Schlocking the Suburbs
Austin Bramwell becomes the dozenth or so libertarian/conservative to criticize libertarian/conservative sprawl defenders on the basis of their own stated principles:
For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States — is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations. If Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl.
I don’t disagree with Bramwell’s thesis, but I think anti-anti-sprawl libertarianism will exist so long as there are libertarians who hate hippies more than they hate central planning – which is to say, it will exist for a long time.
Comment by Eric Martin —
March 11, 2010 @ 10:28 am
but I think anti-anti-sprawl libertarianism will exist so long as there are libertarians who hate hippies more than they hate central planning – which is to say, it will exist for a long time
Man, if that phenomenon doesn’t describe so much that is wrong with far too many “libertarians.”
Comment by Nicholas Weininger —
March 11, 2010 @ 10:54 am
To be fair to the misguided anti-anti-sprawl libertarians, it may be that they just hate central planning they can see more than central planning they can’t. The New Urbanists are upfront about their planning aims and so easy to distrust as arrogant reshapers-of-the-world. The political interests behind sprawl are doing planning too, and reshaping the world arrogantly, but they’re much quieter about it.
Now: they (the anti-anti-sprawlers) should look harder. Of course they should. But we’ve all, I’d venture to bet, been lazy in this sort of way at one time or another.
Comment by Kolohe —
March 11, 2010 @ 11:09 am
Yes, pound for pound, local zoning boards are about the least liberatarian and most regulatory captured of any inititution at any level of government. But since sprawl,
an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States —
is so widespread under widely varying climates *and* political regimes, doesn’t it show a kind of revealed preference? Plus the fact that people have been bitching about ‘cookie-cutter america’ since Sinclair Lewis?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 11, 2010 @ 12:34 pm
Funny thing: this was a point joe-from-Lowell argued very well, some years back. He actually convinced me on the issue.
Mind, Nicholas has a point. It’s not about hippies, it’s about the fact that people pushing anti-sprawl aren’t remotely interested in simply stopping government subsidy of heavy automobile use. Libertarians tend to first notice the proposed government intervention to constrain people, not the decades-old government interventions that got the people there in the first place.
Mind, aside from a little “gotcha”, I’m puzzled by your concern, Jim.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 11, 2010 @ 12:50 pm
The article makes a reasonable point about how walkable urban areas aren’t exactly cheap to live or park in, and perhaps that’s a market signal about the desirability of such places. However, just as we should not assume that ubiquitous sprawl is the preferred outcome of The Free Market (peace and blessings upon its name), we should also not assume that the cost of living in Manhattan is solely the hand of the free market. It’s a reasonable case, but it can be overstated.
In related news, I have a job interview at a school in a downtown area where the cost of living is slightly lower than my Los Angeles suburb. Being a one-car family has worked for us here mostly by accident, but if we move there we could probably continue the one-car deal indefinitely.
Comment by Barry —
March 11, 2010 @ 1:07 pm
Comment by Kolohe —
“But since sprawl,
an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States —
is so widespread under widely varying climates *and* political regimes, doesn’t it show a kind of revealed preference? Plus the fact that people have been bitching about ‘cookie-cutter america’ since Sinclair Lewis?”
First, the ‘widely varying…’ is ‘widely varying *within* the USA’, and in a USA shaped by certain widespread trends (cheap oil, the whole legacy of slavery, a vast military-industrial complex).
Second, to the extent that the shared feature is a tendency for laws to be shaped by economic elites, that’s a revealed preference of the elites, not of the masses.
Comment by dhex —
March 11, 2010 @ 1:23 pm
However, just as we should not assume that ubiquitous sprawl is the preferred outcome of The Free Market (peace and blessings upon its name), we should also not assume that the cost of living in Manhattan is solely the hand of the free market. It’s a reasonable case, but it can be overstated.
there is that. nyc is an odd case due to being desirable, heavy rent control guidelines, local nimby initiatives (codes against buildings over a certain height, etc), a long history of eminent domain abuses (from moses to ratner) and the wackaloon army of jackholes who pass for city council.
Comment by Jesse Walker —
March 11, 2010 @ 1:36 pm
It’s not about hippies, it’s about the fact that people pushing anti-sprawl aren’t remotely interested in simply stopping government subsidy of heavy automobile use.
Exactly. There are some notable and admirable exceptions, but the people who talk about “smart growth” and the like are basically just a new bunch of central planners — and some old central planners with a new mandate.
Comment by Eric Martin —
March 11, 2010 @ 4:07 pm
Yeah, central planners would likely muck it all up and give us miles of strip malls and other architectural dreck.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 11, 2010 @ 6:17 pm
As pointed out, fellow Eric, they already did.
