Unholy alliances: The Growth Machine, simple-minded leftist folks, and the Comprehensive Plan

From an e-conversation (slightly edited), based in part on yesterday's 8 hours of testimony at the City Council hearing on Comprehensive Plan revision and whether or not to go forward:

I'm amazed at how cavalier people are about quality. What's worse is that people who do care about quality and who have a certain amount of integrity -- i.e. who believe that you don't pass judgment till you read and understand the whole document, that you need to think beyond your pet project/issue, that you don't settle for rhetoric when what you want is reform, that you don't ask people who don't know squat to weigh in -- are really at a disadvantage.

This unholy alliance between lefty single-issue advocacy groups and the growth machine has me somewhat taken aback. I understand the Smart Growth-developer alliance, but why does someone like (name withheld) (for whom I have a great deal of respect) support adoption of a plan that, in practice, is more likely to provide discount luxury condos to law students than decent Section 8 housing for poor people and that, on top of that, represents the same twisted priorities when the baseball stadium was at issue? I suspect that the answer is that s/he doesn't understand planning. But, geez, if you don't understand, get out of the way. Sometimes I think that the non-profit world is so insular and that they face such obstacles that they can be very easily bought/manipulated.

My response:

The unholy alliance comes out of a misplaced sense and understanding of "social justice" and the ability of people with power to manipulate people with concern. As Gang of Four say in the song "Is it Love?":

The men who own the city
Make more sense than we do
Their actions are clear
Their lives are unknown.

I was talking about this broad issue of cynical manipulation by the Growth Machine yesterday because a Phd student at GWU is doing his dissertation on what he calls the "Constitutent Landscape" and the shift in the planning regime in DC (1950) to include consideration about residents instead of only being concerned about the federal presence. In particular he looks at the preservation movement. The only chapter I read (he did a presentation yesterday) is on the preservation piece.

He quotes from Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C., (which I have not yet read) about the tension between "social justice" and "beauty" in DC. Gillette terms the federal presence being focused on beauty and the quality of the built environment, and the justice movement concerned with bringing about "social justice for the district's largely black population."

This is a more applied look at the issue of contested spaces and shifts in power within the local political structure, and the shift from federal to local control. But the Growth Machine is still first and foremost about development, and merely recast itself, becoming a bit "more inclusive" but maintaining its continued control of the local political and economic agenda.

Under Home Rule, particularly during the Barry years, "social justice" mutated, from being more about helping the poor (i.e., "The Great Society") to focus on (1) "local"(2) community control (3) by a newly enfranchised (4) relatively new (the population shifted from majority white to majority black between 1954 and 1960); (5) majority; (6) of African-Americans (7) in a city that had once been run by the Federal Government directly; (8) and where the federal government still maintained (and maintains) a strong interest and authority.

It was--and is--about money and power, not about city livability. And I've discussed the book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C., 1964-1994, especially chapter 4, which is about the devleopment agenda and regime during the Barry years.

See these blog entries for more:
-- Department of Duh: Washington Examiner edition
-- E(l)ectile Dysfunction
-- Tom Sherwood, Duncan Spencer, Anwar Amal, and thinking about what I call the "Uncivil War".)

The growth machine is smart enough and well-funded enough to be able to use people concerned with "social justice" and "smart growth" and "the environment." Seemingly responding to their concerns ($50 for a block party, or a new computer for a local school helps too) out of a shared sense of social "justice," the Growth Machine yields a lot of value.

One of my lines is that the great thing about Washington, DC is that we sell ourselves for so little. At least Randy ""Duke" Cunningham got a yacht. We just get rhetoric, and ugly (for the most part) new buildings and chain retail.

I was naive like that when I first moved to DC, but I never turned off my analytic side and I became, very quickly, what I call an "inner city progressive" where my politics are mediated by the reality of dealing with and observing municipal and civic dysfunction.

Barry and the crew were allegedly about social justice, but more about getting a piece of the pie.

The Social Justice types, and I include the Smart Growth people because they are the lead groups behind the inclusionary zoning initiative, get totally used because they are so @#$%^& clueless, a-historical, and a-literate seemingly on these issues in an intricate and nuanced fashion.

This was particularly evident in the Inclusionary Zoning effort, and their trotting out of schoolteachers (workforce housing) and such to ANC meetings, when seeking resolutions of endorsement.

When you would ask questions about the impact on the built environment, in particular historic districts and/or areas eligible for designation, if they were able to respond, it was more out of the "it's better to destroy the qualities that make our neighborhoods distinctive in favor of ramming in some housing and achieving greater access," while failing to recognize the negative aspects of destroying authenticity and quality of life.

The IZ stuff is problematic because they focus on only one very narrow part of the housing agenda: new construction.

The IZ provisions could put historic fabric at great threat, but with the same kind of Social Justice focus on "equity" rather than use value, which Gillette more narrowly calls beauty, they threaten to destroy the qualities that make DC a livable place to begin with. All for producing maybe 60 more units of affordable housing/year.

To deal with affordable housing in a substantive way, you have to address the reality of the market forces within the real estate market, and thus a whole set of policies and reactions are required, including:

-- rent stabilization, rent control, and tenant support programs;
-- removing properties from the market via cooperatives and community land trusts;
-- having the government being an active builder and owner of quality housing that is maybe majority affordable;
-- actively developing DC owned properties instead of selling public asset properties at mostly market rates to developers, with some provisions for providing affordable units;
-- dealing with Section 8 vouchers and related issues;
-- constructing, managing, and maintaining Single Room Occupancy housing; etc.

I raised the SRO issue in my old ANC6C where I was on the zoning committee and nobody understood. Plus on the "communtiy benefits" questionnaire given to developers by the ANC, I said put on a question about the acceptance of Section 8 vouchers (for the new housing going up in Mt. Vernon Triangle) but they never did... I had the same frustration with the "environmentalist" on the Committee over use value issues. He was fine with tearing down city neighborhoods for denser housing in order to save more land in the exurbs from being developed.

Plus, if a developer said they would consider a green roof, then they seemed to receive a pass on everything else. Green architecture should be considered a minimally required industry standard for which city and community givebacks should not be proffered.

So the environmentalists, and I consider myself one, frequently get snookered too, at least in cities.

Index Keywords: Growth-Machine