Thanks for this piece Addison. Strongly agree with your take that we need to be making cities accessible for everyone, meaning they need to feel broadly safe.
One contention: As another commenter noted, you might be making a classic mistake of the modern punditry, extrapolating a conversation with one radical Twitter bum onto the entire progressive movement. Many of the self-styled progressives online aren’t really “progressive,” just reactionary anarchists. Rather than saying you are not a progressive (though that may still be true), I think it’s more accurate to say the people who call themselves progressive need to make sure their chosen policies actually align with their values.
If the defining quality of progressives is that they care about reducing harm, then a lot of the policy choices you describe in your article are contradictory to progressive priorities. Supporting fare evasion that might lead to transit service cuts that harm transit users, who are disproportionately lower income, isn’t really progressive, it’s just shortsighted. Sure, maybe you’re reducing the acute harm of law enforcement, but you are slowly bleeding public resources dry.
I am an urban progressive who believes we need to make cities beautiful with smart policy that actually solves problems. Instead of criminalizing drug use, I believe we should designate safe use locations, provide services to people who want to get clean, and reduce zoning and other regulatory barriers to make the cost of living lower, which is the actual primary cause of homelessness. Instead of investing ever more resources into car convenience, I believe we should focus on multi-modal mobility: Get rid of downtown parking spaces and widen sidewalks, price congestion and invest the earnings in public transit.
Modern conservatives respond to problems like homelessness and traffic with cruelty, creating even more problems in the long run. Faux-progressives on Twitter like to pretend problems don’t exist. True progressivism, as I see it, is defined by a compassionate approach to solving problems. And I agree with you, sometimes compassionate solutions still involve law enforcement enforcing the law.
Your last paragraph is the most important. But as I noted in my Twitter thread there are real people, not just online nobodies, who say this stuff. I've also talked with genuine progressives who articulate what you do here. Thank you for the comment.
The takes I've seen on fare evasion on twitter are truly bizarre. It strikes me as people wanting to defend anti-social behavior just to be edgy. In the case of fare evasion in NYC, your fare is capped once you've hit 33 dollars on the week in transit costs so the only reason to dodge it is out of selfishness, not from any economic concern.
When I visited NYC this year I enjoyed the city and the transit experience much more than I do in my home of Atlanta and I'd credit much of that experience to how much less anti-social behaviors I saw in NYC. There were less panhandlers, fare evasion or people loudly playing music on the subway. I credit that to the number of people that use transit in NYC compared to other cities. We should want less of these behaviors so that more people feel comfortable using transit if that's the transportation mode that we'd prefer people to use in our cities.
33 dollars a week is a significant amount of money to a lot of people. I'm not saying everyone jumping a turnstile is doing so out of economic necessity, but there are definitely some people for whom spending even a few dollars a day on transit is an economic strain. In general, I just don't see fare evasion as being that big of a problem. I think there is a danger that if enough people start doing it, it could be normalized to the point where the average transit rider starts feeling like a sucker for paying, but I just don't see any evidence that we're near that point (at least here in Chicago).
I’m usually jumping to the defense of San Francisco, but what you describe in your last sentence is exactly the situation here. Fare evasion has become incredibly normalized here amongst young people with reasonable middle class incomes. It’s a problem.
looking into it more it does seem like you can get an annual pass for 130 dollars. I lump fare evasion into minor annoyances that make people like riding transit less.
* The rhetoric of a few individuals does not encompass the full set of political beliefs by “progressives” (or, more commonly in the discourse, “leftists”) and while I’m sure you logically agree with this statement, the right-wing project at the moment is to make you forget *THEIR* manners (e.g. that they are happy to associate with and even support those who preach that transgender people shouldn’t exist, or that racial minorities should be kept away from the business of white people from pre-k to retirement/end-of-life care)... but to heighten the suspicion and poor feelings you have about differences among liberals, progressives and leftists. And this works. Logically you feel like you’re divided from people with whom you agree with 95% of political beliefs. There is definitely an uncanny valley of politics - your strongest enemies can be the people whose ideas are just a slight bit off from your own, due to how primaries and power work - but mostly we’re getting gamed. And our own brains work against us - we know the majority of people do not believe in tolerated vandalism or NIMBY policies, but we spend most of the time in our heads being concerned about the few people who do tout those things (generally baselessly, from my experience)
* There are too many categories of disorder in this essay to discuss holistic solutions for all of them. Yes, putting more teachers in schools probably reduces graffiti AND murder, as a counter-example. But society mostly knows what those solutions are & implements them. (Except when, due to budgetary conniving and racism, it doesn’t. And Democrats have the most blame here because Republicans aren’t elected to represent poor wards very often!) The online whining about “disorder” is meant to muddle all of this. It’s not sincerely about addressing the disorder. I know the difference between someone who wants to complain and someone who wants to help. The complaining is mostly about the tribal identity of upper middle class whites, including those on the outside-looking-in who aspire to belonging, or those who don’t identify with whites but definitely believe in fascist capitalism. This makes them all feel a lot closer together. But their proposed solutions - when they have any solutions at all - are unspeakably violent and destructive. Sentiments of extreme vengeance are free to express online... and quite the bonding strategy for people who are fearful, doubtful and angry. This manifests into actual real-life violence, such as occasional mass shootings, or now-more-frequent bullets fired in road rage incidents. But mostly it serves as great advertising for autocrats and demagogues. It is depressing to see how many people now explicitly reject the US Constitution because of this demented discourse. I consider it my duty to at least avoid doing anything I can to contribute to it. A thought may pop into my head, “Something is bad out there!” - but then I have to apply the Craig Ferguson test to it: Does it need to be said? By me? Right now? These ideas usually fail the first part of the test. If saying it contributes to harm and not progress, it shouldn’t be said by anyone at anytime. That may be emotionally frustrating if it prevents you from calling attention to a problem... except there are usually better paths to solving a problem. The unique burden of being a 21st century American is that we have to consider that the framing of many of our social problems is explicitly classist, racist, misogynistic, transphobic, violent and dehumanizing all in favor of the interests of real-estate scions and libertarian Silicon Valley types. Before we speak about problems, we need to make sure we’re not doing it in the voice of depraved oppressors.
