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January-February 2009
Vol. 23, No. 1
Bureaucracy
Confessions of a Planning Commissioner
Even well-meaning people achieve dubious ends when they join the bureaucracy.
Warren Gibson teaches economics at San Jose State University and mechanical engineering at Santa Clara University.
If you’re a libertarian and you get tired of huddling with fellow believers, you might decide to take a run at politics. What to do?
It should be easy to get the Libertarian Party nomination for your local congressional seat. Likely result: you collect one or two percent of the vote and retreat to your huddle with your scrapbook of back-page newspaper articles and leftover campaign signs.
Or you could aim for an office that’s much easier to get into, but has a lot less power and influence. I took the latter tack. I got myself appointed to the Planning Commission in my home town of Belmont, California.
Every city and county in California has a planning commission, consisting of five to seven citizen members, usually appointed by the city council and serving without pay or for nominal reimbursement of expenses. The commission’s job is to review residential and commercial building projects that meet some threshold of size or complexity, to see that they conform to the zoning ordinance and the general plan that the ordinance implements. When a project is proposed, the professional city staff does the groundwork, which can be quite extensive, and the commission is supposed to apply “community values” as only it, presumably, can. It may approve a project as is, send it back for revisions, or reject it. Its decisions can be appealed to the city council. I suspect this is pretty much what happens in other states as well.
A commissioner’s job can be a demanding one. I attended bimonthly meetings, one of which ended at 1:30 a.m. Sometimes I devoted a good bit of the preceding weekend to reviewing a thick stack of reports and drawings, and visiting the sites of proposed projects. During meetings we were expected to pay attention, ask intelligent questions, think carefully, follow protocols, and vote fairly. Sometimes we got flak from neighbors for decisions they disliked, and once in a blue moon we got some praise. This was all fine with me — I enjoyed it, mostly.
It would be silly to get on a planning commission and then cast every vote on High Libertarian Principle — crossing your arms and declaring that the very notion of city planning is illegitimate, for example. You have to take the zoning laws and building codes as given and then hope you can find enough latitude to do the right thing. New appointees, regardless of their political orientation, often overestimate that latitude. Some start out thinking, “Well, I just won’t vote for any bad projects.” You can’t follow that policy, and if you try, the city planning staff or the city attorney will come down on you. Belmont’s zoning ordinance spells out criteria, called “findings,” on which commissioners must base their votes. If you find that a project satisfies all those criteria, your vote is yes. If you can’t make one or more of the findings, you have to explain why, and your vote is no. Of course, some of these findings can be a bit vague (would a new structure significantly block views of “ridge lines”?). That vagueness can be either a source of confusion or an opening to vote against projects you just plain dislike.
My background as a professional engineer was my most valuable asset on the commission. I know how to read drawings, and I try to reduce issues to numbers whenever I can. It surprised me to learn how little aptitude some people have for these things. Sometimes I found problems in drawings or calculations that the professional staff had missed, and I believe the staff and the other commissioners appreciated these insights. But at first I knew nothing about how things get done in a political environment, and it took me a long time to learn to express myself in ways that would influence others without unduly antagonizing them. Eventually I was elected chair, which gave me an opportunity to learn how to run a meeting smoothly.
Although I enjoyed learning about laws and politics, making new friends, and acquiring new skills, I left the commission feeling frustrated. Yes, some good projects turned out better because of our work, and a couple of bad proposals didn’t get done. But what troubled me most was not the few bad projects that got through, but the good ones that didn’t, or almost didn’t. Two of the many projects I saw may cast some light on how planning works these days — or doesn’t.
Belmont’s main drag is called El Camino Real. Its romantic name — The Royal Road — belies its true nature. Our two-mile stretch is dotted with used-car lots, motels, fast-food places, a tattoo parlor, a 99-cent store, and a check cashing store. You have to get away from El Camino to realize that you’re in an area where the average house price exceeds $1 million. Given our town’s affluence, given the city’s official policy favoring “economic development” (backed by a Redevelopment Agency that provides tax funds to private businesses), and given our Downtown Specific Plan, which was supposed to foster coordinated retail development, one might expect to see more upscale businesses drawn to El Camino. But very few have materialized. Why? The story of Golara and her restaurant provides some clues.
