Neighborhoods Should Have a Say in their Own Redevelopment

Despite the hard work done by community volunteers to improve their neighborhoods, they tend to come under fire for allegedly impeding economic growth. On Tuesday, Slate contributor Matthew Yglesias wrote an article about a frustrating experience with neighborhood activists in his community. It centered around a group advocating for a liquor license moratorium in their neighborhood. After reading his article, I thought it was only fair to give a perspective of the other side of this conflict.

I work as a community organizer in Omaha, Nebraska. One of the most successful and high-profile community action groups I have seen form in Omaha is the Alcohol Impact Coalition (AIC), a group of twelve prominent neighborhood associations working to increase neighborhood input on the issuance of liquor licenses in urban Omaha.

In 2010, a local Walgreens was applying for a liquor license. The local residents deemed this an establishment and location unfit for liquor sales. The city government agreed and rejected the application. Despite the consensus between the neighborhood and the city government, the Nebraska Liquor Commission overruled the city's decision and granted the liquor license. Thus, the neighborhoods organized and began the AIC and the Let Omaha Control its Alcohol Landscape (LOCAL) campaign. They have been pushing for legislation to allow for neighborhoods to decide when an establishment poses a threat to community values and have made some preliminary progress on this front.

According to Yglesias, these citizens are exhibiting "NIMBY stupidity." This characterization is demeaning and incredibly disrespectful to people who are advocating for a better community and neighborhood for everyone to enjoy. While his experience seems to deal with license issuance moratoriums, he has not seen the other side of the conflict where citizens who are not interested in the drastic path of moratorium but just want some control over who can sell alcohol in their neighborhood are being pushed around by state officials and corporate interests.

I think we can all agree that moratorium is a radical and excessive step, but there are communities across the country who don't mind a quiet bar that is involved in community affairs but find worrisome a bar that doesn't respect the community it resides in. Yglesias's analysis smacks of classic narrow-minded gentrification rhetoric. Redevelopment in our country's urban cores is going to be a key aspect of economic and cultural change over the next few decades, but we cannot push economic growth forward at the sole expense of the current residents. Residents need to be a part of the redevelopment conversation, and the citizens who band together in reasonable, moderate groups like Omaha's AIC should not be belittled on account of the beliefs of radical moratorium advocates.

If there is anyone who should be front and center in redevelopment talks in a community, it is the current residents of the community. Too often, government, business interests, and yes, pundit economists say they know what is best for the community without consulting with the members of the community themselves. As long as we continue to say we know what's best for a community we are not a part of, it doesn't matter if the redevelopers are public, private, or non-profit, they are missing the perspective for their redevelopment plan that is needed the most.

Libertarian Mayor of London Boris Johnson: "There is a Limit to Laissez-Faire"

In a recent Slate interview with London Mayor Boris Johnson, Johnson talks about his opinion as to how a community based on well-being and liberty of its citizens requires an active government to be successful. In particular, he comments on the need for government to provide "leadership" in respect to public cleanliness, public transportation, and even diet and exercise amongst the people.

While his comments may seem a bit extreme, they come in context of a recent New York City ban on large-size cups for soda pop. The role of government in these sorts of decisions is also a relevant issue at the federal level as conservative opposition to the Affordable Health Care Act has used the example of compulsory broccoli purchases as the logical outcome of the Supreme Court's recent ruling in favor of President Obama's signature legislative achievement.

Two things come forth from these discussions: an acknowledgement of truth and an acknowledgement of limits. Mayor Johnson puts it very well when he talks about the importance of cities having the feel of villages. While the city brings people close enough together to be advantageous on an economic level, human beings still have millions of years of evolving and adapting to the small-group setting of a hunter-gatherer tribe. While the endless opportunities of the city should, from an economic standpoint, give individuals the free reign to make choices that will make them happy, the similarities we share due to our human nature point towards cities needing be have certain characteristics. These could include cleanliness, easy transportation, and strong neighborhoods that allow for multiple interactions amongst people.

Nonetheless, the limitations of the government intervention model should be heeded. If we are to follow an account of human flourishing that derives partly from our evolutionary history, the modern nation-state does not fit well into that system. Aristotle's polis, or city-state, seems to be a much closer fit to what we are searching for. But this would suggest that a leader such as Johnson, who would be in favor of government "leadership" at the city level, may be more wary of it at the national level. This fits well with an American federal notion of democracy: at the local level, the people have more of an opportunity to use their government for good. As we abstract government to higher and higher levels, the ability of people to use their government becomes less and less possible. Thus, we should always keep in mind that government intervention has to be backed by a strong democracy in order to be effective.

What Does a City Lose When It Builds a Parking Lot?

Virtually no modern American community finds itself immune to the issue of parking. From our small town main streets to our big city downtowns, parking is an issue of discussion in village councils, city halls, coffee shops and restaurants. Consistently, car owners (who are not a mere interest group but make up a proportion of Americans tantamount to those who can identify as "women" or "white") advocate for more space for parking so that they can conveniently travel to locations in their communities.

