As a rule, 12-acre development projects don’t tend to receive national or international attention. But that hasn’t been the case for Quayside, a parcel off Lake Ontario in Toronto. Two years ago, Waterfront Toronto—the government entity overseeing the redevelopment and reconfiguration of a larger swath of real estate along the Don River that includes Quayside—brought in Sidewalk Labs as a private partner. A subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Sidewalk Labs pledged to invest $50 million in the endeavor. The company seemed an ideal choice to help make Quayside a kind of prototype “smart city” neighborhood, and produced ambitious plans.

It also produced no small amount of controversy, and at times it has appeared that the entire partnership might implode. That threat seems to have passed, at least temporarily. All the friction has had an unexpected result: Quayside could prove to be a much more valuable prototype for smart city planning than originally imagined.

That’s not because of what has been built (which is, to date, nothing), but rather because of the way its bumpy ride has clarified the core smart-city issues that need to be resolved before any building can happen—not just in Toronto, but in any urban area. While it’s hard to find an example of a smart city project that’s quite as comprehensive as Quayside aims to be, there are many playing out on a more limited scale, from Kansas City’s “smart city corridor” effort centered on a two-mile streetcar line to the LinkNYC program (also from Sidewalk Labs) replacing pay phones in New York City with WiFi-enabled kiosks.

The biggest issue needing resolution may be privacy. That may seem intuitive, and Sidewalk Labs itself professed to be aware of, and sensitive to, privacy concerns in its initial proposal. That proposal included plenty of the sort of tech-forward ideas you’d expect from a Google-connected entity, from heated bike lanes to autonomous delivery robots. Many of the proposed elements relied upon sophisticated sensors to collect data and guide efficiency in everything from trash collection to traffic to lighting.

While Sidewalk’s proposal addressed privacy, the company was apparently caught off guard when it was criticized for leaving too much discretion to private-sector tech vendors. Among those unimpressed: former Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian, a prominent privacy advocate Sidewalk had added to its advisory board who promptly resigned from that role.

Cavoukian, now the executive director of the privacy-focused Global Privacy & Security by Design Centre consultancy, explains that she recognizes the potential value of data collection for shaping a neighborhood or a city. But she believes, in essence, that in the context of the “smart” city, securing privacy is a planning-level decision better left to the public sector. “The technology, the sensors, will be on 24-seven,” she says. “There’s no opportunity for people to consent or revoke consent. They have no choice.”

She specifically advocates what she terms a “privacy by design” strategy, which “scrubs” data at the point of collection. For instance: Cameras or sensors gathering traffic data might also pick up license plate numbers. If Cavoukian and other privacy advocates have their way, that level of personal data would simply not be collected. “You still have the value rendered from the [aggregate] data,” she says. “But you don’t have the privacy risks because you’ve de-identified the data.” The essence of the privacy by design idea is that it privileges the public interest over private use of data; Cavoukian has pointed to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation—which strictly protects individual privacy and has forced even the biggest tech players to adjust since its implementation in 2018—as a model.

Sidewalk Labs proposed gathering wide swaths of data in a kind of “trust,” with private vendors encouraged to anonymize data. To critics like Cavoukian, this delayed privacy decisions until too late in the process: post-planning, post-implementation, less a baseline than an afterthought. One poll found that 60 percent of Toronto residents who were aware of the plan didn’t trust Sidewalk’s data collection. The two sides are still working out details, but have agreed for now that sensor-gathered data will be treated as a public asset, not a private one. (Sidewalk Labs did not respond to an interview request.)

The Toronto proposal was controversial for other reasons. Notably, it sought oversight of much more than the original 12-acre parcel, dangling the possibility of locating a new Google Canadian headquarters along the city’s waterfront as part of a scheme that would give Sidewalk latitude over 190 acres of potentially lucrative properties. This proposal was turned back, but spurred a useful debate about smart cities and equity.

Jennifer Clark, a professor and head of the City and Regional Planning Section at the Knowlton School of Architecture in the College of Engineering at the Ohio State University, has studied smart city efforts around the world, and is the author of Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities, forthcoming from Columbia University Press in February 2020. As she explains, technology businesses and government or planning entities come to these collaborations with distinct perspectives. Enterprises like Sidewalk Labs that are devoted to new city technologies, she says, “come from a particular orientation of thinking about who the ‘user’ is. They’re very much thinking through a consumer model, with users and consumers as essentially the same thing. That’s not how planners think about it in cities. Users are citizens.”

Similarly, companies designing the technology meant to make a city “smart” are looking for a revenue model that will not just fund a given project, but can ultimately prove profitable—which guides the nature of their prototyping products and services that might be applied elsewhere. Clark points out that a seldom-discussed element of the smart city phenomenon is its “uneven implementation.” Quayside and the wider waterfront redevelopment it is part of are expected to result in high-value properties, used and frequented by a demographic attractive to businesses.

“There’s an assumption that if you do these urban development districts, you’re experimenting on the model, you get the model right and then you do broad deployment, so that there’s equity,” Clark says. But frequently, in practice, “there is no path to that.” Whatever innovations emerge tend to recur in demographically similar contexts.

What often underlies this dynamic is a kind of power mismatch. The private side of a development partnership is often richly funded, in a position to offer financial incentives, and thus to essentially dictate terms; the public side may have fewer resources, and less sophistication about assessing or fully deploying cutting-edge technology. But in this case, Clark notes, the Quayside story (which she addresses in her book) may be a bit different.

“Toronto has a history of community organizing and community development,” she notes. “And the community organizations there have a sophisticated understanding of the data collection practices that were proposed.” Thus the privacy pushback, and how it gets resolved, might prove to be the real lasting payoff, especially if it’s resolved in a way others can emulate.

