Flyover Urbanist

An urbanist, but not a progressive

Jun 15, 2024
20 minute read

Earlier this year, YouTuber Ray Delahanty (“CityNerd”) asked how it’s possible for one to be an urbanist and a Republican:

This tweet about excluding conservatives from the urbanist movement also generated several days of discourse:

I dislike that urbanism has been subsumed into the broader progressive movement. This was inevitable given the demographics of people who call themselves “urbanists”, but it’s resulted in the widespread adoption of flimsy, lightweight beliefs that fall apart under scrutiny. If we’re interested in actually solving urban problems, we should be willing to test all possible answers—not just those that conform to our preconceived notions. Our thinking should be rigorous, even if it produces answers that make us uncomfortable.

This post outlines my positions on crime, development, transportation, and municipal governance that disagree with mainstream progressive urbanism. There are several factors that have led me to these conclusions, including years of living in deep blue cities and ingesting the left–right discourse around their issues.

1. Urban living requires a high level of social trust that must be supported by law enforcement.

It’s hard to overemphasize just how much the concept of social trust has transformed my perspective on urbanism. Low-trust conditions drive so much of the urban dysfunction and decline we’ve witnessed in this country over the past half-century.

By first world standards, American cities are unusually violent and crime-ridden. We suffer from higher rates of homicide, property crime, and reckless driving than our developed peers. Every conversation about encouraging urban growth should start with an understanding of these facts and the constraints they impose. Yes, our cities can still grow under these conditions—there are many people who will tolerate dysfunction to live an urban lifestyle—but disorder is a powerful counterweight that pulls against their potential.

The problem with dysfunction is that people have the option to move away from it, and by and large, that’s what Americans have done when they’ve obtained the resources to do so. Consider this story about a proposed solar farm in the Chaldean Town neighborhood of Detroit, which has experienced severe disinvestment over the past few decades:

Investment in Chaldean Town could help boost the struggling neighborhood, Miri said, where few Chaldeans remain, several storefronts are boarded up and residential areas are full of vacant land. 

In its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, Chaldean Town was the first stop for thousands of Chaldeans immigrating to the United States. They raised families and opened up grocery stores, restaurants and doctor’s offices.

But by the 1980s, the crack epidemic swept through Detroit, as did crime, causing Chaldeans to move to suburban communities in Oakland and Macomb counties. 

“Families, especially the second generation, wanted to provide better opportunities for their kids, so they went to Southfield and Oak Park,” Miri said.

Who can blame the Chaldeans for wanting to escape Detroit in the 1980s—a decade in which nearly 200,000 people abandoned the city? They had no obligation to remain in a place that threatened the livelihood they’d struggled so hard to build.

What’s interesting about this excerpt is how the author frames the departure of the Chaldeans sympathetically even though their choice to leave is indistinguishable from the broader phenomenon of “white flight” that progressives blame on racism. Indeed, this is one of the massive blind spots that undermines all of progressive urbanism—the convenient, satisfying, and incorrect narrative that the midcentury decline of our major cities was caused predominately by white racism rather than crime and dysfunction.

The story of Chaldean Town is not the only anecdote that suggests disorder as the primary mechanism behind urban decline. We are living through another demographic exodus from cities: black flight. A generation after the urban crises of the mid-20th century, inner-city black residents finally have the resources and opportunities to leave the places that have treated them so badly. And again, who can blame them for doing so when large swaths of our major cities still suffer from horrific crime and crumbling infrastructure?

With violence and decay now shaping and scarring the life experience of so many on the South Side [of Chicago], it seems the struggle with crime has become its legacy.

Every senseless death, every random shooting and every bullet-riddled weekend means another family, another frightened parent must make the decision to stay or go.

Those of us left behind must deal with the aftershocks: lessening political clout, limited public services and the creep of poverty and crime into neighborhoods like South Shore and Auburn-Gresham.

“A crumbling, dangerous South Side creates exodus of black Chicagoans” – William Lee, Chicago Tribune, March 18, 2016

It’s telling that most black migration is to red states like Texas and North Carolina—places with governments that are often denigrated as racist. Perhaps the inability of blue cities and states to retain black residents should provoke some introspection. It’s a pretty powerful statement that large numbers of black people are willing to tolerate Republican state government in order to access the opportunity and stability that the suburbs of Charlotte and Atlanta provide.

