Solutions always come from people
Dr. Jerome Groopman, in an interview about his new book How Doctors Think, said basic things about doctors and patients, that resonate with the rest of the fight for human rights, in architecture and urban planning.
I should point out that "first do no harm" is essentially a non-existent sentiment among urban planners, a rare sentiment among architects, but a majority sentiment among doctors.
But they don't fully respect the patient, says Groopman. "Every solution to a medical problem ultmately comes from listening to the patient", he says. You may not want to kill the patient. But if you really want to solve the problem, you need to treat the patient as a partner.
Most urban planners don't want to kill the residents in a neighborhood. But neither do they want to hear from them. In their case, the lack of respect comes partly from the availability of force and money -- if you believe you have a good idea, say "density" or "increased land value", why would you listen to anyone else's ideas, the ideas of the "natives", if you didn't need to?
But the lack of respect comes from something else. We can all sympathize with it: insecurity. If professionals maintained that solutions came from non-professionals, how could they justify their status as professionals? How could they be elite? Deep down, they know they are only human, and this makes them insecure about their elite status. So they use all their means to defend their own superiority. They dismiss the very knowledge of the people they are supposed to be helping. This very common human failing has been turned into a completely accepted system of elite power projection, from the intimate to the international.
The majority recognizes this massive failure in our culture. But, of course, it's very rarely recognized by professionals.
I should point out that "first do no harm" is essentially a non-existent sentiment among urban planners, a rare sentiment among architects, but a majority sentiment among doctors.
But they don't fully respect the patient, says Groopman. "Every solution to a medical problem ultmately comes from listening to the patient", he says. You may not want to kill the patient. But if you really want to solve the problem, you need to treat the patient as a partner.
Most urban planners don't want to kill the residents in a neighborhood. But neither do they want to hear from them. In their case, the lack of respect comes partly from the availability of force and money -- if you believe you have a good idea, say "density" or "increased land value", why would you listen to anyone else's ideas, the ideas of the "natives", if you didn't need to?
But the lack of respect comes from something else. We can all sympathize with it: insecurity. If professionals maintained that solutions came from non-professionals, how could they justify their status as professionals? How could they be elite? Deep down, they know they are only human, and this makes them insecure about their elite status. So they use all their means to defend their own superiority. They dismiss the very knowledge of the people they are supposed to be helping. This very common human failing has been turned into a completely accepted system of elite power projection, from the intimate to the international.
The majority recognizes this massive failure in our culture. But, of course, it's very rarely recognized by professionals.
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