Smart Growth and its Discontents

I'm delighted to find that even Reason Magazine itself is less than sanguine about the suburban phenomenon as represented by Orange County, as it so often seems to violate the motto of "free minds, free markets." Especially the "free minds" part. Here's a link to Reason Magazine's review of Suburban Warriors.

http://reason.com/0110/cr.bd.the.shtml

It's interesting that transit dependent, pedestrian friendly, "decadent," socially permissive, "big government" New York City, the arch-devil in the devil theory of the country's anti-urban warriors, is host to the world's largest capital markets, probably the closest thing we have laboratory pure free markets. NYC has depended very little on the Department of Defense, which of course failed to protect it from harm. Freeway dependent, socially intolerant, Eisenhower/Space Age era OC (and SoCal in general), on the other hand, has had to rely heavily on defense for its bread and butter.

Since Robert Cote has been good enough to commend the (too-left-for-O.C. Barry) Goldwater Instititute, I think readers should also check out Harvard historian Lisa McGirr's "Suburban Warriors: the Origin of the New American Right" to see to what degree things like individual choice are respected, or even permitted in sprawling suburban regions like Orange County, and how much notions like "freedom" or "personal choice" are really valid issues underlying suburbanization.

This is from the Amazon blurb on the book:

Prototypical rather than typical, suburban Orange County, Calif., provides Harvard historian McGirr with an illuminating microcosm of the historical transformations that took conservative activism from the conspiracy-obsessed fringes of the John Birch Society to the election of Ronald Reagan, first as governor of California and then as president. Drawing heavily on interviews with grassroots activists as well as a wide range of primary documents, McGirr paints a complex picture exploring the apparent contradiction of powerfully antimodern social, political and religious philosophies thriving in a modern, technological environment and translating into sustained political activity. Federal spending, beginning in WWII and continuing with massive Cold War defense contracts and military bases, was the driving force behind Orange County's booming economy. A frontier-era mythos of rugged individualism, nurtured on hatred of eastern elites who funded western growth before Uncle Sam conveniently hid this dependency. The local dominance of unfettered private development chaotically disorganized in the county's northwest, corporately planned elsewhere destroyed existing communities, producing an impoverished public sphere, a vacuum conservative churches and political activism helped fill. Migrants primarily from nonindustrial regions became more conservative in reaction to the stresses of suburban modernity, while selectively assimilating benefits. Racial and class homogeneity nurtured a comforting conformity consciously defended against outside threats. United by enemies, libertarian and social conservatives rarely confronted their differences. Against this complex, contradictory background, McGirr charts the evolution of a movement culture through various stages, issues and forms of organizing. Incisive yet fair, this represents an important landmark in advancing a nuanced understanding of how antimodernist ideologies continue to thrive.

> Robert E. Lang writes:

> Smart Growth and its Discontents (cont)...

[Pt. Overview and summary Pt 2 & 3 details are examined in depth]

>
> Gripe #1: Many Smart Growth advocates, especially New Urbanists, misread

> history.

>
> The most important and common misread is what I call the “Great Divide” in

> urban history. Before World War II, metropolitan development was a Garden of

> Eden. After World War II, it was hell. The devil took the shape of an

> automobile, worked at GM, and financed the first enclosed shopping mall.

It is certainly are correct in the conclusion that SmUGLERs are generally

anti-POV for reasons of either religion or demonization in order to advance

a competing agenda. It is also important to expose what misguided NUrbists

refer to as "evidence" of unwieldy conspiracies and roads cabals and evil

capitalist plans . The failure resides in not addressing the many

legitimate social and economic forces that were responsible for reshaping

society over the same timeframe. These forces are actually easy to tease

out of the fabric of 1920-1960 if one is diligent. Transit usage was

falling, mobility was rising, transit costs were rising at many times an

already high cost of living rate, POV costs were falling in both real and

relative terms, etc., etc. The pervasive success of the POV to address

unmet societal needs is the effect and not the cause of social pressures for

a different urban model.

