
Is Your City Infrastructurally Obese? - jseliger
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/10/29/is-your-city-infrastructurally-obese
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jeffdavis
The obesity analogy makes no sense. It's a bad logical fit, not illustrative
of the point, loaded with distracting negative connotations, and doesn't
suggest any analogous remedy.

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rollerboi
I love strongtowns. Such an interesting blog rich with data and thought-
provoking ideas.

He brings up a few ways to measure "Infrastructure Obesity," but really it
boils down to over-investment but under-utilization, aka malinvestment.

Some might argue that "well eventually this infrastructure would be used" but
he makes a good point that bloated infrastructure "impede(s) social
connections" so people will move away or not move into these areas, and
entrepreneurs take notice when foot traffic declines. Then these entrepreneurs
decide not to expand to areas with increasing infrastructure obesity. Like a
positive feedback loop.

The wannabe social psychologist/economist in me would've loved if he included
some stuff related to game theory/tragedy of the commons, e.g. Braess'
Paradox. It's probably not as impactful in cities where populations are
declining, but Braess' paradox posits that adding capacity to a system (like
an extra road) actually impedes (traffic) flow, rather than facilitating it.

In theory, this is because the aggregated "normal route" across all drivers in
a system (i.e. a morning commute) eventually reaches a Nash Equilibrium.
Adding capacity changes the "normal route," so drivers will have to re-adjust
and discover new optimal routes, which has cascading effects to other drivers,
etc. etc.

This is fascinating to me because conventionally, you'd think "Extra capacity
= more people on the road = better throughput" but we're seeing evidence that
maybe this isn't the case. Would love to hear yc's thoughts on that, though.

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GuiA
We’ve known how terrible North American city planning is since A Pattern
Language (70s) and Life and Death of Great American Cities (60s).

How do we turn it into concrete, short term action?

What’s the 2019 equivalent of smashing curbs for wheelchair access?
([https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-
cuts/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/curb-cuts/))

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svachalek
Probably pedestrian fortifications like the bulb-out?

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jandrese
Obese in this case seems to mean your city isn't built like Manhattan or
Tokyo. Cars are fat.

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learnstats2
Having more infrastructure than you currently need is a good thing (since the
inverse is clearly bad).

Comparing this to 'obesity' is an overtly political choice.

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sharpercoder
It means your taxes will go up and thw city has lost oportunity cost. That
seems to me as a bad thing. You'd want the _right_ amount of infra.

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sliken
Right, but the problem is it's VERY expensive to change the amount of
infrastructure. Widening roads is expensive, sometimes impossible. Parking
lots can't be resized later. When you put down a grid of streets you can't
just readjust that grid later.

Pittsburgh is one of the cities mentioned as obese. Homes are cheap, the cost
of living is cheap, and generally I find it a pleasant place to live. Owning a
home is a possibility, even relatively easy for the middle class, without
major sacrifices/crushing debt. The public schools are pretty good, crime is
relatively low, libraries are pretty good, there's quite a variety in bars,
restaurants, concerts, etc.

Currently I live in California where the rent is sky high, and it makes me
generally sad. People who don't focus on making money are generally ejected
from the communities because they can't afford to stay. Similarly businesses
that don't have high profit margins or at least really pack in the customers
generally die pretty quickly.

In Pittsburgh you get tons of small businesses, often have an acre or two of
land (usually from the road back to the treeline) and it's easy for them to
break even because the rent is so low. Wander into a hardware store and the
person has been working there for 10 years, actually understands what he
sells, and can break even on a few customers an hour.

Contrary to the story, my non-obese city (with no parking, high rents, a
shortage of houses, high traffic) requires more driving than the obese
Pittsburgh. The main issue is that low margin businesses can't afford to be
here. People that make $10 an hour can't afford to live here. The public
transportation is still terrible. So Costco ... drive to a different city.
Windshield repair... different city. Buy a pair of socks... different city. If
you have an entry level job in any profession... you have to live elsewhere
and generally drive to work. To make matters worse that entry level job ends
up paying a fair amount just to park.

