How Much Of Urbanism Is Poverty?
Or do we mistake an old economic era for a land-use approach?
So I’ve floated this idea before, here and there, but it’s something I keep thinking about: is what we call “urbanism” largely an element of poverty? Or, a little more specifically, a lower level of economic development?
I always remember a talk from a lefty environmentalist at a panel in D.C., many years ago. He was dealing with the argument that we should just deregulate and let the market figure things out. It’s not that that’s illegitimate or impossible, quite, he said. It’s more that we’re a bigger, fully, more advanced country than we were in our earlier laissez-faire days. A sufficiently advanced economy and affluent population simply demand a greater amount of order and predictability. “Regulation” and “red tape” simply follow from that reality.
Obviously, that’s a blanket statement, and it very much depends on what regulations we’re talking about. But I’ve never really heard that point articulated anywhere else, and it strikes me as very likely at least partially correct—which is to say, explanatory. Explanatory as to why “urbanism” and the messy street life and commerce that went with it feel so out of reach today, in a real but indescribable and subtle way.
A long time ago, not at all thoroughly, I played with this idea in a magazine piece titled “When America Was a Developing Country.” If this whole line of inquiry interests you, check it out.
I think this is a related point to something Aaron Renn wrote recently, who’s definitely to my right. Basically, he argued, in an essay titled “The Lifestyle Ratchet Is Hard to Avoid,” that it’s difficult to choose to consume at a lower level—stick with a beater car, bunk up your kids in a single bedroom, etc.—because average standards of living and expectations and the cultural ideas that follow from them are real, and exert real pressure to conform. Choosing to go without is very different from simply happening to live in a society where the thing you might go without doesn’t exist yet or isn’t widely affordable. Or, as I’ve also written a few times here, more choices in some ways foreclose the ability to make choices.
I was thinking anew about all of this reading the reactions to my recent piece on street vending, “Live and Let Fry,” in Discourse Magazine (I expanded on it here at my newsletter).
One of the interesting exchanges I had is missing, because it looks like the other fellow deleted or hid his tweets, but here’s a comment I got, and then I’ll give you gist of the other guy’s argument.
First:
How do people in developing countries manage to live, save money and start businesses when their income is a few hundred (or even a few dozen) dollars a month? How did currently rich countries get rich?
By slowing building things up, without bells and whistles, and regulation on housing and commerce being either minimal or non-enforced.
I am currently seeing this firsthand in Hanoi, a city with more food stalls and home-based restaurants than cars (people use motorbikes instead).
And then: the exchange I had about all this basically came down to, if you want to avoid a free-for-all over who gets to vend where, or a possible health disaster, or retain the ability to tax commerce, or prevent street commerce from cannibalizing brick-and-mortar commerce, you can’t “just let people sell stuff.” In other words, the risks of simply letting a person set up shop on the street are just too great. But this contradicts that rough-and-tumble process the first commenter describes by which a rich country concerned about such risks actually got to that point in the first place.
And that’s the question I’m thinking about here. Can a rich country choose to go back to that old way, or tweak it to make it more amenable to modern concerns, or is just close to psychologically or economically impossible? Is it like trying to collectively bunk up your kids as an upper-middle-class person—possible but socially costly in a real way? Is it like trying to knit your own clothing, grow your own food—do things that, once no longer demanded, are almost no longer possible?
I don’t like the idea that urbanism is one of these things. But when I see these old photos of American cities, even small ones, bustling with people, coming, going, buying, selling, breathing in polluted air in their suits and ties, I just wonder what whatever that is would like in America today at the actual scale of society. Not a minority of people enjoying urban life in their 20s, or the odd family that chooses proximity over space. But a return to an actual properly urban and rural country.
And if that is impossible, then how much does history really have to tell us about urbanism?
As always, leave a comment and help me think through this!
Related Reading:
300 People and History in Clifton, VA
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I think there's some truth to the idea you can't go back - but also I don't think the only way for the country to develop is with this zoning. I think you've written - food trucks are an example of small businesses trying to find spaces within the regulations that allow them to operate with lower revenues. In Japan, they have food stalls and small vendors and other small retail/services - yes, the per capita material wealth in Japan is less than in the US, but it's pretty rare that any American travels there to visit or work/live and feels like it's a poorer society.
I think that we can create a wealthy society that can allow small businesses to open without relying on large revenues. We don't have that now, but it does exist around the world. I also think that urbanism isn't necessarily small apartments - it may mean smaller yards, it may mean apartments, but if you lift height restrictions then the apartments can be 2.5k SF, why not?
There's a lot of truth to this. As we became a wealthy country, with a large middle class, we developed class-based attitudes and regulations. People had nicer things, and wanted everything else to be nicer. And they advocated for this through regulation. Look at some of the writings of early 20th century developers, like JC Nichols, who hated the "chaos" of old urbanism, and wanted to clean it all up for the new middle and upper classes. Much of the discourse around zoning was really class-based, wanting to use regulation to keep out the "bad" stuff and improve everything. I think that's an inevitable part of what happens when a people and a society get wealthier.