To Change Company Culture, Focus on Systems—Not Communication

I was fortunate in college to have taken a class that included Social Psychology of Organizations as a textbook.  It taught me about systems thinking.  (I'd lost my copy of the book, but recently repurchased it.  If you do, make sure to get the 1978 edition.)   

A few other books I read then, but not for class, further strengthened my thinking on this, including Diffusion of Innovations, Strategic Marketing for Not-For-Profit Organizations, and Change: Principles for Problem Formation and Problem Resolution.

Later, books like Reengineering the Corporation, Reinventing Government and Process Innovation.  Processes are systems or elements of sub-systems, and they aren't unique to IT or corporations.

So the headline of this Harvard Business Review article, "To Change Company Culture, Focus on Systems—Not Communication," called out to me.  I've written tons of articles espousing applying systems thinking to urban revitalization and planning ("20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part one -- (in)FAQ and my influences").

It's too bad people don't read blogs anymore, or that I haven't changed with the times, with say a Substack newsletter, or Medium.

From the article (emphasis added):

Culture is one of the most talked-about priorities in leadership, yet one of the least consistently understood. Executives routinely declare it is a strategic imperative. They launch values campaigns, unveil wellbeing programs, revise mission statements, and deliver impassioned talks about trust and purpose. But for all this activity, something isn’t working: in many organizations, we’ve seen that the louder leaders talk about culture, the more performative it feels—especially when actions don’t align with the message.

Culture shapes everything from decision-making norms to employee engagement, brand perception to risk tolerance. When it’s mismanaged, organizations don’t just lose trust; they lose traction.

... A consistent pattern emerged: many leaders treat culture as a communication strategy. They believe it lives in messaging—in the articulation of purpose, the rollout of values, the tone of internal campaigns. But culture doesn’t shift because a new narrative is introduced. It shifts when systems change.

What we found was striking: culture doesn’t fail because it’s forgotten. It fails because it’s misunderstood. It’s treated as branding, not behavior. As output, not infrastructure. And when that happens—even the most well-meaning efforts can erode the very trust they’re meant to build. Here’s what we learned.

... In many organizations, work on culture begins with visible gestures. Leadership teams roll out refreshed values, commission posters, launch Slack emoji packs, or schedule empathy workshops. While the intent is often genuine, when these symbolic efforts aren’t accompanied by a shift in leadership behavior, employees don’t feel inspired—they disengage.

Funny, this finding was the basis of the work by organizational psychologist Chris Argyris, who researched and wrote extensively on organizations and their ability to change. He found that while people expressed beliefs that they were collaborative and open to ground up approaches, the reality was the opposite, and a focus on top down decision making.  From the article:

The problem isn’t the intention—it’s the framing. Culture is still too often treated like a project: something to roll out, brand, or assign to HR. Meanwhile, underlying power dynamics, communication habits, and decision-making norms go untouched, and the deeper operating system stays intact.

Another HBR article had a lot of impact on me, "Your Company's Secret Change Agents," about how to elevate pockets of excellence in organizations that weren't high performing.  It was a rewarding but challenging article--I had to read it a couple times to fully understand it.

It's especially relevant to cities that are more distressed, emerging, and transitioning.

Redefining what public safety means: Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles

Defund the police versus... My big disappointment over the reaction to the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer was not the demonstrations, except when violent or used by thieves as an opportunity to commit crimes, was the slogan "Defund the Police" ("Is it too late to change the messaging on "Defund the Police"? How about "Reconstruct Policing"?"," 2020).

Redefining public safety.  The slogan certainly hasn't helped the Democrats, who've been wrong-footed on public safety ever since.  Most importantly, it obscured the real need, to redefine what public safety means and how to deliver it.

A multi-faceted public safety response, including police, at least initially costs more to deliver than the current system.  Although maybe not once savings are counted.

What is public safety? Is it to just arrest people after they commit a crime, is to provide the mental health care services that when not provided lead to people's problems being defined as criminal, is it to create lasting structural change with a number of moving parts, police--because face it, some people need to be "policed", mental health services and crews, programs to break the generational cycle of crime in low income neighborhoods. Etc.

Alex Vitale's End of Policing has some provocative suggestions about how to decriminalize many social problems, which have been criminalized because the lack of alternatives to police.

It's not "bad apple" police officers, the system is the "bad apple." It's unfortunate that the concept of "broken windows" policing ("Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety," Atlantic Magazine, 1982) got translated into practice as "zero tolerance" policing, with a focus on citing or arresting people for the most minor of violations.  

I often think that the New York City Transit Police--under William Bratton before he became overall Police Commissioner and the Transit Police were merged into NYPD--is the only place where true "broken windows" policing, with a focus on addressing disorder in terms of both people and place, was implemented.

-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016
-- "Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany," 2019
-- "Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today," 2023
-- "Proof of Broken Windows theory in Philadelphia and New York City," 2024

Failures repeat and few officers face repercussions for their illegal acts.  The blog entry "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented: Rochester New York" (2021) and the comments section discusses a broader paradigm for providing public safety focusing on continued problems in Rochester New York, when police respond to people with mental health issues.

Just last week, three Memphis police officers were exonerated for the killing of a man they cornered in a traffic stop ("3 former Memphis police officers found not guilty in the death of Tyre Nichols," NPR).  To me, these cases and those resulting in large payouts--e.g., Chicago spends millions of dollars per year on settlements over police misconduct--ought to be indicators of a need for a structural approach to change ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?," 2020).

Spending billions to maintain a community's level of crime and poverty/equity planning.  After my grand jury service in 2013, I was left with the thought that DC spends a couple billion dollars per year just to keep the low income parts of the system the same, at a negative equilibrium.  In Los Angeles a similar estimate is many many billions of dollars per year.

That led me to write about equity planning and social urbanism.

-- "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017
-- "Equity planning: an update," 2020
-- "Black community, economic and social capital: the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago/Chicago," 2021

Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles.  Besides NYC subways, Los Angeles probably has one of the most significant "public safety" initiatives built on broken windows windows principles in the US, the "Community Safety Partnership" ("How Watts and the LAPD make peace," Los Angeles Times).

I first wrote about the CSP in "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"" (2014) after seeing it featured on the old Bryant Gumbel HBO TV show on sports.

In 2020, I wrote a follow up speculative piece applying it to different kinds of neighborhoods not dealing with gang problems like LA, but the problems resulting from drug use ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)."

The heart of the program is building a new relationship between the community and the police department ("American Police Must Own Their Racial Injustices," American Prospect)

New article on the CSP.  Last week, Rolling Stone Magazine published an up to date article on the program, "Inside the Battle for the Soul of the LAPD."

