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What’s in a Manifesto? | Nov 8th at 1:38pm

Posted by Ryan Avent | 2

Time for some disclosure, I think. My background is in economics, not urban planning. As such, I’ve enjoyed learning about the cutting edge, green strategies emanating from the academy and design professionals. It all strikes me as wonderfully idealistic and aesthetically pleasing—not something I frequently have occasion to say of economics.

But that economic background is useful in these matters, because it is, at base, the study of human behavior given scarcity, and that is actually what all of these discussions are about. Why do people behave as they do, and how can we get them to change? Given limited quantities of time, money, and political capital, where are our efforts best expended?

I appreciate the idea of an ecological approach to city planning, which permeated today’s working group discussion, of just what should go in our manifesto. It’s very appealing—a holistic system that wastes little or nothing, and which constantly replenishes itself. Certainly, if this can be made to work over the long-term, our impact on the environment will be sharply reduced and the sustainability of our cities guaranteed. Those are worthy goals.

But our immediate task is more specific. How can we build our cities in the next two decades, to minimize growth in carbon emissions and minimize the detrimental impact of high resource prices on the citizens of the world? As desirable as ecological city building may be, it will not be the solution to this crisis, because there is no time. People are stubborn creatures. Political institutions are, if possible, yet more stubborn (being made up of people). Planners must act to cajole both households and leaders into accepting changes that constitute, on the surface at least, a painful alteration of lifestyle. Forget, for the moment, total recycling of waste. How do we get people to want to walk from one place to another? Forget, for the moment, the encasement of buildings in energy-producing algae tubes. How do we attract young families back into cities from the suburbs, reducing their carbon footprints in the process?

And we can’t begin from the position that the rules around us will change so that we can make it easier to be green. We have to start from the position that the rules around us will not change, and so how can we produce change despite that hardship?

The most important thing to realize is that global climate change and environmental challenges are more important to this group of urban planners than to most other professions, and certainly than to the population as a whole. Given that, it is basically certain that the demand for good environmental design will lag supply. And the supply of good government policy will lag demand for policy improvements among the planning profession. Those are the constraints, and they’re pretty significant. We have to sell the people something they’re not sure they need, and it seems unlikely that merely telling them they need it is going to change their minds. Planners have to convince them they want it, through the power of their design.

That’s doable. So long as we recognize that that’s the challenge, it can be met.

Ryan Avent is an economics writer living in Washington, DC. He authors The Economist's economics blog, Free Exchange, and covers environmental and urban policy issues for Grist.