Sherlock Holmes Weighs in on Urbanism

I last read any of the Sherlock Holmes stories in 1973.  I borrowed an omnibus edition from one of my girlfriend’s elderly aunts and quickly reconsumed the tales, many of which I’d read in earlier years.

Despite the four decades since that most recent reading, some of the phrases have stayed fresh in my memory.  Foremost among those is something Holmes said to Watson many times.  As written by Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes’ words were “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

Holmes was repackaging a logical argument first struck upon by William of Ockham, a 14th century friar, philosopher, and theologian.  The argument is generally known today as Occam’s Razor, a spelling that illustrates the idiosyncrasies of English.  English philosopher Bertrand Russell phrased Occam’s Razor as “One should always opt for an explanation in terms of the fewest possible causes, factors, or variables.” 

I’ve invoked Sherlock Holmes and a 14th century logician because they have an insight to offer on a key argument for urbanism.

The central tenet of the StrongTowns argument for urbanism is that the drivable suburbia is financially flawed and is driving our communities into deep and unsustainable debt.  But many choose to look elsewhere for the causes of municipal financial malaise.  In a recent post, I recounted that story of a Petaluma citizen who argued that problem is instead the result of corruption in City Hall.

Nor is he alone in his argument.  I’ve yet to find a U.S. city in which the comments following an article on municipal finances don’t often degrade into accusations of corruption within the local elected officials, coupled with the suggestion that the corruption should be evident to all.

That’s the point on which both William of Ockham and Sherlock Holmes would bring Occam’s Razor to bear.

We have two competing propositions.  We can believe that there is something systemically wrong in the drivable suburban model with the result than many, if not virtually all, communities are experiencing financial distress.  Or we can believe that virtually every city has elected politicians who are skimming from the till.

To use Holmes’ formulation, which proposition seems further from impossible and is therefore more likely to be true?

Or to use Russell’s formulation of William of Ockham’s work, which proposition has fewer variables and is therefore more likely to be true?

It should be clear that a systemic failure of drivable suburbia is the correct answer to both questions.  It is a single fact that would explain much of the financial distress we see.  To argue for the crooked politician theory, one would need to believe that tens of thousands of politicians are stealing.  One data point versus tens of thousands of data points.  It’s not close.

I won’t deny that there are politicians who behave inappropriately.  There have been too many convictions to argue otherwise.  But to argue that virtually all politicians are crooked just isn’t credible.

So, if seven centuries of the theory of logic, buttressed by the leading fictional detective of all time, leads us to the conclusion that drivable suburbia is flawed, why are so many people willing to point fingers at elected officials?  Upton Sinclair answered that question for us when he wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

If we substitute “lifestyle” for “salary”, the quote provides a perfect explanation for a general unwillingness to acknowledge the flaws of suburbia.  Many of us like the suburban lifestyle, the quarter acre of grass with the backyard pool, the two or perhaps three cars parked in the driveway because the garage is too filled with toys for cars to be parked there, the ability to live life without being aware of neighbors.

It isn’t a lifestyle to which I aspire, but I know many who do and I can appreciate the attraction.  And Sinclair, with the word substitution, points out how attraction can quickly translate into grasping at straws, ignoring the otherwise evident logic that the lifestyle is financially flawed.

Is there a solution to our collective willingness to ignore logic to retain our unsustainable lifestyle?  Not any easy ones.

The only real solution is a continual commitment to look deeper into the facts, not to default to convenient but illogical answers.

When I make this point, I’m not only talking to readers but also to myself.  On a daily basis, I must challenge aspects of urbanism that I wish were true but likely aren’t.  Like many, I prefer trains as my mode of public transit, but must admit that buses are preferable for many situations.  I love streetfront retail, but acknowledge that the world won’t support as many storefronts as in my grandparents’ time.  I’d like to believe that pedestrian malls can work, but must accept the fact that they’ve failed in many places.

In every case, I’d like to believe in what feels comfortable to me, whether rail transit, sidewalk storefronts, or pedestrian malls.  But I can’t do that.  I need to be wary of the trap pointed out by Sinclair and to follow the logical structure of William of Ockham and Sherlock Holmes to seek simple answers in place of complicated answers based on wishful thinking.

Seven hundred years ago, William of Ockham told us that the best answers are the simplest ones.  If we wish to leave the best possible world for the next generations, we should listen and follow where the simple answers lead us.

