THE COMMON BACKYARD

Lise Burgade

Surfing on the websites of right-wing lobbyists like the “Center for the American dream of mobility and home ownership” and self-declared “consultants” like Wendell Cox, is very instructive, and also deeply worrying. Their arguments against New Urbanists or Smart Growth advocates who defend rail transit instead of cars and a controlled urban development is simple (and in my opinion overly simplistic): it’s a free country, let people do what they want, respect their freedom. Of course, they are very tolerant people. As Cox said in a debate with New Urbanist Andrès Duany (www.tndtownpaper.com/CoxDuany.htm): “We stand for choice: If people want to live in density, they ought to be permitted to live in density; if they want to live in sprawl, they ought to be permitted to live in sprawl.”

“To live in sprawl”, if I understood what I read on several websites, means living in a house you own, with a large enough yard (see Randal O’Toole’s paper on How smart growth makes housing unaffordable, and the picture on page 8 of terrible “homes with virtually no yards”! http://www.i2i.org/articles/3-2006.pdf). For this leader of the Center for the American dream, “homeownership is the ultimate American dream”, and smart growth planning is making it impossible for American families to live the American Dream, by making them live in apartments! With no yard! Noticing a correlation between the fact that children live in “owner-occupied homes” and that they fare slightly better at school, the author goes as far as to suggest that promoting home ownership would be more efficient to promote a better educational level than investing more in schools! But investing in schools, by employing more teachers, buying better equipment, increasing the children’s well-being by a nicer and safer environment, has the advantage of benefiting all, including those who can’t afford a house. It increases the collective well-being.

Similarly, there seems to be a strong egoistic and individualistic bias in the criticism these “think-tanks” make of the preservation of greenbelts or open spaces by smart growth planners. They argue that this kind of smart growth planning mistakes lead to higher housing prices because it “restricts the amount of land available for new developments”. But public parks and open spaces are extremely important, in that they are a kind of “common backyard” for the community to meet and create social bonds and solidarity networks and for the children to play. Again, they are collective goods; they belong to no one and everybody.

Regarding the argument of freedom, these right-wing think-tanks seem to forget that one person’s freedom stops where another person’s freedom begins. Maybe they could reflect about the fact that their freedom to drive large cars for short distances, and to use an irresponsible amount of energy for the functioning of their house and all the things they are proud to own, is impeding on my freedom to live on a healthy planet, to breathe a breathable air. It is this very important dimension which is missing in the way they conceive the issues: the existence of collective goods, and the fact that the planet is not infinite, and that the more resources they use to sustain their lifestyle, the less they leave to other people and to their own children. Owning a house makes no sense if you contribute to the climate degradation leading to a hurricane possibly destroying this same house.

Reading all these arguments, I was surprised how they are strategically hidden behind considerations of freedom, liberty, and the American dream. They make me wonder what kind of dream this is, and worry about the traditional tendency we have here in Europe to be inspired by that dream. The French president made it a campaign argument: the new French dream he sold to his voters includes making France “a country of owners” (un pays de propriétaires). In my opinion, quite an ominous perspective.