Can We Grant a "Right to Place"?

10.1177/0032329204269981ARTICLEPOLITICS & SOCIETYDAVID L. IMBROSCIO

Can We Grant a Right to Place?

DAVID L. IMBROSCIO

The author considers the plausibility of granting a “right to place” (RTP) as anentitlement of citizenship in a nation such as the United States. Such a right wouldafford people the capacity to live in the places (or place communities) they choose.To explore whether granting such a right is plausible, the author identifies andexamines the salient barriers now preventing Americans from choosing their placecommunities. The final section suggests that these myriad barriers, while formida-ble, are not insurmountable—a conclusion that, in turn, suggests that an RTP couldbe plausibly granted to Americans in the twenty-first century.

Keywords: place; community; rights; freedom; mobility

I. INTRODUCTION

In his classic Oxford lecture “Citizenship and Social Class,” delivered morethan a half-century ago, the eminent British social theorist T. H. Marshall pre-sented his powerful and influential conception of the historical development ofcitizenship. Reflecting on the English experience, Marshall argued that civilrights were developed in the eighteenth century, political rights in the nineteenthcentury, and social (or “welfare”) rights in the twentieth century.1 More recently,

An earlier version of this essay was presented to “Spatial Justice and the City,” a panel held at the2002 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. I wish to thank fellow panel par-ticipants, Owen Fiss, Jerry Frug, Loren King, Todd Swanstrom, and Thad Williamson, for theirinsightful comments and helpful suggestions. I also wish to thank Jeff Spinner-Halev, Avery Kolers,Ana Kogl, Mickey Lauria, Preston Quesenberry, Clarissa Hayward, and, especially, Amanda LeDukefor reading and commenting extensively on earlier versions. My thanks also go to Politics & Societyeditorial board member David Plotke, whose extensive and detailed feedback helped me to deepen andsharpen the arguments considerably.

POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 32 No. 4, December 2004 575-609DOI: 10.1177/0032329204269981© 2004 Sage Publications

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Don Herzog suggests the possibility of adding yet another stage to this familiarschema, by tracing the development of modern citizenship rights further back inhistory. Explaining the justification for consent theory—with its “world of mas-terless individuals” possessing “the right to make their own decisions”—Herzogpoints to an even more basic human right won earlier, in the seventeenth century.“Arguably,” he writes, “in the seventeenth century ordinary people win the strug-gle to be thought of as persons, as the sorts of beings who might have independentrights at all.”2

My aspiration in this project is similar, save I wish to suggest a projection ofMarshall’s schema forward in history, to our own, new century—the twenty-first.To civil rights, political rights, and social rights I wish to explore the possibility ofadding the development of what might be called “place rights” or, simply, a “rightto place” (RTP) as an entitlement of citizenship in a nation such as the UnitedStates.3

By RTP I mean that people should have a right to live in the place communities(i.e., communities rooted in geographic space, such as neighborhoods, cities,towns, or regions) that they choose,meaning that, above all, the preferences ofindividuals should determine this question, rather than a host of other factorsstanding largely beyond their control.4 Such an RTP would be constituted by adual freedom, entailing not only the ability to enter and exit but also the ability tocontinue to live where one currently resides. It thus entails the freedom to go, andto go where one desires, but it also entails the freedom to simply stay put.5 Yet,while recognizing this dual freedom, the RTP would not privilege the freedom tostay put over the freedom of prospective newcomers to enter, for to do so wouldarbitrarily deny some full access to their preferred place communities. In thissense the RTP not only is constituted by a dual freedom but also would be porta-ble, irrespective of the desire to express exit, entry, or loyalty to place.

“Why Place, Why Now?” Alexandra Kogl asks, constructively, in her insight-ful preface to a recent symposium in The Good Society.6 Consider the secondquestion first: a focus on place now—in this era of globalization—may seem curi-ous, as new technologies and political and economic institutions destabilizeplaces socially and economically and engender heightened population mobility,often in the form of economic displacement.7 Kogl’s answer to the “why now”question is as compelling as it is succinct: “It is in those moments when a thing isthreatened,” she writes, “that we tend to suddenly recognize its importance.”8

The first question is even more elementary: Why place at all? That is, why add“place rights” to the pantheon constituted by the Marshallian trilogy of funda-mental human rights in the civil, political, and social realms? The answer is thatthere exists a broad consensus around the notion that the ability to choose one’splace community is a basic, fundamental freedom—even if the importance ofplace rights is not always fully recognized or articulated as such.

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We see this recognition and articulation—albeit partial—in a number of dispa-rate forms. Joseph Carens, for example, points out that “freedom of movementwithin the nation-state is widely acknowledged as a basic human right,” and gov-ernments that act to restrict people’s ability to change membership in theirsubnational communities are harshly condemned.9 For others, such as urbanistPeter Dreier and his colleagues, this recognition takes on a more consequentialisttone, as place communities are understood as strongly determinative of individualwell-being. “Place matters,” they demonstrate, because “where we live makes abig difference in the quality of our lives.”10 Thus, to deny people the opportunity tochoose their place communities is to deny them the opportunity to improve theircondition across a whole range of social and economic outcomes.

The fundamental importance of place rights has been recognized in other waysas well. For example, something like an RTP has been suggested in the work of anumber of theorists. The political theorist Douglas Rae, for example, specifies“five particulars which are absolutely essential” for “democratic liberties,” withthe endowment of such liberties being “among the most fundamental purposes ofgovernance.” The very first among these liberties, as set out by Rae, is “the right tolive in a place of our own choosing.”11 Similarly, the geographer and social theo-rist Gordon Clark advocates the principle of “maintaining community integrity.”The appeal of such a principle is rooted in “an implied strong social value thatgoes to the heart of this policy option—the right of individuals to choose where tolive.”12 The late Brookings Institution scholar James Sundquist offered yetanother formulation. While he did not conceptualize this choice as a right, he doestie it directly to democracy: as long as “individual preferences were not conclu-sively outweighed by [economic, social, or environmental costs],” he wrote, “thedemocratic ethic suggests that what the public wants [regarding residentialchoice] should be determinative.”13

The fundamental importance of allowing people the freedom to choose theirplace communities also has been given wide political recognition, even in the con-servative context of the United States. On this point it is instructive to return to thework of Rae, who points out that, empirically, his five democratic liberties “arenot fancy ideas,” as most of “the content essential to democratic liberty . . . has, atone time or another, been legislated by Congress and read into the FourteenthAmendment of the Constitution by the Supreme Court.”14 Continuing, Rae notesthat the articulation of the “substantive due process” constitutional doctrine in theearly twentieth century included virtually all of these liberties, including, “theright of the citizen to be free . . . to live . . . where he will.”15 More recently, the U.S.Supreme Court also has recognized a “right to travel,” arguing that people need toaccompany goods in interstate commerce16 or, more sweepingly, that to deny suchtravel violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of theConstitution.17 This right to travel, as the legal scholar Paul Dimond points out, “is

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embedded in the structure of the U.S. Constitution and the fabric of Americanlife,” and also includes within it “one of the most important individual rights—theright to move.”18

The legal-constitutional recognitions of the fundamental importance of placerights presented in the doctrine of substantive due process and the right to travelcases express the notion in a negative sense: no arbitrary barriers, especially thoseerected by the state, should interfere with citizens’ freedom to choose their placecommunities. But such a notion has been politically recognized in a positivesense, too, as some of the necessary requisites that make this freedom to chooseeffective and meaningful have been provided by means of government policy.

To anticipate what is to follow below, we in the United States find such effortsto be largely rudimentary and tentative—and, as a result, numerous significantbarriers militate against a robust RTP. Nevertheless, the roots of a whole host ofcurrent American public policies derive from attempts (albeit limited) to infusecitizens’ choice of place communities with an enhanced degree of substance.Place-based economic development policies, compensatory fiscal transfers tar-geted to poorer communities, and a variety of affordable housing policies andtransportation subsidies all stand as key examples of affirmative (i.e., positive)measures. One finds such measures to be generally stronger in Europe, especiallyin the form of efforts to develop the economies of specific subnational areas orregions (regional policy), which, as Jon Elster recognizes, “in some countriesrests on what almost amounts to a positive right to a specific residence.”19 ThisEuropean regional policy is most aggressive and self-consciously affirmative inthe Nordic countries of Sweden, Finland, and Norway; in Sweden, for example,the effort to develop remote, sparsely populated regions is inspired by the notionthat Swedish citizens have “the right to continue living in the area they wereborn.”20

Thus we see that an array of both normative theory and political practicestrongly suggests that providing people with the ability to live in the place com-munities of their choice is a fundamental human freedom. The RTP advances thisfundamental freedom; as such, it advances many crucially important values thatflow from it. Granting people the ability to reside where they wish clearlyenhances individual autonomy, and as the above referenced work of Dreier,Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom (as well as a wealth of social science) demonstrates,it can play a major role in enhancing social equity and economic opportunity aswell.21 Moreover, it engenders enhanced freedom of association, since much ofhuman association continues to be structured by geographic place.22 Enhancedfreedom of political expression is also advanced, since geographic boundariesstructure much political participation (including the most basic form of demo-cratic political participation, voting).23

Hence the addition of “place rights” would seem to be warranted, but only ifthe crucially important values the RTP advances were not now adequately secured


by already established rights in the civil, political, and social realms. Otherwiseput, to justify the granting of the RTP, this new right must yield some significant“critical leverage” (or “value added-ness”) in the advancement of cruciallyimportant values.

One best is able to see this critical leverage by understanding that, in theabsence of place rights, the existing ensemble of rights are often left enfeebled.To, once again, anticipate what is to follow in the analysis below, consider someexamples.

