Dan Savage joins me on Volts to discuss how NIMBY-captured city leadership is failing Democrats — and why making cities better is the key to building the party’s future.
For a view counter to that of the market solving the housing crisis -- "government should get out of the way and just let the developers build" -- Richard A. Walker, professor emeritus of geography at UC Berkeley who has written extensively about California, could be consulted, maybe on this program.
He writes in "Pictures of a Gone City", "When it comes to providing enough low-cost housing, however, market solutions are simply inadequate..." "For the bottom quarter of the population, there need to be massive infusions of federal and state funds for construction of low-cost units comparable to the billions that now go into highways and mass transit." He also mentions land trusts to buy land and buildings, and in general removal of land and housing from the market and repurposing to low-income housing (bottom 25% of the population as noted above.)
Yes, the market is what got us into housing affordability/shortage problem in the first place. It isn't a simple supply-and-demand problem. Or rather, supply and demand don't work until you have a lot more housing than exists in many of the desirable areas. In many areas, where manpower and land are scarce, more building paradoxically increases housing prices. Historically (and people forget this), government WAS in the business of building housing. I believe Paris, as a useful model, instituted housing pricing rules that were designed to ensure that people with different incomes could afford to live together.
I caught that stroads were bad but didn’t see a definition (sorry if I overlooked it) so looked it up, sharing for anyone else who might be curious. Great conversation. I am doing what I can do yimbify my town (basically a close suburb of Columbus OH) and this gives me energy.
I feel like the discussion of causes of a rightward swing in cities gives a bit too much credence to actual reasons that make sense and less about the general stew of misinformation that everyone - including city-dwellers - is steeped in.
The places where food is grown and energy is produced (Cali grows over 10% of the nation's food by the way) are utterly dependent on the 80% of the population that consume these.
The blue urban enclaves can get their food and energy elsewhere (and almost 20% of our food is imported). We can, with the right investment, be energy independent.
The red regions cannot survive without the blue dollars flowing in (a net drain on the economy, while cities are the engines of the economy and trade). They are an albatross around the neck of urban America.
Even in CA, the red areas predominantly grow the food and produce the energy.
Saying someone who produces something is *entirely* dependent on someone who consumes puts the almighty dollar above real resources that keep us alive. Not really an argument a progressive person like myself is keen to.
The cities can import all their food from other places? Really? Once again, probably mostly conservative areas in Canada and perhaps Mexico. And I'm not sure progressive 'buy local' city dwellers are going to be keen to ship everything from China to eat. Also, are all those dockworkers and semi drivers also liberals?
How can cities like Chicago or NY be energy independent? A nuclear reactor inside the city? I suppose you could claim Lake Michigan and the Atlantic Ocean as 'part of the city' and build enough wind and solar on those bodies of water, but that's very much stretching what is and is not a part of the city.
Blue dollars- all of the debt free $$ supply comes originally from national Federal spending. So certainly blue cities get their fair share (sometimes less depending on accounting). And they attract $$'s through tourism (fossil fuel heavy), medical needs, education, arts, etc..., but a crap ton also comes through financial pilferage (credit card fees, loan servicing, brokerage fees, etc...). And this latter group of urbanites probably skews right and is extractive of red and blue America alike.
So, the 'blue dollars flowing in'? How do you figure?
Like where I am, Lubbock, TX- a college town. Population of city increases probably 20% during school. Lots and lots of rural kids taking their rural parents $$ and spending it in town to the extractive financial industry and corporate America.
If you then take the argument that these extractive industries are part of 'blue America' and their taxes (way less than they should be) fund statewide initiatives that sometimes help out rural places, OK fine, but that's a very convoluted pathway and not a great argument to try to win over voters IMO.
The reason to vote blue is because blue pols generally give more of a shit about people who don't have a lot. They generally don't make distinctions between red and blue. The IRA sent a lot of $$ to red America because it was done generally in an equitable way. It picked winners and losers based upon metrics that are generally more fair than "Do you promise to vote for me or contribute to my campaign?"
Furthermore, even in the smallest rural counties there is usually 20% to 30% of voters that vote blue. We're on the front lines of fighting misinformation and disinformation. I'm very glad for urban centers where hopefully LGBTQ people can feel safer and progressive policy can be enacted. The blue/red urban/rural divide will continue to grow because of the election and these different value systems, but I don't think it helps to rewrite the story about where real resources are predominantly located. The fascists have a ton of control. Now they once again have the money cannon of the FED govt, and I fully expect them to exploit it towards their own ends.