I can understand not wanting to talk about problems that might provide fuel to people who are racist, or anti-trans, or contemptuous of the poor. On the other hand, though, note that this has some possible pitfalls:
* People with soft preferences against bigotry/contempt might think they have no choice but to make common cause with bigots, if those are the only people willing to acknowledge problems that they care about.
* More caring solutions to the problem might (artificially) seem impossible to find, because caring people are not talking about the problem.
* People not directly affected by the problem might assume it isn’t a real problem, since no-one they respect is willing to talk about it.
As a result, I think it is a good idea to talk about problems of this type, where possible, and offer ways of looking at them that avoid prejudice towards others.
We have to discuss problems for sure. It's our duty to address things and not let them fester.
But we can't always discuss/handle things only on the terms of the people who complain the most about the problems. For example, we can't talk about homelessness solely in the rhetoric of BID groups whose main interest is to "take out the trash".
I'm not sure how much "no one is acknowledging the problem except these people" is a real thing. It is a quite reasonably perceived thing! In the eyes of most people, they can't find anyone talking about these problems! But that hardly is evidence that they don't *exist*. As an example: Where is the news when they're talking about addressing many of these problems at, say, a DSA meeting? And I'm not saying that DSA has all the answers, but it's absolutely the case that a Republican assemblymember has a 100% chance of getting their fiery rant against the homeless repeated on the news where a local socialist party response has a decidedly lesser chance of being repeated (in fact, probably zero chance).
Not to mention the whole problem that it's not politicians that always have the best perspective on optimal solutions to economic/moral issues - only seeking quotes from politicians is a cost-cutting move of local media, and a lazy habit of the public. If you think something is an actionable problem, is it such an imposition to ask that you've read one book about it after a month or so?
I think people who try to get civic information who feel like they have these problems - no choice but common-cause with bigots, can't find caring leaders, can't find people talking about the problem at all - is prismatic. The US relies very much on mostly corporatized media, and to a lesser extent philanthropic media that may show preference for the viewpoints of top donors. We're relying on media to make a breadth of acceptable viewpoints available to the public, yet we have no standards or regulation on this at all so they simply do whatever is convenient or agreeable to them. They can choose to ignore the people who exist out there who are meeting the needs you cited. They're all rich and are certainly inclined to ignore people whose views they don't respect.
There are non-bigoted, caring people talking about our real problems everywhere in the US. Could any of them do a better job getting attention or building coalitions? Maybe! But certainly they exist and are making efforts to break through... My belief is, if news outlets took basic steps - like, for example, providing robust coverage to insurgent primary candidates as if they were taken seriously at all - people wouldn't feel like they couldn't find happy options in the realm of politics.
Do not forget, here, that one of the bits of inconvenient information for the Far Right at the moment is that government works, can solve problems, and is worth the investment by the public. If your local news outlets are implicitly or explicitly repeating the idea that government is doomed and can't solve problems like "capturing value from the output of the economy to provide basic needs for all citizens and residents" it's simply a conniving lie. The main question from the public to policymakers should always be, "Why didn't you fix this yesterday when you had the chance?" A good example of this is the current NYC Mayor Eric Adams news cycle, where he's getting quite a bit of attention for saying the city is "doomed" because of migrants who are here already working (under-the-table) and functioning like normal citizens of the city -- who, it turns out, also can't find permanent stable housing because of years of crooks like him refusing to do the simple things that are needed. He's got quite the bully pulpit to say something that is untrue and racist, and while many people have posted concise and winning rebuttals, the news cycle has moved on...
