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Un-Planning, A Manifesto
Do you hate city planners? Do you wish the New Urbanists would leave us all alone? Yes and yes? Then beware of reflexively defending the status quo, because the status quo is in no small part the handiwork of old city planners.
As Matty Van recently pointed out, a non-negligible portion of what the New Urbanists call our “over-reliance on cars” is due to former city planners and other central authorities having planned it that way.
It is government that has instituted zoning laws segregating commercial from residential areas. It is government that imposes absurd restrictions on small-scale, home-based industry. It was government that built many of our highways, despite the fact that private highways are totally a thing. It is government that mandates that people build a certain amount of parking on their property, whether they want to or not.
Houston is famous for its lack of zoning. It’s also Texas’s most walkable city. Coincidence? Maybe not.
I don’t mention Houston because I’m in love with walkable cities. When it comes to the tradeoffs between living in a walkable but crowded neighborhood and living a more quiet, suburban – but also more diffuse – life, I would probably choose the suburbs. I mention Houston because it’s evidence against an assumption that many liberals and conservatives apparently share: that the inevitable result of less city planning is less walkability.
Naturally, we conservatives want to defend the free market. But even we are prone to mistaking the aftermath of old regulations for the organic product of private enterprise. For their part, New Urbanists – or anyone else who wishes to make a serious case that over-reliance on cars should be regarded as a nuisance – would do well to remember what Coase said about the tendency of pretty much everyone to miscategorize old government-backed nuisances as products of the free market:
Legislative sanction makes that lawful which otherwise might be [actionable as] a nuisance. Examples of this are damages to adjacent land arising from smoke, vibration and noise in the operation of a railroad…; … unpleasant odors connected with sewers, oil refining and storage of naphtha….
Most economists seem to be unaware of all this. When they are prevented from sleeping at night by the roar of jet planes overhead (publicly authorized and perhaps publicly operated), are unable to think (or rest) during the day because of the noise and vibration from passing trains (publicly authorized and perhaps publicly operated), find it difficult to breathe because of the odour from the local sewage farm (publicly authorized and perhaps publicly operated), and are unable to escape because their driveways are blocked by a road obstruction (without any doubt, publicly devised), their nerves frayed and mental balance disturbed, they proceed to declaim about the disadvantages of private enterprise and the need for governmental regulation. “
– Section VII of The Problem of Social Cost, p 131 of “The Firm, the Market, and the Law”
I agree with the anti-New-Urbanists: let’s not try a new type of city planning. Instead, let’s get rid of the restrictions imposed by old city planning. Then people will be free again to build walkable neighborhoods if that’s what they want to do.
Let’s try un-planning for a change.
Published in General
As a born and bred New Yorker I will tell you City planning is TERRIBLE. I contend that anything Robert Mosas built is an atrocity and THAT was when cities were trying to be more drivable, not walkable or bikable. My father lived in the Bronx and had his building torn down to build the Cross Bronx Expressway and ANYONE that has been stuck in traffic on that God awful road will tell you that who ever designed it was AN IDIOT. Who builds a road in the city with NO SHOULDER? I guess back in the 50’s every car worked perfectly, not tire blowouts, no engine trouble. No I guess he never thought anyone would be stuck in bumper to bumper traffic at 2 AM because a car broke down in the left lane.
Go through old Bobby’s list and you will find these road as some of the worst in the country.
So no, not a big fan of city planning and I go to Houston quite often and although in August its 8 billion degrees out, the Galleria Mall makes up for that.
Ah, you sweet, naive simian. Here in NC, pig farming, waste ponds,, proximities, city pigs and even allowing ANY pigs environmentally are argued, zoned, re-zoned, litigated, re-litigated, browbeaten, etc. on a near constant basis.
