Travelogue: Detroit

If there is such thing as a physical manifestation of tragedy, it is Detroit. Epic rise, epic fall. At one time this city was the epitome of American greatness (yes, probably even more so than Chicago.) There are dozens and dozens of fantastic buildings of large scale and opulent ornament; the exuberant monuments of the faster-bigger-better culture of the continent’s industrialization in the days when they set out to prove that Europe had nothing on the New World. There are blocks and blocks of the American Dream writ tangible; solid, clean brick houses perfect for the nuclear family and built back when visiting Soviets could ask, “is that really workers housing? Real housing for ordinary workers?” There are long avenues that stretch on forever full of two-story petit-urban shops within an easy walk from the porches of the houses surrounding them, incubators for retail traffic and conversation between neighbors.

All of this is now destroyed. The buildings are derelict and abandoned to broken glass and graffiti, with whole block-fronts in the heart of commerce covered with rotted and blackened plywood. The quaint residential blocks are unpainted and broken down with iron bars and overgrown landscape. Dozens of blocks have as ornament a neighboring house that burned – and they leave the half-burned wreck there! – an open sore on the landscape. The once grand avenues hold parking lots, boarded shops, or stores with steel grilles and almost nothing on the shelves. Only the ever-present Ford dealers seem to be willing or able to keep their businesses together. This is the Detroit of today: an abandoned shell of a city that looks more like a post-apocalyptic movie set that anything Hollywood could produce.

And yet, a few minutes (and several heartbreaking tower blocks) away is the bucolic paradise of Grosse Pointe (pronounced Gross Point,) where the interbred children of the lords of the city huddle behind armed guards and iron fences (even the lakeshore is private – where are Daniel Burnham and Aaron Ward?) sipping sherry and raising funds for remembrances of the glory days while their city burns (not altogether figuratively) around them. In fact, that seems to be the one bizarre unifying factor of the city: security. Gates and fences and guards seem to surround anything new or important. It’s as if the most frightening mentality of the Third World has landed by the shores of Lake St. Clair. Anyone involved in the urban enterprise should be forced to visit this place as a sobering reminder of the stakes of foresight and cooperation.

The gut-wrenching part of the whole experience is the knowledge that it didn’t have to be this way. There are other great American streetcar cities, other industrial cities, even other cities in the Midwest that adapted and adjusted and came through the dark times of economic shift all right. Chicago is a vibrant powerhouse (again.) New York had its nightmare and is back stronger and safer than ever. Boston deflected and bounced back. Even “satanic mills” Pittsburgh transformed itself into a quaint mosaic of clean (ed) neighborhoods once again nestled among the green hills. What happened to Detroit? Bad leadership? Racial strife? (Don’t try that excuse on L.A.) Irrational attachment to that one industry that “will come back, no really they will” while the rest of the world turns POST-industrial? Detachment of the elites? I suspect it’s a witches’ brew of all of the above and more.

What we do know is that it was NOT planning or design. The basic fabric is almost ideal, and the automobile did nothing here that it didn’t do in Chicago or a dozen other healthy cities. Detroit’s problems run deeper than streets and buildings and transit. A lesson to us all to beware of hubris.

[enlarge the photo for the full tragic impact]

Deadly Graphics Errors

This is an explanatory slide taken from the U.S. Central Command planning for post-war Iraq (circa 2002.)

Apparently the DoD doesn't read much Edward Tufte.

This is sort of an object lesson in meaningless graphics: The entities on the side are shown exerting "pressure" on the areas in the center. How? What exactly is this trying to say? The arrows will "constrain" the divisions "somehow?" What is the purpose of the things floating in the center? Are "joint meetings" etc, part of the divisions to be pushed together? Are they a technique? (Which would imply being part of the arrows or borders, not in the center.)

A graphic that means something is invaluable. One that doesn't actually harms the whole enterprise by seeming to show more planning than is actually there.

It kind of serves as a window into the whole thought process . . . . .

Taken from Fiasco by Thomas Ricks

Home Rule vs. Centralization

It’s been my contention for some time that very few people understand the value of distributed decision making. Economists seem to understand the beauty of the idea, but the whole concept tends to get left out of most big picture discussions. The idea is basically that dozens or hundreds or thousands making independent decisions tend to produce better results than a central figure at the top. (But not always!) Probably the best source to explain all of this was a statistician named W. Edwards Deming, formerly of the U.S. Census bureau, who years ago had the presence of mind to point out that people trapped in an inflexible system can’t improve it. Econo-watchers from Friedman to Reich have picked up on how a lack of hierarchy has turbocharged international trade, but have trouble translating the idea back to home.