People who advocate to de-prioritize policing only say that when they are not harmed or even slightly inconvenienced. The socialist Seattle city Council person, Kshama Sawant (who wanted to cut 50% of police budget) was complaining about police response time when she said someone was throwing dog poop to her yard.
"For what it’s worth, I read this line to my New Yorker parents, and they found it strange. Everybody found the subway performers amusing and fun to watch, they recalled. They weren’t the same as the “squeegee men,” the guys who cleaned your windshield with dirty water and then might break your mirror if you didn’t pay them, or so the stories go.
So I’d put the subway performers and the unlicensed street vendors in a different bucket than the fare evaders and shoplifters. Entrepreneurship is not lawbreaking. And caring about order and safety does not mean declaring open season on anybody behaving oddly in the subway."
I'm guessing that the New Yorker parents you spoke to don't ride the subway that often, or that there was some miscommunication going on. In case it was the latter, let me explain: subway "performers" can fall into two categories, legal and illegal. The legal kind audition with the MTA, set up in a location on the platform where they are allowed to play, and they are generally entertaining, if you like that sort of thing. If you don't like their music, you can just move down the platform.
The illegal kind are the problem. Locally, they're known as the "It's Showtime!" performers (that's what they shout to get everyone's attention once they invade your subway car). They play loud music from boomboxes, perform "acrobatic" dancing that usually involves swinging on poles and from the grab bars. And yes, they panhandle aggressively after they're done. Plenty of times I've had their feet inches from my face as I try to ignore them, so yes, this is a kind of assault. And since you're trapped in your subway car, there's nowhere for you to escape if you choose not to "attend" their performance.
Do some people like them? Apparently, but they appear mostly to be tourists. Those of us who have to ride the subway every day to get to work, etc., would never miss them should they all vanish. They add nothing to civic life, and they add to the perception that the subways are beyond the control of anyone in charge - a bit like graffiti. In short, they're jerks, and borderline violent.
They are not "entrepreneurs"; they're bullies. They are breaking the law, and they should be lumped with the fare evaders.
Speaking of Jonathan Haidt, his book "The Coddling of the American Mind" goes into great detail about this issue of equating words with physical harm. Equating the two has become very common and is what Haidt asserts is behind much of the illiberal behavior around speech in this country. It started at universities but has now proliferated into much of the left wing media and become very common progressive circles. In many ways this dovetails in a negative feedback loop with the strong "harm/care" proclivity. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it along with his substack (which is a serialized version of his next two books), especially if you are planning on having kids. I wish I knew what I know now from his research when my girls were young.
What a bunch of straw man hooey. You throw the boogeyman "progressive" out there and everybody is supposed to wilt. You think folks in urban areas aren't just as concerned with city problems as your two parent white Christian couple who rant about the evil "transgenders" and join Moms for Liberty to ban books by Toni Morrison? Do you know what NYC looked like in the 1970s?
Republicans have been using the scare whitey playbook with "law and order" since Nixon. Read Stuart Stevens' "It was All a Lie." This is the race card your playing, son. For those of us who are old and have seen this same choreographed dance for decades it's laughable. Otherwise "conservatives" would actually do something about gun violence. Because the top 10 states by murder rate in 2020 were Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois, Maryland and Georgia. Plenty of red in there.
And what's this nonsense? "Families with kids are not a special interest. They’re in many ways the median American. They’re not the last word, but they have to be the starting point. If normal Americans feel like progressives are concealing an ideology behind their advocacy for the city, they’ll recognize it, and they’ll say no." Why? Why are they the "starting point"? Only they are "normal"? You're playing the anti-gay card on top of the race card? What a prince.
A theme that I've been pondering lately has aligned with several of your recent pieces: the idea of housing *pluralism.*
Lots of people who would generally advocate for a diverse and pluralist society end up with a very "nope, not what I want, doesn't benefit me, denied!" approach to housing and transit issues, basically guaranteeing that the complacent majority end up in a frankly parasitic relationship there they extract unearned wealth and comfort at the expense of those who can't buy in. My pet theory is that they naturally internalize how negative-sum many of their owner preferences are, and this prevents any consideration of something that another person finds preferable because they intuit that it must be costing them even more, since that's what their preferences mean for others.
What makes this post an important part of that conversation is the recognition that it's easy to see when *people with different preferences* are doing that, it's hard to catch it when *our* prefs are the antipluralist ones, and that's a shame. Pluralism is *hard* because it requires tough tradeoffs and lots of humility and listening, which are things that aren't often prioritized, even in movements that have core values of inclusion and diversity. I don't know how to fix this at scale, that's probably part of the problem: you don't.
Nothing of value to add beyond this observation, but I've enjoyed your work a lot lately, I just haven't had much time to participate in the comments. Keep it up!