Existing civil rights protect citizens from discriminatory hiring practices, pro-viding open access to employment. Yet, absent an RTP, many citizens face localeconomic conditions where employment access is largely closed off, forcingthem to migrate, often against their will.24 The right to travel is recognized, andwithin it, the right to move. Absent an RTP, however, nothing attempts to ensurethat citizens have a meaningful choice regarding where to move,25 and the mirrorof the right to travel—the basic right to stay put—is only minimally protectedunder existing civil rights, with most privileges accorded to those owning prop-erty.26 In the realm of social rights, although citizens cannot arbitrarily be deniedaccess to social service benefits to which they rightfully qualify, absent an RTPthe acceptance of such benefits often shackles recipients to undesirable places orcompels place relocation. Being denied benefits because of an unwillingness tobe shackled or relocate can constitute a very real form of arbitrary denial.27 Fur-thermore, absent an RTP America’s most established social right—free publiceducation—is left almost hollow, given the powerful connection between placecommunity and the quality of schooling.28 Moreover, while existing rights mayprotect the basic freedom of association, absent an RTP little is done to attempt tocreate the conditions under which meaningful association (or “community”) itselfcan occur in geographic places.29 And, while existing political rights may protectthe basic right to vote, absent an RTP citizens often lack the ability to channel theirpolitical expression in the direction they desire (especially in the electoral systemof the United States where small single-member districts are the norm).30

Yet, recognizing the importance of place rights is one thing; making them atangible reality is quite another. In short, is the RTP plausible? Is it realistic tobelieve that such a right actually could be granted to American citizens?

I explore this question below. To undertake this exploration, the analytic heartof this essay identifies and examines some of the salient barriers now preventingAmericans from choosing their place communities. This exercise elucidates whatwould be involved in making the RTP a reality. I next identify and explicate sometensions within the RTP that could potentially render it internally incoherent andtherefore implausible. The final section of the paper makes the case, in a sugges-tive and preliminary way, that these myriad barriers and tensions, while formida-ble, are not insurmountable. This conclusion bodes well for the presumption that


an RTP indeed could be plausibly granted to the American citizenry in the twenty-first century.

II. GROUNDWORK AND QUALIFICATIONS

At first glance the actual provision of the RTP—that is, providing people withthe right to choose their place communities—may seem too fanciful, too incon-ceivable; indeed, almost utopian. Consider the burden of history. Throughouthuman history people have been forced to exit their place communities in the faceof political turmoil, religious persecution, ethnic and racial discrimination or vio-lence, and the inability to maintain an adequate economic standard of living.They, likewise, just as often have been unable to enter other place communities forthe same reasons.

Yet, this historical fact—the existence of past injustices—fails to imply thatsuch injustices must, perforce, continue into perpetuity. Take, for example, theneed to migrate from one’s community to secure an adequate standard of living inthe labor market. In light of the burden this necessity places on individuals andfamilies—as well as the broader society—it is possible to argue that that suchmigration is no longer normatively acceptable, given prevailing social and politi-cal standards of the twenty-first century. Other regulations on the workings of thelabor market system—including those establishing a minimum wage, requiringbasic workplace safety, guaranteeing the right to organize independent laborunions, and proscribing child labor (or, reaching back in history just a bit further,the abolition of legalized human slavery)—all were instituted relatively recently.An America without these regulations—the norm a century ago—would appearunconscionable today. Perhaps, in the new century, some form of an RTP can beestablished, so that the necessity of forced migration to achieve an adequate livingstandard (and basic economic opportunity) can go the way of intolerably lowwage rates, dangerous working conditions, the exploitation of children, and slav-ery, as relics of an earlier less civilized and less humane era. Such a perspective is,of course, Marshallian, as rights become more sophisticated and expansive withthe forward march of human development and progress.

Nonetheless, even with the momentum of this march as propulsion, it is clearthat if the RTP is to be viable, indeed, even conceivable, it must be thought of innonutopian and realistic—meaning limited and practical—terms. Therefore, theRTP must be qualified in several ways.

A first necessary qualification is that the RTP seemingly would require theunderpinning of a certain level of societal affluence and development. Realisti-cally, only societies having achieved copious wealth and prosperity—such as theUnited States—can, conceivably, aspire to institute this right. Societal affluence isa prerequisite because, as we see below, empowering citizens with the resourcesto make meaningful and effective choices about places to live entails sociallyborne economic and fiscal costs.


Second, a conceivable RTP must be limited to domestic populations, beingafforded only to citizens of the United States (and resident aliens with similar sta-tus). Therefore, the RTP would not extend beyond national borders; it must belimited to internal residential choice and migration. This qualification is neces-sary because, as also seen below, a meaningful and robust RTP demands a pleth-ora of institutional mechanisms and policy measures that remain underdeveloped,if not nonexistent, on the global scale. Since the RTP would be a right of citizen-ship, and since citizenship “defines the relationship between individuals and the[nation]-state,”31 limiting the enjoyment of this right to American citizens iswholly justifiable, if not wholly just.

Third, just as civil, political, and social rights—to use Marshall’s trilogy—areattenuated by a variety of institutional limitations, so will be any conceivable RTP.A citizen’s right to fair treatment in the judicial system, to participate in the demo-cratic process, and to educational opportunities or social services—while ostensi-bly absolute and universal—all remain highly imperfect and impure in the realworld, especially because of defects and dilutions rooted in class, race, and gen-der dynamics. Acknowledgment of this reality does not imply the RTP cannot besignificant and consequential, just as civil, political, and social rights—albeitinfected with enervating constraints—remain so. It, instead, simply cautions us tobe mindful of the incomplete nature of all rights (including the RTP) incontemporary liberal democracies.

Further qualifications become apparent when we conceive of how the RTPmight function in actual practice. Like all rights in a liberal society, it cannot beabsolute; the RTP must, instead, be carefully balanced against other fundamentalrights, such as the right to own private property (even though such a right oftengenerates economic inequalities that constrain the RTP). In more precise terms,the way the RTP is conceived of here is as something akin to the limited, realisticway that Shklar conceives of the “right to work”—access to remunerativeemployment at a decent wage—she advocates for America: “It may not be a con-stitutional right or one that the courts should enforce,” she writes, “but it should bea presumption guiding our policies. Instead of being regarded as just one interestamong others, it ought to enjoy the primacy that a right may claim in any conflictof political priorities.”32 Thus, the RTP needs to be understood as a normativeyardstick for policy making—that is, as a political, rather than an inviolate juris-prudential, doctrine.33 This qualified conceptualization also would help avoid anendless array of litigation, as well as the associated judicial interpreting, modify-ing, and, ultimately, legislating that would be required by courts if it were not soqualified.

Adopting Shklar’s notion of a right as a political doctrine begins to reveal moreexpressly the contours of a prospective RTP. In practice it would enjoy “primacy”in the “conflict of political priorities,” rather than as a trump to the basic rightsenshrined in the U.S. Constitution such as equal protection, due process, or free-


dom of speech or religion. Such conflicts over political priorities might, for exam-ple, pit the RTP against the political desire to minimize tax burdens or localizeland-use control or limit restrictions on private property use or devolve control ofsocial policy to subnational jurisdictions or protect the prerogatives of capitalinvestors. Once we were to grant an RTP, the conflicting political priority to it rep-resented in each of these cases would yield to the “primacy” of its rights claim—namely, that people have a right to live in the place communities that they choose.

To illustrate this point, consider, for example, the case of plant closings. Onone hand we see as valuable the political principle that private property ownersshould have as much control (or prerogative) as possible over investment deci-sions, even if this control is never absolute (being limited by, for example, zoning,environmental, or antitrust regulations). In the case of plant closings, however,there exist circumstances when this principle might on occasion come into con-flict with an established RTP, if the closing significantly limited the ability of peo-ple to continue living in a place community of their choice. Such circumstancesmight arise, for example, in the case of a massive shutdown or when the localeconomy is exceedingly dependent on a single production facility.34

In these circumstances, there are many ways the state could intervene in themarket economy to undergird the choice of people to stay in the impacted com-munity—compensatory fiscal transfers, grants for employment retraining, eco-nomic development assistance, and so on. Yet, the existence of an RTP—with itsstrong rights claim—also could quite conceivably sanction a policy responsemore direct and innovative, yet heretofore never successfully accomplisheddespite several vigorous attempts: the use of eminent domain power to prevent theshutdown by means of the public condemnation (or seizure) of the plant’s capitalfacilities, allowing for its continued operation under the control of a public, non-profit, or worker-owned entity.35 Although this policy response would conflictwith the political prerogative of capital holders to dispose of their property as theywill, the RTP could—under the banner of rights protection—provide support andjustification for such a direct and innovative action. On the other hand, as notedabove, the prospective RTP would not trump fundamental rights. Therefore, insuch a scenario, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment also would needto be respected, and the state would be required, as in all cases of eminent domain,to pay just compensation for the condemned capital facilities of the plant.

In sum, then, we can conclude that any viable RTP must, in practice, be a quali-fied right. Even taking account of these qualifications—its attenuations by institu-tional limitations, its requirement of societal affluence, its restrictions to domesticpopulations, and its political rather than jurisprudential status—is the RTP con-ceivably plausible? Can citizens have the right to live in the places they choose?

To answer this question, we need to understand the nature of the salient barri-ers now impinging on this choice. Two kinds of barriers can be identified: thoseconfronting individuals and those confronting communities.


III. INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL BARRIERS

Access to Employment

The first individual-level barrier hampering the ability of people to choosetheir place communities is most people’s need to earn a living in the paid labormarket. With the exception of the independently wealthy or those dependent onthe state, their families, or charitable institutions, most people in advanced indus-trial societies such as the United States require access to plentiful options fordesirable employment in or near their places of residence.36 Only under such acondition will citizens be able to maintain a basic standard of living and haveaccess to an acceptable range of economic opportunities.

