American Dream

In my latest "Vanishing Automobile update," I report on The Ideal Communist City, a book published in 1971 that accurately describes Halle-Neustadt, a "new city" built in East Germany at about that time. This report includes photographs from my recent visit (with Wendell Cox) to Halle-Neustadt showing that residents began fleeing the city as soon as the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunified and that those who stayed all bought cars.

I also show that there are incredible similarities between the Ideal Communist City and smart growth. Both promote high-density, mixed-use, mixed-income housing next to transit stations with little room for the automobile. And both fail miserably to give most people what they want. While a few people might like to live in high-density housing, most do not.

My article has generated waves of hostility from smart growthers for mentioning them in the same breath as communists. While I specifically say that I don't think smart growth is a communist plot, both smart growth and communism come from the same source: the belief that some elite should get to decide for everyone else how they should live and move around. That may not be communist, but it is un-American.