The title of our paper is The Private Production of Urban Planning, and the genesis for this
paper came back in college when I was rooming with an urban planner, a guy that was in the
sociology department, and there was also a faculty member in the philosophy department
where I was studying, and in any discussions that came across libertarianism, my roommate
kind of had these quick defeaters for the whole idea of liberty and talking about what
What about roads? What about zoning? And all the things that he was studying. He was just
of the mindset that this is, you need a state to do it, you need a government to do it.
It doesn't make sense to talk about liberty in certain contexts. So I've been bouncing
ideas with Stephen, the co-author of this paper, bouncing ideas off each other about
how we can approach this. It's easy enough to say the market will do it, but we're trying
to start some philosophical groundwork for showing the compatibility of taking care of
essential needs within the context of libertarianism.
So the history of urban planning goes back as far as society has organized itself beyond
the bare structures of family and small tribes and so on.
Planning in those situations which is typically land use planning runs into natural organic
Limits, as it begins to create commons, so while human society always tends to organize
itself along the principle of community, communal everything can be economically inefficient
at best and really an economic disaster at worst. Urban planning as a term is used almost
exclusively today as a child of the early to mid 20th century progressive era, as people
It is the Hobbesian central planning answer to the fundamental problems that plague our
cities today, which ironically were caused by previous planning errors, poverty, overcrowding,
crime, traffic, and so on. It is most often planning in the worst sense, rash economic
and Social Assumptions packaged together and enforced on a local population by the state.
Even worse, most planners believe that their activity serves the common good. That's why
they're in it. In her introduction to the death and life of great American cities, Jane
Jacobs wrote this book in the, I believe it was published in the early 60s, and by the
way Rothbard had very high praise for this book. Jane Jacobs, very libertarian minded,
I think without knowing it at the time she wrote the book, described urban planning as
it existed in America at that point this way, quote, there is a wistful myth that if only
we had enough money to spend, the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars adjusted
for inflation, that's about a trillion dollars, a little less than that, we could wipe out
all our slums in ten years, reverse decay in the great dull gray belts that were yesterday's
Suburbs, anchor the wandering middle class and its wandering tax money and perhaps even
solve the traffic problem. That such wonders may be accomplished, people who get marked
with the planners' hex-signs are pushed about, expropriated, uprooted much as if they were
subjects of a conquering power. Businesses are destroyed and their proprietors ruined
with hardly a gesture of compensation. The economics of city rebuilding rests on vast
Involuntary Subsidies Wrung Out of Helpless State Victims, The Means to Planned City Rebuilding
Are as Deplorable as the Ends.
Now, it would be easy to dedicate this paper to critiquing modern ideas of urban planning.
And in fact, if you search in the literature, as I have, what you find is pretty much anything
in libertarian literature that addresses urban planning takes that angle.
It's a critique of the state and what it's doing.
And none of this criticism is misdirected, of course, because planning has a tremendous
impact on the day-to-day life of the population it controls.
And we contend that this is precisely the reason why the impact of urban planning is
precisely the reason that warns us against entrusting it to the state.
Yet it does not follow from the follies of state urban planners that planning as such
is incompatible with a free society within its proper limits.
Urban planning can be defined as the science that integrates the disciplines of land use
planning and transport planning, with sociological implications. We contend that neighborhood
and city planning can be, is likely to be, and should be provided within the framework
of a free market for the purposes of interpersonal, community, and human flourishing. We also
find it a neglected topic in typical libertarian discussions, and we think that urban planning
Planning can be mentioned as a tool of the free market, just as much as farming, manufacturing,
security and other goods and services are. Consider two brief examples of how a libertarian
understanding of urban planning can change libertarian discourse. The first is external.
It gives libertarians something to cite against some of the more common objections raised
against free market theory in general. I'm thinking of my roommate here. Just as citing
Roads, Police or Courts often serve as defeaters of liberalism for the common man. So also
are the following objections treated as strong counter examples to the notion of liberty.
But how might garbage collection or fire protection work? Or what about when a brothel builds
its house next door to me? I don't want that. Or our personal favorite, what if all of the
One of the land surrounding my house is purchased, and then the evil owner denies me access to it, trapping me in.
It's a crime that these easily answered objections satisfy so many, who conclude that therefore, libertarianism as such is insufficient to handle society's needs.
But think for a moment about what is built into these objections.
In each of these examples, someone is essentially claiming that in a free society, there will
be no service to meet oppressing essential market demand. To our sensibilities, these
concerns are answered by the central characteristic of the free market to maximize satisfaction
for any given want. Yet not everyone agrees with this abstract resolution. And this objection
is not entirely unfounded. After all, the market as an abstract entity won't take
care of private roads, medicine or any other good or service, concrete individuals, namely
entrepreneurs and businessmen, have to. Therefore, libertarians are wise to expound upon the
kinds of companies or organizations that will handle individual problems and needs. Plenty
of work has been done in this area on concerns relating to private security, roads and money
and other goods and services. We think that a more extensive libertarian theory of urban
and Planning will likewise provide a solid answer to legitimate questions or objections,
and provide the substance to challenge those who think they can dismiss capitalism with
a flippant wave of the hand.