It is the privatization of the control over economic life—and the resulting spa-tial distribution of employment—that often challenges citizens’ ability to accessadequate job opportunities in their chosen place communities. As Lindblom’sdecades of perceptive work on market systems teaches us, “Important public tasksare delegated to the business sector in societies that employ market economies.” Itis business managers, not government officials or the general citizenry, “whoorganize the labor force, allocate resources, plan capital investments, and other-wise undertake many of the organizational tasks of economic life.”37 The result ofthis institutional system, Sundquist recognized, is that, “Except for retired peopleand a few self-employed persons such as artists and novelists who can make a liv-ing in any location,” the freedom to choose where to live “is largely an illusion. Inthe aggregate the nation’s . . . workers must distribute themselves according towhere the jobs are. And workers do not decide where jobs are located; employersdo.”38

This barrier to the RTP would be less formidable if the preferences of businessmanagers for job location and the preferences of the citizenry for residence were,in some happy coincidence, roughly congruent. But recent American economichistory suggests otherwise, as the postwar American economic geography hasbeen thoroughly transformed by large-scale capital flight from establishedpopulation settlements.

Such flight can be understood as both an interregional and intraregional phe-nomenon; that is, among different sections of United States and within particularmetropolitan areas. On the interregional level, the starkest manifestation of thiscapital flight was the transfer of investment from the deindustrializing Frostbelt tothe Sunbelt.39 This movement of jobs led to what Bluestone and Harrison recog-nized as a “massive wave of migration to the Sunbelt”; in the 1970s alone almosttwelve million people relocated to the South and West from other regions of thecountry. “This stream of migrants,” Bluestone and Harrison noted, was “so vastthat if they all had come from the six New England states, this entire region wouldhave been left without a single man, woman, or child.”40 The intraregional level


saw massive capital flight in the form of the postwar deurbanization and the over-all decline of manufacturing (as well as retail and wholesale services) in Amer-ica’s central cities.41 This capital flight has created the well-recognized “spatialmismatch” in metropolitan economies, as inner-city minority populationsbecame geographically estranged from many entry-level employment opportuni-ties, resulting in the deepening of concentrated urban poverty.42

For the RTP to have substance, economic geography must, as Clark points out,follow “the locational preferences of residents, not firms.”43 Sundquist specifieswhat is required: the pattern of job distribution generated by the economy mustapproach “as closely as possible the way in which people would distribute them-selves if they were truly free.”44 In a similar vein, the case Shklar makes for a“right to work” in the United States, alluded to above, specifies that the obligationfor American society is the “creation of paying jobs geographically close to theunemployed.”45 All of this, in Clark’s words, “involves taking jobs to people”—towhere people want to live—rather than forcing people to leave their chosen placecommunities to realize the basic standard of living and economic opportunity thatcomes with the availability of plentiful employment options.46 This does notimply that a meaningful and robust RTP must require that people have the samestandard of living and economic opportunity in those places where they choose tolive; it only implies that certain basic levels be maintained.47

Access to State Subsidies

So far I have discussed the basic standard-of-living barrier to the RTP as a labormarket issue. Yet, what about those unable to work because of advanced age, dis-ability, temporary job displacement, and so on, and/or those dependent on supple-mental income and in-kind support? For this category of the citizenry, achieving abasic standard of living most commonly requires access to government-providedbenefits. Therefore, the RTP requires that citizens be able to continue to receivethese benefits in the jurisdictions where they choose to live.48

One way to ensure this outcome is to make benefits “portable” so that recipi-ents can continue to receive them as they move to their chosen place communities.The model here would be Social Security and Medicare, social programs that pro-vide relatively generous income support and medical insurance for the elderly anddisabled through the federal government, freeing millions of retirees to relocate toplace communities of their choice. Another highly portable major social programis the Earned Income Tax Credit, which provides supplemental income supportfor more than twenty million working poor families and individuals through thefederal tax system irrespective of where they live.

Other government social programs are less portable, primarily because theyare in large part administratively controlled by subnational jurisdictions. Manystates and localities, for example, have imposed residency restrictions on thereceipt of welfare assistance in an effort to prevent becoming so-called welfare


magnets that attract poor newcomers. Such restrictions, which date to the earlydays of the American Republic, were declared unconstitutional by the U.S.Supreme Court’s 1969 decision Shapiro v. Thompson as violations of the equalprotection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because, as noted above, theydenied an individual’s right to travel. The recent 1996 reform of the welfare pro-gram, with its enhanced devolution of policy-making authority, explicitly autho-rized states the option to impose residency restrictions. In response, several statesimplemented new restrictions, but the Court, in Saenz v. Roe (1999), again struckthese down, this time based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s privileges andimmunities clause.49

Like welfare, unemployment insurance is a federal social program with a sub-stantial degree of state administrative control. In many states there remains a“proxy residence requirement” because eligibility for benefits comes only frombeing previously employed in a particular state.50 In addition, to be eligible forunemployment benefits, claimants must remain “available for work,” and somestates deem those leaving a certain geographic area as not meeting this require-ment. Examples include restrictions on leaving one’s normal labor market ormoving to an area where job opportunities are less favorable than a claimant’soriginal locality.51

Public housing has notoriously offered limited choices to program participantsin the United States. These subsidies come in two major forms: project-basedassistance and tenant-based assistance. Project-based assistance includes tradi-tional public housing projects, as well as privately owned projects constructed orrehabilitated with public funds through the Section 8 program. The Section 8 pro-gram also provides assistance directly to tenants in the form of a certificate orvoucher for use in the private rental housing market. Projects—especially tradi-tional ones, but also Section 8—tend to be limited to poor, racially segregatedareas of central cities. Local government participation is voluntary, and, as Dreier,Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom point out, “as a result, few suburbs participate in anyfederally assisted low-income housing program.”52 Section 8 vouchers have thepotential to expand residency choice, but their portability is constricted by lowbenefit levels, which make finding housing in low-poverty areas difficult, as wellas variety of a administrative and regulatory guidelines that “are daunting andoften discourage families from searching [for housing] outside their immediatearea.”53

Housing policy points to a flip side to the issue. A robust RTP demands notonly that citizens be able to take their benefits with them but also that the level ofincome support or the quality of in-kind services be adequate wherever theychoose to reside. If the provision of benefits in certain jurisdictions or neighbor-hoods falls below basic levels, citizens may be coerced into relocation to achievea basic standard of living or quality of life.54


One clear case of forced migration of this variety comes from the unmitigateddisaster of the housing services provided at many inner-city public housing pro-jects. Violent crime, rampant drug use, and substandard maintenance combine tomake life there nearly intolerable. Residents have little choice but to flee, if giventhe opportunity.55 Exacerbating this lack of choice is the fact that many assistedhousing mobility initiatives—such as the short-lived federal Move to Opportunityprogram or the Gautreaux program in Chicago—require former public housingresidents to relocate to distant outer-city neighborhoods or suburban jurisdic-tions.56 Given the disconnection from community and kinship networks, socialservices, and public transportation that such moves entail, these are place commu-nities where many may not prefer to live.57 Discussing the results of his compre-hensive survey of the views of those forced to relocate from the demolitions ofpublic housing projects in Minneapolis, Goetz, for example, reports, “The over-whelming preference of residents was to remain in Minneapolis [more than 70percent] and more specifically on the city’s north side [approaching 50 per-cent].”58 (North-side neighborhoods are within a few miles’radius from the publichousing site from which they were displaced.)

Welfare policy offers another example. The fear (whether founded or not) ofbeing a “welfare magnet,” drawing in new poor persons, has lead some Americanstates to keep cash benefits exceedingly low. The effect of this tightfistedness,especially when coupled with a lack of access to employment, is not only to dis-courage in-migration; it also forces aid recipients to either relocate to less ungen-erous states or face an unbearably low standard of living.59 While most have cho-sen the latter option, and not actually migrated, Schram and Soss point out thatunder the new 1996 welfare reform, with its stricter provisions that allow states tobar recipients from aid altogether, the situation may be different. “States thatmove expeditiously to tighten time limits and work requirements may,” theywrite, “actually force poor people to flee to other states, . . . creat[ing] a class ofimpoverished migrants.”60 It remains too early to tell what the new reform willbring, and its effects have been masked by the strong economy and declining rollsof the late 1990s. Nonetheless, Schram and Soss see the possibility that the cre-ation of such a class could be “very real,” not merely a ghost in the imaginations ofstate policy makers.61

Racial Discrimination

One’s right to live in a place community of choice in the United States contin-ues to be threatened directly by racial biases in housing markets.62 Despite thepassage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, such biases remain pervasive and severe,especially as faced by African Americans.63

Massey and Denton’s definitive work on the subject, American Apartheid,identifies three “mechanisms [that] exist to keep blacks out of most white neigh-borhoods”: violence and intimidation, discriminatory practices in the real estate


industry, and discriminatory practices of financial institutions. While violenceand intimidation still operate, “over time whites have shifted tactics to adopt lessovert and more socially acceptable ways of defending the color line,” as repre-sented by the latter two kinds of racial discrimination.64

Discriminatory practices in the real estate industry include limiting the numberof housing units made available for sale or rent, offering less financial assistancewith credit access or less favorable rental terms, and guiding African Americansaway from white neighborhoods, or racial steering, as well as a variety of adver-tising practices and, more generally, the provision of inferior and discourteousservice.65 Citing a comprehensive 1988 study conducted by the U.S. Departmentof Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Massey et al. note that “on any givenencounter between a black home seeker and a realtor, the odds are at least 60 per-cent that something will happen to limit the black renter or buyer’s access to hous-ing units that are available to whites.”66 Moreover, this figure refers to a singleencounter with a realtor, so “over a series of three visits they cumulate toextremely high probabilities—well over 90 percent in three visits.”67 Subsequentstudies show that such practices remain enduring.68

African Americans entering the home lending market also suffer racial dis-crimination practiced by financial institutions. Such discrimination is well docu-mented for the 1970s and 1980s,69 and research suggests that it continued in the1990s despite greater attention to the problem and some subsequent progress. Forexample, in a review of newly published literature, Holloway and Wyly report thatrecent studies of loan denial probabilities “consistently show systematic racialdifferences in lending outcomes . . . black mortgage applicants are more likely tobe rejected, even after controlling for income, requested loan amount, and otherrelevant applicant characteristics.”70 This discrimination tends to limit residentialchoices for African Americans because the entrance to the numerous place com-munities with limited rental property frequently requires the purchase of a home.

