Monthly Archives: February 2015

Governing transit: the regulated public utility

Public utilities, from Chris Potter. CC BY 2.0

The MBTA is struggling, but they’re not the only transit authority facing both near and long-term challenges. The MTA in New York is trying to find the funds for its capital plan; WMATA is facing systemic budget deficits while trying to restore rider confidence in the system.

For-profit corporations such as airlines aren’t the right answer to govern transit in an American context. So, what kind of structure could work?

Writing at Citylab, David Levinson made the case for structuring American transit operations as regulated public utilities, able to pull the best elements of private sector management and pair them with the fundamentally public purpose required for urban mass transit.

David cites seven key elements of this model:

Competitive tendering for services
The ability to raise fares (with regulatory approval)
Using a smartcard as a common platform for fare payment
Specific contracts with local governments to operate subsidized service
Ability to recapture land value through land ownership and real estate development
Access to private capital markets
Local governance, funding, and decision-making

These elements aren’t substantively different from the elements of German public transport governance reforms outlined by Ralph Buehler and John Pucher: competitive tendering for many services, increased fares, investments in technology to improve capacity, efficiency, and revenue. Public regulation oversees these efforts to operate the core business more efficiently.

Lisa Schweitzer (USC Professor focusing on urban planning and transportation) offered extensive feedback on her blog (in several parts). All are worth reading, I’ve linked to each and included a short summary and/or quote:

1. On the regulated public utility concept: “First of all, even though quangos [a British term: quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations – what we’d usually refer to as a public authority] are somewhat insulated from voters and politics, they still have play with budgetary politics, and those games are where lots of stupid enters into transit provision.”

Schweitzer identifies three main problems with applying the concept to transit. First, unlike water or electric service, the demand for transit use isn’t universal. Aside from a few dense cities, there isn’t necessarily a built in customer base. Second (and related to the spotty demand for transit service), some jurisdictions can/do opt out of transit service, hurting the overall network. Third, unlike water or electricity, there are many different levels of transit service.

2. The challenges of competitive tendering: the devil is in the details for how to successfully structure operations contracts: “And that’s a really the key point for competitive tendering and service quality gains you hope to achieve: if you are going to to do this, you need to be clear on service expectations. The reason the cable guy gets to treat you like crap is that’s not part of the franchise agreement which centers on channels and rights for particular sports events–not customer service response times.”

3. Farecards and technology: Schweitzer notes that most transit agencies already offer smart farecards, but perhaps a regulated utility would have more incentive to invest in technology to collect additional revenues or adopt policies (such as all-door boarding, or proof of payment) that would speed operations and improve efficiency. This is really a matter of institutional incentives rather than simply adopting farecards.

4. Capital cost recovery: While Levinson argues that new transit lines should only be built if they can break even on fare revenues and value capture from adjacent land, Schweitzer counters that this formulation depends on the mode and the type of transit line:”Right now, you have jurisdictions with people who are very avid about wanting rail transit. We must have rail now.”

“You want a train? Fine. Either let us build 70 100-story apartment complexes next to the station (if it pencils for us) or you pay whatever portion of the capital and operating costs that apartment complex would have covered for the utility. Your choice. Again, rich districts can have their single-acre lots if they want, and they can have their trains if they want them–even if nobody wants to take the train and they just use it as decoration. They just can’t stick the rest of us with the bills for those trains.”

5. Asset values and access to private capital: This isn’t exactly a silver bullet. For as well as competitive bidding worked for London’s buses, the similar deal for the Underground flopped:” The Metronet-London Underground deal came about in 1998 in part because the transit provider, Transport for London, was financially stretched and their capital stock decayed. This is a big deal: taking over large capital stocks is risky, let alone doing so because you have to bail somebody out. It means you probably have crumbling assets with an uncertain price tag to fix.”

In London’s case, one rail company delivered on their agreements while another operator came back to the public for additional funds and eventually went into bankruptcy: “While newspapers blamed the public sector partner for failing to manage the contracts properly, the public audit on the deal cited Metronet’s own corporate governance and poor management as the primary reason for the failed partnership.”

6. Local funding: While Schweitzer sees the virtues of local funding, there are risks to completely forgoing federal funds. If there is a chance to reform things, it will likely involve the feds: “If we really do believe that there are normatively better ways for cities to be, then there is a role for federal governments to play in setting standards and incentives.”

