Thread by @clmarohn

Do you really get to decide the kind of place you want to live in? Let’s look at five ways Americans tell everyone how they have to live. Hint: it’s less about arrogance and more about ignorance. 🧵

#1: Housing Finance

Think a 30 year mortgage is a free market outcome? LOL

That you can easily finance some housing styles but not others isn’t American preference. It’s b/c the federal gov’t made it easy to finance one and not the other. 2/

Before the 1930s, housing was financed through local banks - 50% down payments, 5 year interest-only loans w/ balloon payments. That’s what a free market looks like; very conservative financing. 3/

The federal government has told you HOW you have to live: in a home that qualifies for a federally-subsidized mortgage product.

You can technically build something else, but good luck financing it.

4/housingtrap.org

And good luck affording it because the American housing finance system drives up housing prices (a feature, not a flaw). 5/

#2: Highway Expansions
Imagine a federal program that set out to build high speed rail everywhere. It was fully funded by user fees and so lots of HSR is built very quickly. So much, in fact, that after 20 years the entire system was constructed.

Now, instead of HSR, think interstate highways. That’s where we were in 1970. The system was done. Finished. 6/

Did we stop building highways? Of course not. LOL

There was a big pot of money and insatiable demand for just one more lane so, why not? Plus, economists told us over and over that it was an easy way to create jobs and boost GDP.

Economists are wrong, BTW. 7/

When the world gives you strip mall shopping and franchise food instead of neighborhood stores and a downtown, you can pretend you are deciding….

…..or you can wake up and see that it is the outcome of subsidies that dramatically favor one style of business over another. 7/

#3: Zoning Restrictions
People get to decide the kind of place they want to live in? Cracks open your zoning code.

This isn't about having a gun range or a rendering plant. Oh no. In North America, we tell EVERYONE how they have to live. 8/

Want to build a 600 square foot starter home? No.

Want to rent out your spare bedroom to a college kid? No.

Want to build a small home in the backyard for your elderly mother-in-law? No.

Want to build a four car garage? Yeah, that you can probably do. LOL 9/

Ironically, the people most vocal about letting “people decide what kind of place they want to live in” are also the most vocal about opposing decisions unlike their own.

The result is the stagnation and then sudden intensification shown in the original post. 10/

#4: Safe Streets

I decide I want to live on a tree-lined street engineered for slow traffic. One that is so safe that the kids can play in it. Is that a choice that is available to me? Could my neighbors and I agree to make that available?

Of course not! 11/

Your street must meet the minimum traffic standards of the engineering profession. These are standards designed to move high volumes of vehicles at high speeds.

Safety is measured in terms of the driver, not the neighborhood overall. It’s a bias built into the practice. 12/

These standards didn’t evolve out of our common culture; they were imposed by a set of carrots and sticks tied to funding. You drive to the megagrocer thinking you’ve made that choice, but that was a choice made for you.

Don’t believe it? Okay, so what is your other option? 13/

#5: Parking Minimums

Drive to that megagrocer. There is a big parking lot. Is that because the free market determined abundant parking was a competitive advantage?

Again, LOL.

This is another nudge that is a part of deliberate public policy. 14/

In a world where we all get to decide for ourselves, there would be businesses that compete by having big parking lots on cheap land at the edge of town and others that compete on proximity by being within walking or biking distance.

That’s not North America. 15/

Instead, we mandate a minimum amount of parking and force everyone to compete on that basis.

Who does that favor? (Hint: it's not the local small business.) 16/

At @strongtowns, we truly want people to decide for themselves the kind of place they want to live in. That’s not arrogance; it’s humility. 17/

@StrongTowns What is arrogant (and ignorant) is believing that the North American development pattern is a byproduct of individual decisions made in a free and noncoercive market. You have the illusion of choice, but it is an illusion all the same. 18/

Let’s go back to the original tweet and really identify what is at stake.

On the left, you have a bottom-up system where neighborhoods are shaped by many hands, a co-creative process resulting in evolution over time. It can be messy, but also adaptive and strong.

On the right, you have a top-down system where neighborhoods are radically transformed based on the priorities of distant policymakers and corporations. It can feel orderly, but it resists change and is ultimately fragile.

If you don’t want to be told how to live, you need to choose the approach on the left.

If you want to decide for yourself the kind of place you live in, you need to choose the approach on the left.

The approach on the left is a @strongtowns approach.

Don’t be hard on yourself if you are just waking up to this reality. Most people don’t question the world around them -- it’s all we’ve ever known, after all -- even though the North American development pattern is the largest social experiment even undertaken. We reshaped an entire continent in a generation around new and untested theories. We live in that experiment. It’s not natural.

If you want to go deeper, follow us @strongtowns. You can also get our other content free at (new articles, podcasts, and videos each weekday) or dive into our first book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity. ()

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