Will Boulder’s Traffic Safety Program be Effective?

By Dom Nozzi

October 24, 2017

Whenever I hear about a call for “more education” to improve traffic safety, I know that the issue is not one we are serious about solving (and the call usually comes from the political right wing). It is telling that we don’t hear calls for “more education” when it comes to robbery, murder, terrorists, etc.

Given the fact that all cities have, countless times, doubled down on more education for traffic safety for the past century (and our roads are now more dangerous than ever), traffic safety education campaigns probably suffer more from diminishing returns than anything I can think of.

It is a safe bet that all Americans, when they were children, were told over and over and over to LOOK BOTH WAYS or BE CAREFUL or WATCH OUT FOR CARS whenever crossing a street. For Boulder to aggressively push a HEADS UP campaign (or LOOK BOTH WAYS) at crosswalks is condescending, patronizing, and a shameful example of victim-blaming. It is treating adults like children.

Most all of us in traffic safety are well aware of the fact that road engineering to slow cars and obligate motorists to be more attentive is far and away the most effective tactic for traffic safety (using traffic calming interventions and other means of reducing space allocated to cars). No other tactic comes even close to improving safety, to the point of the other tactics almost not being worth even mentioning.

One thing that has really bothered me in my 4.5 years on the Boulder Transportation Advisory Board is how often staff comes to us with solemn, proud sincerity to assure us of the importance of pursuing “the 4 (now 5) E’s”: the outdated, decades long tactic of having us work on Education, Enforcement, Encouragement, Evaluation, and Engineering. Please. Doing this sets up a false equivalence which strongly implies that each is equally important. A much better way of stating this is that there is one big E (engineering), and 4 secondary E’s that are almost not worth considering.

I understand why the City of Boulder is pushing education so hard for its “Toward Vision Zero” traffic safety project (as it has done every few years for the past century). It is because politically, it is utterly impossible to push effective engineering solutions such as road diets (given the Folsom Street debacle that many people are still furious about years after it erupted).

It is so very easy, politically, to push education. Zero opposition from citizens. Who would oppose such a nice thing? When all you have is a hammer (education), all of your problems look like nails…

To its credit, the City has restarted funding for traffic calming, which can be very effective. But that was only after a huge number of citizens demanded it. Staff opposed restoring funding, and it is likely that the City will (intentionally?) continue to okay the construction of speed humps, knowing that humps are furiously opposed by some for their noise pollution and car damage and opposition by the fire department. Knowing, in other words, that humps are a poison pill that has a chance of killing traffic calming again.

It must also be said that even though traffic calming is effective, its effectiveness is substantially muted by the fact that it will not be applied to the major roads in Boulder, which are very hostile, dangerous death traps.

Frankly, given the large number of traffic deaths and serious injuries Boulder has suffered recently, I don’t know what it will take to get the City to take serious action to meaningfully improve traffic safety.

The education push in 2017 shows Boulder is not serious.

Given the above, I continue to recommend that the City suspend and discontinue its Toward Vision Zero program until the City is ready, politically, to seriously pursue it. As it stands now, the Toward Vision Zero program is giving Vision Zero a black eye by being almost entirely a lip service program.

Green Cars are Nowhere Near the Complete Solution

By Dom Nozzi

October 17, 2017

I don’t think anyone disagrees with the point that we need to promote both “green” cars and fewer cars.

The problem in cities such as Boulder CO, though, is that it seems like most or all efforts are directed at cleaner “green” cars (which makes it seem like dirty cars are the only problem). I and many others in Boulder believe Boulder has plateau’d in shifting people from cars to bicycling, walking, and transit, and there are still far, far too many per capita trips by car.