The second example lays entirely within our own community. Free market ideology tends
to foster a resistance to collectivism in all of its forms. In many cases this is a
good thing, however some libertarians under the influence of this impulse go as far to
to reject all forms of social organization, compulsory and free, but our perspective is
that many traditional institutions, family, organized religion, communities formed both
by interest in geography, friendships and so on, organizations that often require individual
sacrifices for the good of the whole are essential to a flourishing society. It is not collective
of Efforts, or commitments that are wrong per se, providing that such relationships
are voluntary.
In this introduction I've laid out our bottom line.
The rest of this paper is going to give a little bit of flesh to these preliminary claims.
And the second section of this paper will take our appeal that planning is compatible
with a free society and ground it more firmly in a libertarian framework, and Stephen's
going to present that.
And then the third and final section of this paper is going to place this argument in the
larger context of the Eudaimonist libertarian understanding of human nature, which is an
Aristotelian liberal tradition.
So Stephen's going to present the next section.
I wish I had some pictures or something up there.
I'm sure we could show all these wonderful plans that people had 50 years ago, which
are now slums where people live, or at least are dying.
So that'd be really effective, but I'm a crank and I'm not very good with computers.
So starting, essentially, underlying the permissibility for urban planning in a free society is that
it could be voluntary, right?
Daniel already said if there is a need, a demand that people have, then it seems to
be a prima facie claim that there's a market that will meet that need, and certain planning
Banking efforts seem to fall under the umbrella of needs.
For instance, if a contractor contracts with builders, plumbers, electricians, why not
park planners, street layers, pool builders, etc., if he does something like that, whether
or not he acknowledges it, he's essentially undertaking something like urban planning.
A contractor or neighborhood's customers will likely be concerned with, among other things,
How well placed and kept up his parks are, how accessible his streets are, and how shielded
from NIMBY concerns he is.
NIMBY concern is an acronym for not in my backyard.
These are concerns like brothels being built next door, airports within a measurable distance,
or football stadiums.
I never thought of that before, but those do not look like nice places to live.
It is likely that customers will demand this service in a free society because they are
by and large demanding it now.
In the market, consumers' demands are met directly and immediately communicated to entrepreneurs
through profit and loss.
Unhappy customers quickly make their feelings known.
Contrast this with the market strategy of state urban planners who advocate, quote,
and this is from the New Urbanism Constitution, this is really great, quote, the restructuring
of public policy and development practices to support the following principles.
Neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population.
Cities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car. Cities and
towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spheres
and community institutions. Urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design
that celebrate local history, climate ecology and building practice. It may well be that
in free society neighborhoods should be diverse, that people would walk more and utilize mass
that public spaces would be readily acceptable and so on, but an urban planner in a free
society will direct resources in order to meet the demands of buyers, not expropriate
the consumer's money to meet his personal preferences, his being the urban planner.
So we'll look at some of these a little bit closer, see exactly how that might pan out.
When buying a house, the obvious expectations are good plumbing and electricity, strong
foundations, nice yard and other features of the structure and functionality of the
building.
Other current consumer demands, less obvious perhaps, but just as important, are the access
to and quality of roads, parks, security, shopping centers, schools, fire protection,
pools, etc. Still other concerns are ones that we rarely consider, but if faced with
a problem we desperately seek to solve, here we have in mind NIMBY concerns, neighborhood
rules, the like. These and other concerns exist today and would persist in free society.
Without the state apparatus to take care of them, people would look elsewhere to meet
A likely place for one to look would be his contractor or neighborhood association.
This is because in the same way that one does not expect to call a plumber to install piping
or an electrician to install wiring, one could just as easily not expect to have to call
a road company in order to finish the line up to his driveway or a police agency in order
to ensure his protection.
In most cases, the contractor building the subdivision will have contracted this work
Workout or the Neighborhood Association would arrange for companies to take care of it.
The consumer buys not just a house, but a membership in a community.
He simply has to sign the dotted line and enjoy the amenities from his purchase, either
on a yearly contractual basis with membership dues or some other form of payment.
In this way, the contractor or neighborhood association has essentially become an urban
planner, even if not by title.
This is an important distinction because this account of planning, that of entrepreneurs
Contractors meeting the demands of consumers treats urban planning not as a separate science
from the other sciences devoted to human living, rather, urban planning subsumes those sciences.
Contractors who otherwise arrange the details for water and electricity will just as easily
provide still further coordinating services in tomorrow's free society.
Their list of services may simply have to grow or a new subvocation of construction
will develop with its own specialists.
Another possibility are independent urban planners who work as consultants.
That is, specialists who focus on land, utilities, transport and mini-coronation.
