Many underrate how much the physical environment teaches behavior by making certain actions ordinary, visible, and frictionless. These changes affect what feels possible. Temporary urbanism is powerful because it quickly changes lived experience, temporarily expanding collective imagination and creating constituencies for permanent change. But if these interventions are not stabilized materially, reversion pressure gradually constricts those possibilities again.

Cities are full of old decisions that continue educating us decades after the people who built them are gone. Highways, architecture, and public recreational spaces all change how we interact with the world around us, and therefore what we expect and collectively think is possible in the world.

The Existing Equilibrium:

In the absence of temporary infrastructure, our collective mental model hovers around what the existing infrastructure enables.1 Individuals constantly imagine new things, pushing past the boundaries of the collective mental model, however these rarely change the imaginations of others.

Most of us think of streets as places for parking, driving, and the occasional bike lane as this is what we see. Some might imagine that the streets could be a place for sporting, childs play, or eating, but that is not a part of the collective mental model as it is divorced from the physical reality we engage with.

Temporary Infrastructure Expands the Mental Model

When temporary infrastructure is introduced, for example during the pandemic, the collective mental model expands to contain that piece of infrastructure. Those using outdoor dining now know that is possible, if not desirable. At this point, imagination expands to further frontiers. For example, we might now imagine urban forests or beer gardens.

When Possibility Becomes Permanent

If we are able to make this new infrastructure permanent, the collective mental model expands to meet that new infrastructure. The result is that we arrive at a new equilibrium where imagination begins anew and we can continue to adapt until we are comfortable.

Protected bike lanes in cities like Amsterdam or Copenhagen no longer feel radical because they have persisted long enough to become ordinary. Infrastructure that once expanded imagination now defines the baseline from which new possibilities emerge.

Time Pressure and the Collapse of Possibility

However, when the temporary infrastructure is removed, the expanded mental model is under pressure from time. People are reeducated by the existing infrastructure and the collective begins to forget that the temporary infrastructure is possible, save for the fervent. This does not happen immediately and leaves time for the infrastructure to be made permanent.

As outdoor dining has ended, as the years go on many have readjusted to NYC as it was but on a nice evening twitter will still show that many of us remember and long for the old days. Luckily, this has become a political consensus and so we will likely get it back.

Present day NYC

In NYC, we see temporary infrastructure all the time. In 2009, Janette Sadik Khan put out new chairs in Times Square prior to the redesign of the new plaza. In the pandemic we saw the proliferation of open streets and outdoor dining. Today, we have Summer Streets, School Streets, and Open Streets that all temporarily highlight alternate ways public space can be used.

Recently, Street Labs and the NYC DOT announced that they will run “soccer streets” in the open streets outside of NYC schools for 2 months prior to the World Cup. This is a brilliant maneuver that uses the concept I call “induced identity” to build a constituency.

Other than getting many young people excited about soccer, soccer streets will create a new life experience and accompanying sense of possibility about how streets can accommodate fun. However this will only largely impact the people who get a chance to experience it. If we do not capitalize on the expanded mental model, eventually many of them will also forget that child friendly streets are genuinely possible for the long term.

Outro

It is not always politically easy to introduce temporary infrastructure let alone solidify it, but if we want different futures to persist, we cannot rely on imagination alone: we must expand possibility through temporary infrastructure and then solidify the expanded possibilities before the physical world reasserts itself.

As we reflect on the vibrant days of outdoor dining when there was a creative energy in the air, let’s hope that the city council makes the moves required to bring this important program back in a permanent fashion. Otherwise, the concrete will have proven heavier than our imaginations.

The physical world we’ve built has a chokehold on what we think is possible. This is because infrastructure creates self-reinforcing systems that shape what feels possible.

To escape this chokehold, we need to understand how it works, and how we can take advantage of it.

What’s Actually Happening

Example: A good bike lane doesn’t just allow biking, it makes biking easier, which produces bikers. This eventually makes biking normal, which changes what cities think is possible, which leads to more bike lanes.

I call this the induced possibility loop. It’s the process by which infrastructure creates self-reinforcing systems that shape what feels possible.1

What matters most is what happens after a new sense of what’s possible takes hold.

How New Possibilities Expand

1. Spread (New locations)

The original infrastructure is built in new locations as it travels as a best practice.

Example 1: Dutch style protected bike lanes are built in Seattle and Cambridge.

Example 2: After congestion pricing worked in cities around the world, it spread to NYC.

2. Deepening (Supporting Systems)

Supporting infrastructure is produced that is demanded as people pick up a new behavior.

Example 1: As people bike more, bike parking lots and bike rental services are established.

Example 2: Higher quality train stations and better train service are demanded to serve those affected by congestion pricing.

