Will This Be Our Legacy?

The Power of (Overly) Simple Solutions
The views are amazing. One minute you’re glancing down the street at the Hudson River and New Jersey shore, another you’re watching traffic race north on 10th Avenue from above. New York CIty’s High Line park is an undisputed gem. Forged out of the perseverance of its two initial founders, lots of smart design and, eventually, some robust municipal and community support, it’s an ingenious example of the power of creatively repurposing an otherwise overlooked asset. The structure that became the High Line would have been easier and cheaper to tear down. While I’m thrilled that Walmart has brought jobs and fresh food to areas of Chicago that seriously lacked both, I’m discouraged that other options that would have built more community capital were never developed. The fate of the former Prentice Women’s Hospital building is another example of overly pragmatic, short-term thinking. Running a city like a hyper-efficient corporation can produce shallow solutions. These approaches generate reductionist data that ignore factors that are much more difficult to measure, but which, in the long term, create greater value and matter more.