Urbanism, Suburbs, and Responding to Eduardo

I begin by expressing my appreciation to Eduardo Peñalver, Rick Garnett, and Michael Scaperlanda in continuing this interesting thread on metropolitan area communities, housing choices, and lifestyle, with this blog’s distinct flavoring of these issues with Catholic Social Thought as a perspective. I apologize for my long delay in responding, due to the need to end my procrastination and finish grading those Civil Procedure exams before leaving tomorrow for the Association of American Law Schools meeting in New York, as well as the sad need to take a very sick cat, our beloved family pet, to the veterinarian. I rely on the generosity of my fellow bloggers in allowing me to offer these delayed responses.

To reduce the length of these postings while giving adequate weight to each, I respond here to Eduardo and then later this afternoon will respond to Rick's posting of the Philip Bess abstract.

I am pleased to learn from Eduardo's recent message that I misread his original Washington Post op-ed/Mirror of Justice post. I had read his op-ed as general indictment of suburban living (through the ascription to the growth of the suburbs of a series of “social ills” from “climate change and the destruction of wetlands to obesity and social isolation”). I also had understood his op-ed as saying that, while the decline of the suburbs may begin naturally due to economic changes in housing and gas prices, a “shift toward a more regional outlook” in government organization would also entail a more deliberate approach to social planning that would place the heavy thumb of the state on one side of the scale of housing choices for Americans.

Understood instead as a positive advocacy of a New Urban approach in residential options, in which people could live, work, and shop in “transit- and pedestrian-friendly, diverse neighborhoods,” Eduardo's vision has much that is attractive. While it is not the choice that I have made at this stage of my life, I have made precisely that choice (or something similar to it) in the past and could well imagine doing so again in the future.

That being said, I am skeptical that Eduardo’s vision can be achieved on a broader scale while preserving what his recent posting positively describes as the preference (that Eduardo shares) for the “single family dwelling over the high-rise apartment.” If suburban growth is to be curtailed (through natural evolution or governmental planning), and a higher-density demographic pattern to be achieved, multiple-unit dwellings will necessarily come to dominate the housing options available to the next generation of Americans. In this respect, I think there is much to Michael's postings here and here (passing along as well the thoughts of a student) that the New Urban vision will be available mostly to the affluent.

The New Urban vision may be more likely to achieve success if it were to be adjusted in recognition of the different stages of life and lifestyle that most of us experience during our adult lives. Young adults, unmarried and married, will be attracted to city center living, for economic reasons and easy access to the kinds of entertainment and activities that the city center best affords. Families with children are more likely to seek the suburbs (or less dense areas of cities), in order to secure a single-family home with a yard in a safe neighborhood of similarly-situated families and in close proximity to a good quality school. When the children have left the nest, senior couples are again more likely to appreciate the greater ease of living in multiple-unit buildings without responsibilities for maintaining a home and yard, as well as having easier access to amenities, health care, shopping, etc. If options are designed that appeal more directly to the changing circumstances of lives as actually lived in this country, then we should be able within reasonable economic circumstances and land-use policies to allow the freedom of diverse choices for all Americans.

My primary theme, here and in prior messages on the Mirror of Justice, has not been so much to insist that my vision of community or choice of neighborhood (or on other questions of community and politics) is perfect or even preferable (and my vision about many matters is not fixed in space and time), but rather to contend that Catholic Social Teaching should be understood as optimistically and openly embracing liberty as a high value, consistent with an appreciation for the dignity of each human being. Catholic Social Thought is not a philosophy of limited imagination, social and political pessimism in allocating supposedly limited resources in a feudal setting, or regressive economic thinking.

One of the great strengths of Catholic thinking throughout the centuries has been an ever-expanding vision of human thriving that draws upon the best of each culture that the Church and its faithful encounter. The American contribution is to encourage a greater appreciation for liberty, future-looking optimism in human development, the virtues of limited government that is closer to the people, and a dynamic economy. The American Dream of home-ownership – a single-family home in a safe and pleasant neighborhood – deserves to be promoted and celebrated in Catholic Social Thought. On that point, it appears that we may find consensus among us on the Mirror of Justice.

Greg Sisk