David, freed from the space constraints of Citylab when writing via his own blog, responded in depth:

1. The regulated public utility model: “I imagine like most reforms, it would be phased in, tested, refined, and revised in the various laboratories of democracy. Some city has to go first, some other city has to go second, and hopefully learn from the first, before every last city does.”

2. Competitive tendering: “…the answer is quite complicated about how to configure to maximize consumer welfare, and experimentation is probably required. Just giving the system away is certainly not the answer. Having the franchises be of a limited duration (5-7 years, e.g.) is better than a 20-30 year franchise. This is feasible for buses where the capital is the ultimate in mobile capital. It would be much harder for a traditional utility where the infrastructure is expensive, embedded in the ground, and long-lived.”

In other words, it’s a lot easier to structure a deal for competitive contracts for bus operations than it is for fixed, naturally monopolistic rail services – both in terms of structuring the deal, and in terms of attracting operators.

3. Farecards: “I would go further and say we should have pre-payment via stop-based farecard reader, i.e. all significant bus stops should have arterial BRT like payment”

4. Capital cost recovery: “Capital investments are new stocks while operating expenditures are continuing flows. From a public policy perspective, continuing with existing commitments (which may be an implied social contract) may be more important than making investments that bring about new commitments. Thus new commitments (such as new rail lines which have irreversibly embedded immobile capital) should only be undertaken if we believe at the outset (admittedly a forecast, which have problems) that they have cost recovery.”

5. Asset values: “Investing in new infrastructure is a lot riskier than investing in already built infrastructure (thus the early financiers of the Channel Tunnel got wiped out twice, similarly the Dulles Greenway and many other privately funded pieces of new infrastructure that were either more expensive than expected, or built too far in advance of demand.”

The broad concept of a regulated public utility has a lot to recommend: it threads the needle between the public purpose inherent to modern transit, while also pulling the best elements from private enterprise and the benefits of running a service-oriented business like a business.

While demanding additional efficiency from transit operators, German public policy worked in concert with these reforms – traffic calming, dense development around transit stations, and increased taxes and fees on car-based transport both improved transit’s attractiveness and also provided new revenue sources.

As Dr. Schweitzer notes, the single biggest take-away from Levinson’s article is the concept of transit as a public utility in the first place. Getting over that mental hump can open doors to plausible reforms.

What might those reforms be? In addition to Levinson’s list, Ralph Buehler and John Pucher offer their lessons from the German experience:

Encourage regulated competition; take advantage of private sector expertise
Collaboration between local governments, transit operators, and labor unions
Focus on profitable services – not to ignore ‘equity’ services. Jarrett Walker would refer to this as a focus on ‘ridership’ routes instead of ‘coverage’ routes – and building political consensus around this isn’t an easy task!
Collaborate with other transit operators; encourage easy exchanges between systems for passengers, interoperable systems, etc.
Improve service quality; focus on customer service.
Increase transit’s competitiveness with complimentary public policies – for example, increased fees on driving/owning a car, encouraging dense development near stations, etc.

All in all, the list is quite similar to Levinson’s.

However, in Germany, the push towards some of these reforms came from the outside (EU regulations); existing transit operators viewed them as a threat forcing reform and a new focus on customer service, efficiency, and overall quality – all while working to reduce costs. Similar to an airline facing bankruptcy, German operators used the EU mandate to find common purpose with their unions to improve efficiency and reduce overall costs.

Both Schweitzer and Levinson sing the virtues of local funding, but reform of this magnitude might require outside stimulus. In the same vein as Schweitzer’s defense of federal experimentation in policy, the federal government is well suited to fill that role. However problematic the federal focus on streetcars may be, the federal focus has certainly shifted the attention of local governments; the TIGER grant process shook up the traditional relationship between the FTA serving a few transit authority grantees. The projects might not be the best investments in mobility, but it does reveal the potential for the feds to drive change in transit governance.

Airlines: the strengths and weaknesses for corporate transportation governance

CC image from Christian Junker.

David D’Alessandro’s review of the MBTA’s finances came to a stark conclusion: “A private sector firm faced with this mountain of red ink would likely fold or seek bankruptcy.” That red ink is thanks to a systemic operating deficit; yet as a provider of a key public service, the MBTA was also “too big to fail” and therefore cannot simply cease operations. Likewise, though municipalities and public authorities can declare bankruptcy, they seldom do.

