Sprawling Misconceptions
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James Howard Kunstler doesn’t think highly of libertarian newsman John Stossel. Assuming this is what Kunstler is talking about (see No. 2), you can’t blame him. Stossel defends suburban sprawl and accuses its opponents — like Kunstler — of forcing lifestyle choices onto others “by limiting where they can build.” The fallacy of this view has been pointed out about 100 times. For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States — is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations. If Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl.
It’s odd that self-described libertarians such as Stossel are so slow to grasp that government planning makes sprawl ubiquitous. You would think that libertarians would instinctively grasp the deeply statist nature of suburban development. First of all, with a depressingly few exceptions, virtually every town in America looks the same. That is, it has the same landscape of arterial roads, strip malls, and residential subdivisions, accessibly only by car. Surely, given America’s celebrated diversity, you would also see a diversity of places. As it turns out, all but a few people live the same suburban lifestyle. Government, as libertarian assumptions would predict, is the culprit.
Second, the few places in America that have a distinctive character are also exceedingly expensive. John Stossel himself admits to living in an apartment and walking to work most days. Now, I don’t know where exactly Mr. Stossel lives, but it sounds as if he lives in Manhattan, where residential space costs over $1000 a square foot (that means a two-bedroom apartment where a family of four could fit costs at least $1.5 million). If Mr. Stossel’s lifestyle, as he puts it, is less popular than the suburban lifestyle, then why does his cost so much more? He apparently never asks himself the question. Had he done so, he might have discovered that government artificially restricts the supply of Manhattan-like places but artificially increases the supply of sprawl. That’s the reason Americans “prefer” to live in the suburbs. They don’t have a choice.
Filed under: Uncategorized
I think you’ll have phenomena like “anti-anti-sprawl libertarianism” so long as there are libertarians who hate hippies more than they hate “big government.” Which is to say, for a damn long time to come.
[...] Austin Bramwell becomes the dozenth or so libertarian/conservative to criticize libertarian/conservative sprawl defenders on the basis of their own stated principles: [...]
[...] a closer look at the problem, we turn once again to Austin Bramwell, who has penned a brief response to James Howard Kunstler’s take on John Stossel on the subject of sprawl. He writes, [...]
[...] and politics Tags: libertarians, urbanism The American Conservative’s Austin Bramwell goes hard on John Stossel and murks his misguided defense of suburban sprawl (via Yglesias): It’s odd that [...]
Stossel is a neighbor of mine on New York’s Upper West Side. (I occasionally see him riding the B train to work, presumably at the News Corp. building in Midtown. One expects he stopped walking to work when he was canned by ABC.)
[...] know that libertarians don’t like environmentalists, so they write in defense of sprawl. But as Austin Bramwell points out at The American Conservative sprawl is also central planning: For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of [...]
[...] Somewhat belatedly I’d like to link to this piece about slum urbanism: how environmentalists and other city-lovers can learn from the way slums are pieced together. “Slum” here is used to mean an informal settlement within a city, usually in the developing world. Spending time in these slums is a revelation to any American, I think, partly for the expected reasons, namely that they’re squalid, dangerous on account of the ubiquitously shoddy construction and exposed electrical wire. Less expected is that the streets of these slums often seem full of life and happy, not only in comparison to American urban ghettos, but also compared to our wealthy suburbs. Often there are a multitude of small shops, neighbors pausing in their daily errands to gossip, and children playing. It’s worth thinking about what a tremendous indictment of our built environment that this fact represents. Unlike the slum-dwellers we are subject to laws ensuring our buildings are built safely, but also unlike them we’re subject to laws that make our neighborhoods isolating, ugly, environmentally disastrous and hostile to all forms retail except the big box stores we’ve been talking about on the blog. As Austen Bramwell writes: [...]
It’s not only in America that such sprawl is defended by pseudo-conservatives; and not only in America that such sprawl was imposed by governmental fiat. Britain got motorways and gutted its rail transportation system, not because of any “free market” demand, but because the regime wanted it.