A replicable model, one that offers guidelines for both technology and the rules that technology must play by, is essentially the outcome that Cavoukian wants. She is now working with Waterfront Toronto, and explicitly hopes that Quayside—with either Sidewalk Labs or new partners—can become a rejoinder to the surveillance-oriented versions of the smart city that are taking shape in tech-advanced urban areas from Shanghai to Dubai.

“We want to be the first to show how you could do this and put that out as a model,” she says. “We want a smart city of privacy.”

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. His book The Art of Noticing was published in May 2019. 

Photograph: Rendering of an interior pedestrian walkway at Quayside. Credit: Picture Plane for Heatherwick Studio for Sidewalk Labs.

En 1879, una delegación de funcionarios de Detroit tomó un barco a vapor y cruzó el lago Erie hacia Cleveland; allí, examinó el primer alumbrado eléctrico de la nación. Tres semanas antes, el inventor e ingeniero Charles Brush había encendido el interruptor de una decena de “lámparas de arco” en una plaza pública. “La mayoría de las personas quedaron deslumbradas”, informó el diario Plain Dealer de Cleveland, “tanto por la novedad como por el fulgor de la escena”.

Detroit enseguida adoptó la nueva tecnología de iluminación, al igual que otras ciudades importantes, como San Francisco y Boston. En otros lugares, como la propia Cleveland de Brush, los dirigentes debatían si debían cambiar las lámparas de gas (y seguían discutiendo este punto unos años más tarde, cuando Brush contrató a John C. Lincoln, colega inventor de Cleveland, para que trabajara en su empresa; este último terminó por fundar Lincoln Electric Company y la Fundación Lincoln, que evolucionó hasta convertirse en el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo).

Con el tiempo, por supuesto, el alumbrado eléctrico se expandió por doquier. Durante el s. XX, la tecnología de alumbrado evolucionó de forma gradual: las varillas de carbono en las lámparas de Brush dieron paso a los focos incandescentes de Thomas Edison, y luego a los focos de mercurio y sodio. Más o menos en la última década, esa evolución se aceleró radicalmente, gracias a dos desarrollos. El primero es el surgimiento de los diodos fotoemisores (LED, por su sigla en inglés), que ofrecen importantes ahorros en energía. El segundo es el estallido más reciente de interés por equipar al alumbrado con tecnologías de “ciudad inteligente” que van mucho más allá de la iluminación: piense en cualquier cosa, desde cámaras de seguridad hasta puntos de acceso a wifi.

Todo esto enfatiza, a la vez que complica, la función del alumbrado en la planificación y el uso del suelo, que se suele ignorar. “El sistema de alumbrado público respalda la seguridad del tránsito y de los peatones, y sirve para que la gente se sienta segura en las ciudades que pueden tener mucha delincuencia”, dice Beau Taylor, director ejecutivo de la Autoridad de Alumbrado Público de Detroit (PLA, por su sigla en inglés).

Más de un siglo después de instalar esas innovadoras lámparas de arco, básicamente, Detroit se vio obligada a volver a asumir la vanguardia de la iluminación. Hacia 2014, cerca del 40 por ciento o más de las 88.000 lámparas de sodio habían dejado de funcionar en algún momento. La infraestructura lumínica de la ciudad, que ocupa 360 kilómetros cuadrados, se había diseñado para una ciudad próspera de 2 millones de habitantes en el s. XX. Esto se tornó imposible de mantener.

Un bono de US$ 185 millones financió 65.000 lámparas LED nuevas; así, Detroit fue la primera ciudad grande de los Estados Unidos en pasarse a las LED. El objetivo de esta renovación no fue simplemente cambiar focos. Las luces de LED son diferentes: un foco de sodio produce luz que disminuye gradualmente, mientras que las LED producen un haz más directo que es dos veces más brillante, y la población de Detroit disminuyó, por lo que los planificadores tuvieron que instalar postes nuevos con una configuración actualizada.

Hoy, el organismo dice que los costos energéticos asociados a las nuevas luces son alrededor de la mitad de lo que habrían sido con luces convencionales. Y un análisis de Detroit Greenways Coalition, un grupo de políticas e interés, indicó que “los accidentes fatales con peatones en zonas oscuras y sin iluminación disminuyeron drásticamente, de 24 en 2014 a apenas uno en 2017”, y concluyó que las nuevas luces eran el motivo principal de esto.

Estos son resultados importantes. Pero podría venir más: las nuevas farolas de Detroit están equipadas con dispositivos que se pueden modernizar para cumplir varias funciones “inteligentes”. Y esto nos lleva a la revolución tecnológica que se adjuntó al humilde alumbrado del pasado.

“Cuando usamos la palabra ‘inteligente’, quiere decir conectado”, dice Dominique Bonte, vicepresidente de la consultora ABI Research, cuyo pronóstico es que el mercado de alumbrado inteligente crecerá un 31 por ciento entre 2018 y 2026. Las luces que están conectadas por red, ya sea wifi o cable de fibra óptica, se pueden controlar o monitorear de forma remota. Estas conexiones también abren nuevas posibilidades, en particular debido a que en los próximos años se lanzará la tecnología de red celular más robusta conocida como 5G. “En el futuro, las farolas se pueden convertir más bien en centros o plataformas”, añade Bonte.

Austin Ashe, gerente general de ciudades inteligentes en Current, subsidiaria de GE, explicó a la publicación del área de ingeniería IEEE Spectrum que las farolas son ideales para cumplir esta función: “Tienen electricidad, están por todas partes y tienen la elevación perfecta: son altas como para cubrir un radio razonable, pero no tanto, para poder captar muchos datos importantes”.

Esta noción ya cautivó la imaginación de varias ciudades en todo el mundo: si las farolas ya están en cada cuadra, ¿por qué no pensar qué más pueden hacer?

