Daily Score Blog

[UPDATE 5/14/07: Seattle's innovative mixed income development, New Holly, is also "social engineering," according to the Seattle Times. I guess it's because policymakers had an objective in mind when they made policies.]

I keep seeing the phrase "social engineering" used to describe policies that don't kowtow to the car. See, for example, this inexplicable subhead about a third of the way through a P-I story. Not only is this usage annoying, it's exactly backward (as others have noted before me).

First, let's look first at specifics. The P-I story reports that the city will put parking meters on some formerly-free spots in a rapidly urbanizing district near downtown Seattle. The paper calls this “social engineering.”

I suppose that’s right, at least to the extent that parking meters alter the incentive structure for parking, which ultimately may change some people’s behavior. But if anything, the alternative to the city’s plan -- continuing to provide public rights-of-way for exclusive, uncompensated use by a handful of private car owners -- is closer to “social engineering” than charging a small fee for the privilege. Really, the question is not whether the city will engage in “social engineering,” but what kind of social engineering. And in particular, will government continue to use public resources to subsidize private cars?

Speaking more generally, just about any transportation policy -- or any policy at all, for that matter -- can be described as “social engineering.” Consider some (slightly) overheated rhetoric: today's car-centric system is the result of Soviet-style social engineering.

Governments used the awesome power of the state to take money from the populace. Then central planners used the money with an ethic of brutalism, forcing gigantic car thoroughfares across neighborhoods, into the hearts of cities, and then out into far-flung farmlands and wild places.

In town, America's Soviet-style planning wasn't much different.

As Kristin notes below, Vancouver Sun let Candadian eco-guru David Suzuki guest-edit an issue today.  There's lots of good stuff in there, but I think my favorite article in the day's paper was this interview with UBC prof. Bill Rees -- perhaps because his point of view reinforces my own biases:

"It's very difficult for a person living in a North American city to have a sound lifestyle, because the context in which we live demands it," [Rees]says.

"Look at our area; we can't afford a house in town, so people are forced to live in the suburbs...Once you have a low-density suburb, it's not viable for transit, and a car becomes absolutely necessary."

To be clear, this doesn't ring completely true.  People choose to live in low-density suburbs for all sorts of reasons, not just because housing close to city and town centers is expensive. 

That said, the relative lack of affordable housing close to population and job centers -- where transit, walking and biking are viable options -- does drive some people to the suburbs.  And that, in turn, increases a metro area's ecological footprint (a concept that Rees pioneered).

The May 5 edition of the Vancouver Sun offers a mother lode of environmental news -- edited by "the man most Canadian women said they'd choose to be with on a deserted island" -- David Suzuki.

There are numerous, numerous stories -- from the BC government's disputed record on climate change, to a Vancouver suburb's contest to become the no. 1 clean-energy city in the province, to venerable BC writer Stephen Hume's Great Moments in BC Environmental History -- clip this one and pin it to your cubicle wall for inspiration.

The Vancouver Sun's web site, however, is rather disorganized and hard to navigate. To avoid a headache, I suggest scavenging a print version or just ordering a copy from the Sun's circulation department.

Suzuki has no equivalent in the U.S. He's an environmental star. The Vancouver-based scientist and writer spent part of his childhood in an internment camp for Japanese-Canadians in the BC Kootenays. He went on to earn degrees from Amherst and the University of Chicago, and then returned home to teach genetics at the University of British Columbia. Many thirtysomething Canadians grew up watching his documentary televison series on CBC, The Nature of Things, which continues to run. In 1990, Suzuki founded his own non-profit, the Vancouver-based David Suzuki Foundation, to further educate the public about environmental concerns. He's sort of like Mr. Rogers meets Carl Sagan meets Al Gore meets Ralph Nader. ... Well, nevermind. Just trust me. When I moved to Canada in 2001, people were floored when I said I didn't know who he was ...

Last week, the Sunday Washington Post profiled Suzuki, with a bit on his most recent accomplishments.

Transportation uber-geek Todd Litman looked at studies of people's satisfaction with their commutes (pdf link). The results: transit isn't all that popular, compared with a car commute:

The leftmost bar represents a car-only commute; you can see that it gets higher satisfaction ratings (the green part), and lower dissatisfaction (the orange), than both transit and car+transit commutes, which are the next two bars. (Despite the popularity of park-and-rides, there are lots of yucky orange feelings towards a mixed commute.)

But, wait!!! If you dive into the numbers, it turns out that there's another side to this story. As it turns out, people don't have an inherent preference for cars, or an innate dislike of buses or trains. The real story is that people don't particularly like spending time in vehicles, period.