When obstacles help

The identification of cities with beehives is not only common but even unavoidable, with the rows upon rows of identical apartment buildings and the seemingly incessant traffic in the streets and bypasses. However, I have always preferred the botanic comparison with a tree or a colony of moss because, in the end, beehives are known to swarm and migrate whenever they find serious difficulties, whereas cities, like trees and many other plants just cannot afford the luxury of moving, so they have to learn to live around the obstacles or die trying.

One clear example of this fight was the raise in the height of medieval cities as the number of inhabitants kept rising while the building area within the defensive wall remained constant. Those who could afford it built higher houses, while the rest started to live just out of the gates in the hope that they would be able to run to the safety of the city if an enemy were to attack. As the number of people living outside of the city wall grew, many cities ended up building a second wall encompassing those already established and providing some relief for the housing problem.

Photo: wallpaperuse.com

The modern version of this problem can be seen in many small territorial demarcations of particular interest, such as Macau, Hong Kong, Monaco, Singapore or Gibraltar, who have been forced to find solutions to accommodate the needs of their citizens withing the limited space that they can count on. However, size limitation is not they only obstacle that cities face: the presence of nearby steep mountains, a lake or a sea shore, even man-made elements such as train tracks or highways, can condition the expansion of the cities.

Even within the US there is a very striking contrast between the cities on the East coast and those in the central plains. Where as the former seem to follow (at least in the central part) a European pattern, the latter sport mostly a grid layout, generally with North-South and East-West orientations, resulting in a globular configuration articulated more heavily along the main roads leading to neighboring cities. However, if a river or a state border crosses the city the layout can be significantly different. The obstacle does not make the development significantly more difficult, it just invalidates the canonical good-for-all blueprint and calls for a dedicated solution.

This reminds me of the classical problem of the blank page syndrome: when faced with unlimited writing possibilities, the sheer size of the choice set is so overwhelming that one cannot even start to consider one or the other. In those cases, the usual exercise of choosing a number of words at random and trying to thread them together in a story is a great example of how creating an obstacle can actually help the creative process. The result might not be the best, but writing something can sometimes help breaking the blockage.

Discussing this issue with Karen, she mentioned that she has also done this herself in the past during her studies as graphic designer, when she had to put together a project but did not have clients yet. In those cases she also pulled together two or three words to prime the creative process, acting as a virtual customer.

There is one caveat to this approach: when one is already struggling to fit all the existing constraints, adding new ones does not help. In that sense, I cannot disagree more with the usual statement that being "between jobs" is an opportunity. It can be an opportunity only in the situation were you where unhappy in your previous job and you do not have to rush a new one because you have no savings, but for the rest of us mortals being fired is simply added difficulties.

The one case that I have really started to miss by now is the daily commute to the office and the physical distance from the house. Although these are obvious nuisances, the help punctuate our days as I mentioned before: most of the difficulties we face every day are easily surmountable, but they provide highlights to our life, either by being there and how we solve them or by the relief we feel when we do not have to deal with them. And the kettle bells are also obstacles, very heavy and very helpful ones. Have a nice weekend.