“The Impact of the Highly Improbable” is the subtitle of this strongly antiplanning book by a Lebonese-American investment banker named Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The thesis is that the world is most heavily influenced by large, unpredictable events, so any efforts to plan based on what we know or try to forecast are doomed to failure.
The most salient example offered by Taleb has to do with investing: “In the last fifty years,” he says, “the ten most extreme days in the financial markets represent half the returns.” In other words, half the gains in the Standard & Poors 500 took place in just ten days out of fifty years (roughly 12,000 days of trading). Thus, anyone who says they have a sure-fire method of earning profits through investing (as several Nobel prize winners have claimed) is simply deluding themselves or their clients.
If what Taleb says is true — and he offers a mixture of evidence from Chaos theory, probability, and other mathematical fields — then any efforts to do long-range planning, whether for cities, regions, or some other area, will simply fail. At best, the planners will plan for the wrong things. At worst, they will lock the areas they plan into an obsolete pattern.
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Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this book to people who think like me, in terms of numbers and hard facts. Instead of focusing on such facts, Taleb presents a mixture of autobiography, history, math, and fiction. He comes off more like an Ishmael-like guru. Some people like books like that; I don’t.
A couple of glaring problems. First, he defines “black swans” as an event that is rare, has an extreme impact, and — while unpredictable — leads people to “concoct explanations after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.” But the metaphor of the black swan doesn’t fit. His inspiration is a story that Europeans believed all swans were white — until they got to Australia and found a black swan. Okay, that might have been unpredictable, but it hardly had an extreme impact on history.
Second, he devotes a whole chapter to the intimate details of an author, Yvegnia Krasnova, whose book was a black swan — that is, it was rejected by numerous publishers and then, when finally published, turned out to be a big hit. In the very next chapter, he reveals that the story is fiction — there was never any such author. Yet he proceeds to devote substantial parts of three more chapters to this fictitious author. Why — when there are so many real-life examples of authors whose books were rejected and yet turned out to be big hits? It is as if Taleb wants to share stories he has heard but doesn’t want to do the reseach needed to verify them.
So I fully agree with Taleb’s thesis, yet I find his method of presenting it to be repugnant. If you liked Ishmael, you will probably find The Black Swan fascinating. Otherwise, just remember the name “black swan” and use it whenever anyone says they want to write a 10-, 20-, or 50-year plan for your city.
Lets do a little 50 year planing:
1) It is 1890 and your first problem, as a budding young planner, is to realize the importance of a plan for the first freeway to be open in 1940 (1).
2) Here is a complication: the automobile is just a rich man’s toy with few sales until the model T was introduced in 1908 (18 years after you plan was to be finished – and only after several more years did it became widely popular) (2)
3) How do you solve this problem of planning the first freeway 18 years before the first popular car?
Dan, we need help here.
Thanks
JK
Refrences: (Forgive me for using dubious References for this post)
1) The first freeway in the United States connected downtown Los Angeles with Pasadena. The limited access and toll-free highway called the Arroyo Seco Freeway was built in 1940 and is now known as Highway 110.
http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzfirstfreeway.htm
2) The model T set 1908 as the historic year that the automobile came into popular usage. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, the car which “put America on wheels”; some of this was because of Ford’s innovations, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting (though the Oldsmobile Curved Dash had done this first), as well as the concept of paying the workers a wage proportionate to the cost of the car, so that they would provide a ready made market.[1] The first production Model T was built on September 27, 1908, at the Piquette Plant in Detroit, Michigan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T
Jim, you miss the genius of modern planning. By planning for 19th century development patterns (designing for rail, bicycles, and walking) you don’t have to plan for such innovations as the automobile.
I like the ridiculous mischaracterizations and evidenceless assertions commonly found here that are necessary to defend a position. It says a lot:
50 year static plans? Plans without revision? Plans without automotive transportation? Please. Where are the cities still operating on unrevised plans from 50 years ago? 20? Where are these cities that don’t plan for automobility?
Thanks for the laugh.
