The rules of the economic system that we all live in say that these things are possible events, and maybe ones we should all be prepared for.
The author's point is that the community system is more important (to him) than the economic system.
It may surprise many who are mostly familiar with the economics-based system we all live with, but prior to the 1980's economics was usually a second-order concern when talking about city (and even country) development.
In some places you still see this - there was a recentish HN discussion which talked about some particular issue in Spain, and the cognitive misalignment between people who had lived in Spain and considered the society impact first and those who lived in the US and considered the economic impact was quite striking.
At some point unfortunately many will want a answer as to which way of thinking is right. Generally the economic view will win then, because it's easy to measure and reason about the economic impact of things, whilst alternative models of thought tend to be less based on metrics.
(I wish I knew if the downvotes were because I offended "economic-system thinkers" by pointing out other world-views or if I offended "non-economic-system thinkers" by pointing out that non-economic systems tend to be hard to measure)
The author's point is that the community system is more important (to him) than the economic system.
It may surprise many who are mostly familiar with the economics-based system we all live with, but prior to the 1980's economics was usually a second-order concern when talking about city (and even country) development.
In some places you still see this - there was a recentish HN discussion which talked about some particular issue in Spain, and the cognitive misalignment between people who had lived in Spain and considered the society impact first and those who lived in the US and considered the economic impact was quite striking.
At some point unfortunately many will want a answer as to which way of thinking is right. Generally the economic view will win then, because it's easy to measure and reason about the economic impact of things, whilst alternative models of thought tend to be less based on metrics.
(I wish I knew if the downvotes were because I offended "economic-system thinkers" by pointing out other world-views or if I offended "non-economic-system thinkers" by pointing out that non-economic systems tend to be hard to measure)