Those Pesky Humans: Urban Planning and its Discontents

Article first published as Those Pesky Humans: Urban Planning and its Discontents on Blogcritics.

Greg Lindsay writes in the New York Times that Pegasus Holdings, a technology company based in Washington, DC, is building a "medium sized town" on 20 square miles of New Mexico desert. The town, dubbed the "Center for Innovation, Testing, and Evaluation" (mark it on the map!), will contain infrastructure adequate to support a population of 35,000, but will be home only to a handful of engineers and other geeks from Pegasus, who plan to use it as a laboratory to build future "smart cities", where power grids, traffic, security and surveillance systems are monitored and controlled by computer.

On the face of it, "smart cities" sound like a good idea (better than, say, "dumb cities"). The idea is, in outline, simple enough: a) install sensors to get information about how people move about and interact in cities, then b) feed this data to computers develop complex models of human behavior, generating policies that make things work better, more efficiently. To take an obvious example, who wouldn't want traffic lights optimized to increase vehicle throughput? Or pedestrian pathways that make two-way foot traffic flow more smoothly? Makes sense, right?

Yet, as Lindsay points out, these seemingly innocuous examples paper over a broader project that has repeatedly been exposed as folly, that of trying to simulate the behavior of people in cities using abstractions like computer models, rather than by gaining an understanding of what people living in cities care about, and find valuable. These qualitative, subject elements are typically what determine what makes a great city "great", smart by computer modeling standards or not.

It would seem obvious and necessary to account for this "human-factor" when constructing quantitative models for smart city projects like Pegasus' (after all, we're talking about humans), only, as is so often the case, the computer geeks view "qualitative" features of a city as the very thing that needs to be analyzed quantitatively, and replaced. As Rober H. Brumly, managing director and co-founder of Pegasus pronounced, "We think that sensor development has gotten to the point now where you can replicated human behavior".

And so Brumly and the Pegasus visionaries, in this latest round of "machine versus man", continue the tradition of remaining seemingly ignorant of the manifest lessons of over-thinking urban planning going back decades, at least to the publication of the seminal "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by flesh and blood New Yorker Jane Jacobs. Jacobs repeatedly documented how best laid urban plans would lead to frustration and a sense of alienation in the neighborhoods of New York City. For example, urban planners who attempted a gentrification project in a NYC slum decided that planting strips of grass outside tenements would have a salubrious effect. But alas, the pesky human tenants saw the grass strips as ridiculous, ill-placed, and insulting. It had the opposite effect, in other words, which could have been "predicted" had only the urban planners taken the time to understand the neighborhood, and get to know the tastes and circumstances of its inhabitants.

And there are more nefarious examples, like the 1968 RAND project to reduce fire response times in NYC, resulting in an estimated 60,000 fires in impoverished sections of New York, as "faulty data and flawed assumptions" triggered the replacement of fire stations in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx with smaller ones. The coup de grace here was the politicization of the supposedly "scientific" project, where clever RAND officials, realizing that rich folk in well-to-do neighborhoods would not tolerate the effects of "efficiency" using their (flawed) simulations, placed such neighborhoods outside the scope of the project.

And on and on the story goes. Unintended consequences are simply part and parcel of the development of causal or predictive models using quantitative data gleaned from messy, complex systems. The real folly, however, in the Pegasus project and so many others like it, is not in the (basically correct) idea that quantitative analysis can provide useful information when devising strategies, for urban planning or otherwise, but that the human element can therefore be eliminated. That latter claim does not follow, and taking it too seriously will almost certainly guarantee that among the lessons we learn from the "Center for Innovation, Testing, and Evaluation", one of the most important is likely to be that innovation, testing, and evaluation is not enough.

I Eat Yogurt, Therefore I Am

In the WSJ today, Jonah Lehrer, who dropped out of his Ph.D. program in neuroscience to make millions writing Barnes and Noble science books like "Proust Was a Neuroscientist", and "How We Decide", wrote a piece in the review section about eating yogurt and its connection to the mind-body problem. The basic idea is that yogurt makes you less anxious, because it contains probiotics, which contain GABA, a neurotransmitter that limits the effects of neurons. This is all true enough, I'm sure, just as its true that eating simple carbohydrates gives one a feeling of energy followed by a "crash". It's no mystery that the types of foods we eat affect how we feel. But it's quite a leap from this sensible factoid to conclusions about the nature of the mind--if it's distinct from the brain, or more generally our physical bodies. In fact Lehrer glosses over the pivotal conceptual conundrum, that all the gastronomic observations he or anyone else adduces in favor of theories about the nature of mind are consistent with theories that correlate mind and body, as well as those that identify them. C'mon Jonah, you surely most know this. Was it that hard to find something to say?

Cosmic Rays and Climate Change: Shhh!