... the most salient thing Coughlin did in 2011 was say yes to Emada Tingirides. Tingirides, a Black sergeant and unstoppable rock star in the LAPD, had been tasked with setting up four new squads to undertake the impossible in Watts: to make peace with its residents, build faith with its leaders, and break the gangs’ stranglehold on its corners. Those new units, to be known as the Community Safety Partnership (CSP), were the brainchild of a pair of ex-combatants: the newly named police chief, Charlie Beck, and a firebrand opponent of gang cops and chiefs, the social-justice titan Connie Rice. After years of warfare in open court — Rice, an attorney and civil rights activist, had spent decades suing men like Beck for their “blue grip” suppression of the poor — they’d come to a hard-won truth: Shock-and-awe policing didn’t work. Far from making Los Angeles safe, it wreaked war without end between cops and gangs, and turned Watts and Compton into domestic kill zones, forever blighting the lives of the kids raised there.

It was no one’s intent to invent the future of policing when CSP was launched in 2011. But that is precisely what its founders have done: built a new breed of cop and retooled the social contract between a community and the officers who protect it. It’s premised in the notion that safety is a covenant between two parties: the cops who patrol the riskiest streets, and residents who trust and respect those cops enough to help them keep the peace. That is where CSP comes in. It deploys its cops less as foot patrolmen than as problem-­solvers. They get streetlights fixed, abandoned cars towed, and gang graffiti scrubbed. They find jobs for strapped parents, treatment for first offenders, and vocational education for at-risk teens. They sit gang leaders down and strike a pact: They’ll ignore petty drug deals and public drinking on weekends in exchange for those men leaving their weapons at home. Above all, they recruit every kid they can find for CSP rec teams and youth clubs. Volunteer-based outfits like the Police Athletic League have been around for decades, offering after-school programs, tutoring, and camps in major cities across the country, but L.A. is actually paying CSP cops to run cheer squads and reading groups. 

... He walks me through the protocols CSP established before it sent its officers into Watts. Stop the stop-and-frisk — a tactic Bratton endorsed — replace it with stop-and-chat, and get to know everyone on your beat. Focus less on crime than the problems that create it, especially with respect to school-age kids. Become their Pee Wee coach or their reading tutor. Take them out to Popeyes for heart-to-hearts. And when violent crimes occur, go arrest the doer, then return and ask his folks what they need: cash or food assistance, a job-training slot, an after-school program.

Despite the success, it's a constant battle to keep the CSP program in LA going, because it is so different from how police departments mostly operate on the principles of "warrior policing," "zero tolerance policing," "shock and awe" policing, mass incarceration, and focusing on car-based response to 911 calls rather than place-based policing.  It's another example that the problems of policing are structural, not the fault of a bad apple or two.

For example, a pilot CSP was created in the MacArthur Park area of LA.  But it never became part of the program, wasn't continued, and the gains have all been lost ("Community safety partnership for MacArthur Park in Los Angeles?").  And the program hasn't expanded to abutting neighborhoods that have similar problems.

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Exemplary public safety programs, that are mostly one-offs

• the above-mentioned Community Safety Partnership
• true broken windows policing
• Fullerton, California police department reorganized after officers beat a homeless man to death ("Killing people is seen as a routine outcome, not as an indicator of the need for change: Orange County Sheriff's Department versus Fullerton Police Department," 2022)
• CAHOOTS (Eugene, Oregon) and other mental health response units here and there across the country--nevertheless most cities don't have enough teams to provide round the clock service and killings at the hands of police still occur
• Domestic violence response unit, High Point, NC and Appleton, Wisconsin  (""How High Point, N.C., Solved Its Domestic Violence Problem," Governing Magazine, "11 questions that could save a woman's life," Appleton Post-Crescent)
• Operation Ceasefire, gang intervention program, Boston ("Straight Outta Boston," Mother Jones)

Chicago Community Policing Study

Civic groups in Chicago joined in to commission a study, Operationalizing Community Policing Within the Chicago Police Department: A Summary of Current and Promising National Practices, to help the Chicago Police Department realize its goal to become an agency committed to "community oriented policing."

21CP’s study – which involved interviews with personnel and community stakeholders with direct knowledge of community policing practices in 17 jurisdictions nationally as well as a review of relevant literature –identified a number of elements that CPD’s community policing approach should reflect and incorporate going forward, including:  

• Community policing must be an express, defined overall philosophy. In many, but not all, of the departments studied, community policing is specifically identified as an overall philosophy of policing and an overarching way that the department does its work – and not a specialized program with its own label, name, or personnel
• Community engagement must be understood as part of, but not the same as, overall community policing. Because community policing involves dynamic partnership with community to co-produce public safety, it necessarily requires police personnel to foster relationships with community stakeholders. However, operationalizing “community policing” likely benefits from police departments systematically describing how that community engagement factors into a wider “community policing” philosophy or approach.
• Community policing likely benefits from formally codifying and tracking community problems, assets, and events – and from other types of centralized, department-wide coordination or administration. Even as community policing can and must happen at the level of individual officers, problem-solving efforts, community assets, and opportunities for community engagement must be inventoried, codified, and tracked so that progress can be made and measured. That is, it appears that departments benefit from maintaining some structures and processes to ensure that individual personnel are appropriately “plugged into” the department or a geographic area’s community policing concerns.
• Police agencies must articulate specific, granular performance expectations for personnel across all ranks (i.e., including supervisors) and roles on community policing responsibilities and provide training on such expectations. This may include: (1) Specific guidance on how to use unstructured community engagement time (2) Specific guidance on how to incorporate community policing principles into call response and enforcement activity (3) Specific guidance or instructions on promoting visibility (4) Designating specific expectations about the amount of time that officers should spend on community and problem-oriented policing activities; and (5) Providing personnel with responsibility for a defined geographic area
• Community policing programs benefit from mechanisms for gathering, analyzing, and using performance data and metrics. For a police agency to gauge whether its personnel are in fact conducting the types of activities that community policing requires, it will necessarily benefit from collecting and analyzing information from the field about officer performance. Although some departments have established mechanisms for gauging performance and outcomes, several departments with whom 21CP engaged said that data and metrics regarding community policing is an area that they are actively trying to address – recognizing that the absence of concrete information makes it more difficult for the department to gauge its level of success and share positive outcomes with community and external stakeholders.
• Many departments benefit from having some centralized, department-wide coordination or administration of community policing. Although departments must ensure that the existence of some individuals to oversee community policing is not seen by others as making community policing someone else’s role or responsibility, they can benefit from personnel ensuring that the department, as a whole, is aligning its activities with the community policing objective.

