Traffic and Terror

Jesse Walker | January 4, 2005

I'm not sure I buy all of Hans Monderman's ideas about traffic engineering, but I definitely enjoyed Mark Steyn's defense of them:

But, alas, on the state highways New Hampshire is going in the opposite direction to Mr Monderman. On formerly scenic Interstate 89, the discreet mile markers have been augmented by eye-level markers every fifth of a mile reminding you what road you're on and that it's been 0.2 miles since the last reminder. Until this summer, if you were on a bendy road following a river, you'd take the curves carefully lest you plunged over the edge and died in a gasoline fireball at the foot of the ravine. That happened to some poor fellow every 93 years or so, so now they've put up metal barriers along the picture-postcard river roads punctuated every couple of hundred yards by ugly-ass shock-absorbers that look like trash cans. So now you don't have to worry about plunging into the river because the barrier will bounce you back into the road to be sliced in two by the logging truck. The uglification of New Hampshire's highways is a good example of how, even in a small-government state, the preferred solution to any problem real or imaginary is more government.

From there Steyn moves to the war on terror, defending the idea that it's generally better to devolve power to individuals than to give more of it to the state. Solid stuff, mostly, though I can't imagine what he was thinking when he wrote this:

In his last book, published a few months ago, the late Anthony Sampson claimed that after September 11 'the fear of terrorism strengthened the hands of all governments'. It certainly shouldn't have. In America, I don't believe it did.

Uh ... right. By the way, I'm going to have to confiscate those scissors.

[Via Lew Rockwell.]

Comments

|1.4.05 @ 11:15AM|#

The failure of the radical social engineering project to force people into their cars by making the world more comfortable for drivers than pedestrians is becoming more obvious by the day.

Message for cities: you'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone (Hi, Detroit!), for the times they are a-changing.

|1.4.05 @ 11:19AM|#

"In America, I don't believe it did."
Was that a typo?

|1.4.05 @ 11:26AM|#

Traffic Control: An Exercise in Self-Defeat, by Kenneth Todd

Above is an article in the Fall issue of Regulation, Cato's magazine.

Traffic control is the best issue illustrating how even most librarians are dumb frogs at the bottom of a pot about to come to a boil.

|1.4.05 @ 11:28AM|#

"The failure of the radical social engineering project to force people into their cars "

LOL

Now see what you've done!

You got Joe wound up on his favorite fantasy again that government engineered the demand for automboblies and auto travel instead of merely responding to the innate demand of the public for it.

|1.4.05 @ 11:28AM|#

librarians? was THAT a typo?

|1.4.05 @ 11:37AM|#

c,
librarian is my "pet" name for libertarians.

|1.4.05 @ 11:39AM|#

The failure of the radical social engineering project to force people into their cars by making the world more comfortable for drivers than pedestrians is becoming more obvious by the day.

Wow. Here we go again.

Tinfoil hats everyone!

|1.4.05 @ 11:46AM|#

Can you explain the post concerning book-worm-frog soup or provide a link, Ruthless. I'm terribly interested.

|1.4.05 @ 11:46AM|#

Always interesting to see how eager people are to define the structures they prefer as "natural." OK, guys, I guess widening a country road into a four lane, high speed arterial DOESN'T reduce the ability of pedestrians to get to destinations on the other side. And I must have imagined that whole trillion$, property gobbling interstate highway thing.

Gil, I'm not claiming that there was no demand for cars without the government, just that the government picked up on the trend and took it to absurd extremes. Other countries with similar wealth and interest in cars, such as Germany and England, managed to move into the automotive age without making it mandatory to drive everywhere.

Wow, tinfoil! That's so clever! Who needs facts, logic, or argument when you can call people names?

|1.4.05 @ 11:50AM|#

aw, now look. you frothed him up.

While I think that describing it as a "radical social engineering project" might be a little ... you know, over the top, what he's saying isn't totally stupid.

You'd think librarians would be less enamoured of road building projects, which cost tons and force all sorts of emminent domain claims.

Jesse Walker|1.4.05 @ 11:57AM|#

What c said.

|1.4.05 @ 12:00PM|#

Pinto'stout,
The way to cook a happy frog's goose is to slowly turn up the heat on her. Gummint does it to us all the time.
I think it may be one of Walter Williams' parables.

|1.4.05 @ 12:02PM|#

But c, complaints about road projects, traffic impacts, poor access for city dwellers, and snob zoning come from *sniff* THOSE sort of people.

Don't you know, intense regulation, spending, and social engineering is perfectly libertarian, when done in the name of individuality.

Arthur Levitt, builder of Levittown, stated that one of his goals was to house working class people in single family homes, in neighborhoods without natural meeting places, so they would have less interaction with each other, in order to avoid political organization.

|1.4.05 @ 12:03PM|#

I'm with joe that the US government has distorted the demand for cars. I did the same for trains, then dropped trains in favor of cars.

Now can we talk about traffic control?
huh? huh? Please?

|1.4.05 @ 12:04PM|#

IT did the same for trains.

|1.4.05 @ 12:05PM|#

Other countries with similar wealth and interest in cars, such as Germany and England, managed to move into the automotive age without making it mandatory to drive everywhere.

That wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that the entirety of the UK is smaller than NY and PA would it? Nah, that silly. Making outlandish comparisons to back up silly statements is just par for the course for you.

|1.4.05 @ 12:08PM|#

You'd think librarians would be less enamoured of road building projects, which cost tons and force all sorts of emminent domain claims.

Isn't this true of any type of transit system? Isn't this true of any major infrastructure project?

Didn't the gubament already do this with trains when there was demand for rail travel?

|1.4.05 @ 12:09PM|#

"Always interesting to see how eager people are to define the structures they prefer as "natural.""

Yeah - like all your attempts to characterize jammed up urban living as being the "natural" way people would always prefer to live of only the govt hadn't forced them to do something else.


"OK, guys, I guess widening a country road into a four lane, high speed arterial DOESN'T reduce the ability of pedestrians to get to destinations on the other side."

If the road was widened into a 4-lane it's because there was too much traffic on it for it to remain a two-lane. That's government responding to the demand.

"Gil, I'm not claiming that there was no demand for cars without the government, just that the government picked up on the trend and took it to absurd extremes. Other countries with similar wealth and interest in cars, such as Germany and England, managed to move into the automotive age without making it mandatory to drive everywhere."

First, it isn't "madatory" to drive everywhere in this country. You can live New York or some other urban setting and not drive if you don't want to.

Second the US is a much larger nation than England or Germany. Things are a lot more spread out.

|1.4.05 @ 12:10PM|#

Now can we talk about traffic control?

Is traffic control considered a social movement? If so, haven't we all agreed, well, with one exception, that you can't engineer social movements?

|1.4.05 @ 12:11PM|#

OK, time to end this line by bring up the fact that the Nazi's created the Autobahn....feel free to let the chat degenerate from there.

|1.4.05 @ 12:14PM|#

OK, time to end this line by bring up the fact that the Nazi's created the Autobahn...

You also forgot that it was the Nazi's that really brought urban planning to the fore.

|1.4.05 @ 12:14PM|#

Ruthless,
I understood the Frog analogy, but not the traffic control aspect you mentioned.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 12:15PM|#

joe,

If the problem is that libertarians are too prejudiced against liberals to recognize our common interests, your trying to be the most annoying liberal possible is sure a funny way to show us that.

Interesting, though, that you call road building a radical social engineering project. Numerous times I've known liberals to cite road building as an example of why government is necessary and why those who oppose it are irrational. "Everyone wants roads, but no one wants to pay taxes for them" they always say. Are you of a different mind? Either way, if you'd like to tell us how England and Germany handled things so much better, I might not agree, but then again, maybe I might. Sure beats inviting a pissing match anyway.

|1.4.05 @ 12:26PM|#

"You can live New York or some other urban setting and not drive if you don't want to."

until they eminent domain your fucking house over and built a seven lane highway through your living room. a fucking curse on robert moses and his fuckety fucking fuckface of a fucky legacy.

fucking asshole death machine fuckers. yeah!

|1.4.05 @ 12:32PM|#

"I understood the Frog analogy, but not the traffic control aspect you mentioned."

Ever waited at a long red light while nothing came in either direction?

Wasn't Big Brother smiling?

|1.4.05 @ 12:36PM|#

Thank you Dhex for making the line degenerate at light speed.

|1.4.05 @ 12:40PM|#

light speed---nature's speed limit.

|1.4.05 @ 12:59PM|#

Those of you claiming that we need cars here (whereas in Europe they don't) because "we're more spread out here" have a cause/effect problem to wrangle with. I don't know that our spread is more caused by cars than it causes demand for cars, but I suspect so.

joe wants to say that libertarians are silent on the abuses of government regarding road projects power because those projects are typically opposed by liberals. I think he would also add (as I will) that this is one of those cases where libertarians drop their ideology like a hot rock rather than side with the left. (Is it because liberal opposition to cars and road building projects always seems to come out like some muddled enviromentalist, anti-corporate, consumer safety, class warfare blather? yeah, maybe. but there are other arguments to make, and somebody should make them.)

drf|1.4.05 @ 1:08PM|#

germany has the densest road network in the western world.

the "gotcha" question with whichlibertarians frequently get confronted is the "are you against roads" one.

and, c, "liberal opposition to cars" can deteriorate into a SUV-driving, NE liberal soccer mom vs. WWJD crowd. :)

one thing about driving vs. not driving, is who lives where. in vienna, for example, poorer areas are outside, while wealthier districts are well-connected and more centered ("within the walls" as it were), so there isn't a rush to the 'burbs that spring up where no public transportation net can get to 'em.

copenhagen has something like that, but development is more controlled, and developments have to kick back -- um, kick in to fund train extensions, so most people live along relatively near one of several inconvenient rail lines.

what about the UK? how have things progressed there with the thameslink and other semi private rail lines?

|1.4.05 @ 1:10PM|#

"Those of you claiming that we need cars here (whereas in Europe they don't) because "we're more spread out here" have a cause/effect problem to wrangle with. I don't know that our spread is more caused by cars than it causes demand for cars, but I suspect so."

We were spread out before cars got here - or trains either for that matter. Lewis and Clark weren't cruising the interstate in the Lincoln Continental to scope out the the western territory.

drf|1.4.05 @ 1:12PM|#

And look at other relatively new nations, Australia and Canada - outside of their versions of the NE Corridor, private transportation are the rave.

Of course the bicycle is big in Yurp.

Freshen that up for you, Senator?

|1.4.05 @ 1:13PM|#

Gil, citing the population distribution of a newly discovered, pre-industrial continent is not useful.

|1.4.05 @ 1:17PM|#

"Those of you claiming that we need cars here (whereas in Europe they don't) because "we're more spread out here" have a cause/effect problem to wrangle with. I don't know that our spread is more caused by cars than it causes demand for cars, but I suspect so."

So what you're saying is, without cars, no one would be living in Council Bluffs, El Paso, or Colorado Springs.

Hm. Interesting theory. I suppose someone should have told the people living there in the early 1800's.

|1.4.05 @ 1:18PM|#

"Gil, citing the population distribution of a newly discovered, pre-industrial continent is not useful."

It is as far as I'm concerned.

|1.4.05 @ 1:27PM|#

I do think that the gasoline tax and highway subsidies have made driving cheaper, and has probably kept us in cars longer than we should have. Just as slavery's source of cheap labor made us late comers to the industrial revolution, so has this subsidized cheap transportation kept us in two dimension travel.

Why sit in traffic when the skies above are wide open? I want my flying motorcycle, damn it! So long as the taxpayer funded road infrastructure is already in place, economically cheap personal fly craft will have trouble competing.

|1.4.05 @ 1:32PM|#

Thomas: No, that's not what I'm saying. Frankly, I'm confused why you'd think I was.

Gil: What we're discussing here is the difference between modern Europe and modern America. We're doing that because it will inform our understanding of whether cars contributed more to the spread of american communities than spread-out america contributed to the development of cars. Lewis and Clark venturing to the Pacific have as much to do with it as Armstrong and Aldrin venturing to the moon.

|1.4.05 @ 1:36PM|#

Speaking of sinister Nazi connections, let's not forget who brought us "the people's car" (der Volkswagen). And Ford was an anti-Semite.

Hey, seriously ... regarding joe's comment, I've been reading for years the argument from libertarians that government, tax-funded roadways for automobiles have undoubtedly distorted the market. It's a big welfare program with no rational pricing system linked to demand. As a result of this subsidized commons, people have an incentive to over-use their cars on public roadways, so we have more traffic congestion and pollution. If not for this gov't intervention, we'd probably walk more, or use shared transportation more often -- or maybe we'd have flying cars or personal jetpacks by now, like on The Jetsons.

Wry conclusion: As for the gov't "forcing" people into cars, that might literally be the case if cops were actually stopping pedestrians simply because they are walking instead of driving -- which is reputedly the case in some suburbs of Los Angeles (urban legend?).

|1.4.05 @ 1:37PM|#

Note for the "What Would Jesus Drive?" crowd: Jesus was a carpenter. He'd probably drive a monster pick-up.

|1.4.05 @ 1:45PM|#

"Gil: What we're discussing here is the difference between modern Europe and modern America. We're doing that because it will inform our understanding of whether cars contributed more to the spread of american communities than spread-out america contributed to the development of cars. Lewis and Clark venturing to the Pacific have as much to do with it as Armstrong and Aldrin venturing to the moon."