Also interesting anecdote, but Matt Yglesias has been on a fake/expired car plates crusade and you hear the *exact same* arguments against this kind of enforcement for rich people brazenly flauting parking and traffic safety laws in broad daylight, and those do have a pretty substantial social cost, so I have a hard time taking the arguments seriously that ignoring other social disruption is correct elsewhere, either.
The way out is to argue that the things suburbanites/middle-class folks care about are just quality of life issues/nuisances, while the small crimes motorists commit do or can really hurt people. As I say in the piece, I think this defines "harm" in a way that arrives at a desired political conclusion. I, however, agree with you, in that I absolutely include motorist misbehavior in the low-level crime category.
Yeah, I think part of the reason why I find "pluralism" a helpful frame for a lot of this stuff is because it acknowledges that much of what we're discussing/arguing are ultimately questions of values, which should change the way we discuss it but it's so easy to fall back to some (honestly pretty trite) utilitarian jargon. And I'm plenty guilty of this myself in some areas, I'm sure, but I *do* think in general the better parts of the urbanist community have a much more humble take on this than what I hear from day to day interactions (selection bias my old friend, etc etc)
My immediate knee-jerk reaction to this post is "My urban neighborhood is already pretty desirable, as evidenced by rising housing prices and low vacancy rates. Why should we worry about convincing a bunch of suburbanites who don't like cities that it's a nice place to live?"
Now, I agree with you that cities can be clean, safe places to live, and a lot of US cities (including the one I live in) could do better in a lot of areas. I just don't think that starting from "what would make this city feel more comfortable to people who are predisposed to dislike cities" is a particularly useful approach. For example, homeless people using public transit as shelter of last resort is a significant problem, but the solution should focus on sheltering the homeless. Otherwise, you end up with "solutions" that just push the problem somewhere else.
Regarding the issue of public restrooms in particular, this is a real problem, but are there major cities where most private businesses are happy to allow anyone to use their restrooms? I haven't personally experienced this, but maybe I just haven't been to the right cities. From what I can see, the issue mainly boils down to (1) if you are operating in a dense, walkable area there are a lot more people who would potentially want to use your restroom, so businesses have more incentive to crack down on non-customers using their restrooms and (2) businesses are afraid of homeless people coming in to use their restrooms and scaring away paying customers. Neither of these is solved by cracking down on petty crimes. It seems to me the solution would be some combination of building new public restrooms and paying businesses to open their restrooms to the public.
Well, first of all, as a political matter having people who don't happen to live in cities actively not like them isn't good for cities. And I say nothing about what kind of enforcement I'm thinking about here; I'm really not talking about enforcement at all, per se, but rather the tendency to deny the problem at all. I've also written about homelessness and housing, for example, and I agree most of the problem could be resolved without recourse to criminal justice. And I support that. (Too many urban NIMBYs don't, but that's another whole thing.)
The bathroom thing, though, is real. D.C. is far from the roughest city in America and you have trouble finding an open restroom. Even in some of the suburbs and small towns I've been too, they have a code or whatever, where it would have previously just been open.
I don't know how long you've followed me, but I'm absolutely not predisposed not to like cities. I do know a lot of conservatives, though, who can't get past the appearance or perception that progressives are basically saying "a little crime is cool and gives the city some grit." And I've heard enough of that to know it isn't entirely a straw man. And furthermore, I know there are urbanists who are more concerned about this stuff than they let on, and so I can be confident I'm speaking for some people in writing this, even for some progressives.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you think homelessness is best solved by pushing the problem somewhere else, just that it's an attitude I see among certain classes of well-off people (many of who self-describe as "liberal"). I wouldn't say that "a little crime is cool", but I would say that not all "crimes" are bad, especially at time when some US states are trying to criminalize, for example, the way people dress. People deliberately and publicly breaking unjust laws is one of the ways we advance as a society. Now, I don't think that people jumping the turnstile are generally trying to make a political statement, but I do think that we need to be very careful when demanding the authorities "crack down" on some undesirable behavior, since it can easily lead to an overreaction that does more harm than good.
I’m not sure how valuable my perspective is here. I’ve never really thought of myself as conservative or progressive, more like a very pragmatic libertarian, so my views tend not to be widely shared. I personally think that harm reduction should be the primary task of law enforcement and I generally believe in the doctrine of “no victim, no crime.” But that’s not to say that I think the other values listed by Haidt are utterly unimportant. I just worry about government’s ability to enforce them. Whereas something like harm seems pretty clear-cut to me, concepts like fairness, respect, purity and sanctity are a bit harder (more subjective) to define, giving governments more leeway for potential abuse. I’m not saying I’m against any sort of small fine or penalty for nuisance behavior, I just see it as, at best, a tiny bandaid on the gaping wound of America’s bad urbanism and unaffordable cities.