Un estudio que llevó a cabo la empresa de investigación IoT Analytics estima que, en los próximos cinco años, la cantidad total de farolas conectadas en América del Norte llegará a los 14,4 millones, e indica que Miami es la ciudad con el despliegue más extenso de farolas conectadas con LED: casi 500.000. En los Ángeles, hay 165.000 farolas en red diseñadas para funcionar como una especie de espina dorsal en el desarrollo de otras tecnologías, como sensores detectores de sonidos que identifican disparos y otros ruidos. San Diego probó farolas equipadas con tecnología de vigilancia auditiva y visual, además de sensores que verifican la temperatura y la humedad. En Kansas City, una nueva línea céntrica de tranvía de 3,5 kilómetros tiene esparcidos puestos de wifi, sensores de tráfico y alumbrado de LED con cámaras de seguridad anexadas, y todo está vinculado con cable de fibra óptica. Y Cleveland se está lanzando a una labor por US$ 35 millones para reemplazar 61.000 dispositivos por farolas de LED inteligentes que admiten cámaras. En París, Madrid, Yakarta y otras ciudades de todo el mundo se están realizando labores similares.

Pero a medida que avanzan estos experimentos, empiezan a surgir inquietudes. La Unión Americana para las Libertades Civiles (ACLU) y otros organismos discrepan con la idea de que el alumbrado que admite cámaras observe todos los movimientos de las personas, y exigen que el gobierno supervise para garantizar que las “ciudades inteligentes” no se conviertan en “ciudades de vigilancia”. Mientras el entusiasmo municipal por las nuevas tecnologías deja rezagada a la normativa, algunos dirigentes sugieren precaución: “La tecnología avanza a un paso acelerado”, dijo un miembro del ayuntamiento de San Diego a Los Angeles Times. “Como funcionarios electos, no solo debemos seguir el ritmo de los crecientes desarrollos, sino también garantizar que se protejan los derechos y las libertades civiles de los residentes”.

Y luego están los factores económicos de todo esto. El alumbrado puede consumir hasta el 40 por ciento de las facturas de electricidad municipales, según indica el Departamento de Energía de EE.UU.; por lo tanto, las actualizaciones básicas de eficiencia suelen compensarse con el tiempo. Pero Bonte, de ABI, destaca que el rendimiento de las inversiones en proyectos más elaborados no siempre es claro, y pueden pasar décadas hasta que los beneficios se hagan realidad.

Con vistas al futuro, Taylor, de la PLA de Detroit, dice que su organismo está haciendo un seguimiento de los experimentos en curso en otras ciudades y participa en labores por descifrar qué productos o servicios inteligentes podrían beneficiar a la gente de Detroit de verdad. Si, por ejemplo, la ciudad decide agregar más wifi público en parques u otros espacios, readaptar el alumbrado es una opción. Pero eso está en el futuro. “La tecnología de ciudad inteligente es más bien un efecto multiplicador para un sistema de alumbrado público”, dice. “Nuestro enfoque principal fue volver a encender las luces”.

Incluso ese enfoque, cauteloso en comparación, tuvo sus riesgos: en un desarrollo frustrante, la PLA descubrió que las luces suministradas por un proveedor se están quemando mucho más rápido de lo que deberían. Ahora la ciudad debe cambiarlas, con un costo de alrededor de US$ 9 millones, y demandó al proveedor.

Con razón Taylor parece contento de esperar y observar mientras los demás experimentan. Dado el ritmo de la tecnología, lo último que una ciudad quiere es tener que ajustar su sistema “inteligente” dentro de diez años. “No se trata de que todo quede hecho por adelantado”, dice. “Se trata de mantenernos abiertos a las opciones”.

Rob Walker es periodista; escribe sobre diseño, tecnología y otros temas. Su libro The Art of Noticing (El arte de darse cuenta) se publicó en mayo de 2019.

Fotografía: La nueva generación de alumbrado puede hacer de todo, desde verificar el clima hasta escuchar disparos. Muchos funcionarios de la ciudad lo consideran una bendición, pero algunas organizaciones de derechos civiles exigen normativas más estrictas. Crédito: Coolfire Solutions.

“Ojalá no supiera ahora lo que no sabía antes”.

Era un verso al pasar en la balada “Against the Wind” (“Contra el viento”) de Bob Seger de 1980, una reflexión sobre la inocencia y el remordimiento. Si bien le parecía que sonaba raro y no era gramaticalmente correcto, Seger lo conservó porque a sus allegados les gustaba. Desde entonces, el verso ha inspirado a otros artistas para hacer sus propias interpretaciones. A mí me inspira como invitación a aprender, ofrece un marco de reflexión acerca de las consecuencias impensadas y nos permite imaginar cómo podríamos haber actuado de otro modo. En particular, es relevante en el contexto de la crisis nacional actual de viviendas asequibles.

Desde la Gran Depresión, durante cuatro décadas, dirigí y estudié el uso de inversiones públicas, privadas y filantrópicas para producir viviendas asequibles y ofrecer un techo decente a familias de bajos ingresos. Se debatió una gran cantidad de ideas, y muchas se implementaron. La mayoría de las que se implementaron no dieron los resultados esperados, pero todas trajeron consecuencias impensadas. ¿Qué podemos aprender de estos tropiezos del s. XX? Y, más específicamente: ¿qué estamos dispuestos a aprender?

Hace más de ocho décadas, el gobierno federal lucha para cubrir los compromisos básicos contraídos en las Leyes de Vivienda de los EE.UU. de 1937 y 1949: “una vivienda decente y un ambiente adecuado de vida para todos los estadounidenses”. Las leyes consignaban importantes subsidios para construir nuevas viviendas públicas y erradicar los asentamientos informales. Prometían nuevos empleos, ciudades modernizadas y mejores viviendas para quienes las necesitaran. Dado que las Leyes de Vivienda sugerían beneficios para todos los ciudadanos, se ganaron un amplio apoyo del público.

