In the most basic terms for city planning, I support:
- a sensible yet bold reduction in most city zoning restrictions;
lighten the burden on small business
- an end to artificially boosting the price of housing; let poor people
own their own homes
- policies that do not discourage growth; construction industry gets
jobs and consumers get homes they want
- the creation of cheap and effective high-speed-toll highway lanes;
reduce congestion and the state budget
- a decreased emphasis on light rail or subways, except in the densest
and largest cities; they are budget drains to be privatized
- making municipal bus service self-sustaining and eventually privatized; they are affordable,
effective and flexible
The reasons are very simple. I embrace growth because development brings jobs, affordable housing
and durable, low-cost goods. I shy away from overbearing zoning because it is so often used in a manner that harms small
businesses and residents. I do not ascribe to the control-obsessed theology of the 'sustainability' theory, the 'slow
growth' antics, or the anti-discount store mindset. I wholeheartedly support the construction of affluent, wealthy
'exurbs' and suburbs, of low-cost neighborhoods, of efficient housing complexes, of middle-of-the-road communities, of regenerated
urban neighborhoods - or of whatever other kind of housing people want to buy.
Ultimately, I think the free market is going to lead us to good decisions. This is because people
are smart and businesses want money. In an effort to get money, businesses will give people what they want, so long
as it's within their means. Since people are smart, they know what they need. This
is CRITICAL. The unspoken, but undeniable premise of the Green Party's sustainability theology is that people are dumb,
weak or both and only the government can step in to save us from ourselves. I believe that people do pretty darn
well on their own and it's only when you get third parties sticking their nose in other people's business that you get corruption,
kickbacks and harm.
I think that the anti-sprawl people, by design or by ignorance, are hurting
poor people. Their policies almost uniformly block the creation of low-cost housing in further out areas
where land values are less outrageous. Instead, people have to buy a house in a more expensive neighborhood or they
have to settle for renting an apartment or house. I'd rather people have the option of buying a low-cost house if they
want to use it. This is exacerbated by people who have high-value homes and want to keep out 'poor' neighborhoods because
it hurts their investment. The government shouldn't be intervening like this to help rich
or poor.
By the same token, people who want to buy far out land for the construction of expansive, luxuries
homes - sometimes called 'exurbs' - should be allowed to do so. They would not be able to afford such large houses if
not for the lower land values in the further out zones, and I'm all for people being able to buy bigger and better houses
if they want to do so.
So I really don't like the anti-sprawl craze that's grabbed hold of some lefties. It hurts people,
it gets in the way of what people want to do - by definition, since there have to be laws or people will do it. I think
it inhibits the economy, and therefore it inhibits our ability to access good and services.
Discount stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot bring jobs and benefits, but they also bring low-cost
goods. Bringing in a large number of durable, affordable goods to communities everywhere is a valuable service.
If people don't like Wal-Mart then they won't shop there. That's the basic
truth of human behavior - Wal-Mart can't shut down anybody unless it genuinely attracts customers. But there is
some strange opposition - almost uniformly from people in high-population areas who make very comfortable livings - to a wide
selection of low price products.
Many of those opponents don't honestly care about the money or economics of the situation, whatever
they say. You can tell because if you answer the arguments they fall back on cultural value assumptions - Wal-Mart is
some sort of cultural vacuum to them, a homogenization of society, and they oppose it because they want to stand up for Hometown
America or something to that effect. Besides the awkwardly rude fact of somebody who doesn't live in a town being
immovably opinionated about how other people ought to be made to live, it's absurd to assume that Wal-Mart is anti-cultural.
It's essentially a religious assumption; there's a theology of the
anti-development leftists. They oppose Wal-Mart not for economics but for culture. Wal-Mart, to
get down to the bone, isn't cool enough for them. They want something unique, some crusty little shop run by an old
man or a crazy lady, creaking floor boards, small selection, high prices - they think that's interesting. I am not exaggerating,
they think Wal-Mart is boring and that seems to be the real reason many of them oppose it.
Granted, there are probably a number of more moderate Wal-Mart haters who don't really give a damn
about uniqueness or culture and are doing it for economic reasons, but having spoken and listened to so many of them I can
tell you that the most outspoken ones hate Wal-Mart for cultural reasons.
Considering the very real costs that eliminating Wal-Mart would have - higher
prices, fewer goods, smaller stores, greater inefficiency - you can't justify dropping Wal-Mart just because some people
think it's boring.
