I thought building a sort of spatial forum, where city residents can discuss the little annoyances in their neighborhoods, might help people a) start thinking about which parts of the built environment bug them and b) realize that other people in their neighborhood probably have the same complaint. Of course, I know that local politics can turn nasty quickly, hence the name of the site: I’m hoping to keep discussion focused on potential fixes for each problem.
If you’re excited about this but your city isn’t on the list, I’m happy to add it as long as you promise to make at least one post. It’s extra helpful if you go to geojson.io and create GeoJson for a closed polygon that marks where you think the bounds for your city should be (doesn’t need to correlate with official city boundaries), but I’m happy to guess and do that part myself. Let me know here or by email if you want your city added!
Politicians don't fight for you, they fight for the betterment of their political careers and their own position. If they were in the job to actually quickly address and fix these sorts of local grievances, there wouldn't be so many of them left to address in the first place.
Truth is stranger than fiction as they say.
Anyway, given our massive encarceration rate and our love of solitary confinement, being "disappeared" is not out of the question. Hell, Georgia is trying to prosecute protestors with RICO charges. The federal government itself makes no effort to hide the fact that it salivates over punishing Snowden for publicly embarrassing them. The idea that we have some sort of special immunity to politically-oriented violence from the state is fairly naïve. (Not to mention the fact that the rest of American society will absolutely punish you for your political views if you're outspoken in the wrong context or have the wrong opinion—god forbid you point out how useless voting is, even if it has non-zero value.)
Even if politicians were entirely pure and good, the calculus yields a bias towards non-action.
Each and every decision will piss someone off. Now or any time in the future. Some of the enraged can make a stink. It's very hard to predict negative outcomes. So the best strategy is to play it safe.
Then add corruption, incompetence, fossilized worldviews, and pathologically power obsessed try hards.
Politics is just the worst. And unfortunately necessary.
Two examples that pop out to me are litter/graffiti removal and clean public bathrooms. Millions of people would gladly pay $10-$50 a year to get both, but regulations prevent a private company from even beginning to solve either.
When these nuisance topics come up on existing community forums, like NextDoor, Reddit, or City-Data, somebody usually knows somebody who knows somebody from city planning that confirms that it's an known annoyance but a compromise solution for a complex or expensive problem that needs to meet many needs.
This crosswalk light needs to accommodate some critical car traffic issue, that bike lane inefficiency is the optimal solution given the inability to expand the road any wider, etc.
How does your catalog go from being a wiki of annoyances that highlight intractable problems to something in dialog with the civil engineering professionals who need to weight many constraints?
As a software professional, my nightmare would be somebody maintaining a permanent, public, antagonistic list of all the forced compromises I'm already frustrated with in my software. I know they're there and I hate them too, but that doesn't mean they're accidents.
It's not possible for the committee that's in charge of planning an entire city to be intimately familiar with the nuances of the way every intersection works for every driver, walker, and biker that pass through them every day. The people who pass through these intersections every day, though, will understand the design oversights and deteriorations. Some proposed fixes will be feasible, others might not. I think my major goal with a site like this is to get the public involved and talking among themselves.
Perhaps it's too idealistic, but I see the process of building a city to be almost entirely distinct from delivering a software product. Every resident owns their city, and though there is a group of people that are paid to maintain it, it's every resident's right and responsibility to make the city work for them.
[1]: https://littlefixes.xyz/city/boston/fix/5 [2]: https://littlefixes.xyz/city/palo-alto/fix/2
There's no non-offensive way to say this, so I'll just say it: if you're just randomly guessing anyway, why not pull a different number out of your head? Why not $50, or $5000?
> and there are no complex constraints in the way of installing a sign.
That you know of, and given your guess of how much it costs to install a sign, I'm guessing there's lots about building out civic infrastructure that you don't know about.