Cuando llegó la hora de implementar, casi todas las autoridades de vivienda pública apuntaron a ofrecer viviendas a quienes estaban en la mitad inferior de la distribución de ingresos: una decisión políticamente popular. Para mantener la disponibilidad de viviendas nuevas, se establecieron alquileres que cubrirían los costos operativos de los edificios. Pero los costos operativos aumentaban a medida que los edificios envejecían, y los alquileres crecían a la par. Hacia fines de los 60, los inquilinos de ingresos más bajos se vieron sobrepasados por los precios: pagaban más del 60 por ciento de su ingreso para seguir teniendo un techo.

El senador Edward Brooke (republicano, por Massachusetts) remedió la situación: en 1969 propuso una enmienda a las Leyes de Vivienda que limitaba los alquileres al 25 por ciento de los ingresos de los inquilinos. El gobierno federal cubría los déficits operativos con subsidios. Para obtener un alquiler reducido, los inquilinos debían declarar sus ingresos. Pronto se hizo evidente que las viviendas públicas no servían para las familias más pobres, quienes tenían las mayores necesidades de vivienda. En 1981, el Congreso actuó de nuevo: reservó las viviendas públicas para familias que ganaban la mitad de la mediana de ingresos y reservó el 40 por ciento de las unidades para familias que ganaban menos del 30 por ciento de la mediana.

El deterioro de los edificios se aceleraba. Esto se debió a que los subsidios operativos federales no cubrían gastos de capital, y los sistemas principales (calefacción, iluminación, ascensores) empezaron a fallar. La austeridad fiscal federal de los 80 agravó los problemas, porque redujo los subsidios operativos. Hacia fines de esa década, la única respuesta razonable a la crisis nacional de viviendas públicas fue la demolición generalizada.

Al mismo tiempo que disminuían los subsidios y dejaba de haber viviendas antiguas disponibles, surgió un contrarrelato, en el cual se culpaba a los propios residentes. La “cultura de la pobreza” y la “indefensión aprendida” se convirtieron en los memes dominantes. Se veía a la pobreza como una enfermedad contagiosa, más que como un síntoma. Los pobres se convirtieron en chivos expiatorios convenientes que cargaban con la responsabilidad de que se rompiera su propio techo, como si se esperara que los inquilinos, pobres o no, se responsabilizaran de mantener sus edificios. Al concentrar a los pobres en las viviendas públicas, reforzábamos los malos hábitos y transmitíamos valores que perpetuaban la pobreza a lo largo de las generaciones. Otro meme dominante de los 80 apoyó este movimiento: los peligros del gobierno grande. Este relato contaba (y cuenta) que el gobierno grande era torpe e ineficaz; el deterioro de las viviendas públicas era culpa del gobierno.

Con los programas “HOPE” que surgieron luego (Vivienda y Oportunidades para Personas en Cualquier Lugar), se reemplazaron muchos proyectos de vivienda pública por desarrollos bajos de ingresos mixtos, que en general sustituían tres unidades demolidas con una asequible. Para estimular la producción adicional de viviendas de alquiler, el gobierno federal creó el crédito fiscal para viviendas de bajos ingresos (LIHTC) en 1986. El programa ofrecía a los inversionistas privados créditos fiscales por una década a cambio de adelantos en inversiones en patrimonio (que suele ser el dinero más difícil de encontrar) para producir viviendas. Los estados controlaban cómo se asignaban los créditos, y las normativas exigían una asequibilidad a largo plazo para las viviendas.

Es importante mencionar que el programa LIHTC prometía superar las dos grandes fallas de las viviendas públicas. Al atraer inversiones privadas, las eficiencias del sector privado superarían la relación de dependencia con el ineficaz gobierno grande. Segundo, las decisiones de ubicación se delegarían a los gobiernos estatales y locales, que podrían asegurarse de que la producción de viviendas no concentraría la pobreza. Además, la competencia por los créditos fiscales reduciría el costo para los contribuyentes y, con el tiempo, el sector privado produciría viviendas asequibles sin necesitar subsidios.

Algunos expertos consideran que el programa LIHTC tuvo un éxito extraordinario. En el transcurso de tres décadas, se construyeron más de 2,5 millones de unidades de vivienda. Pero en ese período, perdimos más unidades asequibles del inventario nacional de las que se construyeron. Además, las rentabilidades prometidas del sector privado nunca se materializaron. Según el año y el mercado, el costo de producción estimado de unidades de LIHTC fue entre un 20 y un 50 por ciento superior que el de las unidades similares sin subsidios. Esto ni siquiera incluye los US$ 100 millones estimados por año para la administración del programa.

Los créditos fiscales para patrimonios de inversionistas privados llegaron a los contribuyentes en tasas de tarjeta de crédito. Y los costos aumentaron cuando el capital público estaba en el valor más barato. Durante la Gran Recesión, los créditos fiscales producían un promedio de ganancias después de impuestos del 12 al 14 por ciento para los inversionistas cuando la tasa de fondos federales era casi cero y la ganancia de Hacienda a 10 años era de cerca del 2 por ciento. El sector privado nunca dejó de depender de los subsidios. Hoy, prácticamente no hay producción de alquileres asequibles sin créditos fiscales. Por último, es decepcionante que se haya aceptado universalmente que la producción de viviendas con crédito fiscal exacerbó la concentración de la pobreza.

¿Cómo puede ser que el programa de producción de viviendas más grande de la historia de la nación, con amplio apoyo de ambos partidos, provoque tanta decepción? Hay muchas cosas de las que no sabía (y no sabíamos) antes, en 1999, en 1979 e incluso en 1949, que me gustaría no saber ahora.