However, there are examples of transportation operators declaring bankruptcy in the face of systemic deficits: airlines. Comparing for-profit airlines to subsidized urban transit might seem like a stretch, but consider the similarities:

Both provide a transportation service
Both require capital-intensive operations
Both are historically a low-margin business; transit has been largely subsidized for generations in the US; historic profitability for airlines is slim-to-nonexistant.
Labor is a significant cost for both; both featured highly unionized workforces.
Both are sensitive to swings in energy prices
Both include a high level of coordination with the government (regulations, funding for facilities, etc)

Reform proposals for the MBTA set goals for reducing operating costs, but didn’t necessarily give the MBTA the tools to reach that goal. Compare that to the major airline reform – the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Prior to deregulation, all air routes needed approval from the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). Matt Yglesias explains:

Passenger aviation clearly needs some regulation for the sake of passenger safety, pollution control, and the community impacts of airports. But in the early decades of the industry, CAB went far beyond that to regulate what fares airlines were allowed to offer and which routes they were allowed to fly. This became a classic case of regulatory capture. Airlines cared a lot about the actions of CAB while ordinary voters had bigger fish to fry. As a consequence, the board ended up creating a cozy cartel where airlines didn’t compete much and certainly didn’t compete on price. With price competition off the table, airlines invested lavishly in offering a high level of service. Labor unions got in on the act, using their clout to force managers and owners to share with workers some of the excess profits generated by CAB.

Removing regulatory approval for new routes unleashed new competition, dramatically lowering airfares for consumers. Airlines explored new route network concepts, eventually leading to the dominance of today’s hub-and-spoke system. Existing airlines still had to work within their cost structure, based on the old regulated business model. Soon, many airlines also faced a sea of red ink. Faced with the same choice David D’Alessandro saw for the MBTA, many airlines either ceased operations or entered bankruptcy.

Today, airlines use bankruptcy as a tool to lower labor costs by renegotiating contracts. Yglesias, writing about the 2011 bankruptcy of American Airlines, notes “the real aim of the filing, in the words of S&P 500 analyst Philip Baggaley is to ’emerge as a somewhat smaller airline with more competitive labor costs.’ ”

While the MBTA Forward Funding plan set goals to reduce operating costs, it did not include the tools to make those cost reductions happen. Using bankruptcy as a tool to reduce structural costs, as airlines have done, might technically be available to a public authority like the MBTA, political pressure often prevents this course of action.

In a look at sustainable transit funding, Ralph Buehler and John Pucher study the fiscal sustainability of German public transport systems. The abstract:

Over the past two decades, Germany has improved the quality of its public transport services and attracted more passengers while increasing productivity, reducing costs, and cutting subsidies. Public transport systems reduced their costs through organizational restructuring and outsourcing to newly founded subsidiaries; cutting employee benefits and freezing salaries; increasing work hours, using part-time employees, expanding job tasks, and encouraging retirement of older employees; cooperation with other agencies to share employees, vehicles, and facilities; cutting underutilized routes and services; and buying new vehicles with lower maintenance costs and greater passenger capacity per driver. Revenues were increased through fare hikes for single tickets while maintaining deep discounts for monthly, semester, and annual tickets; and raising passenger volumes by improved quality of service, and full regional coordination of timetables, fares, and services. Those efforts by public transport agencies were enhanced by the increasing costs and restrictions on car use in German cities. Although the financial performance of German public transport has greatly improved, there are concerns of inequitable burdens on labor, since many of the cost reduction measures involved reducing wages or benefits of workers.

The outcomes aren’t all that different than those achieved by airlines utilizing bankruptcy. Unlike either US airline deregulation or the MBTA’s Big Dig deal on transit expansion as mitigation for a massive increase in urban highway capacity, German reforms also included policies aimed to shift the market in favor of public transportation. Fares and schedules are coordinated though a verkehrsverbund, or transport association.

Setting fares, coordinating routes and timetables sounds awfully similar to the Civil Aeronautics Board. However, because air transport is expected to operate profitably and urban mass transit is not. The middle ground is a structure that can combine the best elements of a for-profit corporation (“run it like a business”) with the public purpose of a government agency or public authority. Writing at Citylab, David Levinson makes the case for governing transit as a regulated public utility, operating as a business and billing the public for the full cost of services:

Like any other enterprise, transit should be successful and cover its costs. This is entirely feasible if we change the model of transit finance from a branch of government to a regulated public utility, as is done in much of Europe and Asia. A public utility provides a service, and in exchange, it is compensated for that service. The compensation comes from consumers (e.g. users, riders), and from the public for any unprofitable services that it wishes to maintain for other (e.g. political) reasons.

