In developing a General Plan for the county
things have gotten so complicated, it's impossible not only for planning
commissioners to know it all, but also community planning groups, the
planning department and even the Board of Supervisors.
The evidence: San Diego home prices, less
than the U.S median price in 1973, are now more than double the national
median, $389,440 vs. $179,600 (CAR 8/25/10) with reported overcrowding
in more than 50,000 dwelling units countywide. So much for 37 years of
government planning!
In the former USSR with 70 years of housing
shortages, they had a saying: "You can have planning or housing -- but
not both." The county has been planning its yet-to-be-adopted General
Plan 2020 Update since 1998.
The County Planning Department imagines it
can make an enormously complex General Plan for 491,800 present and
future residents -- despite having a department of planners unable to
make something as simple as a 10-cent lead pencil. I've argued
previously that no planner knows how to extrude graphite lead, create a
factice eraser, or smelt a brass ferule. And yet they want to dictate
where and how thousands of people should live. Think about it!
Some people prefer to live in 27-story
high-rise condos, such as the Meridian downtown, others in rural areas
if allowed, some choose two-story apartments buildings, while most
prefer single-family detached homes. Additionally there are those who
prefer mobile homes and nomads who wish to live in travel trailers. For
whom is the professional, government planner to plan?
Can the San Diego County Planning Department
with any degree of certainty foretell how many people will marry in 2015
requiring additional housing; or how many will divorce requiring two
dwelling units in place of one? How many children will become teenagers
requiring separate bedrooms for sons and daughters possibly requiring a
new or larger home? How many elderly people will suffer the death of a
spouse, motivating the survivor to move into a smaller home or
apartment? And what will be the family makeup of newcomers to the
region? How many households will double up? SANDAG reported between the
1990 and 2000 Census the number doubling up was equivalent to four Poway
size cities -- completely unforeseen by government planners.
The Draft General Plan Update stipulates:
"The General Plan for the unincorporated County has not been
comprehensively updated since 1979 and has been the subject of
substantial modification over the past 30 years. During this period,
considerable growth and change has taken place, leading to the
incorporation of a number of cities and annexation of lands on the
periphery of the unincorporated area. Numerous new laws and regulations
that relate specifically to General Plans or more generally to
development and natural resources have also been enacted." (County DPLU
Draft EIR pg. 1.7 4/2/10)
Government omnipotence versus freedom: There
would be no difficulty about efficiently planning a community were
conditions so simple that a single person or discrete group of planners,
commissioners and supervisors could effectively survey all the relevant
facts. However, when the factors that must be considered to render a
rational decision become so numerous that it's impossible to gain an
overall view, government planning can, and does lead to "planned chaos."
San Diego's 37-year trend of shortages and above average home prices
irrefutably demonstrates the failure of government omnipotence. "You can
have planning or housing, not both." This doesn't mean no mistakes are
made in the private sector, but rather they will be fewer, less severe
and tend to be self-correcting.
Compared with the free market's virtue of
using everybody's decision-making capacity and using specialized local
knowledge, as noted by Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, "government planning
is incredibly clumsy, primitive and limited in scope." The enormous
dispersed decision-making capacity of the free market -- land
developers, builders, appraisers, landscapers, mortgage lenders,
prospective buyers, sellers and tenants -- thousands of people working
individually, but in harmony, can address and resolve far more problems
than the combined efforts of any planning department, planning
commission, community group and Board of Supervisors.
The hallmark of a market economy is the
price system. The cost of raw materials and the prices obtained from
retail consumers answer all the questions posed above. Prices and
profits tell builders immediately if there's a shortage or surplus of
apartments, condominiums, single-family homes of two, three or four
bedrooms, or mobile homes -- a shortage or surplus of labor, materials,
financing or appropriately zoned land to meet the most urgent needs of
consumers.
Incredibly, price isn't even mentioned in
the county's General Plan or planning department manuals, maps or
publications as a guiding principle. Incredible because our national
$14.5 trillion economy is inescapably predicated on prices and profits
which determine what's to be produced and in what quantity and quality.
Thirty-seven years of government planning has resulted in San Diego's
home prices consistently 80 percent to 100 percent higher than the
national average. The General Plan Update must be junked and private
property rights restored. Government inexorably raises the cost of
building housing while developers in the free market ineluctably must
find ways to build better at lower costs.
Blame for the current deplorable situation
rests with both the County Board of Supervisors and planning department
in their trickle-down efforts to redistribute wealth. They thwart
privately built housing while redistributing hundreds of millions of
dollars from rural landowners to urban property owners.
If planners would envision themselves as
facilitators and coordinators, as well as insuring that developers fund
or install essential public improvements in exchange for public
services, they would be fulfilling their responsibility to the public.
Their proper role should be more likened to putting up signposts on our
highways, rather than telling everyone "My way or the highway!"
And when new planners join the county, they
should be told when they can make a simple, ordinary wood pencil, they
may then be qualified to plan an extremely more complicated community.
To date, only the free market utilizing everyone's knowledge can make a
pencil, or an affordable, livable, beautiful countryside.