I lived in US for 30 years, including Trump's first term. Here in Canada we have an election coming up in fall 2025. Our Conservative Party, analogous to Republicans, would easily win at this point. We call them Maple MAGA. The leader of that party is a Trump-lite. So, figuring out WTF happened in 2024 election is urgent for us. Why have we not figured this out in the 8 years since 2016?
Random thoughts:
As JennaFB notes, stew of misinformation--strongly supported by oil and corporate right interests. Lefties are mostly blithely unaware of this stew and completely unable to combat it.
So, we need a big reprogramming effort, which is essentially what climate action is anyway.
1)This pod mentions what are probably two of the biggest levers for that: education and socialization. These often happen together as kids move to urban areas for school and work. Even field trips to places like NYC or other 15 minute cities can have big impacts. Education and training raise incomes, plus we need this for the energy revolution.
2)Income inequality is a thing. Remember Occupy Wallstreet? That has not changed since 2011. Maybe that is part of why the right has weaponized social media to safely corral right wing voters into an alternate universe. Meanwhile, the stock market keeps going up and up...One of the reactions to the election in the US is the formation of a coalition of working class groups that can hopefully make a difference in how the next 4 years rolls out.
3)Remember that Trump voters also probably love dog and cat videos, and that Texas has the most renewables of any state in the US.
I think more is already happening than you are aware of. I'd check out the YIMBY zoning policies passed in Minnesota and Oregon. More importantly I suggest you investigate the results. I live in Portland and Oregon's HB2001 required every city to basically ban single family zoning. I think it's working. As I write, a 8-home cottage cluster is under construction across the street on my residential street. I tell my NIMBY neighbors that complain about parking "Who knows, your future best friend my move into one of these units." Additionally, I'm not sure about Minneapolis, but Portland has 3 major neighborhood redevelopments underway, similar to the Pearl District. Each will be within a few blocks of the river and bring 1,000s of units of housing plus retail and dining.
We don't need to make cities in blue states larger. We need people to move to red cities, either from outside the state or within it, according to the theory presented here of affecting national politics, including presidential races.
While people need housing, and Seattle and other cities need to accommodate those already there who are without housing or in housing that is too expensive, drawing new people to Blue state cities will not solve the problem of the increasingly Republican voting trend in rural and ex-urban (and cities a little) areas of Red states, which is what is needed to sway national politics.
I think the red shift in cities might not be about lefty culture. A friend of mine who’s a campaign consultant did lots of focus groups, and both urban and rural voters complained about inflation the most. But when asked for details, rural voters identified inflation with the cost of groceries, while urban voters identified it with the cost of housing. I’m worried that our urban NIMBYism is hollowing out the Democratic Party.
'Blue Archipelago: Surveying the Political Landscape'
"Maybe now, once and for all we can accept that each and every GOP voter, the fascist crowd, has demonstrated their clear intention of destroying any semblance of a pluralistic democracy...
We need to leverage this economic dominance to promote an ever more progressive agenda, preserving what’s already in place in the face of the Trump/GOP cabal’s attacks, and even pushing the progressive agenda further.
Rather than, in the short term, trying to use our economic dominance to influence red states, I imagine doubling down on the basic reality that progressives congregate in islands of blue (which fortunately include Cali and NY, Illinois and Mass, and cities like Austin and Des Moines and San Francisco and Miami); in the aggregate the blue economy is larger than most nations in the world...
We need to accept this, and go with it, not bang our heads against brick walls in futile efforts to turn conservatives into ‘receptive to progressive ideas persuadable voters’, or red regions into blue regions. Because that has simply, obviously, never actually worked."
The other thing we need to do, as intimated in the discussion, is not create ghettos in our cities, where misinformation and injustice can fester. In Vancouver, for example, there is lots of building going on. This is good, but developers are trying to maximize profits by making as many small housing units as possible. So, 1 bedroom apartments are typically 500 sq feet. This is sewing seeds of class warfare. Plus, very hard on marriages.
A thousand times YES! Thank you for resurfacing this piece. One of my very few consolations right now is hoping that the Democrats use this loss as motivation to retool as a party of fighters. We have to start punching back and not apologize for playing hardball. That’s the political landscape we’re in now. And to Dan’s point, not expending political capital on trying to help those who don’t want to be helped—and in fact, disdain *us* for caring about them (because apparently Real Americans don’t feel empathy for out groups? 🤔).
We need to stop leading with empathy and start leading with strategy. Our better angels won’t be around to lift people up if we don’t win elections in the first place.
For a view counter to that of the market solving the housing crisis -- "government should get out of the way and just let the developers build" -- Richard A. Walker, professor emeritus of geography at UC Berkeley who has written extensively about California, could be consulted, maybe on this program.
