The Revolution Will Be Normalized

Why demonstrating success is psychologically tricky

I recorded a podcast with a fellow trained in architecture (who no longer works in that field), and we discussed my review of Carlos Moreno’s The 15-Minute City. The discussion was mostly about my critiques of the book, and the question of how urbanists should/can communicate with the general public to make our ideas—which at heart are really mostly traditional ones—seem intelligible, given the extent to which car-oriented/suburban land use is familiar and normal to so many of us.

One of these themes/tensions, which I’m going to write further about, is how you define what counts as “new” or “old-fashioned” versus “revolutionary” or “restoration”/“return,” and whether or not it makes sense to say that something can be both. Another theme/tension is whether a new implementation of an old idea is mostly continuous with the past, or mostly innovative. Etc., etc.

But I made a point that wasn’t in my review or my notes, but which I thought of as we were discussing the question of why it seems so difficult to demonstrate urbanist ideas to the general public. Why is it that you can point out a traditional Main Street and people like it and understand that its design is “urban,” but have trouble imagining the replication of that pattern? Why can you point to a duplex in an old neighborhood that looks like a single-family house and say, “See, you don’t even realize it’s a duplex!” and people will say “Well, that works here, but I don’t know about my neighborhood….”

In other words, why do “urbanist” (broadly defined) successes cease to become reforms that were implemented in places that used to less “urbanist,” and instead simply become part of the furniture, with the same sense of “that works there, but not here” prevailing? Even when the “there” used to be the “here”?

And what occurred to me is that in some ways success is difficult to demonstrate precisely because it works, and becomes normal. What might sound disruptive in theory or in explanation ends up just…working. But exactly because the negative predictions don’t come true, that new thing doesn’t continue to feel “new.”

Some of this, I suppose, is down to definitions and preconceived notions. If someone hears “development” or “redevelopment proposal” and thinks “disruption” and “destruction of my town’s character,” then when the redevelopment proposal turns out not to do those things, that person will mentally define it as something other than “redevelopment.” (No true Scotsman sort of thing going on here.)

But part of it is also just basic human psychology. We fear losing things more than we feel safe betting on things to turn out well. We notice disruption or loss keenly, but we get used to improvements. (Social scientists call this “hedonic adaptation.”) So it’s natural to feel a sense of unease about something new even when previous instances of that thing have mostly turned out fine.

When our caution and risk aversion are allowed to dictate land use policy, we lose the ability to build and organically grow cities. There’s a certain amount of risk/uncertainty/chaos/disruption that is necessary to arrive at the finished state that we all love so much.

We forget that part of it, and seem to think it was ever thus. Because if it works out, it feels that way.

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Related Reading:

If You Build It, They Won’t Care

Urbanism is American History

It’s Hard To Explain When You Understand It

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