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Urbanism For Capitalists / Capitalism For Urbanists
About twice a year, I decry how conservatives are conceding an important and powerful demographic and cultural change to liberals. It’s sometimes called the New Urbanism. To conservatives, though, its just the Evil City all over again. And anything good that may be happening is “yuppification,” “gentrification,” or — even worse — “hiptserfication.” I don’t see the problem: all three words mean revitalization, which means the creation of fine, safe, productive, and interesting places for people to live and work. In other words, it means bringing back downtown and main street which, once upon a time, were natural homes for conservatives. But, as I’m wont to say, conservatives are used to what they are used to and skeptical of all else. Many modern conservatives are simply not used to downtown and main street.
But that’s not totally true. My last foray into this arena was a four–part history of transportation in America. The responses to that thread made it clear that there is a solid core of potential, budding, and already-arrived conservative urbanists. Today, I’m here with some good news for conservative urbanists and to announce a fine discovery in the form of a blog: Market Urbanism, whose motto is “Urbanism for Capitalists / Capitalism for Urbanists.”
Hayek and Bastiat (and of course, Jane Jacobs, she of Spontaneous Order) are displayed prominently in their bookstore. A few quotes I’ve so far gleaned from a brief perusal of some of the site. About the website’s founder, Adam Hengels:
Growing up in suburban Chicago, Adam suspected there was something inefficient about the land patterns and transportation of the suburbs. When introduced to urbanist ideas in freshman architecture/planning coursework, the concepts made sense, despite the paternalistic bent of the professors who presented them. Thus, he became conflicted between the urbanist instinct and the free market instinct. Through study and practice of building design, infrastructure design, construction, economics, planning, development, and urban economics, Adam concluded that our problems with sprawl, congestion, and automobile dependency were largely the result of socialistic oversupply of transportation systems and top-down regimentation of land use, not due to market failures, as many urbanists proclaim.
From an article:
So why don’t conservatives and libertarians have more compunction about sprawl? I believe the problem is more the messengers than the message. Despite the free market aspects of modern-day urbanism, smart growth and new urbanism are not libertarian movements. Urban planning is dominated by liberals, and it shows – few even seem aware of the capitalist roots of their plans. The private corporations that built America’s great cities and mass transit systems are all but forgotten by modern-day progressives and planners, who view the private sector as a junior partner at best. Yonah Freemark views Chicago’s meek and tentative steps towards transit re-privatization as a “commodification of the formerly public realm” that’s “scarring” American cities – his version of history apparently starts in 1947. The Infrastructurist must have been reading from the same textbook, because Melissa Lafsky calls libertarianism her “enemy” and apparently believes that America reached its free market transportation peak around the 1950s. And Matt Yglesias, a rare liberal who understands the economic arguments in favor of allowing density, is routinely rebuffed by his commenters, who I doubt would be so offended if he were arguing for urbanism for environmental and social engineering reasons, as so many progressives and planners do today.
And while we’re on the topic, let’s not forget another wonderful discovery introduced to us by our own Chris Williamson: Charles Marohn, a “Republican Urban Planner,” whose lecture you can download here.
Published in Culture, Domestic Policy
The mortgage interest deduction isn’t a subsidy. All interest should be deductible, its a sham that it isn’t.
Wait, what? Explain that please.
How ’bout that. Promoted while I slept. Many thx to editors for the picture and turning potential links blue.
Skipsul, you must be channeling Charles Marohn, the Republican Urban Planner. He has the details and stats to back your personal observations. In fact he adds something new to our long list of worries: a 60 year ponzi scheme which is only now beginning to unravel. A major part of the process of suburbaniation has been governent collusion in massive ponzi financing of infrastructure. It’s been built with borrowed money that can onlly be repaid with continual growth. Vast areas of America are no longer getting that, and just at a time when the roads, bridges, water purification plants, pipes etc are reaching the end of their lifetimes. Often a great deal of money is still owed for soon to be unusable facilities while no money exists for their replacement. For the masochistic, a few of the details are hidden somewhere in that long four-part series on transportation history linked at the top. Or go straight to the source, Marohn himself, also linked above.
Gotta run. May be back in a few hours with some more comments.
EDIT Marohn at:
strongtowns.org
Its a different perspective on relative position.
Its not a carve out if all other forms of interest should be deductible. Personally I think its a sham that we treat some other forms of debt shabbily.
Debt is debt and the interest we pay isn’t income. Works for business, so I see no reason it shouldn’t work for us.
How is a carve out not a subsidy?
Guess it depends on who you think owns or earned the money.
Casey, Guru is saying it isn’t a carve out.
The fundamental claim is that any non-deductible interest is a revenue-garnering encroachment on non-existent income by gubmint.
It’s interesting, but I have to say that even considering a few of the potential ramifications (e.g. usury laws) for a moment makes me a bit dizzy.
