We forget, so we take for granted what a city is: a place of commerce; historically, the marketplace to which farmers and artisans brought their wares.
Tired of commuting, threatened in travel, they erected residences above their stalls: the beginning of a town. The Industrial Revolution added manufacturing; towns became cities. Everything is there: food, clothing, shelter, schools, churches, stores, factories, culture, entertainment.
Parents and children came home at noon for dinner. No need for the expense of transportation: Everyone lived, walked, and worked in their neighborhood; the very charm of European cities.
Politically progressive cities have forgotten these roots. Their focus on social issues (care for the marginalized), on quality-of-life issues (bicycle lanes, parks, pedestrian malls) runs counter to what a city is: a place of commerce.
Activity that supports commerce—truck and automobile circulation, parking, loading zones, factories—must not be restricted in favor of residential use.
But because they forgot, progressive cities evolved into something else: humane centers of lax law enforcement, homelessness, and crime, which chase away business. And because “humane” progressives dislike firearms, progressive cites take little interest in how their police departments operate. Externally and internally unmonitored, they attract trigger-happy personnel.
San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, the nation’s most liberal cities, have the largest homeless populations and the most vicious police departments.
Progressives’ misunderstanding of cities is an extension of progressives’ misunderstanding of government—the sole purpose of which is to protect, not provide, social, political, and economic freedom. With zero faith in America’s historical commitment to market solutions, progressives simply do not understand that social and economic problems are not solvable by government, by the political process, by throwing money.
The New Deal, the War on Poverty, neither had an effect on the nation’s poverty rate. Poverty was 15 percent in 1964 and has remained 15 percent, on average, to this day, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Because progressives never state the problem correctly—namely, that homeless people come to town to lie down and die—they never state the obvious solution: The homeless should leave; keep moving. Cities can tell them there is city-provided housing, food, clothing, and medical attention on the outskirts of town at unused factories and military bases, but cities must enforce the law.
Think “Broken Windows” policy by George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, which insists that cities target lesser infractions that stoke fear and unrest in urban neighborhoods—because they lead to greater infractions. “One unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares.” In other words, what all law enforcement agencies know is that maintaining order, safeguarding property, and preventing crime work in tandem. Yes, pursue drunks, prostitutes, vagrants, subway turnstile jumpers, and windshield squeegee men.
Progressives dismiss such policy as unproven neo-conservative pablum that gives the police excuses to harass and arrest people for minor misconduct, which leads to mass incarceration and racial profiling.
But that was the success behind Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s New York City drop in crime: Purposely drop a candy wrapper, and you’ll go to prison (one hour the first time). In other words, it’s not the severity but the certainty of punishment.
Mr. Giuliani’s policy did not lead to mass incarceration. People are not stupid. They got the message, streets were clean, and crime stopped.
Kelling and Wilson wrote in “The Moral Sense”: “The citizen who fears the ill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager or the importuning beggar is not merely expressing distaste for unseemly behavior; he is also giving voice to a bit of folk wisdom that happens to be a correct generalization—namely, that serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked.
“The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions.
“When you turn people [the police] into warriors, and there are wars on crime and wars on drugs, don’t be surprised when they abide by the rules of warfare rather than the rules of peacekeeping.”
Which is what happens when the law is not enforced.
Sir Robert Peel stated: “The sign of an effective police department is the absence of crime. Not the activities dealing with it, like an arrest.”