Peter Hitchens’s admirable book The Broken Compass discusses the procedure involved. It also points out the total incompatibility of said procedure with anything resembling conservatism (even though the deed was done by allegedly conservative administrations during the 1950s and early 1960s).
1) If the problem with sprawl is regulation and zoning, attack regulation and zoning not sprawl because A) the sprawl fighters almost always want more regulation and zoning.
2) Not every town in America looks the same, what a silly comment. Of course towns have malls, and retail stores – humans want to shop. Not every town is laid out in the same way. This was a half-witted comment to even attempt. Nonsensical at best.
3) Come to Vegas and take a look at our housing market. Which is upset the most? SFR or High Rise Condos?
The answer is high rise condos – people, it turns out, like the single family residents better and they are voting with their feet and money (And have been doing so for some time)
4) Why is Manhattan’s rent so expensive? What about rent control another government regulation? What about the fact that it is high density urban living? (That was the point Austin was trying to make, but then imply that it is superbly popular -it is NOT. If Manhattan style living was so popular wouldn’t we see more places with an urban density approaching 20,000+ people per square foot?
Sure there are a few people who like it, but not enough to justify fighting sprawl with MORE government regulations. People like sprawl, as it turns out, and planners (perhaps like Austin and James hate that fact, I don’t know I’m not a mind reader. John’s correct and Austin and James are just wrong. Thanks for sharing though).
*square mile…
although 20,000 people per square foot would probably be a planner’s wet dream…
The move to the suburbs began for a reason and it wasn’t via a government plot (pardon the pun). It began when legions of WWII veterans with cash in their pockets and families to house freely decided that they didn’t want to live in their old urban neighborhoods. Developers like Toll Brothers and Levitte (sp?) made suburban tract housing possible. This and the collapse of cities brought about by rising criminality and decaying infrastructure made the move to suburbia very attractive.
A lot of suburban government activity today is about curbing rather than promoting growth/building as the 1st and 2nd generation settlers strive to keep some greenery.
Sprawl in my view, is caused by the desire to “move to the country” that is latent in our culture. Of course when we all move to the country, it Isn’t the country anymore, so we move further out and begin the whole sorry process over again.
If we could recapture our cities some of the discontented ex-urbanites would move back. But the drive to live on green land, however paltry, is deeply imprinted on us and some change of culture will be necessary to put a break on sprawl. The countryside in places like Bucks County PA is loosing its character with McMansion ranches sprouting up along roadways unable to support the traffic burden. And frankly, the injection of urbanites into traditional communities just injects the culture that destroyed the cities into healthy populations.
[...] Sprawling Misconceptions [...]
“It began when legions of WWII veterans with cash in their pockets and families to house freely decided that they didn’t want to live in their old urban neighborhoods.”
Fine then. But why did the government feel the need to intervene in the mortgage market, when it never had before, to make sure such Levittowns got built over all those old potato fields our East or fruit orchards in California? Before 1946, it was much harder to get a mortgage. Afterwards, a man could uproot his family to wherever a new subdivision was opening up and get his dream home with little money down at a 30-year fixed rate.
Sprawl is an interlocking combination between big business wanting it and big government making it possible or vise-versa (Interstate Highway system for example). Social change at this scale never happens by accident, powerful interests make it happen and use the government to do so.
The original veterans housing was built within established communities. I remember them. No one wanted to live in them. The government was responding to popular pressure for stand alone housing, and that had to be outside the cities. Government (FDR/ Truman) promised the WWII generation easy housing and easy credit in the same way that the Laborites promised their vets socialized medicine and council housing. If that’s a conspiracy then so be it.
The Interstate Highway system came in during the fifties as a national security initiative. No one planned it as an escape valve to the countryside. Big business had a positive disincentive to support suburban growth. Workers living in the suburbs no longer lived in walking distance to their factories. This migration of workers to the suburbs also left urban factory owners at the mercy of urban political machines with fewer taxpayers to cover the cost of infrastructure.
