Pennsylvania governor on anti-city policies

Here is the Pennsylvania governor talking about how state policy disadvantages cities and what could be done about it.

  • Regional land use planning
  • Zoning ordinances and planning codes that allow mixed use, high density communities
  • Urban growth boundaries like Portland, Oregon
  • Inclusive zoning like Montgomery County, Maryland
  • Change public infrastructure investment strategy to promote redevelopment of old settlements
  • Strike a better balance between highway and mass transit funding
  • Consolidate and restore old industrial sites for redevelopment
  • Reform local tax policies starting with the state taking a bigger share of funding for public education

In the end, the struggle for our cities will depend on the outcome of the competition between suburbs and cities. The outcome will largely be determined by the extent to which that competition is a fair one.

I like most of this, but I’m not so sure about the city vs. suburb talk. Part of regional coordination and planning would be to think of the success of a metro area as a whole, from its most intensely urbanized core out to the less dense areas. But I like the urban growth boundary concept, because it puts a lower limit on how far out that development can go and how much infrastructure it can gobble up to get services to people who are spread out, at every else’s expense. Education funding could be done well at this metro area scale, rather than pitting many tiny municipalities and school districts against each other as it does now (a problem across the U.S., but Pennsylvania is particularly bad). I am skeptical of the state, which draws much of its political power from the empty spaces between metro areas, being the solution. Its existence depends on sucking resources out of the population centers where economic activity happens and taxes get paid, and redistributing them to the empty spaces. Even more insidious, in our state at least racism plays a role in the urban vs. rural divide, as well as the city center vs. suburban divide.

“the new war on cancer”

I remember that one of the (few) things that caught my attention in the last State of the Union address was talk of a new research plan to cure cancer. This article in The Week talks about what that is.

recently, researchers have had very encouraging results with a new approach called immunotherapy. Some patients in advanced stages of the disease, who previously would have been deemed terminal, have undergone rapid and complete recoveries. Hoping to build on that progress, President Obama in January announced a $1 billion “moonshot” to cure cancer, putting Vice President Joe Biden — whose son Beau died of brain cancer last year — in charge of “mission control.” …

Another promising new frontier is genetic analysis, which splits each type of cancer into dozens of subtypes, so that specific chemotherapy drugs can be tailored to each cancer. Experts also now hope they can use the breakthrough gene-editing technique called CRISPR to correct mutations in cancer cells, or perhaps “edit” out mutation-prone genes that people inherit…

In August 2015, former President Jimmy Carter announced he had been diagnosed with advanced melanoma, a type of skin cancer that had spread to his liver and brain. “I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” said Carter, then 90. Four months later, Carter announced he was cancer-free. Along with radiation, Carter had been put on pembrolizumab (brand name Keytruda), a checkpoint inhibitor that stops cancer cells from blocking the immune system’s response. Soon after, Carter’s scans showed no evidence of the original cancer lesions on his brain, or any new lesions. Given that cancer can often reappear years down the line, oncologists prefer to talk in terms of “years of remission” rather than “cure” — but like Carter, some cancer patients on Keytruda have seen their disease disappear completely. Not surprisingly, says melanoma specialist Dr. Patrick Ott, Carter’s miraculous recovery has prompted patients across the country to demand, “I want what Jimmy Carter had.” Doctors caution that in clinical trials, Keytruda shrank the tumors in only 24 percent of patients, and that it only works on certain types of cancer.

Donald Shoup

I can never get enough Donald Shoup. Here are some policies he suggested at a recent talk in Philadelphia:

  • parking benefit districts, where parking revenues go to street and pedestrian improvements, so people can see what they are paying for
  • parking permit blacklists – essentially, people who move into new buildings without parking are not allowed to apply for city parking permits. This might seem unfair, but in my neighborhood in Philadelphia one way existing residents are able to hold up new development is by raising parking concerns with their elected politician. So this could be politically practical in that it might remove one of the sticking points between long-established residents and newcomers. At least, alleviating this one concern might allow people to move on and tackle others. It would force the new developments to either provide onsite parking, or just develop in places and ways where people are not going to demand as much parking. You could drop any minimum parking requirements and let the market decide.
  • Parking cash-out – employees who choose not to use company-paid parking can opt for a cash payment instead. California has done this apparently and it makes sense to me. It removes a perverse incentive for some people to choose driving to work over other options.
  • build transit passes into University fees

Are you safer on the crumbling D.C. Metro or on the highway?

