The Congress for the New Urbanism can’t decide whether it favors coercion or not. The group believes that New Urban designs — high-density, mixed-use developments with pedestrian-friendly layouts — will make cities more livable and that there is a large pent-up demand for such livability. But at least some of its members are not sure they trust people to choose New Urban living, so they are willing to force those choices upon people.
One of the first things CNU did when it was founded in the early 1990s was publish a list of “New Urban basics” saying, “All development should be in the form of compact, walkable neighborhoods and/or districts.” Another document, called the Charter of the New Urbanism, held that existing suburbs should be reconfigured along New Urbanist principles. This doesn’t offer much choice for people who don’t want to live in compact developments.
The charter adds, “Development patterns should not blur or eradicate the edges of the metropolis.” In other words, the 2- to 10-acre rural residential pattern that is found at the fringes of most urban areas should not be allowed to exist. With a few strokes of the pen, New Urbanists would proscribe both suburban and semirural lifestyles.
Not everyone in CNU supports coercion. CNU co-founder Andres Duany has specifically disavowed coercive zoning, saying that he believes there is a market for New Urban design and he simply wants to design for that market. He wants existing zoning codes that prevent mixed uses and other New Urban designs to be relaxed so that he can do so.
Another CNU co-founder, Peter Calthorpe, has not taken a stand against coercive zoning. After Laguna West, a New Urban development he designed near Sacramento, bankrupted its developer and was redesigned in more conventional patterns by a subsequent developer, Calthorpe went into the business of helping cities write coercive zoning codes that would require New Urban patterns of development whether there was a market for them or not.
Duany managed to convince CNU to take the more coercive language out of its charter and other documents it has on its web site (though they can still be found on other New Urban web sites). In debates with the Antiplanner, New Urban leaders such as John Norquist maintained that they do not advocate coercion and that the seemingly coercive language that had been on their web site was merely aspirational.
If the Congress for the New Urbanism does not support coercion, however, then why do they defend Portland? Portland and Oregon have adopted some of the most systematically coercive plans in the nation. Rural landowners are not allowed to build a house on their own land unless they own 160 acres, actually farm it, and actually earn $40,000 to $80,000 (depending on soil quality) per year farming it. Many urban homeowners have found their neighborhoods of single-family homes rezoned for multifamily, and the zoning is so strict that if their house burns down, they are required to replace it with rowhouses or apartments.
Portland’s plans also depend heavily on tax subsidies to get the kind of development New Urbanists favor. Any plan that says, “We are going to take billions of dollars from taxpayers and give it to a much smaller group of developers who also happen to be campaign contributors” has to be considered coercive.
By combining the urban-growth boundary to drive up the cost of single-family homes with subsidies to reduce the cost of multifamily housing, Portland is attempting to force a larger percentage of people to choose multifamily than would do so in an unregulated market. Portland taxpayers are also forced to pay for light rail and streetcars even though they voted against any further taxes for light rail in 1998. These are just some of the forms of coercion that Portland-area residents face every day.
I wrote about these problems in a Cato paper titled “Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn’t Work.” The Congress for the New Urbanism felt compelled to defend this coercive regime with a paper titled, “Dubunking CATO: Why Portland Works Better Than the Analysis of its Chief Neo-Libertarian Critic.”
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Okay, first of all, “neo-libertarian”? Neoconservatives are people who twisted conservative principles around and created something they thought was new. (Traditional conservatives, for example, oppose interventionist foreign policies and many conservatives today remain opposed to the war in Iraq.) Just what about my paper is “neo-libertarian”?
The writer of CNU’s paper, one Michael Lewyn, answers this question on page 11 of his critique, where he claims that I support big-government programs. His evidence?
1. I quoted a letter from the Federal Highway Administration critical of Portland for failing to plan for the region’s present and future transportation needs. Apparently, in Lewyn’s universe, libertarians can’t even quote government officials without compromising their principles.
2. I pointed out that Portland planners rejected a Congressional earmark aimed at relieving congestion. Lewyn reads this as an endorsement of earmarks, but my point was that the region’s planners oppose congestion relief, not that Congress should earmark transportation funds.