While it was harder to get a mortgage before the war, it was much easier and cheaper to actually build a house. A very considerable percentage of the cost of housing now goes to satisfy ever more intrusive zoning, building and fire codes created by government not to mention environmental land use restrictions.
Take a look at Houston as a counter-factual to Adam’s argument.
[...] points to both Austin Bramwell’s anti-sprawl piece and this response from Yglesias. Both seem to agree that zoning and central planning is the [...]
I find it funny when conservatives defend sprawl, since there is very little that is market-driven about it, except that it is easier to do nowadays. Not only is sprawl mandated, but it has been mandated for about 50 years in most of the country. Long enough that it is ingrained into our developing and financing structures.
Starting in the 1950’s the federal govt issued guidelines that showed how to incorporate cul-de-sacs and very long streets to pack more houses onto a site, discourage pedestrian use, and limit access to neighborhoods from large highways only. Separation of uses was considered an obvious virtue, and the guidelines deliberately prescribed one type of residential development only. These were fairly quickly incorporated into requirements all over the country.
This is not even remotely controversial. Anyone studying planning today learns about it and reads the original documents. It’s amazing how many people think the market determined the look of this country–it did not. As a great example, look at Williamsburg. Now turned into a colonial museum, there are many people who would pay top dollar for a home in a location like that, but developers can’t sell it to them: it would be literally illegal to recreate the same layout in almost every part of this country. So, instead, we Americans visit, walk around, and marvel at it, wondering why we don’t make places like that anymore.
Houston is often listed as a city that shows that sprawl is inevitable. In reality, Houston mainly just doesn’t like the word “zoning,” and uses all of the other land-use regulation tools that other large cities do, especially those that dictate how things are organized into sprawl patterns.
[...] Bramwell argues at the American Conservative that the John Stossel set has it wrong on urban sprawl: it isn’t [...]
All of this may be true, but I encourage anyone who thinks all zoning laws are inherently evil to go live in a place with no zoning laws for a while. Better yet, ask my inlaws about their experience living in a place where “freedom” prevails.
They bought a lot in the West Virginia countryside, built a house with their very own hands, and sold it six months later because their neighbor to the north decided to turn his lot into a junk yard/motocross track, and their neighbors to the east drained an unregulated septic system onto my inlaws’ lot.
Freedom is a two way street. While you might have the freedom to do whatever it is that you darn well please; the guy next door might in turn exercise his freedom in a way the severly impinges upon yours.
I live in a “new urbanist” community in Colorado. It’s designed to be walkable and to incorporate businesses and multiple types of housing–multi-unit condos next to houses. And yes, it took years to convince the city that the sky wouldn’t fall if people lived next to businesses and if we had narrower streets than the usual beige-box development. One of the central streets is named Tenacity to reflect what it took to get all the appropriate permissions.
The people in the community are mostly crunchy liberals. The development next door, a classic McMansion community, is full of Republicans who zealously defend the zoning rules. It has always struck me as funny that the way each group lives out its politics is the exact opposite of what you’d expect.
Our community has its problems and some of the new urbanist ideology may prove unrealistic. For one thing, the developer and HOA partly take the city’s place as control freaks in charge; for another, our retail businesses struggle to be viable within a car-oriented town. But if our private covenants and business plans don’t work out, we’ll adapt. I haven’t seen one single problem in the community that’s due to our departure from the zoning rules.
@patrick:
3) Come to Vegas and take a look at our housing market. Which is upset the most? SFR or High Rise Condos?
If you think that high rises in Vegas represent the concept of urban living referred to in the article, then … well, I don’t know what to say.
You continued: “If Manhattan style living was so popular wouldn’t we see more places with an urban density approaching 20,000+ people per square foot?”
A central point of the article is that current zoning regulations in almost all municipalities across the US make it very very difficult to build such environments. A few cities have attempted to increase density, and the ones I know of seem to be generally (slowly) successful (Portland, OR being the best example). But the idea that you could just build “Manhattan style living” from scratch (even in a place that loves the idea of de novo urban “planning” like Vegas) is fundamentally at odds with current US urban planning law.