Well, this is kind of embarrassing. On the surface, the D.C. Metro is one of the country’s more modern and efficient transit systems, at least compared to the trains and subways I am used to riding in Philadelphia. And most major U.S. cities don’t have a comprehensive and reliable system like Philadelphia’s, dirty, old, slow, and laden with bad attitude as it is. So it’s embarrassing that not only can we not build the new infrastructure we need to help the economy operate efficiently and grow, we are letting the infrastructure we have fall apart apparently.

Embarrassing though it is, this little ironic piece (which never admits to being irony, and there are actually people online arguing over whether it is real) points out that if safety is really the main concern, to the point that some are suggesting shutting down the D.C. Metro, car and truck travel should also be banned. In fact, shutting down the nation’s most dangerous transit system and forcing people to drive would be statistically certain to kill people.

Since 2009, 14 Metro riders and employees have died in collisions, derailings, and other incidents. On an annual basis, that translates to about 0.48 fatalities per 100,000 weekday riders.*

However, Secretary Foxx noted that this is exceeded by the fatality rate of car crashes in every single American metropolitan area for which data was compiled in a recent report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In San Francisco, 3.75 people died in automobile crashes per 100,000 residents in 2014, a rate 7.8 times higher than the fatality rate on Metro. In Raleigh, NC, the automobile crash fatality rate was 7.50 per 100,000, or about 15.6 times higher than the fatality rate on Metro. And in Dallas, the automobile crash fatality rate was 12.02 per 100,000, or about 25.0 times higher than the fatality rate on Metro.

It’s not acceptable to have people dying due to negligence and preventable accidents, but this does illustrate the double standard where we accept the commonplace violence on our roads and streets as a necessary evil, assuming it is not preventable. We are also just desensitized to it, whereas the occasional transit accident or plane crash is a shock and gets a lot more media coverage paradoxically because it is not that common.

resilience.org roundup

This “resilience roundup” links to so many interesting articles I just couldn’t pick one or two to link to. Among them:

  • an argument that the “clean energy miracle” is here, and the press and the public just haven’t picked up on it yet
  • a map of the global coal trade – an awesome map/Sankey diagram combo almost as cool as that famous one of Napolean’s death march into Russia
  • the predicted return of oil shortages and high prices
  • an argument that the big multinational oil companies need to “adapt or die”
  • a cool animated gif of global warming

 

1 billion dogs

I never thought to even wonder how many dogs there are in the world. But according to this article, about a billion. I don’t know if that is morally right or wrong. I like dogs. They are generally benign, kind-hearted creatures, and you could certainly make an argument that the world would not be as good a place without them. But they certainly have an ecological footprint. The article contrasts dogs and wolves, which have been systematically eradicated in many cases. So while dogs are neat creatures in many ways there are probably many wild creatures that might exist out there if they did not. Now we could examine this same moral conundrum with respect to a certain species of intelligent hairless ape…

“hybrid” infrastructure

I like a couple things in this abstract from the journal Cities.

One is a definition of hybrid infrastructure as “infrastructure systems that are integrated within buildings and landscapes that also provide non-infrastructure uses”. In other words, you are trying to kill two birds with one stone. This should be efficient and cost-effective compared to killing two birds with two stones, but the reason it often doesn’t happen (at least in the U.S. cities I am familiar with) is that there are typically two entities responsible for killing one bird each, and if their stone happens to kill the other bird they will ignore that and not count it as a benefit. Each agency calculates the cost as one stone, while the actual cost to society was two stones. (The only problem with this analogy, obviously, is that we are talking about ecological benefits and killing birds would actually be bad.)