And MFR, here in the Research Triangle area there are Progressive groups making the argument (and around here they badger their arguments until they eventually go mainstream) that all development should be along light-rail corridors, to ban any new separated subdivisions within a few years, tax people heavily based on commuting distances, make taxes so high on people who live in rural areas who are not involved in activities necessary to those ares (mostly farming) that they will be forced to move, and ban all new rural living, etc. – you get the gist…
I can’t help what you uncivilized folks do south of the VA border. We’ve given up hope for you. I kid, I kid.
Whiskey, you write: “The federal involvement in public highways is an explicit power granted by the Constitution to create post roads. The idea that this is due to cars is laughable.”
Nobody can deny that the Constitution gives the federal government the right to build post roads. But taking that as justification for what we have today is about as extreme as what liberals do with the general welfare and interstate commerce clauses. I checked out the link to Joseph Story’s commentaries that you provide. It was long, so I may have missed something. But he does say this in paragraph 1144:
“This question, as to the right to lay out and construct post-roads, is wholly distinct from that of the more general power to lay out and make canals, and military and other roads. The latter power may not exist at all; even if the former should be unquestionable.”
It seems to me that Story is arguing for the minimal interpretation of federal road building. The “general power to lay out… military and other roads… may not exist at all.”
That would kind of take care of even the pretext for the interstate system, doncha think?
No, you left off the next sentence: “The latter turns upon a question of implied power, as incident to given powers.” He doesn’t rule it out. This also ignores the purpose of the interstate system being for national defense which is another enumerated responsibility of the federal government. You could even make an interstate commerce argument for it. In short, the idea of government involvement (federal, state, or municipal) in the construction of roads is uncontroversial and is not a recent development, certainly not a development owing to the advent of the automobile.
Whiskey, thanks for the clarification. I read the next sentence but mistakenly gave it, in my mind, a strict constructionist interpretation.
But what I want to do now is go on to something – or someone – else. Matede in 31 tells us about Robert Moses. A manifesto to un-planning would be remiss without a big shoutout to Bobby M’s arch nemisis, the goddess of un-planning, Jane Jacobs, hero to liberals, unknown(?) to conservatives, and adopted by libertarians – even if she herself denied being such a thing. Her 1961 classic, born of her struggle with Moses, was The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In it she explained why “spontaneous order” works for cities. Those two words alone make her libertarian!
Actually, I’m not sure why liberals like her. She’s kind of like Henry David Thoreau in that they would certainly like her a lot less if they knew what she stood for. One of my favorite quotes:
To seek “causes” of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.
Ha-ha.
As when I resist the mugger, I’m “forcing” him to go without the loot he could’ve taken from me.
No, it’s rick-o-shay-TWAHZ. (The terminal “e” forces the “s” to be pronounced.)
There were times in American history when private roads were tried. There was a bubble of private road building (turnpike roads) during the early-mid nineteenth century. Most went bust in fairly short order.
Part of this was technological. Private turnpike were competing against railroads (another private transportation corridor), and wagons could not compete with trains, driving down demand for turnpikes. Part of it was that even under favorable conditions turnpikes could not recapture costs because it was easy to avoid payment. The only private roads that succeeded were those with special circumstances – for example a privately-owned bridge over a river.
Regardless, by the American Civil War the road system in the United States was a mess. The only useful roads tended to be the few maintained as improved roads by governments (such as the Valley Pike in the Shenandoah). Those roads tended to repay the costs associated with them by improving the commerce of the area, but many local governments felt roads should be private enterprises, so there were few.
Discovered this researching my forthcoming book on Sheridan’s 1864 Valley Campaign.
Seawriter
Understanding of basic economics, the experience of others like on this thread, and the damage regulations cause on other parts of the economy give me high confidence in my claims. To say those don’t count as evidence errors highly on the side of nihilism.
At work, haven’t read comments.
This is a profound bit of what I see as the way forward for conservatives, because it is far too late for things to ever be “set right”. They will have to be made right in a new way, along the lines of our values.
The term “urban” is freighted with democrat baggage, and at any rate other bags which are not necessarily true. How about somehting like “American Cities Project”? Seems neutral freight, cceptable to the left and the right.
