Quick questions for Matt/Mark/Claire (aka Team Slow Boring) - In this post, Matt noted that "Here at Slow Boring, everything ultimately comes back to Max Weber and politics as a vocation."
That got me thinking, would it be possible to put together a reading list (akin to a course syllabus) of articles and books that have helped to inform your thinking and broader political theories and that you think are worth your subscriber's time?
I often find myself so caught up in the daily news cycle that I don't give much thought to the books/articles that have helped shape the actions of the people who are driving the news. And so I'd love some guidance on where to turn for more information about the theories and philosophies that underpin your thinking.
One could almost get whiplash going back and forth between the conservative takes that zoning is central planning and racism (bad) and that zoning is central planning and racism (good)
SimCity would be so much easier without having to specify zones. Just build some power lines and sewers, choose a tax rate, and watch your city develop into a harmonious yglesiastopia.
Man, my favorite part of SimCity when I was a kid was razing the slums. Why do I feel bad about it now? Junior gentrifier? Heartless oppressor? Questions for a therapist.
Late 19th/early 20th century cities, laid out after streetcars were a thing, have the best balance on this. Dense blocks in a grid but enough space between the buildings for trees and green vegetation.
When I bought my most recent house outside the city, I looked for one with as many trees as I could get (it's on a 1/4 acre lot). And in fact, when I move again someday, ideally, I want a place with enough land that I don't even see my nearest neighbors.
What do we make of the racial justice messaging being more effective than the economic growth message among 3rd party/Independent voters? Possibly an over-sample of the kind of the Bernie-adjacent leftist voters who despise the DNC? Or is there something more interesting happening there?
I am all for deregulating land use and giving the market a chance to provide more affordable housing, but we must temper expectations.
Manhattan is hardly a sprawling suburb of single family ranch houses on acre lots, but it is still unaffordable. At some point a region is overpopulated and the market price of housing is the legitimate means of asking “Do you really need to live here?”
If you are a financial big shot or a Broadway actor you need to live in New York. But you can be a grocery clerk or a plumber anywhere. What happens if all the grocery clerks and plumbers move to Muncie, Indiana? There will be a shortage and of grocery clerks and plumbers in New York, and the ones that remain can command higher wages that let them afford housing.
New York City has almost 55,000 square miles in it. At one time the "city" was all in Manhattan but with development and price increases there is much more city action in Brooklyn and the other boroughs. There is still plenty of room for more people here, if the housing can be built. *Most* New York City buildings are single-family houses.
>>>New York City has almost 55,000 square miles in it<<<
NYC's land area is about 300 square miles; perhaps you're thinking of New York State. I agree NYC could get denser still (thus allowing more people to live there). I'd say most of the housing unit gains in that metropolis, though, over the long term, are likely to be outside the city limits. (There's 20-30 times more metro NY land outside the five boroughs than inside, depending on how you measure it, and also, needless to say, much more low-hanging fruit in terms of densification opportunities.)
But aren't a lot of those single family homes tiny row houses that squeezed together? In any case, have at it. For reasons unfathomable to this ex-New Yorker, there seems to be an insatiable desire to live there, even if it's in a tiny, expensive cubby hole.
I've wondered the same thing before - shouldn't the problem just sort itself out at some point? But apparently the reality is that people will accept surprisingly low standards of living in order to be around who and what they know.
So what is the significance of the fact that Matt chose a Richard Khalenberg essay as the hook for this post? Has he shifted to more of a racial justice lens, or is it explicitly a case of him presenting an argument which is not his preferred argument?
It's worth making explicit a question that's implicit in this and other posts in the "elite nonprofit funders" corpus, which is: What is the (political) use of history?
To spell it out more, I think there's been a largely positive trend of more people taking interest in reading about some of our nation's pretty ugly racial history. I read many of these books and think that, for the most part, they are well-researched, interesting, and worth recommending to other people in my social circle. But there seem to be two errors that occur on the path of "learning about redlining" to "aggressively advocating for racially equitable housing policies."
One is along the lines of what's being argued in this post, which is that the majority of people don't find historically grounded arguments all that persuasive. It's true that many (perhaps a majority) of people in elite non-profit spaces are politically activated by this education, but that's not really politically scalable and the tactic only really works on people who are inclined to agree with your worldview in the first place.
