growth and ideology

There are two "major" papers here in Humboldt County, neither of much significance by major market standards. One is a conservative rag started by a local wealthy businessman, the other is harder to characterize politically.... mostly because of a stunning lack of leadership or innovation, which results in an essential abdication of anything related to policy or ideas to the other paper. There are smaller, community specific papers doing more interesting things, but it's a shame that it's left up to them.

Today at lunch I was skimming through a days-old copy of the conservative paper, one of the issues I missed while at burning man; basically, it was the only thing to read in the newspaper basket by the front door of the restaurant. There was a column, not a particularly well thought out one by the standards of any paper (including this one), which went off on the standard rant against government "control." He specifically cited San Francisco and New York City as "liberal" examples.

Now I'm not a fan of command-and-control government. In fact, I despise bureaucracies. I have a deep-seated libertarian/anarchist streak, (depending who you ask), but at the same time know all too well that in an absence of oversight... people will be people, as witnessed by the recent credit implosion caused in part by lightly-regulated greed. There usually need to be some checks and balances.

So it got me thinking... is there any correlation between style of government and growth?

At first superficial glance, one would think that "conservative" towns might tend to grow more quickly, because of the theoretical relative absence of regulation.

As usual, a look at the numbers showed that it's a little more complicated than that.

San Francisco, like many cities, grew rapidly (+ 7.3 percent, or 53,000 people) from 1990 to 2000. But the 2000-2006 trend defied the projections, with population dropping by 4.2 percent. Without digging deeply into the statistics, my educated guess is that it's a direct result of the astronomical run-up of housing costs during that same period. I know a lot of people who want to live in San Francisco, and can't even think about affording it right now. To some extent the city is a victim of it's own success, in spite of a liberal government that can be... entertaining to watch sometimes.

New York is less ambiguous. It's been one of the fastest growing cities in the nation recently, in raw numbers second only to Los Angeles in 2006-2007. From 2000 to 2006, the city-wide growth rate was 3.0 percent, and all of the boroughs grew, which surprised me a little; Staten Island led the pack at +7.9 percent, Manhattan stood at +4.9, with Queens bringing up the rear at +1.9.

Looking at the table of 2007 fastest growing cities in raw numbers, it's a mixed bag. There are classic laissez-faire cities like Houston and Phoenix in the top 10, and indeed there are probably more "conservative" cities than "liberal" ones in the top 100. But there are some striking examples of progressive places too, for example Madison Wisconsin.

At the local level, much too small to make anybody's lists, it's similarly mixed. Conservative Fortuna is growing, as is liberal Arcata, as is apolitical McKinleyville.

What does it all means?

Again, it's an educated guess. But I suspect that it comes down to how much people want to live there. If building permits are dispensed like candy, that may, and probably does, facilitate growth. But if no one wants to live there, the regulatory climate is irrelevant. Reversing the slide of a dying ag town in Iowa or Nebraska requires major financial incentives and innovation, and even then it may not work. Conversely, in certain coastal areas or in the sun belt, government needs to get fairly obstructive to discourage growth. That's especially true in places like the one I live in, which seems to continually be on some magazine's "best places to live" list.

Not that it doesn't matter at all. When I came here seven years ago, it was for quality of life (and to flee the lack thereof in Chicago). But I passed on Arcata because it quickly became clear that government there can border on the irrational. Anyplace where signs on the plaza list six or more things starting in the word "no" is a little scary. Both ends of the political spectrum can be good at infringing on individual rights, in different ways and for different reasons.

So I found someplace nearby, someplace with a similar art scene and the same mild climate and a less intrusive style of government. Even there, in a town with alleged libertarian tendencies, I've had to fight some battles against irrational government. The difference is that I'm not alone.

The problem isn't necessarily regulation. The problem is irrational regulation, for its own sake, without a clearly defined underlying philosophy. Governments tend to copy ordinances from other cities, thus perpetuating mistakes of the past. Government, no matter it's ideology, tends to grow. We need to periodically review our government, ask on a department by department basis, what's the goal here, what's the objective, and are they meeting it, and if not why not, and if not what can we do to fix it. And occasionally we need to get rid of something, or combine some things. For the simple reason that times change, a mandate developed years ago may no longer be of use, and sometimes people settle into a rut and don't work as hard as they used to.

The only problem is that I haven't yet figured out how to make that kind of credibility stick.