New Book Tackles Western Cities’ Problems

A man walks past tents housing the homeless on the streets in the Skid Row community of Los Angeles, Calif. on April 26, 2021. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

My friend Steven Greenhut just popped out another book on California, “Back from Dystopia: A New Vision for Western Cities.” It’s free here (pdf).

A year ago I reviewed his “Saving California: Solutions to the state’s biggest policy problems.” (Here are parts two and three of my review.) And in 2020 it was “Winning the Water Wars.” He’s resident senior fellow and western region director, state affairs, for the R Street Institute.

The new book is the first installment of a series of books from the Pacific Research Institute’s new Free Cities Project, which Greenhut heads.

He begins by noting planning for cities is necessary, but in recent years it ends up making every place look the same, “Many new urban developments end up having the charm and excitement of suburban developments or even theme parks, even though they happen to be built in cities.

“The new mid-rise condominiums and surrounding shopping/entertainment venues that I see in Reno or Phoenix, for instance, don’t look appreciably different than the ones I see in Sacramento, Everett, Wash., and Arlington, Va. It’s like they’ve all been baked in the same kitchen or planned in the same bureau.”

One of the worst instances of this is Huntington Beach, where I lived from 1987 to 2019—and right next to where I live now in Costa Mesa. In 1987, it still was a classic “surf town,” with funky old restaurants, bars, and surfboard shops. But 35 years of renovations, rezoning, and redevelopment have made Surf City look like almost any beach town in California, Australia, or New Zealand.

Greenhut then scorches the latest social engineering fad: “road diets.” That doesn’t mean banning fast-food joints.

City officials grab the tax money that’s supposed to make traffic flow more smoothly and instead use it to reduce traffic lanes in Sacramento, San Diego, and other bigger California cities.

“To reduce accidents and promote alternative modes of transportation, planners are replacing street lanes with bike lanes. The results are predictable. Few people are replacing their cars with bicycles, and the ensuing rush hour gridlock is maddening. Instead of using light rail to avoid the delays, most endure the snarled traffic,” he writes.

Social Engineering With Roads

Another social engineering tactic has been using freeway construction to divide communities. Summarizing Kevin Kruse’s 2005 book, “White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism,” Greenhut writes how “Atlanta’s 1950s-era planners used freeway construction as a means to essentially wall off certain (read: African American) neighborhoods and reinforce that era’s appalling commitment to racial segregation.”

I saw something similar happen in Detroit, where I was born in 1955, and grew up in the nearby suburb of Wayne. In that case, the freeway planners just ran their “freeways” over the black neighborhoods, forcing the exiles into the already crowded and ironically named Paradise Valley.

The Detroit Historical Society described it: “Paradise Valley was the business district and entertainment center of a densely-populated African-American residential area in Detroit known as Black Bottom, from the 1920s through the 1950s. … Many neighborhoods in Detroit were displaced by the building of freeways and the projects of urban renewal, but Paradise Valley suffered the largest losses. Although it was difficult for displaced Blacks to find new housing, many purchased property in the old Jewish neighborhood along Twelfth Street. Many of the former residents kept pictures of the old neighborhood and these have helped keep the memory alive of the once vibrant Paradise Valley community.”

The social disruption of that era increased tensions leading to the 1967 Detroit riots that left 43 dead and 1,400 buildings torched.

Greenhut notes today’s city planners wouldn’t even think of advancing polices hurting a racial group. “Yet, that’s exactly what a previous generation of urban planners thought was best. Instead of seeing the answer as less government planning and more private decision-making, each successive generation of urban policy wonks promotes new and improved government planning.”

He brings up how redevelopment misuses the powers of eminent domain, which is supposed to be used only for such purposes as building a school, police station, or road. This also is the subject of his 2004 book, “Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain.”

In the new book, he writes, “One of the untold stories of California’s government redevelopment process was the degree to which their central plans squelched the natural redevelopment process. Because those agencies had expansive eminent-domain powers, small owners stopped investing and improving their own properties as they waited for the big decisions from City Hall.”

