The Planning Lady

Continuing on with the reading reflections in Elizabeth Sawin’s book Multisolving, Chapter Three is on Flows, processes that move and are measured in units of stuff per unit of time. As she mentions in the book, we tend to focus only on stocks and ignore the flows, to our detriment. If we ignore them too long, inflow could exceed outflow or visa versa and drain the stock to zero or overflow it. This leads to a crisis like the nationwide housing crisis we are currently in.

The first question for reflection regarding flows is where slowing a flow would improve the health of a system and where increasing would help meet goals. The trend in vehicle miles traveled is steadily increasing meaning more traffic congestion, increased emissions, and reduced safety on our roads. Slowing this flow would improve the health of our transportation system. Alternatively, increasing the flow of transit riders would have the opposite effects, reducing traffic congestion and emissions and increasing safety.

An example of a geographically distant flow that impacts my work is the import of construction materials like lumber or steel needed for housing construction. Some of the closest are the flow of workers into the local construction industry to fill jobs to build housing.

In the example above, the president is grasping for control over the important flow of materials into the country via tariffs. Increased political power is needed to move that flow rate to where it needs to be to reduce costs for building new housing.

The benefits to reducing the costs of material imports would be felt by a number of constituencies or interests including home builders, potential buyers, city governments, realtors, housing advocates, and design professionals. These groups then become partners in a multisolving approach.