Most of the time the newspaper only gives me sad news, bad news and mind-boggling news. But sometimes it also contains good news. This article is about that.
The past few years I’ve seen a steady stream of newspaper articles about infrastructure. I know, It doesn’t sound too exciting. I must admit I sometimes skip them.
But it’s actually very exciting, because I live in the Netherlands and our infrastructure is pretty much the best in the world. In most other countries, you’d be happy to find a bike lane (or even walking lane) at all, let alone one that doesn’t randomly stop in the middle of nowhere. In most other countries, cities are dangerous and polluting because they’re designed for cars only, whereas the Netherlands designs everything to support walkability and bikeability (is that a word?).
For years, I took for granted that I could hop on my bike anywhere, any time, and rest assured there’s a well-maintained bike lane that allows me to get where I want! Not anymore!
I really appreciate the thought and effort that went into our Dutch infrastructure. And I have nightmares now about living in some country where I would not be able to move around so freely.
The Good News
Infrastructure doesn’t sound sexy, no, but it’s way more important than many other topics. It’s literally the thing you see every day. The thing you live in. The physical reality of how you can move and how you can’t. It’s the decision that all houses must be within 20 minutes of a park. It’s the decision to subtly keep cars out of city center to make it safer for walking, and to plant trees just right so you can sit in the shade on the hottest summer days. Good infrastructure means a good life; bad infrastructure means being annoyed and restricted every second of every day.
Anyway, such things don’t happen through magic and accidents. This is by design. This is one of the destinations for your tax money and a perhaps one of the most visible aspects of the job of municipalities.
That’s why I appreciate reading the good news about this in the newspaper, pretty much every week.
What’s happening? Well, basically all municipalities (in the Netherlands) are silently changing their infrastructure to dissuade cars and add more walking lanes, bike lanes, nature, and more sustainable amenities. It doesn’t matter where they are located. It doesn’t matter what their budget is, or whether their constituents are generally left-leaning or right-leaning (politically).
They are all doing it.
Why? Because every single time it has been shown to work really really well and improve everything. Every city or town that prioritized walking and cycling (over cars, skyscrapers, etc) has improved massively because of it. The numbers don’t lie. Parties across the whole political spectrum are silently voting for this, because they all agree about it.
That’s good! I wanted to let people know and say I appreciate it! I appreciate that my home town made some of the roads safer over the years. For example, the crossroads where I was hit by a truck (when I was young) has since been changed into something safer, with a much larger sidewalk and more green. I appreciate that I can cycle 15 kilometers through and around the big city (Eindhoven) on a comfortable biking lane, surrounded by nature and special bike tunnels.
But then …
The Complaints
Then you also have articles vigorously fighting these decisions. You have people complaining. Pretending this is some witch hunt against cars. Pretending it’s “woke”. Luckily, they don’t get too much traction, and everyone just keeps making these infrastructural changes. But as with most things these days: it’s not a problem until a very vocal minority works very hard to make it a big problem.
What do they say? What are their arguments against these changes?
For example, take the commercial center of Eindhoven. It’s already pretty good in supporting pedestrians, but especially around the train station things can get very hectic with loads of cars. They intend to improve those kinds of “problem areas”. They do so in many ways: subtly redirect cars/public transit, outright forbid it, redesign lanes to separate traffic, place more (nature) obstacles to slow people down, etcetera. It’s certainly not the case that cars are just “banned” everywhere, though that can be the final outcome.
And so people come out to say: “Well, this is going to be terrible! It’s a fact that people who shop by car buy a lot more. Making these changes will ruin all the shops and business in this zone!”
And this sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? I’ve presented things like this to many people just to see their reaction, and they usually go like “Huh, yeah, I guess that’s true, never even thought of that. Good point!”
They start to agree. They start to “worry” from now on that these changes are “ruining” things like business, economy, whatever. Before you know it, these kinds of arguments have taken hold and people start protesting against these changes, until they’re never made anymore.
Everything Has Pros & Cons
But it is not a good point! It’s certainly not a compelling, complete argument!
Yeah, duh. A car can hold more groceries/items. Congratulations. You mentioned one thing that will change. Why do people believe that pointing out one thing, in a way that sounds like it supports their case, means something? Why is mentioning a single thing that will change for the worse enough?
