capitalism

66 Cities
phenomenon that requires massive action by government.
The contrary view, put by authors such as the libertarian
social commentator Hernando De Soto, is that the problems
that do exist in such population centers are caused mainly by
government action and above all by the lack of clear and
transferable property rights for the inhabitants of areas, such
as the favelas of Brazil. De Soto describes in detail the ways
in which the conditions of urban life described earlier make
possible the appearance of a wealth of voluntary institutions
and private solutions to urban problems, which are held
back by government regulations and inadequate property
rights.
Similarly, the libertarian position on the nature of urban
growth in the contemporary United States—and in Canada
and Australia—opposes the planned and controlled development
of cities. This approach has been a central part of
the ideology and practice of the modern managerial state.
Indeed, because the idea of the planned city appears at the
foundation of the modern state in the Baroque Era, this
approach is the earliest example of this kind of politics. A
persistent theme in libertarian argument has been resistance
to both the theory and practice of urban planning. A crucial
event in this connection was the publication in 1961 of Jane
Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities, written
partly as a rejoinder to the policies of New York’s urban
planning supremo, Robert Moses. In this work, Jacobs put
forward the view that the city and its neighborhoods were
living spontaneous orders produced by the voluntary interaction
of individual inhabitants, as opposed to the model of
top-down rationalist planning as typified by Moses.
Although Jacobs would not have defined herself as a libertarian,
her ideas and analysis had a great impact on libertarian
social critics. An early example was Martin Anderson,
whose attack on 1960s “urban renewal” in The Federal
Bulldozer pointed to the fact that contemporary urban planning
and zoning regulations persistently and inevitably
favored the rich and powerful over the poor and powerless.
More recently, libertarians have become involved in the
debates over the nature of urban development in North
America. Much contemporary literature has lamented the
phenomenon of “urban sprawl” and the growth of suburbia.
For many contemporary authors, the appearance of this kind
of extensive, low-density urban environment has marked the
crisis or even death of the city as historically understood and
has been seen as a major threat to the natural environment,
whereas the lifestyle of suburbia has been subjected to severe
criticism as soulless and alienating. The libertarian response
to this theory has been mixed. One frequent rejoinder has
been to agree with much of the criticism, but to put the blame
primarily on government and regulation. In particular, zoning
laws are blamed for mandating extensive low-density
housing, for creating socially homogenous neighborhoods by
preventing low-cost housing alongside the more expensive
variety, and for geographically separating different activities.
The federally funded Interstate Highway System and government
funding of highways in general are blamed for urban
sprawl because of the enormous hidden subsidy they represent
to commuting and developers. The other response has
been to welcome or defend many aspects of contemporary
urban development. Many follow Joel Garreau’s identification
and defense of the “edge” city as the new form of spontaneously
evolving city development and defend suburban
life against its critics. One scholar whose work has become
particularly influential for contemporary libertarians is
Robert Nelson. He focuses on a phenomenon that libertarians
welcome, the growth of privately governed communities
or homeowner associations. Nelson points out that these
communities make up the overwhelming majority of new
housing in the United States and predicts a future in which
these essentially private bodies have taken over most of the
functions of local and even state government. This possible
future is generally welcomed by libertarians, but sharply criticized
by others.
The historical role of the city is generally seen by libertarians
as positive, and most of them favor urban life over
the alternatives. In the contemporary world, the analyses of
scholars such as Jacobs and Nelson are leading libertarians
to both articulate a distinctive position in current debates
and envisage a future in which the city, reinvented as a congerie
of self-governing private communities, is increasingly
the main unit of both economic and political life.
See also Cosmopolitanism; Culture; Jacobs, Jane; Spontaneous
Order; Transportation; Urban Planning
Further Readings
SD
Beito, David T., Peter Gordon, and Alexander Tabarrok, eds. The
Voluntary City: Choice, Community and Civil Society. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Garreau, Joel. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. New York:
Anchor Books, 1992.
Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the
United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Jacobs, Jane. Cities and the Wealth of Nations. New York: Vintage,
1970.
———. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York:
Vintage, 1992 [1st ed., 1961].
———. The Economy of Cities. New York: Vintage, 1970 [1st ed.,
1966].
Mackenzie, Evan. Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and
the Rise of Residential Private Government. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1996.
Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Its
Transformations and Its Prospects. London: Harvest
Books, 1968.
———. The Culture of Cities. London: Harvest Books, 1970.
Nelson, Robert H. Private Neighbourhoods and the Transformation of
Local Government. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2005.