of looking at urban areas as having high population and densities,
and failing to see that the people themselves as a resource
1
Most of us come
from cities and cultures that are rich in insights and wisdom of how to do
things here, the popular Buddhist story of six blind men and the elephant*
is retold with an urban twist - of how we look at urban areas and fail to see
the sliver lining in the tales of doom.
It is easy to
point out that urban problems are a result very high populations, and high
densities - and that this is, by itself, a problem. We fail to see that the
people are also a resource and can be tapped on to find local
solutions to local problems.
* where each
of the blind men approached the elephant and gave completely different
descriptions of the elephant depending on the part of the animal that they
touched