| I love strongtowns. Such an interesting blog rich with data and thought-provoking ideas. He brings up a few ways to measure "Infrastructure Obesity," but really it boils down to over-investment but under-utilization, aka malinvestment. Some might argue that "well eventually this infrastructure would be used" but he makes a good point that bloated infrastructure "impede(s) social connections" so people will move away or not move into these areas, and entrepreneurs take notice when foot traffic declines. Then these entrepreneurs decide not to expand to areas with increasing infrastructure obesity. Like a positive feedback loop. The wannabe social psychologist/economist in me would've loved if he included some stuff related to game theory/tragedy of the commons, e.g. Braess' Paradox. It's probably not as impactful in cities where populations are declining, but Braess' paradox posits that adding capacity to a system (like an extra road) actually impedes (traffic) flow, rather than facilitating it. In theory, this is because the aggregated "normal route" across all drivers in a system (i.e. a morning commute) eventually reaches a Nash Equilibrium. Adding capacity changes the "normal route," so drivers will have to re-adjust and discover new optimal routes, which has cascading effects to other drivers, etc. etc. This is fascinating to me because conventionally, you'd think "Extra capacity = more people on the road = better throughput" but we're seeing evidence that maybe this isn't the case. Would love to hear yc's thoughts on that, though. |