Also see the blog entry:

-- "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented: Rochester New York," 

Creating risks, the DC plane crash: risk analysis and investigation

Wreckage is seen in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. Petty Officer 2nd Class Taylor Bacon, U.S. Coast Guard via AP.

The tragic crash resulting in 67 deaths seems preordained ("Boats return to the Potomac River for D.C plane crash recovery and investigation," Philadelphia Inquirer).  

For years, it's been written that because of restrictions on airspace use around the White House, planes fly to and from National Airport through extremely narrow corridors and tight elevations ("Pilots have long worried about DC’s complex airspace contributing to a catastrophe," AP, note: it requires going into a good library articles database to get older links).

But I don't recall these articles discussing airplanes also having to negotiate airspace with military helicopters on training missions from various bases along the Potomac River, like Fort Belvoir, the duty station for the helicopter involved in the crash.

A Reddit thread shared an interesting article, "Why You’ve Never Been In A Plane Crash" (Asterisk Magazine) about airplane crash investigation not being focused on "blame" as much as the process/system that likely generated the crash, with a focus on structural change.

It discusses a case in Los Angeles, and how a series of near misses similar to the final crash bred complacency.  The New York Times article, "Washington Crash Renews Concerns About Air Safety Lapses" sounds like it could have been pulled from the files on the LA crash, detailing ongoing process issues at National Airport, which, scarily, appear to be more common across the country.  From the article:

Clues emerging from the moments before the deadly collision Wednesday night between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet suggest that multiple layers of the country’s aviation safety apparatus failed, according to flight recordings, a preliminary internal report from the Federal Aviation Administration, interviews with current and former air traffic controllers and others briefed on the matter.

The helicopter flew outside its approved flight path. The American Airlines pilots most likely did not see the helicopter close by as they made a turn toward the runway. And the air traffic controller, who was juggling two jobs at the same time, was unable to keep the helicopter and the plane separated.

WMATA Fort Totten crash, CBC photo.

The same kind of complacency at the airport ("Near-misses at Washington airport worried pilots well before fatal crash," Reuters) seems comparable to WMATA's Metrorail which experienced a number of signals failures induced near misses before the 2009 crash that killed 9 ("WMATA circuit failure," 2009).

Plus things could have been even more discombobulated because of the Trump Administration's call for air traffic controllers to leave government service ("Air traffic controllers were initially offered buyouts and told to consider leaving government," AP).  OTOH, Trump blamed DEI and the Biden Administration ("Trump was challenged after blaming DEI for the DC plane crash. Here’s what he said," AP).

Another way to think about gap analysis/planning

 I joke that I might not be a good planner, but I'm great at gap analysis.  I meant to read this Financial Times column last week, "The secret to finding the best idea ever? First think about the absolute worst  When looking for a business breakthrough, a design innovation, or a flash of artistic insight, it’s smart to think in reverse," but I forgot.

The title puts gap analysis in perspective.  There are so many bad ideas and implementation, how can I not excel at gap analysis?  

But it's also about brainstorming.  People make important, interesting points, or share ideas.  I build on them.  And it's two-way.  People improve and extend ideas I put out there too.

From the article:

Creativity gurus have termed this approach looking for the “worst possible idea”. When looking for a business breakthrough, a design innovation or a flash of artistic insight, it can be hard to think of much when challenged to dream up a good idea. Far easier, less intimidating and more fun to write down a list of terrible ideas, then see what those terrible ideas suggest once you turn them on their heads. 

Sometimes the worst-idea exercise is little more than a warm-up, getting the imaginative sparks flying before the real creative work begins. Sometimes, however, focusing on what makes an idea bad shines the spotlight on what might make an idea good. If the bad idea is to make a product look clumsy and ugly, that suggests it’s worth paying more attention to the product’s elegance and beauty. If the bad idea is to ship the product with bewildering instructions, the good idea is to hire an editor to hone the instructions. 

... So let’s hear it for wilful contrarianism in the search for inspiration. Sometimes looking for a bad idea gets the creative juices flowing. Sometimes a bad idea perfectly highlights what would make an idea good. And sometimes, the bad idea is actually the best idea of all.

Super design forward buses in Mexico: Irizar ie tram

Merida city in Mexico is creating a new bus rapid transit system ("IE tram system brings to Merida a whole different means of transportation," Yucatan Times, "Yucatan's Electrifying IE-TRAM Project," Mexico Business News), and as part of it, they're using Irizar ie tram bus vehicles, produced by the Irizar company in Turkey, which look more like fixed rail transit vehicles than buses.

While the specifications on the website only show a 40 foot long bus, images also show an extended version in the articulated bus form.

In "Making bus service sexy and more equitable," as a way to position bus service as a high quality servivce, I suggest that cities like Washington should switch to double deck buses, made famous by London, but used in many cities in Europe especially, but also Las Vegas and Ottawa, Ontario.  The Vegas and Ottawa buses are pretty dowdy looking, while Luxembourg puts them to shame.

Flickr photo of The Deuce, Las Vegas, by EYBusman.

The Irizar ie tram is a worthy option as a way to reposition the image of bus transit.

Also see:

-- "Design forward trains and streetcars: Haga-Utsunomiya Light Rail and Brightline (plus bonus)," 2023

-- "Branding's (NOT) all you need for transit," 2018

Learning what not to do from the New England Patriots football team

Before I came up with the Transformational Projects Action Planning approach ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017), earlier I came up with a method I called Action Planning, which incorporates design thinking and social marketing into the planning process, based on best practices I observed in Arlington County and the Tower Hamlets borough of London ("Social Marketing the Arlington (and Tower Hamlets and Baltimore) way," 2008, "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method," 2012).  

From "Design Thinking," American Libraries, 2008

I used action planning concepts when I did a pedestrian and bicycle plan for Baltimore County ("Best practice bicycle planning for suburban settings using the "action planning" method," 2010).

Basically, I'm interested in continuous process improvement and iterative learning ("Incrementalism as a concept of iterative improvement in government project development no longer a legitimate public administration theory," 2023) applied to government and social program improvement.