Ok, I’m getting confused.
The government says we are gonna tax like this. These are the rules. Unless you do this specific thing in this specific way then we’ll cut you a break on this rule.
That break lessens the financial burden of this specific purchase. How is that not a subsidy?
Point of origin and breadth of application. If the government says “all loan interest is now deductible as an expense – period” – then that is a universal law change and not a subsidy (except perhaps in a broad sense of the government reducing the expense of all debt). If the government says “no loan interest may be deducted in any way, except X, Y, or Z” then that is, in effect, a subsidy. Now granted in the latter case you are keeping your money directly instead of paying it out then getting it back, but that is still (in its effect) a subsidy.
Is that where voters are going, though? Dense, walkable, open-air cities? For all their improvement, cities are still basically unpleasant places to live. That’s why home ownership in the suburbs is still so hugely popular.
I do wonder at that myself. Where I see urban renewal at least locally, it is only in the core, clustered around trendy spots, and mostly of the childless white collar workers. You go more than a few blocks away from these hot spots and you are back to old slums. The outer neighborhoods continue to decay and no larger magnet employers are looking to move in.
I see a common thead running through many of the comments. People say, Cities are X; that’s why they are bad; that’s why people (especially with families) escape them.
Y’all are talking about American cities. People all over Europe and Asia choose to live in the city, even if they have kids, because, unlike American cities, their cities have a great deal to offer while having few of the downsides, like crime. Natural cities in civilized countries tend to be safe, vibrant, exciting, convenient, interesting, with wonderful cultural offerings, and the place to be if you want the best for your children.
The countryside is great, too. Peaceful, clean air, quiet, less pressure from multitudes on all sides, more convenient for, say, hiking, horseback riding, and hunting.
Which is better for you? In America we actually have no idea because government interference has so warped our cities we don’t actually know what a real city can be.
Matty:
Funny, we are talking about American cities because we live in America. That is so odd!
Midge:
You are misunderstanding me. I am not sure how I can be more clear, let me try one more time:
I have less control over what I can do with my property inside the limits of a city than I do in a rural setting.
I do not see how anything you have said refutes that. Nor, do I see how saying that says I dislike anything said in the Wealth of Nations, nor am I advocating that everyone live on self-sustaining farms.
Please stop tilting at arguments I did not make, and address this one point (which you have not). Either prove to me that I can have the same rights over my plot of land (or condo) in a city that I do in a rural setting, or admit I have a point.
My dream is a plot of land big enough I can set up a gun range without a permit. Please find me the city that lets me do that.
It shouldn’t be a carve out. All interest should be deductible. We unfairly tax other forms of interest payments.
You are saying that the carve out is a +1 (a subsidy) where as no deduction is the default position. I am saying that deducting interest is or should be the default position, so we have a lot of -1 on car loans, credit card debt, and other forms of personal financing.
lived there, not true.
Bryan, Guru, I keep getting this feeling that you guys think the school marms of the nanny state are telling you that you have to live in a city, or at least like cities. Well, yeah, they are. But not here at Ricochet. Here at Rico I don’t think anyone has even hinted at that. I think maybe you’re reacting reflexively when you hear the word urbanist? But here we’re talking about free market urbanism, and free marketers are not really into the nagging. So long as you don’t expect the government to subsidize your choices, live where you want to live and like what you want to like. Free market urbanists have no problems with that.
Bryan, I gather from #73 you think we should talk only about American cities. The problem with that is, the recent city renaissance in America is still a limited thing. Not too many American cities serve as good examples of what’s possible. Most have become bombed out no-man’s lands thanks to massive government intervention in the tranportation and land use markets. Yes, it’s the welfare state, too, but it’s far from only the welfare state that’s to blame. To get a handle on why the free market urbanist blogs recommended here are interested in revitalizing the cities you need to know two things: the history of government intervention transportation systems and land use in both the cities and the suburbs, and what smooth functioning cities look like, even if they are not in America.
Let the market work it’s magic!
The flaw here though is that European cities are hardly “natural” either. If American sprawl is subsidized, then so is European density. Furthermore, European cities have a natural pedestrian friendly core only in the sense that they are so old that they pre-date any other form of transit. Not really fair to compare the two types as they came to exist under very different circumstances.
Completely right, Skip. Still, you can learn a lot by looking at all kinds of cities.
Would you at least agree that if you lived somewhere very rural, you would not have access to the technology that allowed you to do what you wish with your own property?
For example, a plot of land in Mongolia might easily be big enough for a gun range, but so far from civilization that even access to the equipment needed to drill your own well and run your own generator might be impossible to acquire.
If I had to run a property without the tools necessary to alter it to my liking, I would feel like I had very little control over that property indeed.
