But to get all that in one commercially available product, you would have to spend $3,900 per trash can. Confronted with the hard cost of its stated requirements, San Francisco County officials could have ponied up—or settled for a functional but less-than-perfect trash can. Incredibly, however, they settled on the third-best option: About three years ago, San Francisco embarked on a yearslong process to design its own bespoke trash cans from scratch. The cost “could now hit as high as $5,000 a can,” Chávez reported in September. “San Francisco will spend from $6.6 million to $16.5 million to replace the city’s existing public trash cans” by current estimates, but “who knows what things will cost when the manufacturing actually commences.”

This is what happens when you solicit input from everyone about all the things that would be good, then create a process that discourages compromise on any of those issues, even to the detriment of what was supposed to be your primary goal—whether that goal is procuring new trash cans or creating an outdoor-dining culture. (read more)