There are many reasons for this: Densities too low; too many major roads and intersections oversized and therefore nearly impossible to walk or bike; too little mixing of housing with offices or shops; too much free parking; too little traffic calming; too little road tolling; gas and gas taxes (and other motor vehicle taxes/fees) too low in price or absent; too many one-way streets; excessive parking requirements; over-concern about traffic congestion; failure to adopt an “Idaho Law;” silo-ing transportation and land use so that each is considered without the other; widespread lack of knowledge about (or outright opposition to) effective tools to shift motorists from cars to non-motorized travel; signal lights synchronized for car speeds rather than bus/bike speeds; failure to slow the growth in over-sized service vehicles; widespread belief in the myth that freer-flowing traffic reduces emissions and fuel consumption; over-emphasis on mobility rather than accessibility; no trend analysis of important measures such as quantity of parking or VMT per capita; extremely inflated estimates of bicycling levels that are not even close to reality; over-emphasis on stopping growth or minimizing density as a way to reduce car trips (such efforts actually increase per capita car trips); too much effort directed at creating more open space within the city (the city has way too much open space in part because so much of it is for cars); too much use of slip lanes and turn lanes in places they do not belong; widespread belief in the myth that car travel is win-win (it is actually zero-sum); failure to use raised medians in several locations; making bicycling impractical on hostile streets (due to extreme danger); and over-use of double-yellow center lines.

I also believe that installing bike lanes, bike paths, sidewalks, and improved transit has about reached its limit in recruiting non-car travel.

It seems to me that Boulder’s relatively high city government wealth has allowed the city to over-rely on politically easy tactics (more paths, bike lanes, sidewalks, buses) that involve throwing money at problems. To a great extent, the City rests on its laurels by pointing to the (inflated) bicycling rates, and buys into the societal narrative that dirty cars are the only problem with cars. Too little effort is therefore directed toward the tactics I list above.

I and many others in Boulder fear that the strong, highly visible push for clean cars is in certain ways distracting us from the extremely important need to make progress on the tactics I mention. Much of my tenure on the Boulder Transportation Advisory Board (TAB), for example, has featured a lot on green cars, and pretty much nothing on the tactics I mention.

I think green cars are important, but even if we substantially increased the percent of such cars on our streets, we’d still have a huge amount of work in front of us to address the enormous number of substantial problems associated with per capita car travel – car travel that is way too high.

But I and many others in Boulder fear that the strong, highly visible push for clean cars is in certain ways distracting us from the extremely important need to make progress on the tactics I mention, and makes it too easy for people to conclude that dirty cars are our only problem with transportation.

The comments I make in this blog also apply equally to the promotion of self-driving cars, which is another silver bullet that too many believe will be a sufficient means of solving most or all of our traffic woes. Not only will they not do so if they become a large percentage of cars on the road. I also believe it is highly unlikely that we will ever see a large number of such vehicles on the road. So again, another unfortunate distraction when we have so many important, effective transportation tactics that are languishing for lack of strong advocacy.

I’m afraid that the lack of political will, and the surprising number of citizens who are misinformed, means that for Boulder to start moving on non-green car tactics, severe crisis will be needed that gives the city a kick in the butt.

 

 

Protecting “Neighborhood Character” through NIMBYism?

By Dom Nozzi

October 15, 2017

There are people in Boulder who regularly state that the City Council has turned a blind eye/ear to neighborhood concerns. That they are not concerned about “protecting neighborhood character” (which is a transparent euphemism for NIMBYism) in their allegedly corrupt rush as Council members to ruin Boulder with rapid, uncontrolled growth.

The NIMBYs also make the bizarre claim that this “out of control” Council will lead to environmental degradation and loss of affordable housing.

But I utterly fail to see how the positions of the NIMBY people will achieve these worthy objectives if, as is clear to anyone paying attention, their positions result in a big jump in car travel and a perpetuation of rapidly rising housing costs.

If you oppose, as nearly all of these NIMBYs do:

Smaller homes

ADUs

Co-ops

Smaller lot sizes

Smaller setbacks

More neighborhood mixed use

Less parking (and the conversion of existing parking to housing)

More density

Priced parking

Buildings over one or two stories

Road diets

…you are thereby calling for more per capita car trips, more carbon/air emissions, much higher housing costs, a continuation of neighborhood character being changed by the in-migration of much more wealthy residents, and sprawl into outlying towns.

Oops.

My Comments Regarding Vision Zero in Boulder Colorado

By Dom Nozzi

October 8, 2017

I have served on the Boulder Transportation Advisory Board for 4.5 years. Because only a tiny number of people attend the Board meetings, the thoughts shared by us Board members are heard by almost no one. Therefore, since I consider a “Vision Zero” plan that Boulder is now pursuing so important, and that item is on our October 9^th agenda, I would like to give my views more daylight by sharing them on Facebook and my blog site.