[...] could actually be a little more, oh, let’s say, libertarian instead of reactionary dimwits. John Stossel thinks he’s defending the free market by defending sprawl, but guess what? Urban sprawl is planned by government zoning laws. Don’t [...]
perhaps it is not impermissible here to note that a lot of sprawl in many metro areas is driven by the quiet insistence of white people that they would rather drive two, sometimes three hours a day to work rather than have to subject themselves and especially their children to the hassles, frustrations and occasional dangers involved in living around significant numbers of non-whites.
“The original veterans housing was built within established communities. I remember them. No one wanted to live in them. The government was responding to popular pressure for stand alone housing, and that had to be outside the cities. Government (FDR/ Truman) promised the WWII generation easy housing and easy credit in the same way that the Laborites promised their vets socialized medicine and council housing. If that’s a conspiracy then so be it.”
Good, then you won’t mind the government’s further tinkering in the health care field because, after all, Obama promised it and their was public demand to do something about health care. Hardly a conspiracy.
But then again that’s the thing about war, you’re never quite the same country going into it as coming out of it. In fact it’s suprising Obama is promising the same kind of paradise for veterans coming back from our current wars. He could probably win more votes that way.
Suburban sprawl: a statist invention…
Austin Bramwell cannot figure out why libertarians and conservatives like suburban sprawl. Excerpt: It’s odd that self-described libertarians such as Stossel are so slow to grasp that government planning makes sprawl ubiquitous. You would think that l…
“Good, then you won’t mind the government’s further tinkering in the health care field because, after all, Obama promised it and their (sic) was public demand to do something about health care. Hardly a conspiracy.”
You’re confusing description with advocacy. I’m not in favor of sprawl. I just want to trace its roots accurately. Try asking old folks of your acquaintance if they moved to the suburbs voluntarily or were they induced/forced. People just like getting out of old industrial cities.
> Our community has its problems and some of the new urbanist ideology may prove unrealistic.
> For one thing, the developer and HOA partly take the city’s place as control freaks in charge
Colorado’s Free Market Think Tank advocates HOAs as a “Free-Market Alternatives To Zoning”
http://www.i2i.org/main/article.php?article_id=1702
“Since HOAs are very local and small, participants are often neighbors and hence have incentive to settle disagreements in a civil manner. ”
Never mind that in an HOA, you never truly own your home, since it is always collateral to the HOA corporation, even if the mortgage is paid off.
See
http://privatopia.blogspot.com/2010/03/bankruptcy-wont-work.html?showComment=1268491529701#c3343262799454143585
I have proposed a new model of home ownership, based on the collectivism and corporate governance advocated by both conservatives and libertarians.
In my modest proposal, home owners would own shares in the common interest community, not equity of an individual property.
http://volokh.com/2010/03/09/do-we-need-to-subsidize-homeownership-to-preserve-our-national-character/#comment-769298
“People just like getting out of old industrial cities.”
I understand that but I don’t see why the Feds should help them, or destroy whole neighborhoods with interstate highway system or with urban renewal.
Sean, the interstate highway system was planned before the war for national security purposes and pushed through by Eisenhower. Eisenhower wasn’t elected until years after the push to the suburbs started. So the interstate highway system couldn’t have been a plot by the government to foster sprawl. Of course in due course it did just that. But it was not intended to from its inception.
As to “….I don’t see why the Feds should help them,.” Well they were citizens after all and wanted to escape. Hell, sometimes the government actually responds to popular preference. I’m not a libertarian but just how would one keep people determined to own land and free standing homes from doing so. And would we want a government with such power?
I think that part of our different perspectives on this matter stems from age difference. I’m in my mid 60’s and can remember the urban scene of the 1950’s. The city I grew up in had real white ethnic ghettos. A great many who lived in them wanted something better for their children and tried very hard to get out. They wanted to live someplace where they were no living on top of each other. Their children attended college and were absolutely not going to live in the esthetically ugly surroundings of their parents. The first tract housing I recall were in small communities literally on the cities edge. The media of the time depicted suburban life as idyllic and “normal.” Ozzie and Harriet, Reilly, Beaver, none of these people lived in a tenement.
