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Maia's avatar

I'm not following how you read Abundance as a proposal for top-down, centrally planned change. While it does have some things to say about issues like allocation of grant funding for scientific research and large-scale infrastructure, it is almost entirely about removing obstacles so that people on the ground can act, especially as it pertains to cities and housing. Those obstacles tend to exist at the level of local government, but the important detail is that they are obstacles, not which level of government they exist at or which direction the movement for change is coming from. Sometimes the pressure is going to come from below, from individual property owners who are tired of being told what they can't do, or from renters who are tired of being told their priorities don't matter, but other times it is going to come from regional or state level authorities that are more representative and have a bigger picture view of things, telling municipalities and neighborhood homeowners' groups that their narrow self-interest will no longer be allowed to impose stasis on entire metropolitan areas. I want to keep my eyes on the goal, and I don't see the point of insisting that only bottom-up change of a particular fashion is desirable. The status quo is deeply entrenched, and overcoming it is going to take work at a variety of levels, in a variety of directions, from a variety of actors. The important thing is that we meet in the same place. Everybody has a part to play, but this can't be done entirely through grassroots local action. In no way do I see Abundance as an insistence that local actors abandon their own efforts and wait for permission from above. I don't understand where in the text you're drawing such an exclusive message from.

I'm also confused by your criticism of Abundance as a proposal to streamline the existing system when the system itself is the problem, followed by the backyard cottage example in which you present working within the existing system as better than the alleged sweeping changes called for by Abundance. Abundance presents a vision of where we should be headed, but it doesn't follow to me that this means it is opposed to incrementalism in favor of dramatic and immediate change. I'm less familiar with Derek Thompson's work, but Ezra Klein, at least, strikes me as a "yes, and" type who wants to do whatever will move the needle in the right direction, not someone prone to either/or arguments. I think the conflict you present here between bottom-up incrementalism and aggressive top-down reform is a red herring.

My historical view is somewhat different from yours, too. While I agree that postwar urban renewal was misguided, the system we struggle against today arose afterward, as an overcorrection against it. Maybe you think Abundance is proposing to shove the pendulum all the way back in the other direction, but I don't see it that way. Unlike postwar urban renewal, Abundance doesn't come with a specific blueprint for redesigning cities, nor does it insist on razing and rebuilding en masse. The point I take from it is simply that things need to be allowed to change, and in service of that, the system built from the 1970s and onward around the goal of preventing things from changing needs to be dismantled.

The actual changes desired here are a mix of bottom-up local efforts and larger public endeavors, but again, I think focusing exclusively on one or the other is missing the point. Undoing the NIMBY system allows individual neighborhood actors to carry out incremental change, and it also gets out of the way of big infrastructure projects like transit and energy, which we do need, and which aren't going to happen through eking out small wins at the community level. I see Abundance as more "big picture" than "top down," and the Strong Towns message is a part of that picture, not an opposing worldview.

I'm involved in a fledgling Strong Towns chapter in my city, and I seek YIMBY-aligned allies wherever I can find them, but I'm alarmed by all the anti-Abundance rhetoric coming from the Strong Towns corner lately. I hope you can ease some of my concerns.

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Lee Nellis's avatar

Like Chuck, I have seen - participated in - this story before, in having the State or Federal agencies inflict unfunded, one-size-fits-all mandates on local government. I have also been involved in using the Federal government as a way to attain goals the localities and states aren't ever going to reach. So, as other commentators have said, the way forward is all of the above, presuming one can sort out the right strategy at the right time. The grass roots campaign to get the legislature to act on ADUs, as it is described below seems to be in the ballpark. BUT, the UT legislature that allowed ADUs as a property rights matter then deprived local governments of much of their power to regulate land divisions.

SO, I am going to say a word for Chuck and the de-centralist camp. I got a whiff of authoritarianism reading Abundance, and I get more than a whiff from some YIMBY advocates here on Substack and elsewhere. And I have a hard time not connecting that to the fact that we are experiencing the worst abuse of centralized power in American history.

Authoritarianism is in the air, and we should be very careful about what we wish for. How is telling cities they must permit ADUs any less an application of power than banning abortion or gender-affirming care? Or how about de-funding public schools in favor of vouchers? Its fine when you like the results of the application of power from the top. Not so good when you don't.

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