Emergent Order and Infrastructure

Throughout history, most cities emerged. They were not centrally planned with a specific end state in mind, but rather flexibly adjusted to the needs of the time. Things like main streets and civic centers were often government supported, but they were merely a layer on top of a structure that had worked for hundreds or thousands of years before that. Cities started as little rows of shacks built in what might later turn into an advantageous location. As migration patterns and local trends changed, some of these rows of shacks were built into slightly nicer structures, and others that found no use were completely demolished. The point is, the end state was never known when they were built and they were able to adjust to things as they happened. Building codes did not exist and public infrastructure went in after private investment had already been verified. Rather than the public taking on the risk of huge infrastructure bets, hoping that private investment picks up, the old method was letting private investment be the leader and bearer of risk in public investment, only doubling down on choices that had been already made. The system was a recognition of cities as an emergent order rather than a created one. Building codes must be reduced and paternalistic planners must slow down their usage of public funds in order to return to this traditional development pattern rather than continuing down our current path of risks, borne by the public.

Development built on an understanding of emergent order recognizes that the government cannot understand the future, and that the best way to be resilient through the future, is to have some level of flexibility in development. Rigid zoning codes could work if the government could predict the future and assign the highest value use to any given piece of land. The government can not predict the future. Zoning codes become a barrier to resiliency as they limit adjustment to the changes that inevitably come with time. Zoning code crystallizes a place into a specific pattern. When that pattern no longer serves the people that live there then the zoning becomes pure regulatory damage. A lack of zoning or more flexible zoning lets the type of structure be built that can adjust to the shocks of the market and consumer demand. Zoning requires a specific vision of the world to be worth it, and that vision requires a level of foreknowledge that no planner has.

Infrastructure should be a conservative and gradual development process rather than a state funded speculative journey. The financial and social upside for infrastructure experimentation is far less than almost any other form of investment. While the upside is not nearly as high, the potential downside is massive. A failed experiment in housing quickly becomes useless, expensive to maintain, and a drag on all other infrastructure investments. The government often approaches infrastructure more aggressively than business people pursue development. Across party lines people agree to more infrastructure spending on pieces of infrastructure that will never pay for themselves. This aggressive rather than conservative nature towards infrastructure investment is unnatural and a unique product of the American experiment for the last 70 years. With great abundance, we had the ability to construct infrastructure, unlike any that had been created before, which took place so rapidly that we could not understand how it related to the environment that we had lived in before. 

Whether or not the government should be responsible for building infrastructure, they should at least build infrastructure that creates more tax revenue than it uses. A failure to recognize that infrastructure cannot be an investment without return has made countless American cities insolvent. Unlike the federal government, towns do not have the same sort of escape hatches at their disposal. Deficits have the ability to destroy towns much more powerfully than they do for the federal government. Every new infrastructure investment has a cost and generates a return in tax revenue. While this cannot be known, it can be at least approximated, and currently very few cities do this. Cities continually dump money into infrastructure that will wear out before it amortizes. Just because the city can build something does not mean that it should. This sounds like basic truth, but it is by no means evident to most city planners. If a government continually spends more than it brings in, it falls into incompetence and becomes a burden on the people.