by Billy Cooney
Wikipedia defines Shiny object syndrome As in “the situation in which people focus unduly on a new and conventional idea, yet abandon it entirely as something new takes its place.”
Cities have their own version of shiny objects in the form of big projects that scream innovation, commitment and a can-do attitude. They can come in the form of a highway cap connecting two neighborhoods, a waterfront trail project, or an affordable housing development, complete with a publicized ribbon cutting — or, in Texas, a fiery explosion. They are big, bold and they actually accomplish the necessary goals. What they tend to leave behind, however, are persistent and unsolved problems that large projects alone cannot solve.
By their very nature glossy objects have limited project scope. They are one-way, require a lot of planning and they don’t scale Because they are glossed over, they keep us distracted and unfocused on more practical solutions and long-standing systemic problems.
Consider Fort Worth’s Panther Island. Since 2004, the city has pursued a $1.16-billion plan to reconfigure the Trinity River and become Panther Island. Although the project has started, Funding issues kept it delayed.
What I find odd is not the goal of the project: adding mixed-use development closer to downtown makes sense. But just south of the river sits parcel after parcel of undeveloped parking lots. The whole block is Dedicated surface parking. There are about 10 full blocks of surface parking next to the convention center, broken only by half a block of one-story commercial buildings. This strip of parking is so long that if you removed the buildings in the middle, it could serve as a landing strip for a private jet — in the middle of the city.
At about 30 acres, the parking lots make up a fraction of Panther Island’s footprint, but it’s infinitely easier to develop them in a center with infrastructure and transit access outside the flood plain. Yet it looked like this for decades, long before the 2004 proposal for Panther Island. I’m not saying it’s an easy problem to solve – if it were, there wouldn’t be dozens of other suburbs dealing with the same thing – but it’s certainly more practical than rerouting a river.
Fort Worth isn’t the only city where a big project overshadows low-hanging fruit. Atlanta’s Beltline goes for my favorite piece of urban infrastructure in the United States. During my two years living in Atlanta, the Beltline was often a source of joy — a route I used not only to get to school or the grocery store but to free my wandering mind and bring myself back down to earth. I usually see people walking, running, and biking on my bike as I pass by bars, restaurants, and parks where people are picnicking or doing yoga. It was a place that made Atlanta feel full—not in a “‘we’re full’ don’t move here” kind of way (This is a local meme), but in a happy, “I love sharing this city with wonderful people” kind of way.
Yet the city has a failing grade overall in bike infrastructure, according to the People for Bikes City Ratings, which ranks Atlanta 31 out of 100. Ride your bike away from the Beltline and you’ll likely find yourself on a street with no bike lanes, mingling with cars that have no regard for your safety.
And there doesn’t seem to be a strong commitment from leadership to change that. In 2022, A complete street demonstration project was completed on Peachtree Street A politically connected opponent got state legislators to draft a bill threatening to ban the demonstration project. There was direct conflict with the decision to remove the protest Documentation of project success: 27% increase in pedestrian activity and 11% decrease in vehicle volume. Of those surveyed about the protest, 71% support permanent pedestrian improvements.
The original long-term plan to make the design permanent is now questionable, especially considering An update from Propel ATL this year:
Despite being one of the city’s most iconic and heavily used pedestrian corridors, Peachtree Street was recently renovated to a four-lane, car-centric configuration, with no additional crosswalks, curb extensions or traffic calming measures. There has been no visible investment in pedestrian safety yet.
Unfortunately, two lives have already been lost on Peachtree Street this year. At the end of the cited article, Jeremiah Jones raises a great question: “Why aren’t safety upgrades the default, especially in areas with recent pedestrian fatalities?”
While the Beltline is an amazing piece of infrastructure, responsibility for bike safety is underrepresented in the context of the miles of unsafe roads that surround it.
I love big, innovative projects: they inspire wonder and show us that we can do big things. They are critical to creating a culture of civic investment. But when they are not linked to comprehensive reforms, they act as a policeman for systemic change. Big goals require big projects, but they also require small but consistent incremental improvements. Trying to improve, say, a city’s affordability or bikeability requires projects on both ends of the spectrum.
Big projects need a system to resonate. Across the river on Panther Island in Forth Worth is the growing need for downtown development. Atlanta’s Beltline sometimes requires new bike lanes when a street is repaved.
If Fort Worth can figure out how to make parking lots easier, the more impact Panther Island will have on downtown growth and the more downtown will be able to support Panther Island’s success. As Atlanta’s bike network expands, the more powerful the BeltLine becomes as a neighborhood connector. The extent to which Atlanta stifles the expansion of bike infrastructure, as it did on Peachtree Street, is the extent to which it undermines the impact of the Beltline.
Without concerted investment in tandem, shiny object projects cannot achieve their goals of inspiring change. Rather, they serve as monuments to our inability to implement systemic reforms.
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Previously published Also at strongtowns.org Creative Commons License
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