3. I rejected regional planning in favor of local planning, and specifically preferred homeowner association covenants over zoning. But Lewyn feels that even voluntary homeowner associations must be a violation of libertarian principles. Apparently, he doesn’t understand the value libertarians place on voluntary associations and contracts.
I am on record as supporting highway tolls, privatization of highways, elimination of all zoning rules, and (as an interim measure) allowing neighborhoods to opt out of zoning and write their own covenants. These can in no way be construed as big government measures.
To be fair, I am also willing to support government transportation projects — provided they are user-fee driven so that the government agencies running those programs face the same market incentives that private businesses have to deal with. If that is not pure libertarianism, it is a form of pragmatic libertarianism that is well accepted within the libertarian movement.
“When government favors cars, O’Toole is a fervent believer in the wisdom of Big Brother,” claims Lewyn. Hardly. I have opposed sales taxes and other non-user fees for highways. But I also know that subsidies to transit riders average two hundred times as much, per passenger mile, as subsidies to autos. Rail advocates want to blur the issue by claiming that a tiny subsidy to autos justifies a gigantic subsidy to rail transit.
The term “neo-libertarian” seems to be an effort to taint my paper by associating me with other neos, such as neoconservatives. Lewyn is certainly not above such tactics. He states that my paper “accuses [former Portland Mayor Neil] Goldschmidt of statutory rape.” Excuse me, “accuses”? That’s like saying someone accuses Bill Clinton of having had sex with Monica Lewinski. Clinton admitted it, everyone knows it, so there is nothing to accuse. In the same way, Goldschmidt admitted having sex with a 14-year-old girl, which in Oregon is statutory rape (though the statute of limitations had passed by the time Goldschmidt confessed). Lewyn is more interested in making his opponent look bad than in reporting the facts.
“Even if Goldschmidt is a bad man,” says Lewyn, Portland’s New Urban policies are not “obviously related to Neil Goldschmidt’s alleged [again with the “alleged” — there is no allegation, he admitted it] nasty deeds.” But my paper points out the relationship. Before Goldschmidt confessed to being a statutory rapist, he was the most powerful man in Oregon, and this political power intimidated many potential critics and stifled dissent. Only after he admitted his past misdeeds did local papers begin to openly discuss Goldschmidt’s “light-rail mafia” which manipulated Portland’s transit and land-use policies to enrich its members at taxpayers’ expense. “Were not for Goldschmidt’s statutory rape,” I wrote, “many Portland-area residents never would have learned about this cabal.”
Lewyn makes more substantive comments on transportation and land-use issues. Tomorrow I’ll respond to CNU’s comments on transportation issues, and I’ll look at land-use questions on Wednesday. I’ll wrap up this series on Thursday.
Ah. I don’t have to wait for the first paragraph for the dog whistle, it’s in the subhead.
But for those who feel that there’s no need to read your article, Randal, because of the loud ideological dog whistle, I say there’s more reason than just hearing protection to skip it: the grasping at straws is palpable and distracts from the ideological message. How is this different from other standard small-minority ideological dog-whistle messages? It’s not.
HTH.
DS
…small-minority…..
Truth is not affected by its number of adherents. Witness Galileo.
…loud ideological dog whistle…
Even the reflexively vitriolic should know better than this. Dog whistles are silent.
HTH
I have a dog whistle. It is tuneable. To frequencies within and without the human hearing range.
My small-minority point continues to be [using the argumentation here] that it may very well be truth for a few, but the continuing inability to frame the wonderful truthiness of it to the masses (‘coercion’) ensures the policy changes of proponents won’t happen.
HTH.
DS
I agree the word “coercion” has that “dog whistle” feel to it. I wonder where this sort “coercion” is actually occurring, unless it is places like New York or San Franisco where some people buy condos rather than houses in order to be near the “action.”
