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Are You a Wright or Friedman Urbanist?

In a post blogger Eric Orozco called, ‘forerunner candidate for “most incisive blog post” of the year,’ Daniel Nairn of Discovering Urbanism discussed the seemingly conflicted camps of libertarianism when it comes to Urbanism.  His observations are based upon the comments in the Volokh article on planning and walkability linked in the previous post. Daniel (a non-libertarian) presents the opposing libertarian factions as The Wright Group, after Frank Lloyd Wright and his romanticism about individualistic prairie living and The Friedman Group, which “believes that the spatial distribution of development ought to be determined by a free market.” The Wright group seems to favor optimizing individual autonomy through spatial living arrangements even if doing so requires centralizing economic and political authority to some extent. The Friedman group seems to favor optimizing individual autonomy through market decisions even if doing so results in more people living in situations where full control over private property is compromised in some way. Daniel’s insightful choice of figureheads fascinates me from a philosophical point of view.  Frank Lloyd Wright was hardly a libertarian, but had strong individualist tendencies, and is said to be the model for Howard Roark’s character in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.  Milton Friedman, a Nobel Laurette Economist, is probably one of the most famous figures of modern libertarian thought.  Despite Friedman’s steadfast defense of liberty, he had favored government roads on occasion. I think most would agree that The Friedman Group, as Daniel describes it, is more closely aligned with the thesis of Market Urbanism and the ideas of emergent order of the land marketplace.  Hayek or even Rothbard may also be considered appropriate, although less famous substitutes as figurehead. (note: I’m not sure what Daniel means by,  “even if doing so results in more people living in situations where full control over […]

Do We Need “New Urbanism” To Fix “Unwalkable Sprawl”?

At Volokh, Ilya Somin discusses a recent piece in the American Prospect (also linked from here) that favors “New Urbanism” to prevent “unwalkable” sprawl.  Somin favors “voting with your feet” as the preferred method of satisfying location preferences.  Unfortunately, voting options have been whittled down through government interventions: To the extent that we do need to enable more people to live in densely populated urban areas, it’s far from clear that government planning is the best way to achieve that goal. We can better achieve the same objective by cutting back on planning rather than increasing it. In many large cities, the cost of housing is artificially inflated by restrictive zoning laws, which tends to price out the poor and some middle class people. In the suburbs, as Adler points out, zoning policies sometimes artificially decrease density, for example by forbidding "mixed use" neighborhoods where commercial and residential uses are in close proximity to each other. The ultimate question is whether we should trust deeper interventions into land use to fix the complete failure of past interventions.  Long before “New Urbanism” was the progressive utopian ideal, sprawling, auto-friendly and trolley-free, single-family suburbs was their “American Dream”.  But, progressives quickly forget their history when it turns out their past visions created something they are now supposed to hate: Like previous generations of planners, the new urbanists often ignore the diversity of human preferences. Some people do indeed like high-density "walkable" environments. Others prefer to have more space and more peace and quiet. Neither preference is inherently superior to the other. To paraphrase a popular liberal slogan, we should celebrate diversity, not seek to use urban planning to force everyone to live the same lifestyle whether they want to or not. The post evokes the typical variety of comments ranging from standard […]

Redistribution (a follow up)

I threw up Friday’s Redistribution post somewhat hastily during my break, but there isn’t much more that I haven’t said before.  As a follow-up, I’d like to tie it in with some other interesting reads. Ryan Avent at The Bellows agreed with Yglesias’ post and added: Anyway, I saw in Google reader that libertarian intellectual Will Wilkinson had shared Matt’s post, presumably because he agreed with it. And indeed, this is one of those times when libertarians and liberals can find common cause. On the other hand, most of Cato’s planner types vigorously defend suburban sprawl and highway construction, and vigorously oppose smart growth and transit construction, despite the obvious point that it takes an immense web of regulations and subsidies to support rapid suburban and exurban growth. Over here! Ryan, Will! We’re over here!… Definitely check out The Bellows post. Will Wilkinson stopped in to comment, too. I think the “common cause” concept was conveyed well in Ed Glaeser’s recent NY Times piece, called The Case for Small-Government Egalitarianism. Harvard’s Glaeser reaches out for “common cause” between libertarians and progressives – kinda like the links between Free-Markets and Urbanism: Libertarian progressivism distrusts big increases in government spending because that spending is likely to favor the privileged. Was the Interstate Highway System such a boon for the urban poor? Has rebuilding New Orleans done much for the displaced and disadvantaged of that city? Small-government egalitarianism suggests that direct transfers of federal money to the less fortunate offer a surer path toward a fairer America. and Many of my favorite causes, like fighting land use regulations that make it hard to build affordable housing, aid the poor by reducing the size of government. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I also argued that it would be far better to give generous […]

Private Roads Work

Bart Frazier wrote a brief article for the Future of Freedom Foundation on private roads. He begins by discussing how most Americans remain strongly opposed to privately owned roads, while at the same time many have warmed to private education, medicine, and social security. This first part of the article is somewhat similar to many articles advocating private roads. In the second part of the article, Bart goes on to discuss some examples of private roads in America, including a homeowners association, The Dulles Greenway in the suburbs of DC, and the city of North Oaks, Michigan, which doesn’t even own any property. Frazier concludes: Everyone, particularly libertarians, should favor private roads. They have much going for them — they rely on mutual consent for their construction and use, and the market decides what is the appropriate level of their use. People who don’t want to use them are free to spend their dollars on other things that they consider more worthy. And as far-fetched as they seem to some, we have examples of working private roads. I cannot think of a better way for cash-strapped state governments to reduce their budgets than to stop paving the roads.