The hard truth is that convincing people to embrace urban life requires assuring them that they can expect (a) the full protection of the law, safeguarding their person and property, and (b) stability and normalcy in their neighborhood. This perception of security & stability is more difficult to achieve in cities because you encounter a greater number and diversity of people on a daily basis, and you can’t use cars and open space to isolate yourself like in the suburbs. People who live in cities need high-quality enforcement of the laws they have democratically enacted—it’s the only way to make urban living tolerable for most people.

Other commentators are better at talking about solutions than I am. Yglesias has written extensively about the need to bolster investment in policing and shift resources and manpower from low-crime suburbs to high-crime urban neighborhoods. Peter Moskos, a criminal justice professor and former cop, has some interesting ideas about achieving “quality policing”. I’m currently reading The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William Stuntz, which diagnoses the inability of our criminal justice system to curtail urban crime despite massive incarceration rates. The general theme is that re-establishing social trust in cities will require (a) a substantial investment in more police, not fewer, (b) reintegration of police into communities, and (c) adjusting the incentives built into the criminal justice system to target antisocial repeat offenders.

This all comes off as authoritarian to progressives, but refusing to consistently enforce the law will lead to worse outcomes for everyone. More crime creates more victims (who are disproportionately poor) and drives people away from cities. An increase in crime also produces a thermostatic political backlash that results in sloppy, aggressive policing and degrades or eliminates public spaces and infrastructure. You can’t expect the general public to support urban living if they don’t feel like they can safely participate in it. Consistent and stringent law enforcement is far more preferable than the chaotic ebb and flow we have today.

2. Development is good, and more of it should be allowed and encouraged.

Progressives in our largest cities are skeptical of development by default. To them, developers are rich capitalists looking to exploit cities and fuel gentrification, and any private effort to build must be treated as a negotiation in which the city should extract as much as possible. The city is a precious, communal resource that developers—the ‘other’—threaten to defile.

I reject everything about this worldview, starting with the premise that development is exploitative. Development is the physical manifestation of our collective productivity and wealth. It is a response to our demands for more physical space for living and working—it serves our needs. And I think developers are noble for investing their capital in the objectively risky enterprise of constructing buildings—there are many safer, less tangible places to put that money to work, but they choose to use it to create places that will long outlast their investment. With so much attention given to the vanity and extravagance of tech startup culture, shouldn’t we celebrate the humble local developer who actually wants to create things that normal people use?

Yes, they’re looking to make a profit—but who cares? What they leave behind is an immovable asset that provides housing or commercial/industrial space for decades. And, importantly, this asset is very easy to tax. Everyone benefits: the residents of the city get more space to live and work, the developer may get a decent margin, and the city increases its revenue stream, which it can use to improve infrastructure and services.

I reject every progressive argument about gentrification. Given both the preponderance of evidence and basic economic logic, believing that market-rate development fuels gentrification is equivalent to climate change denial. I also reject the aesthetic framing of gentrification ‘truthers’, who have created an us-versus-them dynamic pitting “native” city residents against newcomers. This ugly rhetoric is no different than anti-immigrant sentiment or xenophobia, in addition to being out of touch with reality—new development is often occupied by people who moved from elsewhere in the same city.

One way to counter claims that development drives displacement is to look at the counterfactual: what happens in low-income areas with no development whatsoever? East St. Louis is one of those places—there has not been any market-rate housing development in the city since the 1970s. Yet despite a glut of low cost housing and a direct light rail and highway connection to hundreds of thousands of jobs in St. Louis, the city continues to lose people at an accelerating pace. Nearly one third of the population left between 2010 and 2020. The city’s population has declined nearly 80% from its peak.

Every urban problem that afflicts St. Louis is amplified tenfold in East St. Louis. Black residents are fleeing the city as quickly as possible. Without investment, historic preservation is impossible; the city’s downtown has evaporated, and it’s only a matter of time before structures like the Spivey Building collapse. Basic infrastructure, including the sewer system, has been crumbling for decades. The city is so desperate for investment that it awarded a massive tax abatement to the first market-rate housing development in the city in nearly fifty years.