The premiums some people are paying for New Urbanist housing is quite consistent with the housing market surveys quoted in the “Growing Cooler” report, “SMARTRAQ” in Atlanta, and other places, about 1/3 of the market is interested in dense, walkable, transit-oriented development, 1/3 would willingly trade off larger houses for smaller ones and smaller lots if work trips are relatively short, and the remainder wanting to stick with the current large lot suburban, curvllinear/cul de sac street pattern. One interesting thing about these market surveys is that none of them take into account how people would change the trade-offs made in housing choices the face of much higher energy prices.
I also agree with Randal that calling him “neo-libertarian” is like calling James Howard Kunstler a “neo-Cassandra.”
I wonder where this sort “coercion†is actually occurring, unless it is places like New York or San Franisco where some people buy condos rather than houses in order to be near the “action.â€Â
Do you actually live in Portland? I do. And your objection to the semantics is irrelevant. When the city bans “snout houses” and requires specific residential designs, when the city requires a “design appraisal fee” of $1200 to decide whether or not they will allow you to replace your back deck, then “coercion” is exactly the right term.
When the city bans “snout houses†and requires specific residential designs, when the city requires a “design appraisal fee†of $1200 to decide whether or not they will allow you to replace your back deck, then “coercion†is exactly the right term.
Some rabid ideologues solve the gummint problem by advocating HOAs, who do exactly the same thing here. Want a yellow house? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Nothing wrong with design guidelines at all. Nothing. And the reason for the design appraisal, which is common? All the people before you who tried to get away with something. Welcome to society, Max. Don’t like it and want to move somewhere without these rules? Ah, well.
DS
“Do you actually live in Portland? I do. And your objection to the semantics is irrelevant.”
You read some really lame comments here!
Your reading comprehension of what I said appears non-existent. We’re talking about “forcing” people into the type of housing they don’t want, NOT a 2nd-tier issue like design review!
For the record, I live in Napa County, which actually has much stricter land use controls than Portland–the way most people want it around here. One reason is that most homeowners here covet the values coming out of the vineyards and wineries, which would not have been possible without the agricultural preserve established in 1968. And the ag preserve helped establish a $1 billion+ per year tourist industry…
AND NO, my “objection to the semantics” is EXTREMELY relevant. George W. Bush and his right-wing fellow travelers has corrupted the language with impunity, and so have many libertarians and others of the “free market” ilk, the “Objectivists” (sic) being the worst.
What results in the real world when those of your general viewpoint talk about “liberty,” is the “liberty” of a tiny rentier aristocracy to give everyone else the shaft, such as now in the contemporary U.S. (For example, why do small business people pay up 15% FICA AND up to 35% income tax, when those making their incomes off stocks and other “capital gains” pay only 20%???) Being surrounded by many of the “rentier class,” I know a lot about them and their attitudes. So, yes, “semantics” matters!!
Hmmm. Napa valley has rules, has high quality of life. Portland has rules, has high quality of life, and the vast majority want to keep it that way.
Gee. May some policy solutions be non-starters? Wonder why.
DS
I have a dog whistle. It is tuneable. To frequencies within and without the human hearing range.
So, when you write “loud, ideological dog whistle”, you must mean loud for dogs. Or do you mean to say that people can hear it, too? Of course, then it would just be a whistle. But then, why would you mention dogs, if you didn’t mean to suggest it was below the human hearing threshold? Perhaps you just meant ideological dog-whistle… well, either loud or dog has got to go! Otherwise, the whole metaphor is just ruined.
…it may very well be truth for a few…
Holy Cow! And I thought the dog whistle metaphor was confusing!
I can’t imagine what you mean when you write ‘truth’, but I sure don’t intend it to mean ‘belief”. Truth is truth, small minority or no.
…the policy changes of proponents won’t happen.
They are, in fact, well under way. All around the world, government is retreating. In the U.S., the rise in privately governed neighborhoods is one of the biggest housing trends of the last two decades. Global and local competition won’t allow governments to continue to misbehave. I see every reason for optimism.
HTH
Indeed it does. The logic, maturity, and scholarship represented by your posts is consistent with every pro-planner I have ever known. Your presence in this forum is a great aid to the cause. Keep ’em coming.
