Try. Fail. Try Again.
Mar. 20, 2019
Philadelphia is stuck in an existential traffic jam of our own making.
Just like everything else in the world, roadway congestion in Philly seems to be getting worse by the mean solar day. Center City and its periphery are swelling with new construction, new jobs, and the inrush of new professional workers, overwhelming our already treacherous streets with commitment trucks, taxis, Ubers and Lyfts, cranes and physical mixers, and thousands of distracted pedestrians trying to avoid existence squashed past all of the above while still staring at their phone screens.
The consequences of this chaotic new reality manifest in a 20 percent increment over the past iv years in automotive travel fourth dimension from Wide to 23 rd Street via Anecdote, to an intolerable number of deadly collisions; the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia counted no fewer than 103 traffic fatalities in 2018.
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In response to the mounting crisis, City Council is putting forth a ballot question request for voters' approval to establish a new bureau of Public Prophylactic Enforcement Officers (PSEOs). Per Quango President Darrell Clarke'due south resolution, PSEOs would patrol the metropolis's streets, enforcing Vision Zero violations and quality-of-life infractions.
To the extent that a dedicated squad of PSEOs tin can reduce congestion and relieve lives, so the initiative is laudable, and in keeping with similar agencies already at piece of work in peer cities like Washington D.C., Baltimore and New York. But merely putting more than traffic cops on the street fails to anticipate the cataclysmic changes that cities like Philadelphia will exist forced to contend with in the days and years alee.
Our challenge is straightforward enough: to make our political system cease throwing up roadblocks to progress, and start helping us build expressways.
As global concentrations of power increasingly shift from nation states to a handful of cities, the race for primacy amid them is picking up steam. And the cities best positioned to win that race won't exist those that rely on outmoded methods and mentalities to meet unprecedented economic, political and ecological challenges, but those that, whether by diligent planning or panicked agony, prefer and integrate the radical new technologies that are transforming the earth infinitesimal past minute.
I wrote recently in these pages about China'due south early dominance in the implementation of narrow bogus intelligence (AI). Leveraging the force of the world'due south biggest population, an unbridled enthusiasm among that population for engaging with data-capturing consumer technologies, and an attentive, gamble-welcoming political appliance, China is leading the style in the application of narrow AI to almost every facet of human life and social interaction. Already, Chinese technologists and entrepreneurs, with the support of regime officials at every level, are making dramatic breakthroughs in everything from financial services to medical diagnostics.
And it should be no surprise that China is also applying its burgeoning prowess in AI to the dynamics of its cities. No other state on the planet has experienced urbanization at the footstep of China in recent decades. Barely 40 years ago, People's republic of china was a largely agrarian state, populated past impoverished rural peasants eking out an beingness under the fist of an oppressive, lapidary Communist authorities. But with the advent of economic liberalization and the introduction of open markets, its urban centers exploded. Gone are the days when municipal thoroughfares bulged with scores of cyclists pedaling through town. At present, the streets of Cathay's cities (there are more than a hundred with populations greater than one 1000000) are choked with cars driven by part workers commuting to their jobs in ane of any the thousands of corporate skyscrapers that seem to be sprouting up similar weeds.
While People's republic of china's rapid urbanization indisputably lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and inverse non just the standard of living only the manner of life for many millions more, this overwhelming speed and scale of the transformation has presented major new challenges, a fact that has not been lost either on the country's political class or on its increasingly influential entrepreneurial class. In the by few years, Red china's government has launched and championed a "mass innovation and mass entrepreneurship" campaign to accelerate technological growth, particularly in AI, with torrents of subsidies, regime contracts, innovation corridors and other substantial carrots.
In his landmark book, AI Super-Powers: Communist china, Silicon Valley, and the New World Club , Chinese AI skilful and former Google executive Kai-Fu Lee describes "aggressive mayors across China scrambling to turn their cities into showcases for new AI applications. They're plotting driverless trucking routes, installing facial recognition systems on public transportation, and hooking traffic grids into 'city brains' that optimize flows." These municipal leaders, many of whom, information technology bears emphasizing, oversee cities with populations larger than most American states, are given resources, latitude, and more than than a little bit of pressure from the national government to make bold investments in technological innovation. Plenty of those bets never pay off, merely Lee acknowledges that a sure corporeality of inefficiency is inevitable when a whole country is scrambling to undertake big things for the first time.
