Dear Friends and Neighbors:
I strongly agree with you about the ability to debate issues in a friendly, informative fashion. I have long craved this, specifically regarding development issues in Ann Arbor. Thank you for indulging me!
You pose an interesting question on the moral obligation of cities to accommodate people who can’t afford to live there. For me, it’s a matter of the balance between the harms caused by exclusionary zoning and the harms of urban change. Where the harms of exclusion are slight and the harms of change are great, I probably wouldn’t support the reform. You won’t be surprised to learn that I think that we’re in the converse situation: the harms our policies are imposing are great, and the costs that single-family homeowners like us are likely to bear are slight.
Regarding the harms of exclusion: A few months ago, I wrote a short memo explaining this position. In a nutshell, post-WWII US land-use planning, including in Ann Arbor, exacerbates harms in areas that are of central concern to many: sustainability, affordability, traffic danger, racial exclusion, and fiscal soundness. The City of Ann Arbor has stated policies on some of these, e.g., carbon neutrality and vision zero, and the planning process properly turns these goals into action. The reforms are not a complete solution—e.g., there will still be sustainability and affordability problems post-reform—but I disagree with the notion that this is a reason not to pursue them. The “incomplete solution” charge can be applied to every conceivable policy to address the problems that the City (and country, and world) face, but inaction cannot be the answer.
Regarding the costs of reform: I see these as quite modest, and a small price to pay for privileged people like myself. To illustrate: there’s a house across the street from us that’s a single-family home that’s three stories in height, the maximum that would be allowed in low-rise residential. I would not see myself harmed if it contained several flats rather than a single household. Quite the opposite: I would feel that the greater diversity that would bring to my neighborhood would be a benefit. I’d be happy if policies that currently exclude the teacher, the nurse, or the firefighter—those essential workers that we so lauded during the pandemic—were reformed so that they could also be my neighbors. Prosperous US cities were once ladders of upward mobility, but the housing crisis has pulled out the bottom rung. Another example: the other day, I snapped a picture of a building going up on N. Division. It will contain four apartments and is hence currently illegal in my neighborhood. I would welcome both it and its future residents. Now there’s an open question that I would be happy to discuss: once small multifamily homes are legalized in single-family areas, what standards and policies can encourage harmonious design? But that’s a separate issue from the question of “shall this neighborhood be restricted only to households who can afford single-family homes here.”
Regarding the openness of the process: The City publicized its comprehensive planning engagement events extensively. It maintains a comprehensive list of neighborhood associations, and all were notified, in addition to individuals on its public mailing list. There were numerous articles in the press, including MLive, Ann Arbor Observer, and Click on 4 Detroit. Elizabeth Nelson’s blog from April 14, 2024 called on people to participate in one of the three library open houses. The “Pause the Plan” organizers believe that there should have been a physical mailing to every Ann Arbor household, but in my opinion, they’re simply creating criteria and then assessing the public notification process to be inadequate because it didn’t match their criteria.
Regarding the preordained nature of the process: The Ann Arbor City Council did in fact give direction, and I find that to be entirely appropriate. The resolution establishing the contract with the consultants included the following goals for the plan:
1. Carefully considers and implements those portions of the A2Zero Living Carbon Neutrality Plan applicable to land use and development activity in the City;
2. In the context of largely developed City, make recommendations of adding new homes and densification in single-family zoned areas, and other areas and zoning districts;
3. Develop recommendations and policies that promote fewer zoning districts or categories, that contain more flexibility for re-use and adaptability over time;
4. A proposed land use framework that seeks to emphasize values over specified land use limitations where possible;
5. Recommendations and policies that undue and/or seek to repair past land use policies and regulations that resulted in exclusion of people based on race, income or other characteristics and other inequities.
In my view, the City Council was doing its duty as the democratically elected representatives of all Ann Arbor voters.
Thanks for hearing me out, and I’m happy to engage further on the topic.
Jonathan Levine
PS: There’s a new book out that I recommend: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. The introduction and Chapter 1 are highly relevant to all of these issues and place them very convincingly in a much larger societal context.