Casting Shadows on Urbanism

Two posts ago, I introduced an argument put forth by renowned baseball analyst Bill James, who also comments with acuity and insight on any other subject that interests him.  In his non-baseball role, he contended in his book “Solid Fool’s Gold” that if infinite value is assigned to any single element of a complex decision, the resulting decision will be distorted.

As James describes it, any two values, no matter how individually worthy on their own, will eventually come into conflict.  Whether those values are honesty and modesty, cleanliness and punctuality, generosity and thriftiness, or any number of other combinations, there will be some set of circumstances that brings them into conflict.  When that conflict occurs, having the flexibility to balance competing objectives is essential.  And giving infinite weight to one of the values eliminates that flexibility.

In James’ monograph on the subject, he challenged the TSA airline safety measures implemented after 9/11.  He also noted the changing approach to the criminal justice system under the Earl Warren Supreme Court.

I thought his argument had merit and immediately applied it to a balancing of traffic congestion versus youth sports that recently occurred in Petaluma.

But then a possible better example came to my attention just a few miles south.  Although subsequent information seemed to undermine the value of the example, the story still contains lessons.

The tale begins in 1984 with the approval by San Francisco voters of Proposition K, the “Sunlight Ordinance”.  Under the terms of the ordinance, as interpreted and implemented by the San Francisco Planning Department, any proposed development that would shade any portion of a city park, no matter how minor the shading, requires a finding by the Park and Recreation Commission that “the shadow is determined to be insignificant or not adverse to the use of the park”.

Accordingly, the Commission recently denied a proposed affordable housing project that would shade 0.07 percent of an adjoining park.  0.07 percent!   It seemed a perfect example of a single value being assigned infinite value and resulting in a flawed result.

But then other information became evident, as might have been expected given the 30-year lag between the adoption and the first denial.  It seems that the Parks and Recreation Commission had regularly found shadows to be insignificant and/or not adverse, not tripping up a single project with that hurdle until this decision.

As a result of the long string of decisions, the Commission was coming under fire.  On this specific project in the Mission District, the neighbors were particularly adamant in their opposition and the applicant, based on other land-use activities, was considered odious by many so the Commission decided to finally flex their authority under the thirty-year-old ordinance.

So, it seems that the Mission District example had more to do with old-fashioned politics than mis-weighted decision elements.  However, it still provides an insight into how a poorly constructed entitlement model can lead to flawed decisions.

In the past, I’ve expressed a concern that historic preservation, as much as I enjoy historic settings and bemoan the loss of some buildings that I never had a chance to experience, can sometimes be given a weight that inhibits good planning and good social policy.

Also, I once lived in a county that had a very strict sunlight protection ordinance, although the focus of the rule was the access of sunlight to photovoltaic arrays, not to parks.  As I recall, single-family homes were allowed to cast no shade on neighboring lots beyond which would be cast by existing trees and by a hypothetical eight-foot fence at the property line.  The shading potential was to be calculated for the hour before and after solar noon on the shortest day of the year.  And that standard was absolute, with no exceptions for “insignificant or not adverse” impacts.

Applying the standard required astronomical calculating skills, three-dimensional geometry, and assumptions about how much shade a 70-foot pine tree actually cast.  All were interesting exercises.

And as much I approved the preservation of solar access for alternative energy generation, I wasn’t sure if the effect of spacing houses further apart, inhibiting walkability, was truly good public policy.

So even if the Mission District example didn’t quite make the point it first seemed, it and the other examples noted above still offer good lessons about how an entitlement process can go awry if we don’t allow competing objectives to be reasonably balanced.

And urbanism in particular would suffer under a flawed entitlement model.

It’s been about a year and a half since I wrote about the City Repair concept, a way of mobilizing neighborhoods to add character and function to their communities beyond what city hall can do.  It’s time for an update, which I’ll provide in my next post.  The results are mostly unimpressive, but there has been one unexpected success.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Reflections on Being a Nincompoop

Early in the history of this blog, I wrote about three key steps on my path to becoming an urbanist.   One of those was being exposed to pioneering baseball statistical analyst Bill James when still at an impressionable age.  (I was probably in my mid-20s.)

Baseball number-crunching may seem a long way from urbanism.  And it truly is.  But there’s a connection in the way of thinking, particularly in the upsetting of entrenched paradigms, at which James excelled.  As I wrote about James over three years ago, “his work provided the life lesson that conventional wisdom can be wrong and that we should be open to those who offer new ways of viewing reality.”  For me, that was a key step on the path to becoming an urbanist.

James continues to put forth baseball work, although it seems less ground-breaking than it did forty years, with many good young writers tackling the subjects into which James opened the doors.  Sometimes revolutionaries are overtaken by the forces they set loose.

But James still has moments of eye-opening insight.  To me, the best of those moments come when he digresses from baseball and applies his incisive and paradigm-rejecting mind to other areas of life.  I’m currently reading a book by James in which my favorite section is his rumination on the fallacy of assigning infinite value to any element of a decision.

