Sometimes people hear about Open Space and wonder how it can work, with nobody “in charge” of what’s going on. But then again…

…The economy is non-linear, and no one is in charge. There was a famous statement by a Soviet official during Glasnost in the 1970’s. The Soviets were beginning to tour the United States and couldn’t believe that the houses were real, that the workers actually had cars. The Soviet official who was in charge of bread production for Moscow was said to have asked the mayor of New York where the man was who was in charge of bread production for the city of New York. The mayor responded, “No one is in charge of bread production for the city of New York.” The key thing about our Western economy is that nobody is in charge of it, no one giving orders, no one planning, and so far things have mainly been OK.

From Gregg Easterbrook as reported at WorldChanging.org, in response to the question about what our most important tool might be for creating bright green cities.