Leapfrogging the Oligarchy

When cell phones were introduced some places that didn’t have landlines could skip the infrastructure investment and go straight to mobile phones. Same with renewable energy that comes from solar panels generating power locally instead of connections to power plants and grids that require larger upfront investments. Now, I’m interested in this idea of satellite based internet as a similar leapfrog innovation.

When I have thought about transportation lately I’m consistently wondering if we’re at the edge of our spatial limits with auto oriented development. Meaning that we’ve built out our regions in a way that is hard to build more housing affordably unless we either rethink transportation, telecommunications, and/or land use.

On the transportation side, I really do think we’re “running out of land” as I’ve mentioned before. We’ve used all the space within a reasonable driving or transit distance to employment or entertainment destinations for single family tract housing developments and there’s just not many more huge parcels to build that many homes. Hence large increases in housing costs.

As Redfearn and Orlando note in their paper on the subject, neighborhood tracts with aging housing stock are also resistant to densification and sclerotic. There are groups working on this trying to break the logjam on already built out spaces, but that reform is at the moment slow and confronting entrenched interests.

But the pandemic and the white collar work from home movement has also opened up another path for connection albeit not as good or perhaps efficient as humans meeting with each other. Work from home allowed certain workers to move somewhere else to find a cheaper cost of living as long as there was internet. Of course we can’t ignore the equity considerations we’ve not even begun to grapple with in terms of who can work in such a way and where, but it does give us insight into what many people are craving. Affordable living and good quality of life.

During a recent visit to Boise Idaho, a major receiving region during the pandemic migration, I learned the extent that the region has been bursting at the seems with growth, especially sprawling single family subdivisions. These growth regions are now getting more expensive as builders and governments are grappling with demand but they also lend credence to the idea that our development and financial systems are good at suburban growth at scale and infill in bits and pieces.

The IIJA (infrastructure bill) passed during the Biden administration has funded broadband expansion (BEAD) that could have been an opportunity to grow something different for communities that aren’t quite as connected by networks as they should be. It wasn’t as good as it could have been (lack of a public option and more money to existing interests) because of telecom companies and states that are in the pockets of said telecom companies but the overall idea of connecting more Americans to a faster internet is still strong.

Now we’re seeing another emerging telecom type that could leapfrog the legacy (ha internet has legacy?) players which is satellite based internet. There’s something to be said about the proliferation of orbital physical and visual pollution around our planet, but technological advancement in this “space” could mean connecting people that weren’t connected before because existing companies said it would be too expensive to run a line to everywhere.

In my mind, our road expansion and airplane system now has diminishing returns and should be enhanced by programs that connect people faster with more economic impact. This could mean high speed rail which stops at more cities and economically connects mega regions, it could mean densification of existing urban conurbations, or it could mean deploying broadband to places that haven’t had high speed quality internet before.

Right now oligarchs like Elon Musk (Starlink) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon Leo) have the upper hand in this domain and are rigging the system to give themselves more of a head start. But it would behoove our governments or collectives to get out ahead of them to capture this value for everyone.

Advancements and investments in transportation and connectivity are one of the keys to affordability needed for a good quality of life. I would prefer we develop 15 minute cities and faster transportation networks, but there’s also an opening for connections to health care, loved ones, and opportunity that broadband can provide.

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