How to Use Technology to Solve City Prob1ed.Y

by William V. Donaldson* URING the period of about a year, talking to a dozen groups about the possible application of some of the technology developed by NASA, the

Atomic Energy Commission and the various military programs of the federal government, i t was surprising to learn how many of the self-proclaimed ex- perts on urban technology have no idea how a city operates or what its real problems are.

Consider, for example, one rather simple problem that occurs in all cities on a regular basis and what we do about it. Every year there are thousands of house fires which kill citizens and destroy their property. To deal with these fires we all support large fire departments complete with brass poles and $45,000 fire trucks. Where we put this equipment and how we man it is dic- tated by a compromise between our fiscal ability and a fire rating schedule designed by Rube Goldberg with some help from the Spanish Inquisition. Once we receive a call for help, we respond with a t least two $45,000, thirteen and one-half ton monsters which would be instantly recognizable as fire trucks by our grandfathers.

When we arrive a t the fire we make a connection to a fire hydrant which may not work despite the fact we have spent hundreds of dollars installing and maintaining it. This connection is made with a hose line that creates so much friction loss that we have to pump to increase the pressure of the water to compensate for it and is held together by brass fittings that are difficult to join together and cost as much as a bronze replica of the Venus de Milo. Once we get water to the fire through this complicated, expensive and inefficient system, we use nozzles that neither control nor regulate the flow of water, pumps that require a full-time attendant, breathing apparatus that is unde- pendable, ventilating equipment that doesn’t work very well and salvage equip- ment we don’t have the manpower to utilize properly.

It does not seem too unreasonable to expect that a nation that can photo- graph Mars from a satellite could produce a piece of fire equipment that would substantially simplify this process by automating the hydrant and the pump, providing nozzles that could control the application of water, ventilating equip- ment that works, salvage equipment that is effective and a breathing apparatus that protects the firemen.

To cite another example, recently a great deal of time and effort has been spent in finding ways to recycle the trash that our cities generate. Devices ranging from laser beams to complex filters have been used to recycle glass, paper and other components of the trash. It is surprising that so much effort has been spent in this area, where so little has been spent on the problem of collecting the trash. A brief examination in any city wilI reveal that the collection part of the waste disposal process accounts for over 70 percent of

* William V. Donaldson is city manager of Tacoma, Washington.

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the cost and that the equipment we use is old, unreliable and requires a great deal of physical effort on the part of employees for its use. While most places are now using trucks that have the ability to compact the trash, rather than dumping it in open-bed trucks, most of these compactors look like something that was designed in someone’s backyard shop without very much regard for the kind of job they were going to be called on to do, or the demands that they would make on their operators. Had just a small part of the effort spent on developing recycling devices been spent on designing reliable collection equip- ment, many cities would have enough money to experiment with recycling without having to demand large subsidies from the federal government.

Most city officials could add to this list of machines that don’t work, or require too much labor, or are unreliable, or are overpriced or poorly designed, making i t more difficult or expensive than i t should be to do the job the citizens expect. The thing all these problem machines have in common is that they are relatively simple and designed to do relatively simple tasks. The development of effective equipment would not turn our cities into an overnight Eden, but they would resolve a number of frustrating problems and release an enormous amount of money and human talents for more productive use. If we could automate a fire pumper and release its operator for productive fire fighting, most cities would have increased the effectiveness of an engine company by 33 percent. If we could automate the picking up of refuse, we could reduce work crews from three to one on each trash truck.

Why, if we know about these problems and the technology exists in our society to solve them, have they not been solved?

President Nixon has spoken about using the nation’s immense technological resources to solve the problems of cities. There are presently a number of bills before the Congress that would provide funds for bringing technology to the cities, and several federal departments are now experimenting with programs designed to let us take advantage of the tremendous resource of technological data and skills. Professional organizations also have begun to move in the direction of applying technology to some problems. One of these attempts is Public Technology, Inc., an outgrowth of the International City Management Association’s program involving a group of city officials and technologists. And, yet, this seems to be only a beginning, doomed to failure unless some very specific truths about technology transfer are recognized and built upon.

Unless public officials are willing to take the responsibility of saying what they want done and how they want i t done, it is unlikely that any of the other parties involved in transferring technology to cities will produce usable results. There already seems to be a great deal of the feeling that technology transfer is something that will be done to us or for us, but not with us. The technolo- gists would like to find problems that fit their already developed solutions and then develop programs calling for massive federal aid to create both the prob- lems and the solutions in cities. And we are often so overawed by the tech- nology that put a man on the moon or threatens to destroy man’s existence on this planet that we are embarrassed to say that is not what we want at all.

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Let’s examine what some of the principles of transfer must be and how we can work with the federal government, private industries, the universities and others to implement them.

Principle No. 1. We must insist that any program is designed primarily to help us solve our problems and not somebody else’s. There may be a number of perfectly good reasons why the federal government should help the aerospace industry or the universities or some other group that has fallen on hard times, but to pretend that a program that is designed for this purpose is going to help everyday managers of American cities is to perpetrate a giant fraud and Will probably lead to the identification of a number of problems that don’t even exist while overlooking some that do.

Principle N o . 2 . We had better make sure that anyone proposing techno- logical solutions to problems understands what those problems are.

Principle No. 3. We have to learn something about technology if we are going to use i t and not regard it as some sort of magic potion. This means the investment of some time and money on the part of city governments to train present staff so that, even though they may not be able to expertly handle, a t least they can evaluate the tools of the technicians. Department heads who understand what a computer does and how it does it are able to make much better use of the facilities than those who regard the computer as some sort of an idol to be placated with endless flows of useless information.

