In the governance proposal for Tony Hseih’s (Zappos; RIP) Downtown Project, the microcity was designed to maximize spontaneous “collisions” between residents, with the idea that collisions increase growth, community, and innovation. The first line in Paul Haggis’s ham-fisted, proto giga-woke (and somehow Oscar-winning) 2004 film Crash seems to corroborate this: ‘Any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people. People bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.’
Daniel Keller: We've invested in development in a way that is meant to maximize collisionable hours, meaning the number of hours that someone is out and about in a neighborhood in a public or semi-public way. For example, sidewalks, parks, bars, restaurants or cafes. And the first line in [the 2004 film] Crash is [the character played by] Don Cheadle who just got in a minor car crash. “You brush past people, people bump into you. In LA, nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we missed that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”
