A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift is a work of satire that captures the idea of paradoxical and ludicrous ideas represented as objective and rational, using data and technocratic processes within a constructed inevitability of “how the world works”.
For me it captures very precisely the army of planners, advocacy experts, community participation experts and rest of paraphernalia of positive intentions, each highly specialized than the other presenting "solutions" that sit comfortably within the status quo of liberal free market...where issues of access to resources, universal access to housing, healthcare, well being are all sacrificed or ignored in the interest of "numbers need to add up". This precisely is the starting argument that Swift puts in Modest Proposal to conclude with a solution of the poor selling their children as food for the wealthy.
Quite paradoxically, the antithesis of Modernist top down hero architect (who had a socialist manifesto and composition to their merit) is a circus of Jane Jacobian Post Modernists working within exactly the same top down structure (but now without composition or a single manifesto). Bravo.
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