From Tragedy to Comedy: Urban Planning and the Tragedy of the Commons
Nov 28, 2023Season 2Episode 18
Booked on Planning
This episode pulls back the curtain on the intriguing economics of our shared spaces, grapples with the tragedy of the commons, and how urban density is a resource under threat. We debate the possibility of cultivating denser neighborhoods by revisiting parking requirements, minimum setbacks and lot sizes.
In a refreshing twist, we also introduce the concept of the comedy of the commons, illustrating how shared spaces, when handled collectively, can forge community solidarity and benefit the collective. We'll transport you to Italy, where the Co-City project in Bologna paints a vibrant picture of the urban commons at its best. We also consider the empowering framework of the 'right to the city', exploring how it invites citizens to participate in the decision-making processes that shape their urban living. From community gardens to land trusts to microgrids, tune in as we chart a course through the complexities of urban planning and resource management.
This episode pulls back the curtain on the intriguing economics of our shared spaces, grapples with the tragedy of the commons, and how urban density is a resource under threat. We debate the possibility of cultivating denser neighborhoods by revisiting parking requirements, minimum setbacks and lot sizes.
In a refreshing twist, we also introduce the concept of the comedy of the commons, illustrating how shared spaces, when handled collectively, can forge community solidarity and benefit the collective. We'll transport you to Italy, where the Co-City project in Bologna paints a vibrant picture of the urban commons at its best. We also consider the empowering framework of the 'right to the city', exploring how it invites citizens to participate in the decision-making processes that shape their urban living. From community gardens to land trusts to microgrids, tune in as we chart a course through the complexities of urban planning and resource management.
You're listening to the Booked On Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between. Join us as we get Booked On Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked On Planning. On our last episode, with Mimi Scheller discussing her book Mobility Justice, we discussed the tragedy of the commons in relation to the mobile commons. In this episode, jennifer and I are going to dive into a collection of articles on the tragedy of the commons and its application to city planning.
Jennifer Hiatt:
The tragedy of the commons is primarily an economic hypothesis that states when a group of people have unfettered access to a prize resource, they will overuse and possibly destroy that resource. And under this hypothesis it's not rational quote unquote for an individual to exercise restraint when using said resource because others most likely will not exercise such restraint themselves Was kind of a get yours while the getting is good situation. Aristotle was the first person to put this hypothesis into words. He's quoted as saying that which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own. They care less for what is common. I really think that it probably was interesting to translate that from Greek.
Stephanie Rouse:
So the classic example of the tragedy of the commons hypothesis was published by the English economist William Foster Lloyd in an 1833 pamphlet that used a common action of the time grazing cattle in a public pasture. Though the number of cattle a herder could use was moderately regulated, the quote unquote rational action would be to graze as many of your cows as possible without getting caught. This herder would receive the additional benefit of more fat, happy cows, but the entire community would pay the price of an overgrazed pasture, thus ultimately creating a detriment to all involved.
Jennifer Hiatt:
And finally, garrett Hardin brought the tragedy of the commons hypothesis into the modern lexicon with his 1968 article titled the tragedy of the commons, published in the journal Science. Hardin applied the hypothesis to population growth and the earth's natural resources as a common resource. He argued that the welfare state was creating a tragedy of the commons. He believed that where the state provided for children and supported overbreeding as a fundamental human right, catastrophe was inevitable. There, of course, has been a growing amount of pushback to Hardin's expansion of the tragedy of the commons, but the original theory, the overgrazing of the pasture, still holds its own in many academic conversations.
Stephanie Rouse:
So to build off this concept, jennifer found a few articles putting the tragedy of the commons into an urban planning perspective. The first article, written last year by Devon I'm going to butcher her last name Zughal and reposted on the Strong Towns website, said that dense neighborhoods are undersupplied because urban density is a tragedy of the commons. The article pretty much summed up the conversation that my husband and I keep having. We want to keep our really walkable neighborhood with a short bike commute to work and great restaurants so we can get to pretty quickly, while also living on a large lot with room for all my chickens and huge garden, and for him he really wants a big pool. So we're trying to find that little gem that really doesn't exist and is contributing to this tragedy of the commons in an urban way. Because if everyone was able to get the biggest lot, as Devon points out in her article, everyone really would want the biggest lot within their price range in their desired neighborhood. Then we'd all be living in the suburbs.