Vision Zero, by the way, is a vitally important objective that many cities in the US have adopted in recent years. It seeks to create a transportation system where there are zero traffic deaths or serious injuries.

Over the past year or so, Boulder has tragically seen several deaths and serious injuries on our roads. I was therefore initially quite happy to see that the City is now proposing a Vision Zero plan.

But while I am extremely supportive of a Vision Zero objective, the strategies being proposed by staff are little more than timid tweaks to the same old, ineffective strategies that Boulder and most all other US cities have tried now for the past century: More warning paint. More (or revised) warning lighting. More warning signs. More warning education. More warning enforcement. After a century of doubling down on these strategies every few years, our roads are in many ways far more dangerous than they have ever been.

In part, this is because the strategies are suffering from a severe form of diminishing returns. After installing thousands of warning signs on our roads over the past century, for example, it becomes information overload and motorists largely tune them out.

But mostly, these conventional strategies are simply ineffective in creating a safer transportation system. For the past century, we have poured a huge amount of public dollars into single-mindedly building roads that have too many lanes (roads are too wide). For a century, we have built roads engineered to encourage or enable high-speed, inattentive driving. Warning paint or safety education can do almost nothing to make it safe to walk across or bicycle on a monster 8-lane urban highway filled with speeding, impatient, inattentive drivers.

In general, the only effective strategy we have to create a safer transportation system that has any chance of achieving a Vision Zero objective (besides creating more compact land use patterns) is to design streets with dimensions and geometries that obligate motorists to drive more slowly and attentively.

This is not rocket science.

It saddens me to have learned in my 4.5 years as a Board member (and 8 years as a Boulder bicycle and pedestrian and transit commuter) that while Boulder transportation staff is well aware of (and often supportive of) these effective street design tactics, their hands are tied. They are not recommending these effective tactics in the Boulder Vision Zero strategy.

Why are staff’s hands tied? Why are they recommending the century-long same old song and dance for Vision Zero, instead of recommending effective street design strategies?

In part it is because Boulder cannot, by law, redesign state roads in Boulder (but this can be changed, however, as was done on Broadway).

But it is also because too many people in Boulder (and therefore its city government) are way behind the times regarding effective, beneficial transportation tactics. Or simply oppose such tactics. Here is one of several essays I wrote on this.

Staff and city government are not being given permission by citizens to be effective about traffic safety.

Even though I know I will not get a second on a motion I will make at the Monday Board meeting, I will make the motion because it is the only way to have my concerns be on the record and recorded in the meeting minutes.

I will move that the Board request staff suspend and withdraw the Vision Zero initiative because Boulder is not ready to use effective tactics to achieve Vision Zero.

To be fair, I should note that Boulder has re-started a traffic calming program (what Boulder formerly called “traffic mitigation” and now calls “speed management”). This is a very beneficial and effective traffic safety strategy for achieving Vision Zero (at least on smaller neighborhood roads).

However, this street redesign program is not clearly integrated into the Vision Zero plan, and because it will only apply to smaller neighborhood streets rather than the large, dangerous, high-speed roads in Boulder, it will do very little to move Boulder toward an overall Vision Zero objective.

 

 

The Future for Transportation

By Dom Nozzi

October 16, 2017

Many people who read my views or hear my speeches believe I am a radical that wants to “get rid of all cars.” I think that is a sign that I need to be better in my messaging, but also a sign that our society is so very pro-car that even reasonable views like mine sound unrealistic.

My position on cars is that we must accept the fact that to move the needle in a positive direction, driving a space-hogging, subsidized, high-speed metal box should make the motorist feel inconvenienced – if we expect to create a quality community. It is a sign of health when a motorist feels burdened, as is the case in any great city in the world. In sum, we need to take away Space, Speed, and Subsidies from motorists, and Shorten distances to destinations so that a car is an option, not a requirement. In other words, it is not about providing more bike lanes, more sidewalks, and more buses, as so many believe…

An important thing that happens when we take away space, speed, and subsidies (and create shorter distances) is that we are able to reduce a very costly problem in our world: low-value car trips (to, for example, drive a car on a major road at rush hour to get a cup of coffee). When such trips are frequent (partly by being enabled by society), it is unsustainable and ruinous.