Here’s why: When I hear “New Urbanist”, that’s three reasons to hate whatever is about to be said. Which is a shame, because as you point out, this is good stuff worth smokin^H^H^H^H sharing.
As I’ve mentioned before, my wife is from Germany, and when we married we decided to live in the US because her profession was more transferable here than mine was there. When seeking a place to live in the US, it quickly became obvious that the only real options were suburban, which she didn’t (and still doesn’t) like. She feels isolated and hates having to jump in a car and drive for miles to accomplish anything. There’s nothing “New Urbanist” about the way she feels – it’s just the traditional way of living where she comes from.
The thing I find odd about this discussion is that for all the complaining against the New Urbanists, the complainers have won the argument. There is nothing really, truly urban in the US outside of a few enclaves. I’ve seen studies that show that the land area of most moderate to large cities in the US is devoted primarily to roads and surface parking (well over 50% in most cases).
The proponents of suburban life have won, and they have influenced urban design and have prevented viable alternatives, leaving those who want something different without a choice.
Nihilism?
Mike, I’m not rejecting the notion that any evidence has been presented for any claims. I don’t dispute that regulations often have deleterious economic impacts.
What I dispute is the notion that evidence has been provided to buttress the belief that removal of zoning regs will lead to socially egalitarian (class-mixed) living arrangements.
Hmm… I don’t think either Mike or I expect egalitarian living arrangements. Rather, we would expect more affordable living arrangements, so that even in a city with expensive neighborhoods, there could also be real cheap neighborhoods.
Maybe we’ve interpreted getting the poor “out of sight” in different ways? Did you mean that rich people will form enclaves so they don’t have to look at lower-class housing from out their bedroom windows? If so, yes, I tend to agree – some rich people definitely want that.
I thought of “regulating the poor out of sight” as meaning regulating them out of an entire city (except perhaps for subsidized housing), or forcing them into the underground economy.
That is exactly what I meant, Midge.
So if I understand your situation correctly, Whiskey, your city gave a franchise (a special privilege, basically) to a certain constituency (a developer) to zone an area commercial because the city wanted the tax revenues. Probably that franchise comes with some form of immunity against nuisance liability. In order to mitigate this immunity somewhat, the city is holding hearings so that city-dwellers can voice grievances they most likely can no longer can address through nuisance law.
While it sounds like the dispute resolution worked in your case, I’m with Eeyore: How is the protracted and often expensive haggling that accompanies zoning disputes really more efficient than a regime that doesn’t grant special franchises, but simply allows the common law of nuisance to work?
Or they discover which neighborhoods have neither the resources nor the political pull to either buy out or bring legal action.
Under either nuisance or zoning schemes, hiring good lawyers does typically take money. That said, as far as I know, bringing a nuisance suit doesn’t typically take political pull, but getting the zoning board on your side does.
Is this the case, or is there simply not the demand to sustain it? They built a subdivision about 5 miles from my house designed on this idea: walkable shops and services near the homes with an almost village-like atmosphere…and the place went under because there weren’t enough people interested in living on tiny property with all the restrictions that come with it when they could get a bigger yard and home without the restrictions for roughly the same price. Then the shops left because the foot traffic they were dependent upon (due to the lack of parking) never developed.
For some neighborhoods, it’s far easier to raise political capital to influence zoning than it is to raise actual capital for a lawsuit.
If so many towns hadn’t spent decades imposing regulatory restrictions on “walkable” development, then we’d be able to say with reasonable certainty that walkability is not in demand. But since so many towns have, it’s much harder to say for sure.
In this instance, I’m not sure you can call it a special franchise as all of the other property along that road is commercial and has been for a while now. This was the last remaining residential lot with road frontage. Asking the city to rezone a plot that is no longer an isolated farmhouse but is in the middle of miles of businesses is the normal course of development. The unique circumstance is that this plot extends back to the neighborhood and runs behind all that roadfront commercial property. It’s been a buffer.
