Density and Compacity
Politics and Plans
Density and compacity are terms useful for places like the New York Metropolitan Area. Several technical measures produce components by volume and within these volumes, fine granular distinctions of enormous importance.
Volumes are also the subject of power in politics and plans. They distinguish one leader’s area from another, they reveal distinct responsibilities for services such as police, fire, and sanitation or how water, gas, electricity, and bytes serve your community.
- The Climate Requirement
- Fire
- EXTINCTIONS
- Megawatts for Megabytes
- The Vehicular Pedestrian
- Climate Central
- Index Density
- Density
- Road Density
- Black Rock
- Diversity/Density
- Van der Ryn and Cowan
- News Source
- Book Act
- The Point of Data
- Tale of Two CTs
- ODBC
- 100 Change Agents
- Placeless Participation
- Earth’s Fifty!
- Caduceus Erroneous?
- Getting on Track
- Dancing with the Bear
- Run from the Bull
- Self-Analysis
- Mega Region Design
- The Elements of Four Problems
- Glaeser, Pendall or Fulton
- The Urban Planet
- Catastrophic Resolution
- Creating a Living Place
- Si se puede
- Federal Agents
- Brooklyn is Charitable
- Elizabeth Warren
- George Monbiot
- Becky Bond and Zack Exley
- Whitney M. Young
- Planning Boards = Index
- Part VIII: Strategic Planning
- Number Truth
- Castling
- Planning Together: Part VII
- Planning Together – Part VI
- Planning Together: Part V
- Planning Together: Part IV
- Planning Together: Part III
- Planning Together – Part II
- Planning Together: Part I
- Critical Politics
- The Fairness Doctrine
- Storm Politics
- Planners Network
- Vote Splitting
- Supreme Dark Money
- Vote Early
- Represent Us! Damn It!
- Malfunctions
- Placeless Participation
- System Change
Energy and Synergy
The lines are multi-linear. They can define you by a zip code, or the train or road used to a set of career routes to and from places that shape human life. People know exactly where they are in the NYMA and when not. Boundary lines separate one thing from another, and the stuff that makes the NYMA separate from everything else is tied to the density of things per unit of land or water. At some point, the area is not dense enough to be called metropolitan. Although these many densities combine to form measures of compacity, of everything we know, and to the detriment of humanity, it remains a vague notion.
The premise of combining stories and writing about the densities and compacity of urban life and the many opportunities it offers includes elements of personal political leadership essential to educate and inspire the will to create change on a scale so massive it appears impossible. It is not.
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