Why Can't America Build Better Cities?

Today’s piece will be a little nerdy, perhaps a little lecture-y. You’ve been forewarned.

I often think about why American cities seem almost incapable of capitalizing on their assets, of routinely and easily making the case for greater investment from the federal and state levels of government. We struggle to make public transit investments. We struggle with implementing good placemaking practices. We struggle with undoing bad urban policies, and instituting good ones.

In a nutshell, America struggles with doing things that work toward the common good, and has a firm belief that improving the lives of individuals is the best way to improve the common good.

Public health is another example of the same phenomenon. America is fine with having the best and most advanced health care system in the world – for some. But extending that common good to the masses so that many more can benefit from it is a bridge too far. We don’t like “freeriders”.

The emphasis on individualism in America can be traced to several cultural, political, and historical factors. This bias often manifests in political rhetoric, policy priorities, and societal attitudes that tend to favor individuals over groups, and private priorities over commonly shared goals. We can easily call to mind all the things that have historically made this happen in America; our historical roots in agrarianism and our preference for localized representation and government stand out. Put these things and others together, and it becomes clear why great American cities are the rare exceptions, and not the rule.

I’d argue that America’s individualistic culture is at the heart of making decent cities good, and good cities great. In fact, the nation has had an anti-city bias since its settlement and founding, and it’s baked into the nation’s fabric.

Two Early Acts

Let me introduce you to two early acts of the U.S. Congress of the Confederation, the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. They probably receive less attention than they should because they were acts passed under the Articles of Confederation, the organizing document that preceded the U.S. Constitution that passed in 1789. Together, they are perhaps the most influential federal acts in the development of early America. They were created to organize the region we now call the Midwest, in the aftermath of the American win in the Revolutionary War with Great Britain, but they had influence well beyond.

As it relates to 21^st century America, a nation in which more than 80 percent of its inhabitants live in cities and suburbs, it’s critical to know about these acts and how they contribute to the anti-city bias built into the American fabric. In the nearly 240 years since the Land Ordinance was passed, the nation has steadily grown more and more urban with each passing decade. Yet the fundamental tools that established precedents for land and political subdivision, and land disposition, had a distinctly rural flavor one that cities struggle with overcoming today.

The Northwest Ordinance came two years after the Land Ordinance, and took on the matter of political organization of the expanding nation. And because the Old Northwest (or the core of today’s Midwest that’s currently comprised of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin) was the place first settled under these acts, they set the precedent for the rest of the nation.

The Land Ordinance of 1785

The Northwest Ordinance followed passage of the Land Ordinance by two years, and was important for many federal and state level concerns. It established the precedent by which the federal government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation. It also set legislative precedent with regard to American public domain lands. The act also prohibited slavery in the territory, an action that probably presaged the Civil War some 75 years later.

Read the rest of this piece at The Corner Side Yard.

Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. Pete has been the editor/publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. Pete is also an urban affairs contributor to Forbes Magazine's online platform. Pete's writings have been published widely in traditional and internet media outlets, including the feature article in the December 2018 issue of Planning Magazine. Pete has more than twenty years' experience in planning, economic development, and community development, with stops in the public, private and non-profit sectors. He lives in Chicago.

Photo: Public Domain, via picryl.