Where No Spreadsheets Grew
A Legend of Human Town-Craft and the Southern Horizon
How to Not Stifle Innovation
The Living Patchwork of Human Design
There was a time, and not so long ago in the deeper tapestries of the human blueprint, when Europe wasn't just a museum of old stones—it was a living patchwork of hillside havens, cobbled alleyways, and towns that bloomed like lichens on the sides of mountains. These weren't cranked out by developers with ROI calculators in one hand and brutalist CAD files in the other. No, these settlements—be they the terraced sanctuaries of Cinque Terre or the alpine nooks tucked into Austria's backbone—were carved by intuition, community, and the unsung geometry of lived experience.
And here's the kicker: they were built without spreadsheets.
That's right. No Excel. No pivot tables. No "synergy" meetings with slide decks listing stakeholder alignment metrics. The folks who built those towns weren't calculating value by how many lattes a tourist might buy in the local square. They were calculating value in sunlight angles, the right bend of a road for horses and carts, and where the fish came in fresh at dawn. These were towns made by humans for humans—before value got replaced with valuations.
The terraced sanctuaries of Cinque Terre, built by intuition and community
Communal Wisdom Over Bureaucracy
The zoning logic? Oh, it wasn't conjured in some distant bureaucratic abyss with forms in triplicate and ten thousand ways to say "no." It was communal. Transparent, like spring water.
If someone wanted to build a new bakery or hang prayer flags from a stone terrace, they didn't need a degree in postmodern urban compliance studies—they needed the nod from the square, from the butcher, the priest, and three wise grannies sipping brandy before noon. Mini-democracies, not micro-managers.
Communal Decision-Making
Decisions made by the community as a whole, not distant bureaucrats
Transparent Process
Clear, open processes like spring water, not opaque regulations
Local Wisdom
Guidance from experienced community members who understood local needs
The Spreadsheet Avalanche
Human-Scale Towns
Communities built on intuition and lived experience
Spreadsheet Modernity
Land justified to distant boardrooms, build-outs became "projects"
Regulatory Cholesterol
Europe ossified with legal barriers to human-scale wonder
So what happened? Spreadsheet modernity hit like an avalanche. Suddenly, every foot of land had to justify its existence to a boardroom three countries away. Build-outs became "projects." Stone became drywall. The sublime became the suboptimal.
And yet—here's where it flips—we still have a chance to do it again. Not by trying to retrofit modernity into those same old hamlets. Europe's lovely, yes, but it's ossified. Every move comes up against a wall of regulatory cholesterol. You want to build a modern village of human-scale wonder? You'd better have a legal team the size of Luxembourg.
So where then?
South America
Why? Because the soil is still soft there—not just in the literal sense, but the regulatory one. The codebooks are still being written. There's enough flexibility in the frame to allow something new to be born—not the wild west of chaos, but the wild logic of reinvention. The same logic that once said, "Let's build a village into the side of a cliff, because it feels right."
Soft Regulatory Soil
Codebooks still being written, allowing for flexibility and innovation
Wild Logic of Reinvention
Space for intuitive design that responds to human needs and natural landscapes
Potential for New Growth
Opportunity to build communities that feel right, not just financially optimal
From Militarized Order to Innovative Design
And here enters Bukele—not just the polarizing avatar of militarized order, but potentially, the man who can pivot from storming gang bunkers to storming stagnation itself. Imagine if he channels that same centralized will—not to dominate, but to coordinate. A living lab of flexible zoning, communal input, and innovation-first design. An experiment not in utopia, but in functional dream architecture.
What's needed isn't just infrastructure. It's infra-sentience. A return to the ancient logic of togetherness—but informed by the tools of today, minus the tools of oppression. That's where the new towns must rise—where spreadsheets haven't already told us what can't be done.
Flexible Zoning
Regulations that enable rather than restrict human-centered design
Communal Input
Decision-making that incorporates the wisdom of residents
Innovation-First Design
Prioritizing creative solutions over standardized approaches
Functional Dream Architecture
Beautiful designs that serve human needs and aspirations
Building Without Fear
It's not nostalgia. It's not escapism. It's the recognition that the best of the old world was built without fear—and the new world will need just as much bravery.