There’s a better approach: “Cities should be treated as living organisms that reflect the goals and desires of the people who live and work there, which means accepting the natural process of growth and decay and providing property owners with the confidence that if they invest in their property the city won’t come along and take it. Messiness, as I see it, means allowing that process to work—not trying to bulldoze neighborhoods and replace them with fancy but sterile planning-driven projects.”

Progressive Harm

In the “How Progressive Policies Harm Cities” section, Greenhut brings up such misgovernance as the excessive school lockdowns during the pandemic. He cites the February recall of three progressive San Francisco School Board members as an instance how even liberal voters have become fed up with the nutty experimentation.

He concluded, “Even in the nation’s (arguably) most progressive big city, voters expect school board members and other elected officials to focus on the fundamentals of their job of educating students, rather than to use the posts to make far-reaching political statements.”

Homeless Solutions?

The homeless crisis in California seemingly has no solution. Greenhut writes, “There’s no easy way to fix the homeless problem that avoids the toughest issues: getting people the mental health and addiction help that they need so they can live independent and productive lives.” More housing doesn’t help those who don’t want to leave the open streets.

Instead, “[S]tate officials must give up orthodoxies like Housing First, which are born out of ideologies, and focus instead on practical solutions. The Free Cities Center is committed to finding such solutions that treat homeless people in a humane way—but that also prioritize the needs of urban residents who have a right to safely enjoy their homes, streets and communities. No one should have a right to turn a city park into a war zone.”

When I was state Sen. John Moorlach’s press secretary, the homeless crisis was one of his biggest issues, including reforming the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967, which made it more difficult to put mentally ill people into institutions against their will. It was intended to reduce the abuses of incarcerating people who just were eccentric, and of no harm to anyone.

Greenhut also covers the LPS Act, as it’s called, “That legislation is perfectly understandable given the conditions in the state’s mental hospitals—and the coercive tactics that officials had used to institutionalize people (and often for questionable reasons). But it did impose an obstacle for removing mentally unstable people from the streets.”

Moorlach’s take on it from 2020 is here in his review of a report from the California State Auditor, “Lanterman-Petris-Short Act: California Has Not Ensured That Individuals With Serious Mental Illnesses Receive Adequate Ongoing Care.”

My guess is this is just another California problem that won’t be solved.

High Cost of Housing

Greenhut then tackles the immense cost of housing in California. “The most obvious problem is an imbalance in supply and demand. For years, Western states—and California in particular—have imposed regulatory policies that constrict new home construction or incentivize builders to construct only luxury products.

“Today’s policymakers focus largely on building new affordable (and subsidized) units, but the real solution involves allowing the construction of all types of housing everywhere.”

Good luck with that. The solution, if one can call it that, I think will be more people exiting California for states with cheaper housing and lower taxes. And fewer people moving here. The reduced demand for housing then will start to lower prices.

Schools and Crime

On California’s abysmal public schools, which rank near the bottom on most national tests, Greenhut recommends more school choice, including expanded charter schools. There’s also a financial component: “School choice does help neighborhoods values. After a Dallas-area school district (Edgewood) embraced a voucher program, property values flourished.”

On the recent increase in crime, he writes, “Californians are tired of crime—and they are blaming those responsible for prosecuting it. … We can’t revive cities and entice new families to move to them if people don’t feel safe on the streets or in their homes. We can embrace thoughtful reforms to the justice system and take a hard line on serious crime at the same time.”

Some crime fighters are blaming recent California reforms for the spike. “There’s little evidence that sensible criminal-justice reforms are behind the increase in crime,” he counters. “Nevertheless, the public is right to be outraged at the progressive approach that views all criminals as victims of society and discriminatory police practices—and refuses to make distinctions between nonviolent offenders and predators who endanger law-abiding citizens. Keeping young nonviolent offenders out of the justice system and releasing repeat offenders are two different matters. …

“Elected officials embracing a balanced approach offer the best hope for restoring safe communities.”

Indeed, San Francisco’s liberal voters again took action by recalling soft-on-crime District Attorney Chesa Boudin in June.

In conclusion, this initial entry in the Free Cities Project’s policy books provides an excellent introduction to today’s urbans problems and outlines some solutions. It’s relatively short at 72 pages, yet provides copious footnotes for further research. I’m looking forward to future volumes. Maybe we really can make things better in California.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.