Category Archives: Politics

When States Should Blow the Whistle

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by Michael Lewyn

Generally, states limit local governments’ means of raising tax revenue. Both Democratic and Republican governors consider it their duty to micromanage the property tax rates of local governments, and local governments can rarely institute a new type of tax without state consent. On the other hand, local governments tend to have free rein in land use matters; even relatively activist state governments tend to allow cities to choke off housing supply without state interference. Is this really the right way to do things?

Just as we ask ourselves, “When does the state have any business interfering with individual rights?”, we should also ask ourselves, “When does the state have any business interfering with a municipal government?” And just as states are most likely to get involved where an individual hurts other individuals, a state should be most willing to get involved where a city’s action affects people living outside the city—for example, the “tragedy of the commons” situation where a policy is rational for each individual city, but is not rational for the region as a whole.

Applying this principle, I am not sure why states should limit municipal taxing powers. When a city raises taxes, it only hurts itself, because it takes the risk that people will flee that city in search of less restrictive cities. And if several cities and towns in a region raise taxes, such tax increases become even less rational for a town that refuses to raise taxes, since that town can gain residents by being a tax haven.

By contrast, environmental issues are especially well suited for state (and for that matter, federal) regulation, because one city’s policies might harm residents of nearby municipalities. For example, suppose that a suburb allows unlimited development of wetlands within its borders. If the absence of wetlands causes increased flooding, the resulting damage may cross municipal borders and harm residents of nearby towns. Or if a suburb decides to build high-speed stroads and starve public transit so that its jobs are inaccessible by public transit, reverse commuters in other municipalities will have to drive to reach those jobs, causing pollution not just in the suburb in question, but also in their own neighborhoods. Thus, states should be responsible for wetlands regulation, and should perhaps play some rule in ensuring that suburban employment centers are transit-accessible. Continue reading →

Conservative Cities? Yes, in the UK

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by Michael Lewyn

In the United States, central cities lean towards left-wing parties (even in affluent areas like the Upper West Side of New York) while suburbs and exurbs lean right. But as we learned this week in the United Kingdom, this is not true everywhere. London’s urban core is the Cities of London and Westminister district, which gave the governing Conservatives 54 percent of their vote this week, and almost as much in 2010. Next-door Chelsea gave the Tories an even larger majority. Why is this the case? I defer to the knowledge of people more familiar with U.K politics than I.

(cross-posted from cnu.org)

Is Mismanagement the Cause of Legacy Cities’ Decline?

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When I was arguing with someone about sprawl in declining “legacy cities,” I ran into the following argument (loosely paraphrased): “The reason places like Detroit are declining isn’t because of sprawl but because of municipal corruption and mismanagement. Fix that instead of worrying about suburbia.”

At first glance, this argument seems appealing: after all, one former mayor of Detroit is in prison, and Detroit’s low level of public services is certainly highly suspicious.

Nevertheless, I am not sure the argument is provable, because there is no easy way to quantify mismanagement; thus, there is no objective way to verify that Detroit is any more mismanaged than more prosperous cities.

There appears to be little evidence that Detroit is unusually corrupt: more affluent cities and suburbs have had equally scandalous governments. For example, Atlanta has gained population for two decades in a row, despite having a mayor who served prison time for tax evasion and a major scandal in its public schools (involving over 100 teachers and principals who rewrote students’ incorrect answers on standardized tests).

Fast-growing suburbs have also had questionable leadership: Orange County, California declared bankruptcy in 1994 because of some foolish investment decisions and has a former sheriff who in 2009 collected over $200,000 in pension payments despite a felony conviction.

