Wicked Problems
Sept 11
Wicked problems are something that was mentioned to our class during week one, but it was a topic that stood out to me. (That’s why I picked it to present to the class this coming week!) While I hadn’t heard the term “wicked problem” before, it sounded very familiar. Long have I discussed with friends, relatives and acquaintances how there are some very serious and pervasive problems that exist in our world that I wouldn’t know how to solve.
These problems often dealt with race, income, environmental issues and a plethora of other issues. After a particularly good conversation, I would actually feel depressed because of the nature of these problems; because I had no idea what the solution to these could be.
Considering the depressive nature, I will instead talk about one that has been on my mind today as I drove back to Pittsburgh from central Pennsylvania: highway alignments. It is mentioned in the Rittel/Webber piece as an example of something that’s not a “one-shot” operation. Once it’s built and property possibly destroyed, there is no going back. There is no opportunity to get it right a second time.
Analysis
You (and many others) need to get from point A to point B, and as fast and efficiently as possible. Perhaps the local roads are just too congested at all hours of the day. Perhaps there are available government funds which will help with the construction of a highway. But where will this road go? If every square meter of land is accounted for, someone will have to give some of it up. But who? Where? What parts of their land? And it’s one thing if we are talking about a rural road and the land needs to be taken from a farmer, but what if this highway is going into a densely populated city? Buildings (which house people) will likely need to be removed. That will affect the nature of that area in ways that are hard to calculate. There have been many instances in the past where highways or railroads divide a community entirely in two. Have you ever been told not to “cross the tracks?” That expression often relates to an area that has been divided by rail — one side is “better” or perhaps safer than the other.
Stakeholders
There are several groups of stakeholders here. The obvious choice would be the government agency that is having this road built. The government employees have a reason for building this road. They are paying for something tangible. X miles of roadway connecting city A with city B.
Another group of stakeholders are people that will be using the road. If the design and origin/destination doesn’t make sense and excludes a lot of potential drivers, then why build it in the first place?
A third group, as mentioned above are the individuals and families that will be affected negatively by its construction. How will this road affect them? Will the farmers loose part of their livelihood? Will the government pay enough for the property that the farmers may be completely willing to part ways with it? Will they use eminent domain and force the land owner to give the land up? And in a city, what will happen if swaths of apartment buildings or single family homes are taken down? That would affect everything from local property values to the amount of available properties in the area.
An article in the Washington Post, “A crusade to defeat the legacy of highways rammed through poor neighborhoods” hits exactly my point.
“It became clear to me only later on that those freeways were there to carry people through my neighborhood, but never to my neighborhood,” said Foxx, who grew up in Lincoln Heights, a neighborhood walled in by three highways in an interview with the Washington Post.
Some evidence provided by the transportation secretary of highways being built through low income areas are:
●New York City: “They call the Staten Island Expressway the Mason-Dixon Line.”
●Seattle: “I-5 was built through the city’s oldest blue-collar community, despite residents’ concerns they’d be isolated from the rest of the city.”
●Baltimore: “Robert Moses wanted to plow through a West Baltimore community known as Harlem Park, a then-thriving middle-class African American neighborhood. Harlem Park was destroyed before the project was stopped.”
Of course this problem can be found all over the country. Another article I found specially mentions how Caltrans has been planning on demolishing a large part of town in order to build a highway.
The economic and environmental toll on these communities was far-reaching: while freeways benefitted the development of outer-ring suburbs, their expensive construction divided and blighted existing neighborhoods, displaced thousands of residents, and contributed to the air pollution challenges that many California cities are seeing today.
These issues are not ones deeply routed in the past 30–60 years. They are something that designers, urban planners, and other concerned citizens need to address and be aware of.
Other Thoughts
While constructing a new highway may sound disproportionally negative, it may not be. In order to be at it’s best, a city and its government need to be aware of the entire system.
“Transportation for a long time has been seen in the light of something that is connected to opportunity,” Foxx said. “If we don’t appreciate that and figure out how to do better, I think we’re going to constrain our ability to grow our country. Everybody has got to have a shot.” — Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, in the Washington Post article.
Are they trying to expand the cities’ footprint? If one small and often crowded road is the only access point, the expansion will either never happen, or it may not be as accessible to city residents as the planners would have intended. Would it still even be a worthwhile endeavor at that point? It’s hard to say, and from what we’ve learned so far about wicked problems, there’s no way to tell. In ten years, this expansion could become a thriving community unto itself, but it could just as easily go nowhere.
Growth and development are important to our country and economies everywhere. To say we shouldn’t build something because it could negatively impact someone is not a reason to avoid any improvements.
Back to the issue of the highway though, what are some possible thoughts to make the disruption to the city more manageable? Is there an ‘obvious’ choice for its path which affects the least amount of people? There are of course, the technologies to elevate the roadway or to bury it inside of a tunnel. However, these options are not without their drawbacks. The construction of both elevated roads and tunnels are expensive. Vastly more expensive. Not just in the construction, but in the maintenance and general upkeep of the highway. And perhaps what might make these extra expenses irrelevant, is that in most cases buildings above or below the road would still need to be removed. Sure, more space is available, but the damage to the community is all the same.
Connection & Conclusion
On that drive back through PA today, I noticed how one interstate I was on was recently built along the top of a mountain ridge. That seemed to me as a rather horrible environmental choice. I wondered why the highway couldn’t have been built in the valley below us. But looking down, I saw a multitude of farms, homes and businesses. That answered my question and allowed me to conclude that the highway was built on that mountain — even with the added cost and environmental impact that came with it — so the road wouldn’t interfere with the community below. Why? Was this cheaper? Did the planners go out of their way as to not impact this particular community? Some could argue I’m sure, that the particular town I was looking at missed out on an economic opportunity. With no direct highway access, they would receive fewer visitors. With no interchange, there was no possibility for a rest stop with restaurants, gas stations and hotels.
In the long run, what is best for this town? There’s no way of knowing short of waiting to see. And what might be good for one person may not be beneficial to another. How do you rectify that? Perhaps the more appropriate question is “can you?”
An interesting note as I was reading about what the transportation secretary had to say; a lot of our infrastructure is reaching the end of it’s usable life and will need to be rebuilt. He makes the case that this is our opportunity to attempt to right some of the wrongs of our past.
“We ought to do it better than we did it the last time.” — Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx
Mission: This week, we’re looking at different approaches to problem solving. Choose your own example of a problem that qualifies as a “wicked problem.” Then using the concepts in this week’s readings, how would you analyze that problem? Who are the stakeholders in the problem? What systems are there? What other questions does your problem raise? This is an opportunity to work your analytical side and finding a good example for discussion in class.