By abusing the power of the state to limit development and extort developers, urban progressives are killing the golden goose. They stymie or destroy the very development they need to build a tax base large enough to fund their policy priorities, and they grant red states the edge in economic and population growth. It’s plainly stupid behavior that’s antithetical to good, effective governance.

3. Cars will continue to play an important role in urban life.

Car ownership is widespread in all developed countries. No matter where you look in the Americas, Europe, or Asia, wealthy countries typically have a household car ownership rate of at least 75%. This includes countries with dense cities and well-developed rail networks, such as Japan (81%), Germany (85%), and South Korea (83%).

The United States is uniquely car-oriented; we have a very high number of cars per capita, and our largest cities have low transit ridership. The typical American household has multiple cars and drives them a lot. But when looking strictly at the prevalence of cars among the general population, the US is not really an outlier.

This is because people like cars and they are genuinely useful. A recent study of car owners in major American cities found that the value people place on owning a car exceeds the cost of ownership, with on-demand transportation and full control over one’s schedule being the largest components of value. Ultimately, the study found the average owner would need to be paid ~$11,200 to give up their vehicle, or ~20% more than the annual cost of ownership. The value placed on the unique utility of cars relative to other forms of transportation is prevalent in other developed countries as well.

There is no putting the genie back in the bottle—cars are here to stay. Like fridges and air conditioning, they are a fundamental component of the first-world household. My thinking on cities has accepted this as a baseline condition. Any realistic proposals for the American city of the future must accept that over 80% of households will own at least one car.

What we don’t have to accept is the outsized role that cars play in this country, which is genuinely anomalous. A car should not be necessary for every trip, and not every place needs to be built to accommodate them. Not every road should prioritize speed and throughput. We should not have a driving culture of routine lawbreaking and minimal accountability. We need to rein in the car, not abolish it.

Support from the driving public is essential if we want to implement good urbanist policy. One of urbanism’s most powerful arguments is that redesigning roads and neighborhoods will actually make driving a better experience by moving trips to other modes, simplifying complex infrastructure, and improving pavement quality. Conversely, nobody’s going to support the ideas of a bunch of online weirdos who want to ban cars.

4. Cities should budget prudently and focus resources on the fundamentals.

St. Louis MetroLink expansion is back in the news as the decade-and-a-half effort to build a north-south light rail line (recently christened the “Green Line”) moves closer to formally seeking federal funding. The city and Bi-State Development want to spend over $1 billion on a 5.6-mile route along Jefferson Avenue bridging the city’s depopulated north and dense south sides.

The purpose statement for the Green Line is steeped in concerns about equity:

St. Louis Metrolink Green Line (formerly Northside-Southside) will connect residents to growing job centers in Downtown West and Midtown, educational opportunities, and healthcare services making St. Louis a more equitable and thriving city for all people.

Project Goals

  • Provide more choices and access to growing and established job centers for those with limited transportation options
  • Invest in historically underserved or marginalized neighborhoods

The best way to determine whether the Green Line will achieve the goal of “connecting residents” is to estimate how many people will actually use it—and it’s not looking good. With a projected daily ridership of just 5,000, the Green Line will be on par with an existing local bus route, the #70 Grand, which carried ~7,500 riders a day in 2016. Given light rail has a theoretical capacity of 60,000 riders/day, the Green Line will be severely underutilized. Indeed, among transit projects vying for the next round of federal grants, it has one of the highest capital costs per daily passenger.

Low ridership projections also indicate the Green Line will fail at its second goal, to “invest in historically underserved or marginalized neighborhoods.” Of course, there’s no denying a new light rail line requires a massive investment, but if the transportation service provided by the new line isn’t actually useful, how relevant is it to the fortunes of surrounding neighborhoods? Why should we expect developers to see value in building along a rail line they don’t expect their clientele to use? Without the ridership to back up the investment, this project is essentially a billion-dollar gamble that a shiny new light rail line can override the crime, disorder, and decay that has devalued North St. Louis for decades. At least the Brickline Greenway provides new park space and recreational opportunities, in addition to being an order of magnitude cheaper.