The second thing I like is that the question asked is about the “maximum ecological performance potential of buildings and landscapes”. This is a nice question to ask – not just how can one type of infrastructure perform one function cost-effectively, but how can it fit into the landscape and perform many functions at the same time. If those two agencies (or in real life, 10 or 20 agencies) were all asking this question together, maybe you could achieve much better outcomes in cities.

Trumpism, fascism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, etc.

This article, from Salon write Robert Sharp, makes some interesting points about the Trump phenomenon. Even if he falls flat in the general election, what the experts say is inevitable (and I want to agree, but we have all been wrong about everything so far…), his success raises some disturbing questions about the mindset of the population and where the country could be headed in future decades. To summarize, the article says that by offering a return to past glory, but offering no specifics, Trump allows each person to hear what they want to hear, visualize their own personal utopia, and imagine that everyone around them agrees.

While Totalitarian regimes present themselves as harbingers of a better future, they do so by appealing to the perception of a glorious past that has since been lost due to the mismanagement of the existing politicians. Thus Hitler referenced a Wagnerian vision of Germany as the source of two of the world’s great Reichs in order to present his Third Reich as a continuation of German greatness. Similarly, Mussolini invoked the orderliness and domination of Ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy in order to restore an ancient pride that would lead to a new prominence on the world stage. Such leaders follow a common pattern, in which they blame any failures of their society on the incursion of Others, who lack the purity of the true members of the nation-state.

While the details differ, the call to action carries a consistent refrain: the totalitarian leader promises to make the country great again, to return it to past glories that have long since been lost.

In many ways, calling Trump supporters an analog to the rise of Nazi Germany is too easy, and far too dismissive. However, there is this one obvious similarity. Hitler and the Nazi party appealed to a people who believed that their Golden Age was past them, and that the world was moving on without them. The appeal of the nationalism that was offered was that it would allow a return to greatness, a necessary repeal of all of the policies, both externally imposed and internally permitted, that had led to their fall. Trump offers a very similar message, and he couches it in a way that allows his followers to fill in the blank. Whatever version of the good life they believe existed in their parents’ or grandparents’ day, that is the world that Trump plans to recreate. It is a compelling narrative, because it is their own narrative, and each individual gets to tell his or her own story while simultaneously believing that everyone else around them is thinking the same thing.

equality vs. equal opportunity

Continuing to think about European socialism-style equality vs. the U.S. narrative of equal opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Our version makes more sense in some ways – everyone starts out equal, but then people who work the hardest, have the best ideas, or are willing to take risks get rewarded. This makes sense as an ideal – combine it with a safety net for those who don’t succeed through no fault of their own, and it could be a nice, practical vision. The main problem is that it is a narrative that can be twisted and co-opted by the rich and powerful to write the rules unfairly in their favor, ultimately creating the opposite of equal opportunity. Even darker, it can lead to a narrative where people who benefit from the rules being unfairly in their favor find ways to rationalize their success, convincing first others and then themselves that they had superior talents to being with. Here’s an article from Shelterforce that makes some of these arguments:

Upon closer scrutiny, however, the meritocratic ideal turns out to be quite pernicious.  Summarizing the conclusion of my recent article on the subject, I find that, while this ideal is highly unlikely to achieve its core objectives (except maybe on the margins), its pursuit nonetheless creates “a competitive individualist ‘rat race’ of a society, fundamentally anti-communal and anti-familial, where group solidarity is uncommon and compassion muted.” And, worst of all, it ends up legitimizing—and thus reinforcing—the very social and economic inequality it purports to rectify…

In particular, much of liberal urban policy focuses on what liberals see as a kind of “unholy trinity” of barriers, as I have labeled it, that stem from inadequate schooling, troubled families, and poverty-impacted neighborhoods. Yet there is a great body of evidence showing that efforts to break down these barriers yield only marginal results in promoting meritocratic social mobility for the urban poor, while at the same time imposing significant costs on the most vulnerable.

