LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Perspectives from Systems Science

This Letter to the Editor was submitted by Dr. David Gould, verified Burien Resident.

[NOTE FROM EDITOR: Letters to the Editor do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Burien-News or Daniel Media.  If you wish to submit a story, photo, article or letter, please contact us.  We look forward to hearing from you.]

As the Greek Philosopher Heraclitus noted, “Nothing endures but change.”

Types of questions a good reporter or critical thinker would ask when reading an article or book, watching a video, or listening to a lecture are who, what, when, where, why, and how much. Thus, questions about drug addiction, crime, policies, ideologies, globalist elite, and so on might be some of the following. Who are the globalist elite? What are these wrong policies or ideologies?” Where are some evidentiary documents? What is the perspective and credibility of the writer? Specifics matter.

Burien is a collection of diverse peoples from different parts of the U.S. and around the world. Residents have a variety of religious beliefs: Christian, Muslim, Buddhism, Jewish, and none, among likely many others. Burien is not a Christian city, yet most citizens in Burien build communities, educate their kids, are law-abiding, and have a sense that what they do in life is important.

Residents are actively creating jobs, building homes, maintaining transportation systems, going to school, and engaging in social, political, and environmental issues facing Burien, as evidenced by walking around town, talking with people, and watching things happen.

Are there problems such as homelessness? Yes, but given approximately 50-60 homeless people adjacent to the Police Station and a population of about 50,000 in Burien, then there is about one homeless person or so for every thousand residents. While tragic, this level of homelessness doesn’t seem as much of a decline or oppression, especially as some positive steps are being taken to resolve it.

Other steps to improve our community are outlined in the Burien Comprehensive Plan. Current estimates are that we over eight billion people are consuming over 1.7 earth resources, and forecasts are that as the population increases, and existing people want a better lifestyle, we will consume even more earth resources.

Of course, there is only one earth, and at some point, sooner or later, something has to change. Some options: the population can decrease such that those who remain can enjoy a middle-class Western lifestyle, the population can continue to increase but with even less of a chance at a middle-class lifestyle, or some other variation on this theme.

The Cascadia Innovation Corridor, a geographic area from Vancouver, Canada, south to Seattle and Portland, is one of at least 11 megaregions in the U.S. containing two or more nearby or adjacent metropolitan areas that begin to function as a single or continuous urban area. These megaregions are exploiting their basic, mostly common systems: the economy, technology, socio-political, and the physical environment.

Social change is ongoing and is driven by interactions among changes in our environment such as increased population, climate change, and availability and accessibility of resources; economic changes such as the business cycle, inflation, costs of resources and talent; political changes bouncing between conservative and progressive poles as well as changing geopolitics; rapid technological changes such as the acceleration of computer power and capability, global communications, robotics, and going forward artificial intelligence, among rapid advances in other fields such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, cognitive science, and on and on. Truly breathtaking change. And no one is in charge.

Cities are being changed or transformed all the time as they adapt and respond to environmental changes. Nothing new. Some change faster, some slower, but all change. Some thrive; some die. People move in; people move out. Sustainability is not a thing; evolution is, and social systems such as cities evolve.

Burien expects to add about 7,500 housing units over the next 20 years due to increasing population, and as Burien cannot expand outward, Burien has to expand upward, meaning more apartments, condominiums, and commercial space. Certainly, discussion about what kind of community Burien should be is important.

I’m optimistic that we at least have a forum for this discussion and communications in our city government, City Council, the various city commissions, two news outlets: the B-Town Blog and Burien News, the Burien Magazine, the public planning process that has given us “Shape your city,” Discover Burien, our Farmers Market, among many other venues.

Sources:

1. Beinhocker, E. D. (2010). Evolution as computation: Implications for economic theory and ontology. Retrieved from http://www.santafe.edu 

2. Fichter, L. S., Pyle, E. J., & Whitmeyer, S. J. (2010). Strategies and Rubrics for Teaching Chaos and Complex Systems as Elaborating, Self-Organizing, and Fractionating Evolutionary Systems. Journal of Geoscience Education. 58(2)

3. Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green.

4. Mobus, G. E. (2022). Systems science: Theory, analysis, modeling, and design. Springer.

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‍[NOTE FROM EDITOR: If you wish to submit a story, photo, article or letter, please contact us. Even if you wish to remain anonymous, please include your name and phone number so we may contact you privately. We look forward to hearing from you.]