The Green Line is representative of the tendency of progressive-run cities to prioritize speculative “transformational” projects over mastery of basic municipal services. This is far from the only example in St. Louis—one proposed use for the Rams settlement money was free daycare for city residents (despite the full cost of such a program far exceeding the settlement amount). Over the past couple of years, the city has set aside millions to buy residents’ medical debt, pay drivers to obtain legal license plates, and pay lawyers to defend tenants facing eviction.

None of these things are related to core functions of municipal government, like transportation, water, and sewer infrastructure, police & fire services, or public schools. You’d think a city should master those functions before expanding its operations to ancillary welfare issues. This is certainly not the case in St. Louis, where roads and sewers are crumbling and 911 calls go unanswered. It’s like if Congress chose to fund a public art program while Navy ships were sinking from deferred maintenance.

Like the Green Line, it’s also not clear these initiatives will make a meaningful difference to many city residents. Canceling medical debt has a negligible impact on debtor wellbeing because it’s typically not their most pressing financial issue and they were unlikely to ever pay it (hence its low value). Paying scofflaws to get legal license plates—which they were obligated to do in the first place by purchasing a car—subsidizes a class of drivers who can’t handle the responsibility of owning a vehicle. Paying eviction defendants’ legal representation is an extremely roundabout way of reducing displacement that doesn’t address the core issue: a lack of money to pay for housing. It’s all window dressing—tepid attempts at welfare that are ineffectual compared to what higher levels of government can do with the same amount of money.

The language of equity is used to justify spending that fails cost–benefit analysis. We must build the Green Line because North City deserves nice new infrastructure after so much disinvestment, even if the people who live there won’t use it. The upcoming extension of the Red Line in Chicago has the same genesis—not many people will ride the $3B route through the far southern reaches of the city, but the South Side deserves the ‘L’ because it’s been neglected for too long. Never mind the many other potential ‘L’ expansions that would benefit a far larger number of people, many of whom are also disadvantaged—we must focus our infrastructure dollars on the most disadvantaged, because who among us is more deserving?

Cities should stop trying to means-test everything they do, and they should end the scope creep of tepid welfare programs they’ll never be able to fund sufficiently. Focusing on the fundamentals that are truly the purview of local government—infrastructure and protective services—is the best way to ensure the long-term health of a city and its residents.

Doling out subsidies is a strategy to convince people to stay in the city; investing in safety and infrastructure is a strategy to convince people to come to the city. I don’t think the former is very effective—the typical person’s reasons for being in a city are employment and family, not the marginal benefits of a local free daycare program. If the fundamentals of the city are not strong—i.e., it cannot ensure the safety of its residents and provide reliable infrastructure and services—people will move away regardless of local programs and subsidies. A new light rail line is not worth living next to a drug den.

What we have witnessed in American cities since the pandemic is a deficit of municipal capacity and talent. Our cities are struggling to meet the demands of the moment. They cannot stop broad-daylight murders at homeless encampments or protect traffic lights from copper theft. They cannot build safe streets or run enough buses. They do not have coherent theories of governance and growth. Mayors are using capital spending as a crutch to compensate for an inability to enforce laws and provide reliable services.

Watching cities like St. Louis trip over themselves, operating by the seat of their pants, makes it difficult to be optimistic about the future. It’s clear that what the city is doing is not working. More are choosing to move away than move in.

I really enjoy living here, so it’s hard for me to imagine what could drive me to leave. The city’s issues are highly visible, but they don’t impact my day-to-day experience—yet. This recent post in /r/homeowners helped put me in the shoes of someone who’s experiencing the worst of urban living:

It only takes a handful of negative experiences to plant the seed of departure in someone’s mind. Your car gets broken into; there’s a shooting on your block; your house floods. Suddenly the city’s malaise is a vivid, real threat, and you wonder if your home is worth the trouble. For most, the switching cost is not insurmountable—just drive a few miles and find somewhere else to live.

It’s the job of our cities to manage negative externalities, from litter to violent crime. If they lack the capacity to do that, then their residents suffer and their very existence is threatened. Fundamentally, my theory of urban governance is that cities must be aggressively proactive in responding to practical quality of life issues and creating the conditions for growth—even when that means making uncomfortable choices about the behavior of certain residents and prioritizing the wellbeing of the entire city over select subgroups. Perhaps that means I’m not a capital-P Progressive. But I very much do believe in progress: progress toward American cities that are safer, cleaner, and more prosperous than they are today.