Urban Planning as Computer Game in Boston’s Chinatown

Computer games like Sim City and Grand Theft Auto feature expansive, photorealistic urban environments and compelling storylines that engross players for hours. In contrast, public meetings about planning issues feature dry, technical information presented through static presentations and reports. It’s little wonder these meetings generally attract the “usual suspects,” with the skills and patience to digest complex data and follow the arcane legalize of local planning.

A new interactive game about Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood seeks to merge the interactivity of games with the real problems of planning. Why shouldn’t games reflect realistic challenges, such as finding housing, jobs, and places to hang out in the city? Can a game both solicit community input and provoke inter-generational dialog? The game, called Participatory Chinatown, is an exciting example of how new technology can do just this. Developed by the Asian Community Development Corporation, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (my former employer, although I was not involved in this project), and Professor Eric Gordon and collaborators at Emerson College, the game as unveiled at two community meetings this week.

Participatory Chinatown has two iterations: an online single-player version, and a collaborative version that groups can play in real-time through networked computers. In each, the game’s 15 characters explore a 3D version of Chinatown, collecting information about opportunities and interacting with other players they find. At the end of the game, players must decide which choices best fill their quest for housing, jobs, or social spaces. Whether they succeed depends on how much information they are able to collect and how much competition exists. In a second phase, players can walk through one of three hypothetical redevelopment proposals for a part of the neighborhood, earning points for leaving comments about their opinions and concerns it provokes.

Integrating a community-created 3D environment, player profiles, and redevelopment scenarios, the project is notable for the close collaboration between community members, governments, and game creators it required. The quests illustrate the choices available in the neighborhood, and the obstacles — such as language barriers and limited income — residents face. At the demonstration exercise I attended on Wednesday, generational gaps were quickly apparent as the younger players most easily navigated the exercise while older players struggled with the game interface. The local youth who helped create the game were on hand to guide players through the exercise. Although not feasible for every neighborhood (it was partially funded by a $170,000 MacArthur Foundation grant), the game represents a tremendous resource for the neighborhood, especially when deployed strategically to stimulate conversation. In fact, much more than replacing the public meeting, the game meetings this week were successful partly because of the careful preparation and facilitation used to present the game and draw out comments after.

From a technical point of view, the game could become a flexible platform for other uses, such as more free-form exercises like exploring the visual effects of proposed developments. Already, some of the game’s 3D models are available for download through the Google 3D Warehouse. Although excellent at buildings, realistic traffic and street conditions were clearly missing. This makes it best suited for physical planning around buildings and public amenities, not discussing parking reform or “complete streets” philosophy.

Most importantly, the game presents planning decisions from the street-level view of community members, not the God’s eye view adopted by systems-optimization games like Sim City or Chevron’s Energyville. Although, like all games, Participatory Chinatown must contain simplifications and assumptions, it succeeds because it portrays planning in a realistic light: as complex trade-offs that can only be evaluated from the perspectives of specific urban residents. After all, there is no perfect urban form, and planning is the ongoing process of considering the future in the light of how well the current city serves our needs and reflects our values. If the game can help encourage this perspective in the community, it will be a success.

> Participatory Chinatown
> Globe: “Chinatown Planners Hope Game Draws Crowd” and editorial “Chinatown, the Video Game.

Is Urban Planning Dead?

At the American Planning Association National Conference in New Orleans a couple weeks back, I participated in a session on the provocative question: “is planning dead?” The event was organized by the staff of the Colorado-based organization PlaceMatters. A small group met to discuss the question at an “unconference” session near the convention center. They were kind enough to post a live blog and summary post about the event. I thought I’d take the opportunity to share a slightly more developed version of what I discussed.

First, in one sense, conventional planning is alive and well. U.S. cities continue to create and implement comprehensive plans and zoning regulations in the same ways they have since the advent of planning in the 1920s. There have been two notable changes. First, the size and complexity of plans and regulations has increased. As an example, the city of Austin, Texas has identified 67 plans, policies, and regulations adopted in the city since completing their last comprehensive plan in 1978. Secondly, although it’s not commonly recognized as part of planning, the historic preservation movement has had a tremendous impact on planning in urban areas. Preservation regulations are generally modeled on planning and zoning controls. New planning tools such as form-based codes, design review, inclusionary zoning, and other innovations share the same regulatory approach dating back to the 1920s, one that is rooted in the city’s “police powers” to create regulations for the health, safety, and welfare of the population.