On the contrary, it has plenty to do with it. Ever heard of manifest destiny? That little idea of exapnding the nation from sea to shining sea. All that came along long before the car did. The pioneers form of individual transport was the covered wagon.

|1.4.05 @ 1:47PM|#

Ok, I am going to point out that cars are as "natural" a machine gets for human beings. After all, we've been itching to have a car as a species since the time of the Trojan War.

BTW, people drive all the fucking time in Europe and they'd drive more if the gas taxes weren't so fucking high (when you go to Europe its nice to buy your friends/family a tank or two of gas - they'll appreciate it greatly). Indeed, they drive so much despite the gas taxes that France just built the world's highest bridge (completely privately financed); that is to facilitate car travel between Paris and the south of France and to get around the Millau bottleneck. People have these glorified and romanticized notions that Europeans don't own lots of cars and don't use them all the time, when in fact they do own lots of cars and do use them all the time.

|1.4.05 @ 1:51PM|#

In fact the nation started off with most people living in a "spread out" pattern to begin with since most work was agriculture related and most people lived on farms in rural areas.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 1:55PM|#

GG,

This isn't the first I've heard of Europe's high gas taxes of course, but I wonder if you can explain them. Are they a concious attempt to control the "externalities" of automobile driving, or did gas just present itself as a convenient source of revenue? I'm assuming that these taxes are more than what's required to build roads, but then maybe that's actually their point, or was initially?

|1.4.05 @ 1:59PM|#

Gilbert Martin,

You'll find that once you get outside of Paris, etc., getting from point A (Limoges) to point B (Blois) in France is a heck of lot easier by car unless you are hopping on the train go from Limoges to Stuttgart or something (but that would similar to flying from Baltimore to Pittsburg).

|1.4.05 @ 2:03PM|#

Gil, Goiter, our cities and Metro areas were at the same scale of those in Europe until the 1950s. Our larger land mass, by itself, didn't result in larger urban areas, just more of them.

Yes, Goiter, the gubmint subsidized rail travel. Before that, it subsidized canal travel. Before that, it subsidized ocean shipping. Before that, it subsidized roadways. In fact, there has never been a major growth or change in the transportation system without government intervention. Point?

"If the road was widened into a 4-lane it's because there was too much traffic on it for it to remain a two-lane. That's government responding to the demand." And what about the demand of people who travelled established pedestrian routes across the road? If you can stir yourself to do even an afternoon's worth of research on transportation policy, you will learn that roadways were built to stimulate demand and promote development patterns (sprawl, suburbanization) that the government deemed more desireable than the established transit- and pedestrian based geography. There's a good libertarian book titled "The Geography of Nowhere" that would shed some light on the subject.

"Yeah - like all your attempts to characterize jammed up urban living as being the "natural" way people would always prefer to live of only the govt hadn't forced them to do something else." I don't know what you'd call "jammed up urban living," but except for farmers, people lived at densities much greater than the modern suburb for severl millenia, from the foundation of the first permanent villages to the 1920s (when mass ownership of automobiles was already established). Look at the towns of the Old West - people built a small node of urban density, even when there was nothing but hundreds of miles of empty plains in every direction.

"First, it isn't "madatory" to drive everywhere in this country. You can live New York or some other urban setting and not drive if you don't want to." Thought experiment, Mr. Martin: as you drive in your region over the course of the next week, look out your window and ask whether developers would be allowed to build either a neighborhood of single family homes or a stip mall with a big parking lot. Then, ask yourself whether a developer would be able to build 20 story condominium of office towers, with storefronts on the ground floor. Though it's awfully nice of the government to allow those areas already built at urban densities to continue to exist.

|1.4.05 @ 2:07PM|#

"Ever heard of manifest destiny? That little idea of exapnding the nation from sea to shining sea. All that came along long before the car did. The pioneers form of individual transport was the covered wagon."

You mean, the people who built their towns with storefronts built to the sidewalks, houses sharing common walls, with a couple stories of rental housing and offices up above, all within the standard 1000 meter walking distance, centered on a main street?

I've seen westerns, Gil. They didn't have two acre parking lots in front of the saloon for covered wagons.

|1.4.05 @ 2:11PM|#

The Ayatollah is correct. Flying (and computer-controlled, for the love of God) cars are the answer. That way, we can stop worrying about pedestrians and can get rid of a good deal of our roadways. On the other hand, the extended range and lowered congestion (due to the three dimensional volume that traffic would run through) would result in much greater sprawl, if such things upset you.

Teleportation would be even better--zzzzzzzzpppt!

|1.4.05 @ 2:13PM|#

"You mean, the people who built their towns with storefronts built to the sidewalks, houses sharing common walls, with a couple stories of rental housing and offices up above, all within the standard 1000 meter walking distance, centered on a main street?"

I mean the people who created all those ranches and farms out in the country - where most of the folks lived - not in town.

|1.4.05 @ 2:13PM|#

fyodor,

(a) Gas prices are higher than diesel prices, and that's why diesel cars are so popular in Western Europe (it was part of a concious effort to make diesel more popular during the 1970s, since diesel vehicles get better "gas milage"). However, as you might know, diesel is a dirtier, if more effecient, fuel than gasoline; or rather the engines that burn diesel are dirtier. So the big push has been to make diesel vehicles that burn their fuel more cleanly; bio-diesel is one option because it uses something say like vegetable oil as a lubricant as opposed to regular diesel (which uses sulfur as I recall).

(b) Gas taxes were raised dramatically in the wake of the 1970s "oil crisis" as an effort to curb its use and make Western Europe less dependent on foreign oil (in France this effort was matched by the effort to rapidly build nuclear power plants - which is why ~85-80% of France's electricity comes from nuke plants).

(c) I think that most of the initial impetus for raising gas taxes in the 1970s was based on the "energy crunch," and that other reasons have been tacked on since then. However, gas taxes have seemingly (since WWII) always been higher in Europe than the U.S., and those higher taxes before the 1970s might have something to do with the need to re-build roads, etc., after WWII.

(d) Though higher gas taxes have increased the use of diesel vehicles, I don't know if its actually decreased miles travelled per person, etc. And of course since diesel vehicles are dirtier than gasoline-powered vehicles, its had some off-setting environmental effects from my perspective.

|1.4.05 @ 2:15PM|#

Gary, I agree that the desire for a car is natural. It is the geography of our communities that's screwed up.

Cars and pedestrians lived happily, side by side, for two decades after a car in every home became standard for the middle class. It was only after World War II, when the government adopted a policy of discouraging "street life" that that changed.

To bring it back to the original topic, one of the manifestations of this ideology was a change in the design of roads. Where once, it was assumed that they were public spaces to be shared by a variety of users, their purpose was distorted, with the fast and efficient movement of automobiles trumping other modes of transport, and non-transportation purposes.

"People have these glorified and romanticized notions that Europeans don't own lots of cars and don't use them all the time, when in fact they do own lots of cars and do use them all the time." Um, yes and no. Yes, cars are popular, and most people use them. But they use them differently, and less. They put much less mileage on them, and a much lower % of work and shopping trips involve cars. Those that do tend to involve shorter trips.

It's not cars vs. no cars. Cars are a given in a prosperous society, like other appliances like washing machines and microwaves. It's how the cars are used.

|1.4.05 @ 2:15PM|#

"I don't know what you'd call "jammed up urban living," but except for farmers, people lived at densities much greater than the modern suburb for severl millenia"

That's very cute - that "except for farmers" part - since that's where most folks used to live - on farms and ranches.

|1.4.05 @ 2:16PM|#

joe probably doesn't realize that more people lived in rural areas as opposed to urban ones before the 20th century, and that the move to suburban settings was a trend set in place during the 1910s and 1920s.

|1.4.05 @ 2:17PM|#

no, no pro libertate -- air travel would *allow* much greater sprawl, because of the further distance you could comfortably travel, but it wouldn't *force* further sprawl (like cars do) because you wouldn't need roadways on the ground for the vehicles. I'm confident the result would be less sprawl.

(parking would still be a problem, and we haven't discussed whether these personal aircraft would be VTOL. I think they would.)

Gil, you keep talking about people living remotely because of economics -- like the farm based economy. No one is arguing that point. We're not a farm based economy anymore.

|1.4.05 @ 2:22PM|#

fyodor,

The reason why gas is more expensive than diesel is because of the lower taxes on the latter and because I think its somehwat easier to fractionate and do all that other alchemy that is involved in making "stuff" out of oil.

|1.4.05 @ 2:23PM|#

"In fact the nation started off with most people living in a "spread out" pattern to begin with since most work was agriculture related and most people lived on farms in rural areas."

France and Germany started off with argicultural economies as well. The city is an artifact of the agriculatural revolution. Of course people in rural areas live spread out - you need the open land. The issue at hand is the geography of non-agricultural areas. Throughout the pre-industrial period, these areas were defined by towns and cities built at an urban scale.

|1.4.05 @ 2:27PM|#

"BTW, people drive all the fucking time in Europe and they'd drive more if the gas taxes weren't so fucking high ....."

"People have these glorified and romanticized notions that Europeans don't own lots of cars and don't use them all the time, when in fact they do own lots of cars and do use them all the time."

I found the same thing observing German, Italian and French aquaintances as well as my french cousin. They'd also use mass transit less if it were not so heavily subsidised and priced accordingly.

|1.4.05 @ 2:28PM|#

"Gary, I agree that the desire for a car is natural. It is the geography of our communities that's screwed up."

No it's taken a form that you don't happen to like so you like to believe that somehow the government was able to "engineer" people into living in suburbs - that were was no innate desire amongst people to live more spread out and have a piece of land their own.

At the beginning of the country, most people worked in agriculture and lived in rural areas. Changes in technology reduced the need for manual farm labor and increased the supply of other type work in the cities and so a lot of people moved to the cities - not necessariluy because they liked living that way but because they had to make a living.

Techology subsequently moved on and allowed the people who want to live more spread out to do so.
Government didn't "socially engineer" that desire into them.

|1.4.05 @ 2:29PM|#

The issue at hand is the geography of non-agricultural areas. Throughout the pre-industrial period, these areas were defined by towns and cities built at an urban scale.


Yet people in the West largely perfer not to live in such environments anymore.

|1.4.05 @ 2:31PM|#

light speed---nature's speed limit.

It's just the Man trying to keep us down.

|1.4.05 @ 2:32PM|#

"joe probably doesn't realize that more people lived in rural areas as opposed to urban ones before the 20th century,"

I've already addressed this - we're talking about the towns.

"and that the move to suburban settings was a trend set in place during the 1910s and 1920s."

Actually, the first big push for suburbanization dates back a few decades before that, to Brooklys, a suburb of New York (Manhattan) becoming a fashionable place to live for workers who could travel across the bridge.

The suburbs of the 1910s and 1920s were built in a pattern which, today, is referred to as "urban," "new urbanist," or "neotraditional." 4000-8000 square foot lots, corner stores, trolleys, and requirements for road connectivity, to allow easy pedestrian movement. Exactly the opposite form of suburbanization seen in Radburn, from the link.

I'm glad you brought this us, because this pattern of development, not the highrises that give Gil nightmares, is the real alternative to sprawl that is growing so fast in popularity.

|1.4.05 @ 2:34PM|#

Isaac Bertram,

You find the same "anti-sprawl" activism in France that you do in the U.S., be it in Paris, the Rhone river or the Nord-Pas de Calais. Its annoying as fuck, limits French economic growth and discourages new dwellings being built (which France has a lack of in light of its growing population). These luddites need to have a cudgel taken to their head and have some sense beat into them.

|1.4.05 @ 2:36PM|#

Why sit in traffic when the skies above are wide open? I want my flying motorcycle, damn it! So long as the taxpayer funded road infrastructure is already in place, economically cheap personal fly craft will have trouble competing.

Yeah, as long as the FAA exists, personal aircraft will never become common. Private aircraft would cost probably 1/3 as much, perhaps less, if the FAA didn't mandate certain maintenance schedules and require lengthy and expensive certification of all production aircraft.

On the upside, civil aviation is probably the safest way to travel. On the downside, few can afford it, and then usually only as a hobby.

And if you want to maintain your own plane, you have to have all your work checked by a licensed aviation mechanic. And don't you dare use those nuts and bolts you got at the auto-parts store. You have to use special FAA-approved "aviation" hardware which is just about the same as car hardware, but it's got the FAA stamp of approval. Oh, and it costs about 10x as much.

|1.4.05 @ 2:37PM|#

joe,

How about the "real alternative" being what people perfer w/o government interference and your neo-luddite fantasies?

|1.4.05 @ 2:40PM|#

"you like to believe that somehow the government was able to "engineer" people into living in suburbs - that were was no innate desire amongst people to live more spread out and have a piece of land their own."

I've never suggested that people don't, though I'm not surprised that you read that into my comments. See my comments, above, about 1920s suburbs vs. 1950s suburbs. The difference between the two periods being, there were laws passed in the middle of the 20th century making it illegal to build in the pattern that suburbs assumed under a free market, and there were huge public investments in roadways to undeveloped areas, intended to socialize the cost of living in a location far from jobs and retail.