Urban renewal was almost universally popular (except of course, the minorities who found themselves renewed.) business, civic improvement groups, liberals like Elenore Roosevelt, everyone thought urban renewal was in the best interest of the slum dwellers. That’s right, they were called slums. Now we know that in the case of the business community and the big city political machines, this was just “Nigger Removal.” But the real harm done was only visible after the fact. It’s hard to believe now but there was a time when moving poor people into vast inhuman housing projects was seen to be a positive caring measure. But they were hailed as such almost universally. I know. I remember them going up and I’ve seen them come down. And of course the people displaced by urban renewal were the last to move to the suburbs. We are sensitive to the bad result of urban renewal but the pre-renewal areas I remember were truly awful, dilapidated unsanitary places. Many were beyond reasonable repair.
Once the phenomenon of suburban growth started it was inevitably manipulated by all sorts of actors, great and small. I don’t like the typical American suburb, but I don’t see how one intervenes without creating powerful corrupt planning monstrosities like those found in New Jersey. As a society we have an ethos that yearns for the countryside but also destroys it. I say that’s a tragedy more than a conspiracy.
If you have some thoughts on how to gently persuade people to take back cities and make them livable places, or voluntarily modify their housing patterns/densities in the suburbs, I’d love to hear them. I’m stumped.
@RonCo, your Colorado town sounds quite interesting — care to mention what town it is so I can look it up…?
Thomas O. Meehan believes that national security drove the agenda for highways when he could read copious literature that the system came about because of concentrated lobbyist efforts on behalf of a certain MacTruck manufacture who otherwise would loose to the more efficient market choice-railroads, That’s in a number of advertising books if you care…And yes, GM and the road unions were right there along with the gas distributors. But it started with M/T. Co and propoganda/advertising/lobbying
Otherwise I agree with him that we don’t want the Gov Tinkering. I wonder where he falls on the Net Neutrality issue which also has so much smoke blown on it by the many corporations with dogs in the fight as well as the mindless FCC krew.
Waltinseatlle, As far as I can ascertain, the US Army conducted mobility exercises going back to the Twenties. Eisenhower was personally involved in these trials and became a great advocate for a national highway system. The army was going to move on wheels and they wanted highways. With the advent of atomic weapons, security planners hoped to provide a method for people to evacuate population centers, so they joined in the cause. Truckers and truck makers had long clamored for a better highways for obvious reasons. I’m sure many actors took part in propelling the system.
My ignorance of the Net Neutrality issue is so comprehensive that I shudder to type the words.
Perhaps if cities were safer to inhabit, more people would choose to live there. However, that would require great changes in our legal and “justice” system; a change that cannot happen until “political correctness” as practiced today has died and perps are treated as criminals, not victims and therefore to be coddled.
[...] Bramwell blames suburban sprawl on the state. Matt [...]
[...] to the American Conservative, Libertarian Foxter John Stossel “defends suburban sprawl and accuses its opponents — [...]
[...] Sprawling Misconceptions James Howard Kunstler doesn’t think highly of libertarian newsman John Stossel. Assuming this is what Kunstler is talking about (see No. 2), you can’t blame him. Stossel defends suburban sprawl and accuses its opponents — like Kunstler — of forcing lifestyle choices onto others “by limiting where they can build.” The fallacy of this view has been pointed out about 100 times. For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States — is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations. If Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl. [...]
[...] Austin Bramwell at The American Conservative: For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States — is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations. If Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl. [...]
[...] libertarians should support smart growth — at least that’s what some supposedly conservative, liberal, and anarchistic bloggers say. This all appears to be a response to James Kunstler’s [...]
This is the area for the tax revolt.
Towns have built themselves a huge expense with low density because they have to supply police, fire, garbage, street maintenance, sewer, water and gas to an area much larger than earlier towns with the same population.
Developers promise a larger tax base and “50 new jobs” in a new retail project but they’re not new jobs or tax receipts, only moved from existing retailers. The new areas and the “used” areas both need all city services and there’s the “tax” of hyper auto use (not cheap).