Outside of this creeping expansion of proscriptive, regulatory planning, there have been alternative developments. Community development organizations and bottom-up initiatives have introduced new models of participatory planning. They should not be overlooked, but in most places city governments retain their central role in urban development. Although the process of creating plans has changed substantially, elected officials retain the final authority to modify or reject plans and development proposals. In its most advanced forms, the community development movement relies on government resources and permission to achieve their goals. (Cobbling together grants and subsidies, “pushing through” projects, etc)

Planning theorists have proposed several new models for the field, however none have significantly effected professional practice.

• Paul Davidoff’s concept of advocacy planning is still widely discussed and taught. He proposed planners should follow the approach of the legal profession, providing each community with resources to create their own plan. However, the model has many well-known criticisms. Who gets a planner, and how are they paid? How does the government decide which plan will prevail? How should large-scale investment decisions be made?
• John Friedman articulated a philosophy he referred to as “non-Euclidean” planning. He argued planning should be iterative, normative, creative, and based in social learning. Although this certainly describes some of the most innovative examples of planning, it is unclear how it could be followed to reform the role of government. Although containing provocative ideas, it requires further development and integration with a broader theory of governance before it can be readily applied.
• Finally, one of the most influential developments has been the ‘communicative turn’ advocated by a variety of planning theorists. Adopting the theories of Habermas, this group focuses on the work of planning as shaping views and collecting information through processes of dialog. It also forms the theoretical basis for the consensus building approach, where stakeholders are brought together to discuss contested policy issues. In their new book Planning With Complexity, Judith Innes and David Booher provide a comprehensive statement of this philosophy and attempt to integrate it with theories of governance. They advocate for an adaptive, collaborative, distributed, and nonlinear government. Just published earlier this year, it remains to be seen in what ways these ideas can be translated into concrete practices.

I think planning can take two — perhaps contradictory — directions.

First, planning can celebrate the dynamism of the private city. Under this scenario, the field would pull back from detailed plans and regulations, seeking ways to encourage private actors to produce the desired ends. The strategy need not concede to private interests, but would seek to make public benefits predictable, transparent, and simple. It would entail the courage to voluntarily limit what powers planners would exercise. In turn, governments would take an even bolder approach to the framework of urbanization: shaping streets, lots, infrastructure, and markets.

Second, planning could re-assert government’s role in shaping the city through empowerment, not regulation. Experiments in participatory governance and budgeting could point the way towards a future where governments function as miniature development states. In this context, planning would be focused on structuring processes to involve citizens and organizations in governance in new ways, and sparking entrepreneurship and innovation.

After the intellectual fall of the rational-comprehensive model of policy analysis, critics have often held the problem with planning lay with its methods. If planners didn’t posses any special skills or methods, the argument goes, what claim to legitimacy do they have? I argue this collapse of a sphere of professional authority unveiled a deeper, more fundamental crisis: of democratic legitimacy. Both of my “directions” share a critical evaluation of the legitimate power and structure of government. As a field embedded in structures of governance, planning cannot be reformed without a vision for a reformed and revitalized urban democracy.

Who Needs ‘Centralized City Planning’? Everyone.

The always-interesting Witold Rybczynski has a provocative piece up on Slate arguing that the failure of government-led urban planning means that “in a democracy, a vision of the future city will best emerge from the marketplace.” I don’t disagree with his observation that private organizations and real estate developers have taken the lead in shaping our cities, however I don’t believe it follows that the government has no role whatsoever.

Such an argument erases the many ways governments are deeply involved in planning urban spatial structure: designing and operating streets and other infrastructure, regulating urban land markets through enforcement of property rights and zoning, shaping the location and character of development through wetlands and other environmental regulations, subsidizing and shaping the housing finance system, and establishing and enforcing building codes and standards, to just name a few.

Although Rybczynski is right the government has largely withdrawn from the business of directly engaging in architecture and urban design (and that’s a good thing), the lesson isn’t that government should (or will) withdraw completely. The stark contrasts of quality of life between well- and poorly-governed cities illustrates just how important these more subtle processes of planning remain. His argument reminds me of Peter Montgomery’s thoughtful analysis of Jane Jacob’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Although her critique of Robert Moses and heavy-handed modernist city planning is important, Montgomery argues her celebration of the urbanity of her neighborhood omits the government processes that establish the framework of urban life (zoning, subway system, urban services, etc). In this way it can be read as a neoconservative tract, writing out the role of government. (In addition, Montgomery argues she ignores corporations, class and race divisions, and metropolitan equity).

To be fair, Rybczynski does stress the importance of government for “management” and “little plans,” and to a degree I’m just rejecting his definition of planning. But the point I hope to make is the “urban visions” created by real estate developers aren’t a pure product of the market, but derivative from government-determined transportation systems, zoning, and metropolitan spatial structure.