Golara Mokhtari had a career in computer software that ended with the dotcom bust. She then got into real estate, acquiring a tiny house on El Camino with the idea of using it as an office. Late one night in 2004 she got a call from the Belmont police, who informed her that her house was on fire. She was relieved to discover that it was actually the restaurant directly adjoining the house that had caught fire, and her little house was undamaged. Golara saw an opportunity to acquire the damaged building, repair it, and open a new restaurant.
Though she knew little of the restaurant business, her attitude was, “Why not?” She had worked her way up to a management position in a major software firm and had succeeded in real estate. These successes had given her the confidence necessary to tackle the restaurant business. After the fire department assured her that the damage to the building was less than 20%, meaning that the place wasn’t too far gone to be repaired, she bought it. The location is the corner of El Camino and Broadway. (Yes, we have a Broadway. It’s three blocks long.)
That was late in 2004, and she hoped to be open for business within a year or so. Little did she know what lay ahead.
I first learned of Golara’s plans when her project was presented to the planning commission for review in 2005. I was delighted to see that a burned-out eyesore might be fixed up and put to productive use. After taking a look outside and inside, and reviewing the plans, I was ready to vote yes, though my final decision had to await the public hearing, where all the evidence would be presented. But, we were told, there had been a snag.
Golara’s original plan called for an entrance on El Camino, which would have required a short ramp projecting onto the sidewalk. This “encroachment” was acceptable to the staff and the commission, but because El Camino is a state highway, Caltrans, the mammoth bureaucracy that is responsible for thousands of miles of California freeways and highways, would have to approve the three-foot ramp. Golara dutifully submitted an application to Caltrans, paid the requisite fee, and waited. Eventually she gave up and redrew the plans with an entrance on Broadway.
Now another player enters the story. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that imposes all sorts of accessibility requirements on businesses and local governments — in direct contradiction to the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, I might add. ADA became a major problem for Golara. Two fully accessible rest rooms were required, taking up a lot of scarce space in her small building. But the most vexing problems came from the fact that the building is on a gently sloped lot and has three floor levels. It ended up with a switchback ramp in the center of the restaurant — an obstacle to almost every customer and especially to the servers, who have to navigate it to get to the kitchen.
Golara took the trouble to consult a state ADA expert, who was quite helpful. But she found the local officials more restrictive on ADA matters, perhaps because they were not ADA experts and therefore tended to err on the side of conservatism. So she had to forego the small stairway that could have bypassed the ramp.
Golara does not dispute the need for rules that are grounded in genuine health and safety concerns. But she does think those rules ought to be applied with a healthy dose of common sense. Otherwise, she told me, “When rules get too cumbersome, nothing gets done.” She thinks the city planning staff could have been more supportive, given the favorable externalities she was generating. The process dragged on far longer than she ever imagined, and all the while she had to make mortgage and insurance payments.
Carlos de Melo, Director of Community Development for the City of Belmont, has another point of view. Part of Golara’s problem, he says, is that her building lies in the Downtown Specific Plan area (more about which later) and was therefore subject to special design rules. He says he and his staff tried to guide her through the process and ended up spending far more staff time than such a small project would normally require. He has a mandate from the city council to cover his expenses with fee income, and says he “took a bath” on her project.
Who is right, Golara or Carlos? As in some Greek tragedy, each is right within his or her own context. Golara expected that a person of intelligence and determination, though inexperienced in retail business, would be able to make this restaurant happen in reasonable time without unnecessary obstacles. Under that assumption, she is right to feel aggrieved. Carlos, on the other hand, is a professional planner, and to him, the world of rules, regulations, reviews, and fees is like water to the fish — not to be questioned. He clearly worked hard within those rules to help Golara get going. In his context, he was right. But the bottom line in my estimation is that three layers of government — federal, state, and local — im-posed substantial costs on Golara, with little in the way of benefits to offset those costs.
Golara opened for business this past July, two and a half years later than she had anticipated. Few entrepreneurs or investors would have stuck it out so long. Only Golara’s exceptional determination and resourcefulness got her through to opening day. She and her partner have transformed the burned-out wreck into the Café Mossant, a lovely spot with good food and a warm atmosphere. It’s a little gem that brightens a stretch of El Camino that badly needed brightening. She feeds the city government through sales tax revenues, just as she literally feeds some of the nearby city hall workers. In addition to the direct benefits she provides to customers, employees, and eventually, she hopes, investors, she provides indirect benefits — which economists call “positive externalities” — to neighbors and passersby who may never set foot in her restaurant.