They are, in fact, well under way. All around the world, government is retreating. In the U.S., the rise in privately governed neighborhoods is one of the biggest housing trends of the last two decades.
Ah. That explains the stunning victories of the Private Property Rightists in the last American elections and the stunning retreat of governments in Russia and elsewhere, and the increase in…er…coordination in most governments to address man-made climate change.
Nonetheless, my point here continues to be that certain folk who aren’t interested in neighborhoods will move to large-lot single fam. This is rule of thumb ~1/3 of the populace, and a subset of that population wants nothing more than to increase their property values so they move into a place with HOAs and CC&Rs. Those who like to hang their laundry outside don’t move to these faceless places.
Here is a brief primer on CIDs, whose rise is attributable to economic basics such as fiscal constraint by cities and a wish for exclusiveness by a population subset.
My city encourages HOAs, as that means we don’t have to re-pave, mow, plow. But goldurnit we got the complaints last winter when the HOAs couldn’t keep the streets clear and we went in and plowed anyway. Oh, yes: we also outsource to HOAs the planting of water-sucking pansies at entrances and the trimming of all shrubs into poodle shapes by the lowest bidder. And we outsource coercion to non-professional volunteers in the HOA to enforce no yellow paint on houses as well as no gaudy decks, no outside laundry, and only yuppie-approved widdle stork banners flying from the porch.
But we still offer public safety [as do all “privately-governed” subdivisions], and often water, sewer, so how private are they and how quickly do they come running to the city for more police, fire, and help when they have to pave their streets and the reserve fund is low? [fellow employee asked me yesterday about what the impact on his family would be if the HOA in his neighborhood went bankrupt, as it is feared? I said the city and taxpayers would likely step in and bail out the HOA until a new entity came in to drive the boat, as happened here twice before. We learned from past experience when HOA went bankrupt and we didn’t bail them out, because the ground is still bare, with the decades-old infrastructure crumbling and the private repair bill mounting…]
So the shorter Dan on how great HOAs are: only surficially.
I don’t mind them as long as I don’t have to live there, visit them, or deal with the fallout. They are great for those who only want certain things from a place.
DS
I’ve lived in Portland. I don’t think that NU is “forced” on anyone any more than the previous single family suburban model was “forced” on anyone.
Coercion by lack of choice was more the norm previous to NU taking hold. The fact is there is much more CHOICE in the housing marketplace in the last 10-15 years than there was in the previous 40.
This whole brouhaha is akin to women complaining that the fashion industry has it in for them because they design only clothes for tall thin people and push eternal youth on them. Well, you don’t have to buy that stuff! You have a choice. People are out to make money whichever way they can and if you don’t buy it, they’ll stop making it. (The auto industry learned this big time in the late 70’s).
This seems like a false argument. There is more than enough spaghetti suburb “snout” houses to meet market demand. No one who wants one is going snouthouseless.
If anything, New Urbanists are free market enthusiasts. It’s the wannabe save-the-worlders who are of a coercive, even totalitarian bent. And yes, these people have infiltrated local and regional government bodies … but that doesn’t mean they support NU or even understand it. These people (and we’ve had them in every age) will jump on the bandwagon du jour because they are busybodies at heart. (They’re all over global swarming too). It matters not what the current fad is … coercive social/political tendencies is a phenomenon NOT exclusive to NU … or any other fad.
In the meantime, people are making boatloads of money off of NU, quasi NU and even outright faux NU. Do these people even spend a nonsecond wondering about the relative value or detriment of NU?
Ah. That explains the stunning victories of the Private Property Rightists in the last American elections and the stunning retreat of governments in Russia and elsewhere, and the increase in…er…coordination in most governments to address man-made climate change.
There’s that logic and scholarship I was talking about.
widdle
And there’s the maturity. Good stuff.
Like I said… Keep ’em coming.
Thanks for overlooking the meat and quibbling over tossed-out wrist bone bait, davek. I’m sure that’s a learned trait and not inherent in some survival strategy.