Economic Discrimination

Recall that the RTP, as conceptualized above, builds from the work of Rae:“The right to live in a place of our own choosing.” Yet Rae also offered a qualifica-tion to this right: it is “subject . . . to constraints set by our ability to pay and will-ingness to do so.”71 This qualification raises another barrier to the right of personsto choose their place communities. Although “willingness” to pay is not a prob-lem because it remains within the realm of free choice, “ability” to pay—that is,economic discrimination—is problematic for the RTP, and highly so. In a societylike the United States that uses largely market-based allocation for scarce con-sumptive goods—including even necessities such as housing—choosing ourplace communities is intimately wedded to whether we can afford them. “I’d liketo live there,” we often hear people say, “but it’s just too expensive.”


Clearly the extent to which this barrier can be lessened is limited, save a whole-sale transformation of our market system and its replacement with an alternativerationing system for allocating housing (and, to some extent, transportation andother goods and services) to one not based on the ability to pay. Yet we might sayof such a replacement to cure the ability-to-pay barrier what Madison said ofdestroying liberty to cure the mischiefs of faction: it is a remedy worse than thedisease. Allocative inefficiencies, increased corruption, and threats to individualliberty all are strongly associated with nonmarket rationing.72

Nonetheless, the affordability problems associated with the ability-to-pay sys-tem are not invariable. There exist various inequities that significantly and sys-tematically exacerbate such conditions, many involving land-use practices. Onthe intraregional level a significant case in point is the exclusionary zoning regula-tions adopted by affluent suburbs.73 Such regulations commonly prohibit multi-family dwellings, mandate large lots or minimum sizes for single family homes,specify building codes that require excessively high quality construction stan-dards, and separate residential from other land uses (thus requiring occupants toown automobiles). The overall impact, as Downs points out, is to “prevent . . . alarge percentage of the nation’s population from being able to live in communitiesof their choosing.” In particular, Downs continues, this system of local regulations“encourages, even compels, most of the poorest people to live in the oldest, mostdeteriorated neighborhoods because they are legally excluded from moredesirable ones.”74

Gentrification is another ubiquitous intraregional phenomenon that systemati-cally limits affordability. It is to older urban neighborhoods what exclusionaryzoning is to affluent suburbs: it leaves many unable to pay the price of place com-munity admission. Taking off in late 1970s and resurging in the 1990s,75 the gen-trifying process develops as young professionals and businesses move (often rap-idly) into neighborhoods after real estate interests or individuals acquire andupgrade a critical mass of buildings.76 Existing residents—especially poor rentersand the aged, are left unable to afford the subsequent increases in rents and prop-erty taxes. The result in many large cities—including Chicago, Boston, Washing-ton, D.C., Philadelphia, and, above all, San Francisco—has been massive dis-placement.77

A formidable barrier to the RTP on the interregional level might be the inabilityto afford to live in high amenity areas around the country. The tropical beauty ofHonolulu, the bright lights of Manhattan, the left coast politics of San Francisco,the earthy charm of Santa Fe, or the sweet music of Austin make such places—aswell as many others—tremendously desirable. This demand drives up the priceone must pay for residence, potentially limiting the choices of many people to set-tle in such communities. On the other hand, the work of Power demonstrates thatpeople commonly make economic sacrifices to move to high-amenity areas,“despite the fact that real wages are lower, employment opportunities are scarcer,


and/or cost of living is higher.”78 Therefore, properly considered, this issueremains more within the realm of the “willingness,” rather than “ability,” to pay,and therefore is less threatening to the RTP.

Nevertheless, clearly citizens’ right to choose these high-amenity place com-munities is circumscribed to a certain degree by their income and wealth. And thequestion is one of relative income and wealth: desirable place communities arewhat Hirsch calls “positional,” rather than simply material, goods, where one’s“relative rather than absolute command over economic resources . . . will deter-mine one’s take.” Explaining, Hirsch points out, “If one’s own income remainsunchanged while the income of other people rises, one’s command over the posi-tional sector will fall. The income that earlier supported a downtown apartment, acountry home . . . or simply an active life protected from the crowds, is no longersufficient.”79

So, when some people in society have comparatively higher levels of incomeand wealth, they can bid up the price of the most desirable place communities,putting them beyond the means of most others. The existence of economicinequality therefore threatens the RTP, and the only truly effective means to endeconomic (ability to pay) discrimination is to end economic inequality itself. Forif, hypothetically, we all had roughly the same income and wealth, place commu-nities would be allocated solely by people’s willingness, rather than ability, to pay(some would pay as much as 70 percent of their income for housing, others muchless; one particularly frugal colleague of mine pays roughly 5 percent of his grossincome for rent).

Clearly, such a leveling of income and wealth is neither feasible nor particu-larly desirable; it may also be largely unnecessary: given the variation in whatpeople are willing to pay to live in various place communities, a moderate degreeof economic inequality may be, in turn, only moderately threatening to the RTP.

Unfortunately the degree of income and wealth inequality in the United Stateshas, over the past decades, become acute. It is now higher than anytime since1929. The richest 1 percent now controls almost 40 percent of the nation’s totalhousehold wealth; for financial wealth (which excludes owner-occupied housing,automobiles, and pensions), the figure approaches 50 percent. Moreover, from1983 to 1998, nearly all the gains in wealth went to the richer 20 percent of house-holds, while the bottom 40 percent saw their wealth actually decline in absoluteterms.80 Of particular relevance because of its dramatic bidding effect on housingprices is the “near explosion in the number of very rich households”: while theoverall number of households increased by only 10 percent from 1989 to 1998,the number of millionaire households rose by almost 60 percent,pentamillionaires ($5,000,000 or more) by 155 percent, and decamillionaires($10,000,000) by 269 percent.81 So many households wielding such awesomeconsumptive power vis-à-vis the vast majority of the population shuts this major-


ity out of the bidding process in the place community auction, leaving most withlittle freedom to choose to reside where demand is greatest.

IV. COMMUNITY-LEVEL BARRIERS

The first four barriers to the RTP all involve the characteristics of individuals—their employment and state subsidy needs, race, and class status—that make it dif-ficult for them to choose their place communities. In contrast, the next two barri-ers examined stem from the characteristics of the place communities themselves.

Inadequate Variety

Choice without variation is meaningless. Therefore the RTP demands thatplace communities be distinctive. What Walzer says of the characteristics of com-munities in general can be applied to the characteristics of place communities inparticular: “Freedom to come and go requires that there be somewhere to comefrom and go to: it requires a genuine pluralism” of varied communities—or whatWalzer calls “a variety of settlements.”82

The problem here is that place communities in the United States are becomingless diverse. Many traditional and basic forms of human settlement face seriouspressures that imperil their continued vibrancy. Central cities, especially theirpredominately minority and racially mixed areas, and rural small towns rankhighly on the endangered places list. As these distinctive settlement forms die (orare killed) off, the ability of people to choose their place communities suffers aparallel fate, threatening the RTP.

Consider first the plight of central cities. Despite some limited revitalizationover the past two decades, most remain fiscally, economically, and socially trou-bled. Central cities continue to suffer from a decline of quality employmentopportunities, high poverty rates, burdensome tax levels, poor service provision(especially schools), limited affordable housing and commercial activity, and adisproportionate amount of violent crime.83 This perpetual “urban crisis” canmake choosing a city life exceedingly difficult, especially for families withchildren.

Urban experts trace the roots of this crisis to federal government policies thatencouraged the flight of investment capital and middle-class residents from cen-tral cities to surrounding suburbs. Most damaging among these policies wereaccelerated depreciation provisions of the tax code, which gave investors theincentive to abandon older, urban industrial sites; the interstate highway system,which allowed suburban residents easy access to city jobs and facilitated businessflight by making trucking rather than rail the more efficient method of goods con-veyance; massive levels of defense spending (especially during the cold war),which saw the Pentagon site most military facilities in suburban areas and grantmost defense contracts to suburban firms; and the Federal Housing Authority/


Veterans Administration (FHA/VA) home mortgage guarantees, which favoredboth new construction in the suburbs over the renovation of older city propertiesand single-family homes over multifamily (apartment) buildings.84 As AliceO’Connor points out, the federal government, by means of myriad urban policies,has in turn “step[ped] in with . . . interventions to deal with the consequences [ofits actions]—job loss, poverty, crumbling infrastructure, neighborhood institu-tional decline.” Such interventions have been “modest and inadequate,” however,and they are left “swimming against the tide” of the “large-scale public policies[that] undermine . . . [central cities’] very ability to survive.”85

Hardest hit within central cities have been predominately minority neighbor-hoods (especially those with heavy African American and, to a lesser extent,Latino populations). Many of these neighborhoods experience poverty rates of 40percent or greater, the threshold commonly used to designate a neighborhood as“high poverty” or “ghetto poverty” or “urban underclass.”86 Such an intense levelof poverty in a single location produces what Wilson calls “concentrationeffects,”87 further exacerbating and deepening the experience of deprivation, andbreeding a “tangle of pathology in the inner city.”88 Physically, such neighbor-hoods have a “slumlike” character, marked by “abandoned houses and busi-nesses, vacant lots, cars rotting in driveways, idle men standing on corners, andmany liquor stores and pawnshops but few grocery stores or banks.”89 Socially,they experience a plethora of ills, including chronic unemployment and acuteeducational deficiencies, as well as high rates of violent crime, family dissolution,teenage pregnancy, drug addiction, and welfare dependency.90 Such conditionsdegrade livability to the point where citizens who prefer to reside in urban, pre-dominately minority place communities for cultural, social, or political reasonsare left unable to exercise this choice.

