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Sprawl, Choice, and The Fallacy of The Free Market
An short but enlightened history of town planning and property rights in America
by Chuck Banas (May 23, 2003)
This article was written as a response to an online debate concerning property rights and land-use planning. An assertion was made that Americans moved to the suburbs in droves during the post-World War II period because of free individual choice. According to this line of reasoning, government policy had nothing to do with the shape of post-war development of the United States; it was simply a result of a "free market" combined with the proliferation of the automobile.
It was further asserted that the continued blighting and de-population of American cities and towns is due to the individualistic tendencies of American culture. Ever since colonial days, so the thought goes, Americans have always had an independent streak; a pioneer spirit; which drove them out of cities and towns during the second half of the 20th century. Therefore, it is argued, planning and civic design have never been part of an American value system.
Conversely, all Europeans universally decided to stay put, even after the invention of the automobile, and even after many of their cities were flattened as a result of two world wars. This is because, alas, Europeans have no such entrepreneurial or individualistic strain. Moreover, the European continient is so crowded that there is no more room to expand. As an "accidental" result, European cities and towns today are far more healthy, beautiful, and satisfying than American cities and towns.
Of course, all of this nonsense couldn't be further from the truth, and needed to be rebutted.
We've been telling
people where to live in this country for the last half-century and more.
In fact, the great suburban build-out has been subsidized: With the highway
programs, the G.I. Bill, Federal loan practices, low-density/segmented-use/segmented-income
zoning, ex-urban public infrastructure improvements, urban renewal
programs, etc., it's been anything but a free-market.
Union Road,
Cheektowaga: everything you see is planned and prescribed by the town's codes.
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While most were well-intended, these policies and others have had a cumulative
effect; namely, prescribing that middle-class (white) America will live in new
single-family detached homes in a suburban subdivision. Even wonder why, in
the banal mono-culture that has become suburbia, there seems to be only one
type of housing choice?
Washington,
DC's McMillan plan of 1901, itself a re-commitment to realizing L'Enfant's original
plan, gave us the nation's capital as we know it—and love it—today.
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In this country, laws and policies have always told people what they
can and cannot do with their land, and where they can and cannot live. In fact,
from the grand Wasington-Jefferson-L'Enfant plan for Washington, DC; James Oglethorpe's
design for Savannah, GA; and the Ellicott-Olmsted plans for Buffalo; to
the giant land-grants and small-town plats of the Midwest and West; nothing
could be more American than the planning and regulation of land-use and growth.
Our founding fathers saw it as both necessary and natural. And for some time in our
short history, we planned pretty well. It's just that in the last sixty years
or so, we've done a pretty cruddy job of it.
One of the many
public squares that make up Savannah, GA: a beautiful, celebrated city today
because of a visionary plan.
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At some point in
the mid-20th century, we decided to throw thousands of years of culturally accumulated
knowledge of planning and civic design in the garbage. We've all become the
unwilling guinea-pigs of a failed Futurama experiment with some terrible
economic and social costs.
The Midway (c.1900)
along Buffalo's Delaware Avenue: one of America's great streets; a grand combination
of both Ellicott's and Olmsted's plans for the city.
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Nationwide, the subsidization of sprawl is bankrupting us, especially in economically stagnant
Western New York. But if we tweak the current rules just a bit, then the choices
people make will start to reflect their true costs. We'll then see a much wider
choice in living arrangements, a wider range of transportation options, more
interesting and beautiful cities, towns, and neighborhoods, revitalization of
our blighted and impovershed neighborhoods, a stronger local economy, and far
more economically and environmentally sustainable development practices
both locally and nationwide.
Check out my Smart
Growth article in Artvoice this week (minus the pictures published in
the paper version, unfortunately):
http://artvoice.com/may15_21_2003/pages/smartgrowth.html
And show up to
at least one of the remaining Smart Growth Tuesdays at the Burchfield-Penney
through the end of June:
http://www.burchfield-penney.org/events/
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