The hard-left goals behind progressive city planning schemes

The extreme accusations made by some Silicon Valley progressives during debates over city and land use planning can be confusing to many citizens. Why does owning a single family home make you a racist? Why does driving a car make you a murderer? Why is your highly-competitive tech job evil?

The answers to these questions may reside in understanding the agenda of what Christopher Rufo at City Journal calls the New Left Urbanists--radical city planners and activists who aim to use city planning crises and issues to dictate how people live and set right society’s socioeconomic, racial and moral deficiencies.

As Rufo puts it, the New Left Urbanists "want local governments to rebuild the urban environment—housing, transit, roads and tolls—to achieve social justice, racial justice and net-zero carbon emissions. They rally around slogans such as “ban all cars,” “raze the suburbs” and “single-family housing is white supremacy”—though they’re generally white and affluent themselves, often employed in public or semipublic roles in urban planning, housing development and social advocacy. They treat public housing, mass transit and bike lanes as a holy trinity, and they want to impose their religion on you.

"One widely circulated left-urbanist plan from April 2018 comes from the People’s Policy Project, a crowdfunded socialist think tank. The authors, Peter Gowan and Ryan Cooper, envision the construction of 10 million “municipal homes” over the next decade. The proposal imagines local governments building more housing units than the private construction industry and becoming the largest landlord in many cities." {Editor's note: the idea of greatly expanded government-built affordable housing surfaced repeatedly during the debate over the Google Diridon project.}

"Activists are concerned not only with the quantity of new housing but also with who builds and lives in it. New developments must be government-run and tick off the boxes of identity politics. In San Francisco, some activists oppose all private housing construction. A 2017 essay in the San Francisco Examiner called advocates for more market housing part of a “libertarian, anti-poor campaign to turn longtime sites of progressive organizing into rich-people-only zones” and compared them to white nationalists." {Editor's note: Race-baiting comments about high tech employees surfaced repeatedly in community meetings regarding Google Diridon.}

"In New York City, progressive urbanists have focused on public transportation. The subway system was designed mostly in the early 20th century to serve the practical needs of New Yorkers, but today’s activists see it as a grand instrument for cosmic justice.

"In the Straphangers Campaign’s 2018 “Transportation and Equity” report, the advocacy group begins from the premise that “the most vulnerable New Yorkers suffer disproportionately from high fares, long commutes, polluted air, and dangerous streets.” It ends up estimating that an additional $30 billion in tax revenue would be needed for its desired overhaul: upgrading 11 subway lines, building 130 new accessible stations, and purchasing more than 3,000 new subway cars, along with nearly 5,000 new buses, over the next 10 years while abolishing fares." {Editor's note: the concept of free mass transit in the Bay Area is being floated by local politicians.}

"Activists use euphemisms like “transportation alternatives” and “transportation choices,” but at heart their vision is about control. They want to remake the urban infrastructure in their own image: green, moral and in solidarity with the masses—at least as those masses exist in their imagination.

"The new left urbanists’ fatal mistake is to view cities as collections of buildings, roads, tunnels and bike lanes. Urbanists can demolish and rebuild physical environments, but they can’t pave over the people. Life in a metropolis is simply too complex, too variable and too ephemeral—it will evade even the most careful planning. Making cities better and more beautiful requires bringing neighbors, developers, employers and governments into the conversation. Thriving cities are built through cooperation, not compulsion."

Mr. Rufo's article appeared in City Journal and a shortened version appeared in the Wall Street Journal.