A Moderate Perspective on Cities

 

 

I am a lover of cities. I am also politically moderate. Putting the two together, it occurs to me that what I hope for cities (including my own) is a combination of left-leaning and right-leaning preferences. 

From the left, I believe there is a good reason for and high return from greater public investment in public goods like transit and public space, as well as top-down methods for bringing these goods into being. Cities require the former to scale up to the density that makes the magic happen (whether the magic is innovation, business, or social). And they need the latter for the density to lead to the magic (i.e. facilitating the kinds of diverse interactions that make cities productive and enriching). Hence, I’m for large public sector outlays and heavy public sector involvement in these cases. 

From the right, I believe that in order for people to feel welcome, safe, and happy in cities, laws must be enforced consistently, including punishment and separation of those who break the law (albeit with careful attention to implicit bias that affect our ability to be consistent, and to an overall objective of rehabilitation and reinvestment for those who become justice-involved). I also believe that housing affordability is critical to the accessibility and productivity of cities, and that affordability is best achieved by making it easier for the private market to add new supply (not that public sector involvement in housing policy isn’t warranted, just that it should be a lighter touch). 

I suspect that there are many among my friends and peers who disagree with me from both sides of the ideological spectrum. Perhaps there are some who are with me in the middle, or perhaps more accurately who lean left with me in some ways but also lean right with me in other ways. What do you think?