Healthy cities need to leverage agglomeration economies (clustering of people and activities) to be healthy. They are also characterized by having lower speed transportation (it is no coincidence that there is a growing worldwide movement for what are called Slow Cities). Furthermore, healthy cities are financially sound.

In each case, over-emphasis on car travel undermines a city. The large space needs and high speeds of a car create powerful, dispersing, centrifugal forces on city development patterns (which destroys agglomeration). Over-emphasis on car travel also requires large government subsidies. The dispersed land use patterns over-catering to car travel requires is inherently unable to come anywhere close to paying for itself (through such things as sales taxes and property taxes). That destroys financial health.

I have been told that it is important for my message to emphasize win-win tactics, rather than just pointing out the problems of excessive car dependence. While I agree that this tactic is an important way to be more persuasive, it is also extremely difficult when it comes to excessive car dependence. For decades, many in Boulder have wrongly concluded that car travel can be win-win with other forms of travel. I believe that in nearly all cases, it is zero-sum. When car travel is enhanced, almost all other forms of travel are made more difficult. Given that, it is very difficult to give win-win messages. And that is an important reason why our car-based society is facing an enormous dilemma. Excessive provision for car travel is self-reinforcing. It is nearly impossible to break out of the self-perpetuating downward cycle of car dependence once a society has gone a long way down that path, as ours has. This is because in zero-sum, there nearly always will be winners and losers. And when almost all of us are nearly entirely car dependent, asking almost all of us to lose on our form of travel is pretty much impossible, politically.

I therefore see major crisis, our inability to continue to afford to pay for extreme car dependence, or both, as our only way out of the mess we are in.

I don’t mean to make people feel guilty about driving a car. I acknowledge that some car travel is important and even acceptable in our society. But because the car, in my view, is the enemy of the city, it should not feel easy or low cost to do so. Driving needs to be more rare.

Road diets and converting stroads back into streets really are the future. It pains me to see Boulder falling behind on a transformation that a great many US cities are now involved in.

Here are a few brief videos by friends of mine on road diets and stroads:

Dan Burden

 

 

Another guy I love on this topic is Chuck Marohn, a traffic engineer who has coined the term “stroad.” Boulder has a lot of stroads. Besides 30th, 28^th, East Arapahoe, Broadway, Colorado, and Canyon are Boulder examples of stroads.

 

 

 

It Must Be the Fault of the Pedestrian

By Dom Nozzi

October 7, 2017

A century ago, as Peter Norton points out in his book Fighting Traffic, nearly all of us would blame a motorist in a crash that injured or killed a pedestrian or bicyclist.

But today the situation is reversed.

The knee-jerk response in our age is to blame the pedestrian. To blame the victim. It is akin to blaming a woman for being raped because she dressed “too provocatively.” Or was walking alone at night.

In the very rare instances when a community decides to use effective tactics to reduce the number of times a motorist kills a pedestrian (by, for example, designing the street to obligate slower, attentive driving), many motorists will scream “WAR ON CARS!!” This creates an enormous political obstacle to the creation of a safer transportation system.

Such WAR ON CARS! screamers conveniently forget that tens of thousands of pedestrians are killed by motorists every year. And that not a single motorist has ever been killed after being hit by a pedestrian.

Sounds more like a war on pedestrians to me…

I refer to “effective” tactics to improve safety, because nearly all US cities are guilty of spending the past century using, over and over again, ineffective tactics: More safety signage. More safety lighting. More safety paint. More safety education. And more safety enforcement.

Since our roads are now more dangerous than ever following a century of repeatedly doubling down on those ineffective tactics, maybe it is finally time to realize that these conventional safety tactics are a failure.

What Tools Can Be Used in Boulder Colorado to Create More Affordable Housing?

By Dom Nozzi

September 15, 2017

Boulder, Colorado – due to such factors as its strikingly picturesque setting, its outstanding climate, its proximity to a large number of world-class hiking and biking trails, its proximity to ski resorts (and many other stupendous outdoor adventures), and its impressive bicycle and transit facilities – has one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation.

The question often raised in the city, therefore, is what tools are available to make housing more affordable in Boulder. A common suggestion is to build more housing in the city.

There are a number of effective ways that more housing can provide more affordable housing in Boulder.

Since land is so expensive in Boulder, newly created housing needs to minimize the amount of land that a house consumes (compact condos, for example, or small apartments).

