4 Feedback, diagnosis and repair
One of the most fundamental aspects of structure-preserving transformations (and belonging) is that at each moment we respond to the given environment, in its current state, and seek to move it further away from its current deficiencies and towards something which extends, enhances, its structure while preserving the essential wholeness which is there.
This is most easily embodied in the idea of “diagnosis”. We examine a neighborhood, looking meter by meter as we go along the streets, for each place that is wholesome, good, in a well-ordered state, and for those place which are damaged, unhealthy, not in good repair. This is the idea of feedback as a necessary component of all growth and all development. We look at the whole, look at whatever there is about it which detracts from the life and wholeness it could have, or seems to be reaching for — and then take the next step to repair the wholeness, to move the whole towards a state of greater life.
I am not talking about broken fences or cracks in the sidewalk — although these things, too, are important, and do need to be fixed. I am talking about larger things, a great tree that has potential but the space around it needs to be taken care of — or another place, a place in the sun where everybody sits because you see the buses passing, pretty girls go by, the wind blows softly. Everyone knows such places and they need to be marked, because they are precious, and must be protected. On the other hand, there is a place which is crumbling a little, which is a dead spot; orange peel and papers gather on the ground, no one likes to be there — it may feel slightly frightening, or anyway, not very comfortable. People are hardly ever there. This, too, needs to be marked. Next time money is spent, a few thousand dollars need to be spent to make that place better, making the neighborhood better.
It is not a matter of opinion. […]
The diagnosis of good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, life-giving and life-destroying, is firmly established and objectively real, even in something as minor as the way the character changes from place to place along a street.
The way is therefore open for every neighborhood in the world to maintain an ongoing, updated diagnosis on a computer, and to refer all future acts, and all capital expenditure, to the continuous improvement of the bad spots, and the continuous enhancement and preservation of the better spots and their latent centers.
Even when a new neighborhood is created entirely from scratch, […] such diagnosis still plays a role in its unfolding. At each moment, the next act looks to the errors, weaknesses, and strengths created in the accumulation of the previous acts, and responds to them, repairs what is weak, and keeps and strengthens whatever is already strong.
This is a pretty good description of a product development process.
#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/11 Necessary further dynamics of any neighborhood which comes to life#