The Planning Lady

Chapter Four of Elizabeth Sawin’s book Multisolving, covers the first of two types of feedback loops in systems–Reinforcing. Reinforcing feedback is “a change in one part of the system that feeds back to amplify the initial change”. In other words, it’s a change in the same direction amplified.

The prompt at the end of the chapter is to identify systems where readers want to use multisolving and find the reinforcing feedback loops. One example would be neighborhood reinvestment. When the City supports small scale redevelopment in a district, it often ripples out and encourages other private investors or property owners to also invest in that neighborhood, furthering the improvements to the district. The initial change or investment is reinforced by the additional investments that amplify the change. The problem that would grow in the wrong direction from this is gentrification where existing residents and business owners are priced out of their neighborhood. The rising property values are part of the reinforcing feedback loop creating a growing problem for existing residents.

Approaches that could slow or stop the reinforcing feedback loop of gentrification would be to include community members in the decision making process for the city investments, offer funding programs to reduce the burden of rising property values, or developing programs to support small local businesses.

The last question was whether the reader was involved in strategies that operate via reinforcing feedback such as word of mouth, building community, building power, and spreading a solution. I think as the co-host of the Booked on Planning podcast where we spread solutions to a variety of societal issues through our interviews, that would count as being involved in strategies that operate via reinforcing feedback.