By revising zoning regulations to allow shops and offices and other destinations within residential neighborhoods, a larger number of households can reduce the number of cars they must own. Because each car owned by a household costs, on average, $10,000 per year, a significant amount of money that was being used for transportation can instead be allocated to housing if the household can reduce its car ownership from, say, two cars to one.

The City should incentivize or require new developments to unbundle the price of parking from the price of the (non-single family) home so that a household can save significant dollars by opting not to pay for unneeded parking. Land for parking is a big expense given the expensive land cost in Boulder.

These important affordablility opportunities can be explored to a much more substantial extent in Boulder, as most or all of them have hardly been deployed at all.

 

 

 

A Squandered Opportunity at Boulder Junction

By Dom Nozzi

November 15, 2017

I am very disappointed that Boulder is squandering a golden opportunity to create a high-quality town center that promotes significant levels of cycling, walking, and transit at Boulder Junction. The location was a blank slate that gave us the opportunity to create a vibrant, thriving, highly desirable lifestyle option that is nearly non-existent in Boulder, despite the very high and growing demand for a walkable lifestyle.

At my November 13, 2017 Transportation Advisory Board meeting, we were presented with a dizzying amount of data regarding observed transportation at Boulder Junction. But it was data without a clear description of our objectives (or tactics to reach the objectives). It therefore amounted to little more than context-less bean counting.

As I see it, the objectives at Boulder Junction should be to create a walkable, compact, human-scaled town center where residents and employees rarely have a need for car travel. Where walking and bicycling and transit use constitute most trips (ie, such trips are normalized), and where driving a motor vehicle is unusual.

Boulder Junction, in other words, should be more like an Amsterdam or a Copenhagen (see photo comparison above of Boulder Junction and Amsterdam). It should have lovable building architecture (like the Boulderado Hotel in town center Boulder, which local polls show to be the most loved building in Boulder). It should have rowhouses and tiny residences.

Our land development regulations, though, are instead giving us a Phoenix or an Orlando. Buildings are unlovable in design, and spacing for building setbacks and streets are in most cases not human-scaled. We are, in other words, failing to use or obligate dimensions that would create a sense of place.

Future reports about Boulder Junction should answer the following questions:

• Is it easy, safe, and enjoyable to live at Boulder Junction without a car? And is it (appropriately) difficult and expensive to own and use a car?
• Is Boulder Junction compact enough to offer a full set of mixed-use destinations to jobs? Medical/doctor services? Culture? Groceries?
• Would you feel comfortable letting your 5-year old walk or bicycle alone throughout Boulder Junction?
• How scarce are the available parking spaces at Boulder Junction? Is it easy to find parking (which is toxic to walkability and discourages non-car travel), or is it appropriately difficult?
• How many residents at Boulder Junction are opting to unbundle parking from their housing? A low rate of unbundled parking is a sign that the design of Boulder Junction – and destinations outside Boulder Junction – is not conducive to reducing car dependence.
• How many Boulder Junction residents and employees are parking for free at their internal or outside-of-Boulder-Junction destinations?
• Do Boulder surveys show that Boulder residents envy the lifestyle and amenities offered by Boulder Junction?
• Are driveway and street turning radii, as well as street and clear zone dimensions, small enough to induce slower and more attentive speeds? Are there any streets in Boulder Junction that can be converted to shared, slow streets?
• What land development regulations need to be revised to better achieve place-making? What street design standards need revision for slower, more attentive motorized travel?

The worthy objectives of minimizing the ownership and use of cars by Boulder Junction residents will be severely constrained by the fact that Boulder Junction is surrounded by areas of unwalkable suburban design where only car travel is feasible. Which means that a large number of destinations outside of Boulder Junction will need to be reached by car. This is also true for the Steelyards neighborhood.

In addition, I don’t see Boulder Junction achieving a sense of place – even at build-out. Streets are too wide (particularly the Pearl Parkway stroad that bisects Boulder Junction), and setbacks are too large.

Future reports need to avoid a “silo” problem, where transportation and urban design are considered separately from each other. Transportation and urban design staff need to jointly author future reports, because transportation tactics can strongly promote or inhibit important urban design objectives at Boulder Junction. Likewise, urban design tactics can strongly promote or inhibit important transportation objectives. Without combining transportation and urban design expertise, we risk unintentionally undermining objectives.