I’m probably most bothered by this oversight in “public policy,” which implies in its very name a centralized, planner-oriented approach of which the Bolsheviks would be proud. This is only more galling when the same people involved in the planning drone on and on about the wonder of “democracy” (are they ancient Greeks?) Exactly how are the two connected? Is ballot representation really representation at all when blown up to a giant scale and centralized on one place? Those that get all exercised about U.S. Presidential elections draw particular skepticism. To them I ask: What kind of mandate can a plebiscite of 300 million with two choices possibly give? In a small list of macro-candidates, the inevitable result of big-tent organization, which of the issues you agree with are represented? Is it all or nothing, what to do about mixed / split issue races? What’s a pro-choice, pro-gun or an anti-tax, pro-civil liberties voter to do?

The original idea behind a republic was delegating the best men to make what decisions needed to be made collectively (and only those.) This is relies critically on knowing the members of the community to choose from. The concept of picking the best members of the community to make delegated decisions doesn’t work at a scale where there is no possible way to know anything about anyone running beyond third-hand and heavily mediated information.

The more centralized decision making (and resource distribution – wait – did I just say “resource distribution?” How planner.) becomes, the more slowly decisions are made, and the more institutional inertia there is to getting anything done. This isn’t due necessarily to malice or incompetence, it’s simply far more difficult to balance all of the competing global interests, not just local ones Isn’t most of the problem with New Orleans reconstruction waiting for a central authority to act? (I will, once again, guarantee that the same thing would not happen in Chicago. Why? Home Rule. Not necessarily entirely legal, but home rule just the same.)

Whether it be a government or a corporation or some sort of episcopal entity, effective scaling screams for distribution of thinking. It’s simply a serial processing versus parallel processing question. Regardless how attractive the cult of the exceptional may be, competent people at the lowest possible levels will generally be more effective than exceptional people removed from the situation or overloaded or disconnected or all three. In a pure theory sense these are the same problems with categories and learning from A.I. (anticipated by Heidegger?) versus the small-scale trial-and-error approach of Artificial Life .

Examples of the comparison abound: Here we have Jane Jacobs squaring off against Robert Moses. Here we have Adam Smith against Frederich Engels. And, of course, Friedman versus Galbraith.

There’s only so much thinking power to go around, perhaps we should use more of it.

Speaking of Oil

Lest you get any misconceptions about where it (still) comes from. Don't forget: The U.S was the major supplier until and through the Second World War. God bless Texas (and home, too.)

[A million kudos to the good people at the Christian Science Monitor, from whom I stole the graphic.]

Evolutionary Psychology Steps into the Wayback Machine

In the “the more things change . . . “ category:

The life of man in society, just like the life of other species, is a struggle for existence, and therefore it is a process of selective adaptation. The evolution of social structure has been a process of natural selection of institutions. The progress which has been and is being made in human institutions and in human character may be set down, broadly, to a natural selection of the fittest habits of thought and to a process of enforced adaptation of individuals to an environment which has progressively changed with the growth of the community and with the changing institutions under which men have lived. – Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, VIII, pub. 1899

Veblen forms sort of a weird midpoint between the environmental determinism of Marx and the Meme ideas of Richard Dawkins, et al. While the twenty-first century thus far seems to be one of working through the effect of biology (and especially DNA) on proclivities, going back and reading how out of hand some of the Spencerian social-darwinian ideas got really justifies a lot of sympathy for the nurture-only crowd, even if you think they did go too far. It’s sometimes amazing to look back through the ages and see exactly how much people used to think was heritable. Even in Veblen (almost the c20!) there’s mention of the idea of “noble blood.” I’m still not sure if he was kidding.

As late as 1939 a Nobel laureate scientist (in New York, no less) was capable of writing: “Modern civilization seems to be incapable of producing people endowed with imagination, intelligence, and courage. In practically every country there is a decrease in the intellectual and moral caliber of those who carry the responsibility of public affairs.“ (Check out the context!)

History may be written by the winners, but it’s fascinating to look back at some of the wacky ideas that once competed for what became established orthodoxy. One wonders what we accept as universal truth now that will seem odd and frightening in a century – or what great controversies that we’ve completely forgotten.

Updating the links

The best part of this exercise is linking to some of my brilliant friends.

These come and go as people fade on and off of the web. Elvira - Unfiltered has decided she wants to be filtered now, and Stu Tidball - Media Personality is holding out for an agent.

In their stead, look into an old friend with an ear and a new friend with an eye .

More commentary coming soon.