I'm tying to write a book: Day 6
Fine, here's the pitch as it stands. "Culture Eats Policy" lives on.
As I read this for the first time in a few months, I’m realizing the shortcomings you’re also going to read once you start scrolling. Its premise is flat and initial takeaways are glib; it’s a sharp intro or idea, but my God am I bored reading through this. If I wouldn’t even read this book, who else can I expect to? It’s missing a big WHY and, of course, a sample chapter or two that helps prove that I can write a lick for a book.
But really, how different is a book from a very, extremely long blog post?
Overview
“Culture eats policy for breakfast” — a reworked Peter Drucker quote from former USDOT Undersecretary and Assistant Secretary and NYCDOT Commissioner, Polly Trottenberg, hits home as we struggle at all levels of government to not only figure out what we should be spending our dollars on, but also to simply spend the money on what we know we should be spending our money on—an aging system and systems for aging.
We simply can’t get this money to where it needs to go, anywhere near fast enough to make a meaningful change. In other words, even though we, as a country, have authorized spending several trillion dollars on building and fixing our dying system, we’re lagging evermore in developing the infrastructure to compete on a global stage in so many metrics. This goes for projects we know how to build, like the Interstate Highway System and all its tributaries and highways, and ones we simply don’t—functional mass transit, safe bike and ped facilities, and the big, glaring asterisk, passenger rail, especially “high-speed” rail. What gives? We can write all the policies we want and organize the dollars in legislation and rulemaking, all we want, but we’re nowhere.
I want to tell this story and track this cultural phenomenon to its origins through interviews, project performance, and data (not boring), where possible. The goal is to geek out on the not-so-obvious and tell a part of this story that might affect some small change in some office in some planning department.
I don’t think this is nearly insightful enough. It needs more. This is where a sample chapter will help flesh this idea out. I understand this and hope to write with incisive clarity to sell this idea. This three-paragraph elevator pitch needs tightening.
Why me
I’ve written extensively about this issue under the thesis that we don’t know how to spend a trillion dollars, and I’ve been proven mostly correct. The velocity of project approvals and the mismatch between perceived problem and MacGyvered solution mostly tell this for the last 40 years. I don’t think it’s incompetence. I don’t think it’s malice or corruption that’s causing our problems. I think the thesis is actually that we do, in fact, know how to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure, but our deeply embedded cultural fixations up and down and side to side and inside federalism preclude the why we should spend any amount of money at all, as a nation, on connecting ourselves to place and person.
This isn’t enough about me. It’s more about my CV, which they’ll have. I need to get to more base principles here.
Broad strokes
There’s also this nagging question of how much of this problem is inside the agencies or departments themselves. Do we need a huge overhaul, or will a series of small fixes, excruciatingly implemented, do the trick?
My thesis seeks to explore the deep cultural disconnect between culture, policy, and action in the American regime of infrastructure planning. Is this problem just an American phenomenon, or do we share challenges with our friends, partners, and rivals worldwide?
This is new because I don’t think it’s been written about or reported on extensively before, and I think readers are done scratching their heads trying to figure out why we can’t build anything of real substance.
If it sounds like this idea dovetails with the “abundance” movement, it does. It builds upon the movement’s work to move past the big picture ideas and into the interesting weeds. There should be a string for everyone interested in abundance to pull on and unravel toward a body politic around abundance and the culture of infrastructure politics and planning.
The “culture” angle doesn’t blossom from this text. I’m rushing through each aspect that deserves a deeper and more careful handling.
Why now?
It is needed because we’re stuck and we really can’t afford to be stuck any longer, and I hope to uncover insights that help people build relationships that influence culture that doesn’t gobble up all the great policy that thousands of people are working on every day. I hope to create a strategic web of ideas that is intriguing and helps readers come to their own conclusions about how to rethink their approach to relationships across their government in their own particular context.
The overall approach will seek to order a disorganized narrative and challenge multiple counterintuitive narratives that have sought to disjointly “explain” our problems. I don’t think I’ll have all the answers, but I just hope to dig deep into the stories that can help readers come up with their own solutions. I’ll be counting on dozens to hundreds of interviews to help discover the signal within the noise.
Needs more urgency. This book is going to take two years to write, but the problem is generational. How do I contextualize this more clearly that, the changes we make now, no matter how small, will snowball immediately and codify eventually?
NB: I hope to shop around an approved book proposal to multiple foundations interested in supporting this work:
Knight Foundation
Surdna Foundation
Ford Foundation
Solutions Journalism Network
Journalism Funders Network
MacArthur Foundation
Open Society Foundations
Real talk, if any of my subscribers or anyone reading this knows anyone who works at or for a foundation or funder, please email me! I need to start these conversations.