I have a bunch of posts on this for government:

-- "Big data/Machine Learning/AI as a policy savior," 2022
-- "I get tired of all the talk about rewarding "failure" because it shows people are trying, and won't be penalized for it," 2017
-- "Creating the right program vs. the hype of big data," 2013
-- "Does the focus on big data mean we miss the opportunity for better use of "little data"," 2015
-- "For a lot of "urban problems" the issue isn't knowledge about what to do, but willingness to engage that knowledge," 2017
-- "Helping Government Learn," 2009
-- "Positive Deviance and DC Public Schools," 2007
-- "Positive Deviance in New York City (public schools)," 2009
-- "3 R's of Transforming the school system," 2007

Digging deeper to learn the right lesson.  Sometimes I tell the story of the first project I did at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a report on the presence of a potential carcinogen in alcoholic beverages.  We sold a fair number of copies through press mentions.  It happened that the chief author, editor of the newsletter, and I were eating lunch together in the basement lunchroom (it had a stove, a luxury for an office), and we ended up doing an after action analysis.

I was certain the report sold because of the policy comparisons between the US and Canada.  The newsletter editor said no, it was because of the list of test results included, and people wanted to check if what they drank was potentially tainted.  In short, it wasn't about policy it was about self-help.

It was an important lesson to me about not learning the wrong lesson from success.  But to dig deeper for the right lesson.

Learning from sports teams.  There are tons of "leadership books" and seminars and articles about leadership lessons from sports team coaches.  Then again, there's a lot written about abuse by coaches ("Beneath NCAA gymnastics’ glow, a familiar ‘toxic’ culture," Washington Post).

Because I went to the University of Michigan, a big sports school, I got turned off by large team sports. I don't watch sports on television for the most part.  I don't go to games.

It seemed futile to witness people getting in fights when Michigan lost.  I used to say "whether or not they win or lose, I still have to take my finals."  That being said, I hope they win, but I haven't watched four full quarters of football equivalent of the team over the past 40 years.

However, I find the business, politics, and societal aspects of professional sports interesting, and of course relevant to urban revitalization and policy.  And I have been reading sports stories a lot more in the past 12-18 months because the rest of the news--the US's slow but steady march to authoritarianism pushed forward by Trump ("Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term," Washington Post, "Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025," New York Times)--is so depressing.

(Rory Smith of the New York Times/The Athletic, who writes about European soccer, writes many interesting stories along these lines.)

Learning from the New England Patriots: it's easy to learn the wrong lessons.  In the same vein of my lesson from CSPI, there is a great column about the decline of the New England Patriots football team ("The fall of the Patriots: An obsession with ‘value’ has led to the lowest point in 30 years," Boston Globe).

Under the coach, Bill Bellichick, the team became famed for finding "value" players, e.g., a fifth round selection for half the cost of a name player, who performed just as well or better.  The coaches all thought their success was them, not fully acknowledging the role Tom Brady, the quarterback and a diamond in the rough late draft selection, played in pulling it all together.  Since Brady left, the team has languished, really badly.  From the article:

“To be good in the business of football today — and good to me is not being good one year, but try to sustain it year in and year out — you have to understand economics and you have to understand value,” Kraft said near the end of his team’s almost-magical 2007 season. “I think every discussion I had with Bill, he understood value.”

The concept of value helped the Patriots win six championships and dominate the NFL for 20 years. On the field and on the salary-cap ledger, the Patriots were better than any team at working the margins, identifying undervalued assets, and exploiting loopholes.

It worked brilliantly when Tom Brady was leading the franchise to unprecedented heights. But “value” has since become a negative in Foxborough. The Patriots’ obsession with finding value — constantly looking for ways to spend 50 cents on the dollar — is why they are 2-8 and at their lowest point since Kraft bought the franchise 30 seasons ago. That obsession has seeped into every crevice of Gillette Stadium, weakening the core of a once-dominant franchise.

The coaches and owner learned the wrong lesson.  Value mattered and matters, but it works in a certain set of circumstances, and to keep working, a great amount of flexibility and serendipity is required.  

“If you gave us any of the top 15 [quarterbacks], we could do it. I don’t think the coaches view Tom as special as everyone else in football does.”

They thought it was them, but they were just a piece of a whole that they didn't truly understand.

Failures in Design Thinking.  The Stanford Social Innovation Review has published articles over the years about application of design thinking to social enterprises and social issues.  The current issue has an article, "Design Thinking Misses the Mark," about the failures of the applications of design thinking.  That's what I've been writing about for years, obviously, as indicated by the text above.  From the article:

However, design thinking has not lived up to such promises. In a 2023 MIT Technology Review article, writer and designer Rebecca Ackerman argued that while “design thinking was supposed to fix the world,” organizations rarely implement the ideas generated during the design-thinking process. The failure to implement these ideas resulted from either an inadequate understanding of the problem and/or of the complexities of the institutional and cultural contexts. One of Ackerman’s examples is the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), which hired IDEO in 2013 to redesign the school district’s cafeterias. The five-month design-thinking process resulted in 10 recommendations, including creating a communal kitchen and using technology to reduce cafeteria lines. However, Angela McKee Brown, the consultant SFUSD hired to implement the recommendations, told Ackerman that IDEO failed to account for the operational and regulatory arrangements required for their implementation.

We reject design thinking as a singular tool kit prescribed to solve social problems. In what follows, we explain why design thinking as typically practiced has not been able to create impactful and sustainable solutions to complex social issues. Instead, we call for a critical stance on design, where critical means both discerning and important. We invite designers to adopt a continuously reflexive and questioning stance akin to what scholar and activist Angela Davis called “a way of thinking, a way of inhabiting the world, that asks us to be constantly critical, constantly conscious.”

... The social sector is inherently complex because it consists of a multitude of actors across different contexts, timelines, and political realities. Any approach that purports to easily solve for such complexity is more likely than not to be reductive and therefore ineffective. Design thinking tends toward oversimplification in at least three ways. 

Design thinking is formulaic

Design thinking is decontextualized

Design thinking is short-termist. 

The article goes on to provide recommendations on how to improve the approach.

Conclusion.  My form of design thinking, effectuated through the concepts of wider scopes for planning, action planning, and transformational projects action planning (also see "A wrinkle in thinking about the Transformational Projects Action Planning approach: Great public buildings aren't just about design, but what they do," 2022), aims to avoid those faults.

Design forward trains and streetcars: Haga-Utsunomiya Light Rail and Brightline (plus bonus)

When I first was into the idea of reintroducing streetcars into American cities, I favored re-adopting the heritage streetcar vehicle ("A National Mall-focused heritage (replica) streetcar service to serve visitors is a way bigger idea," 2013).  

But maybe 15+ years ago, I had a conversation with Dan Malouff (Beyond DC), and he made the point that for a lot of people that might mean that streetcars are dowdy and old fashioned.

