Email from Alex Marshall

In general reaction to the recent post Want a lower price? Condemn and then don't buy. Clever. I receive an email from Alex Marshall. He writes:

I moved away from Norfolk, my home town, in 2000 and I now live in Brooklyn. So I've only kept up with the project here and there, often when my family members send me news stories from The Virginian-Pilot about East Ocean View.

I thought it was an egregious situation when I wrote about East Ocean View in the late 1990s. Duany seemed quite comfortable then with his role, even though it was part of a project that involved kicking out people from their homes and building a high-income neighborhood in its stead. And a lower-density neighborhood, so arguably a less urban one. The neighborhood was hardly a paradise before, but it was also not wholly blighted. Some blocks were awful, some were fine. The area was mostly white, interestingly enough. It was a white working class beach neighborhood.

To Duany's credit, although the overall project was inhumane, his designs were artful and subtle.  The design of the new neighborhood kept homes off some of the beach front, to allow open access. And the project had a grid of streets that blended in walking paths and such.  As I understand it, most of these nicer elements have been dropped, and the project is more and more consisting of big homes plopped down on or near the beach, often consuming the views and access. The project has also gotten submerged or lost in a morass of politics and infighting on the city council. The main councilmember from that district, Randy Wright, has made the project his personal project and there have been charges that he is tied to various realtors and others with interests.

'Blight by condemnation" is actually surprisingly common, or has been.  Almost any history of urban renewal reveals it, whether in Boston or New York or Norfolk. Renewal efforts typically take years, and there does seem to be a certain calculation on the part of authorities. Sell your land to us now for whatever we offer, or watch the value drop anyway under our poisonous umbrella, as well as watch your ability to use it decline as well.

I have mixed feelings about government condemnation. On specific cases, like Ocean View, I think it's appalling. But I'm not opposed to it in all cases, even if it's just for economic development. I accept that property rights come from government, so there's no conflict with that same government sometimes putting limits on those rights, or in effect taking them back. But this should be done fairly, and for good reasons.

I think most or all of the neighborhood has now been torn down. If you did a search on www.pilotonline.com you would find a lot of stories about it.

Let's hope Alex does an indepth followup on East Ocean View. It's useful for a reporter to go back and reconsider a situation a decade later, especially a story which involves so much vivid place, personality and policy. And if it's the reporter's own home town, to boot, he is  uniquely situated and we would read a case study tinged with personal history. I like the long, expansive style of The New Yorker to explore these complex matters of social class, urban design, real estate, constutional law and human ambition.

But -- and this just my own hobby-horse -- I wouldn't be unhappy if Alex adopted even just a slightly more jaundiced view ot the historical origin of property rights as bestowed by government. But hey! that's what makes markets.

Comments

[Mary Campbell Gallagher]

Alex Marsall writes: "I accept that property rights come from government, so there's no conflict with that same government sometimes putting limits on those rights, or in effect taking them back. . . ."

I am a big fan of Alex Marshall, and in general I like what he says here. However, I can see a lot of conflict in the government's taking property. If property rights derive from the government, as Alex says, it is only because the government is acting as an intermediary. In all of the political theories I know about, the government derives its power, including power over property, from either (a) God and natural law or (b) the governed. The Supreme Court of the United States may be dazzled by the mumbo-jumbo of economic development, but I think both God and my fellow-citizens would place severe limits on the government's taking my property.

[clew]

One's fellow-citizens can be an unreliable stay against takings that might profit them, alas.

This whole blight/condemnation thing seems an awful lot like redlining to me, and we still haven't cleaned up for the awful results of that.