Let’s strive for Boulder Junction to be a Copenhagen. Not an Orlando.

Florida Growth Management Has Put Gigantism on Steroids

By Dom Nozzi

September 17, 2017

Florida Growth Management and its “concurrency” is a high falutin’ term which has, almost single-mindedly, been directed toward ensuring that new growth happens concurrently with widened roads and more parking. All other concurrency concerns are trivial by comparison (such as parks, water, schools, etc.). “Sufficient” roads and parking is equated with maintaining quality of life.

Tragically and ironically, these obsessive efforts to ensure happy motoring is about the most effective way to undermine quality of life, not protect it.

For Florida Growth Management regulations to truly protect and advance quality of life, those regulations should be focused on promoting the people habitat, not the car habitat. State and local growth management regulations must insist on quality urban design, which is largely achieved by requiring new development to be compact and human-scaled.

Since Florida started state-directed growth management back in the early 80s, the state has gotten the opposite.

Communities have instead been degraded by dispersed, car-scaled design. Why? Because to be happy, cars need dispersed, low-density, single-use development. A car-based society induces gigantism, and the gigantism disease has been administered growth hormones via “growth management” and “concurrency.”

Maybe someday Florida will wise up and adopt planning laws that promote quality of life. It has done the opposite for 35 years.

Conversation with My Planning Department Supervisor About Green Metropolis by David Owen

September 1, 2009

Supervisor (my City of Boulder planning department supervisor in 1996): I have not seen Owens’ book, so can only comment on the bits you presented. Hard to say who the primary audience is intended to be, but the description seems like old wine in new bottles. I can’t imagine many being swayed either way from the accounts I’ve read. In any event, for a book on this topic to be effective, it would have to be broadly embraced by the general public, because that is where the basis for change originates.

Dom: I’ve not read Owen’s book, either. I read his essay (which I posted on FB in the comment thread following my original post about the interview with him – the interview does a poor job of presenting his viewpoint). After thinking about it later, I think in addition to planners and elected officials, the audience I would think he would appropriately be targeting would be students. I’m not sure about books or opinions being a basis for change. Over the years (and in particular, reading a number of authors on the topic), I’ve come to realize that change in behavior or beliefs is largely driven by material conditions (not to suggest that I’m sympathetic to Marxism or socialism). Behaviors and beliefs arise due to prices, costs, benefits, roads, parking, distances, speeds, economicconditions, etc. An idea can be brilliant, but unless these material conditions promote the idea, the idea will be largely ignored. (for example, water conservation is more common in the western US not because residents there learned wonderful ideas from books or speeches about conserving water, but because water is relatively scarce in the west)

Supervisor: Planners have limited success producing change because they fail to connect with the public, and fail to understand how real change occurs. They talk to the public in arcane, academic terms that don’t address what the average public needs and wants. Planners consistently leave the impression there is something wrong with the way many, perhaps most people live, e.g. there must be something wrong with those people. That is effectively an insult, i.e. the Vermont way of life is “wasteful” compared to NYC, therefore Vermonters are wasteful, and must be bad or inferior people if they don’t mend their ways.

Dom: I agree with much of this, and have spent much time and effort striving to speak (and write codes/plans) in “Plain English.” I sincerely dislike the obfuscation of bureaucratese and legalese. I’ve always sought (and mostly failed) to select words that would better resonate with people (coincidentally, I’m now a “complete streets” instructor in cities throughout the nation, and believe the term strongly resonates with most). You also make a good point about the bad habit many planners have of making people feel like they are doing something wrong, or that they are bad people. This is an important reason why I frequently make it a point to mention and promote, in speeches and writings, the concept of the rural-to-urban transect that new urbanists are fond of, because I believe it is an effective, equitable way to respond to the full set of lifestyle choices. Of course, there are less socially desirable behaviors, and I believe that while such behaviors should be reasonably allowed, they shouldn’t be allowed at the expense of others.

By the way, I think there is a place for expressing

disapproval for “Vermonters.” If “Vermonters” are indicting that the

 

y are holier than thou (as seems fairly common), I have a tendency to want to point out that they may not be as holy as they feel. Or that the rest of us should follow them to salvation.