3. Imagination (New Infrastructure Ideas)

When one piece of infrastructure expands what people think is possible, it can create demand, and belief in the possibility of entirely new kinds of systems.

Example 1: The adoption of bike lanes changes how people experience streets. Once streets feel like places for people, not just cars, ideas like outdoor dining or more green space start to feel possible.

Example 2: The success of congestion pricing changed how people think about pricing as a policy tool. Once you’ve seen pricing change behavior at scale, extensions seem obvious. Cap and Invest schemes, charging for parking by demand, and extended producer responsibility all start to feel like obvious next steps.

One change in infrastructure can turn into many as each one shifts what people expect and demand next. Good interventions can expand what feels possible.

But this same process can also trap us.

Why So Little Feels Possible

The loop is currently clogged.

With the same designs everywhere, we begin to mistake them for inevitabilities. So little feels possible in our country: we are dominated by highways and suburbs, spanning a whole continent, which have reinforced the same behaviors, norms, and mental models for almost a century. If you’ve never seen anything else, this might just seem like the way the world has to be.

Even when people know more is possible, they often can’t change the infrastructure. Political and bureaucratic incentives often prevent new infrastructure from being built or scaled even when what feels possible has shifted. We continue to invest in “just another lane” when we understand better alternatives exist.2

But hope is not lost.

Despite the current suffocation our collective imagination, the right change will still multiply greatly. We can re-expand what feels possible.

To do this we have to make sure we are investing our time and effort in the right places. Many attempts at social change focus on shifting norms or making awareness without changing the underlying environment. These efforts often stall because they work against the loop, not with it. In fact we even know what to do: If a desired behavior isn’t happening, change the infrastructure. We overlook that culture is, in many cases, downstream of what is easy.

How to Use The Loop

So where should we look to make change? The loop guides us to some natural starting points.

Is there pro-social behavior happening despite infrastructure?

If so, if infrastructure were to enable it there would likely be a massive explosion of behavior.

Example: Are people picking up litter despite there being no infrastructure to enable this behavior? If so, that is a sign there is demand.

Is messaging doing all the work?

If there’s a pro-social behavior that demands constant messaging to elicit compliance, that’s a strong signal that the desired outcome isn’t easy enough to comply with given the current affordances.

Example: The amount of “curb your dog” signs in NYC implies a larger systemic problem.

Did an infrastructure change work better than expected?

If so, what working principle could be extrapolated? Are there other domains this could translate to?

Example: After the success of congestion pricing, what other behavior could we apply the mechanism of using pricing to make a behavior more or less attractive?

Examples:

For applied examples, these are two topics I’ve dug in on which focus on making a behavior that could change a norm easier.

Future City Sketches

"Curb Your Dog" Signs Don't Work. Here's What Does.

It’s a cold NYC night, loud with the sounds of trucks. My family’s dog, a Jack Russell Terrier named Miss Penny Lane, trembles with fear as we get in the elevator. Walking out of our warm building, she runs toward the tree bed right outside the door. If I let her have her way, she will jump the tree guard, pee immediately, and run right back to the door…

Read more

4 months ago · 23 likes · 1 comment · Jack Neiberg

Future City Sketches

The Hidden Social Rule That Keeps Parks Dirty

The Problem: Social Permission…

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4 months ago · 24 likes · 4 comments · Jack Neiberg

Seeing the Loop

What feels possible in the world is stuck because the infrastructure we rely on is stuck, and the way we try to make change often doesn’t work.

Next time you’re going for a walk, try to spot the invisible loops. Once you see it, every street starts to look different.

This is part of Future City Sketches, a series exploring how small interventions can reshape what feels possible in public systems.

I’m working on a deeper write-up of the full model and I’m happy to share if you’re interested!

For a video overview of this topic:

Government programs often struggle to reach the people they are designed to serve. One overlooked reason is that interacting with government services can be surprisingly difficult. Confusing forms, complex applications, and fragmented systems create what researchers call a “time tax,” or administrative burden.

Have you ever needed to stop to look something up while filling out a confusing form? Or worse, find someone to ask for help? We all know this frustration, but behind the scenes it has even more negative effects than we realize. Confusing services make government programs more expensive and less effective. This post explains how ‘administrative burden’ creates these hidden costs, how better service design can reduce them, and highlights a few teams already doing this work.

All bureaucracies produce confusing paperwork, but the constraints of government can produce uniquely challenging interactions. When interacting with a government service requires excessive time and effort from users, researchers refer to it as a “time tax” or “administrative burden.”1 We all face this ‘time tax’ in tax season, but the burden is hardest on those who interact with government services frequently, such as benefits recipients, builders, or small businesses. For example, New Yorkers wading through the fragmented benefits ecosystem are required to submit documents and answer confusing questions often through systems that are difficult to access or understand. Missing a single step can delay or derail an application entirely.

