from Ikea. The Globe and Mail reports
Where once they placed a couch in a living room, the Swedes now want to place you and 6,000 neighbours into a neglected corner of your city, design an entire urban world around you, and Ikea-ize your lives.
I can’t wait until they get competition from Walmart.
Apr 11 2012
I never heard of John Derbyshire until a few days ago, but The Nation's inventory of his earlier controversies got my attention. The most interesting: The Nation accuses Derbyshire of "defending Mel Gibson's racist comments." A more accurate summary is that Derbyshire excused Gibson's racist comments on the...
Apr 10 2012
From my former student, Michael Williams: What I am wondering, or maybe proposing, is that as communications become easier and require less effort (i.e. writing an email as opposed to writing a letter) and information becomes easier to access will special interest groups lose their power? My reasoning follows (from te...
Apr 10 2012
from Ikea. The Globe and Mail reports Where once they placed a couch in a living room, the Swedes now want to place you and 6,000 neighbours into a neglected corner of your city, design an entire urban world around you, and Ikea-ize your lives. I can't wait until they get competition from Walmart.
READER COMMENTS
Andrew
Apr 10 2012 at 5:02pm
“We’d have a very good understanding of rubbish collection, of cleanliness, of landscape management,” Mr. Cobden says. “We would have a fairly firm line on undesirable activity, whatever that may be. But we also feel we can say, okay, because we’ve kept control of the management of the commercial facilities, we have a fairly strong hand in what is said in terms of the activities that are held on site.”
A central planners dream come true. Abandon all hope – ye who enter here.
Jeff
Apr 10 2012 at 8:48pm
I’m a bit puzzled at what demographics they’re shooting for here. They say in the article they’re going to keep all the property as strictly rentals; no sales of houses or condos. Presumably, this is so they can keep out the wrong kinds of people and preserve the value of the real estate, which makes perfect sense. But are people really going to want to rent forever? In particular, the middle class families they mention? Most middle class families are home owners, at least in the U.S.
Furthermore, what about schools? There’s a reason most people with school-aged children and sufficient means move to the suburbs: because most urban schools are terrible. Full of bad teachers and worse students.
So if that’s the case, you’re left with childless couples or people with pre and post school-aged children who don’t mind renting. Maybe things work differently in Europe, though. I just think the appeal might be limited in the U.S.
Hey, maybe running schools is their next venture, though.
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