And I don't either! We have a big road nearby that's a nightmare to cross. There's some limply blinking signs that drivers mostly ignore, and I'd love to have the city put in something better - humps, actual stop lights, etc - but there are measures in place to stop that from just happening over a weekend.
i have worked for a municipal government, and part of my job was installing signs in bike lanes. $500 is a pretty spot-on estimate. a sign is $50-$100 per unit at the size you'd install in a bike lane, paying the sign company to do the design and setup was about $200 (less if it's in MUTCD), paying two people (city work needs two people to do anything) to drive out and install it would be about another $100. add another $50 or so if you need to install a new break-off post. we did this multiple times in response to citizen requests, without any red tape beyond the approval of my boss who was the lowest possible level of boss in the municipal government.
I take it you’ve never worked in OSS.
(In my experience, the rationale for public layouts is “first come first serve,” meaning that the original civil engineer made a subjective design call decades ago and every subsequent change has simply accommodated it. In that way your comparison to software is apt, except for the part where I have a reasonable expectation of redress against public works and not against you.)
a lot of city infrastructure is built around keeping away the people who can't afford or aren't old enough to drive.
e.g. Denver - http://polygons.openstreetmap.fr/get_geojson.py?id=1411339&p...
Based on this I found with DDG search: https://peteris.rocks/blog/openstreetmap-administrative-boun...
So these boundaries are sort of meant to be more "places" than specifically cities. But long-term indeed it might not be practical to have these custom boundaries (maybe just removing the boundaries altogether, or loosening them, is the answer)
One difference that I immediately see is that I can see any actual fixes when I go to SeeClickFix’s site. When I go to Little Fixes, I do. And another difference is that I had fun building this one, and I didn’t build SeeClickFix :)
On the one hand, simple things can be quickly fixed with a good reporting tool. My city has such a tool and so broken things, signs becoming obscured by foliage, potholes and so on are all dealt with quickly. These are fantastic systems.
On the other hand people Love to complain. And it's always "they" who should do something about it. But they don't like the established time and effort it takes to complain in the right forum (Town meeting, contacting ward Councillor or whatever.) Much easier to go to some unsanctioned Web site and pile on.
Of course the actual biggest complaint is about change. Any change at all. It doesn't matter whether the change is good, or asked for, or desired, there's always someone willing to complain.
This is especially true at the hyper-local level. I'm tangentially involved in a proposed new residential estate. People 3 miles away, with no shared road, are complaining about it based on "increase in traffic". (Their access is from a main road which is busy all day long.) Their argument really boils down to "no change".
Lots of change is good. Some is bad for me, but common good. Some have good ideas, but there are negative side effects. Some have good ideas, but its expensive. Some have good ideas that are prevented by law or bylaw.
So well done on creating a site. More dialog is a good thing. But ultimately it serves little real purpose (other than just general bitching) unless some sort of real-world interaction with city management takes place. And I'm -guessing- most cities will just refer you to their current online system, whatever they use.
I love that my city responds so quick to any issues reported. Usually you get a reply the next day, and minor things are usually resolved within the week. One time a guy even facetimed me to figure out the exact spot where some metal was sticking out of the ground near a playground, which I had reported.
We have an app to report things on but they don’t have enough people. Construction is everywhere for roads. The biggest issues I see in my city is inconsistent in sidewalks. They have it where trees elevate the side walks. They block it off but have yet to fix it. So you have to walk in the road. People block the cross walks. Half of the pedestrians lights don’t work. The City Council and Mayor are rude and don’t listen. My city is very cliche. “Religious people” So, I just stopped saying anything. Lack of action and accountability is the issue. But if police think you are suspicious they will stop you and say hey you were jay walking. But ya your signs don’t work. I stopped walking because they just don’t have any interest in fixing anything. If you have seen some of the people making sharp turns almost running you over you realize they don’t need a SUV, but to be walking with you. I am just worn on the double standards, and entrapment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37359193
Basically a foot bridge built over a highway to serve a particular community need. Today, however, it's unused, collects litter and is generally disliked by the community. A platform like Little Fixes is certainly a step in the right direction for city planners to apply their craft where it's needed most. That's assuming they have time and the city has the budget.
