Example of Tuning Cities to Meet Natural Human API: Foraging

When you see a woman basically idling in a grocery store, she's trying to satisfy her impulse to forage. If she gathers groceries, this is merely a happy coincidence.

It's not that she tries to buy groceries but gets inconveniently caught by her forager instincts, making the process inefficient.

Rather, she feels the impulse to forage, therefore she ends up in a grocery store. Because, as a side-effect, groceries get gathered, she is not punished for this, and is allowed to go again.

She ends up in grocery stores originally because, as it happens, it lets her meet her forager impulse. This then feeds back: the grocery stores compete to satisfy forager impulses better, so that even if a woman does try to rationally buy groceries, she ends up caught by the forager instincts which are being played to.

It would be much more rational if forager parks were maintained. She would subscribe to a forager subscription, which allows her access to one of these parks, which would then properly satisfy her urge to forage. No half measures. However, the market is smarter than me: I don't know exactly what is necessary to satisfy the urge. Obviously actual outdoor berry bushes in a forest or whatever would work, but maybe it can be more efficient.

Ideally these would be extensive* farming operations, so her gathering would in fact pay for the subscription. Her instinct to forage would be satisfied by actual productive foraging which supported the family she's foraging for. The funds would mainly function as a gate, preventing the area from being over-foraged. However, foraging as leisure would work fine too. She has a foraging quota and this needs to be met, or she's going to be stressed and cranky; this quota is a feeling and it's entirely plausible to suppose it can be fully met without any actual productive foraging going on.** Have forager porn, as it were.

*(Opposite of intensive.)
**(Albeit, this is not the most probable arrangement of facts.)

In this way, her city would be modified so that her instinctual API would cause her to lower her stress (visiting a park, in the end) and raise her productivity, as opposed to blocking the aisle at Costco.

 

It is reasonable to suppose Asian women are historically and genetically further from hunter tribes, and have a weaker foraging instinct. As such, Costco doesn't exist in Asia. They rationally buy things with lower prices as a normal thing, rather than this rational behaviour being limited to a special minority. 

By contrast, Occidentals normally either don't think about it at all, or else use exclusively low prices as a consideration, stopping only when the food becomes completely disgusting and inedible. 

I hear (and it makes sense) that most women can't cook anyway, so it's not like she can tell the difference. Good food and bad are equally ruined by her poor skills.

You may notice this would require giving up certain social signals. You would no longer be signalling rational behaviour and Toughing It Out and desperately trying to show how different you are from beasts or whatever. 

Try to get rich enough you can afford to let the neighbours think badly of you. Be rich enough that you can tell they aren't worth trying to impress. 

As a stupid example of efficiency, imagine a shoujo arcade. Basically a bunch of pixel-hunt arcade cabinets. They would be quiet games, so she can easily chat with her friend in the next cabinet, or maybe even hunt cooperatively by default. Unlike male arcades which have tight time limits, there would be weak or possibly even no time limits. Perhaps (again) only an entrance fee and you would let the women "convince" each other to "share." I hear they're into that sort of thing.
This wouldn't fully satisfy the forager instinct, so it would be supplemented by whatever is missing, but this secondary subscription would be much cheaper than a full root/berry-hunt park subscription. 

Very reluctantly, I will surmise that subsidies would help. Perhaps forager parks are extremely useful but the land required is way more expensive than what women are willing to pay for. If so, the government has to step in to match women's desires to their needs by paying part of the cost.
(However we can still see no black government will ever use subsidies this way. No special interest or voting bloc is being paid off, and it would violate Conquest #3.)
On reflection, perhaps better to use status effects. Have celebrities and facecam app stars talk about their trips to forager parks. This will create plenty of artificial demand, driving up the price until the industry can afford the land it needs. "My husband can send me to the upscale forager park. *smug*"