picking on christopher alexander

I own this book, and I'll admit that I haven't read it cover to cover, but I'll feel compelled to critique it on the grounds that it falls into the category of "blank slate" design and planning philosophy. The blank slate areas of development in this country are near the exit ramps of major interstates, and we're filling them up with a type of sprawl that doesnt' resemble anything any planner ever dreamt up (I'd love to be proved wrong on that).

Another aspect of Alexander that I found disturbing is his complete disregard for building codes. Architects, at some point in their career, will curse the fools who enshrined the arbitrary dimensions that shape the spaces in buildings, but without those dimensions we'd be killing people at a slightly faster rate. Alexander's advocacy of ad hoc, amateur construction played itself in Haiti, with horrific results. There are a whole bunch of buildings in the Middle East that feature unreinforced concrete construction that are marking off the time before they entomb their inhabitants.

A counterpoint to Alexander is Kristina Ford's book The Trouble With City Planning that opened my eyes to what it is that planners actually do--or try to do. However, it didn't do much to improve my sense of optimism. Municipalities, whether democratically controlled or run by kleptocrats, will make bad decisions with or without the input of expert planners.