Thanks for this piece Addison. Strongly agree with your take that we need to be making cities accessible for everyone, meaning they need to feel broadly safe.
One contention: As another commenter noted, you might be making a classic mistake of the modern punditry, extrapolating a conversation with one radical Twitter bum onto the entire progressive movement. Many of the self-styled progressives online aren’t really “progressive,” just reactionary anarchists. Rather than saying you are not a progressive (though that may still be true), I think it’s more accurate to say the people who call themselves progressive need to make sure their chosen policies actually align with their values.
If the defining quality of progressives is that they care about reducing harm, then a lot of the policy choices you describe in your article are contradictory to progressive priorities. Supporting fare evasion that might lead to transit service cuts that harm transit users, who are disproportionately lower income, isn’t really progressive, it’s just shortsighted. Sure, maybe you’re reducing the acute harm of law enforcement, but you are slowly bleeding public resources dry.
I am an urban progressive who believes we need to make cities beautiful with smart policy that actually solves problems. Instead of criminalizing drug use, I believe we should designate safe use locations, provide services to people who want to get clean, and reduce zoning and other regulatory barriers to make the cost of living lower, which is the actual primary cause of homelessness. Instead of investing ever more resources into car convenience, I believe we should focus on multi-modal mobility: Get rid of downtown parking spaces and widen sidewalks, price congestion and invest the earnings in public transit.
Modern conservatives respond to problems like homelessness and traffic with cruelty, creating even more problems in the long run. Faux-progressives on Twitter like to pretend problems don’t exist. True progressivism, as I see it, is defined by a compassionate approach to solving problems. And I agree with you, sometimes compassionate solutions still involve law enforcement enforcing the law.
Your last paragraph is the most important. But as I noted in my Twitter thread there are real people, not just online nobodies, who say this stuff. I've also talked with genuine progressives who articulate what you do here. Thank you for the comment.
The takes I've seen on fare evasion on twitter are truly bizarre. It strikes me as people wanting to defend anti-social behavior just to be edgy. In the case of fare evasion in NYC, your fare is capped once you've hit 33 dollars on the week in transit costs so the only reason to dodge it is out of selfishness, not from any economic concern.
When I visited NYC this year I enjoyed the city and the transit experience much more than I do in my home of Atlanta and I'd credit much of that experience to how much less anti-social behaviors I saw in NYC. There were less panhandlers, fare evasion or people loudly playing music on the subway. I credit that to the number of people that use transit in NYC compared to other cities. We should want less of these behaviors so that more people feel comfortable using transit if that's the transportation mode that we'd prefer people to use in our cities.
33 dollars a week is a significant amount of money to a lot of people. I'm not saying everyone jumping a turnstile is doing so out of economic necessity, but there are definitely some people for whom spending even a few dollars a day on transit is an economic strain. In general, I just don't see fare evasion as being that big of a problem. I think there is a danger that if enough people start doing it, it could be normalized to the point where the average transit rider starts feeling like a sucker for paying, but I just don't see any evidence that we're near that point (at least here in Chicago).
I’m usually jumping to the defense of San Francisco, but what you describe in your last sentence is exactly the situation here. Fare evasion has become incredibly normalized here amongst young people with reasonable middle class incomes. It’s a problem.
looking into it more it does seem like you can get an annual pass for 130 dollars. I lump fare evasion into minor annoyances that make people like riding transit less.
Here' where I found the info
https://www.commuterbenefitsnyc.com/annual-transit-card.aspx
I want to focus on two things:
* The rhetoric of a few individuals does not encompass the full set of political beliefs by “progressives” (or, more commonly in the discourse, “leftists”) and while I’m sure you logically agree with this statement, the right-wing project at the moment is to make you forget *THEIR* manners (e.g. that they are happy to associate with and even support those who preach that transgender people shouldn’t exist, or that racial minorities should be kept away from the business of white people from pre-k to retirement/end-of-life care)... but to heighten the suspicion and poor feelings you have about differences among liberals, progressives and leftists. And this works. Logically you feel like you’re divided from people with whom you agree with 95% of political beliefs. There is definitely an uncanny valley of politics - your strongest enemies can be the people whose ideas are just a slight bit off from your own, due to how primaries and power work - but mostly we’re getting gamed. And our own brains work against us - we know the majority of people do not believe in tolerated vandalism or NIMBY policies, but we spend most of the time in our heads being concerned about the few people who do tout those things (generally baselessly, from my experience)
* There are too many categories of disorder in this essay to discuss holistic solutions for all of them. Yes, putting more teachers in schools probably reduces graffiti AND murder, as a counter-example. But society mostly knows what those solutions are & implements them. (Except when, due to budgetary conniving and racism, it doesn’t. And Democrats have the most blame here because Republicans aren’t elected to represent poor wards very often!) The online whining about “disorder” is meant to muddle all of this. It’s not sincerely about addressing the disorder. I know the difference between someone who wants to complain and someone who wants to help. The complaining is mostly about the tribal identity of upper middle class whites, including those on the outside-looking-in who aspire to belonging, or those who don’t identify with whites but definitely believe in fascist capitalism. This makes them all feel a lot closer together. But their proposed solutions - when they have any solutions at all - are unspeakably violent and destructive. Sentiments of extreme vengeance are free to express online... and quite the bonding strategy for people who are fearful, doubtful and angry. This manifests into actual real-life violence, such as occasional mass shootings, or now-more-frequent bullets fired in road rage incidents. But mostly it serves as great advertising for autocrats and demagogues. It is depressing to see how many people now explicitly reject the US Constitution because of this demented discourse. I consider it my duty to at least avoid doing anything I can to contribute to it. A thought may pop into my head, “Something is bad out there!” - but then I have to apply the Craig Ferguson test to it: Does it need to be said? By me? Right now? These ideas usually fail the first part of the test. If saying it contributes to harm and not progress, it shouldn’t be said by anyone at anytime. That may be emotionally frustrating if it prevents you from calling attention to a problem... except there are usually better paths to solving a problem. The unique burden of being a 21st century American is that we have to consider that the framing of many of our social problems is explicitly classist, racist, misogynistic, transphobic, violent and dehumanizing all in favor of the interests of real-estate scions and libertarian Silicon Valley types. Before we speak about problems, we need to make sure we’re not doing it in the voice of depraved oppressors.
