Building a Conservative Urbanism

The concept of “civilization” is based on the economic and cultural exchange enabled by cities. However, the American “inner-city” has become a euphemism for dysfunction, exacerbated in the last decade by the “Great Awokening.” Those urban areas not rendered uninhabitable by crime and possessing the rudiments of urban cultural amenities and attractive architecture are often unaffordable, hindering young Americans in building wealth and starting families. Furthermore, many major cities are bastions of the radical left, substituting Neo-Marxist anarcho-tyranny akin to Orwell’s Barcelona for the rule of law and abusing their jurisdiction over so much of American life for law-fare. However, policies such as school choice and zoning reform could help to foster red-state cities as an alternative to the Scylla of urban anarcho-tyranny and the Charybdis of sterile suburbia, enabling conservatives to overcome their present marginalization as pagani and shape the future of American civilization.

I. Why We Need Conservative Cities

Why are American cities so left-wing? There are three main reasons that I can discern.

First, Anglo-American culture has traditionally been oriented to rural or small-town life (the former especially among the Scots-Irish and the latter among Yankees), which can be traced to the Teutonic folkways of feudal Europe in contrast to the Mediterranean’s poleis and later monarchical and ecclesiastical empires. Indeed, even as Britain and then America precociously industrialized, WASPs chased a Romantic pseudo-rural ideal, exemplified by country clubs. As America spread west, new states, inspired by Jeffersonian ideology, purposefully separated their state capitals and college towns from emerging commercial centers. Notably, the metropolitan area where conservatives have recently shown the most strength, the “Gold Coast” of South Florida, is heavily populated by middle-class Latin Americans and other immigrants (in particular Jews from the former Soviet Union) from cultures where urban life has traditionally been prized.

Second, crime, public disorder, public sector union parasitism, the racial spoils system in the public sector, heavy taxation and regulation for productive citizens, and ideologized education have driven out middle class families, mostly leaving the underclass, bureaucrats, gays, and young transients rebelling against their parents. While this process may be devastating for a city’s long-term prospects, it often serves individual politicians’ interests by expelling the base of potential opposition, a phenomenon known as the “Curley Effect” after Boston’s early-20th century Irish mayor, whose policies and rhetoric promoted the replacement of the city’s WASPs.

The third reason is that even viable cities and neighborhoods are unaffordable for most families aspiring to American norms of living space and financial independence. This is exacerbated by restrictions on market-rate construction, with new building catering either to the wealthy (often foreigners) or “affordable housing” set-asides. Reasons for these restrictions’ existence range from historical or environmental preservation and neighborhood stability to politicians’ interest in the opportunities for corruption and social engineering created by discretionary control over zoning (a “bootleggers and Baptists” coalition). In local politics, “NIMBY” concerns about the concentrated costs of disruption and opportunities for rent-seeking alike will generally prevail over the dispersed benefits of lower rents and (in up-zoned tracts) higher land values. It should be noted that this collective-action problem also implies that zoning is not a conspiracy of homeowners; in addition to the fact that localized up-zoning generally boosts land values, most Americans own only one home (limiting their ability to profit from high prices, since housing is a necessary expense) and have an interest in affordability to the extent they have more children than houses and a “bequest motive.”

However, even well-intentioned policies preventing land from being put to its best use lead to the nationwide externality of pricing workers out of the metropolitan areas where agglomeration economies enhance productivity and wages. Doubtlessly in part because of the high cost of raising children, America’s most dynamic cities are also often low-fertility “IQ shredders” with negative effects on future social dynamism. The gratuitous difficulty of homeownership and family formation has also very likely exacerbated young voters’ political radicalism, with the UK representing an extreme example of this phenomenon. However, conservatives can also benefit if they credibly seek to remedy this problem; Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives appear set to win the youth vote in the next Canadian election, in part by promising pro-housing policies.

The flight of middle-class families, the bulk of the conservative base, to the suburbs has come with high costs. The suburban lifestyle is expensive, both in terms of inefficient land use and mandatory automobile ownership. Indeed, it is often intentionally expensive since affluent families, regardless of political ideology, generally seek to price out the underclass and, especially, to ensure a safe and learning-conducive environment in local schools. This dynamic leads to an exclusionary-zoning “Prisoner’s Dilemma” which results in a mostly unchanged socioeconomic geography, albeit more strictly stratified on the margin and with many promising low and middle-income students having less access to good public than private schools, but with costlier housing for everyone. Additionally, the suburban lifestyle, with its lack of walkability, harms both human health and the environment.

