17 ms·

There's no question in my mind that North America has gotten a lot worse at completing great civic projects. Sometimes, that's for good reasons. We don't have

by neilk 7y ago

There's no question in my mind that North America has gotten a lot worse at completing great civic projects. Sometimes, that's for good reasons. We don't have slave labor, we have environmental review, and we allow affected communities to protest and block approval. In the old days when the city fathers had a bright idea they'd just plow through the neighborhood of $LEAST_POWERFUL_ETHNIC_GROUP. We might have overcorrected! But I also don't know what model there might exist for moving quickly with a multi-stakeholder process.

ansible 7y ago
> In the old days when the city fathers had a bright idea they'd just plow through the neighborhood of $LEAST_POWERFUL_ETHNIC_GROUP This definitely happened in Chicago. In multiple cases, the city ran highways through ethnic neighborhoods, effective killing the local communities.
- astura 7y ago
  This is one of the major criticisms of the Cross-Bronx expressway.
Tempest1981 7y ago
We squandered the last few years of a booming economy: Study: America has ‘squandered’ the recovery and is falling behind the rest of the world, according to Harvard study https://www.marketwatch.com/story/america-has-squandered-the-recovery-and-is-falling-behind-the-rest-of-the-world-according-to-harvard-study-2019-12-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/america-has-squandered-the...
AndrewKemendo 7y ago
There's not one. Time and time again, organizations prove that product design/project management by consensus leads to budget overruns and under delivery. Quality at speed requires dictatorial like organisation with high risk to all. In every example given people died, more were maimed and even more had mental breakdowns. Seems like most people aren't willing to be a part of something like that today and there doesn't seem to be any popular cause that would motivate such projects.
- behnamoh 7y ago
  Then there's Apple under Steve Jobs and the covert 5-year-long project that lead to the creation of the iPhone. I don't think it was that fast compared to what companies achieve nowadays, but it certainly was accomplished due in part to Jobs' quasi-dictatorial leadership.
- roenxi 7y ago
  > In every example given people died, more were maimed and even more had mental breakdowns. Seems like most people aren't willing to be a part of something like that today and there doesn't seem to be any popular cause that would motivate such projects. People are still totally willing to be part of something like that; people are as haphazard and risky as they ever were. The government won't let them because it doesn't trust people to assess the risks properly (there is evidence that the government is right; people are very bad at assessing risk). However improving safety probably isn't going to cause the speed reductions, safety and speed don't usually conflict. The fastest way is often also a very safe way because it involves less unnecessary exposure of people to hazards. The issue is the government deciding that work flat-out can't be done (eg, can't open a mine, can't build a highway, can't build a building, can't hire/fire someone, etc, etc). There is usually a good reason but at the end of the day building infrastructure is a break-eggs-make-omelette situation. We don't know how to build infrastructure at scale without collateral damage, as it were. If we first gain consensus that something is a good idea, infrastructure will not be built.
  - pergadad 7y ago
    And if we don't get consensus we'll pay the consequences for decades or centuries to come. E.g. mining operations in many places polluted the local waterways and underground water sources. Fracking today is another good example - if you ask the locals no way it will happen.
  - erikbye 7y ago
    > People are still totally willing to be part of something like that; people are as haphazard and risky as they ever were. The government won't let them because it doesn't trust people to assess the risks properly (there is evidence that the government is right; people are very bad at assessing risk). The government doesn't let people partake in hazardous work? Which government is that? For example, the U.S. government will not stop you from working in mines, electronics industry, construction, or in automotive production. Corners cut when it comes to safety to save on cost still happens everywhere.
nickthemagicman 7y ago
There's an Irish Channel here in New Orleans literally thousands of Irish people died to make it. Agree with you. Things used to be faster because people in charge were careless.
- simonsarris 7y ago