Ojalá no supiera que, aunque seamos muy buenos para identificar grandes desafíos y anunciar respuestas ambiciosas, nuestro compromiso casi nunca sobrevive a los desafíos económicos. Ahora sabemos que solo construir viviendas asequibles no alcanza para ofrecer una vivienda decente y un ambiente adecuado de vida. Se necesita un modelo sostenible que mantenga los edificios, conserve la asequibilidad en el tiempo y construya donde lo necesitamos: cerca de empleos y escuelas buenos.

Ojalá no supiera que el apoyo político es efímero, y que la memoria no perdura. Garantizar que el poco subsidio que hay llegue a quienes más lo necesitan es razonable, pero solo si el subsidio se protege. Los más necesitados son políticamente débiles y es poco probable que obtengan apoyo para defender sus derechos. Y cuando intentan hacerlo, es fácil convertirlos en el chivo expiatorio.

Ojalá no supiera que gastamos decenas de millones de dólares para evaluar programas de viviendas, pero no aprendimos mucho. Contamos unidades, hicimos de cuenta que la cantidad producida es la única medida importante de impacto. Hace veinte años, una de cada cuatro familias que reunían los requisitos para recibir ayuda para la vivienda la recibían. Hoy, es una de cada cinco familias. Aunque según la creencia general los costos de vivienda que superan el 30 por ciento del ingreso son insostenibles para las familias, alrededor de la mitad de los inquilinos pagan más del 30 por ciento de su ingreso antes de impuestos para alquilar, y el 20 por ciento entrega más de la mitad de su ingreso.

¿Cuándo haremos un análisis sincero de ocho décadas de labores para dar un techo a nuestra gente? Debido a la complejidad de los desafíos en cuanto a las viviendas, es imposible aprender algo de las evaluaciones de los programas. Para aprender, debemos revelar los resultados esperados y comprometernos con ellos, compartir la lógica que guía nuestras acciones y conciliar lo que logramos en realidad con nuestras intenciones. Este es un modelo de aprendizaje que adoptamos en el Instituto Lincoln, y espero que se pueda aplicar más ampliamente a análisis de políticas en los sectores de vivienda, desarrollo comunitario y filantropía.

Ofrecer viviendas asequibles para todos no es tarea fácil. Las dolorosas verdades de ocho décadas de trabajo se ofrecen no como una acusación, sino como una invitación para aprender, y pensar y actuar de otro modo. Debemos intentar cosas nuevas y aprender de ellas. Esa innovación puede ser construir departamentos sobre bibliotecas públicas, una tendencia que exploramos en este número. Puede significar forjar asociaciones inesperadas, como están haciendo los servicios públicos y los defensores de viviendas en Seattle. Puede significar rematar derechos de desarrollo o aprovechar el valor del suelo de otro modo.

Deberíamos aspirar a las mismas ambiciones de los confiados gestores de políticas de 1949, que se comprometieron para proveer “una vivienda decente y un ambiente adecuado de vida para todos los estadounidenses”. Pero tendremos que intentar muchas cosas nuevas y aprender de nuestros errores. Y, si nos comprometemos a “buscar un techo una y otra vez”, como canta Seger en la misma canción, podríamos lograrlo.

¿Tiene un ejemplo propio de “ojalá no supiera ahora lo que no sabía antes”? ¿Una política o programa del que podríamos o deberíamos haber aprendido? Queremos destacar algunos en uno de los próximos números. Envíenos el suyo a publications@lincolninst.edu.

Born and raised in the working-class Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, Martin J. Walsh is serving his second term as Boston’s 54th mayor, focusing on schools, affordable housing, and immigration, among many other issues. He has also become an international leader in confronting climate change and building resilience, hosting a major climate summit in 2018 and forming a coalition of mayors committed to working on renewable energy and other strategies. He has pledged to make Boston carbon-neutral by 2050, and has led Imagine Boston 2030, the first citywide comprehensive plan in half a century, as well as the Resilient Boston Harbor initiative. He made time to speak with Senior Fellow Anthony Flint to reflect on being mayor in the midst of the unfolding climate crisis.

Anthony Flint: You have been one of the most active mayors in the nation on the pressing issue of climate change. Tell us about your recent efforts to coordinate action—and how you feel about all this work being done at the local level in the absence of a federal initiative?

Marty Walsh: We hosted our first climate summit, and we’ve been working with mayors across America. I was elected as the North American co-chair for C40 prior to President Trump pulling out of the Paris climate accord. We’ve been working with Mayor [Eric] Garcetti in Los Angeles and other mayors to make sure that cities recommitted themselves to the Paris climate agreement. This is such an important issue for the country and for Boston, and it’s so important to have engagement and leadership. It’s unfortunate that we haven’t had a [federal] partner in the last few years. But we’re going to continue to take on the challenges and continue to think about the next generation. What I’m hoping is that ultimately we will have a federal partner, and [when that time comes] we won’t be starting at zero.

AF: Turning first to mitigation: what are the most important ways that cities can help reduce carbon emissions? Should cities require the retrofitting of older buildings, for example, to make them more energy efficient?

MW: We have a program called Renew Boston Trust, identifying energy savings in city-owned buildings. It’s important to be sure we start in our own backyard. We have 14 buildings underway for retrofits—libraries, community centers, police and fire stations. Secondly, we’re looking at electrifying some of our vehicles. The third piece is looking at retrofitting and new construction, making sure all new construction is built to higher performance standards with fewer carbon emissions. Ultimately, as we think about reducing carbon emissions, we are looking at 85,000 buildings in our city . . . if we want to hit net zero carbon by 2050, we’ll have to retrofit those buildings, large and small. Then there’s transportation—getting our transportation system to be cleaner and greener. Even if we had a strong national policy, it’s ultimately the cities that will have to carry out the reductions.

AF: Even if we stopped all carbon emissions tomorrow, the planet will still have to manage significant sea level rise, flooding, volatile weather, wildfires, and more, because of inexorably rising temperatures. What are the most promising efforts here and around the country in building resilience?

