A Common Sense Approach to Building in America
If you made the rounds of conservative publications recently, you might have stumbled across this article in the Federalist by Jonathan & Paige Bronitsky. Paige Bronitsky “…was involved with President Trump’s initiative to protect the “American suburban lifestyle dream.” And Jonathon was a former speech writer to the Justice Department. Their experiences, apparently, make them uniquely qualified to expose the underlying “leftism” of New Urbanism, a movement focused on reimagining our built environment in a less auto-centric way that’s seen fanfare from conservatives and liberals alike in the last few years.
The article rails against the ideals of New Urbanism, equating them to either a developer-led takeover of your neighborhood or a highly contrived version of “Americana” that only the rich can afford. While there may be slivers of truth to this, the article misses the forest for the trees and implies that the status quo is better than anything coming from the New Urbanism camp.
While it is understandable to think that New Urbanism is the hottest fad in Urban Planning, the movement was started almost fifty years ago, and the ideas it espouses aren’t new at all. In fact, they are a return to form for American real estate development. New Urbanism actually epitomizes a pattern of building that was the norm when government was smaller, more constrained, and when markets dictated much of what was built. Easy evidence for this is found in the trove of photographs that we have of pre-war cities and first-ring suburbs. While these cities had their problems, the idea that New Urbanism’s roots are in some kind of left-wing dirigisme is inaccurate.
To understand modern, post-war suburbs, we first need to look at the interstate highway system, which exponentially grew them. It was the single largest infrastructure project in the history of the U.S., and some argue the largest earth-moving project in the history of the world. It was paid for 90 cents on the dollar by the federal government, it was heavily dependent on the use of eminent domain, and it was drawn up by a small, influential group at the highest levels of government. It’s arguably the epitome of government gone wild.
In the building process, tens of thousands of people were displaced, many of whom were getting their first real taste of property ownership (such as Black Americans), fundamental, according to Bronitsky, for the American Dream. Furthermore, the damage done to America’s architectural heritage and ultimately our culture is incalculable. Not just from the interstates themselves, but from the ensuing parking lots that flattened buildings for convenient car storage.
Here you can see the comparison of several midwestern cities, before and after the interstates. The sheer scale of destruction is comparable to war. The before shows a market-based approach to an orderly set of lots that respond to the supply and demand of the residents. The after shows how our cities looked following billions of dollars from the federal government. These handouts distorted the natural inclinations of how a city evolves and injected demand for auto-centric planning.
New Urbanism simply looks to the past for a style of development that was commonplace in our history to combat a bureaucratic, government-subsidized approach to the construction of our communities.
This isn’t to say that the Bronitskys don’t have a point. Modern suburbs are popular. The cover photo for the Bronitskys’ article, which I assume is stock, is likely of the far-flung suburb of Herriman, Utah. A quick glance can tell you that this is a relatively generic suburb, one that’s been replicated successfully all over the country. A real estate search will show you that the houses in Herriman are going from $500k to north of $1mm. Ironic, considering that Bronitsky decries Seaside and Celebration, FL, the crown jewels of New Urbanism, for being wildly unaffordable to the average consumer. This simply proves their point, people vote with their feet, anywhere can be unaffordable if there’s enough demand.
The difference is that Seaside and Celebration offer something markedly different than your standard suburb, one that there’s clearly an appetite for. American suburban homogeneity isn’t necessarily due to demand for the architecture, but to compounding factors that create an easy plug-and-play style of building and zoning.
These standard suburbs often exist because of developers that are “…in cahoots with machine politicians…” a quid-pro-quo that the Bronitskys slam in the second paragraph of their article. This is not a “corruption” that is unique to New Urbanism. The suburbs specifically wouldn’t be possible without the subsidies for the low-volume roads, lengthy sewers and water mains, lift stations, and annexing. This is coupled with local politicians who are eager for growth and usually ignorant about how inefficient the entire system is, a point illustrated well by Grist. Two neighbors who share a backyard, but are 20 minutes apart by car and two hours apart when using sidewalks. All of this infrastructure is paid for by taxpayers, whether they use it or not.
Despite the assumptions and conveniently overlooked big government appropriations, the Bronitskys get a few things right. Left-leaning leadership has hurt cities by refusing to punish criminals and give indecency a pass, a trend, thankfully, that seems to be ending. But despite their explosive rhetoric, cities aren’t “collapsing.” The dreaded Urban Doom Loop from COVID and remote work didn’t materialize as we thought it would, and today, many cities are just as popular as ever, if not more. In the same article, they reference millennials moving out of the city to the burbs, we see that there’s still a large portion of them sticking around, and Gen Z seems to be moving in. But the suburbs, as the Bronitskys mention, are good places to raise kids. Lower density is positively correlated with higher TFR, which is great news for America and a big win for lower-density development.
Ultimately, the Bronitskys seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding what New Urbanism is about and what its goals are. They simplify the arguments to the extremes–Either you live in New York and take the subway, or you live in a hyper car-dependent suburb outside of Phoenix. Personally, I live in a small Minnesota city in a single-family house, I have two cars, drive often, but sometimes walk or bike, and still consider myself an urbanist.
At the heart of New Urbanism is a desire to legalize common sense in development, restore property rights, and let communities decide the direction of their built environment. In the land of the free, do we really see it as sane that coffee shops aren’t allowed in neighborhoods? Or that the government should mandate that your business have dozens of parking spots that you don’t need? Do we view it as helpful that you can’t build an apartment for your aging mother-in-law in your backyard? Is it that offensive to encourage biking and walking?
At the end of the day, humans have built cities, towns, and villages in the same predictable pattern for thousands of years. It’s the modern suburbs that are the anomaly, one that comes with a massive cost. These two domains, city and suburb, have become co-dependent in America and we should be working in tandem to make them both great places to live. To lash out at fellow citizens who seek reasonable change to a highly entrenched system is not helpful, not conservative, and, dare I say, downright un-American.
Image Credit: Unsplash