When I next write, I’ll look at bag fees, the rules in many communities that, for example, mandate charging a dime for a paper bag in which to carry groceries home.  In general, I agree with bag fees.  But, while buried in a pile of cardboard in which Christmas gifts had been delivered, I realized that the bag fees have an element of anti-urbanism.  I’ll dig deeper in my next post.

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

There Will Always Be Luddites Among Us

Together with seven cousins, I spent last Saturday morning using a $1.2 million surgical robot to unwrap Hershey’s Kisses for my 92-year-old aunt.

Lest you think that the adventure involved breaking and entering, I can reassure you.  The eldest cousin works for the company that makes the surgical robot.  He arranged for us to use the robot in the lobby of his office building in the hours before a family gathering.

The technology was remarkable.  Seated at a console facing away from the operating table and equipped with a high-definition screen, two handholds with Velcro loops for thumb and forefinger, and several foot petals, it quickly became intuitive to manipulate minute objects 15 feet away, including unwrapping the thin foil from a piece of candy and delivering it, intact, to my aunt.

But the topic that will remain with me was something my cousin said about the approval process for the robot.

The robot is the next step in the evolution of surgical tools, with the potential to replace laparoscopy.  Both rely on thin tools inserted through portals into the human body.  In laparoscopy the tools are operated manually by a surgeon standing at the operating table.  With a surgical robot, the surgeon works at the console, with his commands executed through electrical and mechanical connections.

The surgical robots offer clear advantages, including reduced reliance on the physical dexterity and stamina of the surgeon.  But new technology also offers opportunities for mishaps.  And that’s the point that some laparoscopists are trying to make, claiming that patients are at greater risk with surgical robots.  Of course, it’s also possible that the laparoscopists, having created successful practices in laparoscopy and lacking the resources to invest in $1.2 million robots, are viewing the world through guild-protecting lenses.

(On the off chance that a laparoscopist stumbles across this blog post and wishes to engage in a debate about laparoscopy versus surgical robots, let me quickly note that I’m unqualified to participate in the debate.

Because of a belief that the world is generally getting better, and with a tinge of family loyalty, I suspect that the surgical robots are the superior solution, but I’ll also acknowledge that objections to new technology sometimes prove valid.  On the specifics of surgical robot versus laparoscopy however, I haven’t examined the arguments and have no intention of doing so.)

The key point to me and the other cousins was that there are always those who will decry progress on the grounds that the new technology is flawed, while failing to acknowledge the likely motivation of protecting a current employment or lifestyle.

The examples we noted included the anti-industrialization 19th century English farm laborers who gave us the word Luddite, the masonry unions in pre-1906 San Francisco who argued that brick was a better material for seismic resistance than reinforced concrete (an argument that quickly tumbled down), and even the 15th century Dutch peasants who threw their wooden shoes, or sabot, into the gears of early looms, stopping the looms and giving us the word sabotage.

As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

As I later reflected on the conversation, it occurred to me that those who pushback against urbanism have much in common with Luddites.

It’s true that most Luddite movements are in opposition to technological advances that threaten employment while anti-urbanists who are rebelling against environmental and fiscal realities that threaten lifestyles, but the underlying mindset seems much the same.  Both rely on increasingly implausible arguments to defend an argument that is steadily losing against the flow of history.

Among the anti-urbanists, those implausible arguments include the contention that the fiscal problems at city halls are the result solely of ineptitude, not a flawed land-use paradigm, a denial of the induced traffic phenomenon, and a rejection of climate change coupled with the far-fetched suggestion that thousands of reputable scientists are working in a secret cabal to hide the truth.

There may also be an element of ego in the anti-urbanists.  Mick LaSalle, the movie critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, recently argued that there is an inherent bias against giving awards to comedies.  He contended that a good comedy, by showing us a new way to view reality, makes us feel a little less intellectually superior for not having anticipated the alternative perspective.  And the need to reassert our egos causes us to dismiss a comedy, even one that we greatly enjoyed, as unworthy of award consideration.

The same may be true of urbanism.  By arguing that drivable suburbia is indefensible in the long run, it challenges our life-long commitment to suburbia.   Some accept that new information and change their worldview.  Others feel a need to muster every argument, no matter how unlikely, in a futile attempt to maintain their old worldview.

Luckily, the better answers are almost always victorious in the long run.  I have a pile of unwrapped Hershey’s Kisses to buttress the case for surgical robots.

Unluckily, the longer we take to accept the arguments for urbanism, the greater the environmental and fiscal holes we’ll leave for the next generation.

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