MW: For Boston and East Coast cities and oceanfront property, our Resilient Boston Harbor plan lays out some good strategies. We have 47 miles of shoreline, and rivers that run through and border our city. We’ve looked at [the 2012 Atlantic hurricane] Superstorm Sandy and at what happened in Houston [due to Hurricane Harvey in 2017], in terms of protecting people in major flooding events. We have one big plan for the harbor, but there are other neighborhoods where we have to make sure we’re prepared. We’re doing planning studies in all of these areas [under the Climate Ready Boston initiative] to deal with sea-level rise. They eventually become one environmental plan.

It is a public safety matter. It’s about quality of life and the future of our city. In the past, mayors have focused on economic development and transportation and education. Today, climate change, resilience, and preparedness are part of the conversation in ways they weren’t 25 years ago. 

AF: At the Lincoln Institute, we’re big believers in working with nature through blue and green infrastructure—and coming up with new ways to pay for it. Are you also a fan of this approach, which the Dutch and others have developed?

MW: Resilient Boston Harbor is really a green infrastructure plan. One project that speaks to that is Martin’s Park, named for Martin Richard [the youngest victim of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing]. We raised parts of the park to prevent flood pathways, and installed mini piles and vegetated beds reinforced with stone to prevent erosion at higher tides. We’re looking at doing something like that throughout the inner harbor. We’re spending $2 million at Joe Moakley Park, which is the start of major flood pathways to several neighborhoods . . . we’re trying to cut back on as much flood-related property damage and disruption of people’s lives as possible. Berms and other barriers can help keep the water out . . . but there are opportunities to let the water through and not let it build up, in a major storm event.

AF: In addition to new taxes that have been proposed, would you support a value capture arrangement where the private sector contributes more to these kinds of massive public investments? 

MW: On top of private investment—which we’re going to need more of—we are working with philanthropic organizations, to see if some philanthropic dollars can go into these kinds of projects. In our budget this year, we’re dedicating 10 percent in capital budget to resilience. We’re also looking at taking some dedicated revenue and putting it into resilience. For example, we raised fines and penalties for parking violations. That will go right back into transportation and resilience, including things like raising streets up. That’s a start. Over time, we’ll dedicate more of our budget to this. At some point hopefully, the federal government will invest. Right now, they are paying millions and millions for disaster relief. Rather than coming in after an event and a tragedy happens, I would hope that they will want to make investments on the front end.

AF: Given projections that large swaths of Boston will be underwater later this century, can you reflect on a personal level about this threat to the city you currently lead? How would you inspire more urgency to address this problem?

MW: That’s our job. Our job is to govern in the present day, and manage all the day-to-day operations, but our job is also to lay down the foundation of what our city looks like in the future. The infrastructure that we build out will be here for the next 50 to 60 years. The Resilient Boston Harbor plan is [designed] to deal with sea-level rise 40 or 50 years from now. We’re building all of that with the expectation of preserving and protecting the residents of the city. I would hope that when I’m not here as mayor anymore, the next mayor will come in and will want to invest as well. This is the legacy of the city—I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily my legacy—to look back years from now, for residents to look back and be grateful for the investments and the time that leaders took in 2017 and 2018 and 2019.

I don’t think as a country we’re where we need to be. The Dutch and other European countries are farther ahead. So we’re playing catch-up. We’re not waiting for the next generation to try to solve this problem.

Photographs in order of appearance

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh speaks at the annual Mayor’s Greenovate Awards, which recognize climate and sustainability leaders in the community. Credit: John Wilcox, courtesy of City of Boston Mayor’s Office.

Mayor Walsh addresses a crowd of protesters at City Hall during the September 2019 youth climate strike. Credit: Jeremiah Robinson, courtesy of City of Boston Mayor’s Office. 

“Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” 

It was a throwaway line in Bob Seger’s 1980 ballad “Against the Wind,” a reflection on innocence and regret. Although he felt the line sounded odd and thought it was grammatically incorrect, Seger kept it in because the people around him liked it. The line has since inspired other artists to offer their own interpretations. It inspires me as an invitation to learn, providing a frame for reflection on unintended consequences and letting us imagine how we might have done things differently. It’s particularly apt in the context of our current national affordable housing crisis.  

For four decades I directed and studied the use of public, private, and philanthropic funding to produce affordable housing and provide decent shelter for low-income families since the Great Depression. Lots of big ideas were discussed, many of them implemented. Most of those implemented did not deliver the expected results, but they all delivered unintended consequences. What can we learn from these 20th-century missteps—and more to the point, what are we willing to learn?  

The federal government has struggled for more than eight decades to meet the basic commitments it made in the U.S. Housing Acts of 1937 and 1949: “a decent home and a suitable living environment for all Americans.” The acts committed significant subsidies to build new public housing and eradicate slums. They promised new jobs, modernized cities, and better housing for those who needed it. Because the Housing Acts proposed to benefit all Americans, they attracted broad public support.

When implementation time came, most public housing authorities aimed to provide housing for those in the lower half of the income distribution—a politically popular decision. To maintain the new housing stock, rents were set to cover buildings’ operating expenses. But as the buildings aged, operating expenses increased, and rents increased along with them. By the late 1960s, lower income tenants were getting priced out—paying upwards of 60 percent of their income to keep a roof over their heads.

Senator Edward Brooke (R-MA) remedied the situation by sponsoring an amendment to the Housing Acts in 1969, which capped rents at 25 percent of tenants’ incomes. The federal government covered operating shortfalls with subsidies. For reduced rents to be set, tenants had to disclose their incomes. It soon became apparent that public housing was not serving the poorest families with the greatest housing needs. In 1981, Congress acted again, reserving public housing for families earning half of the median income and reserving 40 percent of the units for families earning less than 30 percent of the median.  