"Techology subsequently moved on and allowed the people who want to live more spread out to do so." Technology collected and spent $1 trillion on a highway network? Technology condemned huge, linear tracts of private land in cities to allow the construction of urban highways? Technology mandated housing densities much lower than what the market wanted to build? Funny, I thought government did those things.

Your explanation explains the development of the compact, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use suburbs of the 1920s (those that took the established pattern of cities and made it a little less dense), but it fails to explain modern sprawl.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 2:40PM|#

GG,

Thanks for the replies. I wonder what exactly was the point of reducing the "dependence" on foreign oil? Ie, who gets hurt by such dependence other than the consumer of the oil? Did they see it as a foreign policy issue?

I would be surprised if higher gas taxes have no effect on miles driven (or more importantly, amount of gas used; I definitely noticed the smaller size of cars on my one trip to Europe), although I wouldn't be surprised if the effect is disappointingly small.

|1.4.05 @ 2:43PM|#

"Yet people in the West largely perfer not to live in such environments anymore."

Then why do you need zoning laws forbidding developers from building in those patterns? Because the people who make their living knowing what people want to buy are eager to build units they can't sell?

Highrise condominiums in downtown Miami start at $250,000 for one bedroom units. Care to compare that to houses in Florida's suburbs? You are absolutely wrong that there is no demand for traditional neighborhoods and urban living spaces - it's the largest growth sector in the homebuilding market.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 2:47PM|#

joe,

First allow me to explain that I think the government's best role is to stay out of transportation issues except to prosecute the violation of rights.

But when you accuse government of disfavoring nontransportation uses of roads because of an agenda to get rid of street life, that strikes me as rather absurd. Seems the simpler explanation is that cars were going faster and faster and were therefore becoming more dangerous and thus it was believed that keeping things other than cars out of the streets was good for "public safety." Of course, you've done much more reading than I on this, but then, perhaps you only read (or comprehend) what already backs your POV. But if the governmnet really had such a strange agenda, well of course it shouldn't have.

|1.4.05 @ 2:49PM|#

Wow, Gary, "neo-luddite." That's an odd description of someone arguing for a system that uses exactly the same technology as exists within the sprawl system. I'm the one arguing that sprawl ISN'T a consequence of technological development, remember?

As for what people prefer, would you care to address the reality that traditional development patterns had to be OUTLAWED via zoning to prevent them from being replicated? Or that builders, when given the option, are flocking to neo-trad designs?

|1.4.05 @ 2:51PM|#

fyodor,

Well, at the time Europe was hurt more by the oil embargo than the U.S. (note that the North Sea oil and gas fields hadn't come on line yet and there was no pipeline to Russia's gas fields yet) since Europe literally had no source of domestic oil at the time. So it was an issue of, well, in their eyes, of economic survival I think, and not wanting to be potentially blackmailed by the oil states. I guess from that perspective it was a "foreign policy" issue.

I don't think that its descreased miles driven person, or even slowed its growth much, but it has increased dramatically the popularity of smaller cars that run on diesel. It also hasn't slowed the building of new roads, highways, freeways, in France from what I can tell. Whether that has lead to more deaths per mile driven I can't say. I know that was a pretty controversial issue last time the U.S. considered increasing gas taxes.

|1.4.05 @ 2:54PM|#

"Your explanation explains the development of the compact, pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use suburbs of the 1920s (those that took the established pattern of cities and made it a little less dense), but it fails to explain modern sprawl."

Nope.

You're just trying to cherry pick a point in time on the timeline of of our national living patterns that you happen to like and claim that's more "natural" than a subsequent pattern you don't happen to like.

The bottom line is that people wanted to live in the suburban envoronment that you call "sprawl" and the government accomodated that desire. It didn't create that desire. If people hadn't wanted to live that way then, it wouldn't have happened. If the populace were so against spending money on roads, etc. they would have voted the politicians out of office who authorized it and it wouldn't have played out as it did.

|1.4.05 @ 2:56PM|#

joe,

Then why do you need zoning laws forbidding developers from building in those patterns?

The argument would be to of course get rid of all zoning laws.

You are absolutely wrong that there is no demand for traditional neighborhoods and urban living spaces...

This would be an interesting statement if I actually wrote that. :)

Wow, Gary, "neo-luddite." That's an odd description of someone arguing for a system that uses exactly the same technology as exists within the sprawl system.

I think it fits nicely.

|1.4.05 @ 3:00PM|#

Your "if people didn't want the policy they would have voted the politicians out" argument can be used to defend any government action. Do you say that when we talk about gun control? Affirmative action? Emminent domain? Progressive tax rates?

|1.4.05 @ 3:01PM|#

"First allow me to explain that I think the government's best role is to stay out of transportation issues except to prosecute the violation of rights."

This has never been tried. As I mentioned before, no significant changes to how people travel have occured since the beginning of civilization without the government making them happen, whether it's by building and maintaining harbors, constructing the Appian Way, taking land for highways and railroads, or building airports.

"But when you accuse government of disfavoring nontransportation uses of roads because of an agenda to get rid of street life, that strikes me as rather absurd." I agree that it's absurd, but no more so than a lot of goals adopted by social-engineering governments in the mid-20th century. Planning and policy documents from the mid-20th century make this statement openly - it's part of the "Green Acres" strain of American thought that Gil refers to, the idea that kids and women should be in verdant fields rather than alleys and sidewalks, far from the corrupting influence of commerce. This is the reason why public housing projects often closed streets to create superblocks, and why there are large lawns surrounding them. Another libertarian hero, Jane Jacobs, reports from the front lines of this battle in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

|1.4.05 @ 3:05PM|#

Gilbert, maybe there are actual historical facts to back up my position. Maybe there aren't. Why don't you go to the library, educate yourself on transportation and urban history in 20th century America, and get back to me.

Let me try to take some of the ideological stink off the issue, so maybe you can think about the question without getting your back up. Here, maybe this will get you over the hump; the first president to push for suburbanization and the dominance of the automobile as official government policy was Franklin Roosevelt.

|1.4.05 @ 3:12PM|#

joe,

...no significant changes to how people travel have occured since the beginning of civilization without the government making them happen...

Even if that were true, and its not (I can think of dozens of ancient world ports that were funded exclusively by private dollars), its no reason to continue such a pattern. Yours is a fallacious argument based on tradition. Its also a tradition that brought us such racist efforts as the "City Beautiful" movement.

This is the reason why public housing projects often closed streets to create superblocks, and why there are large lawns surrounding them.

No, its so that the inhabitants can be "seen" better by the government; its about population control; you similar examples throughout the World in the 19th and 20th centuries (e.g., the demolition and re-building of Paris).

See James Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.

|1.4.05 @ 3:16PM|#

"Your "if people didn't want the policy they would have voted the politicians out" argument can be used to defend any government action. Do you say that when we talk about gun control? Affirmative action? Emminent domain? Progressive tax rates?"

All that's beside the point. The issue is whether a significant number of people innately wanted to live in a suburban environment of their own accord or whether government "herded" them into it against their own desires.

The politicians wouldn't have been able to force such a change on the people if they didn't want to live that way in the first place. They would have been voted out of office.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 3:29PM|#

This has never been tried.

Just because it hasn't been doesn't mean it shouldn't be! :-) My point was to make clear that I'm not contradicting my libertarian principles when I expressed skepticism about your interpretation of government trasnportation policies. Which brings me to...

"But when you accuse government of disfavoring nontransportation uses of roads because of an agenda to get rid of street life, that strikes me as rather absurd." I agree that it's absurd

You misunderstood me. I was calling your accusation absurd, meaning I don't believe you. Again, it seems much, much simpler (and more consistent with common sense) to explain government's favoring of cars on streets versus other uses as an attempt to protect safety rather than an attempt to eliminate "street life."

|1.4.05 @ 3:29PM|#

"I can think of dozens of ancient world ports that were funded exclusively by private dollars"

Though in the ancient world, those "private" dollars weren't exactly private. The line between private wealth and government coffers (and between law and conditions of e was a lot thinner in feudal/monarchist/agricultural societies. Also, for harbors to be a good investment for private capital, there would need to exist an established system of sea trade for them to join. I'm sure a lot of harbors were built privately, after the governments of the day made it worthwhile to do so, just as a lot of new roads are being built by private developers in their subdivisions, because the new roads connect to the old roads, which connect to the highway.

"Yours is a fallacious argument based on tradition." I think you misunderstand; I'm not saying this is as it should be, I'm saying this is how it is, how it has been, and how it will continue, absent some dramatic change in the way our society and economy operates.

You are simply flat out wrong when you suggest that turning away from the street was not official government policy, and a guilding principle of public housing design. The goal of having the units face "commons" rather than public streets, was a bragging point. If James Scott (whoever he is - I'm pretty familiar with planning literature, and have never heard of him) doesn't make this point, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

And Gary, if you think the word "luddite" applies nicely to someone who doesn't think the level of technology is the cause or solution to problems, you're not using the word the same way as the rest of us.

|1.4.05 @ 3:32PM|#

The politicians wouldn't have been able to force such a change on the people if they didn't want to live that way in the first place. They would have been voted out of office.

File it under "Things you thought you'd never see on a libertarian message board."

|1.4.05 @ 3:36PM|#

"The issue is whether a significant number of people innately wanted to live in a suburban environment of their own accord or whether government "herded" them into it against their own desires."

Er, no, it's not. The issue is whether the dramatic change in the physical form of suburbs that happened after World War II was the result entirely of changing attitudes, or whether government subsidies and regulations caused the changes. Your silence at the decades-long growth of non-sprawling suburbs is as telling as your silence about the $1 trillion spent on the interstate highway system and the absence of sprawling suburbs prior to the adoption of zoning and widespread road building.

The is not about city vs. suburb. It's about one pattern of suburban development vs. another. The morphology I prefer is what grew up in a system of widespread automobile ownership, roughly equal commitment to rail and road funding, and market-based decisions about housing densities. The morphology you prefer is what grew up in a system of widespread automobile ownership, government favoritism of roads over rail, and regulation-based decisions about housing densities. Both are suburban patterns.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 3:36PM|#

it has increased dramatically the popularity of smaller cars that run on diesel.

Are you saying that diesel technology favors smaller cars? I don't know anything about the technology, but that would surprise me since diesel is used mostly for large trucks in the US. But if true, that would be an interesting explanation for why there's so many teeny weeny cars in Europe.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 3:45PM|#

I agree that it's absurd, but no more so than a lot of goals adopted by social-engineering governments in the mid-20th century.

Okay joe, so what's your solution? Better social-engineering or no social-engineering? If it's the latter, then of course we would agree with you. If you'd give us the chance.

|1.4.05 @ 3:48PM|#

it has increased dramatically the popularity of smaller cars that run on diesel.

Are you saying that diesel technology favors smaller cars? I don't know anything about the technology, but that would surprise me since diesel is used mostly for large trucks in the US. But if true, that would be an interesting explanation for why there's so many teeny weeny cars in Europe.

fyodor, I think that the original intent was to note the one-two punch of Diesel engines and smaller cars, both of which individually are more fuel efficient, and, together, correspondingly more so.

|1.4.05 @ 3:48PM|#

fyodor, the "absurd" quip was a joke.

I agree that it 'seems much, much simpler (and more consistent with common sense) to explain government's favoring of cars on streets versus other uses as an attempt to protect safety rather than an attempt to eliminate "street life."' if you aren't well-read on the policies of mid-20th century American government, and the theories of social scientists and planners from that period.

Look, Gil keeps harping on the desire of people to move out of the dirty, corrupting city into suburbs, and I agree, that's a powerful dynamic that underlies this history. But as he suggests in his, dare I say, statist mobocracy defense of sprawl zoning regulations, the government adopted coercive policies to further this end, because the best and brightest (from Ebaneezer Howard's Garden Cities to FDR's Green Belt cities to Le Corbusier's Radiant Cities to the implemetation of these ideas during Urban Renewal) believed that changing the conditions in which people lived would be good for them, and improve their behavior.

First and foremost in the litany of evil assigned to cities were the crowded sidewalks, full of temptation and (usually ethnic) evil doers. Also villified was easily-accessed commerce, which forced women into prostitution so they could afford the furs and jewelery in the shop windows. The mixing of races and classes, the temptation, the whole disorder of a busy city street was the villain of the suburbanists, who endorsed Green Acres not just for its higher physical standards, but for the moral uplift it would provide.

Jane Jacobs says this all a lot better than I do.

digamma|1.4.05 @ 3:49PM|#

Gilbert Martin seems to be avoiding what I see as Joe's strongest point - zoning has ILLEGALIZED mixed-use properties like apartment/office buildings with storefronts on the ground floors, which were favored by the free market.

|1.4.05 @ 3:52PM|#

fyodor

Cars tend to be smaller in Europe because of a combination of traffic congestion and fuel costs. I think the development of the small diesel car is secondary.

In Nice, where my cousin lives and it's less crowded, one of the most popular cars seems to be the Jeep Cherokee. The closer you get to Monaco the more Rolls and Bentleys you see. That probably has a lot to do with income.

|1.4.05 @ 3:57PM|#

joe,

Though in the ancient world, those "private" dollars weren't exactly private.

Sure they were. Local merchant(s) decides to build harbor structures; he builds harbor structures. Indeed, it was quite common in the ancient world for private individuals or groups to build any number of structures (be it temples, harbors, statues, etc.) without the say so or aid of the state.