Just as the public sector pays the electric utility for street lights, it should pay the transit utility for services that the government insists on but that the transit provider cannot charge users enough for.

The public utility model provides a more realistic model for mass transit than airlines do. The lack of an inherent profit motive makes the direct comparison for airline governance a mis-match; yet there are elements of the private corporation that would inherently benefit public transit, thanks to the similiar roles for airlines and transit agencies.

Lessons for transit agency funding, finance, and governance – MBTA

It’s been a rough winter for transit in Boston. The agency’s general manager resigned; they’re buried in 90 inches of snow – it’s a natural disaster in slow-motion. All of those problems are piled on top of the MBTA’s structural deficiencies, outlined in this 2009 review of the agency’s finances. The review, led by former John Hancock CEO David D’Alessandro, paints a bleak picture.

Prior to 2000, the MBTA was backward-funding – sending a bill to the state to cover the organization’s annual operating deficit. A reform program sought to make the MBTA fiscally self-sufficient by dedicating a portion of the state’s sales tax revenue to the agency in exchange for a requirement that the MBTA balance their budget every year. This requirement to balance the budget every year would serve as an incentive for the MBTA to control costs and grow revenues.

Often, similar conversations emerge around WMATA, noting Metro’s lack of a dedicated funding source. However, the MBTA case study shows that dedicated funding alone isn’t a silver bullet. There are other elements to the MBTA’s structural deficit beyond funding.

The MBTA blueprint for self-sufficiency was based on several bad assumptions: The plan called for the MBTA to decrease operations costs by 2% a year. In actuality, they increased by an average of 5% per year. Fuel and energy costs account for a large portion of the shortfall as oil prices rose dramatically (and unexpectedly). Sales tax revenues were expected to grow at 3% per year, the actual growth averaged to 1% per year. The net impact, even with rising fare revenue, is a sea of red ink:

Cumulative impacts from the MBTA funding plan, showing large net negative impacts from the baseline.

There are two different kinds of error here: one is a failure to account for uncertainty in the forecast. Sales tax revenue is strongly influenced by the larger economy; fuel and energy prices are similarly based on much larger and unpredictable energy markets. The size of the error also increases with time from the original plan. Error in the MBTA’s fuel cost assumptions gets larger with each successive year from FY01 to FY08 – beware the cone of uncertainty.

The second type of error stems from wishful thinking. While it’s nice to plan on reducing operations costs, and there’s value in budgeting accordingly in order to set a goal to do so, it’s not clear that the legislation had a clear idea for how the MBTA would reduce those costs. Another analysis from the MBTA shows binding arbitration between the MBTA and labor unions imposed substantial wage increases with no regard for the MBTA’s operating deficit. In that light, assuming the MBTA’s operating costs would decrease seems like wishful thinking at best.

The D’Alessandro review notes that the MBTA’s headcount is actually down, yet wages are up. The agency showed progress in reducing costs, but they “could not pare staff below the number needed to move hundreds of thousands of riders across hundreds of routes each workday.” Baumol’s Cost Disease in action – increasing costs without a corresponding increase in productivity.

To meet the requirement to balance their annual budget, the MBTA sought to lower their annual debt service payments by refinancing their debt to push the principal into the out years and lower near term payments. Much of this refinancing simply ‘papered over’ the agency’s structural deficit. Again, the faulty assumptions of the financing plan exacerbated that structural deficit.

The MBTA’s debt load is also a major issue, one that dates back well before the Forward Funding plan. As a part of a 1991 consent decree to get approval for Boston’s Big Dig, the courts required a broad array of transit expansion projects as “environmental mitigation.” The decree did not identify any funding for those projects. Now, the MBTA has a massive amount of debt, of which approximately 2/3rds is dedicated to prior obligations before the Forward Funding agreement or towards state-mandated expansion projects.

(It’s worth noting the decision-making priorities involved in the Big Dig – the massive tunnelling project was only approved because the transit mitigation projects, backed by transit advocates as a way to hitch their wagon to omnipresent highway funding – yet those projects were never fully funded and now play a large role in exacerbating the agency’s stability. Imagine a project that simply removed the Central Artery and ‘replaced’ it with the long-imagined North/South rail link instead; or where the response to the Big Dig proposal was focused on re-defining the project itself rather than just tacking on ‘mitigation’ transit expansion.)

D’Alessandro’s conclusion is stark: “A private sector firm faced with this mountain of red ink would likely fold or seek bankruptcy.”

