It’s always fascinating to discuss the similarities and huge differences in the challenges faced by built environment professionals in a city thousands of miles away with the same population as London.

I was able to do that this week over dinner with Tim Tompkins, president of New York’s Times Square Alliance, and our mutual friend Patricia Brown, director of the consultancy Central.

The one thing we all agreed on is that our cities are nothing if not complex and if we in the business of changing them don’t understand that then we are doomed to fail.

Given this, it’s always been interesting to me why our response as developers in particular is to try to remove complexity and focus on simplicity.

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