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Not true at all. Kotkin just doesn't consider it an imperative that 100% of all housing absolutely most be extremely walkable or the world will end and the capitalists will win. He's actually pretty pro-walkable neighborhoods, just not every neighborhood everywhere.
We need move away from 20th century concepts that confuse the conversation. If I am right, 70 to 80 percent of new development should be in walkable urban places, and my research leads me to think the majority of that development will be in the suburbs.
Just on a tangent, I think that's the problem that most urban planners have, especially the theorist variety rather than the nuts and bolts types. They think that their job is to design around ivory tower principles of what they feel is right regardless of what people want. We live in a mostly freemarket economy, not a command economy. Command economy approaches will not work. Kotkin is more guilty of this than most. Probably because it pays to be polarizing.
And during the era when suburban development was driven more by the free market, the late 19th and early 20th century, suburbs were a lot more walkable and featured lots of streetcars! Meanwhile, the unwalkable places were the product of massive federal development programs. So which is the free-market product and which is the product of a command economy?
Massive federal development programs that were fully funded by gasoline taxes, a user fee. If you didn't want to pay the fee, you merely didn't live in the suburbs where gas was required to get around. Contemporary suburban development was far more free market than contemporary urban renewal development, which was also tried in the post-war period.
By the time the highways were being built, the streetcars had long since gone bankrupt, bought up by private bus operators which were later socialized, or just socialized directly and converted to bus lines. The fixed-fare, monopoly-rights streetcar was ancient history by the time post-war developing was raging. While interesting that the laissez-faire development was more free market than any development today, it's rather abstract and really the answer to nothing. It's just a more absurd than most example of the correlation-causation paradox. The free market equilibrium during the Colonial Period was not the equilibrium during the Industrial Revolution was not the equilibrium during the streetcar era is not the equilibrium today.
How do/can governments, organizations, and/or people do to beat naysayers and Not In My Back Yarders?
I'm not sure there is a certain way to beat NIMBY people. The best you can do is try to come up with the best project you can think of, and just prepare for the obstacles you'll face. You are dealing with irrational people. They think very differently than just about everybody else in this country, and they also feel they should tell you how you should live. Remember these are people who hate anything that doesn't involve walking. Everything in their world is only a "5-10" minute walk from their 200 sq. ft apartment/condo/rowhouse. They are always going to be the loudest and will try to stop anything involves giving people options other than walking. When you have irrational people like that, they will always be tough to beat.
I'm also glad that, in the small city where I live, those I know in "the political machine" don't take well to bribery. It's a stereotype, but it's not the norm. Tax revenues carry a lot of influence here; corruption, not so much.
I'm not talking about bribery. I'm talking more about promises of campaign finance and/or potential pecuniary benefits later down the road. With a few exceptions, the era of walking into a politician's office with a briefcase full of money is over (in the U.S. anyway).
All of the people working in City Hall, DOJ, the Governor's Office, the SEC, FERC, etc. are hoping for a payout one day. They want to leverage their expertise and relationships to get paid. That's today's "bribery." It's very much a quid pro quo where you look out for their interests while you're in government, and they'll look out for your interests when you want that plush six-figure job. That's the revolving door that keeps on turning and turning and turning.
Massive federal development programs that were fully funded by gasoline taxes, a user fee. If you didn't want to pay the fee, you merely didn't live in the suburbs where gas was required to get around. Contemporary suburban development was far more free market than contemporary urban renewal development, which was also tried in the post-war period.
Factually untrue--remember, we're not just talking about highways, but also about FHA and VA home loans, accelerated depreciation for commercial building, electrification and water infrastructure programs. And a lot of highway miles were paid for by means other than gas taxes, justified as defense expenditures.
Quote:
By the time the highways were being built, the streetcars had long since gone bankrupt, bought up by private bus operators which were later socialized, or just socialized directly and converted to bus lines. The fixed-fare, monopoly-rights streetcar was ancient history by the time post-war developing was raging. While interesting that the laissez-faire development was more free market than any development today, it's rather abstract and really the answer to nothing. It's just a more absurd than most example of the correlation-causation paradox. The free market equilibrium during the Colonial Period was not the equilibrium during the Industrial Revolution was not the equilibrium during the streetcar era is not the equilibrium today.
Factually untrue. Federal highways were being constructed in the 1920s, smaller than the postwar projects but national in scope. To suggest that no highways were being built until after World War II is factually incorrect. Long-distance highways weren't the competition for streetcars anyhow--they were the competition for private long-haul passenger trains, which were very much still in existence in the 1950s and 60s.
The competition for private streetcar companies was provided by the public road projects of the 1920s and 30s, spurred by the "Good Roads" movement of the early 1900s, and not paid for by gas taxes. Streetcar companies went bankrupt because of government sponsored competition and deliberate, observable and often quite well-documented efforts to drive them out of business. Dismissing the observable development patterns of the early 20th century is a handwave to disguise the fact that the supposed "conservatives" are in love with public-funded highways.
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