Furthermore, suburbs cannot provide the same cultural opportunities as cities. As both Jane Jacobs and the Bronze Age Pervert have argued, suburbs are a matriarchal “longhouse” in which “free-range parenting” is impossible (as, of course, it is in unsafe cities) and working mens’ lives are allocated between their bosses and wives, contributing to male anomie and ceding cities’ vital cultural and political territory to the activist Left.

As such, red state urbanism should be a conservative priority for several reasons. First, it could promote a cultural renaissance; it is a disgrace that a wealthy city like Midland, Texas, has not converted its fiscal windfall into something akin to the Manaus Opera House. Second, it could promote male blue-collar employment in construction and industry, help young middle-class families build wealth, and allow conservative “elite human capital” to have careers in cultures reinforcing their values. Finally, the rise of more politically-diverse commercial and cultural centers may preempt the Left’s use of cities for mob action and lawfare. It should also be emphasized that urbanism a la Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham need not conflict with a traditional WASPy affection for nature and activities like hunting or riding that satisfy the thymotic element in man. Despite claiming to offer a synthesis between urbanity and nature, contemporary suburbia generally fails to deliver either, and conservatives’ exurban escapism is not well-suited for either preserving traditional culture or shaping modern civilization.

II. Policies for Red-State Urbanism

How can conservatives reform American cities? In my view, universal school choice is the most powerful tool. Of course, this is not the main reason to enact school choice, which all red states should adopt to expand opportunities for better, more tailored, and more classical education. However, no longer requiring middle-class families to pay twice for a good education would make urban living more viable for conservatives, while weakening the teachers’ unions that are a significant base for the urban far-left. This could begin a virtuous cycle, in which a better-run and safer city attracts more middle-class families. Additionally, unbundling education from residency may reduce the incentive for exclusionary zoning on the margin. School choice could also attract educated conservative-leaning blue state emigres who desire both urbanism and a classical or religious education for their children, both promoting economic and cultural development and balancing out the political consequences of urbanization. Red states’ adoption of universal school choice (without restricting selection, income, or tuition as in Cleveland and Milwaukee’s previous schemes), covering urban areas including South Florida, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Charlotte, Orlando, Raleigh-Durham, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa, will be an experiment in urbanism as well as in education.

It is also imperative for red-state urbanism to promote an affordable cost of living for middle-class families. Anti-density rules are generally counter-productive for this purpose, as demonstrated by the Bay Area and Southern California; reserving land for detached single-family homes may reduce their relative cost, but can increase their absolute cost when apartments and townhomes to satisfy singles, empty-nesters, and small families are scarce. Some on the Right may claim that immigration restriction is sufficient to lower housing costs, but this conflicts with both pro-natalism and building red-state economic and cultural centers receptive to internal migration.

Since our social and political system cannot be expected to produce urbanist philosopher-kings a la Baron Haussmann (and, in addition to its expensive land use, in my view even Paris is diminished by its monotony), the best system for America would be to abolish zoning and return to developer-controlled neighborhood development, albeit with boulevards and parks ensuring sight-lines to civic buildings, city street maintenance and/or financial reimbursement encouraging developers’ adherence to a circulatory grid plan (although they would be permitted to build gated communities such as Saint Louis’ private places if this would help to attract affluent families), and form-based requirements for buildings above a walk-up height ensuring basic skyline coherence (such as early 20th century New York City’s setback rule, vindicated by the “pencil tower” phenomenon in its absence). Similarly, infrastructure could be provided through privately-operated tollways and rail networks like South Florida’s Brightline. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such a planning regime allowed rapidly-growing cities like Chicago to combine deed-restricted family-friendly neighborhoods (such as Kenwood), upscale apartment towers along Lake Shore Drive, “gentle density” in the form of courtyard apartments and ubiquitous neighborhood business districts, and industrial parks such as the Central Manufacturing District.

