Social Engineering

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

The next time someone tells you that zoning for density is some kind of “social engineering,” you could do a lot worse then to repeat this Ezra Klein post word for word:

There’s often a tendency to assume that the status quo is the most “natural” way for things to be, and that rejiggering the relevant subsidies is somehow more artificial and presumptuous. But the current system was built atop a massive structure of subsidies and tax breaks. The mortgage tax deduction advantaged bigger homes; funding schools through inequitable property taxes encouraged families to move out of cities where the property taxes were low and into richer suburbs where the schools would be wealthy; putting billions into costly and little-used roads made far-flung developments appear cheap to those who only saw the finished product; underfunding public transportation heavily influenced development patterns, and so on and so forth. And that doesn’t even get into the racial unrest, social dysfunction, and crime levels that helped drive white flight — and thus sprawl — in the 60s and 70s. Indeed, there’s nothing natural about our current settlement patterns, and no reason preserving them should be seen as a nod to expressed preference rather than, as it actually is, a status quo bias in favor of the current subsidies and their associated winners. Nobody’s saying we should make suburbs illegal. But we don’t have to abide by public policy that makes them look far cheaper and more economical than they are.

It really is that simple.