Jennifer Hiatt:
I think it's one of those interesting planner pushbacks because I've had the same thought many times. You know, when I was in school I lived downtown in the heart of Lincoln Center and I loved it. I loved being able to walk to the restaurants, I loved being able to get to class. And then, when I got a little older, I thought about buying an acreage right outside of town. But I hate those people. I hate the people who like get there five acres and don't pay the city taxes and hang on, because again, everyone wants the biggest that they can afford within their budget.
Jennifer Hiatt:
And I had to laugh that the author used Maine as their example of a rural area, because every time I think about moving to the acreage I actually picture that acreage in the woods in Maine. It gets far away from general civilization as possible. But we have to think about the concept of space and design all the time in urban development. It's pretty rare event for any of us to get a comment from someone that comes up to the podium and says actually, I do want a 200 unit apartment complex right in my neighborhood. So it's always a balance of trying to make sure that we do provide the high density housing that we know some residents either actually need or are specifically looking for, with the construction of those large residential units that seem to be dominating the construction market right now.
Stephanie Rouse:
So Devin wraps up their article with a few ideas on how we can reduce the amount of wasted space, including addressing our far too high parking minimums, building parking garages over these large surface parking lots, and trading coastal highways for residential units instead. What's interesting about these ideas is they all lay the blame for creating the tragedy that comments on our city's approaches to transportation system.
Jennifer Hiatt:
Maybe it's because you're training me so well, but I actually noticed that too. And the transportation system does seem to kind of be like the big bad right now in most planning conversations. And I agree, you know, we should be reducing parking requirements because all of them are a little too high, and we should probably be moving parking to the periphery of neighborhoods and such, and that will provide more public land to create more dense neighborhoods. But there's so much more room in our zoning code to consider being able to create these new or create these denser neighborhoods than just parking Reducing minimum setbacks would assist, or minimum lot sizes or floor area ratios. There's a lot of land that's wasted just inside building requirements for most cities. And then when you throw in the current market pressures to build bigger and more elaborate housing, I was looking the other day and we've added approximately 1000 square feet in the last five years to housing size For what? A larger kitchen. So we're creating a recipe for underutilized land.
Stephanie Rouse:
Very true. And then we looked into a little bit older article by Sheila Foster titled the Co-City from the Tragedy to the Comedy of the Urban Commons, and this lays out how the economic theory has taken hold in the built environment by a variety of professionals. The urban commons can include a range of resources in cities, such as parks, community gardens, streets, neighborhood infrastructure, vacant lots and abandoned buildings, and the urban commons also includes intangible aspects of city living, such as culture and heritage. It positions the city as a shared resource for its residents to care for. But for Sheila these are just larger categories, and what is and is not part of the urban commons is really hard to define and needs a more detailed discussion as we continue to urbanize and create more dense cities.
Jennifer Hiatt:
It's been really interesting to watch the expansion of the original Tragedy of the Commons theory. Traditionally, the theory has focused on some kind of natural resource like the pasture or water space or something like that. But, as Sheila points out, there are a multitude of commons within the urban setting, including neighborhood infrastructure, vacant lots, parks and even streets. And thinking about streets as I was reading through this article as a type of urban commons brought me back to our discussion with Mimi and the mobile commons. What would it look like if streets were privately held? It would create an interesting sort of chaos for sure, like you'd have to pay some kind of toll, maybe to cross everybody's property. I think it could be chaos.
Stephanie Rouse:
That makes me think of the 99 PI episode where they were talking I can't remember which city, but it was all about how these. They look like streets, but they aren't actually public streets. They're actually streets for the buildings adjacent, because the city grew so dense and in such a weird way that the only way to get to some of these lots in the back were through these what looked like public streets, but they're really private streets for those people. So I could see it being something like similar to that.
Jennifer Hiatt:
We have some of those problems sometimes in Lincoln, actually where. So if you see a blue street sign instead of a green street sign, it's actually a private road and we have to put a public easement, a public use easement, over that private road and the benefit can be that you know the city doesn't have to pay to maintain the road as much or take the snow. But what would happen if someone stopped enforcing that public use easement? Many times people just want to put a gate in front of that road and only let the neighborhood in.
Jennifer Hiatt:
So, it's an interesting concept.