...there would need to exist an established system of sea trade for them to join.

Sea trade based on the efforts of private individuals (e.g., Minoans, Phoenicians, etc.); if you think that there efforts were somehow government driven you are more ignorant than I thought. Now, governments did fight piracy (as did private merchant fleets), however, since most pirates worked at the pay of governments (indeed there were "pirate kings" in the words of Julius Ceasar) its more an issue of one government fighting another government as opposed to a government rounding up criminals acting on their own.

You are simply flat out wrong when you suggest that turning away from the street was not official government policy, and a guilding principle of public housing design.

That would be an interesting statement if I made that claim. But I didn't. Quit fabricating shit to make your claims look sensible. Public housing design is based specifically around the idea of making public spaces "visible" and thus more controllable by the state.

If James Scott (whoever he is - I'm pretty familiar with planning literature, and have never heard of him) doesn't make this point, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

If you don't know who James Scott is then its pretty obvious that you are a rather poorly read individual. I suggest that you educate
yourself.

You are a luddite because you do favor one sort of technology over another (one type of housing, neighborhood, etc.), and you favor it for the same "romantic" and presumably economic reasons that luddites favored non-mechanized fabric production.

fyodor,

Are you saying that diesel technology favors smaller cars?

Nope. European countries tax diesel at a favorable rate in comparison to gas; however, its not so favorable as to make diesel cheap. Accordingly, the rate on diesel still favors diesel cars, but not big diesel cars.

|1.4.05 @ 3:58PM|#

Gilbert Martin seems to be avoiding what I see as Joe's strongest point - zoning has ILLEGALIZED mixed-use properties like apartment/office buildings with storefronts on the ground floors, which were favored by the free market.

I have to agree with this, however, there are a lot of people who live in suburbs because they like them, and because they don't like more urbanized areas. It seems urbanizing suburbs would just push those people further out, causing a net effect of increasing sprawl.

The better solution, if indeed there are so many people who prefer to live in urbanized areas, would be for them to move to the existing cities and modify them as they see fit. Perhaps if the city governments themselves got out of the way and permitted homeowners' associations to form in urban areas, allowing groups of residents to choose their own preferred living arrangements, it would be better. Then the city governments could evolve into contractors that would provide services (roads, police, fire, snow and trash removal, etc.) to the private associations.

|1.4.05 @ 4:04PM|#

"Okay joe, so what's your solution? Better social-engineering or no social-engineering? If it's the latter, then of course we would agree with you. If you'd give us the chance."

Let's bring this back to the original topic - roadway design. Is it social engineering for the government to decide to dedicated more right of way width to pedestrian safety and amenity, in order to encourage people to walk in their neighborhoods? If so, is it social engineering for the government to dedicated more right of way width to automobile mobility, in order to make driving more appealing?

If my city puts in a roundabout at an intersection to reduce accidents, and it also encourages people to walk more, am I allowed to be happy about that?

|1.4.05 @ 4:05PM|#

joe,

James Scott is a sociologist/historian. He doesn't do "planning literature"; he criticizes the disasterous utopian schemes that you and your ilk tried to force down the throats of people over the 20th century.

db,

Let's note that while Joe is criticizing one sort of government planning, he's advocating another scheme of government planning.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 4:09PM|#

GG,

If higher gas taxes has led to smaller car, then it may very well have brought about lower gas consumption, apparently its purpose (so as to alleviate the threat of middle east blackmailing), even if miles driven per se aren't affected.

joe,

While I'm reserving judgment on the accuracy of your claim that a desire to lift people out of the moral slime of the street played a larger role in favoring the auto's presence there than concerns over safety in light of the danger of fast metallic cars, I am still curious to know what lesson you draw from your view of what happened and why. Does the failure of this "absurd" social-engineering mean we should come up with better social-engineering or that we should end attempts at social-engineering with regard to transportation issues.

|1.4.05 @ 4:10PM|#

db,

He's also claiming a historical universality for government planning that only a hack government employee wedded to the notion of the greatness of the state could claim.

|1.4.05 @ 4:11PM|#

joe has ilk? joe, did you get some ilk and not tell us?!

|1.4.05 @ 4:17PM|#

c,

Sometimes they are referred to as "useful idiots."

drf|1.4.05 @ 4:18PM|#

fyodor:

in denmark, there's an extra tax based on the weight of the car, too. that's one reason for the smaller cars. plus there's a 185% sales tax on cars there. so a fiat simply costs less to have around.

one thing that people i know over there say is that they will look for other ways of getting from here to there, as driving in their sardine cans is uncomfortable. also, leaded gasoline is still available there. and there's a few extra percentage points on gas and on other "wealthy man's activities" that goes to subsidize diesel.

(many scandinavian friends want to come here and rent a "big car" and drive on the highways. and as gary mentioned, purchasing a tank or two is greatly appreciated indeed! the last time i got gas in copenhagen it was 7.35 dkk/liter. which was about a buck per liter. $3.78/gallon.)

finally, many east-bloc cars that still use leaded gas and belch smoke with the best of 'em are on the streets there. it's interesting how even though the older versions of the cars are above a certiain weight threshhold, they're classified as lighter, so the good workers don't get hammered with an extra tax.

but then again, they have a progressive fine for speeding. some parking zones were progressive, too. go figure.

|1.4.05 @ 4:19PM|#

Me:

"The issue is whether a significant number of people innately wanted to live in a suburban environment of their own accord or whether government "herded" them into it against their own desires."

Joe:

Er, no, it's not. The issue is whether the dramatic change in the physical form of suburbs that happened after World War II was the result entirely of changing attitudes, or whether government subsidies and regulations caused the changes.

And how is that different from what I said the issue was? When I said 'suburban environment" I meant the suburbs that we call suburbs now.

And who says it was necessarily a "changed attitude" that prompted the move? How do you know that people moved to the cities in the first place because they wanted to live that way?
Many people moved to the cities becuase they had to - not becuase they wanted to. A lot of the earlier smaller suburbs that you happen to like so much were built up around rail lines or street car lines extended out of the central cities before auto transportation was readily available, cheap or most importantly, reliable.
They were no more "natural" than the more spread out suburbs that came along later.
It seems to me to be a natural progession as the technology made cars better, faster and more reliabile that the demand for roads to faciltate that freedom of travel and the desire to live more spread out were what drove government to spend the money to build roads and accomodate that demand rather than the other way around.

|1.4.05 @ 4:20PM|#

He's also claiming a historical universality for government planning that only a hack government employee wedded to the notion of the greatness of the state could claim.

Gary,

I remain skeptical of joe's assertions with regard to the necessity of governmental influence in all matters, as well as his advocacy of central planning. He did make the point (if a bit inconsistently) that zoning regulations are prohibiting people from living in their preferred arrangments. However, he didn't mention that central planning frequently does the same.

What do you think of the idea of property owners' associations in existing cities? I imagine that most cities would do their best to defeat their formation. But in a failing city with no money (I think of Pittsburgh as an example, since I live near there), it might be possible to muscle in on the municipal government's turf when it can't afford to fight.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 4:21PM|#

Is it social engineering for the government to decide to dedicated more right of way width to pedestrian safety and amenity, in order to encourage people to walk in their neighborhoods?

Yes. Allowing people to do what they want is not social engineering; encouraging them is. Maybe we're avoiding the "absurdity" of the past. And maybe someday we'll find out what was absurd about this. I imagine those social planners of the past thought they were pretty damn enlightened. And ultimately it's no one else's business whether I walk more or less.

If so, is it social engineering for the government to dedicated more right of way width to automobile mobility, in order to make driving more appealing? If my city puts in a roundabout at an intersection to reduce accidents, and it also encourages people to walk more, am I allowed to be happy about that?

If I were you I wouldn't be asking me what you can be happy about!! :-) But as long as the decisions are based primarily on making the system do what it's supposed to do better, no, I wouldn't call that social engineering.

drf|1.4.05 @ 4:24PM|#

and c'mon - nuff of the insults to joe. you know, gary, like when people have gotten on you over at the command post or something. this is an interesting topic here and you all are having a good discussion, what with the pithy comments flying around and all.

but seriously: joe has cast iron balls for discussing with a hostile crowd, he always tries to address the points, and enjoys kicking around ideas. plus he averages out lots of the bush apologists that frequent here or the cultural poseurs that cite some sort of philosopher or something... :)

respectfully,
drf

|1.4.05 @ 4:24PM|#

db,

Property owner's associations seem fine (in theory) to me. I thought Pittsburg had recovered its bloom?

|1.4.05 @ 4:26PM|#

Gary,

Pittsburgh cant't even afford to plow snow this year. It's just lucky the winter's been unusually mild so far. But we really needed two taxpayer-funded stadia a couple of years ago, and the city-employed bus drivers can't get by on less than $85,000 a year.

|1.4.05 @ 4:27PM|#

"Cars tend to be smaller in Europe because of a combination of traffic congestion and fuel costs."

Also, a lot more Europeans live in cities and towns than in the US, and it's easier to drive a small car in a city than a big one.

Gary, "favoring one technology over another" is not the definition of a luddite. If that were so, people who favored cars over streetcars would also be luddites This "romantic," anti-technology motivation you attribute to me comes straight out of your ass, and has nothing to support it in any of my posts. Strike one.

"Public housing design is based specifically around the idea of making public spaces "visible" and thus more controllable by the state." Then it's odd that there are so many that locate their front doors in courtyards that are invisible from the public way. These types of yards were designed to be visible from the buildings. The failed attempt to focus the life of housing projects on central green spaces was an attempt at social uplift, on the theory that kids who played in a yard were going to grow up better people than those who played in alleyways, vacant lots, and sidewalks. The fact that this "James Scott" wrote an entire book on their design and didn't bring this point up (not an esoteric one, but one the designers bragged about in their public presentations) tells me that his writings are probably not worth my time.

Good job ignoring the point that private merchants wouldn't have considered it worth their while to build harbors if there weren't already established trade systems.

db, how about, people who want to live in suburbs can move to existing suburbs, and all the other development occurs at an urban scale? What? You've got a problem with limiting your preferred development pattern to places where it currently exists? Imagine that...

Now, as to people preferring suburbs to cities, that's a complicated statement. Do you mean, people prefer big yards to small yards? People prefer not having anything but other houses they can walk to? People prefer good schools to bad schools? People prefer low crime to high crime? People prefer new houses to old houses? People prefer neighbors with higher incomes? People prefer long commutes and multiple car trips every day?

Some features of sprawly suburbs are inherent to that development pattern - bigger yards, for example. Others are the result not of the development pattern, but of specific historical conditions - better schools, lower crime, for example. In Paris, the central city has better schools, lower crime, and better infrastructure than the 'burbs.

If you talk to people who actually made the move from a city neighborhood to a suburban one during the 50s-80s, you're unlikely to hear about what a hellhole it was to live in when they were kids. You are, however, likely to hear about how much closer the people on the block were, and how the houses used to be filled with good people who kept up their properties and kept bad stuff out of the street.

Urban and traditional neighborhoods went from being good neighborhoods to being bad neighborhoods over that period, without actually changing their physical form. This suggests that what defines the desireability of the places they moved into was not the morphology and auto-dependence, but the fact that they were stable, prosperous, safe places.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 4:28PM|#

joe has cast iron balls for discussing with a hostile crowd

Either that or he enjoys the abuse!

drf|1.4.05 @ 4:30PM|#

understood. like how my brother in law calls me "conservative" (!)

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous�
Almost, at times, the Fool. "

|1.4.05 @ 4:33PM|#

Now, as to people preferring suburbs to cities, that's a complicated statement. Do you mean, people prefer big yards to small yards? People prefer not having anything but other houses they can walk to? People prefer good schools to bad schools? People prefer low crime to high crime? People prefer new houses to old houses? People prefer neighbors with higher incomes? People prefer long commutes and multiple car trips every day?

There aren't too many people who will voluntarily pay several hundred thousand dollars to live in a way they don't prefer. Some like to live in $250,000 condos in the city. Some like $400,000 homes in the suburbs. Different strokes.

I grew up in a suburban development and disliked it (not because of a lack of central location, but because I don't like neighbors). I don't like living right next door to people, or in apartments. Hence, I want to live in a more rural area. If I have to drive 45 minutes to work in a city or commercial suburb so that I can live on a 50-acre plot and smell cow manure every day, so be it.

|1.4.05 @ 4:35PM|#

"Gilbert Martin seems to be avoiding what I see as Joe's strongest point - zoning has ILLEGALIZED mixed-use properties like apartment/office buildings with storefronts on the ground floors, which were favored by the free market."

Joe's point is that in the name of "free market" he want's to selectively enforce a set of zoning regulations that push every development in the direction he happens to like. A free market would be NO zoning regulations and I could build my dynamite factory right next door to your house.

The suburban zoning regulations were developed becuase the people that live there wanted it that way. The politicians just didn't dream that up all on their own.

|1.4.05 @ 4:36PM|#

Note: I realize that $250,000 may be cheap for a city condo, and that $400,000 may be expensive for a suburban home, depending on where you are in the country. But I'm just picking some numbers I've seen in the Pgh. area.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 4:38PM|#

Allowing people to do what they want is not social engineering; encouraging them is.