The deterioration of the buildings was accelerating. This was because federal operating subsidies did not cover capital expenses and major systems (heating, lighting, elevators) began to fail. The federal fiscal austerity of the 1980s compounded problems by reducing operating subsidies. By the end of the decade the only reasonable response to the national crisis in public housing was widespread demolition.  

As the subsidies declined and our aging housing stock failed, a counternarrative emerged through which the residents themselves were blamed. The “culture of poverty” and “learned helplessness” became dominant memes. Poverty was viewed as a communicable disease rather than a symptom. The poor became convenient scapegoats bearing responsibility for the failure of their own shelter, as if any renters, poor or not, are expected to take responsibility for maintenance of their buildings. By concentrating the poor in public housing, we reinforced bad habits and transmitted values that perpetuated poverty across generations. This was supported by another dominant meme of the 1980s—the perils of big government. Big government was sloppy and inefficient, this narrative went (and still goes); the decline of public housing was the government’s fault.  

In the “HOPE” programs that followed—Homeownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere—many public housing projects were replaced with low-rise, mixed-income developments, typically replacing one affordable unit for three that were demolished. To stimulate additional rental housing production, the federal government created the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) in 1986. The program offered private investors a decade’s worth of tax credits in exchange for upfront equity investments—typically the hardest money to find—for housing production. States had authority over how to allocate the credits, and regulations mandated long-term affordability of the housing.

Importantly, the LIHTC program promised to overcome the two biggest failings of public housing. By attracting private investment, the efficiencies of the private sector would overcome dependence on inefficient big government. Second, location decisions could be delegated to state and local governments who could ensure that the housing production did not concentrate poverty. Moreover, competition for the tax credits would reduce their cost to taxpayers and eventually, the private sector would produce affordable housing without the need for subsidies.  

Some pundits consider the LIHTC program extraordinarily successful. Over three decades, more than 2.5 million units of housing were built. But through that period, we lost more affordable units from the national housing stock than we produced. Moreover, the promised private sector cost efficiencies never materialized. Depending on the year and the market, production of LIHTC units was estimated to cost 20 to 50 percent more than similar unsubsidized units. This does not even count the estimated $100 million spent annually to administer the program. 

Tax credits for equity from private investors came at credit card rates to taxpayers. And the costs went up when public capital was cheapest. During the Great Recession, tax credits were yielding average after-tax returns of 12 to 14 percent to investors when the federal funds rate was near zero and the 10-year Treasury yield was around 2 percent. The private sector never was weaned from subsidy dependence. Today, virtually no affordable rental production happens without tax credits. Finally, disappointingly, it is universally accepted that the production of tax credit housing exacerbated the concentration of poverty.  

How can the largest housing production program in the history of the nation, with broad bipartisan support, produce such disappointment? There are a lot of things I wish I didn’t know now that I (and we) didn’t know then—in 1999, in 1979, even in 1949.  

I wish I didn’t know that as good as we are at identifying big challenges and announcing ambitious responses, our commitment rarely survives economic challenges. We know now that simply building affordable housing is not sufficient for providing a decent home and a suitable living environment. One needs a sustainable model that maintains the buildings and preserves their affordability over time and builds where we need to—close to good jobs and schools.  

I wish I didn’t know that political support is evanescent, and memories are short. Ensuring that scarce subsidy reaches those who need it most is reasonable, but only if the subsidy is protected. The neediest are politically weak and not likely to marshal support to defend their entitlements. And when they try, they are easy to scapegoat.  

I wish I didn’t know that we spent tens of millions of dollars evaluating housing programs, but we haven’t learned very much. We counted units, acting as if the number produced is the only important measure of impact. Twenty years ago, one in four families who qualified for housing assistance received it. Today, it is one in five families. While the general wisdom says housing costs that exceed 30 percent of income are unsustainable for families, about half of renters pay more than 30 percent of their pretax income for rent, with 20 percent handing over more than half of their income.  

When do we take an honest reckoning of eight decades of effort to shelter our people? The complexity of housing challenges makes it impossible to learn anything from program evaluations. To learn, we need to reveal and commit to our intended outcomes, share the logic guiding our actions, and reconcile what we actually accomplish with our intentions. This is a learning model that we’ve embraced at the Lincoln Institute and I hope it can be applied more broadly to policy analysis in housing, community development, and philanthropy.  

Providing affordable housing for all is no easy task. The painful truths of eight decades of work are offered not as an indictment, but as an invitation to learn, and to think and act differently. We need to try new things and learn from them. That innovation might take the form of building apartments above public libraries, a trend we explore in this issue. It might mean forging unexpected partnerships, as public utilities and housing advocates are doing in Seattle. It might mean auctioning development rights or otherwise leveraging land value.  

We should aspire to the same ambition of the confident policymakers of 1949, committing to provide “a decent home and a suitable living environment for all Americans.” But we’ll need to try a lot of new things and learn from our mistakes. And if we commit to “searching for shelter again and again,” as Seger sings later in the same song, we just might get it done. 

Have your own example of “wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then”? A policy or program we could have, or should have, learned from? We hope to spotlight a few in an upcoming issue—send yours to publications@lincolninst.edu.

George W. McCarthy is the President and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

In 1879, a delegation of officials from Detroit took a steamship across Lake Erie to Cleveland, where they examined the nation’s first electric streetlights. Three weeks earlier, inventor and engineer Charles Brush had flipped the switch on a dozen “arc lamps” in a public square in the latter city. “Most people seemed struck with admiration,” reported Cleveland’s Plain Dealer newspaper, “both by the novelty and brilliancy of the scene.”  

Detroit quickly embraced the new lighting technology, as did other major cities including San Francisco and Boston. In other places, including Brush’s own Cleveland, leaders debated whether to make the switch from gas lamps. (They were still arguing the point a few years later when Brush hired fellow Cleveland inventor John C. Lincoln to work at his company; the latter went on to found the Lincoln Electric Company and the Lincoln Foundation, which evolved into the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.)