Another Angle on Planning in Houston

Brian Phillips at Live Oaks contacted me regarding the recent post by Stephen Smith on planning in Houston. Brian is a long time opponent of land use restrictions and defender of property rights in Houston. Brian has a different point of view on the subject, and has written a post on his blog, which I hope will spark some lively conversation. Brian invited me to publish a copy of his post at Market Urbanism. Tomorrow, I hope my schedule gives me the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on the topic, because I sympathize with both authors’ points of view. In the meantime, I want to share Brian’s post right away to get readers reactions to it: Urban Legends: Myths About Houston by Brian Phillips In a recent posting titled “Is Houston really Unplanned?” on Market Urbanism, Stephen Smith attempts to debunk alleged myths about Houston and planning. In the process, he actually engages in a much more widespread error–the failure to essentialize. (Here is a good explanation of essentializing.) Smith cites several examples of land use regulations in Houston, such as minimum lot size mandates and regulations dictating parking requirements for new development. He argues that these regulations, along with the city’s enforcement of deed restrictions, refute claims that Houston has developed primarily on the basis of free market principles. Smith’s position is common. Zoning advocates actually used similar arguments in the early 1990’s. Zoning advocates were wrong then, and Smith is now. Admittedly, Houston is not devoid of land use regulations. But the nature, number, and scope of those regulations is significantly different from other cities. There is an essential difference between the regulations in Houston and those in other cities. The permitting process in Houston is relatively fast compared to other cities, and the expenses incurred […]

Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes

Recently, I came accross an article by Charles Johnson, who blogs at Rad Geek.  The article had linked to a Market Urbanism post about how user fees and gas taxes fall well short of funding road use in the US. Charles’ article further debunks the Urbanism Legend asserted by free-market imposters that a free-market highway system would be similar to the system we see today. I like the post so much that I asked Charles about posting it at Market Urbanism.  Charles requested that I, “indicate that the post is freely available for reprinting and derivative use under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license.” I am happy to comply, and must admit that I haven’t taken the time to acquaint myself with Creative Commons.  So, here it is, in it’s original form, and feel free to read the comments in the link: Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes by Charles Johnson, RadGeek.com When left-libertarians argue with more conventionally pro-capitalist libertarians about economics, one of the issues that often comes up is government control over roads, and the ways in which state and federal government’s control over roads has acted as a large subsidy for economic centralization and national-scale production and distribution networks (and thus, to large-scale “big box” retailers, like Wal-Mart or Best Buy, dependent on the crafty arrangement of large-scale cross-country shipping as a basic part of their business model). People who have a problem with this analysis sometimes try to dispute it by arguing that government roads aren’t actually subsidized — that heavy users of government roads are actually getting something that roughly approximates a freed-market outcome, because users of government roads pay for the roads they get, in proportion to how heavily they use them, because government […]

Weekend Reading: Jane Jacobs, Agglomeration, Farms, NIMBY Songs

During my early college studies in Architecture and Urban Design, I became loosely familiar with the ideas of Jane Jacobs, one of the most celebrated urbanist intellectuals. Sanford Ikeda’s FEE lectures [mp3] have inspired me to learn more about Jane Jacobs from a Free Market Urbanism point of view. Here’s an article by Professors Ikeda and Gene Callahan I added to the links page: Jane Jacobs, The Anti-Planner Jane Jacobs is one of those intellectuals who seem ever on the periphery of the libertarian movement. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, can be found on the shelves of many a libertarian, though often unread. Perhaps this is because her name tends to be associated with leftish intellectuals who decry the rise of the suburbs and the decline of the downtowns, even though Jacobs strongly resists being labeled by any ideological movement, left, right, or other. What is not commonly known, however, is that her works are full of arguments and insights on the economic nature of communities, on central planning, and on ethics that libertarians would find original and enlightening. In the works of Jacobs, the order present in a well-functioning urban area emerges as the result of human action but not human design. It arises from a myriad of individuals each pursuing their own interest and carrying out their own plans, within a framework of rules that encourages peaceful cooperation over violent aggression. I have added Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities to my list of books to read. In fact, I bumped it to next in line. Hopefully her ideas will inspire a series of fresh blog posts. —— Mathew Kahn tipped us off to proceedings from a conference on The Economics of Agglomeration edited by Harvard Urban Economist Ed Glaeser. […]

Should the Government Build the Cars or the Roads?

I tend to agree that there is some hypocrisy in the conservative/libertarian world when it comes to transportation, which is part of the reason I started this blog. A more free-market transporation system would certainly lead to a more urban land use pattern; something between pre-auto, transit-reliant density and current auto-reliant sprawling suburbs. Regardless, market-based solutions will lead to a denser land use pattern in the long-run. This article discusses governement’s role in infrastructure and some libertarian free-market advocates’ strange love affair with government planned highways: Maybe the Government Should Build the Cars Is transportation like education, a communal service that works best through heavy general funding that pays off down the road in a community’s overall prosperity, or is it best delivered by targeting users, especially road users through congestion pricing to reduce demand and increase revenues? Also: King of the Road They seem to see a highway as an expression of the free market and of American individualism, and a rail line as an example of government meddling and creeping socialism. However, the above article portrays the government as the hero for overspending on highways, but what do you expect from a magazine named Governing? Rationalitate: Libertarians for Statism on the Governing article: “[o]ur national road system would never have been built if every street were required to pay for itself.” Yeah, that’s exactly the point! Our “national road system” is the problem, and the author’s implication is that not only would there be no “national road system,” but that roads are indeed synonymous with transportation. But just because we wouldn’t have trillion-dollar pavement stretching across the continent doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be able to get across the continent – or, more importantly, wherever it is that we want to go. Latest: How McCain or Obama Can Permanently […]

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