Cities and Libertarianism(s?)

I’m not a libertarian, but I really appreciate the way libertarians think. I happen to not accept many of the assumptions they make about human nature and human aspirations, but the fact that they accept a set of common assumptions at all allows them to apply rigorous logic to any problem. This makes for good, smart conversation in my opinion, and they’ve got to be at least partially right.

I found one such conversation on The Volokh Conspiracy last week (by way of Market Urbanism) entitled, “Do We Need More Government Planning to Create "Walkable" Living Environments?” What really intrigued me was the long stream of comments that followed this post. A clear rift seemed to develop between those who defended a low-density suburban lifestyle in its own right and those who believed the market alone should determine development patterns.

How could a conversation among libertarians, all conducted under a common language, worldview, and set of assumptions, arrive at such opposite poles? It occurred to me that maybe this was Frank Lloyd Wright versus. Milton Friedman, a personal liberty expressed spatially versus a personal liberty expressed through economic choices. Here is my attempt to profile the two categories these commenters fell into - not necessarily an informed evaluation of either Wright or Friedman themselves.

The Wright Group

The Wright group sees the owned single-family detached home in a quiet suburban or rural neighborhood as the libertarian ideal. Homeownership is a much preferable situation to a tenant-landlord arrangement. Individually owned private property distributes power evenly to each household, and it creates an incentive for the homeowner to maintain and enhance the value of the property. Accordingly, Homeownership ought to be encouraged by society.

The Wright group has a specific conception of home. Houses without any connected walls and with generous setbacks of yards on all sides allow the inhabitants to enjoy a high level of individual autonomy. The home is the castle, the one sure segment of life entirely under personal control. Unlike denser living environments, social interactions in a single-family suburban or rural property can be maximally managed. Neighborhood relationships of any degree of intimacy do not need to be entered into involuntarily.

The Wright group seems to favor strict single-use zoning measures to prevent any external intrusions into private property. Other uses mixed with residential use interfere, whether by adding traffic and noise or altering aesthetics, with the homeowner’s control of private space. Furthermore, if zoning can spatially separate socio-economic groups, it allows homeowners the freedom to purchase a home among people they choose to associate with. Neighborhood change is undesirable, because it alters the homeowner’s investment-backed expectations.

The automobile is the optimal mode of transportation. Public transportation is viewed as collectivist, burdening individuals with the need to coordinate schedules and trips among a large number of people. It is not a coincidence that communist regimes have heavily invested in public transportation systems, while the free world has embraced the automobile. Walking and bicycling are fine, but access is limited to a small area. Maximum mobility in the form of efficient personal automobile travel is something that should be encouraged by society.

The Friedman Group

The Friedman group believes that the spatial distribution of development ought to be determined by a free market. There are many different preferences for living arrangements in society, and these preferences change through time. The market does the best job matching the supply of housing and transportation with demand in any particular region. It is best to let the spatial arrangement of a city emerge from a multitude of individual choices, rather than to be shaped by the predetermined selection of a preferred type and tenure of housing, and mode of transportation.

Their view of homeownership is more ambiguous. While there are benefits, mortgages do create inflexibility in the labor market, making it harder for regions to adapt to changing conditions. Instead of using tax incentives and other programs to encourage homeownership, the federal government should stand back and let the market determine the optimal balance between renting and owning.

The Friedman group continually points out that the Wright group’s ideal living arrangement essentially requires governmental intervention at all levels. The automobile-oriented transportation the Wright group prefers is highly dependent on the federal Interstate system and road-building at the state and municipal level. Contrary to this arrangement, the Friedman group believes that if the costs of driving are fully realized by users of the infrastructure, a diversity of transportation options would naturally arise to meet a diversity of needs.

At the local level, land use controls, such as the separation of uses, minimum parking requirements, and mandatory low densities through zoning, are considered to be unwanted interventions into the market. The same is also true for “smart growth” policies intended to concentrate development in particular locations.

The Friedman group insist that low-density living arrangements should be an option, but that they should not be required, or even subsidized, by government. The externalities of low-density living, including costs of public services and infrastructure, ought to be incorporated into the cost of living for individual homeowners and tenants as much as possible. Doing so will allow the market to allocate scarce resources, particularly land, most efficiently. This is presumed to shift the balance of development toward cities.

Two Libertarianisms?

The Wright group seems to favor optimizing individual autonomy through spatial living arrangements even if doing so requires centralizing economic and political authority to some extent. The Friedman group seems to favor optimizing individual autonomy through market decisions even if doing so results in more people living in situations where full control over private property is compromised in some way.