DS
Portland, for one. They’re explicit about their plans to not build roads, and in some cases decrease road capacity, in order to force people onto public transit *cough cough* excuse me, make public transit more attractive. Only Houston seems to have embraced automobility as their future. Most everybody else hangs on to the IMO completely debunked notion that public transit of any kind, but especially light rail, is a solution for moving people. Planes are much better than heavy rail for long-haul transit, and cars are far superior for urban, suburban, and short-haul inter-urban transit. Buses can leverage automobility for routes and rights of way, and they’re much less expensive than rail (though not as sexy which is why planners don’t like them), but it’s still worthless as a general means of moving people. Let’s face it, buses are a way of subsidizing the poor, not moving people. Urban rail is worthless as an urban transportation tool unless you have massive density (New York City), and even then it’s too expensive to pay for itself and is a disease vector besides.
Dan50 year static plans? Plans without revision? Plans without automotive transportation? Please. Where are the cities still operating on unrevised plans from 50 years ago? 20?
JK:
* And what is the cost of constantly replanning to cover over the errors and omissions in the plan?
* What is the cost of having to revise the plan to allow for a preciously undreamed of use?
* What is the cost of revisions the plan before an improvement to people’s lives can be introduced?
* What is the cost, in lost improvements to people’s lives that were never made, because planners add one more roadblock to the already long and hard path to introducing improvments in people’s lives?
* What is the point of plans all over the country dreaming of little villages full of tiny condos for families, when a single event may make such living undesirable? (Actually it already is, but planners are really only really good at one thing – selling the snake oil of high density)
(Of course most planners don’t really care about people, they care about their religion of earth first, animals second, insects third and man last.)
DanWhere are these cities that don’t plan for automobility?
JK: Portland.
Thanks
JK
arg:
Portland, for one. They’re explicit about their plans to not build roads, and in some cases decrease road capacity, in order to force people onto public transit *cough cough* excuse me, make public transit more attractive.
Can you share with us the amount in the 2007 budget for road Capital Improvement Projects?
Thank you in advance,
DS
arg, make sure you don’t include curb extensions and other “traffic calming” projects, bike lanes, walking paths, etc. ONLY include increasing road capacity.
Dan: Can you share with us the amount in the 2007 budget for road Capital Improvement Projects?
JK: Not really, it takes hours to separate out all of the traffic snarling stuff and find the traffic flow improvements, if any. For instance they consider “transit supportive curb extensions†to be a road improvement, even though they are solely to help buses, screw up traffic and are paid by gas taxes. Same for bike lanes, speed bumps etc.
Thanks
JK
Seems like we have money for cars in the PDX CIP budget, which is of course obvious and expected. That conflicts with the assertion that PDX doesn’t plan for cars.
Do we have any other examples of cities that don’t plan for cars? Thank you in advance.
DS
When did road “improvements” that decrease capacity and speed constitute “planning for cars”? Sure, it’s spending money on roads, but not to *improve* them and they’re doing as little as possible to avoid a peasant revolt. Their “improvement” plan for replacing the bridge into Washington state doesn’t have space for more auto lanes, a clear example of what I meant by “not improving capacity”. It looks like “road planning”, and is probably part of their roads budget (deceptive budget practices are common in government), but real point of the bridge is the rail line they want to run across it.
In any case, in my opinion road “improvements” whose expected result is to merely slow down the rate of increase in congestion cannot reasonably be called “planning for cars”. Given how many planners hate cars and want a return to the supposed “golden era” of early 20th century urbanity, it’s really malicious neglect.
aynrandgirl said: When did road “improvements†that decrease capacity and speed constitute “planning for carsâ€Â? Sure, it’s spending money on roads, but not to *improve* them and they’re doing as little as possible to avoid a peasant revolt. Their “improvement†plan for replacing the bridge into Washington state doesn’t have space for more auto lanes, a clear example of what I meant by “not improving capacityâ€Â. It looks like “road planningâ€Â, and is probably part of their roads budget (deceptive budget practices are common in government), but real point of the bridge is the rail line they want to run across it.
In any case, in my opinion road “improvements†whose expected result is to merely slow down the rate of increase in congestion cannot reasonably be called “planning for carsâ€Â. Given how many planners hate cars and want a return to the supposed “golden era†of early 20th century urbanity, it’s really malicious neglect.
THWM: If any thing this damage control from having too many reckless drivers.
aynrandgirl said: Jim, you miss the genius of modern planning. By planning for 19th century development patterns (designing for rail, bicycles, and walking) you don’t have to plan for such innovations as the automobile.
THWM: Bullshit, an automobile is just a horse less carraige!