Allow me to better explain myself. Coecively encouraging people to do what they otherwise wouldn't for their own good is social engineering. Trying to get people, against their own will, to walk more than they otherwise would is what's objectionable. I don't know what unforeseen consequences such social-engineering might bring about, but then, that's why they call such consequences unforeseen.

drf|1.4.05 @ 4:39PM|#

hey db:

you from pittsburgh?

helluva steelers team this year. full disclosure: i grew up near cleveland. hrumph.

did you go to kiski or shadyside? we swam them and mercersburg... fun dual meets. but this was years ago.... i also remember that most shadyside people i met lived in fox chapel or someplace like that...

cheers,
drf

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 4:40PM|#

And joe, why all this gnashing of teeth over historical interpretations, anyway? If all you want is wider driving lanes and safer roads, why not just say so?

|1.4.05 @ 4:43PM|#

Gary, "favoring one technology over another" is not the definition of a luddite.

No, its part of the definition of a Luddite. But thanks for dishonestly arguing that is my entire definition. Enjoyed that little bit of sophistry from you. :)

This "romantic," anti-technology motivation you attribute to me comes straight out of your ass...

No, its part and parcel of everything you write on the matter of urban planning; there is an idllyic past you want to want to return to, just like "Ned Ludd" and his mates wanted to return to a supposedly idyllic past by smashing textile machinery.

Maybe you ought to read a few monographs on the Luddites. :)

Then it's odd that there are so many that locate their front doors in courtyards that are invisible from the public way.

But they aren't invisible to the state and its employees of course. Indeed, they can easily surveil such places from a roof, by plane, or by entry onto the public way itself. Indeed, the easiest place to surveil of course is an inclosed area such as a public green; which is why public greens are bounded on four sides. Broad avenues, etc., serve similar purposes, even though one cannot immediately see around corners of such.

The fact that this "James Scott" wrote an entire book on their design...

He didn't. I made that rather clear in my earlier statements on the matter. Please, quit fibbing, its getting tiresome.

Good job ignoring the point that private merchants wouldn't have considered it worth their while to build harbors if there weren't already established trade systems.

I didn't; quit fibbing. The trade networks were created by private individuals not by states. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of say the Phoenicians knows this you nitwit.

Let me repeat my earilier comment:

Sea trade based on the efforts of private individuals (e.g., Minoans, Phoenicians, etc.); if you think that there efforts were somehow government driven you are more ignorant than I thought.

I am shaking my head in humor at your pathetic efforts. Should I suggest a reading list for you regarding ancient world trade to relieve you of your ignorance? Or do you want to continue prattle on about your love of the state?

|1.4.05 @ 4:45PM|#

drf:

I didn't actually grow up close to Pittsburgh, but about 1.5 hours away. Kiski, Shadyside, Fox Chapel, these places are way out of the league of what I grew up in. Although my home was in a nice suburb, it was sort of a suburb of a nothing town, dying a slow, small-steel-town death.

Yeah, the Steelers are doing quite well. I'm hoping they take it all the way this time. I'm sort of a recent fan, not having had the love of football pounded into me from an early age, despite where I grew up.

|1.4.05 @ 4:47PM|#

"James Scott is a sociologist/historian. He doesn't do "planning literature"; he criticizes the disasterous utopian schemes that you and your ilk tried to force down the throats of people over the 20th century."

Sounds like a lot of planning literature!

fyodor, I'm not sure how broad you're defining "social engineering." We can both agree that what the Urban Renewers tried to do qualifies. What about installing a sidewalk and some street trees on an existing road? You people (YOU PEOPLE!) take a very broad view of what qualifies as "the man trying to control our lives."

Gilbert, I'm not arguing with the assertion that people rebelled against the city and sought out, literally, greener pastures. But there is abundent evidence that the change from traditional neighborhoods to sprawl was not just the natural progression you hypothesize.

First, the streetcar suburbs you point to were often located on private transit lines, whereas I haven't seen the highway yet that wasn't built by the government. Second, even as the location of the neighborhoods spread further out, the form of those neighborhoods remained consistent with, well, with all of human history. Third, the growth patterns of metro areas changed dramatically starting in 1950. If you look at a map of developed areas in an old metro area - Boston or Philly or Washington - from 1700 to 1750 to 1800 etc., you'll see growth, similar to the growth of a fungus or the spreading canopy of a tree. They got larger, their shape changed, but there is a continuity to the pattern. This continuity breaks down completely if you look at what happens in the decades after 1950. What you see looks more like - forgive the metaphor for its seemingly loaded language, but the spatial similarity is so striking that it can't be avoided - like a metastasizing tumor. Weird strings shoot out, the interface between urbanized and rural areas become much more jagged, with a sort of "dead" space at the edge of the urbanized land...It's tough to describe, but if you can avail yourself of such maps, you can't miss what I'm saying.

And no, I'm not claiming that humanity is a cancer on the earth or any such thing. Just that the visual evidence makes is clear that what happened starting in the 1950s was not simply a continuation of earlier patterns.

|1.4.05 @ 4:47PM|#

joe,

Let's note your claims about my statements keep on evolving as I strike down one erroneous claim after another. Stick to the straight dope and we might get somewhere.

drf|1.4.05 @ 4:48PM|#

are you near berlin? a buddy of mine from college was from there. one of the nicest guys. really cool. had his entire wall as a collage to his then girlfriend.

but even though i'm an ex ohioian, good luck to the steelers.

cheers.
drf

|1.4.05 @ 4:49PM|#

joe,

BTW, Scott directly quotes the planning entities which created such monstrosities as the public housing projects in Chicago; these entities directly described one of their primary goals of creating bounded public spaces as one of surveillance.

|1.4.05 @ 4:50PM|#

ok, fyodor,

"But as long as the decisions are based primarily on making the system do what it's supposed to do better, no, I wouldn't call that social engineering."

Why, pray tell, are neighborhood streets "supposed to" further the mobility of drivers, rather than further the mobility of pedestrians? The pedestrians were there first, after all.

digamma|1.4.05 @ 4:53PM|#

Gilbert Martin: The suburban zoning regulations were developed becuase the people that live there wanted it that way. The politicians just didn't dream that up all on their own.

Do you consider yourself a libertarian? It seems to me that one of the central insights of libertarianism is that free markets often make better decisions than 51% of voters. Justifying a government action on the basis that it was the people's will is, well, how every government justifies everything it does.

|1.4.05 @ 4:57PM|#

"And joe, why all this gnashing of teeth over historical interpretations, anyway? If all you want is wider driving lanes and safer roads, why not just say so?"

LOL

Because that's not all that Joe wants. He wants a central planning directive that all future development be required to be the more dense old-style neighborhood that he likes via forcing all zoning regulations be in a form that permit that type of development but not the other more spread out type.

|1.4.05 @ 4:58PM|#

joe,

I would suggest Fik Meijer's Trade, Transport and Society in the Ancient World - A Sourcebook and Diana Meekings'The Hollow Ships - Trade & Seafaring in the Ancient World as a starter.

|1.4.05 @ 4:59PM|#

Tiresome, Gary, are your pointless word games, played to avoid even the appearance of modifying your position. You haven't added anything to the discussion in a long time.

"Let's note your claims about my statements keep on evolving..." Yes, Gary, in a conversation in which ideas are exchanged, ideas and interpretations tend to evolve, as long as both participants are trying to seek the truth, rather than avoid the appearance of backing down. You woldn't know about that, though.

I'm done with you, baby, your money's on the dresser.

|1.4.05 @ 5:03PM|#

"He wants a central planning directive that all future development be required to be the more dense old-style neighborhood that he likes via forcing all zoning regulations be in a form that permit that type of development but not the other more spread out type."

Actually Gil, I don't. I'm quite certain that the proven success, throughout history and in recent years, of traditional neighborhood patterns would lead the market, absent any regulation, to construct more neighborhoods in the pattern I prefer, and fewer in the pattern you prefer, than are being produced under today's zoning regime. I support zoning for a variety of reasons, but the alleged need to force TND on an unwilling public is not among them.

|1.4.05 @ 5:03PM|#

"Do you consider yourself a libertarian? It seems to me that one of the central insights of libertarianism is that free markets often make better decisions than 51% of voters. Justifying a government action on the basis that it was the people's will is, well, how every government justifies everything it does."

That's a whole different discussion. The argument I'm having with Joe is whether the changes that occured were in fact due to what the people already wanted or whether govt engineered them into doing it.

|1.4.05 @ 5:04PM|#

cars come first though, because...hmm..

oh yeah.

because robert moses was a fucking curse on humanity and damn his goddamn eyes. i want to reanimate that fucking sonofabitch and make him stare at the BQE (maybe down by the fort hamilton exit) and then make the rotting fuckbag walk home.

fucker.

|1.4.05 @ 5:11PM|#

joe,

They aren't "word games." I haven't modified my positions or my definitions. What you have done is try to modify them (and get me to accept such) to suit your ends; the classic example so far was your silly attempt to parse apart my definition Ludditism and claim that part of my definition was the whole definition. There are other similar examples.

|1.4.05 @ 5:13PM|#

"Actually Gil, I don't. I'm quite certain that the proven success, throughout history and in recent years, of traditional neighborhood patterns would lead the market, absent any regulation, to construct more neighborhoods in the pattern I prefer, and fewer in the pattern you prefer, than are being produced under today's zoning regime. I support zoning for a variety of reasons, but the alleged need to force TND on an unwilling public is not among them."

Well Joe, contrary to what some believe, there is still plenty of open space in this country. There's plenty of room for jammed up neigborhoods as well as spread out ones. There are some of the type you like being developed in places all over the country. People that want to live there can do so.

People that want to live in high-rise condos or apartment buildings in downtown New York City can do so.

People that want to live in the more spread out suburbs can do so as well. If there hadn't been a demand for them, those zoning regulations wouldn't have been created in the first place. They weren't created in a vacum out of the blue.

Or perhaps you could postulate a theory on how they came about and have persisted all this time if the people that live in those areas didn't want it that way.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 5:14PM|#

joe,

Some of this goes to what the hell we're even talking about with "social-engineering..." No, I wouldn't say that building roads is social-engineering unless one was trying to get people to do what they otherwise wouldn't on their own for their own good, or for some greater good that is only attained once large numbers of people start behaving the way you're trying to get them to. If your goal is merely to provide a good or service that is desired, no, I wouldn't call that social engineering. Now, I think the free market is a more efficient and fair method of meeting people's desires for goods and services, but if building a road only has the purpose of meeting people's desire for using the road, then it is not social-engineering. No more than the production of CD's was social-engineering because they replaced vinyl records which were there first. Anything that anyone does will have consequences outside of one's goal, but that doesn't make it social engineering or everything is and the term has no meaning. The only things that potentially makes government building of roads unfair are things that are coercive. Collecting of taxes, condemning of property. If someone wants to use private funds to write papers about how evil streets and alleys are, I wouldn't call that social engineering either because without the power of coersion, there is no "engineering." Without a goal beyond meeting a want or need, there is no social agenda. Any other questions?

|1.4.05 @ 5:16PM|#

joe,

I'm quite certain that the proven success, throughout history and in recent years, of traditional neighborhood patterns would lead the market, absent any regulation, to construct more neighborhoods in the pattern I prefer, and fewer in the pattern you prefer, than are being produced under today's zoning regime.

Yet - in light of the statement below - you aren't really willing to allow the chips to fall where they may. Talk about hypocrisy.

I support zoning for a variety of reasons, but the alleged need to force TND on an unwilling public is not among them.

|1.4.05 @ 5:20PM|#

"Ilk" probably would have been dropped from the language by now if it were not so useful in political debates.
----------------------

Word History: When one uses "ilk," as in the phrase "men of his ilk," one is using a word with an ancient pedigree even though the sense of ilk, ?kind or sort,? is actually quite recent, having been first recorded at the end of the 18th century. This sense grew out of an older use of ilk in the phrase "of that ilk," meaning ?of the same place, territorial designation, or name.? This phrase was used chiefly in names of landed families, "Guthrie of that ilk" meaning ?Guthrie of Guthrie.? ?Same? is the fundamental meaning of the word. The ancestors of "ilk," Old English "ilca" and Middle English "ilke," were common words, usually appearing with such words as "the" or "that," but the word hardly survived the Middle Ages in those uses.

Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
(via reference.com)

|1.4.05 @ 5:34PM|#

fyodor,

I have good mind to send joe a copy of Yevgeny Zamyatin's We.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 5:38PM|#

Thanks for the background, GG.

Okay joe, put a little more succinctly, attempting to use operant conditioning to effect certain behavioral outcomes in a population is social-engineering. Giving people what you believe they want is not.

Now, I can see some reasons why it may seem like social-engineering when government attempts to meet people's demand for goods and services. One is that there is a poor (albeit not nonexistant) feedback loop for government decisions so that government, more often than private enterprise, gives people what they don't want and fails to correct the mistake. Furthermore, government's decisions are backed by the coercion of law. Disobey the rules setup on that new road and you'll have to pay. And as I said above, there's tax collection and condemnation which are forced on people, forcing on people what they might not want in a more direct way than, say, 8-track lovers are forced to buy their new music on CD rather than 8-track. This all reflects why the government should not be in the business of meeting goods and services other than that which can only be provided by the government and thus is the only justification for its existence: security and protection of rights. But that the government shouldn't be trying to meet demand for goods and services doesn't mean that it's social-engineering when it does.

