The whole thing was much more banal than what you’re imagining. It was an interim-use building with mainly student residents. There was no coordination between residents that I knew of.
The garden wasn’t trashed before the letter. It was just a table and a couple of chairs, that didn’t fit the house rules. If the city had just said “please, take the table out of the garden”, I’d have given a 70% chance of it working. If the city had not said a thing, there would not have been (a lot of) additional furniture in the garden.
By issuing the threat, the city introduced an incentive they didn’t intend. Some residents who picked up on the incentive destroyed the garden because they were overconfident in the authority following through with the threat – no matter what.
The whole thing was much more banal than what you’re imagining. It was an interim-use building with mainly student residents. There was no coordination between residents that I knew of.
The garden wasn’t trashed before the letter. It was just a table and a couple of chairs, that didn’t fit the house rules. If the city had just said “please, take the table out of the garden”, I’d have given a 70% chance of it working. If the city had not said a thing, there would not have been (a lot of) additional furniture in the garden.
By issuing the threat, the city introduced an incentive they didn’t intend.
Some residents who picked up on the incentive destroyed the garden because they were overconfident in the authority following through with the threat – no matter what.