I can understand not wanting to talk about problems that might provide fuel to people who are racist, or anti-trans, or contemptuous of the poor. On the other hand, though, note that this has some possible pitfalls:
* People with soft preferences against bigotry/contempt might think they have no choice but to make common cause with bigots, if those are the only people willing to acknowledge problems that they care about.
* More caring solutions to the problem might (artificially) seem impossible to find, because caring people are not talking about the problem.
* People not directly affected by the problem might assume it isn’t a real problem, since no-one they respect is willing to talk about it.
As a result, I think it is a good idea to talk about problems of this type, where possible, and offer ways of looking at them that avoid prejudice towards others.
We have to discuss problems for sure. It's our duty to address things and not let them fester.
But we can't always discuss/handle things only on the terms of the people who complain the most about the problems. For example, we can't talk about homelessness solely in the rhetoric of BID groups whose main interest is to "take out the trash".
I'm not sure how much "no one is acknowledging the problem except these people" is a real thing. It is a quite reasonably perceived thing! In the eyes of most people, they can't find anyone talking about these problems! But that hardly is evidence that they don't *exist*. As an example: Where is the news when they're talking about addressing many of these problems at, say, a DSA meeting? And I'm not saying that DSA has all the answers, but it's absolutely the case that a Republican assemblymember has a 100% chance of getting their fiery rant against the homeless repeated on the news where a local socialist party response has a decidedly lesser chance of being repeated (in fact, probably zero chance).
Not to mention the whole problem that it's not politicians that always have the best perspective on optimal solutions to economic/moral issues - only seeking quotes from politicians is a cost-cutting move of local media, and a lazy habit of the public. If you think something is an actionable problem, is it such an imposition to ask that you've read one book about it after a month or so?
I think people who try to get civic information who feel like they have these problems - no choice but common-cause with bigots, can't find caring leaders, can't find people talking about the problem at all - is prismatic. The US relies very much on mostly corporatized media, and to a lesser extent philanthropic media that may show preference for the viewpoints of top donors. We're relying on media to make a breadth of acceptable viewpoints available to the public, yet we have no standards or regulation on this at all so they simply do whatever is convenient or agreeable to them. They can choose to ignore the people who exist out there who are meeting the needs you cited. They're all rich and are certainly inclined to ignore people whose views they don't respect.
There are non-bigoted, caring people talking about our real problems everywhere in the US. Could any of them do a better job getting attention or building coalitions? Maybe! But certainly they exist and are making efforts to break through... My belief is, if news outlets took basic steps - like, for example, providing robust coverage to insurgent primary candidates as if they were taken seriously at all - people wouldn't feel like they couldn't find happy options in the realm of politics.
Do not forget, here, that one of the bits of inconvenient information for the Far Right at the moment is that government works, can solve problems, and is worth the investment by the public. If your local news outlets are implicitly or explicitly repeating the idea that government is doomed and can't solve problems like "capturing value from the output of the economy to provide basic needs for all citizens and residents" it's simply a conniving lie. The main question from the public to policymakers should always be, "Why didn't you fix this yesterday when you had the chance?" A good example of this is the current NYC Mayor Eric Adams news cycle, where he's getting quite a bit of attention for saying the city is "doomed" because of migrants who are here already working (under-the-table) and functioning like normal citizens of the city -- who, it turns out, also can't find permanent stable housing because of years of crooks like him refusing to do the simple things that are needed. He's got quite the bully pulpit to say something that is untrue and racist, and while many people have posted concise and winning rebuttals, the news cycle has moved on...