Phil|1.4.05 @ 6:01PM|#

First, the streetcar suburbs you point to were often located on private transit lines, whereas I haven't seen the highway yet that wasn't built by the government

For the sake of being tendentious, here's one.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 6:19PM|#

Heh-heh, once more, joe,

Why, pray tell, are neighborhood streets "supposed to" further the mobility of drivers, rather than further the mobility of pedestrians? The pedestrians were there first, after all.

Put yet another way:

Streets are "supposed to" further the mobility of drivers because drivers are seen to want that. Why do they get what they want rather than pedestrians? Setting aside the differences between government enterprise and private enterprise, it's because life is unfair to pedestrians the same way it's unfair to those who prefer vinyl or 8-tracks to CD's. Because the drivers won, because they were a bigger (well, when it comes to politics, more influential) market. How is this different from trying to encourage people to walk more than they otherwise would? Because anyone attempting to do that knows that the would-be walkers wouldn't do it unless they were encouraged, or conditioned, to. If governments built roads with the conscious purpose to encourage driving, then yes, it was social-engineering. If they built roads to meet a perceived need or desire, then it wasn't.

I admit that this distinction rests ultimately on mere speculation regarding other people's motivations, and such speculations are inherently iffy. But then, you're the one who introduced the term. I can't control what bureaucrats are cooking up in their excitable little minds, and I don't claim to know what their purposes have been in the past. But I can control what I want in the present, and I want no social-engineering at all, except when it means discouraging people from violating the rights of others.

How 'bout you?

|1.4.05 @ 6:30PM|#

Even if you're right, fyodor, about motivations, I don't think that actually defeats Joe's point--namely, that current development patterns are 'unnatural' and caused partially by the way the government fiddled with the market. Suppose it was honestly trying to give people what they wanted, and was wrong, and gave them more car-usefulness and less pedestrian-usefulness than they really wanted (alternatively, it paid attention only to the wishes of car-drivers and ignored pedestrians, either because pedestrians were fewer in number or quieter, to a greater extent than the market would have). Then we're back to the same problem: this increase in roads-for-cars encourages the development of weird development patterns like suburbs, that wouldn't have come up on the free market.

From what I can see, it's almost unquestionable that the government in some sense subsidized car travel and modern suburbia. It built the roads, after all. And car drivers didn't have to pay for them. So at the very least this probably overly encouraged car-intensive developments.

Conversely, with the comment that people can just move to NYC or some such if they like crowded development, NYC has lots of zoning regulations that keep buildings from getting too big and limit the density. Which really annoys me, because I like New York and would like it even more if it were denser. The density's the fun part.

fyodor|1.4.05 @ 6:50PM|#

Jadagul,

I don't disagree with you at all, and in certain respects I agree with joe. But what's the upshot? What's the conclusion? What are we to make of it all? I asked that of joe and he answsered by asking these rhetorical questions that I then tried to answer as best I could. During which I believe I made clear that I really don't think government should be doing all this subsidizing of transportion either. But what does joe believe? We somewhat know what he's against, but what is he in favor of? I'm not always sure, but it seems that he's trying to get the libertarians here to see that we're betraying our principles in order to not be associated with liberals. And he wants us to think that the developmental environment would be much more like what he prefers without the government regulations he dislikes. I probably don't like all those government regs either. Whether they're as responsible for as much as he says I'm not clairvoyant enough to say. Depends on demand elasticities and such. But these discussions always get so convoluted, and it's all because joe is trying to bait the libertarians here into these arcane historical debates rather than just coming out and simply saying what policy he believes in and going from there.

|1.4.05 @ 6:50PM|#

dhex,

Robert Moses never learned how to drive a car.

Just one of the wonderful ironies awaiting you in "Geography of Nowhere."

|1.4.05 @ 6:56PM|#

fyodor,

joe has made it clear for a long time that he is a statist and that he believes that the state knows best.

|1.4.05 @ 6:58PM|#

"Or perhaps you could postulate a theory on how they came about and have persisted all this time if the people that live in those areas didn't want it that way."

Oh, I'm sure quite a few of the people there are happy to pull up on the ladder on the next group of people who want to build houses near their, er, houses. You're asking me to prove that people support barriers to entry?

|1.4.05 @ 7:03PM|#

joe,

And I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate even a modicum of knowledge about ancient trading systems. That ain't gonna happen I suspect. :)

|1.4.05 @ 7:04PM|#

fyodor,

Anyway, I wouldn't waste my time on joe; he's going to continue to dodge the question until the thread disappears.

|1.4.05 @ 7:05PM|#

fyodor, I do have another question. I want to dramatically reduce the coercive regulations on developers and property owners. I want far fewer property owners to be denied building permits because their lots are too small, or too narrow, or whatever. I want to get rid of, of vastly reduce, parking requirements. I want property owners, not zoning, to determine whether they put residential, commercial, or mixed use buildings on their lots.

My motivation has nothing to do with "property rights" - fuck em. I want to reduce the coercive power of the government in this area, because I believe it will result in development patterns more in line with my vision for a good society.

Social engineering?

|1.4.05 @ 7:10PM|#

Gary, go shit in your hat.

I await your haughty, dare I say Gaulic, protest that the above sentence misstates your post.

|1.4.05 @ 7:14PM|#

joe,

Fuck property rights? Yeah, fuck something enshrined in U.S. Constitution and a bedrock of our liberty against a coercive state.

I want to reduce the coercive power of the government in this area, because I believe it will result in development patterns more in line with my vision for a good society.

And if it doesn't? You've already stated that you don't give a shit about property rights, so its readily apparent that if it doesn't turn out like you want it to, property rights wouldn't stand in the way of you arguing for government coercion to mandate your vision of a good society. And yes, that is social engineering; see my comments above about B.F. Skinner. You want to control the development of society for a desired outcome; your theory is that such control can be based on a laissez-faire approach, but if the theory turns out to be incorrect you would have no disagreement with using something far more coercive to come to that desired outcome.

|1.4.05 @ 7:17PM|#

joe,

The only haughty person here is you; you're the only one who claims to know what's best for everyone you leftist scumbag.

|1.4.05 @ 7:19PM|#

fyodor,

I knew joe was a closet Skinnerite. Leftist, Stalinist-wannabe slime like him always worship anti-liberty, anti-individual and anti-humanity swine like Skinner.

|1.4.05 @ 7:22PM|#

joe,

I am glad to have outted your collectivist, anti-liberty ass once again. Of course its not the first time we've seen you advocate a behaviorist nanny-state: see your earlier commentaries on smoking, eating, etc.

|1.4.05 @ 7:23PM|#

fyodor, cd players don't actually endanger the well-being of 8 track lovers, whereas speeding cars and long pedestrian crossing actually do endanger the well being of pedestrians. Roads that are not pedestrian friendly are roads on which automobile drivers coerce pedestrians into abandoning behavior they would otherwise undertake. However, if a lane's worth of right of way is used for pedestrian amenities, drivers are being coerced to alter their behavior, compared to how they would behave given an additional lane. Someone is always being coerced out of using the road - it's a limited resource, and one or both of the groups are not going to see their demand met 100%. So, when deciding how much of each group's demand should be met, what criteria am I supposed to use?

And, BTW, the desire of men to have sex with numerous beautiful women is natural, just like the desire to own a house on an acre of land (allegedly). If the government were to subsidize hookers for all American males, they would have more sex than if they did not. Hey, those hooker-stamps are just meeting the public's demand.

|1.4.05 @ 7:25PM|#

fyodor,

Note the frigthening world that joe envisions where individual rights like property rights are subordinated (indeed, done away with) to the all-wise state and its class of elites (including joe of course) who implement policies "for our own good."

|1.4.05 @ 7:29PM|#

I know, for a fact, that there are people all over my city who strongly demand more of the right of way be given over to pedestrians. There are also people all over the region who demand that that same stretch of right of way be given over to drivers.

Let's leave pedestrians out of this - why do drivers have a greater claim on right of way width than people who want to limit traffic in their neighbohoods, or have a nice buffer between the traffic and their houses?

|1.4.05 @ 7:30PM|#

Jean Gary,

Vos lobes d'oreilles sont commes tetes de poissons.

|1.4.05 @ 7:33PM|#

BTW, when I wrote "propety rights - fuck em," I was, like, totally serious.

It wasn't a figure of speech to make a theoretical point or anything. I actually want to punch a hole (a large hole, ahem) in a copy of the Bill of Rights and have intercourse with it.

|1.4.05 @ 7:35PM|#

joe,

You are just like conservatives who want to monkey with the tax code to create their "social model"; this is turn might lead to lower taxes, which is a good thing, but it doesn't mean that they aren't in the business of social engineering. However, its clear that if that doesn't work, they'd like to target the "recalcitrant" and "subversive" members of the community with something more coercive. We could only expect the same sort of treatment from you and your ilk. Let's face it; you don't believe in liberty; you believe in coerced "optimal outcomes."

|1.4.05 @ 7:39PM|#

joe,

Quit backpeddaling.

Si les cerveaux �taient de l'essence, ils ne seraient pas suffisants pour faire tourner un kart de fourmis � l'int�rieur d'un beignet. :)

|1.4.05 @ 7:43PM|#

Translation for those watching at home:

If brains were gasoline, you wouldn't have enough to run a piss ant's go-kart around the inside of a donut. :)

|1.4.05 @ 8:03PM|#

Translation for those at home:

"Your earlobes are like heads of fish."

I think.

|1.4.05 @ 8:34PM|#

fyodor,

Sorry, but I don't have an all inclusive statement about how land use regulation and development should be. Unlike petty issues like foreign policy, the economy, or energy production, I know far too much about the history of urban development and planning to think I have the capacity to scrap the entire body of knowledge and law that has been accumulated over the past 10,000 years and start over.

I know better, and I have some sense of what direction to move in. And I also know the political realities that surround these issues. Since this is something I work with every day, it isn't really a subject I approach by thinking about utopia and working backwards to policy. I see problems, and I think about how to fix them. I also have a certain capacity for understanding the implications of policy changes in various directions, and tend to be rather conservative in my recommendations.

It's problem that people can't walk to the corner store, either because it's not there, or because they fear for their safety if they do, or because it's a miserable experience to try. It's a problem that the homebuilders are not producing enough house, or appropriate varieties, to meet demand. It's a problem if people are spending 3 hours in traffic every day, because they can't get a decent job and a reasonable quality of life at home unless they do. And it's a problem if the air is being fouled with automobile exhaust.

|1.4.05 @ 10:11PM|#

I'm going to have to come to joe's defense, at least as far as he has described a problem. I won't attempt to defend his solutions to the problem.

The government did indeed distort the market for land use after WWII. By instituting zoning laws that trample the rights of property owners to subsidizing sprawl by creating new roads and highways, the government obliterated the free market.

If you are one to claim that government wouldn't have done it if it didn't have popular support, remind me not to contribute to your defense when you get busted for violating gun/pot/tax laws. Any action a government performs that is both moral and popular is merely a coincidence.

Perhaps it is true that a large number of people wanted to have big yards on dead-end streets, with the nearest market more than a mile away. The trouble is that if that preference was slim, say 55-45, the policies put in place by government warped the supply of neighborhoods to something more like 70-30. There is a huge chunk of the population that are forced into unsavory compromises because the market is rigid and distorted, instead of free-flowing and responsive.

Even in places that seem to understand the problem, their perscription is "different rules", instead of "NO rules". The difference between the planners of today and the planners of yesterday is that today's planners look at yesterday's mistakes and think that the old planners just didn't have the right info, or the right model, or the right something. They assume that if they just have access to enough info and the right theory, all will be Utopia. 'Taint so.

What amazes me is the number of people on this board who are sticking up for the status quo that grew out of such heavy-handed government action. Old Tip was right: all politics is local. The fact that some of you actually perfer this particular outcome of state meddling is telling.

|1.4.05 @ 10:33PM|#

joe,

...I know far too much about the history of urban development and planning...

It became obvious early on that you are a poser with regard to these issues in the ancient world.

The problems you illustrate are the fault of people just like you: "government planners."

|1.5.05 @ 12:18AM|#

"Joe" writes:
> The failure of the radical social engineering
> project to force people into their cars by making
> the world more comfortable for drivers than
> pedestrians is becoming more obvious by the day.

Why don't you post again after the LSD wears off.

The only "social engineering project" related to transportation modes is the opposite: the so-called Smart Growth movement, designed to deprive people of our right to drive on the roads we've already paid for through car taxes and gas taxes.

Modern urban areas are designed around the car because the overwhelming majority of people choose to drive and ALWAYS WILL. Indeed, the only urban places in America that aren't designed that way are obsolete pre-automotive downtowns (and a few imitations built by the "Smart" Growth movement), all of which are only able to continue to exist because they receive huge subsidies from taxpayers.

In a free market all of these old downtowns would go through the NATURAL form of "urban renewal": people and businesses would continue to gradually move out of them until the resulting empty buildings can be bought for a song and torn down to create the widened streets and added parking those areas need to make them usable. Local governments should be encouraging this "wrecking ball therapy" to take place instead of blocking it.