 Supervisor: Planners rarely make the effort to really listen to the public (as opposed pretending to listen), and speak the

public language. Instead, planners use terms that must be carefully defined and have multiple definitions, like “density” and how they know better what is good for the public than does the public; things like ‘X is more dense than Y if you calculate it one way, but less dense if you calculate it another way, and we calculate it the way that gives the results we want.’ Planners don’t demonstrate they understand why the public is more concerned about short term needs like a job, an affordable day care center or a place for the kids to play soccer without fear of being abducted. They give the public the impression those should be trivial concerns, not relevant to the big picture of vibrant streets, late night activity, and locally produced food.

Dom: Largely agree. Of course, many citizens have beliefs or desires that originate from market-distorting subsidies (such as underpriced roads, parking or gasoline). So I believe that the planner must find a proper balance between actually hearing and responding to “real world” citizen needs/beliefs, and advocating tactics that they, as professionals, know to be effective in achieving community objectives. On this topic, I often like to surprise people these days by pointing out that town center living is shown in studies to be safer, more convenient, cheaper, and easier to travel in than suburbs. If these studies are accurate, and I believe they are, should I be dishonest and agree with people who state the opposite? In such a discussion, by the way, I don’t ever feel as if I would be able to persuade people that town centers are better in these ways. I believe, again, that most people will be convinced, over time, of these things as gas prices rise, roads and parking are priced, a growing number of people (particularly the wealthy) start living in town centers, the cost and profitably of town center properties rise, etc.

I’m not sure I’ve made the mistake you cite of planners trivializing needs like a job, day care or child safety. I think my (mostly) failed efforts have been to point out that town centers and traditional design results in more jobs, better/cheaper day car, and more child safety.

Now that I think about this issue, it occurs to me that I have found at least one way to be persuasive on topics such as these: Using photos in PowerPoint presentations. When I use certain images, my point can become vivid, rather undeniable, and accessible to the most un-schooled of audiences.

Supervisor: Since planners seldom connect with average citizens, they rely on appointed and elected officials to do it. They try to convince planning commissioners and city council members to sell the ideas to the public. Some public officials are believers and take on the task, or vote in opposition to public sentiment. Most don’t, and why should they? The planners aren’t their important constituents.

Dom: I’ve always liked this comment from Reubin Askew: A leader is someone who cares enough to tell the people not merely what they want to hear, but what they need to know.

I think that elected officials are (or should be) elected to be leaders. To do meaningful things, leaders know that they will make enemies – at least in the short run. Margaret Thatcher once said that consensus is the absence of leadership. One of my heroes – Enrique Penalosa (former mayor of Bogota) – was despised early on in his term. He enacted policies that aggressively inconvenienced cars in his efforts to make people, rather than cars, happy. Many wanted to throw him out of office. But eventually, his policies (which nearly all his citizens strongly opposed initially) resulted in visibly obvious quality of life and civic pride improvements. He went on to become much-loved and honored by most in Bogota.

 * A city can be friendly to people or it can be friendly to cars, but it can’t be both. – Enrique Penalosa

* Over the last 30 years, we’ve been able to magnify environmental consciousness all over the world. As a result, we know a lot about the ideal environment for a happy whale or a happy mountain gorilla. We’re far less clear about what constitutes an ideal environment for a happy human being. One common measure for how clean a mountain stream is, is to look for trout. If you find the trout, the habitat is healthy. It’s the same way with children in a city. Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people. – Enrique Penalosa

* God made us walking animals—pedestrians. As a fish needs to swim, a bird to fly, a deer to run, we need to walk, not in order to survive, but to be happy. – Enrique Penalosa

*A premise of the new city is that we want a society to be as egalitarian as possible. For this purpose, quality-of-life distribution is more important than income distribution. [And quality of life includes] a living environment as free of motor vehicles as possible. – Enrique Penalosa

* Anything you do to make a city more friendly to cars makes it less friendly to people. – Enrique Penalosa

If I (or an American elected official) were to state anything like the above quotes, what would the reaction be?

So to answer your question above, elected officials need to acknowledge, sometimes, that public sentiment might be counterproductive (particularly in a world where misguided public subsidies and laws encourage dysfunctional behavior and ideas). Sometimes the public will undercuts public desires. Sometimes you need to make enemies. Sometimes consensus leads to ruin.