The city that most closely follows the classic American approach to urbanism today is Houston, where land use is still primarily controlled through private deed restrictions. This has both allowed selective densification, ensuring comparative affordability, and preserved the option to settle in stable HOA-regulated family-friendly neighborhoods, while also promoting blue-collar employment. That said, Houston is far from an urbanist utopia; in addition to facilitating middle-class urbanism through universal school choice, the externalities of sprawl should be curbed via congestion pricing or, as a second-best solution, expanded subsidized (and secure) transit infrastructure.

Nevertheless, there are also valid objections to simply imposing “YIMBYism” nationwide. Many neighborhoods were developed on the premise that homeowners would be able to control zoning through local politics, and developers would have otherwise incorporated the deed restrictions and HOAs widespread in zoning-free Houston. Therefore, homeowners could complain with justice about a simple ex post abolition of zoning laws, since the number of property owners in most neighborhoods is too large to plausibly engage in Coasean bargaining to attach new restrictions with unanimous consent. Furthermore, historic districts do help to preserve the cohesion and beauty of many urban neighborhoods, and, albeit rarely, some (usually old-money) towns’ zoning policies do ensure basic standards of architectural taste and coherence.

A more viable approach than complete YIMBYism might be for states to permanently exempt unincorporated land from zoning rules; if reasonable deed restrictions boosted a tract’s long-term value, developers would be incentivized to attach them to subdivisions or bargain with neighboring landowners. Nuisance law and environmental regulation would continue to limit extraordinary negative externalities. In regard to existing cities, there is a strong legal argument that municipal zoning ordinances could be privatized into neighborhood HOAs; alternatively, the zoning power could be ceded to property-owner-controlled special districts akin to Texas’ Public Improvement Districts. More ambitiously, using the precedent of Kelo v. New London to strengthen rather than undermine property rights, it may also be possible for states to effectively privatize the right to re-develop entire neighborhoods through eminent domain by granting that power to PID-style special districts established by the approval of a super-majority of affected property owners by number and valuation. Developers could secure such consent by offering a premium over fair market value and, depending on the nature of the project, a right of first refusal for plots or units in the re-developed neighborhood. This would work similarly to the “land readjustment” system utilized in Germany, Israel, and Japan among other countries. These reforms would all shift the power to shape development from politicians to property owners with direct skin in the game.

More modestly, states could enact targeted land-use reforms, such as allowing apartments up to a certain height in all commercial zones (effectively conditioning localities’ right to collect sales taxes in lieu of property taxes on directly or indirectly expanding workers’ housing options), legalizing medium-density residential development within walking distance of regional transit routes (making such networks more viable), and permitting townhouses or at least duplexes or small-lot “starter homes” in all new developments of a certain size. Furthermore, states could establish a fund financed by, say, a penny sales tax and use the money to buy down local property taxes (especially helpful for rural areas), but tie these transfers to the net rate of new construction for localities with high per-capita non-agricultural property values (indicating unmet demand). This structure would effectively constitute a penalty for exclusionary zoning’s negative externalities; however, in contrast to the Obama-era federal AFFH program, this policy would emphasize the “trickle-down” effects of lower rents through market-rate construction rather than socially-engineered “affordable housing.” One response to such incentives might be for cities to adopt form-based codes like Miami’s focusing on aesthetic coherence (and, particularly in the sunbelt, mitigating the "urban heat island” effect through expanded tree canopy and sun-reflective architecture) rather than limiting density and strictly segregating potentially synergistic commercial and residential uses.

Whichever approach is taken, such policies could promote the economies of scale and scope needed both to challenge the incumbent coastal megalopolises and perhaps even to create the techno-industrial “American Shenzhen” required to counter China.

III. The Promise and Pitfalls of Georgism

Another policy frequently associated with YIMBYism is that of replacing property taxes and other forms of local and maybe even national taxation with a land value tax (potentially at a confiscatory rate), termed “Georgism” after its advocate Henry George.

Georgists advance two primary arguments for LVTs. First, since the supply of land has been essentially fixed since the closing of the frontier, LVTs are perfectly efficient and merely transfer revenue from landowners to the government, while traditional property taxes reduce investment in structures and are thus (to the extent that marginal supply is flexible) passed on to renters and businesses. However, this only holds if land values are exogenous to landowners’ actions, and large landowners, developers, and individual homeowners (via HOAs, which cover the vast majority of new American developments, and participation in small units of local government) often do capture spillovers from their investments and activities. Therefore, an LVT would deter landowners’ activities to boost land values, especially in cities that follow a free-market land-use policy.

