I guess I’m just hoping these groups can be teased apart a little more. That’s why I really appreciate this blog. It really shines some clarity on how the market and cities really interact.

By the way, have you checked out George Will’s column on Ray Lahood in Newsweek? Lahood was making some since, but Will just breezed right past the obvious questions and cut-and-pasted some typical anti-urbanism.

a) Although I’m intrigued by Daniel’s use of Frank Lloyd Wright and Milton Friedman as figureheads for the two camps, it seems to me that bringing Frank Lloyd Wright into the discussion is more likely to cloud the issues rather than clarify them (at least for me).

b) It seems to me that ONE BIG MISTAKE(of two) that’s being made by the so-called “anti-planning” group, let me call it the Randall O’Toole group, is that they’ve defined “planning” incorrectly — i.e., in a vague, inconsistent way. Having entire neighborhoods of detached single-family homes that are set apart from commercial and industrial districts, more or less permanently through government enforced zoning laws, is also “planning” — albeit in perhaps a more primitive, broad brush, and less stylistically detailed way than in the communities that have been planned by the New [Sub-]Urbanists. Same holds true for limited access highways (including toll roads) that are built via a government’s use of eminent domain (which seems to me to be the case — inevitably — for the vast majority of such roadways that are built). This is also “planning,” although of a more primitive, less au courant, kind.

c) By the way, if I recall correctly, the earliest “suburbs” of the type extolled by Randall O’Toole (detached, single family homes; winding roads, etc.), were indeed PLANNED communities (e.g., West (?) Orange in New Jersey; Roland Park in Baltimore; Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, NYC; and, later, Radburn, N.J.; etc.). Such communities don’t just spring up without planning.

d) In my opinion, the only full-fledged school of thought that is truly “anti-planning” (in a practical and meaningful way) as it relates to human settlements (and not just economics) is the urbanism and economics of Jane Jacobs, as expounded in her seven major books (including, but not limited to, “Death and Life of Great American Cities”).

e) I’m not sure about the other early planned communities, but Forest Hills Gardens (which also includes row houses and apartment houses, so it can also be seen as a forerunner of New [Sub-]Urbanism) was built before the local adoption of zoning-type laws. So the community was planned to be kept “pure” via market mechanisms (i.e., restrictive covenants) rather than through government action. In other words, the people who wanted to maintain such an environment were going to pay for it (indirectly) out of their own pockets (by purchasing the right to forbid neighboring property owners from building apartment houses and foregoing the right to sell to such developers themselves).

f) In this regard, it seems to me that THE OTHER BIG MISTAKE of the Randall O’Toole group, is that they ignore how much government “planning” and government coercion (sp?) is usually involved in keeping such communities of detached, single-family homes “pure.” Instead of relying on non-governmental market mechanisms, like restrictive covenants, etc., as Forest Hills Gardens does, they want the government to maintain (and also often to even indirectly subsidize) their, in fact, planned environments.

g) Although they seem to be against government encroaching on their own property rights, they seem to ignore the fact that their plans involve the government’s encroaching on the property rights of others.

h) If one wants to live in a detached single-family home separated from others by a certain distance, and if one is truly against planning, etc., one should buy into a privately owned community that is set up for such an environment — and don’t ask other tax payers to subsidize it either directly or indirectly.