Those same news articles always try to stay neutral and objective. After relaying the “arguments against the changes” from several bosses, shop owners, or “economy experts”, they usually calmly state the other facts. They dryly point out stuff like “people who walk/bike visit way more often, easily compensating for leaving the car at home” and “because the area looks nice now and is save to walk around in, they also visit more often and longer”
If you look at the facts as a whole, long-term, you see that car-avoiding infrastructure changes have been a massive success. All other places that improved their “shopping center” like this are very happy they did. At first they were skeptical, or maybe even firmly against it. But when the changes were made anyway, they came around within a few months. Because of the reasons stated above—people visit more, like to stick around because the area looks nicer, etcetera—and many more consequences they “didn’t foresee”.
I’m always a bit annoyed that the newspaper articles try to stay so neutral and dry. We need to call out this kind of bullshit as being … bullshit. If somebody mentions one thing as a disadvantage, and you can mention a hundred things as an advantage … then you are right and they are wrong. It’s that simple. Everything has pros and cons, literally everything, it’s about whether the pros outweigh the cons.
We need a society of people who understand mentioning a single thing (that supports your case) means nothing! Everything is a system, everything has pros and cons, everything has short-term and long-term effects. You need to see them all to see what’s the best decision. One thing is never changed in isolation. Making one change leads to other changes, leads to other changes, and so on. The very same event or property can be a pro in one context, and a con in another.
I had a funny exchange with a friend recently. I’m notorious for never checking my phone and being hard to reach. So, when I actually responded quickly several times, they were like “Tiamo! You’ve changed! You’re checking your phone, great!” They treated it as if I finally got my life sorted out and had the discipline/will to wake up early and socialize. A good thing! They treated it like a massive improvement!
While in reality … I only check my phone when I really, really, really, really can’t motivate myself to do anything else. When I’m tired, demotivated, uncertain, out of ideas, you name it. If I respond quickly, then you’re either very lucky with your timing, or you can rest assured I am having a terrible week and getting nothing done. A massive bad thing, obviously.
I hear it so often. Somebody lays out a list of solid logical arguments for why they did something. Then someone else responds with a single thing that is an argument against. And then people are like “well there are arguments for both sides, so they’re both right!” (Or the feared and infamous “let’s agree to disagree”!) No. It doesn’t “balance” like that.
In my view, with every problem, you tally up the pros and cons, try to assign a logical weight … and then arrive at your conclusion. I’ve done this my whole life. I’ve surrounded myself with people who do the same, perhaps by accident because I was forced to study Applied Mathematics. It’s absolutely the method that leads to actually solving problems and making logical steps forward. We need a society that does that for every problem.
And when you tally up all known advantages and disadvantages to such infrastructure changes, the advantages easily outweigh the disadvantages. Thus, unless they can come up with more and stronger arguments, those fighting against it are just wrong. And I wish we’d treat it like that, instead of staying neutral or “reasonable” and saying both perspectives are equally right or some other nonsense. Call out bullshit, especially when it comes from some rich greedy CEO complaining about not being able to park his expensive car right underneath his office now.
The Behavior Fallacy
But that’s not the final point of this article!
I specifically wrote about this situation because it perfectly illustrates the real fallacy going on here. The real problematic thinking present in most people that they just can’t seem to get rid of.
Let’s call it the constant behavior fallacy. Or, more exciting, the let’s pretend humans never change when it helps our case.
The second “argument” put forward in that article (by the same guy) was: “But only X% of our shoppers arrive by bike! Why add more bike lanes? Why make the whole area a comfortable home for bikes when only this tiny percentage of shoppers arrive that way? It’s ridiculous! How stupid!”
This is, again, very convincing to a lot of people. But it’s stupid!
If you add more bike lanes, then the logical consequence would be that more people start using their bike, is it not?
If you make an area easier to reach by bike … watch how that percentage shoots through the roof.
Human behavior changes. And it changes depending on the environment. On circumstances. As stated, everything is a system. Life and society are very complex systems at that. Changing one thing—redirecting a road, planting some trees, opening a new shop—will lead to a flurry of other changes down the road.
We need a society that understands “people currently do/don’t do that” means nothing. It’s close to arguments like “but I want it now” or “I know lots of people who like the current laws”, which also mean nothing. People change! People do stuff they don’t want to do, but they’re forced to by circumstance, or by addiction, or they don’t know there’s an alternative, or a myriad of other reasons.