  But unlike back then, we have power tools and vast mechanization. One Diesel powered machine can do the work of thousands of men. If we wanted to build a canal today we ought to be able to do it much faster regardless of carelessness level.
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    Classic straw man logical fallacy. Because machines exist, does not mean carelessness levels go one way or the other. You're just adding an unrequested extra variable. We could build it even faster with machine AND being careless. So what?
    - jonplackett 7y ago
      It surely a machine that can do the work of 1000 people more than compensated for extra safety. Even if you have 1000 people you’re willing to sacrifice, if just one machine can do all their work then carelessness can’t be the main reason we’re so slow now.
      - nickthemagicman 7y ago
        Or maybe they use the machines and the same amount of people and just do more? It they did less it would slow things down....oh wait, that was the original point. And we've gone full circle.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- scurvy 7y ago
  Umm the Irish Channel is just a neighborhood name. It's not a canal. Yes, thousands of Irish died from yellow fever and malaria while digging canals in New Orleans (Basin St and those going to the lake). They were considered expendable because they were Catholic (unlike the Scotch Irish who were protestant). They were also lied to and told that New Orleans was close to the Irish communities in New England.
tim333 7y ago
I think one person / body in charge but willing to listen sympathetically to the stakeholders before making a decision. I'm having a job thinking of an example but Hong Kong under British rule did pretty well. Run by UK civil servants tasked with doing well for the place and built a lot of infrastructure and housing.
verttii 7y ago
Japan seems to be completing civil engineering projects pretty fast compared to almost any other nation. Maybe there's something to be learned from there?
- thedudeabides5 7y ago
  Print MOAR money! https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MYAGM2JPM189S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MYAGM2JPM189S
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Is this much worse than the United States?
    - roenxi 7y ago
      No. Both countries have basically added a "0" on the end of the M2 since 1975. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2
      - thedudeabides5 7y ago
        Wrong! Since 1990 Japan has indeed only added $6tr of Money (M2), but as their GDP hasn't really grown that's an additionall 80% of GDP in terms of Money (the same meausure for the US is up 15%) China on the other hand, money is up 150% of GDP, which clocks in at $26 Trillion dollars (a bit more than 100% of US GDP). https://rose.ai/dashboard/someone.on.the.internet.is.wrong.about.money.supply.20191221 https://rose.ai/dashboard/someone.on.the.internet.is.wrong.a...
- m0llusk 7y ago
  The lead engineer who completed the Toyota Camry Hybrid in record time dropped dead shortly afterward. Japan keeps its development speed high by burning through employees aggressively.
starpilot 7y ago
China is incredible in this respect. Nationwide high speed rail in less time than California will build a single route.
- erikbye 7y ago
  Why is it incredible simply to do something fast? China is not a model to emulate. They throw a massive number of people on projects, pays them next to nothing (neither when they are maimed, nor to their families in case of death), and allow them hardly any time off. Wherever they're employed, it's not uncommon for Chinese men, and women, to only see their family 1-2 times a year.
  - glofish 7y ago
    The fundamental model that we forget today is that impressive things are built by oppressing millions of people. From the pyramids, to Notre Dame, Neuschwanstein Castle, Great Wall of China, Panama Canal, Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, Cancun hotel zone, etc every single technologically unbelievable achievement was built by exploiting large masses of the population. The reason we cannot build the same today is that the pool of people that can be exploited has been much reduced. Perhaps that is a cause for celebration.
    - danans 7y ago
      > Cancun hotel zone Didn't expect to see that on the list. It looks to me like any other mega hotel beach area ... or am I missing something about it?
      - glofish 7y ago
        It is a massive undertaking (also including the resort chains down Riviera Maya), gigantic opulent sprawling palaces, built-in about two-three decades, in a remote place, jungles for hundreds of miles in every direction, in an area with no pre-existing infrastructure, It was built super cheaply on the back of millions of Mayans - it is on the list because IMO is the most recent and perhaps last example of building "pyramids".
xwowsersx 7y ago