When I joined the planning commission I had to take the planning process as given. Now that I’m off, I feel free to question it.
What is the worst that might have happened if there had been no planning process at all? What if she had built whatever she wanted without benefit of any design review, entitlements, or permits? What mischief might she have done? Painted the place an ugly color? Make it inaccessible to handicapped people? Cut corners on materials? Conceivable, but unlikely. It’s not just Golara’s personal standards that would have prevented such things; the highly competitive restaurant market simply wouldn’t have allowed them. Restaurant customers are a fickle lot, demanding high standards of food, service, decor, economy, and convenience. It’s very difficult to see how the planning process prevented any significant unfavorable outcome that the market wouldn’t have prevented. In short, the fault as I see it lies not with Golara, not with Carlos, but with the system. Regulation has gotten such a stranglehold on development — and not just in Belmont — that often only those with deep pockets or political savvy can get anything done.
Moving on from Golara’s, if you take a left onto Ralston Avenue you soon come to a vacant field. This brings us to the story of Brad Liebman, and the senior residences that were not to be.
Since 1901 Belmont has been the home of various sanitariums. By the mid 1990s the remaining psychiatric hospital had been struggling and was up for sale. When Brad Liebman came to look at the property he saw it as an ideal setting for a facility where he could pursue his novel ideas about treating people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He and his partners bought the land and began to do just that. Townspeople, passing his place on busy Ralston Avenue, may have appreciated the nicely kept grounds but likely gave no thought to the opportunity that was there, should an elderly relative ever require the kind of care he offered. Nor did most of us realize that part of the lovely wooded hillside that frames the valley was his property, off limits for development.
I know nothing about Alzheimer’s disease, but I will never forget making the rounds with Brad one day and seeing the loving personal care he lavished on his people. Later he told me that the head of neurology at UC San Francisco had brought his team to visit Ralston Village and had declared Brad’s program the finest he had ever seen. Brad tells me he had visions of establishing the Village as a model center for Alzheimer’s care, and perhaps even of creating a special degree program in that field at Notre Dame de Namur University, located across the street from his property. He could see this program achieving national recognition and “putting Belmont on the map.” He also expected that revenue from the new residential development that he envisioned would help support this undertaking.
None of this came to pass.
One end of the property is now an empty field, amounting to about four acres, where the Alexander Sanitarium once stood. In 2004, Brad and his partners approached city hall with a proposal to build a large condominium development for active seniors. The idea was that many people in and around Belmont — empty-nesters — would be ready to give up their large houses and move into a high-quality environment that would liberate them from most of the burdens of home ownership. Residents would not need assistance in daily living but would appreciate the common facilities and the proximity to Twin Pines Park and Belmont’s little retail area. And a relatively easy transition to a higher level of care would be available to them if they should ever need it. I was given a tour of a similar facility nearby that had been built by Brad’s development partner, and I was most impressed with its quality. I imagined that Merrilee and I might make the move ourselves some day.
The economic viability of a condominium project depends strongly on getting enough salable units to support the com-mon facilities — the meeting rooms, exercise rooms, driveway, landscaping, and so forth. So the project as first presented to the city was pretty big. It was to be four stories tall with 101 units covering about half the empty land. Because most people aren’t adept at visualizing projects from drawings, Brad’s architect employed a new and expensive technology — a simulated drive-by video that seemed to show minimal visual impact from Ralston Avenue. Although I was a little uneasy about the size of the project, I supported it. But many of the neighbors, led by the Hortons, whose residence bordered the project, opposed it. Most of the commissioners likewise disapproved. It was just too big. So it was back to the drawing board. The project was scaled down to 82 units and then reduced again, to 55.
Many people were worried that the project would worsen the traffic situation on Ralston Avenue, which was already bad. So Brad and his partners paid for a professional traffic study that came back with the commonsense conclusion that there would be minimal impact because seniors don’t drive much at all, and especially not at rush hour. Brad’s partner conducted about 30 neighborhood meetings, and eventually the Hortons became enthusiastic supporters of the project. Many other neighbors eventually came around as well. But their support was not enough.