Not only have predominately minority place communities in central cities hadto confront the general antiurban biases in federal policy listed above; they alsowere frequently “redlined” (designated as areas inappropriate for investment) byprivate banks and insurance companies (as well as in FHA/VA loan guaranteeprograms). Without access to credit and insurance—for home mortgages, homeimprovement, and commercial business development—such neighborhoodsinevitably suffered property abandonment and economic degeneration. Althoughfederal and state legislation passed in the 1970s greatly restricted the practice ofovert redlining and encouraged reinvestment, racial biases continue: “Despite thediverse array of characteristics that have been controlled in different studies,”Massey and Denton summarize, “one result consistently emerges: black andracially mixed neighborhoods receive less private credit, fewer federally insuredloans, fewer home improvement loans, and less total mortgage money than socio-economically comparable white neighborhoods.”91 While documenting someimprovement, more recent studies continue to confirm this conclusion.92 Thus,African American place communities suffer the same discrimination suffered by


African American individuals. The latter limits individuals’ free choice of whereto reside, while the former limits free choice by limiting the choices themselves.

Maintaining stable, racially integrated place communities also remains elu-sive: “Opportunities for interracial or interethnic living in this country [the UnitedStates] are very scarce,” Yinger explains. “Even if minority and white familiesprefer a multiracial or multicultural environment, they usually cannot find stableintegrated neighborhoods into which they can move.” This situation, he con-cludes, vitiates “true freedom of choice.”93

As Smith concluded after an extensive review of the problem, “Powerfulforces operate against stable integration.”94 Most opportunities to create (and sus-tain) integrated place communities come during the process of racial or ethnictransition, stemming from minority in-migration amidst “white flight” (or, to alesser extent, white in-migration amidst gentrification). Yet, as Smith adds, “Mar-ket forces are more likely to operate in favor of neighborhood transition than sta-bility.”95 Surveys of white attitudes suggest little enthusiasm for residentially inte-grated areas.96 And, once transition begins, the real estate industry has anincentive to encourage its intensity as a means of increasing property turnover.97

Integrated neighborhoods also receive inadequate credit. Studies show that“recently integrated tracts with modest black populations experience the greatestunderinvestment compared with areas that are either predominantly white or pre-dominantly black,” as banks fear the “instability associated with neighborhoodchange.”98 Meanwhile, governments offer little support for stable integration:suburbs are generally unreceptive, “having spent much of their corporate exis-tence fighting class and racial integration”; central cities “are often too belea-guered or unconcerned to address the integration goals of a small number ofneighborhoods”; and the federal government, by means of HUD, historically “hasnever . . . given serious attention to [neighborhood integration].”99

The loss of variation in place community types is not only an urban phenome-non; the rural small town as a distinct form of human settlement is also imperiled.The postwar, automobile-driven spread suburbia enveloped small towns over pre-vious decades, while the continuation of sprawling suburban growth and popula-tion deconcentration has brought newcomers and suburban-style housing andcommercial development to those further out, transforming formerly autono-mous communities into mere exurbs of urban metropolitan regions. Many othersmall towns not economically linked to these metropolitan regions are sufferingconsiderable decline, as they experience a significant loss of jobs, people, andwealth, creating the phenomenon of what Stauber calls the “rural ghetto.”100 Thisdynamic is especially pronounced in those small towns lacking proximity tonatural or recreational amenities.

Although the general economic transition from an agricultural to an industrialeconomy in the twentieth century destined American small towns to lose impor-tance as settlement form, the extraordinary degree of decline experienced by such


places is attributable more to specific (and historically recent) factors. Economicglobalization has bought the flood of cheap imported commodities, which nega-tively affects rural small towns severely because the livelihoods of many dependon the raw goods produced by farms, ranches, and mines.101 In the retail sector theproliferation of Wal-Mart and other corporate chains has devastated the commer-cial vibrancy of many small towns’traditional central business districts. It also hasled to job losses and the loss of community income, as profits are largely siphonedoff to distant stockholders and less contracting is done with local business serviceproviders in fields such as banking, accounting, insurance, and law.102 Federalpolicy, especially agriculture policy, also is implicated. As Davies points out in hisrecent book Main Street Blues: The Decline of Small Town America, “Federalfarm subsidies and related policies have favored large-scale individual or corpo-rate agricultural interests, thereby accelerating the demise of the small familyfarm and contributing markedly to the depopulation of America’s farmlands.”103

In addition, federal assistance for rural business, housing, and commercial devel-opment has traditionally been limited compared with the assistance funneled tometropolitan areas.104

Population Instability

Place communities must not only be distinctive; something else is required ofthem beyond pluralism to support the RTP: they must have a reasonably stablepopulation base. Here the issue is not just that a variety of different types of com-munities thrive; rather, it is that enough people stay settled in them.

Again, the insightful work of Walzer on communities in general teaches uswhy population stability is necessary for place communities in particular: “Ulti-mately, what makes it possible for me to choose is the fact that other people havechosen (or have simply stayed on where they were planted by their parents) and sohave kept alive . . . a community that I can enter (and exit). I can’t be a . . . vaga-bond unless other people are settlers.” While Walzer appreciates that, clearly,“mobility is the mark of a free society,” he also recognizes that if people “move sofast and in such numbers . . . the freedom to move and experiment will become lessand less significant. Freedom will undercut itself unless there is a collective effortto cope with its effects: to create and re-create stable social settings . . . that pro-duce strong individuals and provide them with seriously and interestingly differ-ent possibilities.”105

In a recent book Ralf Dahrendorf makes this point by quoting WalterLippmann: “The tides of population must,” Lippmann wrote in his “Agenda ofLiberalism,” “move slowly if old communities are not to be devitalized by emi-gration and new communities overwhelmed by unassimilable immigration.” And,more directly relevant is Dahrendorf’s own insight: “There are degrees of migra-tion which are necessary and even desirable, but a point may well come when


communities either lose their identity or are no longer able to assimilate newcom-ers.”106

In short, the absence of ample population stability hampers the freedom tochoose a place community, either because in-migrants confront inhospitable con-ditions for settlement or, more significantly and interestingly, because the veryidea of “community” is swept away in the tides of human locomotion.107

There is a strong case to be made that population movement in the UnitedStates is indeed excessive enough to impair community in significant ways. Con-sider the sheer numbers: Americans, on average, move eleven to thirteen timesduring their lifetimes, and each year since 1950, 15 to 20 percent of Americanshave changed their residences.108 Assessing the effect of this phenomenon,Dagger notes that such “widespread mobility” clearly has “unsettling effects [oncitizenship]” because it “loosen[s] the ties that bind individuals into a commu-nity.”109 Leach effectively makes the case that, with residential mobility rates sohigh, America has become a “country of exiles” requiring a new “centeringagainst the landscape of the temporary.”110 To make this point he quotes novelistWallace Stegner: “Our migratoriness has hindered us from becoming a people ofcommunities and traditions. . . . It has robbed us of the gods who make placesholy,” and references sociologist Peter Berger’s classic book The Homeless Mind,which argued that the extreme mobility in American society creates “a deepeningcondition of homelessness.”111

Much of this churning of the American population stems from the continuedcentrifugal flight from core areas of metropolitan regions, central cities, and innersuburbs, to peripheral areas, outer suburbs, and exurbs, as well as movement fromnonmetropolitan areas to outer suburbs and exurbs.112 Characteristic of this trendare places like Olathe, Kansas—a small agricultural center transformed into abooming suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. Olathe—now Kansas’s fifth-largestcity—has seen its population grow by more than sevenfold since 1960. “Likemany suburbs,” describes one keen observer, “Olathe provides little organiccommunity. . . . Because people are moving in so quickly, the city has few well-established neighborhoods. And the explosive population growth has made it dif-ficult to develop a coherent civic identity.”113 Likewise, the rapid movement out ofcore urban areas and nonmetropolitan areas has equally destructive effects on thevibrancy of these communities.114

To understand the intensity of U.S. population movement, one need only lookto what movers are chasing: jobs and quality of life. Job opportunities are particu-larly important for nonlocal (intercounty) population movement, with almost athird of migrants relocating for work-related reasons. Quality-of-life enhance-ment, as reflected through housing upgrades—obtaining better housing stock,owning rather than renting, or moving to nicer neighborhoods, and so on—is thedominant reason for local (intracounty) moves, accounting for almost two-thirdsof such moves.115 Peoples’ geographic chase for jobs has been necessitated in


many cases by the heightened degree of capital mobility in the postwar era,wrought by a combination of technological advances in transportation, communi-cation, and production processes as well as promobility government policies.116

Their geographic chase for a decent quality of life, which normally is centrifugalin character, often stems from the need for escape: “Increasingly,” observe Moeand Wilkie, “we move because the communities in which we live are destroyed,little by little, by insensitive development or the arrival of the urban ills that causedus to flee the cities in the first place.”117 Government policies contribute to suchconditions by facilitating migration and property abandonment while providingonly marginal support for place.118

V. LESSENING TENSIONS

The immediately preceding discussion of population movement reveals theexistence of a deep tension in the RTP—a tension that, if not worked out, couldrender it internally incoherent and therefore implausible. On one hand, theessence of the RTP is the freedom of community choice; yet when such choice isexpressed too frequently—by means of overwhelming degrees of exit or entry—the RTP is undercut by the resulting population instability that destroys commu-nity. The fact that the RTP is fully portable gives rise to another variant of this ten-sion, as the overwhelming freedom of entry can destroy the specific desirability ofplace communities (e.g., in the case of small rural towns being transformed byrampant sprawl into mere exurbs of urban regions). Much of the same occurs withoverwhelming exit (or flight), whether from small rural towns, minority neigh-borhoods, or central cities. Such freedom to exit destroys the viability of theseplace communities. In both scenarios—overwhelming entry and exit—thisdestruction diminishes the freedom of place community choice for those living inoverwhelmed communities as well as the variety of community choice for all.

