The slow response to rapid innovation
Local agencies can use their regulatory power to allow for innovation or keep the public trapped in the olden days.
I love asking Why and What If questions related to the built environment. Not to annoy, but to learn and dream big. I may have a degree in civil engineering, but I study people.
Having been a consultant almost 25 years, I find myself living in a Venn diagram of 2 worlds:
New urbanism. Organic development and timeless design philosophies that build at a human scale to serve human needs.
Emerging technology. This includes smart cities and all the innovation that can dramatically change our day-to-day behavior.
These worlds are often considered to be in conflict, but I think that’s because of a basic language barrier between the two. I’m trying to be a Rosetta Stone for these industries because I want professionals in each to understand each other, especially when they disagree.
There’s incredible opportunity in the peaceful overlap of walkable neighborhoods and smart cities. For example, mobile phones make bicycling more accessible. Autonomous vehicles will make streets safer for kids to ride bikes to the swimming pool. Ubiquitous internet will free us to work close to home, or even completely eliminate the commute.
The way to break through communication barriers is to bring ideas into focus.
When my boys were infants and toddlers, they didn’t have a grasp on language. They made plenty of sounds, but how could I understand them? I’d subconsciously look at context. Is he banging on the fridge door? Is he pointing at a tree, laughing? The big idea would come into focus, and then I could communicate with this similar but different being.
That’s what I’d like to plant in your mind. When you’re thinking about tactics and strategies, bring the big idea, the Why, into focus. This is especially true when you get into issues about governance, policy, and regulations. Rules about land use and infrastructure are often at odds with human behavior. We’ve got to be able to identify the ways in which society has outgrown some forms of governance.
The brick-and-mortar bank is one example that comes to mind. I’m a Gen Xer, so my first savings account was opened in the 80s by going along with my mom to a bank. She filled out a form. Then she threw it away and filled out the correct form. After waiting in the lobby, we were called back for an interview with one of those well-dressed people behind a fancy desk. All the while, a steady stream of people trickled in along the velvet rope, depositing and withdrawing money before exiting with a lollipop.
Right now, if a developer plans to build a bank in a shopping center, they have to submit a traffic study to the local government agency. That study will include a prediction about how many cars will come and go during a typical weekday. It’s based on decades of studies by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. (The Trip Generation Manual.)
Also right now, people of all ages have access to internet banking. We rarely drive to a bank. I don’t even have a branch of my bank in my state. And yet the rules of development continue to be enforced. “We predict 150 to 200 vehicle trips per day.”
Autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, smart cities, the internet of things, mobility-as-a-service… transportation is shifting from an engineering industry to a technology industry. The status quo is in a white collar panic. There’s much hand-wringing about “new mobility” and how it needs to be studied, studied, and studied before modifying any industry practices.
I bet there’s a public works department out there right now arguing that their phone booths are not adequately accessible.
Factory-minded professions tend to display slow and weak responses to innovation. Slow and deliberate is a terrific way to plan and build bridges and hospitals, but a terrible way to innovate. This has been a real problem for traffic engineers and land use planners since long before most of us were born. These are two types of people groups that directly shape development patterns and the type of infrastructure that gets built. And if Henry Ford had asked them how to innovate, they would have asked for a faster horse and a zoning ordinance to require free horse parking.
Part of the infrastructure professional’s job is to look into the future to develop long-range plans. They consider where people will live, work, and play, and how they’ll get around from place to place. And when I say they look into the future, I mean they use current day technology as a guide for what technology people will use to move around (thus, the Henry Ford reference).
This is a human nature thing. Our default setting is a wild imagination and big dreams, but that gets schooled out of us. Now, we’re in this situation:
Very intelligent people look in the rearview mirror to see what’s through the windshield. It’s an embarrassing form of fortune telling. I know, I was trained in the dark arts.
Inevitably, a long-range land use or mobility plan includes outdated assumptions like these examples:
Employees have no way to work away from the office.
Mobile apps have nothing to do with transportation.
Personal automobiles are the only viable mode of travel.
Let me offer up just two reasons that it’s so important for traffic engineers and land use planners to change their approach to travel prediction. The outdated assumptions lead to:
Building wider roads that communities don’t need and can’t afford.
Spread out development patterns that communities don’t need and can’t afford.
How can anyone say with a straight face, after all these pandemic lifestyle changes, that those example assumptions are valid. But that’s still how highly educated and credentialed experts work. They’re looking into a rearview mirror thinking they’ll see the future.
Meanwhile,
Almost half of the people working at home now want to keep working from home.
Mobile apps have everything to do with moving people and goods.
Car prices are through the roof, and so are the sales of electric bicycles.
There’s a perceived safety in moving slowly through policy changes. But sometimes you need to toss those old rulebooks in a dumpster fire.
It’s wild that so few planning and public works departments change course. But some are tossing out minimum parking requirements, questioning the need for zoning, and exploring ways to integrate “libraries of vehicles” on digital platforms.
What about your local agencies? Are they paving the way for innovation, or stuck in a rut?