Brad says that he and his partners spent more than two years, over a million dollars, and no end of personal energy working on their plans. Their scaled-back version was considered by the planning commission at a public meeting in April, 2005. We were to render opinions on the necessary Mitigated Negative Declaration, General Plan Amendment, Conceptual Development Plan Amendment, and Vesting Tentative Subdivision Map. The City Council would have the final say on these actions. Brad came to the evening meeting with his development partner, landscape architect, civil engineer, community relations consultant, and health care consultant in tow, all expensive professionals, no doubt. One could almost hear the meter ticking. But commissioners raised more questions than could be answered in that hearing, so it was held over so that answers could be gathered and presented to us at a later date — five months later, as it turned out. Meanwhile, Mrs. Horton had taken a seat on the Planning Commission but was not allowed to vote, because the law presumes that anyone owning property nearby has a conflict of interest. Six of us were left to vote at the October meeting, meaning at least a 4–2 vote would be needed to pass anything.
By this time I thought the whole thing had dragged on far too long. I really hoped for approval. And I expected approval, perhaps naively, because so many issues had been raised and answered. Following lengthy discussions, I introduced a motion in favor of the project, gave it the best rhetoric I could muster, and accepted friendly amendments, but my motion failed on a 3–3 tie. We could only report to the council that we had failed to reach agreement on a recommendation. I left feeling frustrated and angry. In November, the council voted 4–1 to deny the project.
By the time of that council meeting, the benefits were clear: an ugly vacant lot would be transformed into 55 nice new homes in a handsome new building. The city government would reap considerable fee income, capped by a “park-in-lieu” fee of $700,000, supposedly to mitigate the effects of a few additional senior citizens on the city’s parks, but in reality a form of legalized extortion. The downside hadn’t been reduced to zero: the building wouldn’t be wholly invisible, totally noiseless, or completely free of traffic, but the applicants had bent over backwards to mitigate those problems. The only citizens who got up to speak at the meeting were three neighboring homeowners, all of whom spoke in favor of the project. Ignoring the facts in front of it, the council spat out a 4–1 denial. The video recording of that meeting conveys more through the members’ facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice than through their actual words. The two leaders of the opposition projected bitter personal animosity; another projected cowardice; a fourth cluelessness. That evening may have been the low point in a long history of some pretty ugly politics in this town.
Not long after his defeat, Brad sold his property to Sunrise Assisted Living, a national chain, and left Belmont. The lot remains vacant. Sunrise ran the facility for a while, then gave up and sold it. The seniors who might now be enjoying their new homes in Brad’s development remain in their oversized houses, if they haven’t left town. The Park Department didn’t get its $700,000. I have no idea what sort of care the Alzheimer’s patients are getting from the current owner.
Without question, these two projects are a black mark on Belmont’s planning process and on the concept of government planning in general. Notwithstanding Carlos’s helpfulness, Golara’s struggles send a message to small developers: beware of Belmont! And a grave injustice was done to Brad Liebman, to the nameless potential beneficiaries of his project, and to everyone in Belmont, save a few politicians.
I must add that I saw other proposals that the city staff or the planning commission did seem to influence favorably. And I do not for one moment question the ethics or professionalism of the planning staff. I know them personally and believe they really wanted to do what was best for Belmont. But government planning is a system — an ideology, or a religion — that just doesn’t work, and they are immersed in that system.
What if there were a privileged class of property owners who were somehow exempt from planning rules? If there were such people, the kinds of projects they might build could give us some insight into how well the planning process achieves its stated goals.
You think this can’t happen in our democracy? Think again. There is a privileged class that can build whatever it wants without any review by the city staff or the planning commission. I refer to other governmental agencies. Our school district, for example, built a large gymnasium without any city review, while a private school that wanted to do something similar was shot down by the planning commission and the city council. The water district built two pumping stations without any review. Both projects seem all right to me.
Churches are another quasi-privileged class. I live in a remote canyon, where the idea of a business starting and attracting customers from far and wide would be ludicrous, absolutely forbidden by the zoning code. Surely if zoning ordinances do anything at all, they ought to restrict such outrageously nonconforming land uses. Yet there is an Indian Orthodox Christian church near my house, the home of an obscure denomination that draws congregants from all over the Bay Area. Some of my neighbors were upset when this congregation announced plans to set up shop. But the church couldn’t be stopped, in part because a federal law called RLUIPA (don’t ask) makes it all but impossible to use zoning to restrict religious activities. But now that the church is in business, the consequences have turned out to be minimal: some parking issues and a little extra traffic on Sundays is about all.