It'south precisely that license to chance and to fail in the attempt that distinguishes China's political praxis from America's. Lee writes, "While America'due south combative political system aggressively punishes missteps or waste in funding technological upgrades, China's techno-utilitarian approach rewards proactive investment and adoption." A instance in betoken is the Solyndra debacle of 2011. After the California-based solar panel visitor, which had been the affiche child of President Obama's green energy financial stimulus plan, went bankrupt, Obama's political opponents lacerated him, spending millions to pillory his feckless "venture socialism" in the run-up to the 2012 election.
Today, Estonia is not merely the Silicon Valley of the Baltics, but arguably the well-nigh continued nation in the globe. In fact, Estonia has enshrined the right to internet access in its post-Soviet constitution.
For a country that so zealously burnishes our own reputation as a nation of risk-takers and innovators, we are aggravatingly quick to pounce on any politician who takes a take chances that doesn't pan out. This hypocrisy is just one attribute of America's toxic political universe, but we can't pretend it doesn't ooze downwards to the municipal level too. In Philadelphia, as in so many primitive machine towns, entrenched interests in the form of union bosses, their lackeys and various other erstwhile economy power players exert an fe grip on policy and policy makers akin to ensure the maintenance of a self-serving gravy train. Against the swift and fell consequences of bucking the condition quo, fifty-fifty forward-thinking elected officials are quickly co-opted or broken downward and forced into retreat.
The astounding metamorphosis of China'due south cities in the 21 st century may be a event of that land's wholesale economic and political re-engineering science, just it'south not a phenomenon entirely unique to the People's Republic. For another illuminating case of the catalytic potential of a shared commitment to innovation between the public and individual sectors, we ought await to the hinterlands of Northern Europe.
On the wall of a casually futuristic co-working space somewhere in Tallinn, Estonia's Telliskivi Creative Urban center is a stenciled mural reproducing an iconic image of Barack Obama. The mural depicts the former president'due south face up, as lifted from Shepard Fairey'south famous "HOPE" campaign posters, looking pensive and determined. In the Telliskivi version, a idea bubble floats over Obama'due south caput. The text within reads, "I should have called the Estonians when we were setting upwardly our wellness-intendance website."
It's an odd dig; very specific, not particularly punchy in its commitment, a bit dated, and highly unlikely to reach anyone whose feelings might be hurt past it. And it would be easy to dismiss as the quaint boast of a few Nordic nerds, merely for the fact that it's probably true: Obama should've chosen the Estonians earlier the calamitous curl-out of healthcare.gov. Far from being a former Soviet backwater with delusions of grandeur, the smallest Baltic State has revealed itself as a bold pioneer in tech investment and digital governance, and offers more than a few lessons for Philadelphia.
With the collapse of the Soviet Wedlock nearly three decades agone, Estonia, much like its fellow satellite states, suddenly plant itself cut loose from the authoritarian tether of its sometime patron and left largely to its own devices. Within a few years, the tiny nation somehow gained the profound insight that the Cyberspace was the way of the futurity, and went all in on the latest technological revolution. Today, Estonia is not only the Silicon Valley of the Baltics, but arguably the most connected nation in the earth. Working in concert with coders, computer scientists and web developers, the state can now boast that 98 percent of all government services are accessible online. In fact, Republic of estonia has enshrined the right to internet access in its post-Soviet constitution.
Taking the leap to reinvent itself as a techno-utopia has paid major dividends. With a population of only 1.3 million (some 2 hundred m fewer than Philadelphia's), Estonia is home to not ane but iv tech unicorns—start-ups valued at more than than $1 billion. That claim to fame has made the land a mecca for ambitious and adventurous tech entrepreneurs, then much and then that Estonia has created a streamlined path to quasi-citizenship for foreign innovators inclined to plug in and log on at that place.
Different massive Cathay and miniscule Estonia, we may not have the dubious advantage of having survived the 20 th Century under the yoke of stultifying socialist rule, and to be sure, we face up plenty of deep-seated and uniquely Philadelphian issues, only the examples of these two very dissimilar countries show that it is possible to awaken from a long political shock. The presence of height flight academic, inquiry and medical institutions in our metropolis belies any contention that Philadelphians lack the brainpower, vision and bulldoze to plough this town into an elite city of the future. Our challenge is straightforward plenty: to make our political system terminate throwing up roadblocks to progress, and start helping u.s.a. build expressways. Information technology's our only way out of this traffic jam.
Header: Dan Anderson via Flickr 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/try-fail-try-again/
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