Principle N o . 4. Any program has to recognize the city’s sensitivity to failure. When the federal government undertakes a research program, it seems to take so long to find out that it is a failure that all of the people who designed it are no longer in office and those that are can blame them. This isn’t true in local government. The consequences of failures in local programs are immediate and the rewards for success are in no way as clear.

Any research program must anticipate possible failure. In fact, a 50 percent success rate would be Iooked on as phenomenal. A program of technological transfer must recognize these facts and be willing to accept the blame for failure without having it fall directly on the local officials who had enough courage to innovate.

Principle No. 5. Any program of technological transfer must be designed to operate over a long period of time. All officials have probably had the experi- ence of trying to figure out what’s going to be big with the grant givers in any given year. Is this the year for housing? Is it the year to deal with delinquent children? Will they be giving grants for smoke abatement? These are the questions federal aid coordinators are constantly asking, and administrators are constantly finding out that a program that started off well has been dis- continued just at the time they were starting to get some real results. The process of training the technologists to think about problems and of city em- ployees to start using the tools of technology is not one that can be shut off or turned on to reflect some idea that is currently fashionable with the urban- ologists if we are to have long-term results. A small continued effort will pro- duce a great deal more in the way of results than the dramatic one-time shot

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will. The experimental farm, agricultural university and extension agent sys- tem that have worked so well to bring technology to the agricultural part of our economy are examples.

Principle No . 6. The process of technological transfer must take place in the cities and not in some isolated laboratory or think tank. The measure of success will be the products developed by fire departments and cities’ staff using the technologies we can apply to everyday problems. You have only to spend some time looking at the work the agricultural extension agent does to know how effective a program of field research is in developing and disseminating new ideas.

You will probably hear a great deal over the next few years from those who would like to establish a municipal think tank or centers to mobilize the tech- nical competence that has been developed by the various federal agencies. There undoubtedly will be a great number of private consulting firms suddenly arising from the ashes of the failure of the physical planning of the “701” programs to offer their competence in helping us use technology by producing a report in several colors which we can put up on the wall as sort of a master plan of technological utilization. All of these groups have in common a desire to do something for us, not to do something with us. In fact, we will be counted by these people only as a necessary evil, some sort of baggage that has been imposed on them by the requirements of the Congress or the taxpayers.

Principle No. 7. We should look very closely a t the track record of those agencies or persons who are offering to help us use technology to solve city problems. Do they know something about cities? Do they see the city as the test bed that must be used not only to try out, but to develop new ideas? Do they understand the accountability of local officials? And most of all, have they invested some of their time, their money and their effort in winning real credentials in the urban research game?

Principle No. 8. The last principle I have to offer you is a very simple one. Any program that is going to be successful will have to start with small things. Before we can work with the technologist to develop an efficient fire truck, me had better develop a nozzle that works. By beginning with small, well-defined projects the technologist and the city expert will have an opportunity to learn from each other, to gain mutual trust and to benefit by success.

If technology is to do anything for cities, city officials must be part of the act. Every year a new program comes along touted by its supporters and developers as a cure-all, Comprehensive master planning, model cities, OEO, revenue sharing and the Law Enforcement Assistance Act are all examples of ideas that have been so oversold as to make any results they may produce anticlimactic. The same thing can be true in the application of technology to urban problems. The systems analyst cannot promise a renaissance of New York, nor can the aerospace engineer make Kansas City the center of urban sophistication, but they can begin to provide solutions to the problems that keep us so busy in city government that we can’t look at anything else. They can help us pick up the trash, sweep the streets, put out the fires and treat our

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sewage in a safe and efficient manner. However, they can do this only if we are willing to accept the responsibility of directing their activities for our good and for the good of our citizens.

BOUNDARY CONTROL IN OREGON (Continued from page 542)

have intergovernmental significance and that no one local government or combination of local governments is the optimum arbiter of where those boundaries should run. The role of studying, evaluating and determining those boundaries is, logically, a state function. State financing of the three existing commissions reflects this role. This financing is quite crucial to the effectiveness of the commissions. If the commissions had to depend on local money, it is doubtful whether they would be adequately financed. But lack of state finances for new boundary commissions may constitute a politically insurmountable barrier to establishing them.

The boundary commission law constitutes the first adequate legal basis in Oregon for systematic analysis and evaluation of local boundaries and pro- posed changes in them. Formerly, boundary proposals, except possibly some relating to school-districts, were reviewed only on a hit-or-miss basis, when some interested party-most commonly a city with a well-staffed planning commission-deemed it expedient.

The existence of three commissions poses certain obvious problems of coordination and, inasmuch as each operates independently of the other in almost every situation, impedes the development of a unified state policy regarding local boundaries. Perhaps such a unified policy is not needed; perhaps each metropolitan area and each county or combination of counties with a boundary commission may properly have its own policy. Be that as it may, the commissions and their staffs do confer frequently about their mutual concerns. They do not, however, have any announced uniform policy or set of principles and do not appear ready to enunciate any.

Local-government boundaries frequently engender fierce controversy. It has been inevitable, therefore, that the roles of the commissions have re- peatedly been highly controversial. A t times concern has arisen in certain circles that the commissions were making enough enemies to jeopardize their continued existence. The commissions came through the 1973 legislative session, however, without any serious threat to their continuation. They were funded generally in accordance with their requests, and the law under which they operate was clarified in important ways and expanded to give them needed powers for effectual boundary control. It appears, therefore, that they are well established and will continue to figure prominently in Oregon’s system of local government for the foreseeable future.