Statistics like “well only X people use our public transit” might be completely true, but conclusions such as “so there’s clearly no demand and people don’t want it” simply can never be drawn. It’s short-sighted. It’s silly. Maybe the current transit runs on a silly schedule that doesn’t match with the intended users. Maybe it uses an old, broken, stinky vehicle that people subconsciously started to dislike. Maybe people didn’t even know the option existed or had time to try it, because, surprise surprise, they don’t go around looking for new ways to travel every single day. Maybe there was a campaign for wider roads and more cars for decades before now, which now led to all the people living here being used to owning a big car and driving to work, so they’d never even consider using that public transit.
Change the circumstances and see how the behavior changes. See how people “suddenly” enjoy other things, want other things, travel in other ways, realize they actually didn’t want to do what they were doing before.
Any argument based on what people are doing right now is void. Sure, you can let it inform you, guide you, shape the direction of your thoughts. You can use data on historic behavior as input to models and discussions. But you can’t use it as an argument for (not) changing something. Because as soon as you made the change … all your knowledge about previous human behavior means nothing anymore. In that new situation—after the change—people might behave in completely different ways.
The Tale of Three Shops
As usual, the best way to illustrate this is to stretch the idea to a funny extreme.
Imagine the “commercial center” of some city. It has a supermarket, a clothing store, ane an electronics shop. People visit to buy groceries. They visit to buy new clothes. They visit to buy electronics. And they don’t visit for any other reason. Because, well, there is nothing else to buy.
Then, somebody intends to open a (board) game shop here. Sure enough, all shop owners in the zone raise their voice to complain! They say: “This is a ridiculous idea! Preposterous even! Clearly, none of our shoppers buy games! There is no market for it, nobody who wants to buy them, so this would be a terrible decision. A waste of space, and money, and it might even detract from our actual business!”
And so, the board game shop is not allowed. Some time later, someone else arrives who wants to open a bakery.
Sure enough, everyone gathers around to say: “What a stupid idea! Unbelievable! Our data clearly shows nobody who visits the shopping center is looking to buy bread! They want clothes, or a smartphone, and a bakery doesn’t provide that! This would be a bad business to open. Just no market for it. Doesn’t suit our needs. Nobody wants it.”
And so it was that no shop was every opened again. Because, clearly, no shoppers were currently interested in anything besides groceries, clothes, and electronics. Strange. How very strange.
Well, hopefully, the message is clear. Maybe I need to turn this into a children’s fairy tale one day. It might increase the chance people actually pick up on the stupidity of such arguments without feeling lectured to!
Conclusion
Most of all, we need a society where people don’t pick the side that benefits them the most (financially), then stubbornly stick to it as they scramble to find any arguments to support it. It should be the other way around. Follow the facts, the levers of the system, the pros and cons, then reach the inevitable logical conclusion.
A good step forward would be to realize the things I mentioned in this article.
- Everything is a system. Mentioning one thing, changing one thing, means nothing.
- Everything has pros and cons. The best decision is the one that leans most heavily towards the pros. This also means simply mentioning one “con” and pretending your perspective is now equally right, or that you said something insightful, is silly.
- Any argument based on human behavior at the moment (or in the past) is largely meaningless. It assumes that human behavior is completely “free” and that external influences would not ever change what we do. When, in reality, our behavior is heavily constricted (by laws, money, time, effort, social circles, etcetera). And changing a system even the slightest bit … might make thousands of people suddenly behave completely differently.
My to-do list said I had to write this article for 2 weeks now. Leaving a task for so long has the downside of losing that initial spark or thought train, which is why this article is perhaps a bit directionless. I decided to write it anyway. These are things I really hope some people take to heart, changing how they approach problems and logically argue their case from now on. Even if my infrastructure example and explanation was perhaps the least sexy topic I could’ve chosen ;)
Oh well. I’m sure in a few years time political parties will decide human and walkable infrastructure is “woke” or “communism” too and municipalities will stop silently (unanimously) voting for these good decisions. Let’s hope the wrong people never realize this is happening, so we can enjoy our biking lanes and green cities a little longer.
Until next time,
Tiamo