His point was provocative.  And I'm sure I disagreed at the time.  But he's right.  

Today, too many people scoff at streetcars as "19th century technology."  Although cars are 19th century too.  The thing is both have improved since.  But really they are knocking mass transit for being transit while favoring individualized personal mobility.  

Design should be a key element in repatterning how people think about transit.

A lot of train design is clunky, or at least given that the trainsets are used (unless terribly faulty) for at least 40 years, it's important to try to get the design right and to be forward, recognizing it will be around for a long time.  

While I think Baltimore's light rail cars have a kind of industrial charm, they have been in service for 31 years, and likely many more.  They don't communicate "design forward."  (Note that in my writings on the Purple Line, I suggested that they replace the Baltimore light rail vehicles at the same time.  But that's expensive when the cars have years of useful life yet.)

Most governments aren't so great at this, but there are exceptions.

There's an article in the Financial Times, "Kenneth Grange: ‘The government once had ideas about how to use design’," about a famous designer in the UK, and he commented about how the UK government was once truly focused on the value of design as an element of the built environment:

He also says the Design Council, founded in 1944, was a cornerstone of his career, a government body which “approved” the right kinds of designs. “It was an incredible thing,” he says. “The government had ideas about how to use design, for how to recover from the war and for society. And it promoted industry too; everything then was made here, now absolutely everything is made in China.” 

... One thing Grange points out is that so many of his designs were the result of central or local government commissions, from the Festival of Britain to parking meters and trains, something almost unthinkable today. “Wouldn’t it be great if [Keir] Starmer, or whoever ends up trying to govern this country, embraced the idea of believing in design in the creation of real stuff that makes real lives better?”

And you have the great example of Frank Pick who incorporated design into the communications and stations and trains of what we now call the London Underground.

I do have a piece about this, "Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward," which includes links to scads of entries as design as an element of urban revitalization.

I watch "Japan Railway Journal" on NHK as a way to keep in touch with best practice in Japanese rail matters.  While it's a sub-channel for many PBS stations, it's also available on demand.

For the most part they cover trains and stations, but sometimes but not nearly enough local transit systems operating in Japan.

The latest episode is "Haga Utsunomiya LRT: Shaping Communities," on Japan's first new from the ground up streetcar/tram/what they call light rail in 75 years.  

HU 300 light rail car.

The line was built mostly for Utsunomiya City, capital of Tochigi Prefecture, but during the planning phases it was slightly extended to the manufacturing district of Haga, which is a major job center ("Utsunomiya in Japan: The new light rail opened today!," Urban Transport Magazine).  

Just like in the US, it took a long time to realize, about 30 years from idea to working line--about 10 miles.  And its primary purpose is urban revitalization and centralizing new development along the transit line, with the aim of promoting trips on transit instead of by the car.

There's talk about extending it to the Utsunomiya City Hall, but I think they should also extend it to Haga's center, as the manufacturing district is on the edge of Utsunomiya, and the light rail barely extends into Haga.

But related to Dan's point, the streetcars are absolutely design forward, with a great design, low floors, huge swathes of glass for the windows, and a decent livery.  

The cars are called HU 300 and are manufactured by Niigata Transys, although Alstom is a partner as they provided the bogie/wheel sets.

Similarly, Brightline ("Florida's Brightline passenger rail as an opportunity to rearticulate and extend transit service in cities like Orlando"), the "new" private passenger rail service operating from Miami to Orlando (an extension to Tampa is planned) also has well designed trains and liveries.

In "Branding's (NOT) all you need for transit," I discuss how London Underground is treated as a "design product":

The London Underground as a design product. The London Underground is an outlier for transit systems in that it has been a consistent innovator in design and usability for 100+ years.

Key to this development was Frank Pick, who started at the agency being responsible for communications ("PR") and who laid the groundwork for corporate branding by coordinating all elements of the program into an integrated and extensive transit system -- advertising, branding, station architecture, vehicle design, and mapping -- with the highest standards for "design."

That legacy had been maintained through the creation of "product design managers" for the various transportation modes managed by the successor agency, Transport for London. But more recently, because the agency has been crushed by needing to find money to pay for Crossrail, in part because the national government cut back its contribution, they've cut these positions (and many other programs across the system).

-- Product design guidelines, Transport for London

Although in our IT centric world these days maybe people think about this more in terms of what is now called UX or User Experience.  

Brightline also does that, better than Amtrak, more like how it was done "back in the day" with railroad passenger service as being a premier service by railroads.

And the ads ("American Streamlined Trains. Striking Ads of the 1940s," Ikonographia). This page classifies ads, and the elements of premier train service as:

• the equipment
• power and speed
• comfort and service
• ability to serve leisure and vacation (and commuting)
• designing trains for the future.

Brightline's focus on first mile/last mile transportation integration with train service is unparalleled.  They even sponsor bike share in some places ("Brightline kick starts bike share rental program," Florida Weekly).  

(Deutsche Bahn was an early pioneer in bike sharing, but not in other elements of first mile/last mile.  In Los Angeles, the local transit agency is the deliverer of bike share.  This is an outlier in the US.)

Multiplicity bus system Luxembourg.  I've mentioned these buses.

Flickr photo by km_edinburgh

Flickr photo by EYBusman.

And I just came across the livery for the Class 222 trains of East Midland Trains in the UK.

Post columnist Colbert King says the DC Council needs to do more oversight

In "An example of oversight from the D.C. Council? More of that, please."  Duh.  He makes the point that the Council probably needs more staff to be able to do so.  One of the comments on the article made a point about a local "Government Accountability Office" function.

The article mentions Councilmember Robert White questioning at a hearing, Brenda Donald, director of the DC Housing Authority, asking about her $40,000+ bonus for the year, after the agency was ripped to shreds by a HUD inspection report ("D.C. Housing Authority’s leadership is failing, HUD report says," Post).  After the Executive branch restructured the board in ways that didn't necessarily improve functioning and oversight--the Council pretty much rolled over on that.

Speaking of oversight, how is that the DCHA, which was revitalized during the administration of Anthony Williams, has in 15 years, deteriorated to one of the worse in the country?  Doesn't say much for executive branch competence.

I've written about how to improve the legislative branch and oversight over the years, "Continued musing on restructuring DC's City Council (mostly)" (2013), is probably the most complete summation of recommended changes.

In "Outline for a proposed Ward-focused (DC) Councilmember campaign platform and agenda" (2015), I suggest more tools for ward-specific oversight.

