The city is peopled with spirits, not ghosts

When conservatives talk about the importance of “place,” we often turn to a poignant Wendell Berry passage, or perhaps a little Robert Frost. Our go-to poets of place make America sound like a land populated by nothing but cornfields and covered bridges–a lovely but somewhat ridiculous notion. I admit, I’m the first person to romanticize small New England towns.  I think one of the most convincing arguments for God is the sound of the crickets on a summer evening. New York makes me woozy.

But if we care about human nature and human history, conservatives need to do a much better job of engaging cities. I’m a fan of the Manhattan Institute and their focus on urban conservatism. So with their work in mind, I’ll suggest that conservatives’ engagement with cities ought to happen on two levels:

First, we should remember that cities are a testament to man’s entrepreneurial spirit, and successful cities tend to have concentrations of “human capital,” where knowledge, skills, and high achievers flock. This is a more abstracted (and even aesthetic) appreciation of cities, as outlined in Mario Polese’s City Journal piece “The Five Principles of Urban Economics.” Although we can say that cities’ location, governance, and infrastructure all play a role in whether or not they are vibrant or successful places, Polese concedes that there is a certain mystery behind the sociology of cities:

Despite the best efforts of scholars, econometric models rarely succeed in explaining more than half of cities’ variations in growth over time. Many factors are impossible to quantify, such as the ability of a dynamic individual, such as a mayor or an entrepreneur, to make a difference. Local business and political culture surely plays a part in a city’s growth, but we know little about how such cultures form.

Polese is a social scientist who knows he can’t know everything. That’s refreshing—and probably the first step toward smart urban policy.

Second, on a more specific political level, the Republican party cannot abandon urban voters. In the latest election, Mitt Romney received a paltry 29 percent of the big-city vote, and his platform contained no urban initiatives. That’s unfortunate, because conservative urban initiatives do indeed exist.

Crime reduction is one area where conservatives can shine, drawing upon James Q. Wilson’s broken windows theory and New York’s successful Compstat program for mapping law breaking and responding appropriately. As Edward Glaeser’s recent City Journal piece reminds us, conservatives are the real advocates of school reform and charter schools that don’t rely on dysfunctional teachers’ unions. City dwellers are more familiar with government inefficiencies than the average American. They see first-hand the unintended consequences of public housing projects, rent control, and rigid zoning law and are surely open to conservative solutions.

Conservatives often use “cities” as a stand in for what is wrong in America: poverty, family breakdown, and crony capitalism. It’s true that those issues tend to concentrate more in urban zip codes. But it’s also true that cities are a magnetic testament to the human desire to congregate and experiment.

Perhaps next time we conservatives talk about the significance of place, we will turn to H.D.’s poem “Cities” and recall:

Though we wander about,

find no honey of flowers in this waste,

is our task the less sweet—

who recall the old splendour,

await the new beauty of cities?

The city is peopled

with spirits, not ghosts, O my love:

Though they crowded between

and usurped the kiss of my mouth

their breath was your gift,

their beauty, your life.