Okay, what about building standards? How far would anybody get with a proposal to build a one-room shack in my million-dollar neighborhood, in violation not only of the zoning code but also of virtually every provision of the building code as well? Beyond the pale, right? Yet there is just such a shack within spitting distance of my house. It’s “grandfathered,” meaning that it can remain pretty much as it is until somebody decides to replace it. Seventy years ago, when our area was a good distance from town, that was a hunting cabin. It hasn’t changed much, and we neighbors just think of it as part of our area’s charm. We look out for the elderly widow who lives there, and not long ago a group of teenagers from a local church swarmed over the place and painted it.
The school gym, the church, and the shack are the sorts of things that planning tries to stop, but legal quirks allow them to exist, and they seem just fine. If unplanned projects can turn out fine, while lots of planned ones don’t, do we really need government planning? Randal O’Toole says flatly: No. O’Toole has devoted his career to studying such issues as forest management, smart growth, light-rail transit, and affordable housing. In his recent book, “The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future,” he makes the bold claim that “almost everything that planners do could be done better, at lower cost, and with less intrusion into people’s lives, with properly designed user fees, markets, and incentives.” He advocates restrictive covenants (as currently practiced in Houston) as an alternative to zoning. General plans, he says, are useless at best because no one can foresee the future for a large and diverse group of people and properties over a long period of time. But what is a general plan, and why do we have such things?
All California cities are required to prepare a general plan, which is sometimes likened to a constitution. It sets forth general policies and goals. Subsequent ordinances regarding building and planning are supposed to conform to the general plan. The plan is intended to reflect the values of the residents, which is why citizen workshops are emphasized when general plans are adopted or revised.
That’s the theory. The reality is — no surprise — a bit different. I attended citizen workshops when Belmont began its general plan revision in 2002. They were run by friendly consultants, and the meetings were kind of fun. Who doesn’t like to be asked his opinions? Who wouldn’t like to be given a big sheet of paper and some colored pencils so he could make some sketches of what “downtown Belmont” ought to look like? But as O’Toole points out, the consultants are skilled at framing the sessions in a way that will lead to the predetermined results. “Do you want more pollution?” they might ask. “Do you think your downtown should be more friendly to pedestrians?” The results of our workshops were put together in a festive event held in the college gymnasium, complete with music, balloons, and catered food. That little event cost the city $90,000 and attracted hardly anyone except the prior workshop participants. A few weeks later, the general plan revision came to a screeching halt because of the economic downturn and the consequent municipal budget crunch. It is just now being revived.
Belmont’s current general plan includes an element called the Downtown Specific Plan, prepared in 1990. A lot of thoughtful effort clearly went into it, much of it contributed by volunteers. It has flowery language like this: “An attractive, visually cohesive appearance should express a sense of vitality and provide a focal point for public activity and a community life-style.” It has nice sketches and maps of what the “downtown” (which never really existed) ought to look like. Years later, a little of what was envisioned happened, sort of. We did get some nice new retail at Ralston and El Camino, including a restaurant and a toy store that both went bust. The Starbucks is doing fine. The fancy new train station is all but deserted.
In 2003, along came yet another plan, the Belmont section of a plan for all of El Camino as it runs through the county. This plan makes no specific mention of our existing Downtown Specific Plan, saying only that many past downtown plans have been put forth but that “the community has not shown significant support for these efforts in the past.” Translation: those pesky civilians don’t see the obvious benefits of a community lifestyle and insist on pursuing their own private interests! So it just starts all over again. The language in this latest plan isn’t so flowery, but the acronyms, the graphics, and the buzzwords are fancier. Mind you, the El Camino plan is completely separate from Belmont’s general plan, and the two might well end up contradicting each other.
What are the lessons here? Why do grand government plans almost always fail? O’Toole says one reason is the design fallacy. This is the hubristic notion that architectural design is the most important determinant in shaping human behavior: design it, and they will come. Now design surely plays some role, but real people are driven by much more complex and diverse considerations, which can be very hard to anticipate, as anyone who has tried to succeed in retail can attest. But design is what planners do, so they cling to the fallacy and blame everyone but themselves when they fail.
