Plastic Unreality-

In the modern city industry gets treated like a disease. The areas where it exists are assumed to be dirty and derelict. They are kept to the "other side of the tracks," swept under the rug. And people forget altogether that the things which surround them in their daily lives- bread, chemicals, cars, oil, gaskets, radios, chairs- are all made in these forbidden industrial zones. Under these conditions it is not surprising that people treat life as an unreal charade, and forget the simplest realities and facts of their existence.

Since the 1930's various efforts have been made, on behalf of the workers, to make factories green and pleasant. This social welfare approach to the nature of industries is once again unreal, in the opposite direction. A workshop, where things are being made, is not a garden or hospital. The gardens which surround the new industrial "parks" are more for show than for the workers anyway since a few inner courts or gardens would be far more useful to the workers themselves. And the contribution of an industrial park to the social and emotional life of the surrounding city is almost nil.

Christopher Alexander
A Pattern Language