I have no idea whether there's any scientific validity to the research conducted at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, aka CERN, on whether cosmic rays affect climate on Earth. What is interesting is the implication in Anne Jolis's September 7 article The Other Climate Theory, that researchers have long speculated that not just C02, but cosmic rays, may indeed change our climate. Where's this debate in the media? Roger W. Cohen, in a WSJ response to Jolis's article, claims that the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) camp--the scientists who think that the primary cause of the warming Earth is human activity--is actually much smaller than how the media frames the debate, and in fact there is another school of thought among scientists that non-anthropogenic factors may be driving changes. In this "contrarian" school of thought, scientists tend to group into those interested in investigating the influence of cosmic rays, and those interested in the hypothesis that the Earth naturally and quickly changes temperature based on its own "unforced chaotic variations". Whatever the merits of these discussions, why haven't we heard them? That's a question even a non-atmospheric scientist can pose.

Oh, Right, I Have a Blog

I've been away on an extended hiatus as CEO of a software startup, which is still ongoing, but I just can't stay away from blogging any longer. I picked up a copy of the NYT times this morning at the Starbucks, which is proof positive that I'm missing the ole' blogging world.

So, I'll start out modestly with a phenomenon that I'm sure we're all familiar with, but is really kind of silly if one stops to consider...

The Token Door Shove... (dramatic music starts now)

This refers to the little polite "shove" we give the door as we're entering a building and it's closing on the person entering behind us. The TDS is silly because, more often than not, it makes zero difference to the life of the person behind us; in some cases it might actually make things nominally worse, as just opening the door afresh would be easier than attempting to coordinate the door grab post push. We just do this, of course, because it's a signal that we recognize the person behind us, which in general is a good thing. But, again, it's silly because it doesn't really matter. It masquerades as having some positive benefit, when in fact it's pure theater (if it actually does help in some particular case, great, but it's a knee jerk thing that we never figure in the first place, which is The Point). How many other benign actions do we engage in just to reassure those around us that we're polite members of civilization? How about, the little purse of the lips we give to passersby? Do you know the one? Ever so soft and reassuring, and completely useless, unless it's midnight in a shady part of town, of course, where it might give evidence that we're not in attack mode with, say, a rusty screwdriver concealed behind our back (but what if it's just facial expression subterfuge?). But if we're in the shady part of town, we wouldn't look at the passerby at all, would we? So, again, we're hell bent on appearing polite to each other, whether we're actually helpful to another, or not.

The Wisdom of Crowds

I had an interesting discussion with one of my (many) liberal friends recently, and there's a couple of points that came out of our prolonged exploration of every idea we could think of in the span of an evening. The first point worth sharing, I think, is as follows. The barnes and noble science section is packed with books explaining that we can't predict the future in systems that aren't governed by so-called normal distributions (though we think we can, a kind of persistent overconfidence in our epistemic abilities). The point here is that there's all of this complexity in everyday life and social life (think economics), and we're under the illusion that having a Ph.D. in economics and pointing to charts renders all of this moot. I'm talking about Taleb's "Black Swan", books like "The Drunkards Walk", everything that Malcom Gladwell has every written, et cetera. So the point is, it turns out that huge parts of the world--and interestingly, ordinary parts of the world, like society and culture, politics, economics--are effectively black boxes with respect to prediction. We really just don't know what tomorrow will bring. This has implications--huge implications--for the role of government or in general the role of experts in advising the rest of us on what courses of action should be undertaken. Much of this advice should properly be seen as speculation (there's even research that suggests that experts are actually worse at predicting outcomes in complex "human" systems than non-experts).

So that's point one. The other point is the "wisdom of crowds" notion, another concept that accounts for dozens of books in the BN science section (you know, where the smart-people-wanna-bes congregate). So this idea that many problems are solved by aggregating viewpoints, explored in books like, ah hum, The Wisdom of Crowds, Infotopia, Jeff Howe's Crowdsourcing, et cetera, sugggests that having some expert decide things can be really stupid. In fact it turns out that groups--crowds--can often arrive at more optimal solutions to problems then even some one person who is educated and expert on solving problems of that type. It turns out, for instance, that allowing people to "bet" on some future outcome often produces the best prediction of that outcome. Asking an expert to figure out the outcome would result in a worse prediction. Just ordinary Joes (and of course experts too), if there's enough of them, throwing down their money on which horse will win, or which companies to buy stock in, or which presidential candidate will win the election, often produces a better prediction on aggregate than the most expert horse person, or stock picker, or election pundit.