He writes in "Pictures of a Gone City", "When it comes to providing enough low-cost housing, however, market solutions are simply inadequate..." "For the bottom quarter of the population, there need to be massive infusions of federal and state funds for construction of low-cost units comparable to the billions that now go into highways and mass transit." He also mentions land trusts to buy land and buildings, and in general removal of land and housing from the market and repurposing to low-income housing (bottom 25% of the population as noted above.)
Yes, the market is what got us into housing affordability/shortage problem in the first place. It isn't a simple supply-and-demand problem. Or rather, supply and demand don't work until you have a lot more housing than exists in many of the desirable areas. In many areas, where manpower and land are scarce, more building paradoxically increases housing prices. Historically (and people forget this), government WAS in the business of building housing. I believe Paris, as a useful model, instituted housing pricing rules that were designed to ensure that people with different incomes could afford to live together.
I caught that stroads were bad but didn’t see a definition (sorry if I overlooked it) so looked it up, sharing for anyone else who might be curious. Great conversation. I am doing what I can do yimbify my town (basically a close suburb of Columbus OH) and this gives me energy.
I feel like the discussion of causes of a rightward swing in cities gives a bit too much credence to actual reasons that make sense and less about the general stew of misinformation that everyone - including city-dwellers - is steeped in.
Gah, link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad
GDP- maybe...
But all the food is grown outside of cities, almost all of the energy is produced outside of cities.
Financial centers are located in cities (not necessarily blue, but disproportionate power over everyone).
The places where food is grown and energy is produced (Cali grows over 10% of the nation's food by the way) are utterly dependent on the 80% of the population that consume these.
The blue urban enclaves can get their food and energy elsewhere (and almost 20% of our food is imported). We can, with the right investment, be energy independent.
The red regions cannot survive without the blue dollars flowing in (a net drain on the economy, while cities are the engines of the economy and trade). They are an albatross around the neck of urban America.
Even in CA, the red areas predominantly grow the food and produce the energy.
Saying someone who produces something is *entirely* dependent on someone who consumes puts the almighty dollar above real resources that keep us alive. Not really an argument a progressive person like myself is keen to.
The cities can import all their food from other places? Really? Once again, probably mostly conservative areas in Canada and perhaps Mexico. And I'm not sure progressive 'buy local' city dwellers are going to be keen to ship everything from China to eat. Also, are all those dockworkers and semi drivers also liberals?
How can cities like Chicago or NY be energy independent? A nuclear reactor inside the city? I suppose you could claim Lake Michigan and the Atlantic Ocean as 'part of the city' and build enough wind and solar on those bodies of water, but that's very much stretching what is and is not a part of the city.
Blue dollars- all of the debt free $$ supply comes originally from national Federal spending. So certainly blue cities get their fair share (sometimes less depending on accounting). And they attract $$'s through tourism (fossil fuel heavy), medical needs, education, arts, etc..., but a crap ton also comes through financial pilferage (credit card fees, loan servicing, brokerage fees, etc...). And this latter group of urbanites probably skews right and is extractive of red and blue America alike.
So, the 'blue dollars flowing in'? How do you figure?
Like where I am, Lubbock, TX- a college town. Population of city increases probably 20% during school. Lots and lots of rural kids taking their rural parents $$ and spending it in town to the extractive financial industry and corporate America.
If you then take the argument that these extractive industries are part of 'blue America' and their taxes (way less than they should be) fund statewide initiatives that sometimes help out rural places, OK fine, but that's a very convoluted pathway and not a great argument to try to win over voters IMO.
The reason to vote blue is because blue pols generally give more of a shit about people who don't have a lot. They generally don't make distinctions between red and blue. The IRA sent a lot of $$ to red America because it was done generally in an equitable way. It picked winners and losers based upon metrics that are generally more fair than "Do you promise to vote for me or contribute to my campaign?"
You know, hopefully the opposite of fascism.
Furthermore, even in the smallest rural counties there is usually 20% to 30% of voters that vote blue. We're on the front lines of fighting misinformation and disinformation. I'm very glad for urban centers where hopefully LGBTQ people can feel safer and progressive policy can be enacted. The blue/red urban/rural divide will continue to grow because of the election and these different value systems, but I don't think it helps to rewrite the story about where real resources are predominantly located. The fascists have a ton of control. Now they once again have the money cannon of the FED govt, and I fully expect them to exploit it towards their own ends.
I lived in US for 30 years, including Trump's first term. Here in Canada we have an election coming up in fall 2025. Our Conservative Party, analogous to Republicans, would easily win at this point. We call them Maple MAGA. The leader of that party is a Trump-lite. So, figuring out WTF happened in 2024 election is urgent for us. Why have we not figured this out in the 8 years since 2016?
