Somewhat Sensible

Michael Lind takes a look at liberalism in the new American Prospect. Though portions of the piece border on silly, he's got the "anti-growth" meme nailed:

A century ago, the agrarian populists bemoaned the migration of Americans from the virtuous farm to the sinful industrial city. Their jeremiads had no more effect than those of today's urban liberals who have wasted a quarter of a century lamenting the exodus of Americans from the virtuous city to the sinful suburb. Both the agrarian populists and the urban liberals tended to explain these social shifts in terms of a conspiracy by, respectively, evil manufacturers or wicked suburban real-estate developers.

Urban liberals forget that the suburb long antedates the automobile. The first suburbs sprang up around London as a result of the use of horse-drawn omnibuses. Each successive revolution in transport, from the commuter railroad to the automobile, has permitted people of low and moderate incomes to have a greater choice of jobs in commuting distance while satisfying their desire to have more house on more land. Criticism of the latter desire is not credible when it comes from supporters of John Kerry and Theresa Heinz Kerry, who own six mansions. Furthermore, liberals' enthusiasm for anti-sprawl policies has been disastrous for the working class in cities like Portland, Oregon, where, following the adoption of an urban growth boundary, real estate prices shot up, pricing out middle and low-income residents.

Anti-sprawl is a perfect policy for limousine liberals: it rewards current property- and home-owners at the expense of the rising poor. And you thought Democrats cared about ordinary people?