Another reason is that general plans attempt to project far into the future and for a wide area; and that’s simply impossible. Thus, our 1982 general plan did not foresee the major changes in senior health care and senior housing that took place in the intervening years, nor did it foresee the push for higher-density development that has arisen lately. But the outdated general plan was in force, and it provided a hook for the council to hang its prejudices on. Yet another important reason for failure is that planners are not accountable for their mistakes. For one thing, those mistakes often don’t become apparent until many years have passed: the people listed in the front of the Downtown Specific Plan have either died, left town, or retreated to private lives. More importantly, planners and citizen volunteers have nothing to lose if they fail. They have no invested capital at risk, and they are unlikely to lose their jobs, no matter what. In contrast, competitive business is a harsh master that focuses the mind of any business person with the constant possibility of financial failure.
When I reread our 1990 and 2003 documents with O’Toole’s insights in mind, a big omission jumped out at me: there was no attempt to figure out what customers might really want! Despite asserting the need for more and better retail, no one suggested that Belmont residents lacked places to shop, either in their own or neighboring towns. (The real driver is more sales tax revenue, I’m sure.) But since human behavior is so unpredictable, they did what they could and produced nice text and graphics. Maybe government planning doesn’t work so well, but surely we can’t leave people free to do whatever they want with their property. This would invite chaos, ugliness, noise, and just about every form of social ill, right?
Not necessarily.
To begin with, no one is condemning planning as such. Survival requires that we all engage in planning on some scale. But as Friedrich Hayek so ably demonstrated, the knowledge required for successful planning is dispersed and often tacit. Where there are free markets, price signals connect islands of specialized knowledge, and the result is economy-wide coordination that no individual or agency could have planned. Government planning tries to cover too broad a base, over too long a time span, and is not subject to market discipline. The skills and motives of the planners aside, people and circumstances are just too diverse; things just change too fast. When private business people try to plan beyond the range of their knowledge or ability, they are forced out of business. Failed government planning simply elicits more planning to fix the old broken plans, and the cycle continues.
Externalities do exist, says O’Toole: “There are a few problems that markets cannot fully solve.” Yet “they are far less common than planning advocates will admit . . . Even for those problems . . . there are nongovernmental alternatives that work far better than comprehensive government planning.” This strikes me as a realistic answer, unlike that of the late liber-tarian icon Murray Rothbard, who waved off all negative externalities with a call for enforcement of private property rights. That won’t work in cases where a direct link between perpetrator and victim cannot be established. But negative externalities are far less extensive or problematic than the planning ideology assumes. Those that are real can very often be resolved in terms of property rights, using compensation agreements, tort law, forbearance, etc. But for the knottiest problems, purely voluntary solutions sometimes can’t be found. Air pollution is the primary example. In these especially thorny situations, most economists agree that government sanctions are necessary.
Nobody believes in socialism anymore. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises showed very well that it can’t work. Yet it continued for a long time in the communist countries, in part because it was accepted as a religion, not to be questioned. Only when events overtook those countries did socialism collapse. Is government planning a form of socialism? Not really, if you define socialism as government ownership of industrial and commercial property. It is more accurate to call government planning a form of fascism. Let me hasten to justify this incendiary term.
In his recent book “Liberal Fascism” (which I reviewed in the Sept. 2008 issue of this magazine), Jonah Goldberg ably shows the fascistic nature of many facets of 20th-century and present-day American politics. Fascism entails two defining characteristics: first, in its economic aspect it allows nominal private ownership of productive property, with control actually in the hands of government officials. Second, it entails nationalism or racism in some form.
Planning fits the first characteristic to a tee, but where do we find racism? Nowhere is it explicit, of course, but it’s just below the surface in many specific instances of planning. For example, the people with political power in Belmont are all above average socioeconomically. They mostly live in the hills and drive fancy cars. None is Hispanic or Asian. But somebody, either resident or transient, is patronizing the 99-cent store and the check-cashing store — very likely, it’s low-income Hispanics. These are people who are more likely to worry about raw survival than about the lack of a nice spot to relax and sip their capuccinos. Council people have told me they wished they could have suppressed those two stores, and by implication their undesirable minority customers.
Meanwhile, the planning juggernaut rolls on from fad to fad: City Beautiful, Urban Renewal, Smart Growth. Plan n is hatched to correct the failures of plan n-1, and around and around we go. Can we learn from the failure of socialism and get off this merry-go-round, or must we wait for things to get really bad? Randal O’Toole has done a fine job of exposing the planning myth. Let us hope that others continue the job.
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