Olan Biten

I need to begin with stating I’m not trained neither in urban nor in environmental studies, yet as a true economist, I will use the liberty of talking about things I’m not educated about. In this case, I believe my attempt is legitimized for two reasons, first, main argument I want to make has to do with the ways in which we use models, not necessarily on the environmental catastrophes and self-organization of cities. Second, this is just a simple blog post where I will intentionally avoid necessary steps to show the validity of the model for the example I will discuss. Thus, I do not claim the proposed model has any explanatory power anyway. You may have come across to the nasty photos of the Sea of Marmara, an inner sea between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea. What is believed to be a natural phenomenon, sea snot, seem to have built up uncontrollably both on the shores and on the bottom part of the sea, seriously threatening the sea life. According to a BBC article 1 , it was firs...