And don't talk to me about the rising values of condo units in San Francisco or Manhattan. Hardly anybody ever voluntarily moves a family into dense-pack, automobile-hostile housing; but when zoning boards have created the kind of horrendous housing shortage that has produced today's prices, any kind of housing you put on the market will find a buyer. I know many people who commute 100+ miles because of these deliberate shortages, often right past whole square miles of wasted land that can't be built because of those zoning laws.

Zoning laws are nothing but a nasty semi-monopoly enacted by and for the owners of existing housing. Their real purpose is to keep its price astronomically high by keeping now-unbuilt land unbuilt, at the expense of _its_ owners and anyone who needs to move into the metro area for a job. (They also deliberately worsen traffic by wasting our gas-tax funds on transit nobody will ever use, in the hope it will prevent new growth.) If it weren't under the umbrella of local government, the federal antitrust authorities would come in and break up these crooked cartels, and I wish they would anyway.

It's about damn time we got government completely out of the land-use-planning and transportation businesses. Then we'd see what people really want to buy -- and we'd see enough of it.

|1.5.05 @ 6:05AM|#

....by giving the illusion of security actually makes driving more dangerous. - Mark Steyn on Monderman

This is pure Aaron Wildavsky - Searching For Safety reviewed at: http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=2048

...whereas I haven't seen the highway yet that wasn't built by the government. - joe

On your way to the original Levittown, stop and take in the remnants of the Long Island Motor Parkway, privately built as perhaps the world's first limited-access, automobile-only tollroad by William Vanderbilt and his pals, so they could cruise out to their country houses in their Cords and Pierce-Arrows, and hold the Vanderbilt Cup road race! When the Depression hit, the localities didn't adjust their tax assessments for deflation, and the Vanderbilts deeded the road to the state in 1938. Competition from the government's Northern State Parkway (that fuckety-fuck Moses again!) had forced down tolls, hurting revenues. The last 13 miles, ending at Lake Ronkonkoma, is still in use as Suffolk County Road 67. See:

http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/motorparkway/motor.html

http://home.att.net/~berliner-ultrasonics/limtrpwy.html

BTW, the early Levitt homes were street-oriented

At the same time, one of the largest decisions concerned how to set the rooms, the entrances, and the house more generally in relation to front yard and street, and back yard and play area. In this, Levitt seems to have gone back to an urban model: the kitchen and living room looked out on the street, where mother could watch children playing whether she was doing housework or relaxing in the living room. But underlying this was the assumption that the street was the center, the playground, the focus. In the back yard and common areas, the children could not be easily seen, unless one went into the bedroom and looked out through the window. - Peter Bacon Hales, Building Levittown

http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Epbhales/Levittown/building.html

Oh, and joe, calling Brooklyn a suburb of Manhattan is "foightin' woids."

Kevin

|1.5.05 @ 8:41AM|#

Me:

""Or perhaps you could postulate a theory on how they came about and have persisted all this time if the people that live in those areas didn't want it that way.""

Joe's reply:

"Oh, I'm sure quite a few of the people there are happy to pull up on the ladder on the next group of people who want to build houses near their, er, houses. You're asking me to prove that people support barriers to entry?"

In other words Joe has no answer and he's sucking wind.

|1.5.05 @ 8:50AM|#

And for those of you who've posted comments about the roads being "subsidized" and government "favoring" drivers over pedestrians, the roads were paid for by drivers. Paid for out of dedicated highway trust funds that were funded by state and federal gas tax money paid by drivers every time they fill up at the pump.

If there's any subsidy going in, it's a cross subsidy from drivers in some areas to drivers in other areas - not a subsidy from non-drivers to drivers.

Since pedestrians aren't paying for the road construction, then there's no reason why new roads should be designed to favor their mobility over drivers. The drivers are the one's paying for the road.

As for Joe's earlier remarks about the rail lines and street car lines that the early denser suburbs grew up around being private companies, well they may have been private but acquisition of the rights of way for their tracks certainly weren't private. The government arranged that.

digamma|1.5.05 @ 9:38AM|#

And for those of you who've posted comments about the roads being "subsidized" and government "favoring" drivers over pedestrians, the roads were paid for by drivers. Paid for out of dedicated highway trust funds that were funded by state and federal gas tax money paid by drivers every time they fill up at the pump.

There's no relationship between supply and demand. My gas taxes go to the federal government, where they are distributed by Congress's transportation committees, so that Bud Schuster can build highways to nowhere in Pennsylvania, highways on which I will never drive, so that Schuster can win 98% of the vote in the next election instead of just 96%. Meanwhile the roads I use are congested and ridden with potholes. This is not a free market.

I'd like to see all roads paid for by user fees, whether the users be pedestrians, bikers, or drivers. Then we'd see less congestion at peak hours due to the higher prices, cheaper tolls in the middle of the night when there's no traffic, and more construction where there's real economic demand, not just votes to be bought.

I don't agree with Joe's general ideology, but for the purposes of this thread, Joe is right. Some people here can't accept libertarian policy when it might lead to outcomes that would make a leftist happy. And that's disturbing.

|1.5.05 @ 9:52AM|#

Mr. Galt, you make some good points about the artificial shortages of housing, but you don't know very much about urban history. Read a little bit about Robert Moses if you don't believe transportation and social engineering have a long pedigree. Also, families with children aren't the only buyers of homes. Finally, you have a tendency to confuse motives and outcomes, which is a very effective way of guaranteeing that you will never actually be able to accomplish change, since this bad habitleaves you incapable of identifying the actual goals that underly public policy.

Easy dere, kevrob. Wuddya gunna do? Brooklyn is, obviously, no longer a suburb - the center city expanded to turn it into part of the city over the course of the early 20th century. But at the end of the 1800s, it was a suburb, and properties there were sold as such, with all the appeals to Ward Cleaver home life and kids chasing butterflies you find in modern ads for suburban homes. Now, of course, it's a significant city in its own right, better than Manhattan in a lot ways, and you don't gotta slash my tires or nuthin.

It is this natural progression, the gradual densification of close in suburbs until they become part of the urban core, that has been interrupted by suburban zoning. Growth which used to be accomodated by building up and building closer, has been replaced by building out and further away. This, as Galt points out, has created a housing shortage.

Good point on Levittown. Levitt's projects go back to about 1950, and much housing from this period combines features of traditional neighborhoods with innovations that would become common. For example, you might see half acre lots, but still arranged in rigid rectangles set on a street grid. Or, while the houses might address the street as if it were to be a usable public space, the street itself might be built with the wide, gently curving design with few intersections that favors automobiles over pedestrians and neighbors.

|1.5.05 @ 9:57AM|#

Gil, the gas taxes collecting during the 50s, 60s, and 70s did not even begin to approach the cost of building the Interstate Highway System, or of paying for all the urban land that taken for urban highways. While your point about modern road funding is correct, the fact remains that we only became locked into an automobile-dominated system because of the massive subsidies used to make that happen.

And, of course, the payments made to those urban property owners didn't cover their actual costs, nor did they cover the economic harm caused by the disruption of established patterns of urban activity by the installation of impassable elevated and surface highways.

|1.5.05 @ 9:59AM|#

"Robert Moses never learned how to drive a car."

oh that just fucking figures. this guy was worse than hitler.

and jesus fuck kittens, gary, calm down.

|1.5.05 @ 10:14AM|#

The interstate highway system was not built for the little people. Its first purpose is to facilitate military defense against the Soviet Union. Setting sail in a land yacht with the cold air blowing and tunes cranked on a long journey to the far-flung fun places is a nice byproduct of the military industrial taxasaurus. It beats Tang.

|1.5.05 @ 11:09AM|#

"Gil, the gas taxes collecting during the 50s, 60s, and 70s did not even begin to approach the cost of building the Interstate Highway System, or of paying for all the urban land that taken for urban highways"

The interstate highway system was started by Eisenhower as a military initiative since he'd seen the military value of the German Autobahn for moving troops.

As for paying for the cost of urban land, the govt had to pay landowners for any land taken via emminent domain. It is mere speculation on your part that the compensation they got for it was less than fair market value.


"nor did they cover the economic harm caused by the disruption of established patterns of urban activity by the installation of impassable elevated and surface highways."

More speculation on your part. Roads generate new economic activity in different places. You have no evidence that roads caused economic harm on a net-economic basis.

|1.5.05 @ 11:24AM|#

"It is mere speculation on your part that the compensation they got for it was less than fair market value."

Why do you continually assume that I'm making shit up? What graduate school did you study urban planning in? I know, for a fact, that much of the urban land that was taken was undervalued during the compensation phase. This is documented, Washington-crossed-the-Delaware type history. You can keep saying "Nuh-uh" to information you find inconvenient, but that won't change history. You can believe me, or not, doesn't matter to me. I argue on these threads to here the other side, and have my understandings challenged. If your retort is simply to contradict facts that I know are accurate, all that does is make me more secure in my knowledge.

You're entitled to your own opinions, Gil, but you're not entitled to youw own facts.

"Roads generate new economic activity in different places. You have no evidence that roads caused economic harm on a net-economic basis." No, nor did I claim such. In fact, I claimed the opposite, that the highway spending promoted growth in outlying areas. Further, the central thesis I've been arguing is that the investment in highways was done for the purpose of promoting one style of growth over another, in one location rather than another, because of a a belief among policymakers that it was wise to use transportation investments to steer growth out of the cities, into the suburbs. On a net basis, the money spent to enhance the transportation system probably did promote overall economic growth, as transportation improvements have throughout history. Had this investment been made in ways that facilitated access and mobility for city-dwellers, rather than suburbanites, that also would have promoted economic growth, though of different varieties and in different locations.

|1.5.05 @ 11:30AM|#

Futhermore, on a more general basis' my response to Joe's complaint that suburban dwellers are being 'subsidized" and it's not a "free market" is:

Tough shit.

There are great many government subsidies and non-free market things that the government does that affect us all whether we agree with them or not.

There's nothing "free market" about being forced to subsidize other people via paying social security and medicare taxes. Or having to pay taxes to financce somebody else's children's education or to pay for welfare, food stamps, etc. or farm subisidies or farm price supports.

There's no particular reason why this particular interference in a "free market" should be at the top of the list to get undone relative to any of the rest of them just because it's Joe's preference.

You want to talk about getting rid of subsidies and inteference in the "free market"? Then get rid of all of them all at the same time or don't bother me about it. Any subsidy I'm getting for living in a suburb is dwarfed by all the subsidies I'm paying for all that other "social engineering" stuff that you're perfectly happy that government is forcing on all of us.

|1.5.05 @ 11:48AM|#

"You're entitled to your own opinions, Gil, but you're not entitled to youw own facts."

You're not any ackowledged "expert" on what the facts are.

|1.5.05 @ 11:58AM|#

You want to talk about getting rid of subsidies and inteference in the "free market"? Then get rid of all of them all at the same time or don't bother me about it.

In some threads you style yourself quite the realist. Here, you say that liberalizing things one at a time is a bad thing. My only question is, do you really think we'll get a completely free market overnight?

all that other "social engineering" stuff that you're perfectly happy that government is forcing on all of us.

Gilbert, the inner-city has spawned a lot of dangerous people. If we do nothing then they'll come to your neighborhood and rob you and perhaps even kill you. This is about changing the dynamic and transforming the society. Just like we're doing in Iraq!

|1.5.05 @ 12:10PM|#

"In some threads you style yourself quite the realist. Here, you say that liberalizing things one at a time is a bad thing. My only question is, do you really think we'll get a completely free market overnight?"

If want to talk to me, try to respond to what I actually said instead of making up your own version of it.

The point was that I do not accept Joe's opinions as to which things government should or should not be involved in. There's no reason why he should get to pick and choose what if any things should be undone any more than I should get to pick and choose.


"Gilbert, the inner-city has spawned a lot of dangerous people. If we do nothing then they'll come to your neighborhood and rob you and perhaps even kill you."


The inner-city has been around a long time and I've been in my neighborood a long time. None of them have gotten there yet. But if they do come to kill me, I'll oblige them by killing them first.

|1.5.05 @ 12:21PM|#

But if they do come to kill me, I'll oblige them by killing them first.

That's the discreditied "law enforcement approach" to murderers. We need to pre-emptively change the dynamics and drain the swamp.

Just look at how well this new doctrine is working in Iraq!

|1.5.05 @ 12:25PM|#

If you want to get cute about Iraq then go troll on a thread about Iraq.

I'm not going to play your game here.

drf|1.5.05 @ 12:25PM|#

but thoreau, it's a few bad apples...

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/01/outnumbered_in.shtml#comments

:)

|1.5.05 @ 12:31PM|#

Gilbert-

I was talking about social engineering. I thought that's what the current discussion was about in this thread.

digamma|1.5.05 @ 12:45PM|#

Roads generate new economic activity in different places. You have no evidence that roads caused economic harm on a net-economic basis.

So a few people had to have their property taken without compensation for the common good. Am I reading Reason or The Nation here?

|1.5.05 @ 12:52PM|#

"Gilbert-

I was talking about social engineering. I thought that's what the current discussion was about in this thread."

I already told you I wasn't going to play your game. If want to get cute about Iraq, you'll have to get somebody else to play with.

drf|1.5.05 @ 12:59PM|#

thoreau, i guess we have to ask Haid d'Salaami if he'll play.