Table of Contents
I expect this table of contents to change and expand or contract based on interviews and experience. But generally and specifically
Acknowledgements:
Introduction / 201: An intro to the thesis and a rundown of the book’s chapters and logic for the argument. There will also be a brief and relevant history of how we got ourselves into this position.
“Culture Eats Policy for Breakfast”: The thesis chapter, an explanation of the quote, where it comes from, and how I interpret it.
Conflict vs. Mistake: From this blog post, I think this frames one of our many political problems as simply as possible.
The Bad State of American Infrastructure Planning: In a few parts, where the real fights are happening. Deep insights into control over spending, federalism, technology, the meaning of access, and mobility.
We Don’t Know How to Spend $1 Trillion: A dive into the pitfalls of our federal, state, and local funding processes. What’s the policy doing right? What’s gummed it up after 100 years of successive spending priorities?
…or Do We?: Are we simply destined to continue overbuilding our highways and investing in fossil fuel infrastructure?
Well, actually… Is the call coming from inside the house? Have the problems ossified inside the agencies? Are staff not allowed to do their best work? Is it a state capacity problem or just a toxic culture reinforced through ineffective leadership?
The Myth of the Foreign Example: Should we look to our foreign allies for examples of culture and prioritization? Maybe not so fast. We’ll look here without the rose-colored glasses at examples from Western Europe, East Asia, and Latin America.
The Truth of the Foreign Example: Where can we find ground that fits our coming needs? What are some examples of successes that might fit our cultural narrative — or break it?
Artificial, Intelligence: How should we proceed when it’s becoming clear that the real future looks harder and harder to distinguish from a simulated one?
The Path: My policy prescription without pretense. This is the most important chapter of the book. It will be a carefully vetted set of policies and suggestions for implementation aimed at all levels of government, with the specific intent of moving us forward through a cultural evolution.
Index
Epilogue
I don’t hate this TOC, but each chapter needs more detail. Each chapter’s lede is enough to pique interest, but it reads choppy because there are no transitions and natural flow—instead it feels like entries in an anthology, which, cool, but that what I’m writing.
Audience
I hope this book has a broad, popular appeal, but I will specifically be targeting planners, engineers, architects, designers, policymakers, analysts, and enthusiasts. I hope to involve academics and practitioners, and electeds. It will be important to socialize this book through:
Planning and Design Institutions:
American Planning Association
Institute of Traffic Engineers
Transportation Research Board
American Society of Civil Engineers
Others
Think Tanks (right, left, and center):
Brookings Institution
Urban Institute
Manhattan Institute
Reason Institute
Others
Advocacy Organizations:
Transportation for America
The LOT Coalition (NADO, NACO, AMPO, NLC, etc)
AASHTO
Others
Funding networks/foundations:
Knight Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
Surdna Foundation
Ford Foundation
Others
Academic Institutions:
Planning, Policy, Engineering, and Design University Programs
American Collegiate Schools of Planning, Inc.
Others
Who else should I include here? I’d love to estimate potential reach so I can estimate how much this book could make. Book publishing is a business after all, and if I wanted to just write, I’d make it an online manifesto, self-published weirdo loony screed you all know and love.
Author Information
I’m a 15-year veteran of the planning profession, cutting my teeth in government, public, private, and non-profit positions. I am a known quantity in our field and have been writing prolifically about this topic in a less focused way for the last 6 years. I’m a policy expert and skilled with data and information. I also have a real estate finance degree to help me understand the time value of money.
Marketing Platform
The goal is to grow my marketing platform with an established plan to introduce people to the topic while I’m writing the book, including publishing pieces on my own site and extending this thesis to national and local blogs, opinion journals, and essay sites. I’ve got 6+ years of experience interviewing experts and have been the subject of interviews.
I have a growing following on LinkedIn and seek to expand my network across other platforms as I switch to more audio/visual content.
This is a wildly incorrect way to talk about a marketing platform.
Competing/Comparable Titles
I hope to capture the spirit of some recent titles in the transportation space through the great work done by friends and colleagues:
Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar
The Unfinished Metropolis by Benjamin Schneider
City Limits by Megan Kimble
New York’s Secret Subway by Matthew Algeo
Sidewalk Nation by Michael Pollack
Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman
I’ve not yet found a book that considers transportation culture with my brand of incisive commentary and style, which is why I’m ready to write it and the right person to do so.
I need to find more comps here. But I really think these six hit the right tone: narrative-driven and non-scolding.
Production Consideration
I estimate this book to take close to two years to complete to ensure that I’m capturing the stories and angles correctly. I also estimate that this book will require travel to the places I’m reporting on to experience the operations, engineering, and planning ideas, and to add local color and reporting, and on-the-ground analysis, I wouldn’t be able to get over Zoom.
Needs more detail here. I should have a schedule—and with that a budget. I do this for a living and I know better.