On Livability

“Livability” is one of those very popular concepts in urban planning, a discipline which, on the whole, has probably done almost as much damage to American cities as crack cocaine. No amount of government inattention has ever done for a neighborhood in Boston what the wise progressives of the 50s and 60s did to the West End and Scollay Square with their wrecking ball. But I digress.

The study of livability as the concept of looking at what makes a place desirable to live in, is perfectly wise and sensible, but in practice that never happens. This can be seen by looking at any ranking of “most livable” cities, lists of which tend to be dominated by Scandinavian gingerbread villages, trendy third-world hotspots, and places like Portland, Ore., where people go to retire from the rigors of their mid-twenties. To read these studies is to inhabit a world where “livability” is only slightly easier to quantify than the mass of the Higgs Boson; invariably they include a dozen or more attributes numerically scored by subjective opinion.

In fact, the livability of a place can be measured simply and accurately by counting how many people actually live there. The choice of where to live is a complex and highly-personal one, including such things as cultural life, employment opportunities, recreational possibilities, cost of living, and the number of cute single redheads under 40. Creating a single representative equation for all this tells us nothing about the population in general, but a lot about the person writing it. Imprimis:

Livability means being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or Post Office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids at the park–all without having to get in your car.
                                                                                                                   –Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood

In other words, downtown Detroit–or, to be fair, Beacon Hill. Roughly 90% of adults in the US own a car, and of the remaining ten percent who do not, it seems reasonable to guess that many are, like me, city mice who choose to spend their shekels on $18 martinis, $24 bites of otoro, and other such things as one does not find outside the largest cities. In other words, even the vast majority of poor households have a car. They also, coincidentally, tend to have more living space per occupant than the average (non-poor!) European, but that’s another story.

The point is that LaHood’s nirvana is almost entirely subjective. Some people (like me) prefer living in dense old urban areas, and some don’t. Even of those who do, a large majority still own cars, as they are wonderfully convenient for things like grocery shopping with two young children even when bus and subway lines could get you door-to-door in reasonable time.

To the extent that government policies in the past have unduly subsidized the suburbs and exurbs, I’m all for getting out of that business. By the same token, I’m opposed to putting a finger on the scale in the opposite direction.