A challenge to the city of San Luis Obispo and all of us—be better problem solvers 

When trying to solve a problem, our tendency is to almost immediately minimize or strip down the scope or context of the problem. But the public should be aware of how such a superficial view of the problem will lead to poor or even dangerous solutions. By minimizing the scope of our investigation, we may not be anticipating solutions to circumstances that can have unintended, negative consequences. More concerning is that many of us seem to be "married" to specific—shall we say more "trendy"—solutions and we assign them to either the wrong problems or problems that we do not fully understand.

Let's go over a number of examples here in the city of San Luis Obispo where our city fathers have correctly identified a number of problems but then have arrived at the wrong solutions simply because they did not go further into exploring the problem.

1. Problem: preventing bike accidents. Bad solution: introducing dedicated bike ways. Better solution: maintaining shared streets.

Dedicated bike ways are being proposed when shared streets might more suitably address this problem. Bicyclists and autos are more alert when using shared streets. Accidents in bike lanes are 2.6 times higher than on roadways because bike paths are more dangerous. There are more car-bike collisions on dedicated bike paths because it is more difficult to negotiate in a safe manner intersections between cycle lanes and roads than it is on normal roads.

2. Problem: increasing housing availability while maintaining climate change resilience and livability. Bad solution: increasing housing density downtown by building more tall buildings filled with micro units. Better solution: outside of downtown, infill with tiny homes or a range of house-scale buildings with multiple units, compatible in scale and form with detached single-family homes.

The city is proposing the former when tiny homes or house-scale multi-family residences will more likely address the needs of the demographic that is most in need. Micro units in mid-rise buildings are not family friendly. Where will the minimum wage, front-line workers (who are more likely to have families) live? Instead these micro units will be occupied by students, vacationers, or second home buyers. Moreover, the Marsh Street flood plain places downtown residents in harm's way. Remote work and social distancing are transforming downtowns all across the county. Because of remote work, there will be no need to locate these workers near their work. Finally, social distancing will likely be required in the foreseeable future and this mitigates against high density housing.

3. Problem: forcing people out of their cars in order to reduce our carbon footprint. Bad solution: eliminating parking across the board through the reduction or elimination of on-street parking and reducing or eliminating parking requirements for all new developments. Better solution: creating more park-and-ride lots for commuters and out-of-town visitors and maintaining curbside parking for designated users.

Downtown employees commuting into SLO will most likely be arriving in cars. Tourists and shoppers will also be arriving by cars. Where is the consideration for convenient access for the handicapped, the elderly, and the quick in-and-out customer? Where are the locations for drop-offs, which require more space within the right-of-way, for both private and public transportation? Finally, the carbon footprint of cars is quickly being reduced based on the shift over to alternative fuels and alternative methods of manufacturing cars.

4. Problem: preventing urban sprawl. Bad solution: build taller buildings downtown. Better solution: build more low-rise infill projects and put a stop to annexations.

A recent Harris Poll found that nearly a third of Americans are considering relocating to less crowded places. Harvard researchers and urban planners are now urging us to consider how a more dispersed city can thrive. All of this can be attributed to the rapid increase of remote work and the hazards of living in close proximity to others during pandemics. Tall buildings use almost twice as much energy per square foot as low-rise structures. Tall buildings require more steel and concrete, therefore contain more embodied energy and are less sustainable than low-rise buildings built largely of wood. Concrete is 10 times more greenhouse gas-intensive than wood. Tall buildings involve higher construction costs thereby resulting in higher rents and reduced retail diversity.

5. Problem: too many jobs and not enough housing as result of 14,000 employees commuting into SLO every day from outside the city limits. Bad solution: build more housing while staying within the 1 percent per year growth cap. Better solution: place a more restrictive growth cap on jobs.

Limiting the development of commercial projects, as opposed to increasing housing, is more effective when trying to address our continuing jobs-housing imbalance. This is because the 1 percent cap on non-residential square footage, in its present form, is a flawed algorithm as it continues to produce far more jobs than our housing market can absorb. The net result is that job growth has averaged 3.25 percent per year, far exceeding the maximum 1 percent per year growth in our housing supply. And so follows more traffic due to an explosion in our daytime population (comprised of 13,955 daytime commuters) plus an increasing jobs/housing imbalance.

Problem-solving is ranked among the most important skills for students to demonstrate on their resumes, with 82.9 percent of employers considering it a highly valued attribute. Let's evaluate how harmful the act of stripping and minimizing the full exploration of problems can be. A 2010 study published in Behaviour Research and Therapy found that kids who lack problem-solving skills may be at a higher risk of depression and suicide. Kids who lack problem-solving skills may avoid taking action when faced with a problem. Parents and teachers can interfere with the child's ability to solve problems on their own when parents interpose their own solutions. Instead, the child should be allowed to thoroughly define the problem on their own, brainstorm solutions, pick the pros and cons of each solution, pick a solution, and test it out. If the final test has failed to solve the problem then let the child learn from this by "failing forward." Parents (sometimes described as "helicopter moms") and teachers inadvertently minimize the scope of all decisions when they rush to solve their child's problems.

In the final analysis, we can no longer tolerate energy directed to minimizing the scope of any problem. When this attitude permeates thinking at all levels, we all end up as adults deferring to the so-called "experts" and relinquishing our right to exercise our own self-determination. On a societal level this can lead to a body politic inclined to embrace authoritarianism. Δ

David Brodie and Allan Cooper are ready to save SLO's downtown. Send a response for publication to [email protected].