Of Capitalist Urban Planning
Capitalism and state planning have a complicated relationship. Capitalist ideology insists that markets are the best mechanism for economic, social, and environmental decision-making, and that consumer choice is the fairest and most efficient arbiter of public will. Deregulation has been the byword of the business class for decades, and diminished government has been the goal of conservative politicians at all levels.
Grover Norquist of the right-wing Americans for Tax Reform famously claimed he wanted to shrink government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
That’s what capitalists say; it’s not really what they do. Capitalists and political conservatives are quick to call for an expansion of the state when it comes to its carceral capacities or its military might, and those expressions of state power have been ballooning budgets at the local, state, and federal levels. Big businesses love the kinds of complex regulations that keep smaller firms from competing with them; they can hire armies of lawyers to whack through the weeds, while their competitors get mired in the muck. They herald expansions of state power that increase inequalities and suppress insurgencies as government doing its job.
On the level of city planning and land use policy, the rhetoric and the reality are similarly mismatched. Capitalists have serious and specific demands of the state, without which they are unlikely to function in the long term, or even on a day-to-day basis. They want the state to make big, fixed-capital investments in infrastructures that enable their own profit-making. They also want government to ensure some degree of support for people’s social reproduction, in order to assure they have a living, breathing workforce to exploit in the first place. Without these investments — planned, paid for and coordinated by the state — they have little basis on which to operate.
The Contradictions of Capitalist Planning
Look a little closer, however, and some important cracks arise. In his classic 1986 book Planning the Capitalist City, Richard Foglesong analyzes the relationship between capitalism and city planning as it evolved in the United States from the colonial period through the 1920s. He frames the book around two primary contradictions: one he calls “the property contradiction,” and the other “the capitalist-democracy contradiction.”
The property contradiction arises because capitalists demand certain planning interventions from the state to enable their mode of accumulation, but then deny the utility of planning as some sort of socialist sickness. Crucially, beyond certain fundamentals, urban capitalists do not want the same things from city planners. Their demands crudely break down along industry lines. Manufacturing capitalists might bristle at environmental regulations that curb their abilities to exploit land, water, and air without legal consequences. They could, however, be broadly supportive of planning interventions meant to cool rising land and housing prices, as they view land as a cost factor of production and housing prices as a cause around which their workers could rally and demand higher wages.
Real estate capitalists, on the other hand, might welcome environmental regulations that limit pollution if they see smog and grime as factors that might bring down the value of their buildings. They would not, however, cheer the state for imposing rent controls or building high-quality public housing, as those measures might threaten their very business model. Planners, then, must manage a double bind: meeting the competing demands of various types of capitalists, without doing so much planning that the capitalists freak out.
In trying to thread that needle, urban planners face the capitalist-democracy contradiction. Actual capitalists — those who own the means of production, not just those who think like them — are always the numerical minority. In a republican government and a capitalist economy, planners must incorporate the working class into their process or risk a legitimacy crisis. At the same time, however, they are entrusted to appease the capitalists for whom the system is designed to work. To navigate this dilemma, cities have devised elaborate land use review systems (in which public comment is encouraged but non-binding) and public city planning commissions (which are generally staffed by real estate experts and business elites).
According to this model, urban planners’ main job is to contain these two contradictions; neither can be resolved, but both can be managed. It’s a complicated bind. They are supposed to make certain land use interventions, but are prevented from making more sweeping changes. Their process must be open to the public, while simultaneously guaranteeing that ultimate power resides in the hands of propertied elites. It can be a pretty shitty job. (...)
With real estate concentrating and manufacturing dispersing, the relationship between urban capital and urban planning has shifted in important ways. If manufacturers no longer make up a powerful capitalist constituency for lower central city land and housing costs, planners managing “the property contradiction” are really only hearing from real estate capitalists and those aligned with their growth agenda, who are calling for policies that push land and property values ever-upward. Even when attempting to solve urban quandaries that have little do with real estate directly — education, transportation, parks, etc. — real estate capital demands planning interventions that enhance speculation. (...)
Whatever problems planners attack, the solutions they propose are likely to include luxury development as a key component — even when that problem is a lack of affordable housing. Planners in the real estate state are tasked with stoking property values: either because they are low and investors want them higher, or because they are already high and if their deflation could bring down an entire budgetary house of cards. Working to curb speculation and develop public and decommodified housing seem like absurd propositions to a planning regime whose first assumption is that future public gains come first through real estate growth.
In this system, gentrification is a feature not a bug. It is surely an economic and social force, but it is also the product of the state — a planned process of channeled reinvestment and targeted displacement. Urban planners, however, are not just corporate tools or government stooges. For the most part they join the profession to have a positive impact on cities. Many come from radical backgrounds and see planning as a means to impose control on capital’s chaos. But under the strictures of the real estate state, producing space for purposes other than profit is an enormous challenge.