So this cutting edge research makes everyone feel all enlightened and egalitarian and up to date with the latest tidbits of "didn't you know?" science. Only thing is, this is the best, greatest empirical argument for free markets ever. Let ordinary people figure out what to buy, where to shop, how the economy should go, from the ground up, so to speak. Science suggests that this libertarian technique often results in more optimal solutions then central planners sitting in government offices. This really amuses me, because the folks feeling all educated reading wisdom of the crowds literature-- folks interested in social networking technology, reading Marx, sniffling about how republicans are idiots, eating tofu-- yes these folks are in fact reading powerful arguments for individual liberty, limited government, the wisdom in crowds, not government planners trying to engineer the Good Society for everyone else. (And they seem not to know it. Ha!) The latter just isn't optimal, if you believe the latest Gladwellesque arguments coming out of research on decision making.

Which brings me to my little wrap up. When I'm not sitting in cafes and I'm actually doing serious work, I'm reading Hayek, the Nobel economist who is widely credited as an intellectual precursor to libertarianism, particularly with regard to government involvement in the economy. Hayek, that Ph.D. egghead himself, who nonetheless argued (in my view persuasively) in the 1950s that because no one person can possibly know everything, the best strategy for a society is to vest more and more power in individuals. Hence individual liberty is a strategy that is most likely, over time, to result in more optimal solutions. Makes sense. The wisdom in crowds.

So the point is, again, that all of these insights emerging from the latest research in the social sciences are pointing back to non-government-controlled solutions to our most pressing problems. It's pointing to a model where government's most important job is to structure society in such a way that its citizens--all of us--can choose how best to live, what to buy, who to give money to, how to use our own money, and on and on. The aggregation of all of these individual voices makes things work better (right comrades?). But of course people who are free to choose and to decide much of their lives on their own means that disparities in wealth and natural talents will result in disparities in society. And that bothers all of my liberal friends. "Can't we just control people and liberate them too?" perhaps I heard (didn't they tell us in school? you have to control people to try to make them equal, since we're not naturally that way). But no I think unfortunately, on the aggregate, there's a better and worse way to do things. And on the aggregate, their will always be winners and losers in the crowd.

On Lawhatever James and Passion for World Cup

Labron James makes much ballyhooed anouncement on which organization he will work for, continuing to bounce a ball on a wood floor and throw it through a metal hoop to the adoration of millions. Don't Care. Not that I'm bothered by fame per se. I love Lady Gaga and she's a fame monster.

What other grumbly points can I make. Oh yes, I almost forgot. In the ongoing attempt for all enlightened Americans to outdo each other in showing the most self-deprecation, the Bay area is aflame with passion for the World Cup. Who gives a damn? Uruguay? I don't even know if I pronounced it right, and you know what, who cares? Uruguay? Yes it's vitally important that we all hang on the edge of our seats to see this world power at their finest hour (actually I think they lost). Interestingly, when I show a little American nationalism amongst my European friends here in Palo Alto, they seem strangely, ironically, to appreciate it. It's almost like everyone is thinking: "Americans, get some cojones! The world's superpower and your educated elite are tripping over themselves to appear embarrased by your success, and desperately trying to convince us that you're okay because you love watching Uruguay kick a ball around, clapping so loudly you make yourself look silly. We wouldn't do that, says the French man, smiling. We love France. Suckers!")

US Nonplussed as Iran Threatens Ban

Iran's Ahmadinejad threatened to ban Coca Cola and other American products Thursday, after President Obama announced new sanctions on the regime in further efforts to curtail its nuclear ambitions. Insiders in Washington remarked privately early Friday that Iran has in fact been receiving shipments of New Coke, tons of which were inventoried shortly after its introduction in 1985, in response to lackluster public interest. "We're not worried about its [the ban's] impact on the economy", remarked a White House official who chose to remain anonymous, adding that a deal struck with Coca-Cola currently gives a percentage of the profits from sale of the now-defunct New Coke to the State department to help offset the cost of "dealing with Iran". "We may feel the heat in terms of a loss of funding if Iran follows through", he admitted, noting that sales of parachute pants and Vanilla Ice albums could also suffer.

Computer giant IBM and Intel were also mentioned by Ahmadinejad in his defiant response to news of further sanctions. And a spokesperson for Iran told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Friday that "further bans on U.S. auto imports", could "bring the U.S. economy to its knees", insisting that the thousands of Pintos Iran currently imports could easily be replaced with "less expensive models from China", and "other countries", insisting that such non-Western alternatives were competitively priced and would be increasingly sought after as relations between Washington and the beleaguered Iranian regime further chilled in the wake of Thursday's announcement.

Obama declined to comment on Ahmadinejad's retaliatory remarks, and privately the mood in Washington appeared upbeat. "We tried to sell them MC Hammer shirts", said a State department official familiar with the matter, "but they told us to go packing". "We were definitely the Great Satan after that one", he mused, confessing that the once bestselling single "Hammer Time" remained a solid, if seldom admitted, favorite of his. "Don't diss The Hammer", he chuckled, jerking a thumb towards the wall behind him, where a photo of several men standing around crates of Coca-Cola was visible. "Drink up, boys."