The other mistake is what I'd call the "1619 project" error, which is that the fusion of history and politics has led many otherwise intelligent people to get out over their skis and interpret history in an overly deterministic manner. (In the case of the 1619 project, this is the argument that America became a racist nation from the moment the first slave ship landed.) As historians quip, "the past doesn't know its future," but much of the non-profit class you describe has really bought into the fact that no solution is effective unless it comes along with an exorcism to account for past historical wrongs. And they've come to that conclusion--I would argue--because they don't fully appreciate the limits of what history is able to tell us about our present.
My sense is that, because many people have made the second error, their response to an argument like the one made in this post (pointing out the first error) would be that an "economic growth" framing would be insufficient to address the past historical injustice that needs to be dealt with before meaningful change can occur. I don't think that's right (or at least it's extremely impractical), but I think it's worth being attentive to the second distinction because many elite actors have convinced themselves that the "historicist" approach to politics is superior to the "popularist" approach.
History is history and politics is politics. History is about understanding the past and people in it, all of it, in the round. Politics is about judgment and persuasion, and these are antithetical to historical understanding.
I'm torn between thinking, on one hand, that this post is great, and successfully identifies specific problems and offers enough context to tell what is going on. On the other hand, it feels like it dodges some of the harder questions. In closing, Matt talked about the, "ethic of responsibility" and the value of solving actually existing problems.
I agree completely! But that ignores the historical reasons why the racial justice framing has gotten so much traction. Efforts to solve actually existing problems are rarely completely successful or frictionless. Much of the time we end up with compromises which allow for some progress while preserving parts of the status quo (or preserving existing power relationships).
I've been convinced that the YIMBY position is correct, and that we should change zoning to allow more development. I'd also like to make some commitment to the idea that, whatever compromises get made along the way, don't give up the potential racial justice benefits.
That tension feels less sharp in the YIMBY/NIMBY debate than in some areas, but it's no a crazy thing for people to worry about.
Despite the headline, most of Kahlenberg's article is actually about class, and he explicitly calls out the potential for this issue to unify working-class people across racial lines.
I agree with parts of your political analysis here, but I think it's early in the game, and the Kahlenberg NY Times article did something more valuable: It brought zoning reform to a wide, mainstream audience, both with its content and its framing.
Yes, making racial justice the primary argument for zoning reform won't be too productive when it's time to vote on the big things, whether at the state or national level. But it will be quite productive to have it as a secondary argument, if done wisely and in moderation.
Without it (like you actually noted), people don't pay attention to it, and may not make it a priority.
>>Does turning zoning reform into a highly polarized issue of racial conflict make it more or less likely to happen?<<
This this this this this.
I'm a homeowner on the westside of LA and have been converted from NIMBY to YIMBY partly by Matt but more so by serving on my local homeowners association board. And one thing the latter has taught me is what *won't* work -- and that is the racial framing, whether you cite redlining from 1917 or describe it as some abstract form of "systemic racism." These are all good liberals and to basically call them racists is to immediately shut down all debate. (And why not? All minorities are welcome in our neighborhood, as long as they can cough up the >$2 million for a house.)
And these people are *powerful.* The excellent book "Neighborhood Defenders" (https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Defenders-Participatory-Politics-Americas/dp/1108477275) nails this. Oh, and by the way, passing good state laws without these groups' buy-in is a losing proposition. Scott Weiner et al here in California have excellent laws, but whatever laws are passed have to be implemented locally. And no matter what the law says, there are *so* many ways to gum up the works in local implementation, and the state simply doesn't have the apparatus or scope (or probably political will) to police all the actions being taken locally.
So, one way or another, there has to be some buy-in by local homeowners. Vilifying them, and calling them racist, may make you feel better, but won't advance things.
This is a hard one, but the framing I would push is threefold: climate, your kids, and workforce. They believe in fighting climate change and don't take it as personally as being called racist. Convince them that density helps with this noble cause. Then tell them (gently) that *their* kids won't be able to afford to live anywhere, so why not do your part? Lastly, I find them somewhat amenable to the workforce argument, so hit that. In West Los Angeles terms, that means emphasizing that their kids' teachers are making the long, painful trek from Reseda, the police officers they love have to fight daily traffic from Simi Valley, and the firefighters from Van Nuys (and for the most woke, tell them about how their maids have to come from Pacoima).
And, finally, this is truly slow boring. Take small victories when and where you can, and don't expect that the NIMBY forces will collapse all at once, and a bright new day will dawn. This will take time.
If we could just care about ALL the less advantaged and the poor, not just those in certain groups. If that in itself is a racist statement, then I’m racist and unashamed.
