Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

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?

It's interesting that on one hand you stress the importance of neighbourhood consultation, yet on the other emphasize urban planning experts. These two can often be diametrically opposed in their views.

One of the biggest problems with neighbourhood consultation is NIMBYism - sometimes one neighbourhood will suffer (because of increased noise, construction, traffic, etc.) at the expense of broader urban planning initiatives. If every neighbourhood controls their own development you just can't get things done that might otherwise be good for the city.

Actually I could say the problem stems from giving outright control to neighbourhoods in terms of development committees - consultation is a good idea, but it can be taken too far.

Neighbourhood consultation and input is required, but this does not mean that neighbourhoods have a veto over any and all development.

Without neighborhood consultation, what will happen is that only the wealthy neighborhoods will have a voice, since the standard way to displace poor people is to say that it is "cheaper" and "better" for the city.

In SF, literally everyone has a voice and its terrible! A single citizen can seemingly delay any project indefinitely for a few hundred dollars. I have heard stories of land owners being denied permits to build on their property (including vacant lots) for up to a decade when their proposal meets all zoning restrictions and codes. Perhaps, apocryphal, but surely not far from the truth because SF has no right to build.

Japantown and the Western Addition at large were total disasters of course, but of late, urban planning has resurrected Hayes Valley and the Embarcadero against the wishes of the locals and only with the help of an earthquake!

I would argue that SV is in desperate need of disruption.

"A single individual [delayed] San Francisco’s plan to expand its network of bicycle lanes [...] Five years, several million taxpayer dollars and 2,200 pages of environmental review later, the plan finally was approved."

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Califor...

> clueless software engineers

Will it really software engineers who get to decide what is built and get to try out their theories? I would think that it's some sort of product manager who makes these decisions (who I would actually expect to consult the customers and other stakeholders). Don't know if Google has a different hierarchy in terms of decision making than I expect though.

Or, you know, civic engineers. Google could hire some of those.

This is a pretty ridiculous statement. Implying that software engineers make all the decisions at all the Alphabet companies is misguided. Of course each org hires area experts so that they can build products that actually solve the problems of the respective areas.

> "It’s staffed by both technologists and government alums. Its leader, the former New York City deputy mayor Dan Doctoroff, openly acknowledges the gulf between technologists and city government types. And Sidewalk Labs says it wants to bridge the two."

Unrelated, on the bay area: If the community was open to development in anyway, perhaps there could be some creative solutions to traffic, housing, ect. NIMBYism unfortunately rules all decisions.

It could go full Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 with googles power of surveillance and monitoring. No doubt they may have the ability to implement helpful new technologies, but googles revenue model is still advertisement.

Or Black Mirror style with "freemium-subsidized condominiums". Imagine cheaper condos that you have to watch commercials every couple minutes, and of course they know if you're closing your eyes or not looking (think iPhone X).

Of course you can pay a higher rent to disable them and go "ad free". ;)

That doesn't actually sound too bad.

I wonder what prevents these at SF?

I think at that point advertisement ROI would be essentially 0 - though maybe not for things like market research. People would essentially find ways to block out the background noise either physically or mentally.

I'm doubtful that even the most invasive advertising would be capable of generating enough revenue. $1500/mo is still $50 a day. Say you're typically only home for a few waking hours in the evening— how do you consume enough advertising to pay for $50?

Buying home appliances a few times an year and watching recommended shows and movies could generate that amount (for young people with disposable income, at least).

Home appliances, cars, medicines seem likely candidates. I think it would be used to assess demand for new products as well.

A point worth making is that this is not Google, it is Sidewalk Labs. I believe (ot maybe would like to believe) that part of the reason Alphabet was created was to remove these conflicts of interest.

> I believe (ot maybe would like to believe) that part of the reason Alphabet was created was to remove these conflicts of interest.

I think the more logical thing to believe is that it was created to remove the appearance of conflicts of interest for PR purposes and give them plausible deniability.

They already are.

https://security.stackexchange.com/q/169374/122495 ( How is Google's Sidewalk Labs Tracking me?)

China is doing a pretty good job of building giant cities without much local consultation.

> clueless software engineers

I think it's a bit unfair to assume out of hand that they'll be clueless.

.

The other side of the coin is that new ideas often come from outside of a field. Sometimes expertise can mean expertise in the established, unquestioned dogma of a field. (I'm saying that as a matter of principle. I don't know specifically what it's like in this case).

I definitely think we need more experimentation in society - small experiments to test out ideas, where successes can be copied elsewhere in the country and world.

One look at how badly google has managed their online communities, support, etc. suggests that this should be assumed until proven otherwise. There’s just such a track record of trying to conflate problems which can be automated with the problems the real world actually has.

They've handled a number of things poorly. But they're not a monolithic entity, and I don't think we can make assumptions about exactly who will be involved with this and how they'll handle it.

Why do we need to assume anything now, anyway? I think it's appropriate to be agnostic about it. We can't know until if and when it happens.

because by the time problems become blindingly apparent in parts of the city that have already been redeveloped, they are effectively unfixable.

This isn't an app, we're talking about here. These are people's lives.

Because this matters more than A/B testing the right way to get people to click on an ad. Some of these things could be easy to ignore but once you’re talking about building or traffic design, mistakes can take decades to fix and have a negative impact on people’s lives throughout that period.

As a reply to all the sibling comments: it's right to have concerns, and that is completely compatible with being agnostic about it. Being agnostic means not forming judgements if you don't have adequate information to do so. You can have concerns but that's different from acting like you know they actually will be problems.

When it comes to serious issues, with serious consequences, it's even more important to withhold any definitive judgement until you have adequate information! So many problems in the world seem to come down to people too hastily jumping to conclusions.

There's so much hate for "NIMBYism" on here, why? Looking at the wikipedia article, it just means putting things undesirable to have in a residential area farther away from residential areas. Do you really want to live next to an airport? Is it so bad for people to want their neighborhood to be nice?

"it just means putting thinga undesirable to have in a residential area farther away from residential areas"

Infamously, at least in the Bay Area, the "undesirable things" in question are typically new neighbors.

I can easily see increased population density being a problem for an already crowded city, among the other arguments the residents have against building up more.

> an already crowded city

Ha!

If a city isn't already crowded then it makes sense for the residents to strongly oppose letting it become so.

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