Shiny Object Urbanism

How Cities Chase Big Projects over Systemic Change

Wikipedia defines shiny object syndrome as “the situation where people focus undue attention on an idea that is new and trendy, yet drop it in its entirety as soon as something new can take 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 may 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 genuinely accomplish needed goals. What they tend to leave behind, however, are persistent and unresolved issues that big projects alone can’t address.

By their nature shiny object projects are limited in scope. They are one-off, require lots of planning, and they don’t scale. Because they are shiny, they leave us distracted and unfocused on more practical solutions and lingering systemic issues.

Consider Panther Island in Fort Worth. Since 2004, the city has pursued a $1.16-billion plan to reconfigure the Trinity River and develop what will become Panther Island. While work on the project has begun, funding woes keep delaying it.

What I find strange is not the project’s goal: adding mixed-use development near downtown makes sense. But just south of the river sits parcel after parcel of undeveloped parking lots. Entire blocks are devoted to surface parking. Next to the convention center is nearly ten whole blocks of surface parking, broken only by one half block of single 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 downtown.

At around 30 acres, the parking lots make up a fraction of Panther Island’s footprint, but they are infinitely easier to develop in a downtown with infrastructure and transit access outside of the flood plain. Yet it has looked like this for decades, long before the 2004 proposal for Panther Island. I’m not saying it’s an easy issue to solve—if it was there wouldn’t be dozens of other downtowns 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 is in the running for my favorite piece of urban infrastructure in the US. In my 2 years living in Atlanta, the Beltline was frequently a source of joy—a path I used not only to get to school or the grocery store but to relieve my wandering mind and bring myself back down to earth. I usually found myself breezing along on my bike, weaving through people who were walking, running, and also biking, as I passed by bars, restaurants, and parks where people were picnicking or practicing yoga. It was a place that made Atlanta feel full—not in a “we full” don’t move here kind of way (it’s a local meme), but in a joyous, I love sharing this city with wonderful people kind of way.

Yet the city as a whole has a failing grade on bike infrastructure according to People for Bikes’ City Ratings, which ranks Atlanta as 31 out of 100. Veer off the Beltline on your bike and you’ll likely find yourself on a road without a bike lane, mingling with cars that have no concern for your safety.

And it doesn’t feel like there is strong commitment from leadership to change that. In 2022, a complete street demonstration project was ended on Peachtree Street after a politically-connected opponent got state legislators to draft a bill threatening to ban demonstration projects. The decision to remove the demonstration was in direct conflict with the documentation of the project’s success: there was a 27% increase in pedestrian activity and a 11% decrease in vehicle volume. Of those surveyed about the demonstration, 71% supported permanent pedestrian improvements.

The initial long term plans to make the design permanent are now in question, 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 repaved in a four-lane, car-centric configuration, without any 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 article quoted, Jeremiah Jones poses a great question: “Why aren’t safety upgrades the default, especially in areas with recent pedestrian deaths?”

While the Beltline is an amazing piece of infrastructure, its representation of a commitment to bike safety falls short in the context of the miles of unsafe streets that surround it.

I love big, innovative projects: they inspire awe and show us that we can do big things. They are important for creating a culture of civic investment. But when they aren’t paired with comprehensive reform, they tend to serve as a cop out for systemic change. Big goals need big projects, but they also need small yet consistent incremental improvement. Trying to improve, say, a city’s affordability or bikeability requires projects at both ends of the spectrum.

Big projects need a system to resonate. Forth Worth’s Panther Island needs incremental development downtown across the river. Atlanta’s Beltline needs the occasional new bike lane when a road is repaved.

If Fort Worth can figure out how to make developing parking lots easier, the bigger the effect Panther Island will have on Downtown’s growth and the more Downtown will be able to support Panther Island’s success. The more 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, like it has done on Peachtree Street, is the extent to which it cripples the Beltline’s impact.

Without coordinated investment in tandem, shiny object projects never accomplish their goal of inspiring change. Rather, they serve as monuments to our inability to implement systemic reform.

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Thumbnail photograph by Max Faulkner of Fort Worth Star-Telegram.