Supervisor: So, planners grumble about the uninformed public, the too-influential interest groups, and the gutless, visionless officials. Planners instead spend their time talking to each other, i.e. folks that already think the same way, or are predisposed in their direction. They avoid meaningful ongoing conversation with those who strongly disagree with them, and talk to the public in neutral settings where fixed positions can be stated and maintained. This approach guarantees slow progress toward their goals as it fosters stasis in thinking.

Dom: Agree. I’ve learned, again, that because material conditions are largely the origin of ideas and behaviors, ideas are mostly useless (unless the timing is right). By realizing this, I’ve mostly avoided banging my head against the wall. I’ve mostly avoided being frustrated by my inability to convince people of my views. I mostly like to point out, when asked, the tactics that I believe are most effective in achieving an objective. “How can we get more transit riders, Dom?” I respond by pointing out we need priced and scarce parking, relatively high gas prices/gas taxes, priced roads, compact and mixed-use development, etc. I don’t expect anyone to agree. At least not in the world we currently live in.

More so than in the past, when I “grumble,” it is about car subsidies, not uninformed people.

Supervisor: Planners come to believe they have the “right” answers. They forget there can’t be right answers or even best answers without commonly held objectives. Even then there are no right answers, there are only answers that produce different results, and often unintended or unpredictable results. So when some decision makers do follow their advice the results may not be as advertised. Oops, but believe us next time.

Dom: Yes. Which is why I often counsel against half-measures. I believe that sometimes, if a half-assed approach is taken (due, usually, to compromise), the implementation can give the concept a black eye. I’ve also sought to be better at taking a more equitable approach that can appeal to a more comprehensive set of lifestyles and choices (as long as such choices are not costly to others). Again, this is why I find the new urbanist transect concept so appealing. And the idea of “complete streets.”

And I really enjoy pointing out unintended consequences. For example, I’m currently having a discussion with a County Commissioner friend that high-mileage cars can have unintended consequences. By lowering the cost of gas, such cars can actually induce more driving…

Supervisor: Planners think those who strongly disagree are uneducated or have impure motives, because the evidence in support of the planner position is so clear and strong. They forget the lack of common objectives produces an inconsistent frame of reference to view the data.

Dom: I’ve been reading recently about the issue of “confirmation bias,” where your frame of reference leads you to tend to accept information that bolsters your perceptions and reject information that does not.

One antidote to my suffering the mistake you cite here is my reading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn). From that book, I learned that when we devote a great deal of time and effort working with a certain paradigm, we can become immune to data that undermine the paradigm – even if the data is overwhelming. Most of us are incapable of admitting to ourselves the tragic thought that we’ve wasted so much of our lives on a failed idea. Many of us go to our graves w/o being able to change our viewpoint. It is only when the old guard dies off that the new paradigm can emerge and be accepted.

Formerly, I made the mistake of thinking that overwhelming data, evidence and logic would pretty much always carry the day and be convincing to most everyone. I now know better.

Supervisor: Planners forget, or never learn, how societal change occurs. Since cities are support structures for human society, not the reverse, planners miss the essential connection. Instead, planners see the design of cities as merely a technical issue – change these design/density characteristics, and see the happy results. The reality is that cities are the people, and the buildings and infrastructure are physical accoutrements that support the people. Fundamental change in the physical accoutrements follows fundamental change of the society. Since planners spend most of their time talking to each other and their supporters, rather than listening to the society to find unique ways to meet their needs, they ensure lack of effectiveness.

Dom: Hmmm. I’m not sure I fully understand your point here, but it reminds me of Churchill’s comment that We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us. I’m also reminded of the adage that if all we have is hammers, all our problems look like nails. With the planning profession, planners can (in theory) have an influence over infrastructure, but have little control over how people think.

I think that planners can be most effective if they can leverage the tactics that effectively influence behavior and ideas. For example, successfully influencing the size and pricing of roads, the amount and pricing of parking, the amount of gas taxes charged, the amount of impact fees charged, where buildings are placed on a piece of property, etc. Each of those tactics are effective in changing behavior and ideas.

Frankly, I’ve lost much of my previous enthusiasm for public sector planning because I find that public planners have almost no ability to influence such things. Instead, public planners are mostly in the role of implementing land development regulations that, in a great many ways, undercut sustainable, Smart Growth designs.