Solution Architect vs Enterprise Architect: Central Planning
Nick Malik has a great blog on Central Planning, comparing a city council's zoning board to enterprise architects. The pull-quote from that post:
Most IT architects don't understand the boundary between solution architecture and enterprise architecture. City planning decides that a shopping area needs to sit next to a housing area in order to meet the growth goals and trends of the town. It does not decide who the builders are, what stores will be built, and what products will be sold. The board does help decide where water, electricity, sewer, rainwater, and pollution mitigation needs to play into the bigger picture. Solution architecture should take on the role of 'architecture within the land' and let Enterprise Architecture take on the role of 'architecture within the city.'
This fits completely within Pat Helland's Metropolis.
So city governments must allocate resources across an array of competing priorities, taking care to protect the sacred—such as education—and balancing the short-term, long-term, and speculative. Private industry makes decisions about what buildings to erect; constrained and controlled by planning rules.