The more interesting and accurate conclusion to draw from the failures of modernist city planning is to consider which forms of government planning are still active and desirable. In this sense, Rybczynski’s article is a bit behind the times. The tremendous interest in high speed rail, urban transit, green building codes, the government’s role in wind power and broadband, and housing finance regulation has reminded us of the central role of government in shaping our cities. Hopefully this will be the legacy of the Obama era: that the choice between government and the market is a false dichotomy. Because the two are mutually dependent, addressing public problems (such as city planning, and yes, health care) requires attention to the design of each.

> Witold Rybczynski – Don’t Plan On It: Centralized city planning is not the answer to the problems facing America’s cities.

Happy Census Day

Although a majority of Americans have already returned their Census forms, technically today is the “Census Day” for the purposes of determining where people should be counted. How is your community doing? Take a look on the Census Bureau’s nifty participation rate map, where you can get a widget for the national participation rate or any county, city, or tract in the country.

Simulating Our Petroleum-Dependent Future

Computer modeling is a powerful tool for analyzing complex urban systems. Indeed, for decades metropolitan-scale transportation planning has been informed by increasingly sophisticated computer models. In addition, models are commonly used to study all types of infrastructure systems, the urban environment, even possible location of future of urban growth. In fact, I’m building an attractiveness model for future residential development in South Florida in a class this semester.

However, models can have insidious effects. They excel when applied to deterministic systems, where the rules are static and known, but often fail when applied to systems with arbitrary or random characteristics. Even more troubling, models can impede decision-making by hiding their assumptions, introducing bias into the simulation.

In this light, let’s consider a simple model developed by the oil company Chevron. Their “Energyville” game is located the Will You Join Us website, now being promoted through magazine and TV ads that position the company as an energy company interested in finding energy “solutions” and using it “wisely.” Energyville is presented as a neutral challenge: “What energy sources will power your city?” A disclaimer reminds the user that the assumptions are “based on The Economist Intelligence Unit’s assessment of global facts and trends obtained form numerous credible sources.” The warning observes the game makes many simplifications, acknowledging “global forces and technological developments may change current and future assumptions.” The game aesthetics shows a clear influence of the popular SimCity.

Launching the simulation, I begin by placing some wind turbines in the city. After installing three turbines, the limit is reached: “Geographical and other constraints prevent Wind power from providing any more power to Energyville.” Next, I turned to solar panels. After just two placed, I get this error: “Unavailable! Solar panels are still too cost prohibitive and inefficient to provide any more power to Energyville.” The only remaining renewable energy source is a massive conventional-looking hydroelectric dam. After installation on the river, most of my city’s electrical needs are met.

All except for the ever-important petroleum. There’s no Better Place-type electric car networks possible here. “Warning! low on fuels,” a message quickly appears, saying I need petroleum for airplanes, vehicles, and mass transit. Only once I put a huge petroleum platform in the ocean could I proceed to the next level.

Before level 2 begins, the simulation presents a policy choice: should I adopt energy efficiency measures that will improve environmental quality and “security,” while placing a tax on economic output? Round two is similar, with a couple surprises. First, my wind farms are in trouble:

Ironically, my attempt at developing renewable sources was thwarted by the very global warming I am concerned with! Next, my solar program is in trouble:

I’m a bit confused by this one. After all, all energy costs money. Solar panels can only be “too costly” if cheaper alternatives are available. What these options are – continued petroleum, nuclear, or some other source, is not explained. In this round my fossil fuels are unaffected by catastrophe.

Repeated playing revealed other game paths have other possible events. In one case, solar panels become more attractive to homeowners due to net metering policies, and two actually make wind power even more attractive due to vaguely specified improved technology or other benefits. If you invest in nuclear it warns you uranium may increase in price due to global demand. Once, a terrorist attack in the middle east tightens oil supply. But petroleum price and supply rarely plays a role in the problem – despite the historical evidence as recently as the summer as 2008 that it can be subject to major price volatility. (Incidentally, I think the game was created in 2007.)

In the end, is this a fair simulation? Despite the capricious nature of some of the factors, most of the assumptions are probably reasonable. Presumably Chevron is too savvy to deliberately plant obvious biases in some of the assumptions, nevertheless I’m sure a serious energy wonk could find plenty to quibble about. However, like too many models, Energyville doesn’t clearly reveal its underlying assumptions, or allow the user to question or manipulate them. Although the limits placed on the speed alternative fuels can be rolled out are probably derived from mainstream sources, history shows change — whether beneficial or catastrophic — can be surprisingly rapid.

This means Energyville misses a major educational opportunity. (Despite it appearing on an educational blog – the only Technorati link to the site.) The flash interface makes it impossible to copy text and contains no links to external sources, and the “about” page lists dozens of unlinked articles, reports, and websites, and no assumption is presented as contested. Although thousands of players may learn a few facts embedded in the game, or gain a vague sense of the benefits and limitations of various energy sources, it doesn’t support serious examination and debate about energy technology or policy. But maybe that’s the point.