But I realize it's yetanother post, where I reference organizations like the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington State or the Independent Budget Office of New York City, and I never mentioned the Congressional Research Service, which besides the GAO and the Congressional Budget Office, provides such resources to Congress, along with Committee staffs.

Organizations like the MRSC or IBO provide a lot of deep research which is almost uniformly lacking when it comes to DC policy development and program practice.  Although to be fair, the same goes for plenty of other cities.

-- "For a lot of "urban problems" the issue isn't knowledge about what to do, but willingness to engage that knowledge" (2017)

DC has Inspector Generals and an Auditor who reports to Council.  The auditor, former Councilmember Kathy Patterson, has done a lot of good reporting.  But again, the Executive Branch doesn't seem to want to engage with it, and the Council doesn't push.

In some cities, more independent offices, like the New York City Comptroller--currently Brad Lander--who is elected, do this kind of work as well, and bring more attention to the ins and outs of better governance.

=====

Note that separatelly I argue for training, assistance, and capacity development systems for the city's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and citizens groups more generally.

-- "Framingham Massachusetts creates Citizen Participation Officer position," 2018
-- "Building civic engagement systematically: Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods," 2022

And in general across the board in other cities too.

Big data/Machine Learning/AI as a policy savior

The Post has an article about how Virginia Congressman Don Beyer is getting a masters degree in machine learning so he can apply AI to government and creating better policy ("A 72-year-old congressman goes back to school, pursuing a degree in AI").

Over the years I've written about the hype about big data and "apps," making the point that there is plenty of "little data" and academic analysis of policy that is already being ignored, despite the richness it offers for improvement in policy and practice.

-- "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method," 2012
-- "Creating the right program vs. the hype of big data," 2013
-- "Does the focus on big data mean we miss the opportunity for better use of "little data"," 2015
-- "For a lot of "urban problems" the issue isn't knowledge about what to do, but willingness to engage that knowledge," 2017

In fact, the Post has another current article, "How Black activists in Northern Virginia transformed the way children learn to read," about how despite persistent--over decades--lagging outcomes in Fairfax County Schools for black students in learning how to read the school district wasn't doing anything about it, until the local NAACP chapter stepped in.

Positive deviance theory: Hope amidst failure.  Years ago I read an article, "Your Company's Secret Change Agents, in the Harvard Business Review about "positive deviance" theory, how in even the worst performing organization there are pockets of excellence, and you can use those clusters of best practice to reshape the organization.

I believed in the approach for a long time, but the reality is that most organizations, even poorly performing ones, are highly resistant to change, improvement, and innovation, and they can counteract pockets of excellence with incredible resistance and inertia.

For example, I was really troubled by an example in Boston, where a junior high school improved to the point where it was an international best practice example, yet the people who helped the school succeed were pushed out, and over time the school reverted back to the mean of mediocre performance.  In fact, now it's slated for closure.

-- "A positive deviance failure in Boston: Timilty Middle School," 2022

What an incredible waste.

Like my frustration with DC Government.  After two terms, eight years, the reelected mayor is looking for innovative ideas?

-- "I can't help but laugh... DC Mayor's third term as a platform for transformation"

Similarly, the reelected Mayor of Toronto says he's best placed to reverse the city's last 8 years of decline, decline that he ruled over.

-- "Brutal performance art criticism of Toronto's Mayor, John Tory, and his "austerity" agenda"

Transformational Projects Action Planning. ("A wrinkle in thinking about the Transformational Projects Action Planning approach: Great public buildings aren't just about design, but what they do"). By contrast, I propose the concept of transformational projects action planning, leveraging master plans and projects to push innovation forward in a variety of ways.

TPAPs should be implemented at multiple scales: 

(1) neighborhood/district/city/county wide as part of a master plan; 

(2) within functional elements of a master plan such as transportation, housing, or economic development; and 

(3) within a specific project (e.g., how do we make this particular library or transit station or park or neighborhood "great"?); in terms of both 

(4) architecture and design; and 

(5) program/plan for what the functions within the building accomplish.

At the master plan scale, I've written about this in terms of Bilbao ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning") and Edmonton ("Downtown Edmonton cultural facilities development as an example of "Transformational Projects Action Planning""), and for infrastructure projects, the Purple Line light rail program in Suburban Maryland ("Codifying the complementary transit network improvements and planning initiatives recommended in the Purple Line writings") and the Silver Line Metrorail in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties in Virginia ("Using the Silver Line as the priming event, what would a transit network improvement program look like for Northern Virginia?").

At the scale of an individual project, the best example comes from my piece about best practice development of libraries, focused mostly on branch libraries, but not exclusively.

-- "Neighborhood libraries as nodes in a neighborhood and city-wide network of cultural assets," 2018

Flickr photo by Laura Billings of an Idea Store, with a farmers market out front.

One standout is how the Tower Hamlets borough of London merged their workforce development programs with the libraries, and relocated the libraries to well located places instead of in out of the way otherwise vacant buildings, using forward architecture and advanced branding and identity systems, to create "Idea Stores" ("The Idea Story," "Is this the library of the future?," BBC).

It's a particularly great example of how architecture is not enough.  They retained a now renowned architect, and he gets a lot of library commisions as a result.  But the other libraries afterward prove that it isn't design, but program, that makes for an innovative library.

Innovation Officers.  Along with the focus on big data, "Apps for Democracy," etc., a number of cities created "Chief Innovation Officers."  

I think that thrust has pretty much fallen by the wayside ("Whatever Happened to Innovation in Government?," Federal Computing Week) although Bloomberg Government News doesn't agree, "Chief innovation officers reconnect as their movement grows."

I was so impressed by the book Reinventing Government, back in the days of the Clinton Administration.  A promise that was never realized.

Killing people is seen as a routine outcome, not as an indicator of the need for change: Orange County Sheriff's Department versus Fullerton Police Department

Fullerton Police Department.  Fullerton's police department completely revamped its use of force, training, and other practices after police officers beat Kelly Thomas, a homeless man, to death in July 2011

While the city paid out a big judgement to his family, rather than accept what happened as "an accident," the City of Fullerton evaluated various police processes and changed them, to reduce the likelihood of injury and death in interactions between the police and the public ("Here's how Fullerton police have improved since Kelly Thomas' death." Orange County Register).

The changes in practice were not limited to dealing with homeless people or people in mental distress, but in how all of the city's police officers interact with the public and how they are trained.

The police department has set a goal of being one of the best police departments in the country for its size, and measures its success through annual independent reviews.  From the article:

The study offers a half-dozen recommendations – compared with 59 in its first review – that range from striving to use the least force necessary to more cautious foot pursuits. 

