ABSTRACT
In planning, policy-making and public health, scientific metaphors shape much of how we interpret and intervene in the world. Policy science and management often tacitly view challenges like urban health much like a machine; if something seems to be broken the best approach is to take it apart, understand how all the parts work, fix each one, and put it back together. Public health often aims to emulate Western medicine where curing the body can also be like machine repair and focused on individual parts not the complex whole. In policy science as machine, the internal workings take priority since less is known about how to control the entire system and the ambient environment that might be influencing the machine's functioning. Not everyone can repair or even understand the workings of the policy-making machine, so the theory goes, and only specially trained experts are trusted to participate.