Stephanie Rouse:
I think she then flips the script and discusses Carol Rose's comedy of the commons, which, instead of overconsumption of a valuable resource, she argues that these collective spaces that are loved and visited by many can instead create solidarity and potential for other goods that sustain communities. There's a recognition that common goods can be cooperatively or collaboratively produced and managed by urban residents in ways that are more attuned to the needs of those users and more inclusive of their input. As she said, I think the best example of this is the community garden. Gardens are often open to anyone wishing to participate and everyone has an interest in seeing that that little community garden space is maintained well.
Jennifer Hiatt:
So, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, there has been recent pushback to Hardin's take on the tragedy of the commons theory, and the comedy of the commons is one of the most popular In this context. Keep in mind, comedy means a happy ending, not something that's funny or strange, and we have seen time and time again that, when given the opportunity, most people actually do come together to work cooperatively toward a greater good. So, as I've mentioned before, I've really been honing in and focusing on community land trusts and the article mentions community land trusts as well. Clts have become increasingly popular, especially over the last 20 years. Maybe it's partly because CLTs are market disruptors, so the people who purchase a trust home or participate in a commercial trust have probably already bought into the concept surrounding CLTs somewhat, but overwhelmingly we see CLT communities coming together to care for the properties within their trust. There will always be a bad actor or two, but collective action from the majority of the CLT members is usually all it takes to push those bad actors out of the CLT.
Stephanie Rouse:
So in reading all these examples, what struck me is that the urban commons all seem to arise out of a general need to fix something that's broken. So with community gardens, many of them are created by neighbors wanting to clean up a vacant lot and reduce the crime that's happening in that space. The community land trust model arose out of a need to secure affordable housing into the future, because the affordable housing crisis is only getting worse. And community wireless mesh networks that didn't discuss here but, as mentioned in the article, are a result of unaffordable and unequitable access to the internet. And a new example in New York City the article mentions is collectively owned micro grids to guard against the impacts of climate change.
Jennifer Hiatt:
You know, that's a really interesting thought.
Jennifer Hiatt:
I really hadn't looked at it that way. In a few of those examples, the thing that needs to be fixed is actually a direct action of private action, such as abandoning a private building or allowing it to become so decrepit that it's no longer useful to society, and that's often when you see neighbors coming together to clean up the vacant lot. But really most of the issues that you listed there are societal at large problems. The housing affordability crisis is largely a result of the lack of construction of housing between 1980 and 2000, simply because during that economic crash the government wasn't kind of stepping in to help fill that void. And the grid problem is a lack of investment in infrastructure, again something that society just hasn't deemed high enough priority to get done. So I guess you could say that Aristotle really was correct in saying that that which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care, in the sense that as a society we have neglected to invest in those things that could provide the collective good bringing it all full circle.
Stephanie Rouse:
While many of the bigger examples of urban commons projects are necessitated by some sort of issue or concern, there are small examples of the comedy of the commons at work Organizations adopting parks or highways to keep them clean, volunteer days where residents come together to plant trees or flowers or two that come to mind In an urban setting. The commons seem to be more about cleaning up after yourself and helping out when the need arises, and maybe that's just an oversimplification of the idea.
Jennifer Hiatt:
I look forward to seeing this body of academic work expanded further, but I do think that it goes somewhat to show that overall people are willing to step up to help maintain their public spaces. And while we can understand the original theory of the commons of the tragedy and we can see where that rational bad actor might overgraze, I think personally that it just goes to show that once you have a group of people, most people actually don't have that cold sense of pure self-rationalization and most people are actually willing to work together with their neighbors to enhance what they have, as opposed to pull it down.
Stephanie Rouse:
I agree, and the article ends with a really quick description of Blonia, italy's Co-City project that empowers residents and others to collaborate with the city to undertake the care and regeneration of the urban commons across the city through collaboration packs or agreements. Sheila notes that we can see the right to the city framework partially realized, which is to say, the right to be part of the creation of the city, the right to be part of the decision-making processes shaping the lives of city inhabitants, and the right of inhabitants to shape decisions about the collective resources in which all urban inhabitants have a stake Basically, residents participating in the comprehensive planning process is what that sounds like to me.
Jennifer Hiatt:
I agree. Remember everybody. Participating in the planning process is the best way the public can come together to ensure collective resources are allocated appropriately.
Stephanie Rouse:
Well, we hope you enjoyed this conversation, continuing this month's theme of mobility, justice and the ideas of the urban commons. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked, on Planning.