Mostly notably, we see various school reforms fail over and over, and even enhanced higher education produces surprisingly limited impacts. As a result, we end up blaming the educational system for the failures of the rest of society, which in turn opens the door to corporate-oriented policies designed to privatize and monetize public schools. At the same time, programs that intervene into family life, unless highly intensive, also produce only minimal results, and when such interventions are intensive, they tend to violate the liberty of poor parents to autonomously direct the development of their children. Likewise, efforts to reduce barriers arising from the effects of poor neighborhoods via housing dispersal policies or the creation of mixed-income communities also have been generally disappointing, while often disconnecting the vulnerable from crucial familial and communal bonds.

I still think we should talk about how to make equal opportunity, with an appropriate safety net, a reality in this country, as an alternative to the European socialist model, which is the main alternative. These are really the only two humane options. What could true equal opportunity look like? For the sake of argument, let’s say we had a 100% inheritance tax, with the proceeds distributed equally to all newborn babies. Universal tax-funded education, up to and including the highest level of education and/or practical skills training needed to succeed in the economy, including continuing education for adults to adapt as technology and economic conditions change. Universal and equal access to health care. Excellent public infrastructure serving and connecting all urban areas. Low barriers to changing jobs or starting a business. Now you have a platform where people can compete and cooperate to build wealth. Some will work harder, innovate more, take more chances and earn more financial rewards. Others will choose to play it safer, devote more time to family and leisure, or just enjoy life’s experiences with less material wealth. You would still need unemployment and disability insurance for those who fall through the cracks through no fault of their own.

Scandinavian equality

Recently I wrote a post about how it seems ludicrous to blame the United States’s problems on an excess of democracy, if democracy is defined as equality. I also suggested that a reasonable definition of democracy should include a consensus building process, which is not just rule by majority vote, but a method to choose policies that almost everyone can accept even if they are not everyone’s first choice.

Well, the Scandinavian democracies at first glance seem to achieve equality, consensus, wealth, and peace. I want to believe in that, and to believe that we could learn its secrets and bring them to the United States. Here is a dissenting view though, in a new book about the Anders Breivik massacre in Norway:

After the Second World War, Scandinavia seemed to create model societies, free of corruption and intolerance, moral, compassionate and fair. The Danish people had bravely defied their Nazi occupiers throughout the war and saved almost all of the nation’s Jews. In 1944, the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal published a groundbreaking critique of the racism faced by African-­Americans in the United States. Myrdal’s study, “An American Dilemma,” greatly influenced President Truman’s executive order to integrate the United States military, the Supreme Court’s ruling on behalf of school desegregation, and the creation of the modern civil rights movement. In 1964, Gunnar Jahn, a former leader of the Norwegian resistance to the Nazis, handed Martin Luther King Jr. the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo. Jahn expressed the hope that “conflicts between races, nations and political systems can be solved, not by fire and sword, but in a spirit of true brotherly love.”

Today, the third-largest political party in Sweden has the support of racists and neo-Nazis. The leading political party in Denmark is not only anti-immigrant but also anti-Muslim. And the finance minister of Norway, a member of the right-wing Progress Party, once suggested that all the Romany people in her country should be deported by bus. In “One of Us,” the Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad explores a dark side of contemporary Scandinavia through the life and crimes of Anders Behring Breivik, a mass murderer who killed 77 people, most of them teenagers, as a protest against women’s rights, cultural diversity and the growing influence of Islam.

I don’t necessarily buy this. There are problems in every country, and I think the countries of northern Europe (I would throw Germany and the Netherlands into the mix) have quite possibly done the most anywhere to try to solve them and create the best human societies they can. I don’t think they claim to be utopian, only to be striving for utopian ideals. Most impressively to me, they try to build consensus not by keeping outsiders at bay and trying to remain homogeneous, but by allowing diversity and then trying to deal with it, which is the harder path. Because they have chosen the harder but potentially more rewarding path, there is a visible right-wing backlash developing. I think something similar has happened in the United States – the intolerant minority has become more vocal and visible as we have become more tolerant and pluralistic overall. This doesn’t mean there aren’t vulnerabilities – if the intolerant element becomes large and active enough to gain real power, bad outcomes are obviously possible. Economic stagnation, violence and fear can all increase the risk of bad outcomes.