Eben Fodor lives in Oregon today. But if, a couple of decades ago, the state had adopted the kinds of policies he advocates, he would not have been able to move there. Now that he lives in Oregon, he wants to shut the door behind him and prevent other people from moving in -- at least until someone else happens to leave.
Fodor's new book, Better Not Bigger, is an instruction manual for no-growth advocates. He suggests stiff developer fees, limits on the number of building permits allowed each year, restrictive zoning, lengthy and costly public review processes, and a host of other strategies to limit the growth of a city or urban area.
The book identifies an "urban growth machine" consisting of real estate, construction, and other businesses that thrive on growth (p. 11). This machine, says Fodor, controls the politics of many communities in order to "divert local resources to accommodate growth." He gives an example of someone who bought 200 acres of undevelopable wetlands and convinced a city to rezone it for development and provide millions of dollars of infrastructure subsidies. Since the area was wetland, it could not be developed without restoring or creating new wetlands elsewhere, and the developer got the city to do that as well. The result was $50 million in subsidies for a project that netted the developer a few million dollars (p. 33).
This case was in Eugene, Oregon, but readers can probably think of similar subsidies to development in their home towns. Fodor thinks cities should "take the foot off the accelerator pedal" of growth by stopping such subsidies (p. 107). Most people would agree, although there would be some debate about what is and is not a subsidy.
For example, in 1996, Fodor published a report saying that taxpayers paid $24,500 to provide public facilities for each new home built in Oregon (p. 13). But his report failed to note that taxpayers also paid more to support all existing homes than the homeowners paid in taxes. The reason is that in Oregon, as in most states, taxes on commercial properties effectively subsidize homes. In his book, Edge City, Joel Garreau estimates that homes cost $1.22 in public services for every dollar they pay in taxes, while commercial properties cost only $0.32 for every dollar they pay in taxes. Expecting new homes to pay $24,500 in development fees, as Fodor advocates, creates a strong bias in favor of existing homes which would be expressed by a significant increase in home prices.
There are plenty of developers who would gladly build without any subsidies at all, but Fodor does not consider such developments to be any more worthwhile. He wants cities to limit all growth, subsidized or not, by "applying the brake" of government regulation. Among the policies he suggests for doing so are:
Throughout the book, Fodor makes two explicit but erroneous assumptions. First, he asserts that "land is a finite resource with no substitute." Thus "we should use land efficiently" by keeping urban areas small (p. 148). In fact, American farmers have a seventy-year history of producing more food on fewer acres each year, suggesting that there is a substitute for land. When land inside the Portland or Eugene urban-growth boundaries is selling for one hundred times as much as otherwise identical land outside, it is hard to see how keeping the urban area small is in any way efficient.
Second, Fodor repeatedly states that cities can identify "an ideal or optimal population size" and then limit themselves to that size (p. 15). He gives little hint about how this should be done except to suggest that people look for water shortages that may limit "carrying capacity" (p. 133). He admits that "changing technology that has the potential to overcome some limiting factors" but apparently doesn't think technology can overcome water shortages.
On the other hand, Fodor accurately points out what he calls the "catch 22 of growth," which is that "the better you make your community, the more people will want to live there, until it is no better than any other community" (p. 61). His only solution is to make his community better by not letting any more people live there. While he realizes that the Supreme Court has held that Americans have a constitutional right to travel, his solution is to let people move in so long as someone else moves out.
If a community is so nice to live in that lots more people want to move there than there are places for them to move to, something has to give. Usually that something is housing prices, which skyrocket. Fodor has a solution for that, too: Simply require developers to build affordable housing (p. 117).
Fodor has a complete disregard for markets or property rights. While he has no objection to buying land, he sees nothing wrong with simply zoning it to prevent development. He argues that "the beauty of land is priceless," but notes that "the right 'view' can make a $100,000 home sell for twice as much" (p. 56). It never occurs to him that, if views are so valuable, maybe the people who enjoy them should pay the cost of protecting them.
The no-growth or slow-growth movement differs fundamentally from smart growth. The latter endorses growth but wants to dictate where and how it should occur. The former wants to limit or halt growth. Fodor understands the difference, but argues that the two are compatible.
In fact, they are not. Smart growth gets its political muscle by co-opting much of what Fodor calls the growth machine. While the development industry is not as monolithic as Fodor thinks, some developers will support smart growth if they can profit from high-density development. But their support would melt away if smart-growth planners ever advocated slow-growth or no-growth policies.
By default, the no-growthers support smart growth because they think it is better than nothing. The result is they get the growth they abhor, often accompanied by huge subsidies to high-density housing and other developments. In many places, they would be better off supporting instead a market-oriented view that calls for ending subsidies, creating markets for environmental values, and otherwise setting neutral policies towards growth and development. Not only might unsubsidized growth be slower, but markets for environmental resources would make growth more environmentally sensitive.