I agree, Nick, "The most destructive examples are in Queensland, where the government behaves in its customary manner: letting the developers run wild. The architectural impoverishment of Brisbane under the Bjelke Petersen government in the 1970s and 1980s is being repeated on the land." As you know, I have well argued the urban sociology case against the Queensland Government and the Brisbane City Council. However, what is not clear: "The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” If your point is simply that the politics of environment reform -- and reform on steroids since we have delayed for too long -- has big costs for those who would rather not pay, and that change is not perfect, then I agree. If your argument is that the cost-benefit ought to preclude pushing for major environmental solutions, I disagree. There is a fallacy which is the critical thinking field teaches. You can appear to destroy a very good argument by killing it with all the details of the mistakes made in its name. What it is doing is killing the universal perspective by eroding in the details case-by-case, and ignoring the better solutions which are imperfectly working. What this comes to, in the reasoning process, is how we measure success. It is, as I always argued, big picture stuff and looking for immanent local action ("the God within"). Our measuring for success has to take both in account.
I agree, Nick, "The most destructive examples are in Queensland, where the government behaves in its customary manner: letting the developers run wild. The architectural impoverishment of Brisbane under the Bjelke Petersen government in the 1970s and 1980s is being repeated on the land." As you know, I have well argued the urban sociology case against the Queensland Government and the Brisbane City Council. However, what is not clear: "The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” If your point is simply that the politics of environment reform -- and reform on steroids since we have delayed for too long -- has big costs for those who would rather not pay, and that change is not perfect, then I agree. If your argument is that the cost-benefit ought to preclude pushing for major environmental solutions, I disagree. There is a fallacy which is the critical thinking field teaches. You can appear to destroy a very good argument by killing it with all the details of the mistakes made in its name. What it is doing is killing the universal perspective by eroding in the details case-by-case, and ignoring the better solutions which are imperfectly working. What this comes to, in the reasoning process, is how we measure success. It is, as I always argued, big picture stuff and looking for immanent local action ("the God within"). Our measuring for success has to take both in account.