The outcome of this conflict? A 1960 study on parking spaces showed that most major urban areas devote about half of their square mileage to streets and parking spaces. This means that about half of the space in a city is being used to support a transportation system that relies heavily on automobiles. This is space that could be used for a number of different purposes, including public parks, businesses, and especially grocery stores to combat the recent issue of urban food deserts.

Much can be said about the negative side effects of America's car culture. With gas prices skyrocketing and evidence mounting of the health and environmental dangers around fossil fuel usage, there is more than enough good reason to be skeptical of America's automobile addiction. There is also much to be said about the automobile's detraction from walking culture, a trend which has contributed to declining health of our population.

A more neglected casualty of America's car culture is the loss of community that comes from excessive reliance on cars. Someone who drives a car does not have to sit in a train car with others or mix on the thronged and common road with those who are like and unlike them, yet still a part of their community. Automobile culture makes our travel time an extension of our home life, privatizing our commutes and depriving us of an opportunity to engage with our culture and community. It is this sort of engagement with others that helps imbue us with the empathy necessary to engage in shared governance. While cars are a necessity in many cases, building a culture around them can be detrimental to the democratic spirit.

While the automobile is often revered as a tool for freedom for individuals, an unbudging fidelity to it can imprison a community. When a city builds a parking lot, it loses not only a location for a business, but also a locus for the interactions necessary for a healthy democracy.

Government's Role in Fostering Healthy Communities and Fulfilling Relationships

A fundamental aspect of liberal economic theory is that individuals are the best judges of what will effect their own happiness. The point of a market system is to allow individuals the ability to spend as they wish on what they wish, thus leading to outcomes that are favorable to their personal happiness. Recent research, however, is calling this assumption into question. It turns out that many of the economic decisions that we make do not necessarily lead to our own fulfillment, likely because of our inability to foresee effects of our decisions and misunderstanding of what it is that truly makes us happy.

What is the government's role in rectifying this error? While our current condition in America of political polarization is centered on a question of what the role of government truly is, arguments on both sides are built on a single assumption: that government exists to promote the welfare of its citizens. While this is a perspective that stands in contrast with that offered by the Rand/Nozick/Friedman camp, the theory of the role of government put forth by Nozick is not one that is generally accepted in moral discourse. When people talk about the benefit of limited government, it is defended by the claim that limited government will better work to promote the welfare of its citizens. The modern understanding of government is deeply Aristotelian.

Thus, if government exists to promote the welfare of its citizens, then it has an obligation to work to create systems that benefit its citizens. If science can show us that individuals find more fulfillment in lives that are social rather than solitary, as recent research has begun to uncover, then government should be working to foster the communities, friendships, and families that facilitate that fulfillment.

This is where psychology is beginning to connect with views of human nature put forth by MacIntyre in Dependent Rational Animals. Human beings are built to live in communities and to care about others. When we create systems that encourage people to separate from one another, we are not actually facilitating freedom, but are instead cutting people off from the opportunity to enjoy fundamental human capacities. This is not to say that a more invasive government is the answer in this respect, it may very well be that a more laissez-faire government can allow people to have more authentic experiences with one another. But it does say that government has an interest in healthy relationships and communities within its jurisdiction and that it has an obligation to promote them amongst their citizens.

Why I Don't Use the Word "Communitarianism"

In yesterday's Washington Post, sociologist and journalist E.J. Dionne published an incisive op-ed concerning the modern GOP's decision to turn away from the traditional conservative value of community. In the op-ed, Dionne talks about the tension between American commitment to individualism and the commitment to community life by saying that "we are communitarian individualists or individualistic communitarians, but we have rarely been comfortable with being all one or all the other."

While thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer are often lumped into the category of "communitarian," Dionne's use of the word is an illustration of the reason that these philosophers routinely reject the label. "Communitarianism" is often described as a foil to liberalism. These thinkers are described as critics of liberalism at its foundation, offering a new way of thinking that is fundamentally opposed to the liberal thesis. The basis of this supposed critique is that liberalism considers the individual as primary and that communitarianism concerns the primacy of community.

A look at these thinkers, however, shows that this view is an oversimplification of their true positions. MacIntyre, in his 1999 book Dependent Rational Animals, places special importance on the individual's ability to exercise "independent practical reason." Taylor, in The Ethics of Authenticity, iterates the importance of authentic individuality for flourishing. Even Walzer in Spheres of Justice lays out a system of justice that is focused on goods accrued to individuals.

The takeaway from this is that the thinkers and the philosophical tradition that is often labeled "communitarian" is not the antithesis to individualism that Dionne describes, but is rather a position that supports Dionne's thesis. MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor, and Walzer are not critics of liberalism at its most fundamental level, but are rather offering critiques within liberalism.

Thus, the use of the phrase "communitarian" does little more than to reinforce misconceptions and cause confusion. It would be nice if there were some catch-all phrase to describe the philosophy of this critique, but at this point there is not, so the best we can do is shy away from a label that does nothing but obfuscate the positive contributions of the cause.