Random thoughts:
As JennaFB notes, stew of misinformation--strongly supported by oil and corporate right interests. Lefties are mostly blithely unaware of this stew and completely unable to combat it.
So, we need a big reprogramming effort, which is essentially what climate action is anyway.
1)This pod mentions what are probably two of the biggest levers for that: education and socialization. These often happen together as kids move to urban areas for school and work. Even field trips to places like NYC or other 15 minute cities can have big impacts. Education and training raise incomes, plus we need this for the energy revolution.
2)Income inequality is a thing. Remember Occupy Wallstreet? That has not changed since 2011. Maybe that is part of why the right has weaponized social media to safely corral right wing voters into an alternate universe. Meanwhile, the stock market keeps going up and up...One of the reactions to the election in the US is the formation of a coalition of working class groups that can hopefully make a difference in how the next 4 years rolls out.
3)Remember that Trump voters also probably love dog and cat videos, and that Texas has the most renewables of any state in the US.
Top-down climate action may be gone, but maybe we need it less than we think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXwGvLj4rak
Cheers!
I think more is already happening than you are aware of. I'd check out the YIMBY zoning policies passed in Minnesota and Oregon. More importantly I suggest you investigate the results. I live in Portland and Oregon's HB2001 required every city to basically ban single family zoning. I think it's working. As I write, a 8-home cottage cluster is under construction across the street on my residential street. I tell my NIMBY neighbors that complain about parking "Who knows, your future best friend my move into one of these units." Additionally, I'm not sure about Minneapolis, but Portland has 3 major neighborhood redevelopments underway, similar to the Pearl District. Each will be within a few blocks of the river and bring 1,000s of units of housing plus retail and dining.
The archipelagos are also changing. Nyc voted more republican in this election than any before.
We don't need to make cities in blue states larger. We need people to move to red cities, either from outside the state or within it, according to the theory presented here of affecting national politics, including presidential races.
While people need housing, and Seattle and other cities need to accommodate those already there who are without housing or in housing that is too expensive, drawing new people to Blue state cities will not solve the problem of the increasingly Republican voting trend in rural and ex-urban (and cities a little) areas of Red states, which is what is needed to sway national politics.
I think the red shift in cities might not be about lefty culture. A friend of mine who’s a campaign consultant did lots of focus groups, and both urban and rural voters complained about inflation the most. But when asked for details, rural voters identified inflation with the cost of groceries, while urban voters identified it with the cost of housing. I’m worried that our urban NIMBYism is hollowing out the Democratic Party.
Hmmm...
If I find I arrived at more or less the same conclusion as Dan Savage, I feel pretty good.
Here's an essay I posted on Substack Nov. 8th, updated from one I originally wrote in 2017-
https://iandouglasrushlau.substack.com/p/blue-archipelago
'Blue Archipelago: Surveying the Political Landscape'
"Maybe now, once and for all we can accept that each and every GOP voter, the fascist crowd, has demonstrated their clear intention of destroying any semblance of a pluralistic democracy...
We need to leverage this economic dominance to promote an ever more progressive agenda, preserving what’s already in place in the face of the Trump/GOP cabal’s attacks, and even pushing the progressive agenda further.
Rather than, in the short term, trying to use our economic dominance to influence red states, I imagine doubling down on the basic reality that progressives congregate in islands of blue (which fortunately include Cali and NY, Illinois and Mass, and cities like Austin and Des Moines and San Francisco and Miami); in the aggregate the blue economy is larger than most nations in the world...
We need to accept this, and go with it, not bang our heads against brick walls in futile efforts to turn conservatives into ‘receptive to progressive ideas persuadable voters’, or red regions into blue regions. Because that has simply, obviously, never actually worked."
The other thing we need to do, as intimated in the discussion, is not create ghettos in our cities, where misinformation and injustice can fester. In Vancouver, for example, there is lots of building going on. This is good, but developers are trying to maximize profits by making as many small housing units as possible. So, 1 bedroom apartments are typically 500 sq feet. This is sewing seeds of class warfare. Plus, very hard on marriages.
A thousand times YES! Thank you for resurfacing this piece. One of my very few consolations right now is hoping that the Democrats use this loss as motivation to retool as a party of fighters. We have to start punching back and not apologize for playing hardball. That’s the political landscape we’re in now. And to Dan’s point, not expending political capital on trying to help those who don’t want to be helped—and in fact, disdain *us* for caring about them (because apparently Real Americans don’t feel empathy for out groups? 🤔).
We need to stop leading with empathy and start leading with strategy. Our better angels won’t be around to lift people up if we don’t win elections in the first place.