By Theodore Brown
Transportation Consultant, New York
Image Attribute: City of Jakarta, Indonesia / Creative Commons
Out of all the
words in Silicon Valley’s increasingly eccentric lexicon, “disrupt” holds a
special place. Companies seeking out disruptions are scouring the landscape
looking for yawning gaps of efficiency created when capitalism and government
collide. Uber is disrupting the taxi industry just like AirBnb is disrupting
the hotel industry and Venmo is disrupting wire transfers. Disruption is not so
much a trend as an especially lucrative world philosophy favored by
technophilic entrepreneurs. It’s the only path towards progress. If you’re not
disrupting something you might as well go collect kindling and roast raccoon
meat in the hills of Cupertino.
Disruption
operates from a perspective that highlights separation or otherness. A company
that spends its time rooting out inefficient market practices is also
attempting to torpedo industries built on the back of those glitches which is
why you always hear about the more sinister aspects of startups like Uber and
entrenched services like PayPal. They have no interest in being complementary
since they’re simply replacing bad ideas with good ones. In fact, the mandarins
behind disruptive companies are confident their ideas are so transformative
that they can quite gracefully shift the paradigm for everything even,
according to early Uber investor Shervin Peshivar, the government should "uberized".
There’s an
objectivist streak to all these platitudes and even when some of the more
outspoken proponents of a disrupted world order backtrack you can’t help but
think they might have been caught saying something publicly they only espouse
privately. Typically, the companies that fall under the umbrella of disruption
want to throw capitalism into hyperdrive without much consideration for the
fallout, but there is a small subset of this group that is attempting to
augment services that are woefully inefficient—like, say, getting a pothole
fixed before another person cracks a hubcap.
Citizen
engagement applications have been garnering less attention than some of their
more profitable counterparts, but they’re gaining traction in the wake of
municipal troubles in the United States. SeeClickFix, a startup based in New
Haven, is helping local governments from San Francisco to Huntsville, Alabama
improve their non-emergency services through a turnkey application package.
Users can identify a cosmetic issue in their neighborhoods—graffiti, potholes,
abandoned cars—and log the complaint by dropping a pin in SeeClickFix’s map.
The complaint relays to the appropriate municipal department and, bureaucratic
gods willing, the issue is resolved.
Tailoring 311
systems—for readers outside the United States, 311 is 911’s less hysterical
cousin, typically used to report non-emergency issues in a city—for
municipalities that are financially strapped may seem like using a Band-aid to
heal a gunshot wound. But with cities reducing their administrative staffs to
skeleton crews, recalibrating non-emergency services towards direct democracy
takes some pressure off city halls and lets the average citizen feel like
they’re improving their neighborhood piece by piece.
Fostering that
relationships is increasingly important in places like Detroit, where even
emergency responses can take upwards of an hour. Urban decay can seem like
background noise compared to spiking crime and violence, but quality of life
issues left to be solved wholesale after the more immediate issues are
addressed can end up becoming permanent symptoms. Transferring responsibility
for reporting to neighbors is certainly indicative of municipal governments
shedding some of their traditional duties, but in the current fiscal
environment there’s not much they can do to improve their lot. Better they
empower the people than ditch the process altogether.
SeeClickFix
and other developers like it are still in the business of filling gaps just
like their counterparts chasing seven figure funding rounds, but they
understand the world is not made up of zero sum games. It’s an additive
process, concerned with bringing civic engagement into the 21st century and
maybe even shaving layers off entrenched bureaucracy without pining for the
dissolution of government in general. It’s a refreshing outlook on innovation
coming from safely outside the Silicon Valley echo chamber. Let’s hope the next
step is disrupting budget deficits and austerity—lord knows there’s a buck to
be made somewhere in there.
About The Author:
Theodore Brown is
a transportation consultant based in Brooklyn, New York.
This article was originally published at ThisBigCity.net under Creative Commons Licnese 3.0