I think it might also be a reflection of general polarization. Collective action is hard (certainly easier under a dictatorial regime, e.g. China), but in earlier days in the US we had more common purpose -- whether it was a sense that we are building a nation or WWII, those kinds of things -- which to some degree compensated for the inherently inertial nature of collective action within a liberal democracy.
- kqr 7y ago
  It was also a time when it was more socially and politically acceptable to steamroll those who didn't share or was part of that common purpose. Not only in the US, but all around the world.
shafyy 7y ago
This, exactly. I think we're better off that things are built more slowly now. Look at China, they still build things very fast but they also don't care about work safety, neighborhoods, ethnicity and all that.
crispyambulance 7y ago
> what model there might exist for moving quickly with a multi-stakeholder process. There is no model for that. The OP's list of "fast" was more of a compilation of cherry-picked projects that, with the right context and in the right hands, achieved an impressive outcome. Moreover, each of them AFAIK had long prerequisites to get to the point where they could reach their endpoints. The path to great things invariably includes many failures, false starts, and uncertainty. The author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph. It doesn't happen that way, except in the wet dreams of project managers.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > The author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph. In fairness, the author co-founded Stripe when he was 21. So, perhaps it's fair that his views are colored by the fact that at a very young age he built the highest valued company in the history of the world's most successful startup incubator, but saying "it doesn't happen that way, except in the wet dreams of project managers" is, well, I'll just say a bit funny given who the author is.
- hluska 7y ago
  I’m curious about your last statement. You wrote “the author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph.” Then you made an even more disparaging comparison to wet dreams that is too distasteful to quote. How many billion dollar companies have you started?
- fuzzfactor 7y ago
  To the high performance operator, inefficient bureaucracy has been a recognized thing for millennia. The associated deadlines, proven over millennia to never be realistic. Regardless, this is the mainstream, and this is how institutional projects are built and at institutional speed, i.e. sluggish. You know, like a snail without a shell. Alternatively, for an equally long time now, in a certain way nature has favored those few individuals who have the instinctual need for non-sluggish, dare I say "fast" myself. These are so hard to find that most time-sensitive projects simply start without them and substitute traditional deadlines and bureaucracy in order to measure long-term progress which would otherwise not be apparent. When what is really needed is leadership from the top down building the team exclusively hand-picked for the very instinct which has always outperformed mainstream operation. But it takes one to know one. When everybody on the job has always had the knack for outperforming anything deadlines have to offer, you don't have to remind them you needed everything "the day before yesterday". No need for (lack of) progress reports either, when the goal is moving visibly closer continuously and it's turning out not to be a long-term project after all. Outliers will be outliers.
pergadad 7y ago
Same in Europe. Brussels city in the 1900s moved 20.000 families to build a single street (now the main pedestrian area). Mussolini paved over dozens of ancient Roman sites to build a big street through the city centre. Paris went through an entire planned effort to reshape the whole city, which created all the famous avenues you know today and at the same time created all the social problems (poor 'banlieue' areas around the city) we still know and love today.
allworknoplay 7y ago
We also used to have stronger public institutions that could maintain long-term vision, weren’t subject to constant political upheaval or budget cuts, could reliably staff planning and execution phases, didn’t have to put everything out to bid, negotiate with overdue/overbudget vendors, set up new processes for each project, etc. Bureaucracy involves some waste in overstaffing, but also saves on the chaos that results from our starved, politicized institutions with little internal execution/planning capability.
elamje 7y ago
IMHO, if there is one thing a communist government can execute on, it’s infrastructure. China now has 2/3 of the worlds high speed rail, despite being an emerging economy, and only starting 20/25ish years ago.