In order for this tension to be eased, the levels of entry and exit must somehowbe made manageable (i.e., limited) so that fewer communities would be over-whelmed and destroyed by the freedom of individuals to come and go. Yet, if theRTP is to be robust and coherent and such, limitations on entry and exit must comewith only minimal loss of that individual freedom. Under what conditions can thisbe possible?

The key to solving this dilemma lies in the pursuit that Clark labels the “strongpolicy goal” of “maintaining community integrity,” a notion introduced at the out-set of this essay.119 Recall that, as discussed above, often it is the chase for jobs andquality of life that makes population movement so overwhelming. As also notedabove, much of this chase is necessitated by the need to flee declining communi-ties; that is, communities that have lost their economic and social integrity. Forexample, the overwhelming push to move into exclusive suburbs stems as muchfrom the desire to flee declining central cities than from any inherent desirability


of such communities.120 Much of the same can be said of the overwhelmingexpansion of suburban sprawl into rural areas, which stems largely from thedesire to flee declining “inner ring” (or “first ring”) suburbs rather than a prefer-ence for lower residential density per se.121 Thus, keeping communities strong andstable would reduce the demand (or choice) for entry and exit to manageable lev-els, which in turn preserves individual freedom without producing the kind ofoverwhelming population movement that is often so destructive to placecommunities experiencing either massive immigration or emigration.

The upshot of this conclusion is that an internally coherent and robust RTPimplies strong policy measures to achieve Clark’s “community integrity.” With-out such efforts the RTP cannot coherently accommodate its need to be inclusive(allowing freedom of entry) and its need to be somewhat exclusive (to keep suchentry from being destructive). And it cannot coherently accommodate its need toboth permit the freedom of exit for some and ensure that such freedom does notsignificantly destroy place community choice for others. While fully specifyingthe nature of the policy measures necessary for promoting community integrity isbeyond the scope of this essay,122 at a general level all of the following would beessential: aggressive place-based economic development policies, compensatoryfiscal transfers to local governments, improved public safety measures, and mea-sures to strengthen public schools and improve housing quality. In addition,below I discuss some technological and political trends that are currently creatingthe kinds of conditions favorable to reducing the significance of the six barriers tothe RTP. As will become clear, these trends by their nature would also contributemuch to the health and integrity of place communities.

VI. BARRIER TRANSCENDENCE? SOME FAVORABLE TRENDS

Thus far we have seen that for it to be plausible to grant the American citizenrya serious, meaningful, and effective RTP, the six barriers elucidated above wouldclearly need to be transcended (or, at a minimum, significantly diminished), andcommunity integrity would need to be greatly enhanced to lessen the internal ten-sions within the RTP. Whether successful efforts can be undertaken to allow forthis transcendence and the subsequent enhancement of community integrity is anopen and largely unanswerable question. Given that such efforts would hold somany future unknowns, we can only conjecture about the possibilities. Nonethe-less, to aid our understanding of whether the RTP can be thought of as plausible,we find it useful to engage this question. As alluded to above, by doing so I findmany favorable trends—in technology, in policy development, and in politics—suggesting that the task of significantly diminishing the barriers and lessening thetensions, while formidable, is not insurmountable.

Recall that the barriers preventing Americans from choosing place communi-ties included both individual-level barriers—stemming from the need foremployment and state subsidy access, as well as racial and economic discrimina-


tion—and community-level barriers, stemming from the inadequate variety ofsettlements and excessive population instability.

Consider first the access-to-employment barrier. Diminishing it requires inter-ventions in the market economy to ensure that adequate jobs be located wherepeople choose to live. At first glance this “jobs to people” effort would seem to behighly problematic—and increasingly so. As noted above, recent technologicaladvances in communication, transportation, and production have left capitallargely detached from place communities in this era of economic globalization.

Yet these same technological advances actually can be put in service of thegoal of better matching the pattern of employment distribution to the locationalchoices of persons. These advances make the dispersal of business operationsmore feasible, as various production facilities, distributional centers, administra-tive offices, and market outlets can be located almost anywhere.123 In short, thekinds of technical determinants of firm location—such as physical geography, theproximity to natural resources or markets, or the logistical need of administrativecoordination at a central location—become less important given the new techno-logical environment of production.124 Therefore, capital investment can occur in avariety of places without imposing substantial efficiency losses on the economyas a whole. With such investment unfettered as it has never been before, publicpolicy can be used to direct capital investment to places with people needingemployment opportunities without massive economic costs.125 Such a redirectionalso would ameliorate the population instability barrier, as people’s need to chasejobs geographically would be lessened.

Diminishing the access-to-state-subsidy barrier requires making such subsi-dies—especially in the housing and welfare arenas—more portable on one hand,and more adequate on the other. The portability of benefits frees recipients tomove, while their adequacy permits staying put.

The fact that some 3,400 separate local housing agencies administer the fed-eral housing program is perhaps the single most significant factor hamperingchoice to relocate (especially the inner-city poor seeking suburban residences).Implementing programs on a metropolitan-wide (or regional) basis to overcomethis fragmentation is key to making public housing benefits more portable.126 Infact, the prospects for pursuing a regional approach to solving metropolitan prob-lems—whether by means of federal (and state) initiatives or the cooperationamong local governments themselves—not only affects the prospects forenhanced housing benefit portability but also affects the capacity to assuage keyaspects of many other barriers as well (see below).

Unfortunately, to date, metropolitan-level governance, where it has occurred,has tended to “emphasize infrastructure-based ‘things regionalism’ while dis-missing social and equity-based ‘people regionalism.’ ”127 Suburban resistance toregional policies that promote equity—through either the deconcentration of theurban poor to the suburbs or the redistribution of resources from wealthy suburbs


to poorer central cities—remains intense. Such resistance is empowered by thetremendous political influence that comes from the dual advantage of wielding anumerical majority of votes and superior economic resources. In recent years,however, some observers have become more sanguine about the prospects forchange. These observers root their sanguinity in the idea that a new politicalcoalition between central cities and older inner suburbs can be built, as the latterincreasingly experiences the same social problems plaguing the former. Work-ing together, this coalition has the combined political strength to achieve policychanges on the local, state, and federal levels that promote equity-orientedregionalism.128

Access to state subsidies involves not just mobility-facilitating portability;adequacy, which allows recipients the choice to stay settled if they so choose, isalso necessary. As discussed above, acute adequacy problems exist in the housingand welfare arenas, stemming most notably from intolerable conditions of manyinner-city public housing projects129 and the potentially perilous “race-to-the-bottom” effects of the recent welfare reform.130

Many troubled public housing projects are in the process of being remadethrough the Hope VI program, which demolishes blighted buildings and redevel-ops sites into mixed-income communities. Early studies suggest this effort maybe successful, especially in cities with strong real estate markets, although thethreat of gentrification-like displacement and a deterioration of housing optionsfor the very poor loom large.131 Regarding welfare, states have not yet gutted ben-efits and imposed draconian time limits and work requirements, although giventhe authority to do so in the 1996 reform. This outcome bodes well for recipients’continued access to state subsidies; it may, however, be a temporary effect of thedrastic declines in the welfare rolls in the latter half of the 1990s, which eased statefiscal pressures, coupled with the exceptionally robust economy.

The racial discrimination barrier can be ameliorated through various govern-ment actions, including, most notably, the beefed-up enforcement and strength-ening of fair housing laws.132 Whether such legislated measures are successfulultimately depends, to a great extent, on the attitudes of whites. Although highlevels of white prejudice remain, analysts report that such prejudice is decliningover time.133 The continuation of this positive trend can lead to the proliferation ofstable integrated communities.134 This proliferation will not only have a salutaryeffect on the inadequate variety barrier by adding to the menu of place commu-nity choice; given that many studies confirm the contact hypothesis (whichexplains diminished prejudice by the existence of equal status contact betweengroups), greater integration is also likely to diminish white prejudices further.135

The economic discrimination barrier stands, undoubtedly, as the most deeplyrooted and problematic, given that people’s choice of place communities in a mar-ket system is inherently limited by their ability to pay. Nonetheless, as discussedabove, the inequities of various land-use practices and processes—notably


exclusionary zoning and gentrification—significantly exacerbate affordabilityproblems.