That’s kind of what I’m getting at. The regulation and planning is not an evil itself if it is flexible and allows for changes over time. It’s the rigid zoning that cannot account for future needs which causes problems, or the abuse of the system to favor cronies.
Like what, for instance?
I mentioned several in the OP: Zoning that permits painfully little overlap between commercial and residential uses. Regulations making it nearly impossible for ordinary people to legally operate home-based cottage industries (like the goofy regs mentioned in “Carrots”). Requiring that plans for new or refurbished buildings include X amount of parking space, whether the builder wants to include it or not.
Also, banishing “big box” stores that sell affordable merchandise to poorer people to outside the city limits, so as to keep established, politically-influential local merchants from competition and to gratify the moral vanity of other politically-influential citizens.
All these restrictions serve to geographically separate homes from places to work or shop, rendering life less “walkable”.
Now, not all geographical separation of home life and industry is bad. But I’m inclined to think we probably have too much of it these days. And that the mandated geographical segregation also renders life for ordinary people considerably less affordable.
Yes, sometimes poorer people can raise political capital to substitute for financial capital. But it seems to me that the well-off and well-connected are on the whole much, much better than the poor at raising political capital.
Pushcart and foodtruck peddlers have at last attracted the attention of well-connected people and institutions to advocate for them politically, but for years the norm has been for established brick-and-mortar stores to use their not-inconsiderable political capital to regulate these small-scale peddlers out of existence.
Sometimes the dependent poor are used as mascots to raise political capital for those they depend on, but I’m not sure that’s the same as the poor themselves raising political capital.
Quite possibly, if being a foodie weren’t trendy among the upper classes, and food trucks weren’t trendy among foodies, this advocacy for small-scale peddlers would hardly be happening at all.
I must have misunderstood. Midge clarified our position. It’s not that removal of zoning would lead to egalitarianism, but we know zoning definitely prevents it. I’m confident it would lead to egalitarian pressures, and happily, many of the people affected would be liberals who believe the poor should be subsidized while relegated to the fringes.
Urban areas that develop organically tend to have the opposite problem – real estate prices skyrocket because of demand and make it difficult for the very people who tend to want to truly colonize them – i.e. younger people – to afford. Thus, they often become enclaves for the well-to-do.
It’s very difficult for a developer to come in and create something like a functioning town. Most towns developed around an activity or industry, river, natural resource, etc. It’s pretty hard just to plop one down in the middle of a field. That’s why newer ideas, pushed by people like Adreas Duany (creator of Seaside, FL) are focused on “Lean Urbanism” and are designed to appeal to the more libertarian minded and are focused on cutting bureaucratic red tape.
I ran out of space above, but the point is that most urbanism is now focused on improving existing urban or near-urban areas. The primary impediment to those is government red-tape, which is the focus of the article I linked to above. Duany developed Seaside, Florida, which is very popular, but is also basically a resort. He says that the days of greenfield faux urban development are over (as is suburban development in general, by the way).
I want to love unplanning, for roughly the reasons Midge outlines, but the reality is that my heavily planned and zoned St Paul seems so much pleasanter than these Texas cities, Houston especially. I’ve visited there at least 15 times since my husband’s family is mostly all there. I’m surprised to hear it described as walkable; I’ll believe that some parts are but the suburban deserts stretch a long way, and it’s hard to get anywhere without going on multiple freeways. My relations all live in pretty different parts of town, but none in walking distance of things to do.
Texas cities always seem like a maze of giant billboards, concrete overpasses, strip malls and storage lockers and 1970’s-built residential areas. There are definitely things I like about it (it does feel freer there, and people smile at my kids and never make snarky remarks about whether I’m “done” having them, and there are more pro-life bumper stickers than pro-choice ones). San Antonio has some nice areas. Bur in general, I’ll take over-planned Minnesota for urban pleasantness.
Again, it gives me no pleasure to say this, but my aesthetic reactions are what they are.