(consistent with this thread, i'll talk to you about someone else)

i guess consistency about social engineering is the same as consistency about limited government.

|1.5.05 @ 1:12PM|#

"You want to talk about getting rid of subsidies and inteference in the "free market"? Then get rid of all of them all at the same time or don't bother me about it."

I wonder why libertarians haven't become a major power on the political scene.

"You're not any ackowledged "expert" on what the facts are."

Actually, I am. I am, ahem, a Master of Regional Planning. I've dedicated two years of my life to studying these issues, and nearly a decade to working the field. Believe it or not, years of graduate study and real world experience actually do provide you with information about a subject.

Believe me, don't believe me, educate yourself, remain ignorant, base your understandings on what you want to be true, base your understandings on the historical record, it makes no difference to me.

|1.5.05 @ 1:13PM|#

I guess no one has appointed either one of you as any authority on what constitutes "social engineering" or "consistency".

In fact I know they haven't

|1.5.05 @ 1:22PM|#

Ever seen a cornered rat?

|1.5.05 @ 1:27PM|#

The college of engineering I attended didn't have a social eng. dept. I may have to look into this further.

|1.5.05 @ 1:27PM|#

"I wonder why libertarians haven't become a major power on the political scene."

Translation:

Joe has no reason other than his own personal preferences as to why govt should be doing things like welfare and social security but not suburban zoning regulations.

I don't wonder why liberals are becoming an ever diminishing power on the political scene.

|1.5.05 @ 1:30PM|#

"Ever seen a cornered rat?"

Yes - you.

I cornered you in here a long time ago.

drf|1.5.05 @ 1:35PM|#

"The college of engineering I attended didn't have a social eng. dept. I may have to look into this further."

ha ha.

MRP is a fairly well-represented graduate field. oftentimes called "urban planning" or some such, it's already been cited in this thread by kevrob who noted Univ of Illinois at Chicago's program above.

the people's republic of mass. has lots of good MRP programs. (i know some Master Real Estate candidates at UIC who are very smart - one was looking at U Mass (where his wife is from) or UIC (where he's from), for example.

but claiming that only liberals have preferences for what government should do, gilbert, is still rising to thoreau's comment - your preferences for government engineering have a different scope than joe's.

|1.5.05 @ 1:57PM|#

"but claiming that only liberals have preferences for what government should do, gilbert, is still rising to thoreau's comment - your preferences for government engineering have a different scope than joe's."

I never said only liberals have preferences for what govt should do. I said there's no reason Joe should get to select and prioritize which ones to undo. Suburban zoning regulations are no more an egregious interference than social security is.

As for Thoreau - he was trying be cute and say we are in Iraq for social engineering when the reason we are there is to protect our own national security. And yes making sure we continue to have access to all that middle eastern oil is indeed part of our national security.

drf|1.5.05 @ 2:02PM|#

that's a strange insult then. and if it is common, then it's no basis for rejecting what joe says. since you've noted that all of our opinions are just that, you've exposed yourself for an unprincipled brute.

and spare me the "war for oil" line of argumentation. that's by far the worst fucking excuse for invasion, as oil wasn't threatened. especially with the emasculated iraq in the interwar years.

yawn to you.

|1.5.05 @ 2:15PM|#

"The interstate highway system was started by Eisenhower as a military initiative since he'd seen the military value of the German Autobahn for moving troops."

Actually it is a myth that Ike was inspired by the German Autobahn. He first became interested in a national road system in the '20s when the he was involved with an army experiment trying to move troops and material across country by road. It took something like three months to get from DC to the west coast.

Hitler got the idea for the Autobahn from the already established american superhighways of the '20s and thirties.

The interstates originally were not supposed to go thru cities either. But when various city councils and Chambers of Commerce and the like smelled the pork it became a feeding frenzy.

|1.5.05 @ 2:20PM|#

yawn to you too.

drf|1.5.05 @ 2:21PM|#

here is an article by prof Sanderson of U of C called "power to which people".

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2004/Sandersonpower.html

enjoy,
drf

fyodor|1.5.05 @ 2:22PM|#

I want to reduce the coercive power of the government in this area, because I believe it will result in development patterns more in line with my vision for a good society. Social engineering?

No, because I think of social engineering as tricking people into do what they otherwise would not for their (or everyone's) own good. Allowing people to clome closer to doing what they already want, ie "reducing coercive power of the government" because you see something good in that would not qualify, at least not on its face. I would only wonder if the coerciveness that has been left intact is there to effect your personal image of society, and you are only removing the coerciveness that gets in the way of that vision, in which case the reduction of coerciveness may be a backhanded way of effecting the "social engineering."

|1.5.05 @ 2:29PM|#

Isaac, yes and no. There were highways, like Route 1, in the 1920s, and also turnpikes (the Penn Turnpike lowered its speed limit to 35 mph during WWII to save gasoline). What caught Ike's attention about the Autobahn was that it was a nationwide, interconnected system.

Of course, that's just my personal opinion. Far be it from me to impose my subjective interpretation on those who are of the opinion that the Pennsylvania Turnpike didn't exist during WWII.

Who knows what's right and what's wrong in this crazy modern world anyway? (Puffs on Gauloise)

|1.5.05 @ 2:32PM|#

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/1919ike.html

Sorry, it took two months 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy to cross the country. And it was 1919 not "the '20s".

Also, I suspect that the main efect of the German Autobahn systen on the US interstate highway system was that thousands of american GIs had seen for themselves what a really good highway system could be. It made it an easy sell.

But superhighways were already well established in the northeastern states long before Ike went to Germany.

fyodor|1.5.05 @ 2:34PM|#

Someone is always being coerced out of using the road - it's a limited resource, and one or both of the groups are not going to see their demand met 100%.

I thought that's what you've been getting at all along, I'm glad you've finally come out and said it.

Well, given your belief that roads have to be owned and governed directly by the state, you are absolutely right that there is no clear criteria for such decision making. I would say that (given your given that the state must decide), the state should decide on what its constituents most want, to the best of its (decidedly limited) ability. What criteria should not be used is, well hardly anyone wants to walk on this road, but damnit they should want to, it's good for them!! That's where it becomes social engineering and paternalistic and intrusive. Now, all government owning and subsidizing of roads violates strict libertarian principles, but if you think I should jump from accepting that libertarian principles are not always going to be followed in this area to agreeing that whatever government planners do for the good of the people based on their enlightened ability to know what is good for me better than I do.... Or maybe that's not what you're saying. At this point I'm confused about what your point is again.... Anyway, to the degree that I can't keep the government from using its coercive powers to be involved in areas I think it shouldn't be, the next best thing is for it to limit its graces to what people clearly want, NOT what it thinks people should have even though they don't want it.

|1.5.05 @ 2:35PM|#

Good enough, fy. So what about my 7:23 post. There's just so much right of way width. If I take out a planting strip and narrow a sidewalk to add drive lanes, I'm coercing pedestrians out of walking along the street. If I limit the number and width of drive lanes so there will be wide sidewalks and street trees, I'm coercing drivers.

Dammit, I need you libertoids to tell me who to persecute!

|1.5.05 @ 2:40PM|#

drf-

Good article!

|1.5.05 @ 2:43PM|#

joe

"What caught Ike's attention about the Autobahn was that it was a nationwide, interconnected system."

This is true. But it also caught the attention of thousands of other GIs.

As further evidence that they had better put a parka in my coffin I found myself generally agreeing with you on this thread. :)

However I have been wondering if your positions on "snob zoning" on the like were what brought you to Reason, since they have been railing on it and other planning issues for as long as I've been reading it. And that's over 20 yrs.

fyodor|1.5.05 @ 2:47PM|#

I have some sense of what direction to move in

Then tell us what that is and how to get there and we'll debate it, probably a lot more straightforwardly than these debates that you spur with your intentional button pushing.

It's problem that people can't walk to the corner store, etc etc

And it's a problem that I can't buy new music on 8-tracks as I would like to. The market doesn't meet everyone's needs, only the most people's needs in the most efficient manner. That said, naturally I want to remove all the barriers to the market that you blame for creating these problems. Only I know that these barriers were created to solve other perceived "problems" in the first place, and that's why I'm also skeptical of the barriers you want to leave in place.

|1.5.05 @ 2:48PM|#

on the like > AND the like

fyodor|1.5.05 @ 2:59PM|#

joe,

Dammit, I need you libertoids to tell me who to persecute!

First, recognize that anything that the government decides will be unfair because it is the government deciding it. Then make the decision that would seem to come the closest to what a business would decide if the people affected were paying customers. How to do that? Well, I didn't say it would be easy. Only that that should be one's goal rather than to do what you know would be better for people even though they don't even want it themselves.

|1.5.05 @ 2:59PM|#

Re: joe's depiction of Brooklyn as a "suburb."

Brooklyn was its own city, one of the largest in the country, prior to the corruptly engineered consolidation of the Five Boroughs into Greater New York.* The intrusion into The City of Churches of bedroom communities convenient for Manhattan commuting was, indeed, an artifact of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. This was the beginning of a pattern repeated throughout the 20th century across Long Island. Land that was as yet undeveloped, though it may have been pasture, farmland, or forest, was planted with housing. Villages that dated to the early Dutch settlement, or the later migration of English settlers from Connecticut began filling in, or, as in the post-WWII activities of Levitt and his imitators, new subdivisions were planted inland from the coastal villages, often in unincorporated areas. The South Shore and North Shore villages of Nassau and Suffolk served as market towns for the surrounding agricultural areas, were home ports for fleets that harvested fish, whales and shellfish from the ocean and the inland waters, and boasted local industry, from shipbuilding to textile mills. Once the Long Island Railroad was built, the oceanside towns became summer destinations for tourists from NYC. The LIRR was not initially a commuter line. It was originally built down the spine of the Island, to move freight from the East River to Greenport, where it would go by ship to Connecticut, then by train to Boston. This worked fine, until a railroad was laid along the Connecticut coast. The Southern and Northern branches, serving the old sea-side towns, came later. Once one could catch a train into Manhattan, the bedroom community function started creeping east, but most communities predated that effect. Levittowners, for example, could catch a train at nearby Hicksville, and didn't need to drive to Manhattan.

The challenge to the small Suffolk County village I grew up in, which had storefronts to the sidewalk, with offices or rental housing on the floor(s) above, the occasional "corner store" in the residential neighborhoods, was not so much strip development on the highway north of town, but from the regional shopping mall that started competing with the downtown merchants ~1969. Our local Chamber of Commerce had fought for decades to make sure that the back doors of our Main Street merchants faced large parking lots, staving off the complaint oft-heard from visitors to competing villages that "they have nice shops there, but there's no place to park."

The "sprawl model" so hated by New Urbanists may somewhat accurately describe growth near cities that are surrounded by virgin lands, but when suburbanization exists side-by-side with settlements that are over 300 years old, it is a bit more complicated.

Kevin

*Everyone remembers the sign in the credits for Welcome Back, Kotter, don't they?

Welcome to Brooklyn, 4th largest city in America. Hon. Sebastian Leone, Borough President.

For the conniving flim-flam that extinguished Brooklyn as an independent city, see the Pulitzer-winning Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace.
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryAmerican/?view=usa&ci=0195140494

|1.5.05 @ 3:18PM|#

Fyodor, the public's demand is clear - they want streets to be more pedestrian friendly, to move traffic more efficiently, to have less traffic on their streets, to have streets and sidewalks that are well maintained, to have less tax money collected for street maintenance, and to avoid taking property.

So you can see where I'm in a bit of a bind.

fyodor|1.5.05 @ 3:22PM|#

So you can see where I'm in a bit of a bind.

Well...don't take it out on us!!! :-)

drf|1.5.05 @ 3:33PM|#

fair enough, Gil! accepted!

however, i still enjoy the commenting with you, so let's continue on other topics - and i'll betcha there'll be times when we're on the same side!

stay tuned!

drf

|1.5.05 @ 3:35PM|#

"Well...don't take it out on us!!! :-)"

You pissed me off. The demolition crew will go to chez fy, as soon as they're done at Gil's.

fyodor|1.5.05 @ 3:54PM|#

You pissed me off. The demolition crew will go to chez fy, as soon as they're done at Gil's.

I don't doubt it often works that way!

|1.5.05 @ 4:01PM|#

dhex,

Let's note that its the Skinnerite joe who is discussing things like getting rid of property rights, creating massive social control regimes that suit his designs for how others should live, etc. His ideas are right out the typical "urban planning" tradition that created the racist "City Beautiful" movement, forced sterilizations and other like monstrosities in American history. More precisely, joe is the enemy.

|1.5.05 @ 4:38PM|#

"You pissed me off. The demolition crew will go to chez fy, as soon as they're done at Gil's."

Uh Huh

And then they'll head over to all the social security administration offices and tear down that whole system so you won't be getting any retirement checks when you're old and gray.

|1.5.05 @ 6:45PM|#

I'm unhappy that I missed out on this thread.

It seems there are several competing visions for the future (of transport in this case), and different tolerances of the means to achieve those visions.

I may like the feel of Main Street, but it seems wrong to coerce (or incent) an exurb-lover into my rehabbed warehouse condo. Let's dismantle the web of regulation and trust individuals to negotiate their own best compromises. End both roadway subsidy and mass transit subsidy as a progressive step toward liberty. Maybe we'll discover a new living arrangement altogether?