>
> This great divide has also spurred some Smart Growth “urban legends”:

>
> Legend: The automobile was thrust upon us all. Fact: Not all of us. Western

> cities, especially Los Angeles, embraced the automobile as an icon and built

> large parts of their culture around it. Does anyone seriously believe that

> the celebratory car culture of Southern California was really a conspiracy

> that forced people into loving automobiles?

What an incredibly bad example to support a universal truth. Didn't you

watch "Roger Rabbit?" Just kidding, rather, LA is an example, THE example

of the modern embrace of transportation mobility as a generator of wealth.

The reliable PE surface transit system fueled LA's growth, building on the

reliable water transportation system that was just previously completed.

Pacific Rim deep water ports connected to the continental rail network were

the next contributors. Finally, the adequate roads network proposed under

Governor Brown, (... NO! the real Gov "Pat" Brown) took over as the latest

transportation solution.

What went wrong? Glad you asked. The adequate roads network was never

completed AND despite the suprising ability of the remaining pieces to cover

the massive infrastructure shortfall local governments all oversubscribed to

the freeway system. Too many people, over-reliance on freeways, excessive

density, all are in the extreme in Greater Los Angeles. LA also discovered

an impact that should have been obvious but was apparently overlooked at the

time. Big (physical extent) urban areas regardless of density require far

more infrastructure for the same levels of mobility. It takes much more

capacity to serve a metro of 4 million than two metros of 2 million each.

>
> Legend: Before World War II, all developers were visionaries concerned with

> quality.

Exactly. I take it you are familiar with and obliquely referring to that

classic bit of Americana; "It's a Wonderful Life." It describes exactly how

miserable the "company town" old style density could be. This is the

reality of presuburbanamerica. Only planners and SmUGLERS pine for the days

of pre- WW-II urban patterns. An excellent example BTW of the urban legend

syndrome among the planning class.

> Fact: The first suburban strip development actually took place in

> the 1890s and coincided with the emergence of electric trolley. “Tax Payer

> Strips” were cheap shopping centers that developers held onto until the land

> value rose. The rent would often be just enough to pay the property taxes.

>

Ahhh but that's only half the story. Those trolley lines were subsidized by

the developers themselves. Imagine that, self-financing of transportation

infrastructure. Wow, we haven't ever done that in the US at least for a

long time excepting of course air and roads and cargo rail and pipelines and

canals and ports and locks and inland waterways and well.... Every form of

transport EXCEPT public transit. See the connection? When these old

RC, again with the political evocation of "personal choice." You mean like Irvine, CA, where your house color is dictated to you? Or Cobb County, GA, whose government has resolved to condemn the "homosexual lifestyle"? Surely no places more completely abhor personal choice than the Eisenhower era suburbs and their descendants (especially the military/aerospace company towns of the South and West). Which is why, of course, gays overlwhelmingly do not live there and do not want to live there. For the most part, living in the suburbs still limits you to the lifestyle choices available in the Eisenhower era, and increasingly, this is not an acceptably wide range under current circumstances.

> Robert E. Lang writes:

> Smart Growth and its Discontents Urban legends, edgeless cities, monster

> homes and other phenomena complicate the perception, application, and

> inclusion of Smart Growth.

You've just got to love an editorial that manages to needle nearly every possible constituency or opponent with the title alone. Let's deconstruct those comments before going into the body of the editorial for further details. Critics of SmUG are not discontent, they are a vast, in power, majority that are critical of a concept that overtly denigrates personal choice and covertly attempts to devalue the single largest financial investment of these same stakeholders. Urban legends revolve around the past as a model and not on current realities. Edgeless cities do not exist, this is merely an admission that the old urban boundary definition is inadequate. Monster homes are nothing new nor any demonstrable negative to the built environment. The true content of this editorial resides in the last few words of the title and in this we agree; There is a disconnect between the intent and execution of SmUG principles and an equally wide gulf between the public face of SmUG advocates and their hidden agenda.

> By Robert E. Lang Sep 30, 2002

>
> Freud, in his famous book Civilization and its

> Discontents, describes the inherent tension of modernity as humans needing

> civilization for survival but having basic drives that would tear it apart.

Freud seems to be defining the human need for cities and simultaneously the human desire to not live in those cities perhaps? Hardly an insight. Since Freud's time we have managed to accommodate both those desires. We call them suburbs.

