Responding to Incentives - Strong Towns Blog - Strong Towns

Interesting perspective on incentives, something under discussion ad nauseam locally (to no effect):

A monkey sits on a chair in front of a panel with two buttons. If the monkey presses button number one, they get one treat. Pressing button number two yields two treats. After participating in this experiment for some time and seeing consistent results, which button is the monkey likely to press?

I appear before dozens of city councils and town boards each year, often to talk about economic development, growth and land use planning. There is a belief system that is near universal that is revealed in these conversations. It goes something like this:

• Our budget is tight, cutting services is difficult and so we need more revenue.
• The best way to get more revenue is by adding commercial development.
• We need more commercial development.
• Mr. Planner, zone more property for commercial development.

Today we're not going to challenge that dead idea - although there are some fundamental flaws in the logic - but instead focus on the incentives that bring about this delusion.

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