Yes, They’re Coming for Your Cars

SACRAMENTO — I’ve been spending time engaging with urbanists on X (formerly Twitter) so that you, dear American Spectator readers, can avoid doing so. By the way, it’s not something I’d recommend unless you have a large stash of blood-pressure medication. Obviously, social-media silos encourage zealots from every crevice of society, but these platforms also provide the rest of us with useful insight into what true-believers in any movement are thinking.

Urbanists are a highly energized bunch on X, where they post endlessly about the evils of cars, the glories of mass transit, Big Oil’s stranglehold, why all Americans (even in cold climates) should forego cars for bicycles, how Americans are greedy and selfish, why suburbs are icky, and why we should all live in a characterless condo in, say, Oakland.

They’re constantly outraged at things to which most of us wouldn’t give a second thought — busy shopping centers (consumerism!), empty shopping centers (overbuilt suburbia!), a sidewalk that makes a jagged turn (insufficient attention to pedestrians), some dude who drove or parked poorly (traffic violence), painted bike lanes that don’t include safety barriers (paint is not infrastructure!), and big suburban houses (they’re unsustainable!).

On the happy side, they love posting pictures of, say, a person riding a bicycle to the home-improvement store where — like poor people do in developing countries — load them up with supplies. There is even a nifty e-bike/truck/trailer you can buy that can actually handle some lumber. I looked it up and it costs more than my V-8 pickup truck is worth, but whatever. (I’m fine if that’s your choice, by the way.)

My biggest takeaway is urbanists (at least many of those on X) are absolutely miserable with the way the world currently is constructed. Their car-driving neighbors are inconsiderate. Their local officials don’t listen. Bike lanes aren’t wide enough. Transit systems are unreliable and insufficient. Parks are poorly designed. The rent’s too high. That new downtown building is ugly. The grocery store is too far away.

I’d suggest they buy a car and move to the suburbs, where prices are lower, people are more neighborly, city governments are better run, and it’s easy to get around. But that would be rude. I love cities and don’t blame people (especially the young and childless) from wanting to live in them given the amenities and visual drama, but a lot of what they complain about goes with living on anthill. They might be happier if they adapt to the world rather than insist that the world change to suit them.

Everything is not going to change to resemble the cool European city where you spent a semester in college. If you like your current suburban lifestyle, then you need to change your outlook because your choices are harming everybody else. It’s a great example of how the climate-change ideology threatens every one of our individual rights. How can you insist on your right to fill-in-the-blank when that decision is causing the Earth to turn into an inferno?

Before I get accused of being a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yarder), I’ll note that I’ve actively supported the urbanist/YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) agenda whenever it means reducing regulations and promoting property rights. I’ve cheered as the California Legislature passed YIMBY laws including ones that allow property owners to build duplexes in single-family neighborhoods, an elimination of stifling parking minimums, and a law allowing streamlined housing construction along the coastal zone.

YIMBYs say they are for deregulation, but that’s not exactly so. They are spot on that NIMBYs — especially those who control local governments — have caused California’s housing crisis by making it so difficult to build new homes by requiring layers of regulatory and community approvals. They are right that the state needs to allow far more housing construction. Bravo.

But while urbanists quote the great urban writer Jane Jacobs, who called for a bottom-up approach to urban planning, many echo her nemesis Robert Moses. They can’t imagine allowing anything not signed off by Central Planning. Urbanists argue that “we” (translation: Other People as directed by government agencies) should build this or that — when “we” simply need to follow Jacobs and let the spirit of individuals invest and build as they choose.

There are some wonderful exceptions, but you can’t count on a YIMBY to support the construction of a new city or suburban developments. NIMBYs oppose anything near them, but YIMBYs support projects that promote their end goal of density and a transit-oriented society. If you have any illusions about their commitment to markets, then consider that many YIMBYs advocate for stringent rent controls.

One always finds crazy stuff on X, but many of the ideas urbanists express there come from academics, architects, city planners, and writers who are intelligent and influential. The latest Big Idea has even gotten traction at the National Transportation Safety Board: requiring all new vehicles to be equipped with electronic speed limiters. Sure, and why don’t we also require all new homes to come with security cameras to monitor misbehavior? Or we can all just wear ankle bracelets.

One writer on X proposed limiting the number of car registrations in the state, meaning that if you want to buy a new car you have to purchase a registration from someone else. That should really help a low-income worker who needs a car to get to work. Others seriously propose phasing out cars or banning them in large swaths of cities.

Given dismal transit-ridership numbers, these progressive activists know they aren’t successfully convincing people to abandon their cars, so they need to rely on coercion. People also are fleeing cities given the high prices and mismanagement (bad schools, high taxes, uncontrollable homeless populations, soaring crime), yet this is their model for all of us — whether we like it or not.

Given their dislike of cars, urbanists like to prattle about the unfairness of car subsidies. When I point out that cars (thanks to the highway user fee) are only subsidized at 1.5 cents per mile compared to 90 cents per mile for transit and that drivers largely subsidize transit and bike lanes, they immediately change the subject to, “Yeah, but cars are destroying the planet.”

Suburban development was indeed a product of a previous generation of social planning, but it’s nonsensical to now again use central planning to reengineer the society all of us have grown up in. Most people would be fine with an agenda that “allows” variety, but urbanists tend to distrust the private sector (unless it’s the subsidized variety) and are so opinionated about everything that gets built around them that they just can’t allow investors to do their thing.

It’s too bad, really. It’s good to create more walkability in suburbia and to improve traffic policies to reduce traffic fatalities. It’s a great idea to allow mixed-use developments so that people can choose to walk to the store, with the emphasis on choose. Bike lanes are fine within reason. Better transit options have their place, provided they are cost-effective and not utopian. Sadly, the urbanists rarely talk about allowing private transit options or reforming their poor-performing transit lines.

But this simple, reasonable agenda is consumed by raging, anti-car sentiments and by condescending attitudes toward America’s benighted suburbanites. Many urbanists refuse to recognize that different people choose different places at different times in their lives and that’s OK. It’s a common view that the only legitimate choice is urban living. That leaves them relying mainly on government edicts — and leaves the rest of us with no choice but to rebut them.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

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