A Placemaking Journal

I’m writing this as Wisconsin voters appear poised, if we’re to believe the hyperventilating pundits, to push the reset button on the 2016 presidential primary season. All bets are off from here on.

Not the smart money, though. That’s because the presidential campaign is likely to play out within boundaries shaped by what we voters tend to agree on most of the time:

The future we most believe in is the past we wish were true and are convinced we deserve.

To be successful, a politician has to recognize the hold nostalgia (“when America’s was great”) has on us and tap into our frustration at gaps rising between the imagined then and the annoying now. What some might characterize as cynicism is nonetheless anchored in what we know about how humans’ brains work. Scott Adams, the guy who created “Dilbert,” draws on both the cynicism and the science in this piece of truthiness masquerading as satire. “Psychology is the only necessary skill for running for president,” says Adams.

Back in 1992, James Carville got credit for a nod to psychology and its practical applications in politics: Frame the debate in ways that affirm voters’ wishful thinking; offer solutions that cause them no pain. It’s a political variation on the “elevator speech” old-school public relations gurus tout as essential to communicating a vision. Keep it simple.

In 1992, it was Carville’s, “It’s the economy, stupid!” In the current era, if you lean right, “It’s the government, stupid!” If you’re on the left, “It’s corporate greed!” And just as the reductionist arguments at the national level have paralyzed Washington, delusional nostalgia and the demand for simple, pain-free solutions are complicating meaningful action at the local and regional levels.

Take, for instance, the community affordability debates. There’s insistence on one side to use government’s regulatory powers to limit development for rich people and increase it for poorer populations. That’s nostalgia for an imaginary America before corporations conspired against the People. On the other side are those arguing that, unfettered from growth-stunting restrictions, the free market will fill most of the gaps. Just as the Invisible Hand provided for all in the Good ‘Ol Days, regardless of resources, race, gender, ethnicity, etc.

It takes about 20 minutes on Google to find all the examples you need of cities and regions that have tried a bunch of variations on keep-it-simple solutions and failed to make a dent in the problems. Even minor progress on affordability issues requires acknowledging bundles of complexity and the need to combine strategies – and, in more cases than we’re apt to admit, the necessity to suffer inconvenience, if not pain.

In a recent post in Planetizen, Todd Litman provides a helpful round-up of approaches, each with its own baked-in pluses and minuses. Here’s his summary analysis:

• Affordability analysis should be comprehensive, taking into account total housing costs (including utilities, taxes and maintenance) and transportation costs, considering both short- and long-run impacts.
• No single strategy can meet all affordable housing needs – most communities need a combination.
• Some lower-income households need help repairing and maintaining their homes.
• Government sponsored and subsidized housing is important to serve people with special needs, but can only address a small portion of total affordable housing demands.
• Urban fringe development can provide cheap housing but tends to have high infrastructure and future transportation costs, and so is only truly affordable if planned and located to maximize accessibility and transport options.
• Inclusionary zoning may provide a modest amount of affordable housing where demand is very strong, but should otherwise be avoided to prevent spoiling the market for new housing construction.
• Removing unjustified restrictions and costs for urban infill is generally the most cost-efficient and beneficial option overall, but is challenging due to local opposition, and because its benefits are widely dispersed and so has fewer advocates. Our challenge is to promote, ‘Yes In My Backyard!'”

There you have it: Complexity-aware, coordination-focused, comprehensive in scope.

Also requiring a certain amount of tolerance for hard, wonky work and for pissing off people likely to get only part of what they think they deserve.

It’s that last part that makes things tough for those of us working to plan, design and build better places. A lot of people are pissed. Some with legitimate beefs built up over generations; more with fantasies they’ll fight – and vote – to maintain.

As Scott Adams suggests, Donald Trump has been doing us all a favor by taking the tried-and-true strategies of WINNING! to the logical extreme. But I’m not sure we’re grasping the lesson if all we come away with after the Wisconsin primary and the Trump challenges to follow is revulsion to his style instead of recognition of the dangerous absurdity of building a national – or a community – to-do list around fear, resentment and wishful thinking.

–Ben Brown

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