So a homeowner getting money back that other people don’t get doesn’t count as a subsidy because the other people should be getting that money back too but aren’t.
That’s rather Clintonian.
I won’t debate the deleterious effect of government on cities. But American cities have another issue, and European cities are getting it too, now.
Assimilation. Blacks have not really assimilated into mainstream life. There have been moves towards that recently, thwarted by the Great Society BS. But it will take a LOT of effort to change. Meanwhile the effects of labour unions particularly in the South have done great havoc to blacks being able to work at decent paying jobs.
In Europe it is the muslims. There may be other reasons this is so in Europe, but the end result is the same – havoc.
Bryan, in re-reading your exchanges with Midge, I think you might be missing her point, which was essentially a historical point about the origins of property rights, with later sidebars about the lack of services on rural property. No one, least of all Midge, is arguing against you putting a gun range on your property, nor is anyone arguing that you should be made to live in a city.
Personally, I don’t like city life and would be content with the old adage that if I could see the smoke from my neighbor’s chimney then it’s too crowded. But all of that is beside the point of the original essay. The point, rephrased as best as I can is this:
The current condition of American cities is a peculiarly American problem, and is due in no small part to continuous government meddling (such meddling being in part the fruit of the desire of many Americans to get out of the cities to the suburbs and beyond). However, the majority of Americans live still in urban areas, and as urban areas are now mostly Democratic strangleholds, Conservatives and Libertarians would be well advised to attempt to re-engage with the cities, especially since there is a significant % of the population who would like to see their urban areas revitalized. It’s an opportunity to try to take back lost ground.
Matty, apologies if I mangled your point.
Mongolia? What does that have to do with West Texas?
You really are going to great efforts to avoid saying “Yes, Bryan, there are legal limits on your property rights in a city”.
What you are talking about are not rights at all, but logistics. Economic Power is different than Rights. And if I had enough Economic Power, I can build a gun range anywhere in the world. It would be laws that would stop me.
Midge has either missed my point, or is avoiding it on purpose. I GET her point about property rights and economic power. That has nothing, to do with the point that inside I city the law is more restrictive on my land use than it is in the rural areas.
Lack of services are not part of property rights. Rights are negative, not positive. Water hookups are not part of rights. How I can use the water that falls on my land is part of rights (i.e. who owns is).
Midge is not addressing my point. Not sure how more clear I can be.
From the Morning Jolt today:
OK gang. Y’all have a big talk about subsidies for the suburbs, but there, in black and white (and blue) is where a City, one of the grand wonderful places you think we should all want to live in, got nearly 3/4 of its budget under a stimulus. Please do not lecture me that my lifestyle is somehow being supported when cities are not.
There are “market distortions” all over. And there always will be because that is what the voters want.
Thanks, Skip.
I confess I did not express clearly enough the point of my description of the lack of certain amenities in the country. The point was the inexorable trade-offs between living arrangements:
All costs are opportunity costs. By living in the city, you forfeit some opportunities you would have had if you lived in the country. Conversely, by living in the country, you forfeit some opportunities you would have had if you lived in the city.
There’s a natural relationship between the amount of opportunity an individual has and the freedom he feels. A person who has fallen into a deep pit in the middle of nowhere may have the luxury of not being bossed around by other people, but he probably feels trapped anyhow. And because people are different and value different opportunities, some people may justly feel freer in the city than they do in the country.
A young person looking to get a good start in the world might find a sense of freedom in the concentrated smorgasbord of job opportunities a city has to offer, for example. This assumes that the city is a functioning one and has job opportunities – and reminding conservatives of the utility of functioning cities is Matty’s goal.
Texas is urban compared to Mongolia. You yourself don’t have an unbridled preference for all things rustic. Instead, quite rationally, you prefer to seek out the balance between the trade-offs that best suits you. Which is as it should be.
Likely so. And I guess I’m happy that you find this something to revel in, rather than a regrettable, though inevitable, limitation of democratic government.
I did an internship-type thing in Amsterdam for one summer. That was an incredibly functional (and actually somewhat conservative) city, though fairly small by American standards. I have no illusions that American cities will ever be that functional. Our elites are too fundamentally opposed to the sort of social cohesion that requires (they seem to feel it makes people ethnocentric).
Also, I think you are missing an important point: frankly, I think a lot of the white people who live in suburbs would feel unwelcome in large cities; in some cases, that’s why they moved to the suburbs in the first place. The SF Bay Area certainly wouldn’t welcome an influx of such people, (which became painfully obvious when I moved here.)
I like to put it this way. Suburb/rural people do not idly talk trash about city people the way city people talk trash about them.
There is no actual trend towards urbanization.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/trulia/2015/01/22/urban-headwinds-suburban-tailwinds/
Even among us skinny jeans wearing millennials. We all hit 30 and bail on urban lifestyles for suburban lifestyles.