... Four years ago, OIR Group recommended that officers – when safely possible – employ less force by increasing time and distance, using cover and concealment, creating barriers, and calling and waiting for backup.

“The department,” the document says, “has substantially addressed many of the shortcomings we noted in our 2012 report.” 

First, a new training room was built for officers to practice lesser-force techniques. Then, a video-based interactive training system was installed. It offers more than 200 bad-guy scenarios, and each one can be altered with the touch of a screen. 

“These upgrades in training facilities,” the report concludes, “allow trainers to emphasize the importance of tactical alternatives to force, particularly deadly force.” 

The training may be paying off. Citizen complaints have dropped from a high of 36 in 2014 to a low of 24 last year. 

Still, the new report offers new suggestions. They include requiring incident reports to check off threat perception, least-use-of-force efforts, and adherence to reporting policies. 

The process in Fullerton is appears to be a national model, unlike the whitewashes that seem to be happening in most other cities when it comes to evaluating police departments and officers in terms of excessive force and deaths at the hands of police officers.

--  Fullerton Police Department: Audit of Force Reviews and Internal Investigations, August 2016, OIR Group

Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies kill a homeless man in San Clemente, September 2020 ("DA clears deputy who shot and killed homeless Black man in San Clemente," Orange County Register). 

Officers from the homeless liaison unit !!!!!!! confronted a homeless man who was jaywalking.  In the struggle that resulted, they determined he reached for one of the officer's gun, so they shot and killed him.

The DA cleared the officers, saying he was reaching for the gun, but that is disputed.  Amazingly, the DA said that the man wasn't jaywalking (although they said he was crossing against a green light giving them still the reason to stop him).

Process redesign.  It's so obvious the officers in San Clemente mishandled this, and is just as egregious as the actions of the West Valley Utah Police Department in their apprehension and subsequent killing of a man in mental distress, which was documented by the Salt Lake Tribune ("A West Valley City police officer killed a man inside the police department. It was his third shooting") and later featured in a Frontline documentary, "Shots Fired."

It happens over and over and over again because police departments, their "overseers" -- the fact is that true oversight is minimal -- elected officials and the public see such killings as routine, maybe unfortunate, but not as an indicator of process failure.

For example, I argue that the high rate of settlements for police misconduct ought to be seen as an indicator of system failure ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?," 2020).

Instead, rather than get fired, the West Valley police officer serial killer got a commendation.  And the family just got a settlement "West Valley City settles lawsuit with mother of man shot, killed while handcuffed in police station").

Why is Fullerton's police department such an outlier?  This is something I need to track down.

Firefighter vaccine refusal as a reorganization opportunity

In the past I've written about how fire departments these days mostly respond to medical calls, but most departments haven't reorganized to reflect this fact, in part a result of labor contracts which mandate stasis.

-- "Rationalizing fire and emergency services," 2011
-- "Fire department issues in municipalities," 2014
-- "DC's fire department is in the same situation as WMATA in terms of the necessity of a redesign of culture and behavior through a human factors approach," 2015

A column in the Los Angeles Times, "To anti-vax firefighters, bye-bye. Now let's build back better at the LAFD," suggests that the Los Angeles Fire Department has an opportunity to do some reorganization in view of the likelihood that 300-400 firefighters will be put on permanent leave for refusal to get vaccinated.  From the article:

That’s why Andrew Glazier, a former member of the Board of Fire Commissioners, sees a potential mass departure as an opportunity rather than a problem. 

“If you lose several hundred people, and you refuse to change your operating model, then, yeah, you’ll have a big problem,” said Glazier. “But … if they were willing to add single-function paramedics to the department, you can hire them up and have them in the field in six weeks or less, and you can continuously hire them as needed.”

About 85% of the calls for the fire department are medical.  The Firefighters Union represents firefighters not paramedics, and firefighters get paid more.  So the union continues to advocate for firefighters being cross-trained as paramedics, rather than hiring paramedics specifically and reorganizing services to focus on paramedics.  

Although cross-training makes sense too, the reality is that fewer firefighters and related equipment are required to serve the average city today than in the past.

And as it is, comparable to crime analysis approaches in police departments, if fire departments put some resources into "fire suppression" by providing assistance to communities and households where buildings have characteristics indicating the potential for catastrophe, house fires especially would be less of a problem.

As I wrote in 2017, in "I get tired of all the talk about rewarding "failure" because it shows people are trying, and won't be penalized for it":

... [the] article ("Cities Are Having a Data and Analytics-Driven Moment, and It's Likely to Stay") in Government Technology [describes] an initiative in  New Orleans, where the firefighters decided to be proactive in distributing smoke alarms in neighborhoods with a higher rate/risk of fires. From the article:

In New Orleans, the city has been saving lives by using data to predict which of the city’s buildings need to be equipped with fire alarms. Using data collected by the Census and New Orleans Fire Department, the city identified building age, building inhabitant income, and building inhabitant occupation length as strong predictors for determining if a structure may not have a smoke alarm installed. It then mapped this information along with fire risk calculated from resident age data and fire data over the previous five years. The program’s results now inform NOFD’s door-to-door program to install free smoke alarms.

To me the issue isn't big data, but first, the decision (1) to be proactive in distributing smoke alarms, (2) not willy-nilly, but in those neighborhoods with a higher risk for fires.

I find it hard to believe that the Fire Department doesn't analyze runs and fires already to know what types of properties and situations are high risk.

====

I do note that DC Fire Department has recently undertaken such an initiative ("Neighbors offer support for family of 7-year-old who died in D.C. rowhouse fire," Washington Post).  But likely such efforts could be more systematic.  From the article:

As the investigation continued into what caused the blaze, D.C. fire officials and firefighters returned to the neighborhood Wednesday morning in hopes of preventing future fires. They arrived with free smoke alarms in hand and printed sheets of fire safety tips, and were welcomed by neighbors, who said they are making efforts to help the family moving forward. 

 “Any time something happens to any of the neighbors, it affects all of us,” said Geoffrey Tate Sr., 65, who has lived in the community for nearly 50 years.... 

Visiting nearly 200 homes Wednesday, groups of fire officials talked to residents on Quebec Place, Rock Creek Church Road, Princeton Place and Warder Street NW. Fire Inspector Celina C. Primus went door-to-door on a block of homes, making sure residents checked for working smoke detectors and had a fire escape plan. 

“When a tragedy like this happens, they want to know someone outside of immediate family cares for them,” Primus said. “We care.”

