The Rand Institute made a science out of bad science. They looked at the city’s fire services and created metrics that were actual counter productive in reducing the impact that fires had on the population. They saw areas with more fire companies, not as areas that required more fire services, but as over served areas. Well that is to say that they saw low income areas in that way. Areas which were more affluent were deemed important commercial zones in need of more fire companies. It seems that the pseudo scientific method with which they reduced services was simply a political mechanism to burn out the city’s poor and foreign.

The plan was to neglect the problems of the poor and somehow the ills of the city would vanish or whatever officials though this would achieve. Fires do seem to be a rather effective way of clearing overcrowded areas for industry. What defense can a community put up if there is nothing left to fight for. The reading touched upon the support structure that communities can provide for people who go through hardships in their lives. Communities provide referrals, advise, guidance, and occasionally financial support for those in need. There is also the aspect of a community to self police and keep people in line without incarceration. It is exactly these non-monetary support structures that the fires destroyed and as the fires spread through new districts communities were crumbling as there existence was increasingly needed.

A much better approach to allocating services is to look at exemplary areas as measured by meaningful metrics and look at areas that are in need of improvement and attempt to tailor a solution to the area taking from what you have learned. As soon as the ideas of standardization and uniformity are applied to chaotic systems such as fires – it is likely that resources will be allocated in a minimally efficient manner. If everything is based on averages, half the city would be over-served and the other half would be under-served.

Discussion question: Were the people at the Rand Institute too naive to see that their methods were incorrect or did they intentionally design the system to be used as a mechanism for planned shrinkage?