> One exists in civilization, but one is never really happy with it due to the

> limits a collective society demands. This is how I see Smart Growth—we

> really need land use reform, but we are never going to be entirely happy

> with it.

Only SmUGLERS (smart urban growth lovers) and planners are unhappy with the current process. Everyone else is content to let evolutionary land use policies develop. SmUGLERs like all malcontents claim the -need- to change the status quo. Planners are merely pursuing their life goals of shaping the developed environment to their will. Recent trends in land use regulation, notably Napa and Ventura Counties in California represent the greatest threats to the NewUrb/NeoTrad/SmUG fad du jour of the "professional" planning community. Surely Napa and Ventura are effectively promoting the -claimed- goals of those planner driven marketing progroms but their failing is in their inability to promote the agenda planners assumed would follow from such programs. It should be noted that every single planner at the city and county level publicly opposed the passage of Ventura Counties' SOAR initiative.

Dense transit oriented urban conclaves surrounded by distinct rural character, in other words, nodalism on a regional basis is unnatural for our current circumstances.

>
> Much has been written about the benefits of Smart Growth and somewhat less

> on its drawbacks.

Oh, pleuuze. The supposed benefits have been promoted to no end and the technical literature are filled with the measured failings. It is hubris in the extreme to think there is any substantial body of pro SmUG evidence or that there is not a large body of measurable SmUG refutation already extant. I object in both these directions. Editorialist Lang certainly has some things to offer and he expands upon several points but to imply that any of these points are original is exaggeration.

> These commentaries have focused on smart growth successes,

> smart growth rip-offs and smart growth out of control. However, very few

> address much less critique, the premises upon which the Smart Growth

> movement was built. I lay my critique out in three basic gripes—I could have

> picked more, but three seems like a reasonable number considering space

> limitations.

On the net, no one can hear you "run on." In the future I suggest any and all proceed without fear of your bring down the world wide web with too many bytes. More importantly, many long standing and vocal opponents of SmUG would certainly welcome additional critical comments but the reader is done a disservice to not at least mention those people and organizations. Randall O'Toole, Wendell Cox, The Reason Institute, Thoreau Institute, Goldwater Institute, amongst a great many others would be on such a list.

While Mr. Lang makes several compelling points, he does not justify the title of the article. Rather, he identifies three points of contention with Smart Growth philosophy, but does not adequately support them. One has to wade through some (admittedly) impressivle and esoteric arguments, but in the end does not support his "Gripes" clearly.

Robert Lang's "Smart Growth and its Discontents" attacks straw men to critique smart growth. Are there really that many smart growth proponents so dumb that they think America was an urban paradise before 1945, which suddently became an urban hell?

A smarter smart growth position understands that America faced urban difficulties throughout the 19th and 20th Century, but attempted to "solve" them in ways which became very destructive. The automobile was not "forced" on people, but a structure was created where the automobile was the "logical" choice. In the decades between 1910 and 1970, European and Canadian cities invested heavily in mass transit, American cities did not. Not surprisingly, American mass transit deteriorated. Meanwhile, the state and federal governments invested heavily in highway and then freeway building. At the same time, the federal government favored mortgage lending in the (then very segregated) suburbs, while redlining many urban neighborhoods. There were and are a myriad of other subsidies which went mostly to the suburbs, most notably the tax deductibility of mortgage interest. This policy favors higher income homeowners over lower income ones (many of whom do not itemize their deductions) and tenants, who get no equivalent tax break.

The outcome is that not only are European cities different from cities in the United States, but so are Canadian cities here in North America. The proportion of trips Americans make by automobile is significantly higher even than Canada's.

Adopting a "smart growth" approach does not automatically solve all planning problems. Some see "monster" homes as an example of smart growth (infill in existing neighborhoods), others as travesty of it. Transit on the urban edge is another issue--should agencies seek to serve all areas or focus away from these edges since they are so expensive to serve? But the overall point--that American metropolitan areas desparately need to become more compact, more energy efficient, and more transit-oriented remains. The alternative, which is includes an ever-warming global climate, is unacceptable.