The Feds and Land Use

[nancylebov]

An article from the NYTimes reviews two books which argue that large scale Federal policies have had a major and mostly bad, effect on land use in the US, partly a matter of encouraging people to build in dangerous areas and partly a matter of encouraging people spread out more than they otherwise would. In particular, one of the books argues the Federal highway system was designed in case of conventional war and the push to get people into the suburbs was dispersal in case of nuclear war.

The latter seems fairly stupid--I'm not sure if it didn't occur to them that small towns and cities would be a better idea, or if by the time it was clear that people were aggregating around big cities, the nuclear war thing had been forgotten, or if no one can figure out a way, even with the Feds leaning on it, to get people to live in small towns and cities. Or maybe the idea was to get people out of city centers, without much thought about where they'd decide to live instead. I leave open the possibility that encouraging people to move into the suburbs had some other purpose, though.

In any case, the article recommends looking for Federal solutions to the problem, which sounds rather risky--the whole point of Federal solutions is that they can override individual judgement on a large scale. Any suggestions for how the Feds could withdraw from that arena in a sensible way?

Comments

[madfilkentist]

The Feds acting in a sensible way is practically an oxymoron. But I think the tendency of people to aggregate around large cities has major causes other than Interstate highways. People like the large number of services you can get in a big city, even if they don't like to live right in the city.

A different aspect of encouraging people to live in dangerous areas is federal flood insurance subsidies. It's been a while since I've looked into the issue, so I don't recall whether the subsidy is direct or regulatory, but either way people get to live in flood-prone areas for less than it would cost them otherwise, so the stay-away economic signal that a disaster-prone area would otherwise have is muted. In many of these areas it's well-to-do people with beachfront property who get the subsidy.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Even if the Feds can't be expected to be extremely sensible, there's a large difference between bad and worse.

Afaik, the American pattern of hollowing out the centers of cities or significant sections of them is unique, and could well be a result of government policies. Likewise, there's a French pattern of high-unemployment concentrations of immigrants in suburbs which seems to be caused by their government.

People were moving away from US center cities as early as the 1830s

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

America has had a strong anti-urban bias since before the US. That's why the state capitol is in Harrisburg, why SC's state capitol is in Columbia instead of Charleston, and so forth and so on.

The English seem to have had less appreciation of urban areas than some of the European countries -- vide Home Counties and the Holburn Viaduct which did a sweep up through some of the more colorful and dangerous London neighborhoods. People got out of London if they could afford to. So, urban removal of people in the way and replacing them with a highway on stilts isn't unique to the US.

Public Housing is put on cheap land. In the US, this was in the center cities near the urban core. In France, it was in the suburbs. Also Toronto has high rise suburbs around a lower height city core which was a very weird sight to this American tourist. I don't know where they put their public housing or if those high rise apartments can be subsidized units, something like our Section Eight housing in the US.

You might want to read or re-read some of what Jefferson said about cities and urban working classes.

Re: People were moving away from US center cities as early as the 1830s

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I don't dispute the general anti-big-city bias, but [a] I don't think it has *anything* to do with the placement of state capitals -- that's far more a function of each state's particular politics at work, especially the desire to minimize RMS travel time to the capital in the age of horses; and [b] until the 20th century (and maybe not until after WW2) small towns, *not* suburbs, seem to have been more the norm.

Public Housing is put on cheap land. In the US, this was in the center cities near the urban core.

Only after the secretly (or not so secretly) racist Urban Renewal programs took hold.