Tragedy of the Urban Commons

The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory that states that within a shared-resource system, individuals act independently according to their own self-interests and behave against the common good of all users by depleting that resource. Many people fail to understand that this concept is present in both the large scale of nations and the smaller scales of both cities and communities. Residents of city life (especially those in disadvantaged neighborhoods) are constantly in competition with one another for the either the best resources, the most resources, resources just to make it to tomorrow, or some combination in the middle. While not all situations are this drastic, there most certainly are individuals who go against the grain to get all that they can out of various resources, regardless of their intent.

Consider this first article http://www.econlife.com/urban-transport-systems-create-a-tragedy-of-the-commons/. In Manhattan, streets occupy almost twenty-five percent of the total land, as of 2008. One of the biggest competitions in any city, large or small, is finding the real estate to both drive your car as well as find a spot to park it, wherever that may be, and that real estate is EXPENSIVE. Something that officials are looking into, in regards for making the resource of the road more accessible for all, is public transportation. This would alleviate all of the congestion, pollution, and headache that plagues city drives and the drivers. As the article states, public transportation should reflect the city itself, so that the implementation would have some sort of merit. While subways and motorcycles make sense in a highly populated city, the same modes of transportation do not make sense in smaller cities.

However, this is not to say that there should be mass quantities of public transit (like busses, for example) because then the busses would simply create an even greater tragedy. Their massive size would take up even more real estate than the smaller vehicles would, making everything much worse off than they would have been at the beginning. Finding the balance, then, is also difficult. Too many busses create the problem just described, while too few busses create yet another potential tragedy, because then everyone is competing for the last (or first) seat on the bus. Therefore, it would seem that from this article, there is no easy remedy for the tragedy of the commons.

Another great example of the tragedy of the commons is number ten on this list: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/ten-reallife-examples-of-the-tragedy-of-the-common.html. Population growth is something many people observe, but do not suspect to be an issue for the commons. Much as the cite states, everyone on the planet is in constant competition for resources, big or small, noticed or unnoticed. With over 7 billion people on Earth, it is hard to look past how hard people fight for what they need or want for their individual survival. Simple land, water, air, and food use creates contention among members of both large and small-scale populations. While not implicitly related to city living, it is important to think that city populations are not slowing down in terms of growth, and this reflects some of the basic struggles in these areas, with people fighting for what they feel they either need, want, or deserve for themselves.