The Deleted Scenes - Live And Let Fry
I’ve got a recent piece in Discourse Magazine, returning to this question of informal, small-scale sidewalk commerce. I guess this is probably my most libertarian issue. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s absurd and almost insane that we’ve squeezed out enterprises like street vending and home-based businesses, with zoning and other regulations. I mean that basically literally:
What inspired this one was the immigrant women selling cut fruit on the sidewalks in New York City who I saw during my recent visit. I have a much longer set of thoughts on New York City that I’ll be putting together—I liked it now, I didn’t used to like it years ago, and part of the reason I liked it was because it exceeded expectations based on all the anti-urban tabloid stuff you see. I’ll expand on this in that later piece, but I get the sense that a lot of the sentiment over these things is disconnected from the actual thing. Almost as if women selling fruit on the sidewalk in New York City has nothing to actually do with women selling fruit on the sidewalk in New York City, and any of the questions over whether and how that activity should be regulated, and rather about, you know, Joe Biden and the border and Democrats. Fine, but one of the problems with nationalizing and culture-warring everything is that we abstract real, on-the-ground issues and almost seem to forget there is an actual issue underneath all of that other stuff. That issue being this:
Read the whole piece: there’s more, including the idea that absurd laws are very bad because they put following the law in tension with common sense. I think crime is a serious matter, and because of that, we should be careful which activities we slot into that category. But increasingly this is a big part of my thinking about urbanism. Urbanism is one part land use and at least one part commerce. Density is a means of enabling and centralizing opportunity. Cities can be engines for people with very little to lift themselves up. But you have to allow them to do that. The rules that govern land use and commerce and their intersection—home-based businesses or accessory commercial units, for example—seem to assume that nobody will need recourse to these things. When I say “tiny apartments and single-room occupancies, with tiny vehicles,” I mean the sorts of tiny apartments that make it possible to live in Tokyo for a few hundred dollars a month, or the tiny trucks that allow people in Europe to run mobile fish markets. I don’t see deprivation; I see access. We talk about picking yourself up by your bootstraps, and then we ban bootstraps because “they’re for poor people.” At the Strong Towns conference in Cincinnati last month, one of the presenters—I think it was Charles Marohn himself—asked the audience how many of them would like to live in a 500 square foot house or apartment. A couple of hands out of a couple hundred went up. He then asked, how many of you have lived in such a unit? And a whole bunch more hands went up. I’m just going to belabor this by pulling a bit from another piece for Discourse, about inexpensive cars, and by analogy starter homes:
This is a big part of what urbanism has to be about. It has to be about un-banning opportunity, and in a real sense un-banning cities. Some YIMBYs use the phrase “Legalize housing,” and some people think that sounds weird. What we mean by that is, re-permit the process by which our legacy cities came to exist. That process was in large part just a whole lot of normal people doing lots of little things, and building a city together across time. I think we think that in a rich country, we can shortcut that work; we’ve “graduated” from it. We don’t want to be reminded of the hard times in our past or in our country’s past. But someone will always be going through that, and someone will always need to grab onto that last rung of the ladder and climb their way up. We should not be embarrassed by this. We should not view it as a nuisance. We should look long and hard, and see ourselves. Related Reading: Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only piece, plus full access to the archive: over 1,000 pieces and growing. And you’ll help ensure more like this! You're currently a free subscriber to The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
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Decongest Yourself
Monday, June 10, 2024
Thoughts on New York City's (possibly?) scrapped congestion pricing plan ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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Sacrifice, networking, showing up ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
New and Old #165
Friday, June 7, 2024
Friday roundup and commentary ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Living On The Edge
Thursday, June 6, 2024
Does density belong in the exurbs? ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
A Pancake Amid Stacks
Wednesday, June 5, 2024
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #165 ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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