I think we should allow Home Depot, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Sears, and all the rest to move
in where they want to because they bring jobs and affordable products. Big discount stores
disproportionately help the people on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder with their cheap, durable products and they
do so at a profit. If anything we should be thanking them for what they do - but I think they'll settle
for us shopping at their stores.
Now the 'sustainability' fad going around - the idea that we are running out of space, food, wilderness
and resources due to an unrestrained population - is just Malthusianism redux. It was wrong then and it's wrong now.
Of course, the irony of the sustainability people is that they often oppose things like genetically modified food - splicing
genes of plants to make them more nutritious, more efficient, more affordable, more numerous and generally better. If
they really cared about feeding the planet then they would support efforts to design better crops to feed the world.
Instead, many would rather focus on limiting sprawl and building light rail. Why? Because both population growth
and corporate science strike them as undesirable change and progress - exactly the sort of industrialization they dislike.
For zoning, I think we need to realize that big corporations can get zoning variances and tax credits
if they move in and the local city council will usually comply. Instead of creating zoning laws that are used largely
against small businesses - that lack the political clout to get variances and exemptions - we should reduce them across the
board. We should allow people to run small businesses from their home, if they wish, and let businesses decide their
own signs, storefronts, sidewalks and so forth. This will allow small businesses to thrive
and become more accessible to people of diminished means.
In transportation, most cities have a light rail system that is not heavily used. Cities like
to push them to reduce traffic, but it usually doesn't work. However, they are convenient because you don't have to
park them. They should be spun off and forced to be self-sustaining from advertisements and fares, so that people who
don't use them are not required to pay for them. The focus should be on making good roads, because that's what people
use. We need to make sure roads are wide enough to be used safely and we should assure (at least for the short term)
that bus service is reliable and affordable. If the bus is a good alternative, people will use it, eventually allowing
cities to make bus service self-sustaining and then even privatized. Bus service is especially easy to privatize, since
it works almost like large taxi cabs (which are of course privatized).
Highways should be continued and where possible augmented with a toll lane. Using high-speed
tolls - where you can go even above the speed limit and it still knows to charge your account with speed-pass
technology - we can also build extra lanes or convert existing but under-used carpool lanes into toll lanes. This is
already in use in San Diego, and has been since 1996. The way it works is former carpool lanes that were frustratingly
underused are turned into toll lanes. You pay a toll to use the carpool lane in hopes of faster travel. The toll
lane responds to usage and recalculates the toll every six minutes by quarter increments. In this way the lane automatically
regulates itself and discourages over-usage by higher tolls, but it offers a way out of the normal lanes. This benefits
those outside the toll lane as well, since they get fewer drivers on the road as well without even paying for it.
These ideas - optional toll lanes, variable-toll and high-speed radio toll technology – can
dramatically improve our transportation policy in this country. The use of tolls and optional tolls also means we stop
punishing those that don't drive on highways with taxes for an unused product. The use of high-speed tolls means nobody
has to slow down to pay a toll, since some of them work at speeds up to 120 miles per hour.
What we need to realize is a simple economic fact: traffic jams represent surplus demand. There
is more demand -drivers and cars- than there is available product -road space- and so there's a traffic jam. The solution,
then, is to find smarter ways to build more and better roads. People like to drive and they want to drive. We
have to accept that. The solution to excess demand is to raise the supply to meet demand. The reason there are
traffic jams is that there isn't enough road-space to meet demand. Building optional toll lanes is a great way to try
to meet this demand and to accumulate funding at the same time.
Our basic policy on planning and transportation
should be twofold: encourage the market and allow growth. If consumers and producers both want
something, whether it's bigger houses, cheaper houses, bigger stores or smaller stores, we ought to allow them to do it.
In this way we can satisfy the desires and demands of consumers, allow producers to make profits and pay employees, and encourage
the diversity the market provides. If we want to improve the way people move around, then it makes sense to have a more
flexible, road-friendly policy: encourage the use of tolls to make end-users support the cost of highways, and encourage the
private use of bus service and taxis which are both economical and flexible.
We shouldn't accept the one-size-fits-all policy of those
who want to limit the size of our houses, dictate the location of our homes, shrink the size of our stores, increase the price
of our products, decrease the selection of commercial goods, and force us all to follow the direction and timetable of public
transit. Diversity and flexibility are critical to a free, tolerant society, and the market is the best way to
meet both of these values - and be efficient and profitable in the process.
