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“And that,” Mr. Cobden says, “will give the residents an events calendar that arrives on their doorstep of things that are happening – and that kind of creates a sense of place. … We’ll shape it rather than force it on people—but we’ll be trying to knit the community together.”This is basically going to be an old-fashioned utopian venture, but instead of a wacko socialist/cult leader heading it up, it’s a corporation who expects to generate profits while—this being Ikea—making everyone fitter, happier, more productive, comfortable. According to the article, the Swedes are going to have a “long-term interest” in the community and “in fact, Ikea will be acting very much like a municipal government.”Corporations acting like a government, is, of course, just the endgame we all know is coming. Private businesses control enough of government—and are, often enough, run better than government, that we’re just a few short steps away from this scene from Network being accepted as gospel truth. Why not let Ikea take over urban planning? Why not let Google put its algorithms to work fixing the world economy, or let Yum! brands provide school lunches? It’s not like they’re going to fuck anything up that isn’t already totally, insanely fucked anyway.
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waterways on either side of it, and that sounds a lot like a moat to me.[Globe and Mail]@HCheadle
