For example: Google looked at Seattle's NIMBY laws regarding utility boxes on sidewalks (each requiring a lengthy community approval process) and said, "Nope!"
Seattle's new mayor is now looking how to streamline the process to make the city more Google friendly, should the opportunity arise again.
FYI, some municipalities have democratically driven regulations; this seems like a much better course if you’re not trying to make a homogenous neighborhood.
It’s hard to “move fast and break things” in government because in modern city development, neighbourhood consultation is the basis of how decisions are made, and for good reason.
Neighbourhood consultation is a reaction to past urban planning regrets and failures, where heavy handed government “urban renewal” initiatives razed entire neighbourhoods, most often marginalized and ethnic minority ones.
In the worst case community consultation can be distorted into blind NIMBYism that serves only to slow down all development, but nonetheless we know that from our previous mistakes that consultation is required.
I would count myself among those a bit concerned about Silicon Valley being so eager to “fix” problems with cities. Will Sidewalk Labs employ and listen to urban planning experts that have studied cities for their entire careers or is Toronto going to be a sandbox for clueless software engineers' pet theories?
Will Google be so eager to test out self driving cars that they’ll discount and ignore decades of knowledge about how cars impact neighbourhoods?
I agree that it requires political will and good governance. Bus lanes aren’t easy most places. However, I don’t think one should ever generalize about municipalities from examples set by San Francisco.
What is the bigger barrier to getting things done - regulations or politics with locals? I grew up learning that regulations were the reason things would take so long, but the older I get the more I realize its just a bunch of really loud NIMBYs.
I think in many cases zoning and the way land taxes are done are a big problem holding cities back. It's not legal in many cities to make things walkable, bikeable, transit friendly due to laws like single use zoning and parking minimums.
There's always opportunity. However: the space is, to be frank, kind of boring (mostly just CRUD apps) and has to deal with the government procurement process. Which is why I think no one has come up against Tyler yet. I'm sure someone determined enough could easily eat their lunch but most disruptor types aren't in the municipal CRUD app business.
Municipalities operate about 20 years behind everyone else. For example: asking for AI to determine when grass needs to be cut in medians is just unrealistic when most municipalities don't have the expertise or budget to even produce a functioning mobile platform for their base website.
I disagree with the sibling comment about the data export problem. I worked for a city and getting data in and out, while a hassle, isn't really too tough. Tyler and many other vendors are very lazy with their protections (as clearly evidenced by subject line) and with a bit of know how even very early on in my career I had no issues getting the keys to the city.
Being a resident of Seattle I'm not thrilled about the state of Washington making decisions about what happens in my city. I can get behind something like gating funding based on results but I'm not thrilled about the state dictating how the city spends money. I could also get behind the idea of a state-owned-and-operated shelter network which happens to have locations in cities. But in general I have a preference toward local government having responsibility where possible.
I'm not opposed to building more shelters. But it's not a complete solution. So what is the rest of the solution?
No, I don't think the laws are most of the reason why it's rare. It's probably more that other municipalities have seen the huge fights put up by the incumbents that tie the projects up in legal battles for years that have had a chilling effect on it. Citizens know that it's going to cost a lot for the infrastructure, and then probably a lot more for the legal fights.
Sadly, many of them don't seem to see what a success most of it is.
Towns can easily control for these things using taxes, zoning, and traffic rules, but they often don’t have the political will to do so. We’ve been here before with Silicon Valley, and thirty or forty years later it’s still a major problem .
This is already how it works. Also, in the process of applying for a permit, the city will make sure your construction plan is reasonable and you're doing everything you can to minimize impact to the public. I think anywhere in the world with a functioning local government will be similar.
I disagree. If you site the city in the US, you can use the existing governance models. Most of the what YC wants to do can be done with local zoning ordinances (tied together with restricted deeds or community lands trusts/co-ops), with the populace (hypothetically made up of citizens who are conducive to this experiment) voting at the local city government level.
This is not new territory. They're building a master planned community (with what you might consider an HOA on steroids), and based on their requirements, I think they going to do an incredible job compared to your average real estate developer.
But there are reasons for municipalities to do that. Namely infrastructure. The city next to mine allowed uncontrolled building of housing and that city is a shitshow right now. The roads are clogged and often gridlocked. They deal with all kinds of failure modes in their utilities due to high usage. No.
My town is being more strategic about it. They allowed businesses to come in first and expanded out the robustness of the local coop's electric grid and only then did they allow appartments and they are doing them in stages to make sure the area can handle it. This is important in an area where not everyone is even hooked up to the city's water supply or has access to city sewage.
In this case the YIMBY org BARF has a lot of support from displaced techies and developers. They are using the court system to enforce the law already on the books. The cities can't win. It will just take time though. This together withsome new legislation from the State will probably solve the problem.
For example: Google looked at Seattle's NIMBY laws regarding utility boxes on sidewalks (each requiring a lengthy community approval process) and said, "Nope!"
Seattle's new mayor is now looking how to streamline the process to make the city more Google friendly, should the opportunity arise again.
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