As a member of a LA YIMBY group, my experience is that racial justice rhetoric isn't necessarily convincing to voters, but can be useful when talking to elites. If I'm trying to get the NAACP on board, or trying to convince the San Francisco city council to move away from exclusionary zoning, then this framework can be effective.
+1. I find that stories like, "I want to be able to see my grandchildren, not have them live in Austin," and "It's not right that teachers in my SF Bay city have to live in Stockton or have three roommates because there's nowhere they can afford here," are better YIMBY tactics.
It's slow boring, but the benefit to local advocacy is actual wins. You and a few friends can go to a City Council meeting and get an apartment building approved that would have been denied if you weren't there. It's gratifying.
So first off, I enjoyed this and largely agree. Question from someone who reads polls in takes like this but is not an expert: is +3 point difference in support based on framing a significant difference?
This breaks down into two parts: 1) is it statistically significant? This depends on sample size and methodology details I'm sure, but my impression from Nate Silver is that 4 points is a not untypical size polling error.
But what I'm more interested in is 2) even if we assume this poll is exactly accurate, is +3 points a big enough difference to hang a large argument on? I think the relevant factor here is how much should we ever expect framing to matter. My default assumption is that people have a baseline support for policy and framing will only have small effects, so in that context maybe +3 is significant. And obviously if a +3 support is the difference between something actually happening and it not happening, then it's hugely significant. But on an issue like this it seems like you need almost unanimous public support for things to actually happen...
P.S. maybe in the age of negative partisanship, the 6 point reduction in oppose is more important? Genuinely curious if anyone has more info here
This is a good point. I think in actuality, turning a poll on a policy issue into support for an actual bill when it has actually been written and the political players have had their turn to demonize/apotheosize it is very hard to do. But what I mainly took from that poll is that at the moment, giving it a racial framing doesn't actually help among any group, including some political groupings where you might have hoped it would.
Jesus and the prophets talked about the poor, not just the poor of color.
Quick questions for Matt/Mark/Claire (aka Team Slow Boring) - In this post, Matt noted that "Here at Slow Boring, everything ultimately comes back to Max Weber and politics as a vocation."
That got me thinking, would it be possible to put together a reading list (akin to a course syllabus) of articles and books that have helped to inform your thinking and broader political theories and that you think are worth your subscriber's time?
I often find myself so caught up in the daily news cycle that I don't give much thought to the books/articles that have helped shape the actions of the people who are driving the news. And so I'd love some guidance on where to turn for more information about the theories and philosophies that underpin your thinking.
One could almost get whiplash going back and forth between the conservative takes that zoning is central planning and racism (bad) and that zoning is central planning and racism (good)
SimCity would be so much easier without having to specify zones. Just build some power lines and sewers, choose a tax rate, and watch your city develop into a harmonious yglesiastopia.
Man, my favorite part of SimCity when I was a kid was razing the slums. Why do I feel bad about it now? Junior gentrifier? Heartless oppressor? Questions for a therapist.
I really appreciate Matt breaking the fourth wall on activist/foundation politics. It "explains the news" more than any vox piece, tbh.
I love footnote #1. I'm one of those people! It is a real dilemma: dense urban living is good for the environment, but I like trees.
Late 19th/early 20th century cities, laid out after streetcars were a thing, have the best balance on this. Dense blocks in a grid but enough space between the buildings for trees and green vegetation.
Isn't the solution dense urban living during the week, trips to the woods on weekends?
That's what I do now. It's not the same. If you grow up on or near a farm, you'll never get it out of your system.
When I bought my most recent house outside the city, I looked for one with as many trees as I could get (it's on a 1/4 acre lot). And in fact, when I move again someday, ideally, I want a place with enough land that I don't even see my nearest neighbors.
What do we make of the racial justice messaging being more effective than the economic growth message among 3rd party/Independent voters? Possibly an over-sample of the kind of the Bernie-adjacent leftist voters who despise the DNC? Or is there something more interesting happening there?
I am all for deregulating land use and giving the market a chance to provide more affordable housing, but we must temper expectations.
Manhattan is hardly a sprawling suburb of single family ranch houses on acre lots, but it is still unaffordable. At some point a region is overpopulated and the market price of housing is the legitimate means of asking “Do you really need to live here?”
If you are a financial big shot or a Broadway actor you need to live in New York. But you can be a grocery clerk or a plumber anywhere. What happens if all the grocery clerks and plumbers move to Muncie, Indiana? There will be a shortage and of grocery clerks and plumbers in New York, and the ones that remain can command higher wages that let them afford housing.
