RALEIGH – Try as they might, politicians don’t get to change human nature. That doesn’t stop them from trying mightily to do so, via a variety of government programs designed to modify economic preferences, personal values, or basic social conventions. The economist and Gastonia native Thomas Sowell once wrote an excellent book on this subject entitled A Conflict of Visions, in which he distinguished modern-day liberals from modern-day conservatives on grounds that the former had an unconstrained vision of human nature as malleable by government while the latter had a constrained vision of what government can and should attempt to do.
(Come to think of it, the phrase “excellent book” is redundant when discussing Sowell. From now on, I’ll just say book and assume the excellence is self-evident.)
Though the current intellectual fashion is for the Left to accuse the Right of wanting to impose their values through government action, this truly is a case of pitch-dark pots screaming “black” at (admittedly grayish) kettles. A good example would be the nexus of environmental extremism and so-called Smart Growth. Faced with the undeniable reality that most Americans, indeed most human beings, prefer individual autonomy to collective transport and low-density communities to urban condos, these activists say it is all an illusion. They claim that current settlement patterns reflect some akin to a lifestyle addiction that they will “help” everyone else overcome.
How likely is that? Let’s quantify the challenge they would face. My friend Sam Staley, director of urban and land use policy for the Reason Foundation, points out that the typical American suburb contains between 2,500 and 3,000 people per square mile. In North Carolina, the figure is typically well below 2,000 people per square mile. The urban-planning literature suggests, however, that large-scale bus transit – that is, buses as a form of routine transportation for non-poor, non-disabled people – requires densities in the range of 10,000 per square mile. The threshold is about 14,000 for rail transit to make sense.
I think the case for making this change is highly suspect. Higher densities would not reduce the overall cost of providing government services. They would create more, not less, congestion. Thus they would likely create more, not less, air pollution. They wouldn’t make us feel safer or more community-inclined.
But let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s say that all these benefits lay just over that planning horizon. It still seems obvious that the planning horizon is impossibly far, far away. Imagine if any large North Carolina community truly attempted to engineer a result of 10,000 to 14,000 people per square mile. Its elected officials would be turned out on their ear. Those voters not protesting at zoning hearings, or voting these officials out of office on Election Day, would be high-tailing it to a less oppressive, less claustrophobic clime.
Sure, there are some neighborhoods in some cities with densities in this range. But they are quite the opposite of what Smart Growthers say they want. These places are either ritzy and exclusionary or, essentially, slums. Even more modest efforts to regulate land-use patterns result in significant price premiums for new and existing homes. In North Carolina, say two of my JLF colleagues, such policies have pushed up home prices by nearly $22,000 in Wilmington and $14,000 in Asheville.
Because of its effective monopoly on the construction and operation of most roads, government does have some effect on land and housing markets, though its magnitude is often exaggerated. But in fashioning policies, public officials need to confine themselves to removing obstacles to the growth boat floating downstream, with the current formed by consumer preferences. They should not try to paddle the boat upstream, a doomed effort that will cost the rest of us money and freedom.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.