More than half a century ago, Jay W. Forrester tried to warn the public about the unintended consequences of policy programmes. If one facet of the system was pushed, he wrote, apparently unrelated parts would eventually be thrown out of balance, meaning that no matter how good or bad the policy programme was, it would inevitably affect the balance of the system as a whole.
Forrester raised an important point. Seemingly promising policy programmes in the US turned out to be inefficient at solving problems. What is more, these policies created other problems, sometimes leading to the opposite of the desired outcome. Forrester concluded that this was due to a lack of understanding of highly dynamic, complex social systems. He believed that the human mind was not very good at dealing with such systems – it had taken a long time to evolve, and we had only recently begun to deal with social complexity. At the same time, computers were already quite good at dealing with complexity. Forrester called the approach to modelling complex systems systems dynamics.
The model Forrester and his team applied to cities considered how industry, housing, and people interact. They looked at four programs commonly implemented by governments. The first was to create jobs by moving the unemployed to the suburbs or into government jobs. The second was a training program for the lowest income population. The third was to provide financial assistance to the city through a federal grant. The fourth was to build low-cost housing. The results of modeling these programs explained what was going on in the depressed cities and pointed to the failure of these very programs.
For example, it appeared that the root of urban problems was an oversupply of housing in low-income areas. This excess created a social trap for the population, trapped in high-density areas with insufficient income opportunities. Measures to raise the standard of living worked only temporarily, as a higher standard of living led to population growth, and population growth led to a decline in the standard of living–back to the original level or even lower. Thus, programs to address the shortage of low-income housing only exacerbated the situation in already depressed cities.
The urban planning practices used in many of the world’s major cities today are exactly what Forrester warned us about. Consider Moscow, a typical megalopolis. As the city with the highest wages and standard of living in the country, Moscow attracts people from elsewhere. The standard of living inevitably falls, and city officials try to improve it by … building roads and expanding the city far out into the suburbs. More people come. The vicious circle repeats itself. Low-cost housing is the program that is supposed to help in this situation, but let us look at what it does. First, it attracts more low-income people to the area. The area becomes more attractive to low-income families and less attractive to job creators. Job opportunities elsewhere are also limited. The economic situation in the area continues to deteriorate. The condition of the area soon requires new interventions.
What Forrester proposed in this case was to use the land for income-generating opportunities, i.e. to give it to industry. This would help to redress the balance, revive the economy, and support the low-income families that were already present in the area of political intervention. In general, he called for treating problems in the context of the whole system. He wrote: “Programs aimed at improving the city can succeed only if they ultimately result in raising the average quality of life for the country as a whole. The only way to improve the quality of urban life in a particular city is to improve it on average everywhere else. Otherwise, people will continue to flock to the most attractive places, constantly pushing down the quality of life and creating more and more similar problems.
We hear about the rapidly growing proportion of the population living in cities. Looking at the events of 2020, I do not think that anyone is in any doubt about the various problems that this urbanization may bring or exacerbate. Perhaps if the approach of more balanced development across the country, rather than focusing on ultra-hubs, was more widely adopted, the projections of urbanization would be less discouraging. It is quite disappointing to see city managers repeating the mistakes that were well studied in the 1960-70s by systems thinkers like Jay Forrester. I hope these mistakes are made without malice, as Upton Sinclair also said: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it’.