Marcus -
It *was* city funds, specifically for this purpose that brought in
the huge yellow machines for a week to rip out the pavement, pour
curbs and sidewalks and dump a hundred tons of soil and maybe even
lay the sod.
But it wasn't the Berkeley City council deciding that this particular
parking lot would be better off being a park... how could they know
that, really? They knew it when a critical mass (5%, 10%?) of the
locals to that neighborhood decided to apply to their program for
doing precisely this kind of project.
Then I'd say that's an example of government working. It's control
mechanism involved tapping the people that knew it best. Good. But
for goodness sake tap the city infrastructure in making it so. It's
not that that leadership hijacked the resource from the public funds,
it's that they didn't waste it.
They not only didn't waste it, they leveraged it well... I'd never seen
anything quite as "organic" of a success.
The commons need not *always* be tragic. And well intentioned, top
down, fascist approaches to "the public good" needn't always inhibit the
bottom up, engaged spirit of being human within a community of humans.
It was a rare moment, in my experience and I'm glad you enjoyed my
sharing it with you!
- Steve
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