Exclusionary zoning has proved to be tenacious in light of suburban politicalpower and favorable court rulings.136 Whether efforts to attack this practice canbe successful depends to a large extent whether the kinds of political coalitionspushing for equity-oriented regionalism discussed above can be successful.Such coalitions can pursue a policy agenda—whether undertaken on the fed-eral, state, or local levels—that induces or commands that each jurisdictionwithin a metro area permit the construction of affordable housing, so that eachassumes its “fair share” of the burden of housing the region’s low and moderateincome residents.137

The recent movement, led by the Fannie Mae Foundation, among nonprofitcommunity developers to develop “value recapture” or “resident ownership”mechanisms show some promise for mitigating the deleterious impact of theurban gentrification process. Value recapture and resident ownership mecha-nisms allow for the increasing market values of property in gentrifying areas to beredirected in ways that provide financial benefits to existing, usually lowerincome, community residents. One important such mechanism is the communityland trust, which acquires and holds real estate in the community’s interest.138

Gentrification, with its dual processes of inner-city revitalization and displace-ment, sparks sharp words from those who come to praise it as a savior and fromthose would bury it as a destroyer. If, however, “existing residents of distressedcommunities share in the benefits of revitalization efforts,” notes Fannie MaeFoundation senior vice president James H. Carr, “the debate on whether gentrifi-cation is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ can be rendered moot.”139

More generally, much of the threat to the RTP from economic discriminationwas traced above to the explosion of economic inequality in the United States overthe past few decades. This trend has sparked a parallel explosion of policy andinstitutional correctives. Ackerman and Alstott offer one of the most intriguingcorrectives: provide every citizen with a “stake” in American society: a one-timegrant of $80,000 when she or he reaches early adulthood (age eighteen for thosegoing to college; twenty-one for others). The price tag of such a seemingly out-landish proposal would be surprising reasonable: approximately $250 billion peryear (in 1997), then eventually become self-financing as stakeholders repaid theirstakes with interest at death.140 Employee ownership offers another path forreducing economic inequality. Transferring businesses to workers broadens thedistribution of wealth in society as “worker-capitalists” garner the economic ben-efits of capital ownership. This path would build on current positive trends thathave already seen one form of worker ownership, the Employee Stock OwnershipPlan (ESOP), become a significant factor in the American economy: roughly 8.5million participants working in 11,500 ESOPs companies own at least $400 bil-lion in stock.141 Various proposals to expand and support employee ownership


have been forwarded of late, including an ambitious congressional effort to usefederal policy to increase ESOP-held corporate stock to the 30 percent level by2010.142

Diminishing the inadequate variety barrier requires the enhancement of thelivability of central cities generally, especially their predominately minorityneighborhoods, and preserving the distinctiveness and vitality of small townAmerica. A key to enhancing the livability of central cities is their economic revi-talization. While city economies have suffered disinvestment vis-à-vis suburbanlocations throughout the last half of the twentieth century, their distinctive attrib-utes possibly poise them to thrive in the twenty-first century. Cities boast manyunique economic advantages, including opportunities for face-to-face contactamong businesspersons, high density of business activity that can support themost state of the art telecommunication technologies, and superior transportationlinks between producers and retailers that make them ideal sites for the special-ized flexible manufacturing that is replacing traditional mass productionmethods.143

Special challenges confront the predominately minority neighborhoods of cit-ies. Prior massive disinvestment coupled with the legacy of racial and ethnic dis-crimination makes their revitalization especially problematic. Nevertheless, stra-tegic location close to downtowns and largely untapped local markets providesome competitive advantages for business development.144 Also, it has beenshown that commercial and residential revitalization is not entirely impossible ifcommunity developers are given the necessary resources and development tools,such as in the case of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Boston.145

Moreover, when financial institutions across the country were required by theCommunity Reinvestment Act to invest in the minority neighborhoods, they pre-viously redlined, they found such investments to be no riskier than loans in higherincome areas, which suggests the existence of many overlooked economic oppor-tunities that could be tapped in the future.146

Some hope for the “rural ghettos” wrought by the economic misfortunes ofsmall town America can be found in the new technological environment of pro-duction. As I pointed out above, technology now frees capital investment to occuralmost anywhere without losses to economic efficiency, thus employment can bedirected to struggling small towns with little cost to society. Along these linesKotkin explains that because new telecommunications technology allows ruralcompanies to participate in the global economy, even isolated areas could be thelocus of extensive job development, as rural America’s strong cultural values ofhard work and self-reliance, as well as attention to education, are let loose in aninformation economy.147

Slowing the momentum of the suburban sprawl machine also would contributemuch to preserving place community variety, given that its centrifugal forces sapsvitality from core urban areas and gobbles up small towns on the ever-expanding


metropolitan fringe. Slowing sprawl in the American context is a daunting task,though, given the political power of the private developers that benefit from it, thestrong attitudinal disposition in favor of growth, and our cultural reluctance torestrain property rights. Nonetheless, current political enthusiasm for sprawl-limiting “smart growth,” even in politically conservative areas of the country,such as Kentucky, is promising.148 Urban experts surveyed by Fishman listed“smart growth” as “one of the ten most likely influences on the American metrop-olis for the next 50 years.”149 Explaining its likelihood as an influence, Fishmanwrites, “The grassroots desire to stop sprawl and the loss of open space—com-bined with the economic imperative that regions with a high quality of life suc-ceed best in the global economy—have made smart growth a movement that poli-ticians and developers must reckon with.” Once again, the likelihood that suchefforts will be successful is wedded strongly to likelihood for regionalism.150

A diminution of the population instability barrier would come about largelyfrom diminishing the others. Bringing jobs to people and ensuring adequate statesubsidies lessens the frenzied pursuit of such things; curbing the effects of gentri-fication or extreme economic inequality lessens displacement; and strengtheningcommunity variety lessens the need for flight from precarious places (such as cen-tral cities, minorities communities, or rural towns) in order to obtain a good qual-ity of life. These outcomes also are means by which to create the kind of “commu-nity integrity” necessary to ameliorate the internal tensions within the RTP.Hence, the project to diminish barriers and the project to lessen tensions havemuch in common with one another. As a result, if the former can be achieved, itwould contribute much to achieving the latter.

VII. WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

The promise of America is the promise of freedom. Our people passionatelycherish, and our culture gloriously celebrates, individual freedom. It is our mostfundamental political value. Yet a basic freedom remains only partial: the free-dom of many Americans to live in the place communities of their choice. Fulfill-ing the promise of America, more than two centuries after its founding, requireswe expand this freedom by recognizing and granting a basic “right to place” forthe American citizenry.

The analytic heart of this essay identified and elucidated the barriers currentlyencumbering Americans’ capacity to choose their place communities, and thenature of the internal tensions within the RTP. Such barriers and tensions wouldneed to be significantly diminished for one to consider it at least plausible to granta meaningful and effective RTP; that is, one taken seriously. The favorable trendssketched above suggested, however, that this formidable task is not insurmount-able. Nevertheless, such trends should not cause us to fail to appreciate the ardu-ousness of the struggle that would be required to establish such a right, a strugglenot unlike those waged to establish the civil, political, and social rights that Mar-


shall identified as so central to the development of modern democraticcitizenship.

We are left, then, with the need for more research. Additional empirical workon policy development and, especially, political strategy is needed to determinehow the existing barriers and tensions could be diminished in practice. Such workcould help build a future in which the experience and exercise of enhanced indi-vidual freedom flowing from a meaningful “right to place” is a real and essentialpart of what it means to be an American in the twenty-first century.

NOTES

1. T. H. Marshall, “Citizenship and Social Class,” in Class, Citizenship, and SocialDevelopment: Essays by T. H. Marshall (1949; repr., Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964),65-122, see esp. 71-83; also see Desmond S. King and Jeremy Waldron, “Citizenship andthe Defense of Welfare Provision,” British Journal of Political Science 18, no. 3 (1988):415-43; Martin Bulmer and Another M. Rees, eds., Citizenship Today: The ContemporaryRelevance of T. H. Marshall (London: UCL Press Limited, 1996); Jytte Klausen, “SocialRights Advocacy and State Building: T. H. Marshall in the Hands of Social Reformers,”World Politics 47 (January 1995): 244-67; Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, “Return ofthe Citizen,” Ethics 104 (January 1994): 352-81, esp. 354-55.

2. Don Herzog, Happy Slaves: A Critique of Consent Theory (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1989), 225 (emphasis added).

3. Others have suggested additions in the American context, notably the right toemployment. See, for example, Judith N. Shklar, American Citizenship (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1991).

4. By granting people the right to live (or reside) in the place communities of theirchoice, an RTP would incorporate a basic right to housing (a social right) suggested by oth-ers and found in many constitutions around the world. See Chester Hartman, “The Case fora Right to Housing,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 2 (1998): 223-46. The emphasis here,however, is not merely on the social good of housing but instead on the community of resi-dence, hence the more extensive and innovative idea of “place rights.” An RTP would belimited, however, in that it would not guarantee access to any particular residential struc-ture within a place community, although like a right to housing, it implies a basic level ofphysical quality of the housing unit. See ibid., 237-38.

5. On the duality of this freedom, cf. Gordon L. Clark, Interregional Migration,National Policy, and Social Justice (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983); and ChesterHartman, “The Right to Stay Put,” in Land Reform, American Style, ed. Charles C. Geislerand Frank J. Popper (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984), 302-18.

6. Alexanda Kogl, “Why Place, Why Now,” The Good Society: A PEGS Journal 10, no.2 (2001): 1.

7. Ibid., 1; William Leach, Country of Exiles: The Destruction of Place in AmericanLife (New York: Vintage, 1999); Edward Luttwak, Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losersin the Global Economy (New York: HarperCollins, 1999); and Saskia Sasson, The Mobilityof Labor and Capital (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Pres, 1988).