Comment by P Henry —
March 11, 2010 @ 6:45 pm
Jim Henley,
My response is that whenever people have gotten wealthy you’ve had sprawl (classical Greece, the wealthy periods of classical Chinese history, the Aztec empire, etc.). So I don’t think that planning is at the heart of sprawl; wealth and prosperity is. Now perhaps planning supports it; but I would argue that the outcomes we have today – despite all the desires which surveys find for “walkable communities,” etc. – are the ones that most people generally prefer.
This is only a defense of sprawl in the sense that if you are going to have a lot of wealth then that means you are going to have a lot of sprawl. As far as I can tell none of the efforts over the past hundred years to blunt have succeeded – and this even true in Europe, where sprawl has become commonplace around major and minor cities a like. Maybe that presents a false choice, sprawl and wealth vs. no or reduced sprawl and some level of reduced wealth, but so far, that has been the sort of bargain we’ve been making.
Anyway, sorry for whatever rambling I’ve done.
Comment by P Henry —
March 11, 2010 @ 6:48 pm
Jim Henley,
As an add on thought, I’d also make a similar argument about traffic congestion; traffic congestion is a cost of being wealthy.
Comment by lunchstealer —
March 11, 2010 @ 6:50 pm
I don’t understand how, from a libertarian standpoint, SPRAWL is the desired target. If it’s caused by a market distortion, shouldn’t we be attacking the market distortions? Are we worried specifically about particular outcomes, or are we worried about freeing the market and seeing what comes out?
Comment by P Henry —
March 11, 2010 @ 6:52 pm
Barry,
Lots of sprawl exists in Europe and now in Asia right now and it lots of it has existed historically. It is not simply an American only phenomenon, nor is it something which is temporally narrow.
Comment by P Henry —
March 11, 2010 @ 6:55 pm
lunchstealer,
I’m personally not that worried about sprawl; like a lot of moral/environmental panics, it is a tempest in a teapot.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 11, 2010 @ 8:24 pm
Gunnels, is that you?
Comment by lunchstealer —
March 11, 2010 @ 11:46 pm
What, posting 4 times in 10 minutes? How is that like gunnels?
Comment by Thoreau —
March 11, 2010 @ 11:52 pm
Yeah, Gunnels would be 4 times in 3 minutes.
Comment by ajay —
March 12, 2010 @ 9:48 am
his even true in Europe, where sprawl has become commonplace around major and minor cities a like.
Sprawl in the US is far lower density than European suburban growth. The city of Phoenix has lower population density than the _entire Netherlands_.
Comment by The Angry Optimist —
March 12, 2010 @ 12:42 pm
ajay – so what? Could that not be true if Amsterdam was exceptionally dense, but the rest were spread out ‘burbs, even more so than Phoenix? Average density on such a large scale tells us nothing about the prevalence of sprawl.
Comment by Celebrity Gossip Magazine —
March 12, 2010 @ 1:07 pm
Ajay covered in in #19, P Henry — it’s true that any city in history would have sprawl, since nearby land would have attractions (higher density farming, an expendable country house, etc.). The question is how much?
Comment by mpowell —
March 12, 2010 @ 1:22 pm
I don’t think you can equate the local planning that drives suburban sprawl in the United States to the kind of planning advocated by new urbanists. There is a difference between developer capture of local boards and a central planning process that a group of advocates attempt to advance through a legitimate engagement with the democratic process.
One weakness common among Libertarians is a failure to acknowledge the substantial difference between different infringements on the free market. Even if they were all bad (which I wouldn’t agree with as a non-libertarian), some are much worse than others. And in some fields, power dynamics are such that closing your eyes and wishing for free market outcomes only insures the worse kind of results.
Comment by js —
March 12, 2010 @ 1:38 pm
This is a brilliant article on libertarianism and urbanism that deals with the the kind of contradictions you are talking about and tries to figure out where they may be coming from:
http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2009/05/cities-and-libertarianisms.html
Basically some might favor suburbanism for what might be called “thick libertarian” reasons even though it’s clearly not libertarian at all.
Comment by peter —
March 12, 2010 @ 5:08 pm
The reason for U.S. suburban sprawl is obvious — the enormous amounts of money the federal government has poured into the interstate highway system. Take away the interstates, and imagine what the communities around your town would look like.
Comment by lunchstealer —
March 12, 2010 @ 8:34 pm
Ajay, just FYI, the city of Phoenix is 7.5 times denser than The Netherlands.
If something sounds astonishing, it may be a bad idea to try to astonish people with it without checking it out.
Comment by lunchstealer —
March 12, 2010 @ 8:51 pm
Maricopa County, on the other hand, has almost exactly the same population density as The Netherlands. Of course, while The Netherlands has some marshland and the Dutch Sonora…
Comment by piddle poo —
March 12, 2010 @ 10:15 pm
“I don’t disagree with Bramwell’s thesis…”
So the real question is, what motivates libertarians?
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 12, 2010 @ 10:21 pm
Different things, actually. Ask me a hard one.
Comment by Dorian Villalona —
March 22, 2010 @ 8:05 am
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