A collective right to the city A collective right to the city was seminally articulated by the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, a right understood not simply as individual access to the goods, services, and spaces of the city but as the right to change the city in accordance with our deepest desires, to steer the very process of urbanization and the way in which the city nurtures the kinds of people we wish to become. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan The Help-Yourself City rights
Don't Rush to Simplicity An Article by Shawn Wang www.swyx.io You've probably heard this story before: A businessman finds a fisherman, who is living an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea. He laughs and tells the fisherman how to get rich instead. The fisherman asks him what he will do after he gets rich. He replies that he would retire to an idyllic, peaceful life by the sea. There's supposed to be a deep life lesson in there, but it's always felt insincere to me. To me it is better to have reached the heights of a career, or suffered an epic defeat, even if I do end up in the same place as everyone else in the end. To me simplicity is made more beautiful when understood through a long personal struggle with complexity. When I can dance with it, having turned a mighty nemesis into an old friend, and teach others to do the same. Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. On the other side of complexityMountains are mountains zensimplicity