Detroit’s decline also should not be blamed on fiscal liberalism: although Detroit’s spending level in 2011 ($5,437 per capita in direct expenditures) exceeded the national urban average, it spent about the same amount as Atlanta ($5,408) and less than Nashville (just over $6,200) or San Francisco (which spent over $11,000 per resident) (NOTE: more details are available in this database). Continue reading →

Not A “War on Suburbia” Election

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(cross-posted from cnu.org)

According to Joel Kotkin, this month’s elections were really about the “progressives’ war on suburbia.” According to Kotkin, the Democrats lost because they are “aggressively anti-suburban.” Since I didn’t vote for President Obama, I leave it to his supporters to defend him.

However, I do think it is worth pointing out that cities and suburbs moved in the same direction this year. The Republicans gained several governorships this year (Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts). I couldn’t find city election statistics for Arkansas, but I was able to find city board of elections statistics for the other three states. In each, the Republican candidates for governor improved on their 2010 showing. In Massachusetts, Republican Charlie Baker gained 30 percent of the Boston city vote, up from 23 percent in 2010. This 7 point gain was equal to his 6.5 point statewide gain (from 42 to 48.5 percent) and exceeded his 4 point gain in suburban Middlesex County.

In Illinois, the Republican vote share increased from 17 to 20 percent. Kotkin asserts that this is a “laughably pathetic” vote share, but in fact the Republicans gained almost as much in Chicago as they did statewide. They gained 3 percentage points in Chicago, and almost 5 points statewide (from 46% to 50.8%). (To be fair, the Republican gained a little more in the Chicago suburbs, but that may reflect the fact that he is from suburban Chicago while 2010 nominee Bill Brady is from downstate).

In Maryland, the Republican vote share in Baltimore city increased from 16 percent to 22 percent, a 6 point shift, more than the vote shift in Prince George’s County near Washington (4 points) and almost as much as the 7-point vote shift in Montgomery County. (However, the Republican gained more votes in the Baltimore suburbs, which by Kotkin’s logic means that they must have revolted against a “progressive war on Baltimore.”)

In sum, Republican candidates gained votes in suburbia- but they gained votes in cities as well, often in roughly equal proportions.

Learning from Kansas City

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Kansas City, Missouri (where I am a visiting professor for the current academic year) is a medium-demand city: a city with more successful neighborhoods than Cleveland or Detroit, but one still dominated by its suburbs to a greater extent than more successful cities. One reason the city keeps losing people to its suburbs is the low reputation of the city’s school district. In the city’s affluent southwest side, only 27 percent of K-12 children attend public schools. Moreover, many people who would otherwise live in those neighborhoods have moved to Kansas so they can send their children to the overwhelmingly white public schools of Overland Park, Leawood, and other suburbs. Why are Kansas City’s schools so unpopular?

I recently read Complex Justice, a book by political scientist Joshua Dunn about Kansas City’s schools. While much of Dunn’s work focuses on litigation strategy and judicial decision making, he also makes a few points relevant to the problems of urban school districts.

In particular, Dunn shows that some of the city’s public schools became all-black almost as soon as desegregation took place. For example,Kansas City’s Central High School was almost 90 percent white in 1955, and by 1965 had only 16 white students (out of over 2000). Similarly, Paseo High School was 6 percent African-American in 1959 and 97 percent African-American in 1969. So it appears that Kansas City’s whites were ready to move out as soon as blacks moved in—a fact that suggests that whites decided that a school was “bad” as soon as a critical mass of African-Americans moved in. Continue reading →

Joel Kotkin on “What People Really Want”

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(cross-posted at cnu.org)

Joel Kotkin recently wrote in the Washington Post that unspecified urban planners want “to create an ideal locate for hipsters and older, sophisticated urban dwellers” rather than focusing on the needs of “most middle-class residents of the metropolis.” He claims that these people want “home ownership, rapid access to employment throughout the metropolitan area, good schools, and ‘human scale’ neighborhoods” as well as “decent-pay [job] opportunities.” He doesn’t really explain how these goals can be achieved, other than noting that Sun Belt cities continue to grow more rapidly than high-cost northern cities, and thus must have somehow achieved these goals. Kotkin’s claims miss three realities.

