No one is banning your suburb, calm down
In response to Mr. Stanley Kurtz and National Review.
For urbanists, it is very rare that our issues of urban planning and transportation matters get national media attention; and when these issues do appear at the national level it is important for us to clarify important policy meanings. Recently, Stanley Kurtz at National Review has led a national pearl clutch suggesting that Joe Biden, and by extension Democrats and liberals, are conspiring to “abolish the suburbs.” While this is an inflammatory shock-phrase that some urbanists — leftist and neoliberal — do use, it is just that: inflammatory without policy nuance and I personally disagree with use of such phrasing. Let me rebut Mr. Kurtz and settle his acid reflux: a just national housing policy is one that would expand property rights to enable property owners to build more housing where the market supports it. Suburbs are not a divine right for their dwellers, and in fact, they are a superimposed form of urban living with a history and consequence warranting scrutiny. No one is banning it so much as they want to expand property right options in more of the urban landscape.
About the housing plan that Kurtz finds “frightening.” What enforcing “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” means is using the Federal Housing Administration’s rulemaking and funding mechanisms to incentive certain communities in the U.S., especially exclusive suburban enclaves with market pressure to build more housing and commerce, to allow property owners to build commensurate with market demands. Yes, that often means apartment buildings, mixed-use developments, and commercial centers. Where this is allowed, it is what the market clearly desires and what my research with research partner Christopher Leinberger and other colleagues has shown over and over again.
But Mr. Kurtz stems from a long American tradition of believing that his view of the suburban form is an earned respite for a certain economic and racial class to enjoy a specified form of urban dwelling — the single family unit — and that it is a natural and divine right for those who live there, and their right to defend. However, he does seem to respect that there really is nothing natural about suburbs otherwise he wouldn’t be clinging to the right of these communities to exploit the power of the state and bureaucratic regulation to otherwise interfere with free property markets. This is sort of ironic for a self-avowed Conservative that he is so wed to his perceived fundamental right to play English Gentry playhouse that he would ensure the state interfere with the right of his neighbor to build something like a duplex, or the right of another property owner to put a bodega on the corner. If anyone is interfering with anything, it is Mr. Kurtz and his neighbors when they lobby their local government to prevent an apartment building or shop from existing.
Among the other divine rights of suburbs Mr. Kurtz advocates for is a natural right and just cause for the government, federal to local, to pay for and subsidize automobile-oriented roads and transportation to convenience his commute to job centers. Proposed federal policy would indeed limit funds from going to places that should, but will not, densify. I’d say that this is wise as we should not be subsidizing fiscally foolish development patterns. My research at Smart Growth America suggests that furthering suburban sprawl is a fiscally foolish thing to do, and the fiscally responsible thing would be to develop around existing infrastructure, downtowns, and commercial centers instead of buying new white elephant highways to support greenfield development. Also, you cannot build yourself out of congestion.
However, some suburban dwellers like Mr. Kurtz believe that their roads and highways must be expanded and their highway commute must be minimized at all costs, and at heavy cost to the federal and state coffers. He recognizes that maybe his bucolic way of life may not be comfortably viable if he’s stuck in traffic for 90 minutes and expects us all to subsidize his housing choice instead of considering that maybe there are other alternatives like bringing job centers closer to housing, or (gasp!) public transportation.
He is very concerned throughout his writing, Mr. Kurtz is, that suburbs may actually have to better integrate with the cities upon which they depend for jobs, commerce, entertainment, and amenities. Is this man aware of the sordid history of suburban enclaves? Of the overtly racist and classist history that caused municipal and school district balkanization? Of the racial history of White flight and the pernicious consequence on the American urban landscape it caused? I don’t believe him to be completely dense to this, I just think he probably doesn’t really care that the wealthy, particularly the White and wealthy, abused the power of the state and regulation to create a system of urban apartheid. Some like it that way.
There is nothing sacrosanct or even so much natural about many suburbs, for the city and urban form has always continuously evolved since humans first created settlements in Uruk over 6,000 years ago. For some reason Mr. Kurtz tries to tie suburbs to some history of the Pilgrims as having anything to do with 20th century exclusionary zoning, which is a far stretch especially since many parts of New England far predate the current “suburb” and happened to develop into quite traditional urban forms around town squares.
A Conservative would presumably respect free markets and the ability of property owners to build dwellings to the highest and best use where markets support it. In many suburban communities in the U.S., this is a moot point because the market is not mature enough to support densification in suburban areas so they will sit just fine with their half-acre lots. However, here is the duplicity of such a Conservative as Mr. Kurtz: he surely speaks poetically about the “free market” with his Conservative D.C. think tank friends, but then he wants to enlist the state police powers to make sure that “others” get off his proverbial lawn. I do not really care if he chooses to keep a single family home on his lot for as long as he owns it. But Mr. Kurtz does not furrow his brow to protect his own property rights; he wants to interfere with his neighbor’s.
