I know that we Lockeans have made the point many times, but its importance merits frequent repetition: the political movement behind transit schemes and Smart Growth policies is not seeking to solve practical problems, such as traffic congestion or housing affordability. It is not simply trying to give people more options, design a better means of pricing and delivering transportation services, or move people and freight as rapidly and efficiently as possible. It has never been about these things.

The movement seeks a radical transformation of society. It wants to bring about a collectivist utopia that harkens back to Agrarian or Industrial-Age communities (so much for ?progress?) and that stigmatizes individualism, freedom, and privacy.

I’m not kidding. Check out the Independent Weekly‘s latest piece on transit and Smart Growth plans in Wake County:

[Raleigh planning director Mitch] Silver argues that given the number of strip malls in Raleigh, the
city must encourage their redevelopment, using “very robust” bus
service and a new zoning code for highway spaces.

But Silver is aware of the question, and posed it himself last month
to a trio of planners attending the annual urban design conference
sponsored by the N.C. State University College of Design. “How do we create a public [urban] realm in a suburban realm”
dominated by oversized thoroughfares and skinny or missing sidewalks?
he asked.

Simon Atkinson, a professor of planning at the University of Texas
School of Architecture, shook his head. “The suburb was designed not to
have a public realm.” The whole point of suburbs, Atkinson added, is
privacy.

In contrast, the walkable urban places that the planners describe
are typically located on a grid of city streets, not highway
thoroughfares. They feature sidewalk storefronts, public plazas and
parks that help to offset the mass of high-density housing
developments. They usually offer?because of inclusionary zoning rules?a
mix of housing types, including affordable units, middle-income and
upscale housing, often in four-story or smaller buildings.
“Inclusionary zoning is a no-brainer,” Leinberger said.

SNIP

At the same conference, Mindy Fullilove, professor of clinical
psychology at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, said true
urbanism is characterized by a sense of connectedness that allows
people of diverse backgrounds and incomes to nonetheless feel that they
live in the same community and share an identity with the same “great
place.”

At a time of rapid upheaval in the world, Fullilove said, people
yearn for the kind of stability and belonging that existed?before urban
renewal cut through it?in the Hill district of Pittsburgh where her
parents grew up. It was a relatively poor, predominantly
African-American community of row houses, storefronts and apartments.
There were no high-rises, nothing fancy. But it was a place where
people believed “whatever problems you have … you can get together
and solve them.”

These folks have a specific vision of how they’d like to live. Fine. But part of their vision is to cajole, and eventually through public policies to coerce, all of us to live there with them. Most Americans do not share their vision, which is why the activists rarely spell it out.