The Atlantic Magazine’s Citylab web page ran an interview with Joel Kotkin today. Kotkin seems to think we need more of something called “localism”, stating: “Growth of state control has become pretty extreme in California, and I think we’re going to see more of that in the country in general, where you have housing decisions that should be made at local level being made by the state and the federal level too. You have general erosion of local control.”
In fact, land use decisions are generally made by local governments–which is why it is so hard to get new housing built. This is as true in California as it is anyplace else; when Gov. Brown tried to make it easier for developers to bypass local zoning so they can build new housing, the state legislature squashed him. Local zoning has become more restrictive over time, not less. And the fact that state government has added additional layers of regulation doesn’t change that reality.
But did the Atlantic note this divergence from factual reality, or even ask him a follow-up question? No, sir. Shame on them!
Kotkin never explains how the subsidies get paid back to the taxpayers who get soaked to build his sprawling ideological fantasy. It appears that he expects wholesale social engineering to occur in favor of his personally preferred pattern of development, with no regard for what the other 320 million people might prefer, according to their own life situation, values and needs, not his. Nor does Kotkin ever resolve the ecological dilemma of sprawl. Or its social decay. or a host of other externalities he glosses over with his zeal for the “freedom” of tract housing beyond the horizon.
Governor Brown did not even attempt to create a bypass for zoning – the by right proposal required local governments to respect their own zoning codes, by restricting their ability to impose discretionary review if certain conditions were met