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This was beautiful. Just moved from Chicago to Austin, and this article articulates everything I miss about Chicago better than I ever could. Spot-on.

The conclusion w.r.t "smart" cities was curious, though. I'd see "smartifying" as something that would add to the tangle, not subtract from it. Another layer on top of all the others.

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Similarly, this article made me homesick for London.

I suppose one angle on smartness is that it provides a simplistic lens on the tangle. If rather than observing the intersection of life, industry and history around us, we tap a single-purpose button on our phones and stare until like magic, the thing we want appears -- if the layers on a city become intangible -- then we lose some of the glorious chaos that is urban life.

Tangle is the thing I love about London. I'm from Perth, Australia, where the tangle is very thin indeed - it's a big suburb. Melbourne is a bit better, but I moved to London in 2002 then visited Melbourne again in 2004, and was shocked how untangled it felt.

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