Eventually, of course, electric streetlights became ubiquitous. During the 20th century, streetlight technology evolved gradually, with the carbon rods in Brush’s lamps giving way to Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulbs, then to mercury and sodium bulbs. In the past decade or so, that evolution has accelerated dramatically, thanks to two developments. First is the emergence of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which offer considerable energy savings. Second is the more recent explosion of interest in outfitting streetlights with “smart city” technologies that go well beyond lighting—think everything from surveillance cameras to Wi-Fi hotspots.  

All of this underscores, and complicates, the often-overlooked role of streetlights in planning and land use. “A street lighting system is there for traffic safety, pedestrian safety, and to make people feel safe in cities where there may be high crime,” says Beau Taylor, executive director of Detroit’s Public Lighting Authority (PLA).  

More than a century after it installed those innovative arc lamps, Detroit was essentially forced back to the leading edge of lighting. By 2014, some 40 percent or more of its 88,000 sodium streetlights had become non-functioning at any given time. The city’s lighting infrastructure, spread over 139 square miles, had been designed for a thriving city of 2 million people in the 20th century. Maintaining it had become untenable.  

A $185 million bond funded 65,000 new LED streetlights, making Detroit the first large U.S. city to convert to LEDs. This upgrade was not just a matter of swapping out bulbs. The lighting from LEDs is different—a sodium bulb produces light that gradually tapers, while LEDs produce a more direct shaft that’s twice as bright—and Detroit’s population has shrunk, so planners had to install new poles in a revised configuration.  

Today the agency says the associated energy costs of the new lights are about half what they would have been with conventional lights. And an analysis by the Detroit Greenways Coalition, a policy and advocacy group, found that “pedestrian fatalities in dark, unlighted areas dropped drastically, from 24 in 2014 to just one in 2017,” concluding that the new lights were the primary factor.  

Those are significant outcomes. But there could be more to come: Detroit’s new streetlights are equipped with fixtures that can be retrofit to perform various “smart” functions. And this brings us to the technological revolution that has attached itself to the formerly humble streetlight.  

“When we use the word ‘smart,’ it means connected,” says Dominique Bonte, a vice president at consultancy ABI Research, which forecasts the smart streetlight market will grow 31 percent between 2018 and 2026. Lights that are connected by a network, whether Wi-Fi or fiber-optic cable, can be monitored or controlled remotely. These connections also open new possibilities, particularly as the more robust cellular network technology known as 5G rolls out over the next few years. “Streetlights, in the future, can become more like hubs or platforms,” Bonte continues.  

Streetlights are ideal for this role, as Austin Ashe, general manager for intelligent cities at GE subsidiary Current, explained to engineering trade publication IEEE Spectrum: “They have power, ubiquity, and the perfect elevation—high enough to cover a reasonable radius, low enough to capture a lot of important data.”  

This notion has already captured the imagination of cities around the world: if streetlights are already on every block, why not figure out what else they can do?  

A study by research firm IoT Analytics estimates the total number of connected streetlights in North America will reach as high as 14.4 million over the next five years, naming Miami as the city with the most extensive deployment of connected LED streetlights, with nearly 500,000. In Los Angeles, 165,000 networked streetlights are designed to serve as a kind of backbone for the deployment of other technologies, such as noise-detection sensors that monitor gunshots and other sounds. San Diego has tested streetlights outfitted with audio and visual surveillance technology, plus sensors that monitor temperature and humidity. In Kansas City, a new 2.2-mile downtown streetcar line is dotted with wi-fi kiosks, traffic sensors, and LED streetlights with security cameras attached, all linked by fiber-optic cable. And Cleveland is embarking on a $35 million effort to replace 61,000 fixtures with smart camera-enabled LED streetlights. Similar efforts are underway in Paris, Madrid, Jakarta, and other cities around the world.  

But as these experiments play out, concerns are coming into view. The ACLU and others take issue with the idea of camera-enabled streetlights watching the public’s every move, calling for government oversight to ensure that “smart cities” don’t become “surveillance cities.” As municipal enthusiasm for new technologies outpaces their regulation, some leaders are considering caution: “Technology is advancing at a rapid pace,” a San Diego City Council member told the Los Angeles Times. “As elected officials, we have to not only keep up with the increasing developments, but also ensure that the civil rights and civil liberties of our residents are protected.”  

And then there are the economics of it all. Streetlights can eat up to 40 percent of municipal energy bills, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, so basic efficiency upgrades tend to pay off over time. But as ABI’s Bonte points out, the return on investment for more elaborate projects isn’t always clear, and realizing the benefits can take decades.  

Looking ahead, Taylor of the Detroit PLA says his agency is tracking the experiments underway in other cities and participating in efforts to figure out which smart products or services might actually benefit the people of Detroit. If the city decides to, for example, add more public wi-fi to parks or other spaces, retrofitting the streetlights is an option. But that’s in the future. “Smart city technology is more of a multiplier effect for a street lighting system,” he says. “Our primary focus was getting the lights back on.”  

Even that comparatively cautious approach came with risks: In a frustrating development, the PLA found that lights supplied by one of its vendors are burning out far more quickly than they should. The city now has to swap out those lights, at a cost of around $9 million, and has sued the supplier.  

No wonder Taylor seems happy to wait and watch as others experiment. The last thing a city wants, given the pace of technology, is to have to overhaul its “smart” system a decade from now. “It’s not about getting it all done up front,” he says. “It’s about keeping options open.”

Rob Walker is a journalist covering design, technology, and other subjects. His book The Art of Noticing was published in May 2019.

Photograph: The new generation of streetlights can do everything from monitor the weather to listen for gunshots. Many city officials view this as a boon, but some civil rights organizations are calling for strict regulations. Credit: Coolfire Solutions.