Reason: But contracts can't anticipate everything. An entrepreneurial community established 20 years ago could have never anticipated the development of 18-inch satellite dishes, which might well be banned in such a place.
Gordon: More adaptive forms will have to come on the market. My friend Spencer MacCallum, an anthropologist who writes on these issues, says that we may see the development of leasehold arrangements rather than traditional contract arrangements. The model he uses is that of hotels and shopping malls, where entrepreneurs provide services that people want. Leaseholds may provide much more flexible property arrangements than we typically imagine.
Reason: You mean the neighborhood association may renegotiate parts of its contract every year? We won't let you build a deck on the back of your house this year, but next year we'll think about it? Or people could decide to live in rigidly defined communities with extremely inflexible contracts if there's a demand for them?
Gordon: Right. All in the direction of increasing competition. People are more mobile than ever, and they have an easier time moving from one place to another as their requirements change.
The downside of these entrepreneurial communities, of course, is that as more affluent people withdraw from cities the interest groups that are left behind become ever more powerful. The people who are victims are the people who are least likely to move. We condemn the poorest to the worst public schools and the worst public services.
Reason: So are decaying urban cores part of an evolutionary process that no planning can overcome?
Gordon: The best thing that's happening to old urban cores is the immigrants, and immigrants have almost nothing to do with the planners except for the fact that planners often give them a hard time when they want to get occupational licenses. The infusion of capital and entrepreneurial skills in the core areas is coming entirely from the immigrants. If we make it our business to chase them out, then we may be hastening the decay of those urban cores.
Reason: You don't fit the profile of the typical urban planner, advocating top-down remedies. How did you arrive where you are? Are you indeed atypical?
Gordon: Planning is so eclectic it draws people from everywhere: architecture, the social sciences, the natural sciences. You really get an odd stew. I have a very Hayekian view of the world, and given the way that I view the evolution of the built environment, the Hayekian view has a lot to say. I teach about markets, so I'm less suspicious of market mechanisms than most of my planning colleagues.
And even when I speak with like-minded colleagues, I have to ask if market-friendly planning is realistic or plausible. Is there any mileage in doing market-friendly planning, or are spontaneous orders or spontaneous adjustments going to outdistance what planners try to do all the time? And that's why it's interesting to look at the migrations that are going on into the exurbs and into private communities, because those are going on in spite of any planning or any policy.
If we have local policy interests, and we have an understanding of the role of markets, then I think you reach the conclusion that a lot of the conventional, command-and-control stuff is disastrous. Spending $7.00 per rider to lose a billion transit riders is disastrous. So I think we have a huge case study which does not offer us any cause for optimism for traditional planning.
What can we, as researchers, really do? We can quit, or we can keep believing--let's unearth some of these facts and ideas, present them as best we can, and maybe somebody will learn something.
Reason: How are you perceived in the planning community? Are you on the fringe?
Gordon: I'm at the edge of the fringe.
Reason: So when you go to the American Planning Association's convention, do you drink alone?
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