Recently New York Times globetrotting correspondent Nicholas Kristof — who has forgotten visits to more cities than I’ll ever see — mused about the difference between West Coast liberalism and East Coast liberalism.
The former, he writes, is largely a failure, while the latter is mostly a success. Why?
Kristof is an established liberal. He’s from, and has returned to, rural Oregon and knows New York City. He has covered good and bad governments all over the world, winning two Pulitzer Prizes in the process. So when he weighs the woes of Pacific liberalism — homelessness, drugs, mental illness, crime — against the accomplishments of Atlantic progressive politics — much less of all that, plus better schools — attention must be paid.
Kristof reasonably concludes that Right Coast liberalism is more grounded in practical politics than its Left Coast counterpart. That Republicans are strong enough in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to keep Democrats there from going off the deep end, whereas West Coast Democrats have the field to themselves and no counterweight to deter bad ideas.
All fair points.
My perspective is much more limited than Kristof’s. I’ve been in New York City for a total of maybe three weeks over the last 67 years, in both Portlands (Maine and Oregon) for a few days each and San Francisco for two brief visits.
But it seems clear to me that the urban areas of deep crimson states such as Utah are more like the altogether azure states such as California’s than our leaders would like to admit. For reasons that have little to do with being liberal or conservative.
The reasons are NIMBYism and car culture.
One big thing that puts the West at a disadvantage to the East is the Not In My Back Yard impulse. That’s the politically powerful drive, even among otherwise bleeding-heart liberal voters, to prevent high-density, walkable, transit-oriented housing because it might look bad next to all those acres of single-family houses.
That attitude drives up housing prices and greatly increases homelessness. And, as experience in Utah shows, it is hardly limited to Democrat-dominated states.
The answer to NIMBY can be YIMBY — Yes, In My Back Yard — where homeowners are happy to accommodate high-density development in their cities. We are seeing more of that in Utah, if not yet enough.
But in many East Coast and European cities the important factor is neither NIMBY nor YIMBY. It’s WABY — What’s a Back Yard?
Many who live north of Richmond or east of Cleveland (or east of Dublin) are accustomed to living in tight spaces, small apartments or streets of often charming row houses — singles, doubles and fours — made survivable by many public spaces, such as parks and pedestrian-friendly streets.
Also devastating the West Coast — but also Utah and most of America west of Pittsburgh — is worship of the automobile. Parking lots, highways, thruways, belt routes, bypasses, places where you take your life in your hands crossing the street.
Car culture eats up acres of land, separates poor neighborhoods from richer ones, makes it far too difficult for people to get to work or school.
East Coast cities — like successful cities in Europe I’ve been visiting over the past year — have public transit baked into their DNA. It’s democratizing, easier to get around and frees up a lot more land for housing, small businesses and walkable neighborhoods.
It’s not just inside a city, but city to city. People in the Northeast U.S. actually ride the relatively high-speed Amtrak services that connect New York, Washington, Boston, Baltimore and other big East Coast population centers. Which is why Joe Biden, who used to commute by train from Washington, D.C., to Wilmington, Delaware, is putting billions of dollars into expanding national passenger rail service.
There is public transit in Portland, Oregon, and in San Francisco — though Frisco’s fabled cable cars are more an amusement park ride than a way to get around. And there are certainly highways and big box stores in New York and New Jersey. But not enough to make the two coasts the same.
Living on top of one another, walking down the same streets, forces people to care about public spaces, public services, practical politics. Political purity, liberal or conservative, takes a back seat to fixing streets and picking up trash.
Utah’s political leaders, Democrat and Republican, can learn a lot about how life is better with fewer cars and more dwellings.
George Pyle, reading The New York Times at The Rose Establishment.
George Pyle, opinion editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, was excited to ride the new Metrorail system in Washington, D.C., in 1976 — when it didn’t really go anywhere.
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