Smiling Gods Looking Down from the Sky

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"One sees in the newspapers photographs from beaming city officials and architects looking down on the successful model as if they were in helicopters, or gods. What is astounding, from a vernacular perspective, is that no one ever experiences the city from that height or angle. The presumptive ground-level experience of real pedestrians -- window-shoppers, errand-runners, aimlessly strolling lovers -- is left entirely urban-planning equation." -- James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism, p. 44

A photo from when my campus was being designed -- that's Nelson Rockefeller who is second from the left:


Here is the campus the way the designer saw it:


Lovely from way up there, isn't it? Too bad that's not where we hold class.

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