Yeah, just a random thought.
Oh, I’m quite sure that this iteration of Burning Man got planned – you don’t have 68,000 people in one area, even in the desert, and have it look this orderly. One also has to keep in mind that these folks, um, don’t always follow the same drummers the rest of us do: artsy types of folks, anarchists, folks that just like to DO things that others, well, would be scared to do. Counter-culture is a decent catch-all phrase but never having been there myself, I bet it doesn’t capture the gestalt of it.
But it shows that perhaps the over, over emphasis by the Smart People thinking that they must control everything and plan everything because we ordinary schlubs just can’t get it right. We need their beneficence in living our lives (hmm, see a pattern from me lately? Maybe I’d fit in there…). Perhaps some zoning could be useful, but all I see from my vantage point in NH is that these folks never seem to ask themselves a most important question: “When is enough, enough? Why do you think that you folks are the Smart People that should be practicing, not zoning and basic code regulation, but actively doing social engineering for the rest of us?”
Even if it only lasts for a week, there are plenty of details that have to be taken care of for 68K people: food, water, medical aid, transportation, waste management. Yet, it seems that these folks seem fully capable of handling this themselves – on a voluntary basis.
The Sustainable Communities Initiative Busybody and Totalitarian planners (like the 8 Regional Planing entities here in NH, HUD/EPA/DOT at the Fed level) must be climbing the walls right now: “HOW can they be doing this without us????” followed up by “How DARE they be doing this without us (and our “crack money”)???”