Yet, at the same time, the MBTA is “too big to fail.” Transit provides a critical service for any large city’s economy. Given the subsidized nature of public transit in the US, any reform must involve the public sector.

Airlines provide an interesting point of comparison: While US airlines operate for-profit businesses, the nature of air transport is deeply intertwined with the public sector. However, US Airlines are private, for profit corporations. Unlike the MBTA, they can seek legal protections to restructure their business through bankruptcy – and every major airline has done precisely that over the last decade. Airlines used bankruptcy to reduce operations costs from long-term labor agreements. German transit agencies have achieved fiscal stability using similar tools.

Unfortunately, the simplified narrative in the wake of the T’s failure to function normally in the face of Boston’s record snowfall has been to set up a false dichotomy between transit system expansion and system maintenance. In spite of the Big Dig deal, the challenge isn’t between expansion vs. maintenance, but between the political governance and funding mechanisms and the technical requirements to operate and maintain the system.

This political challenge isn’t limited to transit. Highway spending is overwhelmingly focused on expanding the system, at the expense of maintaining the system we already have. Angie Schmidt at Streetsblog put it bluntly: More money for transportation won’t matter if we don’t change how that money is spent.

Pop-ups – what counts as ‘reasonable?’

Beware the imperative that we have to do something.

Despite protestations from DC’s former planning director Harriet Tregoning, the preliminary vote count on the plan to limit rowhouse pop-ups in DC is poised to pass, 3-2 (note that two of the zoning commissioners tentatively in favor are the federal representatives to the commission; see this Washington City Paper profile of commissioner Peter May for more about the federal role in local decisions in DC).

Among the local media, the Washington Post editorial board came out against the proposed regulations. Other local papers, such as the Northwest Current, are in favor. The single biggest reason for supporting the proposed changes is that they seem ‘reasonable.’

It’s not hard to see why many DC residents are eager for ‘reasonable’ restrictions on pop-ups. There are quite a few ugly ones out there; some include suspect construction. However, the proposed changes in the zoning code won’t outlaw ugly additions and the zoning code doesn’t regulate construction methods or enforce the building code.

Part of the challenge with ‘reasonable’ restrictions on new development is that many of the impacts aren’t intuitive. Consider the aesthetics of pop-ups: Just as zoning code parking requirements won’t solve on-street parking hassles (you must manage those parking hassles directly), a small reduction in the allowable height and shifting certain elements away from by-right construction towards requiring a special exception won’t address concerns about design. Implement these changes to DC’s zoning code and many will still complain about pop-up development.

Pop-ups need not be ugly. Nor are they a new phenomenon.

Part of the concern about overly restrictive regulations is that limiting small-scale development is a serious constraint on the market’s ability to provide housing that is affordable to a wide range of incomes (here’s a perfect place to shift the narrative away from the nebulous ‘affordable housing’ and instead focus on providing abundant housing instead).

Still, without that background knowledge, it’s not hard to think that these restrictions won’t harm the District’s progress towards abundant housing. Proponents of allowing more growth argue pop-ups provide an opportunity for families and individuals to live in desirable neighborhoods at a lower price point. Meanwhile, the Northwest Current editorial board isn’t convinced that allowing additional housing supply helps ease the supply crunch. Instead, they would wish housing prices would drop naturally:

However, the flip side of the “we’d rather just see the existing houses priced more affordably” coin is essentially an argument to lower property values. I don’t think we’ll see such an editorial from the Northwest Current anytime soon. Why? Because I doubt neither the editorial board nor the paper’s readership would consider advocacy to lower property values to be ‘reasonable.’

So, what are options to regulate pop-ups? A few ideas, keeping in mind the differing perspectives and scales)

