Lower the Drawbridge and Liven Up the Castle

How Our Infrastructure Suffers at the Hands of Exclusionary Zoning

United We Thrive

Ms. G and I used to love the show Alone, where individuals are dropped into the wilderness, completely isolated with only a few tools, and compete to survive as long as they can. The woman caught a rabbit with her snare! The funny guy bagged a moose with a bow and arrow. It makes for good television! Of course, the premise of the show, despite it being set in the natural world, is more contrived than reality shows where singles are dropped into gaudy shared apartments and given fake jobs.

As humans, our natural setup is not isolation. It’s in close proximity to other humans. We’re not just pack animals, we’re super social, forming tribes, communities, towns, and global communities. Our ability to coordinate our efforts amongst small and large groups is truly a superpower. Even the axe that the guy in Alone brings with him to the Yukon is the product of processes, material refinement, and design work that no individual could conceivably make happen on their own (sure you could make a crude axe, but we didn’t want to watch 30 hours of some guy trying to lash a rock to a stick).

I Am a Golden God

In How Infrastructure Works, Deb Chachra, a professor of engineering at Olin College, illustrates how infrastructure— the seemingly invisible physical structures and systems that meet society’s needs— is a concrete manifestation of humans’ coordinating superpowers:

Since they’re always there for my use, at any moment of the day, these infrastructural systems are all but part of me— they extend my capabilities beyond my biological limitations in a way that I almost never have to think about. I can’t see in the dark, but abundant artificial light means that I might as well be able to.

Not only does our infrastructure make us more powerful as individuals, it gives us greater freedom. Being able to charge my e-bike with cheap, shared electricity from the grid or drive my car on roads built for the town means I can go much farther, faster than if I had to rely on my two feet (or a horse? I find horses unreliable). Chachra notes how, in regions of the world without such infrastructure, basic tasks like hygiene and food preparation require significant time and labor, much of which falls on women. Infrastructure unlocks untold amounts of human energy and potential.

Sitting in a Chair In the Sky

The level of cooperation and coordination required to set up and maintain infrastructure is immense. To have infrastructure means making sacrifices and doing the tough work of hashing out differences. This work is even more challenging in a multiethnic modern society, where there’s no lack of competing visions and perspectives. But the work and the heartaches are almost always worth it! Rather than revel in the untold powers our collective systems give us, we tend to gripe about the times our infrastructure isn’t perfect. Here in Fairhaven, the only time you’ll hear from residents about the water system is when their water is temporarily discolored because the town is flushing hydrants in a certain neighborhood. As far as I understand it, flushing is a part of routine maintenance of a water system that clears out sediment and makes it possible for us to have crystal clear water at every other time. We take it for granted that we can have clean water in pretty much any amount whenever we want and grouse about the few moments our water looks funny. It reminds me of a Luis CK bit.

Save Money, Save the Bay

By distributing the costs of a system among many users, our infrastructure enables us to have nice things that most of us could never dream of having individually. Distributing costs through shared systems can also help us to more effectively address the negative externalities of these systems. Updates to Title 5 regs in MA mean that communities in “Nitrogen Sensitive Areas,” which includes much of Cape Cod and towns on Buzzards Bay, are now required to do more to prevent nitrogen pollution in our waters. Fairhaven had to take on debt to pay for upcoming upgrades to our wastewater treatment plant, which will no doubt impact town finances and taxpayers in the years to come. But these costs on a per-resident basis are minuscule compared with the $17-35K that homeowners may have to pay to update their individual septic systems in other towns, where the lack of participation in the sewer system curtails this kind of collective action. In communities where the burden is being put on individual homeowners, there is understandably great resistance to the idea of updating septic systems, even if it means preventing red tides and dead zones in our waters. It’s much easier for me to be anti-nitrogen pollution, given that I won’t be asked to fork over tens of thousands of dollars to make this stand : )

Thick Will Always Triumph, Because Restrictive Zoning is Dumb

Because infrastructure like our water and sewer systems are networks, they generally become cheaper and more effective the more users we add, particularly in cases when those new users are added directly onto the current systems without having to expand it. While the cost of adding another using to an existing system is often nominal, that new user then pays into the system (in the form of fees and/or taxes) and helps defray costs for all the other users. There’s power in numbers! A common NIMBY argument against adding housing to a community like ours is that it will put a strain on our current services. That’s probably true when we allow for the expansion of our town further into undeveloped land further from its core, where new roads/water/sewer etc will need to be built to accommodate new neighborhoods, particularly if those neighborhoods don’t serve enough people to defray the costs of that new infrastructure. But, especially in the case of infrastructure, our services invariably become cheaper (and our ability to maintain and update them greater) if we’re adding users within our existing core. That’s why I continue to advocate for thickening our existing neighborhoods by removing restrictions on their natural growth, thus promoting our town’s financial sustainability for the long term. If you want to continue to enjoy the same (or better) levels of service for things like road maintenance or water treatment, you should want more users on the current system. Otherwise, don’t complain if taxes continue to go up dramatically. There is no magic any town official can conjure to avoid this basic math.

By zooming in on infrastructure within our little town, I’m neglecting the larger topic of how these systems can be extractive, causing harm to people in other places. A striking example is that our highways make it faster for many people to drive to and from certain places, but they were created by destroying many neighborhoods— neighborhoods that were frequently home to Black people and people of color.  If you’re interested in the more global discussion around this, check out Chachra’s book, which goes deep on this discussion.

More is More

The debates around how to divide the municipal pie, when conducted in good faith, are certainly an important part of ensuring the best use of our resources. But generally speaking, those debates occur at the margins. Engaged locals and our town officials would do well to spend more time and energy determining how to grow the pie! And the guiding principles of that discussion need to start with the fact that the more households we add to our core infrastructure, the wealthier, more powerful, and more adaptive we are.

One time a friend and I were invited to a party at a secret society at my college. It was held in their secret members-only room. I arrived to find a small group of people in the room huddled around a couple of coolers of drinks with some not-quite-loud enough dance music echoing off the stone walls of the otherwise empty space. Not an exciting scene. As we headed out to a better party, my friend remarked, “I guess they made their society too secret…”

It’s time to invite more people to the party! I promise it won’t diminish what we already have. It will mean we can keep what we have and even have more nice things! We can’t be exclusionary hoarders of space and infrastructure and then be surprised that we’re increasingly on the hook as those things become more expensive. The more members we add to our systems, the more we can distribute their costs and the more freedom and power we’ll have as individuals. The collective effort to create our current infrastructure means that I could spend this morning clacking away on my computer rather than fetching water or slapping my clothes against rocks to clean them. Increasing our collective will mean an even higher quality of life for all of us.