The Limits of Liberal Urbanism
As housing becomes more and more unaffordable, liberal mayors have jumped to recognize the crisis. At the same time, they’re fully committed to the status quo, giving carte blanche to developers at the expense of legitimately affordable housing.
Staircase for the 167th Street (Jerome Avenue Line) on the southwest corner of 167th Street and River Avenue in the Highbridge section of the Bronx. Wikimedia Commons
In big cities today, the housing problem is obvious to everyone. It’s the appropriate response to it that is intensely disputed. But virtually no one denies that huge and growing numbers of households are forced to live in insecure, poorly maintained, or overcrowded housing for which they pay a small fortune.
The housing situation is making many basic social functions more difficult: setting up a new household, maintaining family life, caring for relatives and friends. For working-class and poor households, the threat of displacement is ever present. The housing problem is so bad that even politicians wedded to protecting the status quo feel the need to take a position on it.
Two Mayors
The desire to be perceived to be doing something while not actually changing anything is the quintessential housing strategy of liberal urbanism. Proponents of this approach currently sit in the mayoral offices of New York and London. The housing programs of Bill de Blasio and Sadiq Khan are paradigm-defining examples of liberal urbanism.
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