New York City has almost 55,000 square miles in it. At one time the "city" was all in Manhattan but with development and price increases there is much more city action in Brooklyn and the other boroughs. There is still plenty of room for more people here, if the housing can be built. *Most* New York City buildings are single-family houses.
>>>New York City has almost 55,000 square miles in it<<<
NYC's land area is about 300 square miles; perhaps you're thinking of New York State. I agree NYC could get denser still (thus allowing more people to live there). I'd say most of the housing unit gains in that metropolis, though, over the long term, are likely to be outside the city limits. (There's 20-30 times more metro NY land outside the five boroughs than inside, depending on how you measure it, and also, needless to say, much more low-hanging fruit in terms of densification opportunities.)
But aren't a lot of those single family homes tiny row houses that squeezed together? In any case, have at it. For reasons unfathomable to this ex-New Yorker, there seems to be an insatiable desire to live there, even if it's in a tiny, expensive cubby hole.
I've wondered the same thing before - shouldn't the problem just sort itself out at some point? But apparently the reality is that people will accept surprisingly low standards of living in order to be around who and what they know.
Something I'm wondering about: Richard Khalenberg has written repeatedly on the advantages of trying to address class disparities rather than racial disparities (his first two books made that argument, and here's something from 2018: https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/04/affirmative-action-should-be-based-on-class-not-race)
So what is the significance of the fact that Matt chose a Richard Khalenberg essay as the hook for this post? Has he shifted to more of a racial justice lens, or is it explicitly a case of him presenting an argument which is not his preferred argument?
It's worth making explicit a question that's implicit in this and other posts in the "elite nonprofit funders" corpus, which is: What is the (political) use of history?
To spell it out more, I think there's been a largely positive trend of more people taking interest in reading about some of our nation's pretty ugly racial history. I read many of these books and think that, for the most part, they are well-researched, interesting, and worth recommending to other people in my social circle. But there seem to be two errors that occur on the path of "learning about redlining" to "aggressively advocating for racially equitable housing policies."
One is along the lines of what's being argued in this post, which is that the majority of people don't find historically grounded arguments all that persuasive. It's true that many (perhaps a majority) of people in elite non-profit spaces are politically activated by this education, but that's not really politically scalable and the tactic only really works on people who are inclined to agree with your worldview in the first place.
The other mistake is what I'd call the "1619 project" error, which is that the fusion of history and politics has led many otherwise intelligent people to get out over their skis and interpret history in an overly deterministic manner. (In the case of the 1619 project, this is the argument that America became a racist nation from the moment the first slave ship landed.) As historians quip, "the past doesn't know its future," but much of the non-profit class you describe has really bought into the fact that no solution is effective unless it comes along with an exorcism to account for past historical wrongs. And they've come to that conclusion--I would argue--because they don't fully appreciate the limits of what history is able to tell us about our present.
My sense is that, because many people have made the second error, their response to an argument like the one made in this post (pointing out the first error) would be that an "economic growth" framing would be insufficient to address the past historical injustice that needs to be dealt with before meaningful change can occur. I don't think that's right (or at least it's extremely impractical), but I think it's worth being attentive to the second distinction because many elite actors have convinced themselves that the "historicist" approach to politics is superior to the "popularist" approach.
History is history and politics is politics. History is about understanding the past and people in it, all of it, in the round. Politics is about judgment and persuasion, and these are antithetical to historical understanding.
I'm torn between thinking, on one hand, that this post is great, and successfully identifies specific problems and offers enough context to tell what is going on. On the other hand, it feels like it dodges some of the harder questions. In closing, Matt talked about the, "ethic of responsibility" and the value of solving actually existing problems.
I agree completely! But that ignores the historical reasons why the racial justice framing has gotten so much traction. Efforts to solve actually existing problems are rarely completely successful or frictionless. Much of the time we end up with compromises which allow for some progress while preserving parts of the status quo (or preserving existing power relationships).
I've been convinced that the YIMBY position is correct, and that we should change zoning to allow more development. I'd also like to make some commitment to the idea that, whatever compromises get made along the way, don't give up the potential racial justice benefits.
That tension feels less sharp in the YIMBY/NIMBY debate than in some areas, but it's no a crazy thing for people to worry about.
Despite the headline, most of Kahlenberg's article is actually about class, and he explicitly calls out the potential for this issue to unify working-class people across racial lines.
Since when does the California legislature take pause because of bad press in the Daily Caller?