The immediate target of James’ attention is the air safety program in the aftermath of 9/11.  He argues that, by assigning an infinite value to preventing terrorist attacks on commercial airliners, we effectively waste many more lifetimes, in ten, twenty, and thirty minute chunks, than we save by preventing the occasional attack.

James notes that there are many areas of life in which assigning infinite value to any single element can lead to flawed decision-making.  He particularly cites the criminal justice system.

The point struck home with me.  My favorite personal example is a utility that proclaims “Customer safety is our only concern.”  My immediate mental response is always “Nonsense.  You also need to put a value on energy delivery to customers, on turning a reasonable profit for stockholders, on providing a secure living for employees, and on many other factors.  Customer safety belongs on the list, but it can’t be the only factor.  And you trying to tell me that it is only undermines everything else that you say.”

Having taken a scenic route through baseball and federal flight safety rules, I’ll now pull these thoughts back into land use and urbanism.

In my last post, I wrote about a congested intersection in Petaluma.  The corner of E. Washington Street and S. McDowell Boulevard is a frequent subject of attention, with City staff continually working to make the intersection function better and the public questioning why good solutions can’t be found.

Adding my unhelpful voice to the discussion, I noted in my last post that any new intersection capacity that might be created would be soon be absorbed by induced demand, returning congestion to current levels and leaving the public still dissatisfied and irritated.

Given such a troublesome intersection, the reasonable expectation is the City would try to manage growth such that new sources of traffic, especially traffic that has little option to defer trips to another time, are minimized.  To give an example, a new sports complex, to which parents must deliver children for fixed gametimes, would be an unfortunate land-use choice near the intersection.

So, of course, a complex of three soccer fields, to which more than half of participants will pass through the problem intersection, is due to open in the next few weeks.  Furthermore, the three soccer fields are only the start, with three baseball diamonds to follow as funding allows.

Outside observers may splutter over this state of affairs, wondering what nincompoops would have located a sports complex in that location.  And I might be tempted to join them, except for one problem.  I’m one of the nincompoops.

About the time the construction decisions were being finalized, I was appointed to the Petaluma Park and Rec Commission.  (It’s actually the Recreation, Music, and Park Commission, but not a single music issue has come before us during my tenure as a Commissioner, so I’ll defer to Amy Poehler and go with Park and Rec Commission for today.)

In my time on the commission, several decisions related to the new sports complex have come before us.  In each case, I joined the others in voting unanimously to move the complex ahead.

Okay, let me insert three disclaimers.

First, by the time I assumed a decision-making role in the sports complex process, the decisions were largely made and the funding secured.  Waving my hands about traffic would have been like trying to stop a locomotive with a flyswatter.  I had no realistic chance to change the direction.

Second, I’m not suggesting that no one ever considered the traffic implications.  I suspect that sometime before my involvement, Planning and/or Public Works looked at the sports complex versus the traffic concern, sighed deeply, and agreed that the value to local athletics outweighed the traffic problems.

Third, I’m not arguing that the decision to proceed with the sports complex was wrong.  We should put a high value on local athletics and I’m willing to agree with Planning and/or Public Works in deciding that sports outweighs traffic in this situation.

No, my concern is that too many of us, including me for awhile, failed to understand that a balance had been made and that it was a balance that had significant implications to the community.  Since I’ve had my moment of enlightenment, I’ve spoken with numerous people, including fellow commissioners, about the siting decision and the resulting traffic issues.   To a person, all have dismissed my comments, noting that youth sports trumps all.

But we can’t think that way.  Because tomorrow, on some other issue, we’ll decide that traffic relief trumps all.  And maybe the next day, we’ll decide that affordable housing trumps all.  And eventually we work ourselves into a corner.  It’s a very suburban style of thinking, addressing each problem in a vacuum and ignoring the interrelationships that eventually govern the world.

Urbanism offers a couple of insights to our conundrum, one philosophical and one practical.

On the philosophical side, urbanism is all about compromises.  Do we want a wider sidewalk, do we want more parking, or do we want parklets?  Recognizing that cars remain an essential element of economic vitality, where do we put them so they serve us without governing us?  What is the right height for a building such that it houses enough people and economic activity that the street thrives without being overwhelmed?  Once we learn to make those careful balances, we’re better equipped to balance youth sports and traffic.

On the practical side, if we live in close enough proximity that we can be served by transit, then some of the traffic issues can be alleviated.  I’m intrigued by the idea of a city bus, in place of twenty cars, disgorging a passel of youth soccer players for a game.  (And as member of the Transit Advisory, I helped push, successfully, for a bus turnaround at the complex.)  Today, we’re nowhere near the ideal of transit serving youth sports, but urbanism can take us that direction.

In the real world, many problems are ultimately unsolvable.  Pretending they don’t exist, such as when we put infinite value on youth sports over traffic, isn’t a viable approach.  But urbanism gives us the tools to minimize the problems and to think about balancing competing objectives.

And so I’ve connected the dots, baseball to air safety to traffic to urbanism, using Bill James as a guide for most of the steps.  I think he’d be pleased.

Next time, I’ll write about a moment of clarity on urbanism and climate change.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)