Humans are sick - and planning is the cure

Luke Leslie Friday 14th September 2007

Planning things poorly is a universal ailment. Wether you still suffer from the condition after ignoring repeated diagnosis, or wether you've made a conscience decision to battle the illness and as a result have come to live with you problem, its still important to remember that poor planning is very much a disease.

In short poor planning may well be the biggest economic, social nay universal plight mankind still faces. Heres 3 very different patients:

Case 1 - in which two Luas lines meet on opposite sides of a road during construction.

Case 2 - Iraq, the liberation of, in which a The Liberation of Iraq and removing of a mass murdering leader becomes a an all out civil war lasting longer then World War 2.

Case 3 - In which my college IADT sells all its remaining development land to a primary school.

The ridiculousness of the first case seems laughable, but laughing at cancer does not a cure make. What started with a common business decision to utilize competing companies to maximize efficiency through competition, ultimately lead various foreign companies being hired to start construction of Dublin's recently costructed LUAS tram system. They began construction from opposite ends of the intended route, much like how railroads were built across America. The problem is, the companies worked very much independatly of each other, leading to a breakdown in communication and consequenly to each team laying the rails on opposite sides of the same street, the embarrassing realization came only when a foreman eventually liaised between the two groups, who presumably would have laid the double lines right past each other and kept on going.

Iraq is another textbook case of poor planning. We suffer from the delusion that because our millitary technology exceeds that of the past wars can be solved quicker, cleaner and more cost effectivly, but the military technology of today is but frills in the face of inept leadership. I don't intend to really start diagnosing Iraq, but rather I'll exlore one specifc oddity. Take a textbook example of regime overthowing: Nazi Germany. When the Allies were faced with taking over an entire hostile country the existing German police force was not lined up and shot, the GI's of WW2 didn't just opt to take it on themselves terrorizing a demoralized population. They simply reinstated the previous German police force, pulled the Nazi flags and ambands off and realized that it was not worth the effort of arresting and trying low level collaborators. Instead by merging resources, intelligence and utilizing the pre-existing frameworks, the Allies preserved peace in the then occupied Germany. The notion of re-training a brand new civilian police force from scrath after a full scale invasion seems silly and uneconomic, and you'd be right in thinking it.

When the US deemed it better to systematically remove, disable and destroy 70% of Iraq's electricity, water and civil infrastructure in the bombing campaign that preceded the land invasion, the later discussion to take the country on single-handed without collaborating with Iraq's pre-existing governmental bodies seems a strange one. But don't worry as George Bush the evil military genius and fiendish mastermind behind the world trade center attacks and later its mass coverup has thought this one through, he is a evil genius afterall.

Finally and most importantly, IADTs newest neighbor - a primary school, begs the question; Does anyone think beyond they're paycheck? In short - the college has literally sold all its remaining land, we now have 5 actual buildings on campus, one of which exists purely for administration, another purely for graduate business, the 3rd is the Blackrock Education center (Not in Blackrock) leaving only 3 rather small buildings for direct 3rd level education. Now Monkstown Educate Together (no longer in Monkstown) has bought al0 IADTs remaining land leaveing the college practically zero room for future development, bar bulldozing the forest along the driveway, I've also just found out the area around the Orchard to the top of my Diagram has been zoned for another carpark.

The planners in IADT need to have only looked to DIT, the most recent college to opt to consolidate its entire campus to a brand new purpose built facility. It seems IADT fail to realize that its short term strategy of money spinning thru land selling will inevitably lead to breaking the bank as they too expand to separate facilities located away from the main campus. Once there where does it end? IADT is going to have to play catch up for 20 years but will inevitably have to come to the same realization as DIT and that is: One - well planned Campus is better then 20 smaller ones spread across the city.

The presumably shared sports facillities will be nice, as is the intended general purpose hall (I can finally shut up about it) and planned student accomedation but at the expense of future development opurtunities for real buildings for classes seems a little short shighted, good luck expanding IADT... I won't be there to see it.

I like to think about the future, for example when a race of fierce fake looking aliens comes to annihilate us in their hover-oid-ships, we can point at them in vain shouting "How could we compete? They're light-years ahead" - but ultimately the fault lies with our lack of preparation, our inability to arm ourselves and ready earth to fight these intergalactic pest-oids.

Humanity has time and time again proven itself to be capable of great things. But its our inability to communicate with each other coupled with our lack of moral conviction that leads to us pointing the finger and calling everyone but ourselves responsible for the messes we collectively cause.

Humans are sick - and planning is the cure.

Another well thought out plan

Click to enlarge ze plans

This clown obviously runs things in iadt.

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