by neilk 7y ago

ansible 7y ago

> In the old days when the city fathers had a bright idea they'd just plow through the neighborhood of $LEAST_POWERFUL_ETHNIC_GROUP This definitely happened in Chicago. In multiple cases, the city ran highways through ethnic neighborhoods, effective killing the local communities.

astura 7y ago
This is one of the major criticisms of the Cross-Bronx expressway.

Tempest1981 7y ago

We squandered the last few years of a booming economy: Study: America has ‘squandered’ the recovery and is falling behind the rest of the world, according to Harvard study https://www.marketwatch.com/story/america-has-squandered-the-recovery-and-is-falling-behind-the-rest-of-the-world-according-to-harvard-study-2019-12-18 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/america-has-squandered-the...

AndrewKemendo 7y ago

There's not one. Time and time again, organizations prove that product design/project management by consensus leads to budget overruns and under delivery. Quality at speed requires dictatorial like organisation with high risk to all. In every example given people died, more were maimed and even more had mental breakdowns. Seems like most people aren't willing to be a part of something like that today and there doesn't seem to be any popular cause that would motivate such projects.

behnamoh 7y ago
Then there's Apple under Steve Jobs and the covert 5-year-long project that lead to the creation of the iPhone. I don't think it was that fast compared to what companies achieve nowadays, but it certainly was accomplished due in part to Jobs' quasi-dictatorial leadership.
roenxi 7y ago
> In every example given people died, more were maimed and even more had mental breakdowns. Seems like most people aren't willing to be a part of something like that today and there doesn't seem to be any popular cause that would motivate such projects. People are still totally willing to be part of something like that; people are as haphazard and risky as they ever were. The government won't let them because it doesn't trust people to assess the risks properly (there is evidence that the government is right; people are very bad at assessing risk). However improving safety probably isn't going to cause the speed reductions, safety and speed don't usually conflict. The fastest way is often also a very safe way because it involves less unnecessary exposure of people to hazards. The issue is the government deciding that work flat-out can't be done (eg, can't open a mine, can't build a highway, can't build a building, can't hire/fire someone, etc, etc). There is usually a good reason but at the end of the day building infrastructure is a break-eggs-make-omelette situation. We don't know how to build infrastructure at scale without collateral damage, as it were. If we first gain consensus that something is a good idea, infrastructure will not be built.
- pergadad 7y ago
  And if we don't get consensus we'll pay the consequences for decades or centuries to come. E.g. mining operations in many places polluted the local waterways and underground water sources. Fracking today is another good example - if you ask the locals no way it will happen.
- erikbye 7y ago
  > People are still totally willing to be part of something like that; people are as haphazard and risky as they ever were. The government won't let them because it doesn't trust people to assess the risks properly (there is evidence that the government is right; people are very bad at assessing risk). The government doesn't let people partake in hazardous work? Which government is that? For example, the U.S. government will not stop you from working in mines, electronics industry, construction, or in automotive production. Corners cut when it comes to safety to save on cost still happens everywhere.

nickthemagicman 7y ago

There's an Irish Channel here in New Orleans literally thousands of Irish people died to make it. Agree with you. Things used to be faster because people in charge were careless.

simonsarris 7y ago
But unlike back then, we have power tools and vast mechanization. One Diesel powered machine can do the work of thousands of men. If we wanted to build a canal today we ought to be able to do it much faster regardless of carelessness level.
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  Classic straw man logical fallacy. Because machines exist, does not mean carelessness levels go one way or the other. You're just adding an unrequested extra variable. We could build it even faster with machine AND being careless. So what?
  - jonplackett 7y ago
    It surely a machine that can do the work of 1000 people more than compensated for extra safety. Even if you have 1000 people you’re willing to sacrifice, if just one machine can do all their work then carelessness can’t be the main reason we’re so slow now.
    - nickthemagicman 7y ago
      Or maybe they use the machines and the same amount of people and just do more? It they did less it would slow things down....oh wait, that was the original point. And we've gone full circle.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
scurvy 7y ago
Umm the Irish Channel is just a neighborhood name. It's not a canal. Yes, thousands of Irish died from yellow fever and malaria while digging canals in New Orleans (Basin St and those going to the lake). They were considered expendable because they were Catholic (unlike the Scotch Irish who were protestant). They were also lied to and told that New Orleans was close to the Irish communities in New England.

tim333 7y ago

I think one person / body in charge but willing to listen sympathetically to the stakeholders before making a decision. I'm having a job thinking of an example but Hong Kong under British rule did pretty well. Run by UK civil servants tasked with doing well for the place and built a lot of infrastructure and housing.

verttii 7y ago

Japan seems to be completing civil engineering projects pretty fast compared to almost any other nation. Maybe there's something to be learned from there?

thedudeabides5 7y ago
Print MOAR money! https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MYAGM2JPM189S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MYAGM2JPM189S
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Is this much worse than the United States?
  - roenxi 7y ago
    No. Both countries have basically added a "0" on the end of the M2 since 1975. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2
    - thedudeabides5 7y ago
      Wrong! Since 1990 Japan has indeed only added $6tr of Money (M2), but as their GDP hasn't really grown that's an additionall 80% of GDP in terms of Money (the same meausure for the US is up 15%) China on the other hand, money is up 150% of GDP, which clocks in at $26 Trillion dollars (a bit more than 100% of US GDP). https://rose.ai/dashboard/someone.on.the.internet.is.wrong.about.money.supply.20191221 https://rose.ai/dashboard/someone.on.the.internet.is.wrong.a...
m0llusk 7y ago
The lead engineer who completed the Toyota Camry Hybrid in record time dropped dead shortly afterward. Japan keeps its development speed high by burning through employees aggressively.

starpilot 7y ago

China is incredible in this respect. Nationwide high speed rail in less time than California will build a single route.

