New Urbanism Limits Freedom

New Urbanism is a modern "progressive" movement in American metro areas. This movement seeks to make our society more like the densely populated, socialist democracies of Europe. Europeans don't have the vast amounts of space that we do here in the United States, nor are they as prosperous. As such, mass transit is quite popular there. New urbanists admire this model of society, and seek to impose it on us.

They seek to bring about their new urbanist vision through several government initiatives. The first is creating unelected regional planning authorities. Here in Minnesota, we have the Met Council, headed by Ted Mondale. The next is drawing "smart growth" or "anti-sprawl" boundaries, containing the growth of suburbs. Also involved, is subsidizing housing and requiring developers to build "affordable housing". Also on their list, is revitalizing the inner cities.

Most importantly, new urbanism seeks to discourage the use of automobiles. To this end, new urbanists promote the building of commuter rail lines and the restricting of highway development. In Portland, city officials have gone so far as to ban the building of large garages, as well as any positioned in front of private homes. In many smart growth cities, they have often sought to limit the size of homes and residential lots. They also seek to limit the development of large or "big box" retail stores, in favor of small shop developments with sidewalks.

The new urbanist vision is to create pedestrian-friendly, "sustainable" and "livable" communities, to reduce protect our environment from urban sprawl, and to revitalize inner cities. Unfortunately, they're not seeing 20/20. None of the new urbanists' goals ever become reality through their policies.

Forcing people to live and work within smart growth boundaries causes real estate prices to rise, in both inner city and suburban areas. How can this possibly improve the "livability" of our communities, or for that matter, encourage the revitalization of inner cities? With sky-high real estate prices, inner-cities can now only be revitalized through government subsidies. Likewise, livable communities can only be achieved with publicly subsidized rentals.

Is this what they want - for all of us to rent? Actually, it is. Remember that your definition of livable may not be theirs. For you and your family, livable could mean a nice house, a yard for the kids to play in, a garage for your cars, etc. To the new urbanists however, livable means a subsidized apartment in a downtown high-rise, on the bus-line, perhaps with a community park nearby.

Smart growth seeks to corral people back into the urban core. But in many areas, families seeking affordable (real) homes have chosen to move completely out of the suburbs, past the smart growth boundaries, and out of the region controlled by their unelected central planners. They move to small outlying towns far from the city. The bread winners of these families then travel all the way back into the suburbs to work each day.

New urbanists seek to limit the development of large retail stores, because they are generally only accessible by car. They are set far back from the street, with huge parking lots. They favor development of pedestrian-friendly, European Village-style commercial districts. This is where small store-fronts are connected along sidewalks, with art, antique, and coffee shops, and lots of people bustling. But prices are always higher in small shops than in large discount stores. How does this improve livability?

By building light rail lines, they claim to be relieving congestion and protecting the environment. But by diverting funds from highway projects, they actually cause more congestion. New Urbanists claim that one light rail line can accommodate six lanes worth of highway commuters. This is only true when operating at full capacity, which never happens. In most American cities, commuter rail is wildly unpopular, especially among car owners. On average, American light rail lines carry one-fifth the commuter volume carried by a singe lane of freeway (Wendell Cox, Atlanta Constitution, 6/23/99).

Indeed, discouraging automobile use never works because mass transit is too impractical and inefficient for almost everyone. We Americans prefer the freedom and independence of our cars, as we should, and as we always will.

Portland, the flagship city for smart growth, has only experienced increased congestion since the construction of its light rail line. Only 2% of the Portland area's commuters take the train, despite its international acclaim and heavy promotion. Also, since the enactment of smart growth policies, Portland has seen its affordable housing market virtually disappear. In Atlanta (a city cited by the Sierra Club as the "most at risk" of urban sprawl and with little use of public transit), traffic congestion is far less a problem than in Portland. Atlanta also rates much higher than Portland in regards to affordable housing, despite the absence of smart growth policies (Wendell Cox, Demographia, 2000 Census Bureau Data).

By building rails instead of freeways, and by imposing smart growth boundaries, regional planners actually cause longer commutes, more congestion, more automobile idling, and more gas and oil being burned. How does this protect the environment?

The fact is, new urbanists don't really care about the environment. What they do care about is changing our behavior. They are elitist central planners who disdain our American way of life, our independence and our freedom. They just don't like the competition of an achievement-oriented America. They decry our consumerist lifestyle, our big garages, our big houses, our big yards, and our big SUVs. They don't like the fact that so many of us own homes. They want us to live like our progressive, socialist, European counterparts, who's economies have all failed. They seek to get us out of our cars and onto the train, so we can all ride to work at the broom factory in the "centre" of town.

Despite the claims of the anti-sprawl activists, we have lots of space. Have you ever flown in an airplane? Whenever I look down at our twin cities from the skies above, I see a metro area dwarfed by countryside. There's a reason for this: Less than 5% of the United States is developed, with 75% of our population occupying approximately 3.5% of the land (Dr. Samuel R. Staley, Reason Public Policy Institute).