Social Engineering

The general consensus is that the so-called "social engineering" of the Twentieth Century, such as the creation of the "new Communist man" is a failure. Or is it? Let's take another look.

The national values of the U.S. and western European countries are roughly similar. There are differences but they are relatively minor in comparison with the value systems as a whole. So then why do the people vote so differently? The average Democrat in the U.S is often well to the right, in political terms, of a "conservative" in Europe. Why is this so when the national values are similar; freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc.

I have a simple answer that involves unintentional social engineering. The general street patterns of the cities is what is so different. The way my hypothesis works is that the buildings comprising city blocks represents business. The streets with commuters and pedestrians moving on them represents the people.

Consider a city like Paris. The basic plan of the city is streets connecting one traffic circle to another, usually with a monument in the traffic circle. This means that the city blocks of Paris are all kinds of odd triangular shapes. We could thus say that Paris is a city based on streets, rather than buildings. The street plan is laid out and the buildings have to fit in with the streets.

The typical American city with it's grid pattern is just the opposite. Rectangular grid blocks are the most efficient shape for the buildings but the least efficient shape for commuters and pedestrians. In the grid, it is easier to build and maintain a building of a given floor size but it comes at the expense of making travellers along the streets go further to get to their destinations.

Paris, in contrast, is just the opposite of the grid pattern. Travellers along the streets can get where they are going by covering less distance, on the average, but buildings must squeeze into less spatially efficient triangular city blocks. My hypothesis is that something that is so primal as the general street patterns in a nation's city's must have an effect on the way people think things should operate, even though we tend to give it little thought unless travelling.

A city with a street pattern like Paris gives people the impression society should be set up so that the needs of the people come first and business should build around this. The grid pattern used in America, in contrast, conditions us to think that business comes first and the people must work around this. Thus, people in France are leftward in their views of how society should function and people in America are rightward.

Some countries are in between the two. In political terms, Britain is to the right of countries like France and Germany but to the left of America. Sure enough, London has a street pattern that is neither like Paris nor the American grid pattern. It's street pattern is vaguely what we could term "concentric", one circle inside the other going outward from a center.

This favors (favours) neither business over people, like the grid pattern, nor people at the expense of business, like Paris, but is between the two. You will find that on a large scale, this hypothesis will virtually inevitably predict how people in a given country will vote. Canada is somewhat to the left of the U.S. and you will notice that while Toronto is very much a grid-patterned city, Montreal is somewhat more European in it's layout.