Recognize the value of by-right development and the path of least resistance. Similarly, the idea of negotiating every single building project on a case-by-case basis might also seem reasonable, beware the unintended consequences of this approach.
Consider a form-based approach. The Coalition for Smarter Growth suggested an approach that mandates a setback for true pop-ups (those that retain the existing facade) or some other design treatment to minimize the visual impact. The challenge for this approach would be in enforcement. The advantage is that the regulatory authorities can offer clear guidance for this form of ‘lite’ administrative design review. It also avoids the perils of full-scale design review; a process that doesn’t keep the desired outcomes on the path of least resistance.
Remember: one of the goals of DC’s pending zoning code re-write was to reduce the burden on the BZA’s case load. Simply adding more cases to the pool of potential special exceptions is a step in the opposite direction.
Build more rowhouses. Part of the rationale for regulating pop-ups is a desire not just to preserve the urban design of DC’s rowhouse neighborhoods, but also to preserve larger housing units for families. If this is indeed a goal for the city’s housing strategy (and consistent with the desires for abundant housing), then the goal shouldn’t just be about preserving rowhouses, but encouraging the construction of more of them in existing single-family detached areas. This is also consistent with the city’s goals for accessory dwelling units as a part of the zoning re-write.
Build more multi-family housing. Work to relieve development pressure from the other end by allowing the construction of more small-scale apartment and condo buildings. DC has many of these grandfathered into existing R-4 (rowhouse) zones. While the Comprehensive Plan does prioritize the preservation of rowhouse areas, the existing zoning clearly allows multi-unit buildings. While much of the commentary focuses on micro effects and ugly additions, lurking beneath the surface is a clear bias against additional dwelling units. This backlash mirrors other DC planning debates about accessory dwelling units and growth in general.
Develop a market-based housing plan for the city as a whole. Collect and distribute data on the overall housing market to better inform decisions on demand as well as new supply.
Shift the narrative around housing discussions away from ‘affordable housing’ and towards ‘abundant housing.’ Hopefully this shift can help avoid the counterfactual trap of new supply that is still expensive, yet cheaper than it would’ve been. Consider this: if car manufacturers could only build a limited number of cars, they would likely focus on higher-margin luxury models. The same is true of housing; yet this doesn’t disprove the impact of supply. Just because new condos in popped-up buildings aren’t always cheap, that doesn’t mean the impact on the overall market isn’t real.

Any other ideas?

Seeing the forest for the trees, and vice versa

CC image from Vincent Ferron

As the saying goes, sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. You can’t focus too hard on the details of each individual tree and still get the bigger picture – all of those trees form a larger ecosystem – a forest.

The expression (almost always used negatively) only speaks to one’s perspective, however. No matter that perspective, there is a forest comprised of many individual trees. The phrase is targeted at a person’s perspective, but it does speak to the differences in both scale and perspective about any given issue.

Let’s Go LA used this formulation to discuss the division between two broad schools of thought on urban housing, particularly in constrained markets with rising housing prices: those that focus on supply restrictions and those that focus on community integrity and preventing displacement.

The difference in tactics between these two groups often leaves them at odds with each other. However, these schools of thought are two sides of the same coin, with similar goals but approaching the problem from opposite ends. Call the land use liberalization advocates the “macro” view, focusing on overall regional housing supply, and the anti-displacement advocates the “micro” view, focusing on the stories of individuals affected by rapid neighborhood change.

The challenge in crafting policy is that both schools of thought have a claim to the truth. Crafting policy for a city isn’t a choice between the forest or the trees, as there isn’t a difference between the two approaches.

This isn’t the only dichotomy you’ll find in a city. I’ve written previously about the tensions that rise out of the different views of real estate in cities – it is both a financial investment and a component of a city’s urban design. Tensions between these schools of thought can be exacerbated by policies that conflate the two – is the mortgage interest deduction a policy focused on housing or on real estate investment?

Trees v. forest
Micro v. macro
Neighborhood v. region
Building v. neighborhood

DC’s debate about pop-up development similarly pits two competing views about the same city against one another: is the city an urban design forest being altered by the trees of the individual property rights of owners? Are those pop-ups representing a healthy regional housing market responding to demand, a forest ecosystem regenerating itself; or a metastastizing growth that threatens ‘neighborhood character?‘

Both are lenses we can use to look at the city. The challenge is finding a policy that can thread the needle without ignoring the bigger picture goals that can be more abstract: not the forest or trees, but a desire for a healthy environment (as an example). Let’s Go LA makes the case that finding that common ground and realizing that the trees make the forest while the forest comprised of the trees is critical in moving forward:

See the forest for the trees, or see the trees for the forest.

The key is to realize that we all share a common goal – a city that is affordable and accessible to all those who want it. When land use liberalization advocates and anti-displacement advocates argue with each other, we let the truly responsible parties – wealthy neighborhoods that stifle any and all development – off the hook.

Too often, the conversation turns into a debate about which perspective is ‘right.’ The reality is that both (all?) perspectives have value. The debate can obscure areas of agreement; it can also foster a misunderstanding of how cities evolve. The only constant is change.

City Block

a work in progress…