Standing Up for Smart Growth in California

Stephens, who deftly responded to Wendell Cox's declaration of war on California's planners, has his sights set on Joel Kotkin this time around. You may recall a recent "sycophantic quasi-interview" conducted with Kotkin by Allysia Finley, again in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, in which he derided the state's "progressive apparatchiks" who want "to destroy the essential reason why people move to California in order to protect their own lifestyles." Stephens challenges Kotkin's "strained logic and offensive biases" head-on.

"Kotkin disparages people like me for liking a lifestyle that he disagrees with. He thinks that more people should live where I live (i.e. near the coast) but he doesn't think that coastal areas should build more housing, and he definitely doesn't think that the state should promote that housing. Because then there'd be too much of a bad thing, even though people want that bad thing very badly if it's located in the right places.

And that's why, according to Kotkin, California shouldn't have passed SB 375 and instead should have maintained the status quo. Or something like that."