Time Tax / Administrative Burden: The costs to people interacting with government programs in terms of time spent navigating user-unfriendly interfaces.

Behind the veil of government, this paperwork produces an additional cost: the burden posed on the employees who have to process it. Think about it like this: every time you are confused and need support due to a preventable confusion, someone has to spend that time supporting you. Every time you submit burdensome paperwork, someone has to process it, likely on outdated technology. This means the time of agency staff and constituent liaisons, that we fund, is funneled away from other work. In extreme cases, entire call centers, nonprofit programs, or even businesses exist solely to help people navigate these systems. This is often not the fault of applicants or frontline staff, but a result of systems that are not aligned with current needs. This damages the morale of public servants, reduces citizens trust in government, and results in inefficient public spending.

Why Fixing Government Services Is Hard

There might seem like an obvious fix: make things simpler! From an outside perspective it’s easy to view this as a problem of bureaucratic incompetence. However, like most problems in government, if you look closely you will find smart, passionate people wading upstream through structural binds. For NYC, what are some of these structural constraints?

One is that many of the largest government programs are funded by the federal government (think SNAP, Medicaid, Section 8, Federal Tax Credits) through “Block Grants” to states and municipalities. These grants require the states and municipalities to fit requirements, such as confusing and rigid terms and questions. The resulting confusion and paperwork can cost millions more to process. In some cases, this complexity is not accidental, but even where there is no deliberate intent, many of the same burdens emerge. 2

There are structural hurdles even in situations where city administrators or legislators have more control (think CityFHEPS, SCRIE/DRIE, Building permits.) For example, contrary to popular belief, “the government” does not have all your data. In fact, on the city level, data is very siloed between agencies and protected by strict privacy laws, and much of this data is stored in ancient technology. Those with AI dreams will be frustrated to learn this.

There is another systemic problem: the rush of the budget cycle. Beyond just being frustrating, confusing services can create a reinforcing loop inside government budgets. These cycles are financial, but the result is that programs can fail to reach the people they were designed to serve.

As confusing services increase costs, they increase budget pressure which results in more rushed budget cuts as the city struggles to fit its annual balanced budget requirement. Administrations and agencies are incentivized to look for savings in the present, which can make it hard to invest in simplifying services for the future. However more importantly than costs, this means that programs are not accomplishing their goals of serving residents.

The Solution: How Service Design Reduces Administrative Burden

A clear way to pull ourselves out of this loop is to make the services less confusing. Luckily, there is a more easily addressable constraint here: the lack of technical capacity in behavioral design.3 Behavioral Design / Service Design4 can teach us how to accommodate human needs to ensure successful experiences.5 This happens by iteratively and frequently prototyping and then testing with end users to arrive at a smooth product. The result of this process is effective, accessible, and dignified services.

Smoother government services reduces the time tax on residents, increase trust in government, and sometimes relieve some of the budget pressure that distracts political energy from system-level improvements.

When I was a fellow at the Service Design Studio in the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, I was lucky enough to be exposed to some of the great people and teams doing work in this domain.

Examples of Service Design Improving Government

Many organizations and government teams are already working to reduce administrative burden through better service design. This is a short list that is not comprehensive.

The NYC.Gov Redesign

About the NYC.Gov Redesign

NYC.Gov was recently comprehensively redesigned with user-centered methods. This will continue to roll out across NYC government websites and is an exciting opportunity to streamline content and information architecture along the way.
In my understanding, the movement for smooth government portals was pioneered by the Government Digital Service in the UK.

About the UK Government Digital Service

Plain Language Training Resources for Government Staff

Plain Language Writing is a clear skill that government employees can learn to increase the effectiveness their outreach materials, applications, web content and more.

To learn more, here is a video advertising Plain Language Writing I made while at the Service Design Studio.

More Plain Language Materials

Form Redesign Workshops

Another cool opportunity is to deliberately up-skill city employees in behavioral design. The Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity organized a Form Redesign Workshop with Ideas42 to coach teams in applying behavioral design. The first cohort went very well and was documented in this blog post (which I may have helped write).

Organizations Advancing Service Design in Government:

If you are interested, there are many more organizations that do this work. This is not a comprehensive list but I offer it for your perusing.

• Public Policy Lab

• Ideas42

• Beeck Center for Social Innovation Digital Government Hub

• NAVA

• The former US Digital Service and 18F

Why This Work Matters

Better service design can save money, but more importantly it means that government programs actually work better for the people they are meant to serve. When services are easier to use, more residents access benefits, trust improves, and administrative costs often fall as a side effect. Investing in better service design will not solve every problem in government, but it is one of the most practical ways to make public programs work better for the people they are meant to serve.