For decades, the pursuit of efficiency has been treated as a universal good. Businesses streamline operations for maximum profit, schools align curriculums to standardized tests, and cities reshape themselves to prioritize speed, scale, and cost. This relentless drive for optimization promises progress but often comes at an unseen cost: the loss of resilience, adaptability, and the very qualities that allow systems—whether cities, organizations, or societies—to thrive in the face of change.
The cracks in this foundation are everywhere. Businesses that focus narrowly on quarterly profits falter when markets shift. Education systems optimized for testing struggle to foster creativity or critical thinking. And in cities, the single-minded push for efficient infrastructure and development has left urban centers vulnerable to economic, social, and environmental crises.
In this article, we’ll focus on cities, where the consequences of over-optimization are starkly visible. However, the lessons extend far beyond urban planning. At their core, these issues reflect a broader challenge: how we think about decision-making itself. By questioning the assumptions that drive our pursuit of efficiency, we can begin to imagine more resilient, adaptive systems—ones capable of flourishing in an unpredictable world.
The Perils of a Narrow Lens
Why do we optimize so fervently for efficiency? Iain McGilchrist, a neuroscientist and philosopher, offers a compelling explanation rooted in how our brains work. He argues that the left hemisphere of the brain, which focuses on narrow, goal-oriented thinking, has come to dominate the broader, integrative capacities of the right hemisphere. The left brain seeks certainty, control, and measurable outcomes—it breaks the world into parts and rearranges them for clarity. In contrast, the right brain perceives the whole, embracing ambiguity and complexity.
This left-brain dominance shapes not only individual decisions but also societal systems. When we design cities—or businesses or schools—around efficiency, we are often responding to a deeply human need: the desire to feel we understand and control our environment. This provides a sense of security, a buffer against the anxiety of an uncertain future. Yet in our effort to impose order, we often lose sight of the organic, interconnected nature of the systems we are trying to optimize.
Jane Jacobs saw this dynamic play out in city planning. Writing in the mid-20th century, she challenged the top-down, efficiency-driven projects of her time—zoning laws that segregated land uses, highways that tore through neighborhoods, and developments that prioritized scale over community. These projects, she argued, destroyed the “sidewalk ballet” of urban life: the intricate web of relationships, local businesses, and culture that gave neighborhoods their resilience.
The overlap between McGilchrist and Jacobs is striking. Both recognized that resilience comes not from rigid control but from embracing complexity. Just as a healthy brain balances the precision of the left hemisphere with the holistic perspective of the right, a thriving city must balance efficiency with adaptability, diversity, and human connection.
Case Study: The Post-Pandemic Office Space Crisis
The pandemic laid bare one of the most glaring examples of efficiency gone awry: central business districts (CBDs) dominated by office buildings. For decades, zoning laws dictated a strict separation of land uses, concentrating offices in downtown cores and pushing housing and other activities to the periphery. This siloed approach allowed architects and engineers to focus on designing larger and more cost-efficient office towers, optimized solely for their intended purpose.
However, this strategy ignored resilience. These buildings were never designed with flexibility in mind—converting them into residential units or social spaces is prohibitively expensive due to their layouts, plumbing systems, and structural designs. Now, with remote work and hybrid models becoming the norm, many cities face office vacancy rates exceeding 30%. This chronic underutilization threatens not only downtown vibrancy but also the financial stability of commercial real estate and banking industries, as debts tied to office properties mount.
Jane Jacobs might have seen this coming. She argued that vibrant cities require mixed uses—housing, offices, and recreation—to create neighborhoods that can adapt to changing needs. Instead, the push for efficiency locked many downtowns into a rigid, monocultural identity, leaving them unable to pivot when the world changed.
The Cost of Neglecting Community Networks
Beyond the built environment, the focus on efficiency has often come at the expense of social cohesion. The urban renewal projects of the mid-20th century serve as a stark reminder. Highways and large-scale developments bulldozed neighborhoods, displacing residents and dismantling networks of support. What was lost was not just housing but the fabric of communities—the small businesses, places of worship, and informal relationships that made neighborhoods resilient in the face of adversity.
This destruction of community mirrors McGilchrist’s warning about the dangers of left-brain dominance. By valuing measurable outputs— vehicular traffic flow, property value or GDP growth, for example—planners ignored the immeasurable: the sense of belonging, the exchange of ideas, and the creativity that emerges from vibrant urban life.
By contrast, cities optimized for efficiency often externalize their true costs. Highways built to speed commuters through urban cores destroy local businesses and community networks. Monolithic office towers create economic vulnerabilities when their single use falls out of favor. The cost of rebuilding or adapting these systems—whether financial, social, or environmental—is enormous.
The result is urban fragility: a brittle system that works well in stable conditions but lacks the redundancy and flexibility to withstand change. When cities neglect the immeasurable—the sense of belonging, aesthetic beauty, and public spaces that foster creativity—they lose not just their resilience but their soul.
Building Cities That Can Adapt and Thrive
To move forward, we must embrace the lessons of McGilchrist and Jacobs, prioritizing resilience alongside efficiency. Cities are not machines to be optimized but living systems that grow, adapt, and regenerate.
Adopt Holistic Metrics: Redefine success in urban planning to include social and environmental health, not just economic output. Metrics like walkability, social cohesion, and ecological sustainability should guide decision-making.
Support Incremental Change: Instead of top-down megaprojects, invest in small-scale, locally driven initiatives that allow neighborhoods to evolve organically.
Reclaim Public Spaces: Turn underutilized downtown areas into vibrant spaces for people, with parks, markets, and cultural events that foster connection and creativity.
Reimagining Urban Resilience
The lessons of McGilchrist and Jacobs converge on a central truth: resilience comes not from optimizing for efficiency at the expense of all else, but from embracing complexity and diversity. Cities that prioritize the measurable—traffic flow, economic output, and scale—may appear successful in the short term. But they are fragile, vulnerable to disruption, and incapable of adapting to the inevitable changes and challenges that arise.
If we are to build cities that thrive in the long run, we must shift our focus. We must value the immeasurable: the sense of community, the creative energy sparked by public spaces, and the adaptability fostered by mixed-use environments. As McGilchrist reminds us, true intelligence and resilience arise from balancing precision with a broader, more holistic view. Just as the human brain works best when both hemispheres collaborate, cities, too, must integrate efficiency with flexibility, clarity with complexity.
By rethinking our approach to urban planning—and, more broadly, to the systems we design—we can create cities that are not only efficient but also resilient, vibrant, and capable of supporting human flourishing in an uncertain world.
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