Why is it bad for people to want their own piece of dirt with a house on it? You people who are against sprawl (for whatever reason) are fascists who want everyone to live by your standards. We need to make choices available, not limit choices. Our constitution protects the right we all have to pursue our own version of Happiness. It’s really as simple as that.
Art, you’ve managed to miss the point entirely. Those of us who wish to live in traditional walkable communities find our choices extremely limited thanks to goverment interference and onerous zoning laws. And the Constitution did not enumerate government-subsidized sprawl as a right. Get a clue.
Sean,
Those of us who wish to live in traditional walkable communities find our choices extremely limited thanks to goverment interference and onerous zoning laws.
Tough. Laws reflect the will of the people in the aggregate, not the will of an eccentric minority that prefers to live in “traditional walkable communities” that most people don’t want. Get a clue.
Jamestown, like Art you’ve managed to miss the point, although you sure do write pretty. The fact is that the zoning laws have inhibited traditional developments around the country, even when people want them built. These developments always end up being more desirable and, therefore, more valuable than the suburban crap with which we’ve grown accustomed. Do a search on New Urbanism and read about their struggles to overcome stupid zoning laws that dictate nothing being built anything else. Oh, and while you’re at it, read about Peak Oil and specifically the Export Land Model. These issues will dictate the future need for walkable communities.
Your assertions are completely irrational. If people wanted different zoning laws and other public policies that encouraged “traditional developments,” they’d vote for them. They don’t vote for them because they don’t want them. They don’t want “traditional developments.” They want spacious, comfortable, affordable homes in low-density, car-oriented developments, and they vote accordingly. You need to come to terms with the fact that most people simply don’t want to live the way you want them to live.
Why would I want to live in a high-rise shoebox that costs half a million dollars and have to rely on slow, inconvenient, uncomfortable mass transit to get around when for less money I can get a large house in the suburbs with a garage and a yard and get around in my own car?
[...] at The American Conservative, Austin Bramwell echoed Yglesias, in his own way, in a link-heavy salvo well worth clicking through: For the 101st [...]
You can live wherever you want; but if you want to cut the expense of running a town (who’s against cutting costs?) dense is the only way to go.
I think our towns should be smarter about allowing the typical low density commercial development that spreads through the countryside; but I’m fiscally conserative.
[...] fans. As soon as he posted his rude reply, the blogosphere lit up with arguments from progressive, conservative, and even libertarian writers claiming that sprawl is the result of central planning and zoning and [...]
[...] as “balderdash and poppycock” my claim that “government planning makes sprawl ubiquitous,” Randal O’Toole of the [...]
[...] of the Cato Institute takes on Austin Bramwell’s argument that suburban sprawl is the result of government planning. How can this be, O’Toole asks, when notorious sprawls like Houston don’t even have a [...]
@randy, cities are very expensive. 50+ years of suburbia have shown that density doesn’t lead to more effecient government.
Jamestown, you’re kind of an ass. Where I live right now, it’s illegal to, for example, build a four story building and have retail shops on the first floor, offices on the second, and residential units on the third and fourth. You honestly see nothing wrong with that?
Always strikes me as funny, to listen to libertarians complain about big government doing the bidding of big business, as being the problem. More to the point of this article, developers steering the entire zoning process in their favor, so that the blame for their greed can be laid at the feet of the bad bad evil government. When, the developers and the government are essentially the same thing.
“Paved the first road back ‘45
Now ya gotta have wheels if yer gonna survive.”
Blaming the government for the greed of corporate america as a defense of libertarianism is just too ironic, even for me.
[...] for planning, there has been more talk of this lately – the idea that most walkable urbanism is currently illegal in most parts of [...]
[...] month in the American Conservative Austin Bramwell argued that “sprawl—an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the [...]
[...] a side note, this reminds me of Austin’s post over at The American Conservative earlier this year. He wrote at the time: It’s odd that [...]
There’s nothing to defend when talking about suburban sprawls.