I agree with parts of your political analysis here, but I think it's early in the game, and the Kahlenberg NY Times article did something more valuable: It brought zoning reform to a wide, mainstream audience, both with its content and its framing.
Yes, making racial justice the primary argument for zoning reform won't be too productive when it's time to vote on the big things, whether at the state or national level. But it will be quite productive to have it as a secondary argument, if done wisely and in moderation.
Without it (like you actually noted), people don't pay attention to it, and may not make it a priority.
>>Does turning zoning reform into a highly polarized issue of racial conflict make it more or less likely to happen?<<
This this this this this.
I'm a homeowner on the westside of LA and have been converted from NIMBY to YIMBY partly by Matt but more so by serving on my local homeowners association board. And one thing the latter has taught me is what *won't* work -- and that is the racial framing, whether you cite redlining from 1917 or describe it as some abstract form of "systemic racism." These are all good liberals and to basically call them racists is to immediately shut down all debate. (And why not? All minorities are welcome in our neighborhood, as long as they can cough up the >$2 million for a house.)
And these people are *powerful.* The excellent book "Neighborhood Defenders" (https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Defenders-Participatory-Politics-Americas/dp/1108477275) nails this. Oh, and by the way, passing good state laws without these groups' buy-in is a losing proposition. Scott Weiner et al here in California have excellent laws, but whatever laws are passed have to be implemented locally. And no matter what the law says, there are *so* many ways to gum up the works in local implementation, and the state simply doesn't have the apparatus or scope (or probably political will) to police all the actions being taken locally.
So, one way or another, there has to be some buy-in by local homeowners. Vilifying them, and calling them racist, may make you feel better, but won't advance things.
This is a hard one, but the framing I would push is threefold: climate, your kids, and workforce. They believe in fighting climate change and don't take it as personally as being called racist. Convince them that density helps with this noble cause. Then tell them (gently) that *their* kids won't be able to afford to live anywhere, so why not do your part? Lastly, I find them somewhat amenable to the workforce argument, so hit that. In West Los Angeles terms, that means emphasizing that their kids' teachers are making the long, painful trek from Reseda, the police officers they love have to fight daily traffic from Simi Valley, and the firefighters from Van Nuys (and for the most woke, tell them about how their maids have to come from Pacoima).
And, finally, this is truly slow boring. Take small victories when and where you can, and don't expect that the NIMBY forces will collapse all at once, and a bright new day will dawn. This will take time.
If we could just care about ALL the less advantaged and the poor, not just those in certain groups. If that in itself is a racist statement, then I’m racist and unashamed.
As a member of a LA YIMBY group, my experience is that racial justice rhetoric isn't necessarily convincing to voters, but can be useful when talking to elites. If I'm trying to get the NAACP on board, or trying to convince the San Francisco city council to move away from exclusionary zoning, then this framework can be effective.
I can see that, but words travel widely. Everyone else can hear this too.
+1. I find that stories like, "I want to be able to see my grandchildren, not have them live in Austin," and "It's not right that teachers in my SF Bay city have to live in Stockton or have three roommates because there's nowhere they can afford here," are better YIMBY tactics.
It's slow boring, but the benefit to local advocacy is actual wins. You and a few friends can go to a City Council meeting and get an apartment building approved that would have been denied if you weren't there. It's gratifying.
So first off, I enjoyed this and largely agree. Question from someone who reads polls in takes like this but is not an expert: is +3 point difference in support based on framing a significant difference?
This breaks down into two parts: 1) is it statistically significant? This depends on sample size and methodology details I'm sure, but my impression from Nate Silver is that 4 points is a not untypical size polling error.
But what I'm more interested in is 2) even if we assume this poll is exactly accurate, is +3 points a big enough difference to hang a large argument on? I think the relevant factor here is how much should we ever expect framing to matter. My default assumption is that people have a baseline support for policy and framing will only have small effects, so in that context maybe +3 is significant. And obviously if a +3 support is the difference between something actually happening and it not happening, then it's hugely significant. But on an issue like this it seems like you need almost unanimous public support for things to actually happen...
P.S. maybe in the age of negative partisanship, the 6 point reduction in oppose is more important? Genuinely curious if anyone has more info here
This is a good point. I think in actuality, turning a poll on a policy issue into support for an actual bill when it has actually been written and the political players have had their turn to demonize/apotheosize it is very hard to do. But what I mainly took from that poll is that at the moment, giving it a racial framing doesn't actually help among any group, including some political groupings where you might have hoped it would.