The Voluntary City
review by Eric Miller
At age 32, Henry Charles was a carpenter living in what is now the North Side of Pittsburgh. On July 16, 1849, Charles dropped a cigar in his shop, starting a fire. The Allegheny City Fire department refused to extinguish the blaze because they were on strike. The fires spread to adjoining blocks and destroyed the newly constructed First Presbyterian Church. It was eventually extinguished by Allegheny City residents.
This story could either be used to extol the benefits of a free market--if the fire department was a private enterprise, surely profit would motivate its extinguishment--or more likely convince a populace that laws must prevent economics and political goals from standing in the way of a roaring blaze.
The Voluntary City, a collection of essays, tries to make the point that communities can be formed by choice, rather than run by a rigid, overbearing government entity.
Urban life and capitalism in a free and voluntary market have more than their share of tales that go far beyond what happened to Mr. Charles, the church, and the wood shop in Allegheny City. One of the most famous is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. On March 25, 1911, a fire that began in a bin of scrap fabric in this New York factory could not be contained. By the time it was extinguished a half-hour later, the fire had claimed 146 lives--the owners had not seen fit to waste money on fire suppression apparatus, and had besides locked most of the doors. The common conclusion is that had there been better and government regulations concerning fire codes and working conditions, there would not have been a fire, let alone one with such tragic results.
Given the history of urban America and the perception that unfettered free markets have been the cause of much disaster, The Voluntary City has a big task ahead convincing us that cities can be free of governments. The case that the free market can do some things better is an easier one to make.
One chapter is on "Proprietary Communities and Community Associations." It suggests that the idea of a hotel could be stretched to encompass a larger area and service residents as guests. Let's imagine for a moment that a rent-generating "territorial public good" could encompass an area big enough to be known as a city-hotel. In this example, rent would replace taxes and enable private providers to finance public goods, such as keeping the streets and hallways clean.
The chapter quotes Heath as saying, "The hotel has its public and private areas, corridors for streets, and a lobby for its town square. Its public transit system operates vertically instead of horizontally." The author states that "like cities, hotels provide utilities such as electricity, water, and sewerage. The administration provides for security and fire protection."
Really it's like the tale of the health insurer only accepting healthy people. Not everyone will be able to afford to live in the hotel community. This will end up creating a "walled city" of the affluent that excludes "free-riders"--in effect what you have in many residential gated communities today (communities that can't in any way exist without a city nearby to provide them with services); it will certainly lack accommodation for the low-wage workers needed to provide those services expected by those who do live in the community. In other words, if you remove such a hotel community from the confines of a traditional city, it could not exist without the people it excludes as "free-riders."
If a hotel did exist on a larger scale in a hotel-city model, there is so much more it would need to provide that real hotels presently don't. For example, while a hotel does provide security of a sort, it doesn't provide a means of arbitration between residents, and it isn't in a position to investigate disputes between residents.
Another chapter, "Market Challenges and Government Failure," makes the statement that "private ownership can occur on a larger scale than is often conceived." I hasten to make the point that so can public ownership--and in both cases it is bad. American cities are filled with failed examples of large-scale private developments. The healthiest parts of cities are filled with small, privately owned parcels with lots of micro-capitalism.
A simple examination of the town of Pullman, Illinois, would provide a real world example of how a private city can fail. George Pullman felt that aesthetics had a commercial value from which he could derive profit by attracting a higher-quality resident. Pullman built such a town and named it after himself--a town which he owned and controlled wholly.
However, because they could never purchase a home there, many of the town's residents eventually moved to neighboring communities where booze and other vices, restricted in Pullman, were also available. By 1855 the glowing reviews of the town had faded, and Pullman's experiment was increasingly referred to as a "gilded cage." It can easily be seen by even the most diehard libertarian that being in the confines of a large scale private development is little different from being stuck in a large-scale public one--as anyone who has tried to paint his house an "unapproved" color in a private, controlled gated community will know. The Constitution often stops at the property line.
There are of course many examples of how private industry can and has provided services far beyond the ability of government. The public transportation provided privately at the turn-of-the-century and beyond was far superior to that provided publicly today. The government of course built roads that made the private mass transit unprofitable and yet aided private industry greatly by enabling the mass use of private automobiles.
The city, it would seem, can not be private on any large scale, and the chapter "The Private Provision of Police" points out why. "It is true that in contrast to the village or small town, the city creates more privacy and encourages socialism." It goes on to say this can lead to more rather than less collective action because of the greater number of active individuals and mobilizers it creates. The key phrase here is active individuals; however, many individuals become disenfranchised with large private developments such as Pullman, Illinois, where they are not free to act outside of the confines of the corporation. History has shown the numbers willing to live voluntarily in such restrictive situations are few.
Reviewed by Eric Miller
