Casualties of Change

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Change is usually accompanied by an outcry of pain. It seems that someone always loses. Lets take a recent example around where I live:

A new cycleway is built that makes people who are less confident at riding their bikes feel safe, encouraging them to ride more or even start riding.

Flow-on effects include:

  1. reducing traffic congestion by encouraging mode shift*
  2. reduced greenhouse gases
  3. makes it easier to live in the city, and
  4. generally creates a happier, healthier society.

Oh, and

       5. the amount of on-street parking reduces to make space for the cycleway.

Apparently, some businesses will have to close because of the loss of on-street parking. Ouch. That sucks.

But let's get high-level-big-picture-meta for a second...

We're (hopefully all) trying to take steps towards a future where there is:

  1. Smooth traffic flows.
  2. Reversed climate change.
  3. A vibrant central-city.
  4. Happy, healthy people.

We're not there yet, so some things need to change.

And it turns out, there are casualties of change.

Before we all leap to attempting to weigh up the relative importance of different contributors to our utopian future, and defending our particular area of concern/interest, let's not imagine that there aren't any casualties to the status quo. Choosing not to change causes casualties too. They're just casualties we often don't see, or have assumed always be there.

Changing how property works would have casualties. It's a change. There will be some losses, there will be some pain. Some of the pain might be worn by individual, some of it will be felt at a societal level.

But when we're weighing up the cost of change, lets not forget about the casualties inherent in our current system. 

*Mode Shift: A technical traffic engineering term I learnt that means something like "people who used to get somewhere using one type (mode) of transport (e.g. a car) now uses a different type (mode) of transport (e.g. a bike)