Bloggers are enjoying themselves ridiculing South Sudan’s plans to rebuild its city centers from scratch—in the shape of safari animals.
As well they should! These are crazy schemes, fueled by oil revenues and delusions of grandeur.
But just as delusional is the attack on “constructivism and the demeaning character of collectivism,” and the glorification of so-called bottom-up, market-based approaches. This is what such no-planning has produced in Juba and Wau:
The problem is not central planning versus markets. It’s the set of economic and social forces that produced both the current urban disasters and the zoological plans for the future.
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