Hence, especially under an optimal planning regime, the maximally-efficient LVT rate would be well below confiscatory levels. Also, incentivizing farmers to maintain and invest in their land would favor relieving agricultural land. These factors imply that an optimal LVT would raise far less revenue than is believed by many Georgists, especially under a free-market land-use regime that keeps land prices in check. Thus, while there is a strong case for a moderate LVT (probably most politically palatable as a real estate capital gains tax, ideally inflation-adjusted and with a rollover option a la 1031 exchanges), an LVT cannot serve as the workhorse of local, much less national, revenue generation.

The second main argument for an LVT is that since land prices are responsive to demand from mobile residents and businesses, an LVT taxes the passive beneficiaries of local services. However, individuals and businesses are not fully mobile between jurisdictions (especially in the case of large cities) due to local networks and other fixed assets, and to the extent they are mobile, all kinds of local taxes are capitalized into land prices. Since the benefits of local government are shared between residents, businesses, and landowners, it is sensible, both in terms of justice and the political incentives for efficient governance, to levy marginal taxes with a likewise incidence (such as on property and sales). This is particularly the case in large cities where renters dominate the local electorate and where, paradoxically, the LVT’s relative economic efficiency could incentivize governments to engage in socially-wasteful marginal expenditures.

While Georgism is flawed, the property tax is still an attractive local revenue source due to its stability (especially for backing long-term capital investment), its ease of collection and difficulty of avoidance, and its function as a user fee for local property protection in the form of police and fire services. As noted, that a portion of the tax (generally small under a free-market land-use system) falls on site-values can be a double-edged sword, depending on the nature of the local electorate. However, it also has its drawbacks. First, it discriminates against the agricultural, construction, industrial, and in-person retail sectors, promoting “virtualization” of the economy. Second, it is highly “salient” for homeowners, since it must be paid directly, is inevitably imprecise and unpredictable, and does not vary with household income, potentially leading to underinvestment in the public goods essential for urbanism where homeowners predominate in the electorate. As such, cities, particularly consolidated cities where cross-border shopping is less of a concern, should also be allowed to collect a local-option sales tax.

Finally, one decidedly non-Georgist tax policy that could promote urbanism is expanding cities’ power to grant homestead exemptions, which shift the tax burden from resident homeowners to renters and commuting workers in jurisdictions such as large cities where the latter are plentiful. This policy would encourage middle-class homeowners, the conservative and centrist base in urban politics, to move into cities. Statewide homestead exemptions, especially as in South Carolina for school taxes (which are often revenue-equalized across school districts by state aid), in addition to income tax exemptions for retirees, can also be used to shape interstate migration to ensure that an urbanist program does not radically alter a state’s political character.

Conclusion: A Time to Build

Of course, any family-friendly urbanist program presupposes law and order, especially to make characteristically urban amenities like public transit and beautiful public spaces viable. To this end, red state governors should assert control over their legal creatures, exemplified by Ron DeSantis’ removal of leftist DAs, and increase criminal penalties. States should also preempt cities from imposing unreasonably burdensome or ideologically-driven taxes and regulations. While political incentives have traditionally militated against spending political capital on urban issues, the GOP and centrist forces in urban politics have shown growing promise with non-traditional (especially immigrant) voters on issues such as crime, public order, and education.

Where it proves impractical to transform existing cities into hospitable environments for conservative-leaning middle-class families, another potential path is for conservative investors to develop beautiful mixed-use family-friendly communities. Notable examples of New Classical urbanism that could serve as models for larger future projects include Carmel outside Indianapolis, Ohio’s New Albany, Florida’s “Redneck Riviera” (Alys Beach, Rosemary Beach, and Seaside) and Baldwin Park, Louisiana’s River Ranch, England’s Poundbury, and Guatemala’s Ciudad Cayala.

Regardless of which path is taken (or ideally both), conservatives must get in to cities if they want a role in building the future of American civilization.