The Mackinac Center hones in on the conditions that make “cool” communities thrive (via Free-Market.net‘s Freedom News Daily):
In the early 1980’s, the leaders of Flint, Mich. announced plans of their own. They wanted to make downtown Flint into a hip tourist Mecca. Plans called for a new shopping center, a new luxury hotel, and a theme park. After spending over $70 million, that plan today is known simply as the disaster “AutoWorld.”
What was the difference that determined success in the one case, and failure in the other? Gov. Jennifer Granholm should ponder the answer to that question. She is creating a “cool cities” advisory panel and calling upon 250 cities in other states to do the same. She hopes that 251 new government commissions will come up with ideas that can revive depressed urban areas.
Why did SoHo succeed while Flint failed? Did New York’s development bureaucrats figure out a better way to accomplish their goal than did Flint’s? Nope. In fact, SoHo historian Richard Kostelanetz argues that the lack of centralized planning was essential to SoHo’s success. He claims SoHo succeeded because its development flew below the radar screens of control-seeking bureaucrats, politically connected developers, and local zoning bureaucracies. In short, SoHo succeeded because government planning wasn’t involved at all.
In fact, it was openly opposed. Kostelanetz tells the story of a feisty Lithuanian immigrant named Maciunas, who came to New York to study art, but who also had tremendous talent as a real estate developer, and was extraordinarily disdainful of abiding by the law. According to The Village Voice, “By 1968, 10 years before his death, Maciunas had used nearly 17 buildings to create 11 co-ops for artists,” around which the SoHo community formed. “He did every transaction in cash, commingled funds, and basically broke every rule in the book. The authorities were after him for years,” Kostelanetz told The Voice.
The point is that if governments want “cool cities” to grow up in their midst, government planners will have very little to do with it. The best thing the bureaucrats can do is to perform the core functions of government well — and otherwise get out of the way.
Sadly, the state of Michigan abounds with examples of bureaucratic pipe dreams and overzealous regulation that strangle the life out of our cities at the same time that vital services like infrastructure, schools and police protection are allowed to decay.
This reminds me of my hometown, Portland, OR — the very model of a modern central planning zeitgeist. Guys like Randal O’Toole and organizations like the Cascade Policy Institue have done some particularly good work in exposing Portland’s planning folly, but it’ll take a long time for the tide to turn. I still love Portland, but it’s like a friend engaging in dangerously self-destructive behavior — someone needs to stage an intervention.