But enough about that particular sharp rebuttal of yours. Are the rise of HOAs, davek, a result of millllllions wishing to retreat from gummint intervention or have they arisen out of other factors, such as property value retention, or exclusiveness, or fiscal restraint, or supervention of restrictive zoning or some combination? I think you buried your implication too deep in your reply for poor ol’ me to grasp. Here’s another easy-to-read primer with more meat & few wrist bones to help you consider.
And how about local competition? How does another layer on condos or gated/fenced single-fam in my town keep the streets plowed any better than economies of scale? How often does a busy volunteer for an out-of-state-managed HOA do a better job at water conservation strategies for the entry lawns than a paid professional?
I suspect you buried your sharp refutation too deep in your reply for po’ ordinary folk to grasp. Tell us. Tell us how an additional layer of coercion is more efficient and not simply offloading or outsourcing or circumvention of NIMBY zoning. We logic-challenged and non-scholarly thank you in advance.
DS
People aren’t forced to live in HOA neighborhoods. They choose to.
I think you buried your implication too deep in your reply for poor ol’ me to grasp.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure you could do it if you wanted to.
I suspect you buried your sharp refutation too deep in your reply for po’ ordinary folk to grasp.
No, you seem to be the only one having trouble. No need to project, Dan.
Tell us… We logic-challenged and non-scholarly thank you in advance.
Come now. We both know there’s nothing I could teach you, and all the anti-planners appear to understand just fine. Why not go ahead to the part where you lift your clenched fists high, declare yourself victorious, and look around for someone to high-five? I promise I won’t give you any trouble when you do. Then, you can get back to helping the Anti-Planner make more anti-planners! It’s win-win!
Dangit. I forgot my rule of keeping it simple to take away opportunities for changing the subject.
Let’s try again: davek, do you have any evidence for your implicit assertion that the rise of CIDs is because the masses want to get away from planning and government (and nevermind that there are more rules in CC&Rs than in muni code)?
Thank you in advance for answering the question(s) and not avoiding the question(s) by distraction.
DS
Could the rise in HOA’s be due to the rise in dense development that requires them by its very nature? 20 years ago a 5 acre parcel would have had 15-20 houses on it and no HOA. Today it might have 100 condos on it that require an HOA by law.
…do you have any evidence for your implicit assertion that the rise of CIDs is because the masses want to get away from planning and government…
Man, this just gets worse and worse.
Okay, first of all, if you are truly interested in my beliefs regarding CID’s (which, of course, you are not), I agree almost entirely with Robert Nelson.
Secondly, ‘implicit assertion’ is an oxymoron.
Thirdly, I neither implied nor asserted either of the positions you have attributed to me.
And finally, if you hope to have a discussion with me about CIDs, or any other matter, you’ll have to improve that whole logic and scholarship business.
Thank you in advance for answering the question(s) and not avoiding the question(s) by distraction.
Aaand maturity.
Yes and no johng.
HOAs and density are related in part because back when, those developers wanted to build to greater densities than restrictive code allowed, and Planned Development (PD) regs were written to allow that to happen, in trade for architectural standards and cities’ release from certain obligation.
The idea caught on from the muni side as cities learned 1) they could offload costs onto HOAs [who then had to fee the residents for services] and 2) they didn’t have to listen to the public complain about higher density in a rezoning meeting. It caught on from the development side as they learned they could get more per sf in a PD & they aren’t plowing or paving after the turnover to HOA. My last town had a subdivision with a weak HOA that could neither enforce nor sue a developer past the warranty to fix a slope stability problem. City wouldn’t touch it because it was a HOA so homeowner had to pony up for a retaining wall. Point is that this is all too common. Anyway,
The ‘HOA by law’ part is because of the fiscal constraint of cities (no mowing, no plowing, no repaving obligations) and because a subset of the population likes the certainty offered by restrictive CC&Rs (certainty of increase in property values). I studied the green infrastructure in a CC&R development east of Seattle that was at ~3.5 DU/ac; CC&Rs were enacted to ensure vegetation was kept low to preserve views and to enforce landscaping and architectural standards. But the town still paved and swept and public saftied and replaced street light bulbs, IIRC, so it varies.
DS
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