First, smart growth-oriented planners seek to achieve some of these goals. By improving public transit and substituting street grids (which allow traffic to flow through a broad range of streets rather than being confined to a few major streets) for cul-de-sacs, they seek to expand “rapid access to employment throughout the metropolitan area.” Smart growth-oriented planners also seek to make cities more “human scale” by making them more friendly to pedestrians as well as automobiles. By contrast, much of America is “car scale” rather than “human scale.” And by expanding the urban housing supply, smart-growth oriented planners seek to make more homes available to more people. (Having said that, I agree with Kotkin that planners in “luxury” cities have failed to meet the latter goal- partially because density-phobia has limited development and thus artificially constricted housing supply).

Second, some of Kotkin’s worthy goals are beyond the reach of urban planning. Nearly all Americans are for “good schools” but urban planners don’t have any special expertise in how to create them. Other central-city policymakers have struggled with this problem for decades, usually without much success. Similarly, urban planners have no special expertise in how to create jobs, especially in the teeth of the post-2008 worldwide economic downturn. Even before the 2008 recession, Rust Belt metros like Buffalo struggled with job creation.

Third, to the extent a city can’t solve the “school problem”, it might as well try to attract the people who don’t need schools: singles and empty-nesters. Although Kotkin may sneer at these groups as “hipsters”, the fact of the matters is that the number of nonfamily households has exploded over time. In 1940, 47 percent of households were either married couples with children or single parents with children; today, only 30 percent do. Kotkin may bemoan the growth of nonfamily and empty-nester households, but they exist and need places to live too.

Mission Accomplished? Not Yet.

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(cross-posted from planetizen.com)

Over the past few years, I’ve read a lot of articles and blog posts proclaiming that cities are back: that millenials want to drive less and live in cities, and that suburbs as we know them may even be dying.

I agree that many consumers demand more walkable development, both in cities and in suburbs. But even in relatively prosperous, safe cities, the political obstacles to meeting this demand are enormous. To name a few:

*Zoning. The increased desirability of urban life means that in many central cities and walkable inner suburbs, there is simply not enough housing to go around. But zoning law is generally designed to limit density (i.e. neighborhood population), which means that if a landowner wants to build new housing, it will usually have to apply to the city for a rezoning. However, rezonings tend to be politically difficult, because people who live in a neighborhood tend to like it the way it is- otherwise they would be living somewhere else. So as long as zoning is designed to limit density and accommodate present residents at the expense of future residents, urban cores will never be able to accommodate consumer demand. (I note that this is equally true for already built-out suburbs- so in many regions, the only easy place to build new housing is at the fringe of suburbia).

*Transit. Many Americans may wish they could drive less- but if their residences and jobs aren’t in places with good public transit, they may never get the chance. The highway lobby of road-builders and suburban developers has plenty of money to give to politicians, while there isn’t really much of a transit lobby (beyond bureaucrats who can’t give campaign contributions, and environmentalists who are more interested in other issues). So whenever economic growth flattens, public transit is one of the first things to be cut back; after the 2008-10 financial crisis, nearly every American city areduced transit service. (To see a few examples, just google ‘transit cutbacks.’) And even in relatively good times, transit is politically vulnerable because, unlike highways, transit often lacks a reliable source of funding.  For example,Seattle plans to eliminate 28 bus routes this fall to make up for weak sales tax revenues, and to eliminate even more routes in 2015.

*Street design. Many commercial streets are designed for high-speed traffic– for example, the eight-lane street near my former apartment in Jacksonville, Florida. Because a pedestrian is more likely to be killed by a car going 40 mph than by one going 20 mph, such streets are not particularly safe for pedestrians. In theory, these streets could be retrofitted. For example, a city could effectively slow traffic by widening sidewalks and medians, thus reducing the number of traffic lanes. However, these changes would cost money and be politically controversial.

Continue reading →