The Jersey Utopians

A policy is a hypothesis which has to be tested against reality and corrected in the light of experience. Detecting mistakes and inherent dangers by critical examination and discussion beforehand is an altogether more rational procedure, and one as a rule less wasteful of resources, people and time, than waiting till they reveal themselves in practice. (Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies)

I had to travel into St Helier yesterday evening.

A road accident, which as far as I could see, was not too serious, meant that there was an extensive traffic delay around the inner road at the junction by Benests, Millbrook. As Victoria Avenue was closed, and there was a traffic lights system operating diverting traffic to the inner road, you can probably imagine the slow (mostly stop) speed the traffic progressed at until past Benests.

Of course, when the Avenue is closed - as at present for major road resurfacing - this means there is only one main road into town the inner road. Any accident then causes major problems - just as the flooding of the Avenue caused major problems earlier in the year when the inner road was closed in one direction.

What we have in such cases are unintended consequences, those things which might occur, and which could be considered and planned against. But in most cases the planners are tightly focused on a particular aim, and they do not stop to think "what might happen if..."

It is impossible to plan against all contingencies, but any really good plan should look at some of those, and welcome any criticism because that criticism may highlight deficiencies.

As Karl Popper notes:

Detecting mistakes and inherent dangers by critical examination and discussion beforehand is an altogether more rational procedure, and one as a rule less wasteful of resources, people and time, than waiting till they reveal themselves in practice.

In his "Poverty of Historicism", he notes the kind of planner who wants to push ahead with Utopian schemes, and notes that:

The reason is that every attempt at planning on a very large scale is an undertaking which must cause considerable inconvenience to many people, to put it mildly, and over a considerable span of time. Accordingly there will always be a tendency to oppose the plan, and to complain about it. To many of these complaints the Utopian engineer will have to turn a deaf ear if he wishes to get anywhere at all; in fact, it will be part of his business to suppress unreasonable objections. But with them he must invariably suppress reasonable criticism too. And the mere fact that expressions of dissatisfaction will have to be curbed reduces even the most enthusiastic expression of satisfaction to insignificance. Thus it will be difficult to ascertain the facts, i.e. the repercussions of the plan on the individual citizen; and without these facts scientific criticism is impossible. (Popper, Utopian Planning)

Listen to the debates about the Hopkins Masterplan, I could not be struck by how this rings so true in the case of the way in which the argument has been pushed forward, and criticisms shrugged aside, especially by Frank Walker and James Perchard. On hearing of a Las Vegas lawsuit pending against the developers, the reasonable thing to do (if one didn't know about it) was to suggest that the matter should be looked into before decisions were made, but this was not the case. Instead we had the "deaf ear" and Perchard trying to "suppress reasonable criticism" with what amounted to, in part, an ad hominem attack on Gerard Baudins.

Nevertheless, this "great vision" went through and was voted in, although with elections coming up, and electors raising the matter, I note that Sean Power, not noted usually for being against the Council of Ministers, has been asking questions about the fiasco of Frank Walker's denial. As you may remember, Frank denied categorically a lawsuit against the developers and apology after the vote was taken because he had suddenly been briefed (so conveniently it beggars belief) that there was a lawsuit after all. There may yet be a rescindment motion.

But the harsher issue of why the Waterfront so appealed to States members that they took no stock of unintended consequences, I would turn again to Popper, and his fine critique of Utopian planning. The planners want a clean slate approach, they want a vision of a Waterfront, an ideal that matches the glossy images in the Hopkins plan, something free from the ugliness that we see at the Waterfront at the moment. And there is much ugliness there - the Coast programme on TV noted that the entrance to St Helier, where visitors drive of the ferry, is more like a building site than anything else.

Utopia is always the temptation in the face of such ugliness, to build an iconic and beautiful area, and clear away what has gone before, bury roads, and build a vibrant brave new world. Against this Popper gives a warning:

"This sweep, this extreme radicalism of the Platonic approach (and of the Marxian as well) is, I believe, connected with its aestheticism, i.e. with the desire to build a world which is not only a little better and more rational than ours, but which is free from all its ugliness: not a crazy quilt, an old garment badly patched, but an entirely new gown, a really beautiful new world. This aestheticism is a very understandable attitude; in fact, I believe most of us suffer a little from such dreams of perfection. But this aesthetic enthusiasm becomes valuable only if it is bridled by reason... Otherwise it is a dangerous enthusiasm, liable to develop into a form of neurosis or hysteria." (Popper, The Poverty of Historicism)

Has the Waterfront become "a dangerous enthusiasm". I think so.

Remember....

"Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell." (Karl Popper)

---

References

The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper
The Poverty of Historicism, Karl Popper
Conjectures and Refutations, Karl Popper
Karl Popper: Modern Masters, Brian Magee