But of course, just as with the state, such bodies, if too large or too prescribed, though
free and voluntarily entertained, could encounter such impediments as the calculation problem,
cultural incongruity, lack of spontaneity, and other weaknesses that will drive consumers
to stronger competitors.
The very genius behind freely based urban planning is that buyer's concerns must be
met.
There is a common fallacy held even by most advocates of laissez-faire that the government
must supply police protection as if police protection were a single absolute entity,
a fixed quantity of something which the government supplies to all.
This is precisely why state-run urban planning fails.
Planning is not an absolute fixed quantity.
Some neighborhoods will require litter to no planning, others will require extensive
planning, intricate services to cater to the wishes of its consumers.
One further benefit is the amelioration to NIMBY problems.
Because most do not want to live near a strip club, at least they don't want to raise their
family near one, or an airport or a garbage dump, the contractors will either have to
shield their buyers through land use planning or negotiations with other contractors or
some such thing in order to keep the peace in their neighborhood.
Whatever the specifics, it is clear that a contractor and neighborhood association
will have great incentives to provide these services.
Currently, citizen's sole recourse is political action,
a battle that consistently favors the privileged over the non-privileged
and in no way rewards consumer preferences. Rather, it only benefits the state
and its friends. Private planning
accordingly will embolden a buyer such that he will not have to stand by helplessly as
his neighborhood is infiltrated with such undesirable content.
We have so far argued for the compatibility of, if not the inevitability of, urban planning
within a voluntarist framework.
It seems clear someone is going to have to make some of these decisions that urban planners
currently take for themselves.
It also seems clear that these decisions will tend to collectivize above the individual
level, being organized according to neighborhoods or even small boroughs before hitting its
natural organic limits of the commons.
But perhaps one could object that we have simply defined away our problem, that what
we're proposing isn't actually urban planning, it's just what contractors do, they build
houses with amenities.
Planning after all, as it is currently pursued, is an ostensibly sociological science. It
takes a lot of pride in that. It is more than simply putting roads or houses here and there.
It includes elements of architecture, culture, environmental concerns, and other issues of
community design. We saw this exemplified in the New Urbanism Manifesto that was cited,
planning aimed at sociological ends. Thus, one objection to what we have laid out is
is that what we propose isn't urban planning per se and that therefore only a government
really has the overarching reach to make planning happen.
Well we don't think that that objection holds for two reasons.
The first is that necessarily all planning decisions have a sociological impact.
Just as you can't be kind of a coordinating contractor arranging quite a few services
without also being a planner, you can't really be a planner without making what are essentially
and these sociological decisions. Contemporary urban planning seeks to preserve local culture
and prevailing sociology, often with a few nanny state improvements. But it has removed
the power to do so from the individuals themselves, the way it's sort of worked up until the rise
of the state. Planning, architecture and culture all came before the state. They often persist
in spite of the state. And so there's good reason to think that it would flourish after
The second reason is that we see a larger framework to free market urban planning than merely connecting garbage collectors with clients, or constructing enough parks per set of neighborhoods.
Because planning necessarily impacts social conditions, there is an aspect to the science that must serve human beings' ultimate end of what Aristotle called eudaimonia,
Human beings are what Aristotle calls the political animal that is a social animal, and as a result, we only find our fulfillment in connection with what he called the polis, or the community.
The Aristotelian approach to praxeology tells us that society, that is, community, is a good to be pursued. It is not an arbitrary burden that can be easily rejected.
This framework allows libertarians to go on the offensive with respect to many of the so-called commons objections that opponents of the free market site.
This includes everything we have discussed from roads, parks, community shared goods and services, and fire and security protection and the like.
But there is a wider implication to our argument than the mere fact of planning's compatibility with libertarianism.
If it is the case that planning decisions cannot be sociologically neutral, then it follows that there is a proper science of urban planning to be pursued with the end goal of contributing to individual and social flourishing.
There are some thinkers and authors who have begun this groundwork. Jane Jacobs, for example, critiques planning in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, but the book contains a series of insightful observations on just how well-functioning cities accomplish important social functions.
and Social Functions. To cite but a few examples, she explores how sidewalks reinforce bounds
for privacy while also encouraging healthy relationships among neighbors and safely incorporating
children into city life. She cites how cities organically promulgate diversity, mixed uses
for buildings, and naturally tend towards the right balance of population density. Peter
Gordon, a sociologist working at a USC, is another good example of someone doing this
Now the majority of our examples lend themselves to imagery of new construction and suburbs.
But the reality of urban planning in America today is that the greatest volume of work
lies in already existing residential zones that need a lot of work addressing decaying
inner cities and revitalizing failed planning districts.
We maintain that, just as the state, through its urban planners, was the agent of destruction
for American Cities, so also it cannot be the entity that brings renewal to the places
that it has destroyed. And it is for this reason that a libertarian theory of urban
planning and libertarian minded urban planners are essential components for a possible future
of flourishing communities in America. Thank you.