Capitalism and state planning have a complicated relationship. Capitalist ideology insists that markets are the best mechanism for economic, social, and environmental decision-making, and that consumer choice is the fairest and most efficient arbiter of public will. Deregulation has been the byword of the business class for decades, and diminished government has been the goal of conservative politicians at all levels.
Grover Norquist of the right-wing Americans for Tax Reform famously claimed he wanted to shrink government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
That’s what capitalists say; it’s not really what they do. Capitalists and political conservatives are quick to call for an expansion of the state when it comes to its carceral capacities or its military might, and those expressions of state power have been ballooning budgets at the local, state, and federal levels. Big businesses love the kinds of complex regulations that keep smaller firms from competing with them; they can hire armies of lawyers to whack through the weeds, while their competitors get mired in the muck. They herald expansions of state power that increase inequalities and suppress insurgencies as government doing its job.On the level of city planning and land use policy, the rhetoric and the reality are similarly mismatched. Capitalists have serious and specific demands of the state, without which they are unlikely to function in the long term, or even on a day-to-day basis. They want the state to make big, fixed-capital investments in infrastructures that enable their own profit-making. They also want government to ensure some degree of support for people’s social reproduction, in order to assure they have a living, breathing workforce to exploit in the first place. Without these investments — planned, paid for and coordinated by the state — they have little basis on which to operate.
The Contradictions of Capitalist Planning
Look a little closer, however, and some important cracks arise. In his classic 1986 book Planning the Capitalist City, Richard Foglesong analyzes the relationship between capitalism and city planning as it evolved in the United States from the colonial period through the 1920s. He frames the book around two primary contradictions: one he calls “the property contradiction,” and the other “the capitalist-democracy contradiction.”
The property contradiction arises because capitalists demand certain planning interventions from the state to enable their mode of accumulation, but then deny the utility of planning as some sort of socialist sickness. Crucially, beyond certain fundamentals, urban capitalists do not want the same things from city planners. Their demands crudely break down along industry lines. Manufacturing capitalists might bristle at environmental regulations that curb their abilities to exploit land, water, and air without legal consequences. They could, however, be broadly supportive of planning interventions meant to cool rising land and housing prices, as they view land as a cost factor of production and housing prices as a cause around which their workers could rally and demand higher wages.
Real estate capitalists, on the other hand, might welcome environmental regulations that limit pollution if they see smog and grime as factors that might bring down the value of their buildings. They would not, however, cheer the state for imposing rent controls or building high-quality public housing, as those measures might threaten their very business model. Planners, then, must manage a double bind: meeting the competing demands of various types of capitalists, without doing so much planning that the capitalists freak out.
In trying to thread that needle, urban planners face the capitalist-democracy contradiction. Actual capitalists — those who own the means of production, not just those who think like them — are always the numerical minority. In a republican government and a capitalist economy, planners must incorporate the working class into their process or risk a legitimacy crisis. At the same time, however, they are entrusted to appease the capitalists for whom the system is designed to work. To navigate this dilemma, cities have devised elaborate land use review systems (in which public comment is encouraged but non-binding) and public city planning commissions (which are generally staffed by real estate experts and business elites).
According to this model, urban planners’ main job is to contain these two contradictions; neither can be resolved, but both can be managed. It’s a complicated bind. They are supposed to make certain land use interventions, but are prevented from making more sweeping changes. Their process must be open to the public, while simultaneously guaranteeing that ultimate power resides in the hands of propertied elites. It can be a pretty shitty job. (...)
With real estate concentrating and manufacturing dispersing, the relationship between urban capital and urban planning has shifted in important ways. If manufacturers no longer make up a powerful capitalist constituency for lower central city land and housing costs, planners managing “the property contradiction” are really only hearing from real estate capitalists and those aligned with their growth agenda, who are calling for policies that push land and property values ever-upward. Even when attempting to solve urban quandaries that have little do with real estate directly — education, transportation, parks, etc. — real estate capital demands planning interventions that enhance speculation. (...)
Whatever problems planners attack, the solutions they propose are likely to include luxury development as a key component — even when that problem is a lack of affordable housing. Planners in the real estate state are tasked with stoking property values: either because they are low and investors want them higher, or because they are already high and if their deflation could bring down an entire budgetary house of cards. Working to curb speculation and develop public and decommodified housing seem like absurd propositions to a planning regime whose first assumption is that future public gains come first through real estate growth.
In this system, gentrification is a feature not a bug. It is surely an economic and social force, but it is also the product of the state — a planned process of channeled reinvestment and targeted displacement. Urban planners, however, are not just corporate tools or government stooges. For the most part they join the profession to have a positive impact on cities. Many come from radical backgrounds and see planning as a means to impose control on capital’s chaos. But under the strictures of the real estate state, producing space for purposes other than profit is an enormous challenge.
by Samuel Stein, Jacobin | Read more:
Image: A view of the Hudson Yards development zone. Stephanie Keith/Getty
[ed. See also: New York's Hudson Yards is an ultra-capitalist Forbidden City (The Guardian).]Image: A view of the Hudson Yards development zone. Stephanie Keith/Getty