> WillYouJoinUs.com

New Database of Tools for Participation and Collaboration in Urban Planning

Over at my MIT webspace I just launched a database of web tools for participation and collaboration in planning. I created it mostly to help myself keep track of all the technology and consultants in this area, and also because of my dissatisfaction with existing databases. It’s not meant to be all-encompassing, just cover the important tools and some of the more innovative projects out there. Comments and suggestions are welcome!

> Web Tools for Participation and Collaboration in Planning

Does Data Matter in Urban Policy?

Last week’s Open Cities conference, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and Next American City, brought together a diverse group to discuss the role of new media in shaping urban policy. One of the major topics discussed was the emerging trend of cities establishing data catalogs where a wide range of datasets and feeds are made available, often with the explicit goal of enabling private apps that will use the data to create value. Washington, D.C.’s data catalog is a national leader, and San Francisco, Boston, and others not far behind. (Through sheer coincidence, New York City announced their BigApps contest during the conference.) In addition to the city-led programs, a host of other sources — from Google Transit to Data.gov — are making urban data more available than ever.

Within government, data can be a powerful tool for management and service delivery. Baltimore’s CitiStat and its emulators have shown the power of data to focus on the bottom line for easily quantified government services and policies. Applications for e-management within government are many, and today’s New York Times story on IBM’s Smarter Cities initiative describes several.

Outside of government, the case is less clear. Some at the conference questioned whether governments should expend their limited resources on finding, cleaning, and publishing data. I think this debate is largely won. The costs of hosting data has dropped precipitously, most of the datasets have already been purchased by citizen tax money, and the resulting apps really do seem to create new value for city residents. Less clear, however, is whether disclosing data to the public will have any impact on urban policy.

It is this deeper question that lurks in the background of conversations about data: although more and more may be available, does influence urban policy or planning? A conference attendee who works for the mayor of a major east coast city suggested this at one point: in his opinion the city was driven by politics, not data.

On the one hand, data seems very needed in planning. Urban planners analyze data to understand trends, and every city plan contains detailed tables, charts, and data analysis. Outside government, community development corporations and nonprofits are also frequent data users: for grant applications, advocacy, and to explore trends in urban neighborhoods. In fact, hundreds of government planners, nonprofit employees, community activists and citizens came to the conference I helped organize here in Boston last summer titled “Data Day: Using Data to Drive Community Change.”

However, the cynic will retort there are “lies, dammed lies, and statistics.” Certainly, government planners and activists need data, the argument goes, but it’s just to support their particular agenda or policy. Taken to the extreme, this jaded view says you can find statistics to back up any belief.

This wasn’t always the case. In fact, for a brief period in the 1960s there was a great deal of interest about the possibility of establishing “social indicators” analogous to economic indicators. Just as economic indicators, such as unemployment rate, are used to determine economic policy, social indicators would guide social policy. Judith Innes in her 1975 book Social Indicators and Public Policy argued social indicators could be created, but must rely on a consensus understanding of definitions and measurement. The book’s fascinating history of the unemployment rate shows how the measurement has responded to cultural values about who to count. Despite thousands of books and articles on indicators in the late 60s and early 70s, the movement didn’t take off as expected. Defining social indicators was value-laden, collecting social data expensive, and focusing on data seemed irrelevant to a turbulent, problem-filled world. It’s little wonder when the second edition of Innes’ book appeared in 1990 it was re-titled Knowledge and Public Policy.

Although falling short of her definition of an indicator, many government datasets do provide a common framework for discussion and analysis, even perhaps guide policy creation. Although often imperfect, their flaws are well known by all users. In the 1990s, a number of “indicators” projects emerged, organized as the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. Generally based in nonprofits or foundations, these projects took advantage of new technology and plentiful government data to track measures of their choosing. (At MAPC, I worked closely with the Boston affiliate – the Boston Indicators Project)

Today, thanks to rapidly evolving technology more urban data is available than ever. Its role is equally ambiguous, simultaneously in demand by diverse users to use for advocacy, government service delivery, and perhaps crafting urban policy. At the conference, federal officials reminded the group the Obama administration is interested in evidence based governance, and President Obama even elevated the former architect of the D.C. data catalog, Vivek Kundra, to the nation’s first Chief Information Officer. In an interesting way, perhaps during times of concern for the public interest we are more likely to view data as a shared resource for deliberation and discussion of new policies and plans. We may be in a new era of data availability, but as always what matters isn’t the numbers themselves, but how we view them.