erikbye 7y ago
Why is it incredible simply to do something fast? China is not a model to emulate. They throw a massive number of people on projects, pays them next to nothing (neither when they are maimed, nor to their families in case of death), and allow them hardly any time off. Wherever they're employed, it's not uncommon for Chinese men, and women, to only see their family 1-2 times a year.
- glofish 7y ago
  The fundamental model that we forget today is that impressive things are built by oppressing millions of people. From the pyramids, to Notre Dame, Neuschwanstein Castle, Great Wall of China, Panama Canal, Chichen Itza, Machu Picchu, Cancun hotel zone, etc every single technologically unbelievable achievement was built by exploiting large masses of the population. The reason we cannot build the same today is that the pool of people that can be exploited has been much reduced. Perhaps that is a cause for celebration.
  - danans 7y ago
    > Cancun hotel zone Didn't expect to see that on the list. It looks to me like any other mega hotel beach area ... or am I missing something about it?
    - glofish 7y ago
      It is a massive undertaking (also including the resort chains down Riviera Maya), gigantic opulent sprawling palaces, built-in about two-three decades, in a remote place, jungles for hundreds of miles in every direction, in an area with no pre-existing infrastructure, It was built super cheaply on the back of millions of Mayans - it is on the list because IMO is the most recent and perhaps last example of building "pyramids".

xwowsersx 7y ago

I think it might also be a reflection of general polarization. Collective action is hard (certainly easier under a dictatorial regime, e.g. China), but in earlier days in the US we had more common purpose -- whether it was a sense that we are building a nation or WWII, those kinds of things -- which to some degree compensated for the inherently inertial nature of collective action within a liberal democracy.

kqr 7y ago
It was also a time when it was more socially and politically acceptable to steamroll those who didn't share or was part of that common purpose. Not only in the US, but all around the world.

shafyy 7y ago

This, exactly. I think we're better off that things are built more slowly now. Look at China, they still build things very fast but they also don't care about work safety, neighborhoods, ethnicity and all that.

crispyambulance 7y ago

> what model there might exist for moving quickly with a multi-stakeholder process. There is no model for that. The OP's list of "fast" was more of a compilation of cherry-picked projects that, with the right context and in the right hands, achieved an impressive outcome. Moreover, each of them AFAIK had long prerequisites to get to the point where they could reach their endpoints. The path to great things invariably includes many failures, false starts, and uncertainty. The author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph. It doesn't happen that way, except in the wet dreams of project managers.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
> The author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph. In fairness, the author co-founded Stripe when he was 21. So, perhaps it's fair that his views are colored by the fact that at a very young age he built the highest valued company in the history of the world's most successful startup incubator, but saying "it doesn't happen that way, except in the wet dreams of project managers" is, well, I'll just say a bit funny given who the author is.
hluska 7y ago
I’m curious about your last statement. You wrote “the author, perhaps, has watched too many films with breezy montages that end with triumph.” Then you made an even more disparaging comparison to wet dreams that is too distasteful to quote. How many billion dollar companies have you started?
fuzzfactor 7y ago
To the high performance operator, inefficient bureaucracy has been a recognized thing for millennia. The associated deadlines, proven over millennia to never be realistic. Regardless, this is the mainstream, and this is how institutional projects are built and at institutional speed, i.e. sluggish. You know, like a snail without a shell. Alternatively, for an equally long time now, in a certain way nature has favored those few individuals who have the instinctual need for non-sluggish, dare I say "fast" myself. These are so hard to find that most time-sensitive projects simply start without them and substitute traditional deadlines and bureaucracy in order to measure long-term progress which would otherwise not be apparent. When what is really needed is leadership from the top down building the team exclusively hand-picked for the very instinct which has always outperformed mainstream operation. But it takes one to know one. When everybody on the job has always had the knack for outperforming anything deadlines have to offer, you don't have to remind them you needed everything "the day before yesterday". No need for (lack of) progress reports either, when the goal is moving visibly closer continuously and it's turning out not to be a long-term project after all. Outliers will be outliers.

pergadad 7y ago

Same in Europe. Brussels city in the 1900s moved 20.000 families to build a single street (now the main pedestrian area). Mussolini paved over dozens of ancient Roman sites to build a big street through the city centre. Paris went through an entire planned effort to reshape the whole city, which created all the famous avenues you know today and at the same time created all the social problems (poor 'banlieue' areas around the city) we still know and love today.

allworknoplay 7y ago

We also used to have stronger public institutions that could maintain long-term vision, weren’t subject to constant political upheaval or budget cuts, could reliably staff planning and execution phases, didn’t have to put everything out to bid, negotiate with overdue/overbudget vendors, set up new processes for each project, etc. Bureaucracy involves some waste in overstaffing, but also saves on the chaos that results from our starved, politicized institutions with little internal execution/planning capability.

elamje 7y ago

IMHO, if there is one thing a communist government can execute on, it’s infrastructure. China now has 2/3 of the worlds high speed rail, despite being an emerging economy, and only starting 20/25ish years ago.