America Wants Urbanization, Despite Itself

What’s the Latest Development?

The wealth that often sits behind inner-city development projects, such as a new apartment or commercial building, has a tendency to bring out progressive-minded people in the name of preserving the old neighborhood. But America’s desire for more urbanization, particularly among city-oriented progressives, should be seen primarily as a humanist project meant to increase available space within a city’s core. “If space is scarce, then poor people won’t be able to afford homes and low-margin businesses and startups won’t stay in business.”

What’s the Big Idea?

Similarly, conservatives who tend to argue in favor of limited government often do not carry their fight into cities, places where government zoning policies have proven adept at sacrificing multiple-use building plans in the name of order, creating large swaths of dead urban space at different times of the day, which increases crime and a host of other city problems. The urbanization question is not whether the city is better than the suburbs but that semi-forced suburbanization disadvantages everyone by driving up costs and decreasing economic opportunity. 

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