Balance and Tension

Art by Georg Phillip Harsdörffer at www.bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

So creating enough housing, quality housing that is snugly nestled into a community that can ideally provide its citizens with everything relevant to a good life, a sustainable is, as you can imagine, an enormous game of balance and tension.

And probably many planners would argue that one city can't be all things to all people but, that it might be many things to many people. Whatever the vision of the city -- it would include a broad variety of competing ideas that must be interpreted, creating a constant play of tension in an effort to achieve the ideal of balance.

Imagine a juggler who keeps juggling as the audience throws more and more things for him/her to keep in the air -- while standing on a ball and being pulled in opposite directions.

Process:
This, I think, is the last big point I want to make. Unfortunately I didn't find a great visual reference for this idea of tension and balance and, I'm not so sure that I articulated it clearly enough--especially with the juggler thrown in there. This idea maybe just as important as the home and heart. Competing viewpoints and NIMBYism (not in my backyard) both positively and negatively impact decision-making when it comes to housing (depending on your perspective).