He Disappears He Comes Back Then He Runs Away Again Shuts Us Out We Donã¢â‚¬â„¢t Even Know His Plans
Today we are supposed to remember the men and women who gave their lives to protect America's freedoms. But I would also like to remember some of the freedoms that we have lost thanks to planning.
Freedom of Property Ownership
Who should get to decide how this land is used — the owner or the government?
Flickr photo by Kacey97007
First among these is the freedom to own property without fear that it will be taken without compensation. Though this freedom is enshrined in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, it has largely disappeared thanks to the Supreme Court.
The court has made many decisions chipping away at this freedom, but one of the most important ones was Penn Central v. New York City in 1978. As I explained in more detail on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the case, the Supreme Court ruled that government regulators could take part of the value of people's property without compensation so long as some value was left behind.
This was not a case of a police action protecting public health or safety or preventing nuisances, but simply a government that wanted to preserve a historic building without having to pay for the cost of such preservation. This opened the door to further regulation largely on aesthetic grounds.
Prior to Penn Central, no state (with the possible exception of Hawaii) had ever allowed counties to permanently downzone rural land with the goal of keeping landowners from ever developing their land. Within a year after the Penn Central decision, Oregon's legislature passed a law doing just that.
Today, government regulation that takes away people's property rights is routine and is often justified by planners based on a warped theory of "evolving rights." According to this theory, people once had a right to do anything they wanted with their land, but now society has evolved so that first one right, then another, disappears for the greater social good. This is a huge misrepresentation of land history.
The idea that regulation that reduces property values without compensation complies with the Fifth Amendment is exactly equal to a notion that censorship is compatible with the First Amendment provided the censors leave at least some of the words in the newspaper or other publication. No American would stand for that, and no American should stand for regulatory takings.
Freedom of Mobility
Why should our mobility depend on the whims of urban planners?
Flickr photo by chefranden
Mobility is not explicitly listed in the Constitution, but some Supreme Court decisions have suggested that laws or rules that limit mobility (such as a law preventing certain people from moving to certain cities or neighborhoods) are implicitly unconstitutional. Constitutional or not, mobility is a part of being American and Americans have benefited greatly from their mobility.
For more than two decades, planners have been slowly reducing our mobility by increasing traffic congestion. Some increase in congestion is due to a shortage of funds for new roads caused by fixed gas taxes (as opposed to user fees that would vary according to the number of miles people drive). But much of this shortage is due to planners diverting highway user fees into expensive transit projects and other non-highway programs.
In 1983, Congress first authorized the diversion of federal gas taxes to mass transit. Since then, according to the Texas Transportation Institute, urban congestion has increased by about five times. Urban planners in Florida, Minnesota, Oregon, and other states have stated that they want to create more congestion in order to reduce driving and increase transit ridership. Such planners should be dismissed from government jobs for reducing our freedom and wasting our time.
Freedom of Choice
How many Americans would really choose to live in 5-story apartments if they could afford single-family homes?
Flickr photo by InfoMofo
Under the guise of "giving people choices," planners are taking away choices by driving up the cost of single-family housing in order to force more people to live in apartments, condos, rowhouses, or, at best, single-family homes on tiny lots. The same "choice" rhetoric is used to support plans to build expensive rail transit systems while choking off funds to programs that can actually reduce traffic congestion.
The planners' code of ethics requires planners to "provide timely, adequate, clear, and accurate information on planning issues to all affected persons and to governmental decision makers." Government planners who use such choice rhetoric should be dismissed for violating this code and deceiving the public.
So here we have three freedoms that we have lost in just the past few decades: freedom to own property, freedom of mobility, and freedom of choice. Let's remember these freedoms this Memorial Day and resolve to take them back.
Source: https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=154
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