Policing and city risk and reputational management: Ocean City, Maryland | Create beach ambassadors to deescalate visitor management

The Washington Post writes, "Ocean City boardwalk: Violent arrests of unarmed young men raise questions about policing," about a bunch of violent policing episodes in the beach section of Ocean City, Maryland.  

The city has rules about "vaping on the boardwalk" and the crowds get more unruly as the night goes on and people become more inebriated. 

The need to redefine what public safety means and how to deliver it.  It's a particularly good example of the need for rearticulating how to deal with public safety in a broader and more nuanced fashion ("The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented"). 

Police often escalate even the mundane.  It occurred to me while reading the article that there is an element of "police escalating a situation" that hasn't been adequately identified in all the recent analysis of overpolicing, warrior policing, "defund" etc.

I had a few experiences with cops in my teens and 20s that left me negatively disposed. 

My sense was that because police officers mostly deal with criminals on hard things: 

(1) they tend to believe that everyone they deal with is a criminal.  (At least that's the way I perceived my interactions.  That's how I felt I was treated.)

(2) they escalated the situation(s) almost immediately, not violently with tasers or guns, but "socio-emotionally" by immediately assuming the worst of the situation and the people they encountered, and communicating this in everything they said and did.

I'm a pretty nondescript white guy as were the people I was with.

This form of escalation hasn't been identified as an issue, but it likely contributes to escalation of the many incidents that quickly become violent.. 

Policing and risk management.  And a good example that elected officials don't look at policing as a risk management issue, and such incidents should be seen as indicators that there is a problem that should be addressed ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?").

Tourism as an invasion, and the attack response?  Ocean City is a town of 7,000 people year around--90% white, but grows by at least 250,000 week by week throughout the summer, and 40% or more of visitors are people of color.  

The police department isn't huge, and augments its force every summer with "temporary officers."  Most are white.  And the article describes a number of troubling incidents, not limited to the temporary officers.

A town that grows 300x every week throughout the summer must feel like an invasion to many of the residents and the city more generally.  

Other cities face the same issues.  Either with Spring Break or other special events ("Police chief: End truck meet -- 300 police officers trying to control 50,000 visitors," Dayton Beach News-Journal) or more generally like Amsterdam ("'Don't come to Amsterdam.' Dutch capital tells rowdy tourists to stay away," CNN), Barcelona ("Can Barcelona Fix Its Love-Hate Relationship With Tourists After the Pandemic?," TIME Magazine), and Venice, and are trying to take special measures to reduce the impact.  

Thinking of this as an invasion may well carry over into the attitude of the police officers and how they interact with visitors.  And frankly, some of the incidents might cause them to feel that way (" Maryland Men Charged With Setting Car On Fire, Shooting Into House Of Women They Met At Seacrets, Ocean City," CBS Baltimore).

The boardwalk sits between the sand of the beach and the long strip of businesses -- hotels, retail, taverns, rental shops, etc. -- facing the ocean.  Photo: Julia Hatmaker, Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Vaping on the boardwalk the equivalent of traffic stops as opportunities for escalation?  A number of incidents have been around vaping, as smoking and vaping is forbidden on the beach and boardwalk.  

It reminds me of the really great discussion lately about traffic stops and how they are used by police as a way to initiate "stop and search" ("WHAT TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT WITHOUT POLICE COULD LOOK LIKE," The Appeal; "Traffic without the police," Stanford Law Review, 73: 2021).  

As part of the "defund"/rearticulation of public safety discussion, traffic stops are being brought up, that they should only be made for true traffic violations, not as an excuse to create the opportunity for an arrest.

Smoking or vaping on the beach, like traffic stops, is an opportunity for escalation and for things to go awry in unexpected ways with terrible consequences.

Lifeguard station in Ocean City.  Image from the city website.

Lifeguards for the water, beach ambassadors for the sand.  I hate smoking, so have no problem with the ban.

But like how lifeguards are hired to manage people in the water ("Ocean City Beach Patrol Works Hard, Rescues 557 Swimmers This Summer," OCNJDaily, "n Ocean City, another lifeguard season begins — two minutes early," Baltimore Sun), from the perspective of rearticulating how public safety is defined and delivered, I'd create positions--beach ambassadors--to manage the sand side of the beach in a similar way, shifting from the more coercive approach of police officers.  

Beach ambassadors in Virginia Beach wear bright yellow shirts.  Photo: WAVY-TV.

It turns out Virginia Beach already does this ("Beach ambassadors: They don’t police, but they play a role in keeping Virginia Beach safe," Norfolk Virginian-Pilot) as do other communities.  From the article:

“We’re not here to police,” she said. “We’re here to basically bring calm and reassurance.” 

Beach ambassadors are stationed on every block in the resort area and are roaming at other city beaches. The city has a $1.2 million contract with IMGoing for the service, which likely will continue through Labor Day weekend, Deputy City Manager Ron Williams said. The money is coming from the Tourism Investment Program fund. 

According to their job description, beach ambassadors are to serve as a “welcoming committee” for visitors. They are to remind people of the beach guidelines, which are also posted on signs along the beach and the Boardwalk.

Ocean City calls the lifeguards the Beach Patrol.  They can include beach ambassadors within the same program.   From the Sun article:

“They’re the ambassadors down here,” he said of the lifeguards, new and old. “They've been trained on how to talk to people.”

Some communities, with smaller crowds, and fewer order issues, have volunteer beach ambassador programs.  But cities dealing with large crowds, like Ocean City or Virginia Beach, need more formal programs.

The "beach ambassadors" would manage the beach and boardwalk the way that lifeguards manage the water.  And they should not just be drawn from Ocean City and the surrounding county, which are predominately white, but also from communities like Baltimore or Harrisburg where many of the young visitors originate.

Recommendations to Ocean City.  (1) Ocean City ought to be addressing public safety from a risk management and tourism reputation standpoint and manage it accordingly. 

Although probably a lot of visitors reading articles like the one in the Post blame the people "served" by the cops, and won't change their plans to visit.

(2) Hire a crew of police officers more reflective of the demographics of summer visitors rather than the demographics of the permanent residents who are 90% white. 

(3) The police need to be trained super well in terms of the likely issues, crowd control, and especially de-escalation. 

(4) Create a crew of Beach Ambassadors to provide softer management of the beach and boardwalk, tot de-emphasize coercion and police presence, but with police as back up as needed.  

Conclusion: create a community safety partnership for the beach.  In some ways, the tourist "invasion" should be seen as a nuisance, and managed proactively and professionally ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)").  Business improvement districts and the way they provide extra-normal services including public safety management are one example of how to do it.