Histories of Things That Don’t Happen and Shouldn’t Always Work

A number of contemporary disasters or failures—the recent financial crisis, building collapses, landslides, climate change denial, or the current refugee situation—are arguably the result of organizations or institutions in denial. The organizations are arranged like a closed loop that circulates only favorable evidence, and when they encounter contradiction they assume a binary oppositional stance against this perceived threat. These dispositions of the closed loop and the binary both shut out information and attempt to eliminate evidence of a growing problem that can lead to crisis or violence. If there is no punctuating event, the potential violence latent in organization may not capture the attention of history. And laws, standards, and master plans that purport to have the right answer have so much authority in global governance, even when they are spectacularly inadequate to address stubborn problems. Urbanists and architects may offer underexploited ways to adjust the political temperaments and dispositions of organization by introducing spatial variables that are time-released and part of an unfolding interplay—forms with a temporal dimension that allow them to be both more practical and politically agile.