People bought homes, properties, started businesses and generally went through life assuming that there was an order to the universe that more or less reflected their right to do what they wanted, and keep what they had. City planning represented, for many, an unnatural barrier. There were unanticipated and counterintuitive rules that prohibited the good things that they wanted, and there were loose and naïve rules that allowed the miscreants next door to legally graffiti, vandalize or destroy their lives and livelihoods with impunity. People strolled through life oblivious to its chaotic and conflicted underpinnings, and then suddenly they were standing before some committee of hapless, condescending amateurs, pleading for just enough sanity to save themselves.