People who advocate to de-prioritize policing only say that when they are not harmed or even slightly inconvenienced. The socialist Seattle city Council person, Kshama Sawant (who wanted to cut 50% of police budget) was complaining about police response time when she said someone was throwing dog poop to her yard.
"For what it’s worth, I read this line to my New Yorker parents, and they found it strange. Everybody found the subway performers amusing and fun to watch, they recalled. They weren’t the same as the “squeegee men,” the guys who cleaned your windshield with dirty water and then might break your mirror if you didn’t pay them, or so the stories go.
So I’d put the subway performers and the unlicensed street vendors in a different bucket than the fare evaders and shoplifters. Entrepreneurship is not lawbreaking. And caring about order and safety does not mean declaring open season on anybody behaving oddly in the subway."
I'm guessing that the New Yorker parents you spoke to don't ride the subway that often, or that there was some miscommunication going on. In case it was the latter, let me explain: subway "performers" can fall into two categories, legal and illegal. The legal kind audition with the MTA, set up in a location on the platform where they are allowed to play, and they are generally entertaining, if you like that sort of thing. If you don't like their music, you can just move down the platform.
The illegal kind are the problem. Locally, they're known as the "It's Showtime!" performers (that's what they shout to get everyone's attention once they invade your subway car). They play loud music from boomboxes, perform "acrobatic" dancing that usually involves swinging on poles and from the grab bars. And yes, they panhandle aggressively after they're done. Plenty of times I've had their feet inches from my face as I try to ignore them, so yes, this is a kind of assault. And since you're trapped in your subway car, there's nowhere for you to escape if you choose not to "attend" their performance.
Do some people like them? Apparently, but they appear mostly to be tourists. Those of us who have to ride the subway every day to get to work, etc., would never miss them should they all vanish. They add nothing to civic life, and they add to the perception that the subways are beyond the control of anyone in charge - a bit like graffiti. In short, they're jerks, and borderline violent.
They are not "entrepreneurs"; they're bullies. They are breaking the law, and they should be lumped with the fare evaders.
Speaking of Jonathan Haidt, his book "The Coddling of the American Mind" goes into great detail about this issue of equating words with physical harm. Equating the two has become very common and is what Haidt asserts is behind much of the illiberal behavior around speech in this country. It started at universities but has now proliferated into much of the left wing media and become very common progressive circles. In many ways this dovetails in a negative feedback loop with the strong "harm/care" proclivity. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it along with his substack (which is a serialized version of his next two books), especially if you are planning on having kids. I wish I knew what I know now from his research when my girls were young.
What a bunch of straw man hooey. You throw the boogeyman "progressive" out there and everybody is supposed to wilt. You think folks in urban areas aren't just as concerned with city problems as your two parent white Christian couple who rant about the evil "transgenders" and join Moms for Liberty to ban books by Toni Morrison? Do you know what NYC looked like in the 1970s?
Republicans have been using the scare whitey playbook with "law and order" since Nixon. Read Stuart Stevens' "It was All a Lie." This is the race card your playing, son. For those of us who are old and have seen this same choreographed dance for decades it's laughable. Otherwise "conservatives" would actually do something about gun violence. Because the top 10 states by murder rate in 2020 were Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois, Maryland and Georgia. Plenty of red in there.
And what's this nonsense? "Families with kids are not a special interest. They’re in many ways the median American. They’re not the last word, but they have to be the starting point. If normal Americans feel like progressives are concealing an ideology behind their advocacy for the city, they’ll recognize it, and they’ll say no." Why? Why are they the "starting point"? Only they are "normal"? You're playing the anti-gay card on top of the race card? What a prince.
A theme that I've been pondering lately has aligned with several of your recent pieces: the idea of housing *pluralism.*
Lots of people who would generally advocate for a diverse and pluralist society end up with a very "nope, not what I want, doesn't benefit me, denied!" approach to housing and transit issues, basically guaranteeing that the complacent majority end up in a frankly parasitic relationship there they extract unearned wealth and comfort at the expense of those who can't buy in. My pet theory is that they naturally internalize how negative-sum many of their owner preferences are, and this prevents any consideration of something that another person finds preferable because they intuit that it must be costing them even more, since that's what their preferences mean for others.
What makes this post an important part of that conversation is the recognition that it's easy to see when *people with different preferences* are doing that, it's hard to catch it when *our* prefs are the antipluralist ones, and that's a shame. Pluralism is *hard* because it requires tough tradeoffs and lots of humility and listening, which are things that aren't often prioritized, even in movements that have core values of inclusion and diversity. I don't know how to fix this at scale, that's probably part of the problem: you don't.
Nothing of value to add beyond this observation, but I've enjoyed your work a lot lately, I just haven't had much time to participate in the comments. Keep it up!
