Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2020 16:13:42 GMT
The Democrats, says President Trump, are going to destroy the suburbs.
This is a new theme for Trump — he has tweeted it only a handful of times — and likely inspired by recent polling evidence of a suburban defection from his voter base. So what, exactly, does destroying the suburbs entail?
One feature is the Trump campaign's claim that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden supports "defunding the police," such that when vulnerable elderly women call 911 for rescue from a violent intruder, they won't be helped. In reality, Biden has explicitly rejected defunding cops, and Trump's lies on this subject don't seem to be working.
The more prominent feature of the narrative, then, is about zoning. "Destroying the suburbs" apparently primarily consists of allowing neighborhoods of single-family homes to include duplexes, granny flats, and small "downtown" areas of shops.
Taken at face value, this is a bizarre policy choice for the Republican Party, both in its pre-2016 social conservatism and free-marketism and in its post-2016 Trumpian populism. Upzoning — allowing construction of buildings with more units or more nonresidential units than was previously permitted in a given area — seems like it should fit the GOP agenda.
It's a move toward greater economic freedom and stronger property rights. It can lower housing prices and make homeownership more accessible, especially for young couples who struggle to afford both home and kids. (A brief dig through the archives of the conservative Heritage Foundation turns up years of praise for Houston's unusual lack of zoning restrictions on exactly these grounds, and The American Conservative regularly publishes arguments for upzoning, including advocacy for doing away with single-family zoning altogether.) Also, having a granny flat means you might actually live with your granny, who can pass along familial traditions and help with childcare, a very attractive option amid pandemic. Surely this is the kind of pro-family, even pro-natalist policy Republicans ought to like. Why is Trump railing against it?
There's an explanation for Trump's suburb rants, and it isn't really about zoning. After all, if single-family zoning were abolished everywhere immediately, most suburban neighborhoods wouldn't change at all. The built environment wouldn't magically transform from houses to high rises. Areas already developed wouldn't shift toward drastically higher density; at most, they might get a few garage apartments and duplex conversions.
And in those smaller, cheaper units, they might not only get current residents' grandmas. They might get new residents altogether — residents, perhaps, who don't look like their neighbors. Trump's defenders have vehemently objected to any insinuation that racism undergirds their affection for city governments telling people how to use their own land. But the history of single-family zoning is not only a story of subsidies; it's also a story of state segregation.
"To prevent lower-income African Americans from living in neighborhoods where middle-class whites resided, local and federal officials began in the 1910s to promote zoning ordinances to reserve middle-class neighborhoods for single-family homes that lower-income families of all races could not afford," Rothstein writes. Some of this was classism, he notes, but some of it was done with "open racial intent." In one example Rothstein cites from St. Louis, a city planner hired in 1916 described zoning to keep "colored people" from moving into "finer residential districts." The zoning ordinance adopted there was race-neutral, but planning commission meetings brazenly debated zoning decisions when white neighborhoods risked being, in their words, "invaded by negroes."
The Obama administration's AFFH rule focused on the residue of that deliberate segregation, and Trump's critique of it hasn't untangled the issue of federal manipulation of local policies from the issue of racist zoning. That makes it plausible to see his talk of single-family zoning as the bastion of suburban integrity as implicitly part of an older tradition of state-enforced racism. It's not unreasonable to wonder if being "invaded by negroes" is what Trump means when he deplores watching a "beautiful suburb ... go to hell."
theweek.com/articles/927137/destroying-suburbs-should-republican-idea
This is a new theme for Trump — he has tweeted it only a handful of times — and likely inspired by recent polling evidence of a suburban defection from his voter base. So what, exactly, does destroying the suburbs entail?
One feature is the Trump campaign's claim that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden supports "defunding the police," such that when vulnerable elderly women call 911 for rescue from a violent intruder, they won't be helped. In reality, Biden has explicitly rejected defunding cops, and Trump's lies on this subject don't seem to be working.
The more prominent feature of the narrative, then, is about zoning. "Destroying the suburbs" apparently primarily consists of allowing neighborhoods of single-family homes to include duplexes, granny flats, and small "downtown" areas of shops.
Taken at face value, this is a bizarre policy choice for the Republican Party, both in its pre-2016 social conservatism and free-marketism and in its post-2016 Trumpian populism. Upzoning — allowing construction of buildings with more units or more nonresidential units than was previously permitted in a given area — seems like it should fit the GOP agenda.
It's a move toward greater economic freedom and stronger property rights. It can lower housing prices and make homeownership more accessible, especially for young couples who struggle to afford both home and kids. (A brief dig through the archives of the conservative Heritage Foundation turns up years of praise for Houston's unusual lack of zoning restrictions on exactly these grounds, and The American Conservative regularly publishes arguments for upzoning, including advocacy for doing away with single-family zoning altogether.) Also, having a granny flat means you might actually live with your granny, who can pass along familial traditions and help with childcare, a very attractive option amid pandemic. Surely this is the kind of pro-family, even pro-natalist policy Republicans ought to like. Why is Trump railing against it?
There's an explanation for Trump's suburb rants, and it isn't really about zoning. After all, if single-family zoning were abolished everywhere immediately, most suburban neighborhoods wouldn't change at all. The built environment wouldn't magically transform from houses to high rises. Areas already developed wouldn't shift toward drastically higher density; at most, they might get a few garage apartments and duplex conversions.
And in those smaller, cheaper units, they might not only get current residents' grandmas. They might get new residents altogether — residents, perhaps, who don't look like their neighbors. Trump's defenders have vehemently objected to any insinuation that racism undergirds their affection for city governments telling people how to use their own land. But the history of single-family zoning is not only a story of subsidies; it's also a story of state segregation.
"To prevent lower-income African Americans from living in neighborhoods where middle-class whites resided, local and federal officials began in the 1910s to promote zoning ordinances to reserve middle-class neighborhoods for single-family homes that lower-income families of all races could not afford," Rothstein writes. Some of this was classism, he notes, but some of it was done with "open racial intent." In one example Rothstein cites from St. Louis, a city planner hired in 1916 described zoning to keep "colored people" from moving into "finer residential districts." The zoning ordinance adopted there was race-neutral, but planning commission meetings brazenly debated zoning decisions when white neighborhoods risked being, in their words, "invaded by negroes."
The Obama administration's AFFH rule focused on the residue of that deliberate segregation, and Trump's critique of it hasn't untangled the issue of federal manipulation of local policies from the issue of racist zoning. That makes it plausible to see his talk of single-family zoning as the bastion of suburban integrity as implicitly part of an older tradition of state-enforced racism. It's not unreasonable to wonder if being "invaded by negroes" is what Trump means when he deplores watching a "beautiful suburb ... go to hell."
theweek.com/articles/927137/destroying-suburbs-should-republican-idea
Trump's GOP is not your father's GOP. The populist version of the party has no fidelity to free markets or spontaneous/emergent order.
I'm old enough to remember a time when conservatives would point their finger at Nimbyism and zoning as the great problem with housing in left-wing cities like San Fransisco. Now these free market arguments are being tossed out and the right-wing is adopting traditionally left-wing policy preferences on micromanaging housing policy. What changed? Was there a revolution in economics? Did we upgrade our understanding?
No, the economics hasn't changed. What's changed is racial issues have replaced concerns about justice and efficiency.
National conservatism is not laissez faire, it requires an activist government ready to intervene, plan and regulate just about every facet of our lives.
The conservative movement is evolving fast and it will be interesting to document its devolution from something "liberal-adjacent" to something "fascist-adjacent."
