What is “Freedom Urbanism”?
(This is a placeholder post which will be filled in more over time.)
- It’s a bad name. It sounds like what George W. Bush would call French Urbanism, if I liked French Urbanism, which I mainly do not. It makes for a humorous but ultimately counterproductive acronym. Suggestions welcome!
- It emphasizes that more freedom is usually better than less freedom in producing the outcomes in cities that people tend to like. Look at the cities you like to visit or even live in, and think long and hard about the best parts of them. How much was ‘master-planned’? How much was built over time, organically, by people exercising choices that were only lightly restricted by regulations? (There’s a lot of detail under this one – one example: lowering or eliminating minimum parking requirements = good; enacting maximum parking requirements = bad; taxes on parking spaces = maybe). How many of the places you love are illegal to build today? How stupid is your opinion about Mueller?
- It requires that one understand that climate change is an existential threat to human civilization, and thus, urbanism is necessary and we at a bare minimum need to stop subsidizing suburbanism.
- It requires honesty. Primarily about costs and revenues, i.e., point out where regionalism is predatory and/or parasitical (hello, District 6! Hello, Round Rock!). It requires that one acknowledge that tolls are good and ‘free’ways that are expensive to build are bad. It requires an attention to the basic equity involved in transit service (like, for instance, don’t make massive cuts to local buses that are barely subsidized and heavily used by the poor so that you can continue to provide high-subsidy rides to more wealthy folks who don’t even pay you taxes).
- If positioned right, it can appeal to anybody who understands that capitalism is better than communism in delivering good outcomes to the public. IE, it can work with actual Republicans, although some painful education about suburban subsidies may be necessary first.
- It is incompatible with bullshit identity politics. If you commonly use phrases like “white privilege” or like to talk about how gentrification is a race issue rather than a money issue, or want to focus on sexism before solving the existential issue of climate change, get the fuck out and don’t let the screen door on the lovely porch hit you on your way out to the well-functioning sidewalk network. Trigger warning: fuck off.
How does it differ from “Market Urbanism”?
- Not much, in theory. In reality, Market Urbanism is somewhat dominated by a faction that prefers to believe that All Rail Transit Is Bad (or at least all rail transit outside a few cities). Any group which can’t tell the difference between Houston’s first light rail line and Austin’s commuter rail line is a group that is useless in making good policy decisions on transportation. They also have a difficult time correctly assigning cause for the US’s suburbanization spree in some cases (see: Houston, analysis of, and the point about about ‘honesty’)1
Where does it diverge from AURA?
- Hoo boy. Not much, in theory, but more than from Market Urbanism above. In reality, AURA has diverged pretty far from its original promise and has started to support regulations which not only actively work against housing supply but do so by decreasing freedom to urbanize. Expect much more here later.
Why am I writing this?
- AURA’s board decided to help me out by eliminating the time I spent daily contributing knowledge and opinions to #atxurbanists2. I am striving to use this time more for content creation than content consumption, although, hey, no promises.
Where does this go from here?
- Fuck if I know! Let’s find out together!
I added the qualifier ‘rail’ to “All Transit Is Bad” upon request of an MU author. In my years of experience arguing transit and roads, many people who propose bus transit instead of rail transit in corridors where rail would work are doing so not out of a desire to support transit, but rather, out of a desire to kill a more viable competitor to road funding and space. Nevertheless, there are at least a few MU partisans who are honestly pro-transit. ↩
and if you’re tempted to lecture me about what went down, I’m looking at you JD Gins, fuck off. I told them what would happen if they did what they ended up doing, and I did what I promised I would do. If anybody tries to repaint this as me ‘going personal’ without cause, I will gladly publish the set of various conversations on this which I am otherwise keeping private for now ↩