Also interesting anecdote, but Matt Yglesias has been on a fake/expired car plates crusade and you hear the *exact same* arguments against this kind of enforcement for rich people brazenly flauting parking and traffic safety laws in broad daylight, and those do have a pretty substantial social cost, so I have a hard time taking the arguments seriously that ignoring other social disruption is correct elsewhere, either.
The way out is to argue that the things suburbanites/middle-class folks care about are just quality of life issues/nuisances, while the small crimes motorists commit do or can really hurt people. As I say in the piece, I think this defines "harm" in a way that arrives at a desired political conclusion. I, however, agree with you, in that I absolutely include motorist misbehavior in the low-level crime category.
Yeah, I think part of the reason why I find "pluralism" a helpful frame for a lot of this stuff is because it acknowledges that much of what we're discussing/arguing are ultimately questions of values, which should change the way we discuss it but it's so easy to fall back to some (honestly pretty trite) utilitarian jargon. And I'm plenty guilty of this myself in some areas, I'm sure, but I *do* think in general the better parts of the urbanist community have a much more humble take on this than what I hear from day to day interactions (selection bias my old friend, etc etc)
My immediate knee-jerk reaction to this post is "My urban neighborhood is already pretty desirable, as evidenced by rising housing prices and low vacancy rates. Why should we worry about convincing a bunch of suburbanites who don't like cities that it's a nice place to live?"
Now, I agree with you that cities can be clean, safe places to live, and a lot of US cities (including the one I live in) could do better in a lot of areas. I just don't think that starting from "what would make this city feel more comfortable to people who are predisposed to dislike cities" is a particularly useful approach. For example, homeless people using public transit as shelter of last resort is a significant problem, but the solution should focus on sheltering the homeless. Otherwise, you end up with "solutions" that just push the problem somewhere else.
Regarding the issue of public restrooms in particular, this is a real problem, but are there major cities where most private businesses are happy to allow anyone to use their restrooms? I haven't personally experienced this, but maybe I just haven't been to the right cities. From what I can see, the issue mainly boils down to (1) if you are operating in a dense, walkable area there are a lot more people who would potentially want to use your restroom, so businesses have more incentive to crack down on non-customers using their restrooms and (2) businesses are afraid of homeless people coming in to use their restrooms and scaring away paying customers. Neither of these is solved by cracking down on petty crimes. It seems to me the solution would be some combination of building new public restrooms and paying businesses to open their restrooms to the public.
Well, first of all, as a political matter having people who don't happen to live in cities actively not like them isn't good for cities. And I say nothing about what kind of enforcement I'm thinking about here; I'm really not talking about enforcement at all, per se, but rather the tendency to deny the problem at all. I've also written about homelessness and housing, for example, and I agree most of the problem could be resolved without recourse to criminal justice. And I support that. (Too many urban NIMBYs don't, but that's another whole thing.)
The bathroom thing, though, is real. D.C. is far from the roughest city in America and you have trouble finding an open restroom. Even in some of the suburbs and small towns I've been too, they have a code or whatever, where it would have previously just been open.
I don't know how long you've followed me, but I'm absolutely not predisposed not to like cities. I do know a lot of conservatives, though, who can't get past the appearance or perception that progressives are basically saying "a little crime is cool and gives the city some grit." And I've heard enough of that to know it isn't entirely a straw man. And furthermore, I know there are urbanists who are more concerned about this stuff than they let on, and so I can be confident I'm speaking for some people in writing this, even for some progressives.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you think homelessness is best solved by pushing the problem somewhere else, just that it's an attitude I see among certain classes of well-off people (many of who self-describe as "liberal"). I wouldn't say that "a little crime is cool", but I would say that not all "crimes" are bad, especially at time when some US states are trying to criminalize, for example, the way people dress. People deliberately and publicly breaking unjust laws is one of the ways we advance as a society. Now, I don't think that people jumping the turnstile are generally trying to make a political statement, but I do think that we need to be very careful when demanding the authorities "crack down" on some undesirable behavior, since it can easily lead to an overreaction that does more harm than good.
I’m not sure how valuable my perspective is here. I’ve never really thought of myself as conservative or progressive, more like a very pragmatic libertarian, so my views tend not to be widely shared. I personally think that harm reduction should be the primary task of law enforcement and I generally believe in the doctrine of “no victim, no crime.” But that’s not to say that I think the other values listed by Haidt are utterly unimportant. I just worry about government’s ability to enforce them. Whereas something like harm seems pretty clear-cut to me, concepts like fairness, respect, purity and sanctity are a bit harder (more subjective) to define, giving governments more leeway for potential abuse. I’m not saying I’m against any sort of small fine or penalty for nuisance behavior, I just see it as, at best, a tiny bandaid on the gaping wound of America’s bad urbanism and unaffordable cities.