8. Kogl, “Why Place, Why Now,” 1.9. Joseph Carens, “Migration and Morality,” in Free Movement: Ethical Issues in the

Transnational Migration of People and Money, ed. Brian Berry and Robert E. Goodin (Uni-versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press 1992), 27 (emphasis added).


10. Peter J. Dreier, John Mollenkopf, and Todd Swanstrom, Place Matters:Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001),1; also see George C. Galster and Sean P. Killen, “The Geography of Metropolitan Oppor-tunity,” Housing Policy Debate 6, no. 1: 7-43.

11. Douglas Rae, “Democratic Liberties and the Tyrannies of Place,” in Democracy’sEdges, ed. Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1999), 173 (emphasis added).

12. Clark, Interregional Migration, National Policy, and Social Justice, 139 (emphasisadded).

13. James L. Sundquist, Dispersing Population (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1975),258, emphasis added.

14. Rae, “Democratic Liberties and the Tyrannies of Place,” 174.15. Ibid. (emphasis added).16. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941).17. Shapiro v. Thompson, (1969) and Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa, 415 U.S. 250

(1974) 394 U.S. 618.18. Paul Dimond, “Empowering Families to Vote with Their Feet,” in Reflections on

Regionalism, ed. Bruce Katz (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2000), 249.19. Jon Elster, “Is There (or Should There Be) a Right to Work?” in Democracy and the

Welfare State, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 56,note 6 (emphasis added). Also see Sundquist, Dispersing Population.

20. Douglas Yuill, European Regional Incentives, 19th ed. (London: Bowker Saur,1999), 19, as quoted in Thad Williamson, David Imbroscio, and Gar Alperovitz, Making aPlace for Community (New York: Routledge, 2002), 7.

21. Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters; Galster and Killen, “TheGeography of Metropolitan Opportunity”; Paul A. Jargowsky, Poverty and Place: Ghettos,Barrios, and the American City (New York: Russell Sage, 1997).

22. See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of AmericanCommunity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

23. Here, one is reminded of Tip O’Neill well-known aphorism “all politics are local.”24. Clark, Interregional Migration, National Policy, and Social Justice.25. See Gerald L. Houseman, The Right of Mobility (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat

Press, 1979), 25-28.26. Chester Hartman, “The Right to Stay Put.”27. David L. Imbroscio, “Fighting Poverty with Mobility: A Normative Policy Analy-

sis,” Review of Policy Research 21, no. 3 (2004): 447-61.28. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York:

HarperCollins, 1992).29. Williamson, Imbroscio, and Alperovitz, Making a Place for Community, chap. 1.30. See, for example, Douglas J. Amy, Real Choices/New Voices (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1993).31. Klausen, “Social Rights Advocacy and State Building,” 249.32. Shklar, American Citizenship, 99 (emphasis added). The legal scholar Robin West,

arguing for the granting of “doulia rights” (which ensure that caretakers can provide high-quality care for dependents without the risk of impoverishment), takes a similar position:“This is not the sort of right that can be located in our founding documents or that will be orcould be addressed by courts. Doulia rights, if they exist, must be given content by legisla-tures through the normal mechanisms of democracy, not by courts through the extraordi-nary means of judicial review. What is added, then, is an argumentative dimension, not aninstitutional change of direction. But that argumentative dimension might be substantial.”


West further notes that, without a rights claim, even wise proposals to aid caretakers willlikely “be met by and then drowned in a tide of competing needs for scarce publicresources.” West, “A Right to Care,” Boston Review 29, no. 2 (April-May, 2004), http://bostonreview.net/BR29.2/west.html.

33. Shklar’s distinction between understanding a right as a political doctrine as opposedto a jurisprudential one also raises the distinction between a formal (or negative) right and asubstantive (or positive) right. If it is to be meaningful and robust, rather than merely thin,the RTP must include not only formal dimensions (such as antidiscrimination safeguards)but substantive ones as well (such as the provision of affordable housing). In this way theRTP is akin to Shklar’s proposed “right to work.” Yet, the RTP also parallels the structure ofmany established formal rights that also have substantive dimensions; for example, theprovision of public financing of campaigns to promote political expression (politicalrights), competent legal counsel to the indigent to promote equality before the law (civilrights), or fiscal equalization monies to fulfill the pledge in many state-level constitutionsfor a quality education (social rights). Rights with substantive dimensions, such as the pro-posed RTP, are inherently problematic because it is often difficult to determine whetherthey have been adequately upheld or protected. Adopting Shklar’s notion of a right as apolitical doctrine mitigates this difficulty, however, because the RTP’s purpose is to serveas a guide to determining public policy priorities rather as a guarantee that absolutestandards be met.

34. A good example of the former is the 1977 shutdown of the Campbell Works ofYoungstown Sheet and Tube. See Gar Alperovitz and Jeff Faux, Rebuilding America (NewYork: Pantheon, 1984); and David L. Imbroscio, “The Local Public Balance Sheet: AnAlternative Evaluation Methodology for Local Economic Development,” in Critical Eval-uations of Economic Development Policies, ed. Laura Reese and David Fasenfest (Detroit,MI: Wayne State University Press, 2004), 77-100. An example of the latter is the proposedclosing of Weirton Steel, in the small town of Weirton, West Virginia, in 1982. See Wil-liamson, Imbroscio, and Alperovitz, Making a Place for Community, 205.

35. On the myriad extant unsuccessful attempts to prevent a plant closing by means ofthis method, see Robert Weinberg, “The Use of Eminent Domain to Prevent an IndustrialPlant Shutdown: The Next Step in an Expanding Power,” Albany Law Review 49 (1984):95-130; Staughton Lynd, “Towards a Not-for-Profit Economy: Public DevelopmentAuthorities for Acquisition and Use of Industrial Property,” Harvard Civil Rights–CivilLiberties Law Review 22 (Spring 1987): 13-41; John Portz, “Plant Closings: New Roles forPolicymakers,” Economic Development Quarterly 67, no. 2 (1989): 70-80; and Peter K.Eisinger, The Rise of the Entrepreneurial State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,1988).

36. Richard Briffault, “Localism and Regionalism,” Buffalo Law Review 48 (Winter2000): 1-6.

37. Charles E. Lindblom and Edward J. Woodhouse, The Policy-Making Process, 3rded. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), 7. Also see Charles E. Lindblom, Politicsand Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977), chap. 13; Charles E. Lindblom, The MarketSystem (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001); and Stephen L. Elkin, City andRegime in the American Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), chap. 7.

38. Sundquist, Dispersing Population, 256; also see Clark, Interregional Migration,National Policy, and Social Justice.

39. Larry Sawers and William K. Tabb, Sunbelt/Snowbelt: Urban Development andRegional Restructuring (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1984).

40. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America (NewYork: Basic Books, 1982), 99.


41. John Kasarda, “Central-City and Suburban Migration Patterns,” Housing PolicyDebate 8, no. 2 (1997): 312-13; and John Kasarda, “Urban Employment Change andMinority Skills Mismatch,” in Creating Jobs, Creating Workers (Chicago: Center forUrban Research and Policy Studies, 1992); reprinted in Enduring Tensions in Urban Poli-tics, ed. Dennis Judd and Paul Kantor (New York: Macmillian, 1992), 616-32.

42. William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1987); William J. Wilson, When Work Disappears (New York: Knopf, 1996).

43. Clark, Interregional Migration, National Policy, and Social Justice, 139.44. Sundquist, Dispersing Population, 257.45. Shklar, American Citizenship, 101 (emphasis added).46. Clark, Interregional Migration, National Policy, and Social Justice, 139.47. Ibid., 159.48. Ibid.49. Scott W. Allard, “Revisiting Shapiro: Welfare Magnets and State Residency

Requirement in the 1990s,” in Welfare Reform: A Race to the Bottom? ed. Sanford F.Schram and Samuel H. Beer (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999), 72.

50. Clark, Interregional Migration, National Policy, and Social Justice, 2.51. Patricia Anderson, “Continuity Eligibility,” in Unemployment Insurance in the

United States, ed. Christoper J. O’Leary and Stephen A. Wandner (Kalamazoo, MI: W. E.Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 1997), 130.

52. Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-first Century, 116.

53. M. A. Turner, “Moving out of Poverty: Expanding Mobility and Choice throughTenant-Based Housing Assistance,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 2 (1998): 389; and PeterDreier and David Moberg, “Moving from the ’Hood,” American Prospect (Winter 1996): 78.

54. Clark, Interregional Migration, National Policy, and Social Justice, 139-43; andHartman, “The Right to Stay Put,” 310.

55. Imbroscio, “Fighting Poverty with Mobility.”56. Dreier and Moberg, “Moving from the ’Hood.”57. See Edward G. Goetz, Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban Amer-

ica (Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2003). Also see Edward G. Goetz, “The NewSlum Clearance: Redevelopment of Public Housing and the Deconcentration of Poverty”(paper presented at the annual meeting of the Urban Affairs Association, Los Angeles, CA,May 3-7, 2000).

58. Goetz, “The New Slum Clearance,” 23.59. Paul E. Peterson and Mark C. Rom, Welfare Magnets: A New Case for a National

Standard (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1990).60. Schram and Soss, “Making Something out of Nothing,” 104.61. Ibid.62. Racial discrimination in employment and education, by reducing the income and

wealth of minorities, also threatens the RTP, as racial discrimination translates into eco-nomic discrimination (see below).

63. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and theMaking of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); JohnYinger, Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimina-tion (New York: Russell Sage, 1995); and Mary Pattillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: ThePrivilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1999).

64. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 97.65. Ibid., 98.


66. Massey et al., “Migration, Segregation, and the Geographic Concentration of Pov-erty,” 443.

67. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 103 (emphasis added).68. Bill Dedman, “For Black Home Buyers, a Boomerang,” New York Times, February

13, 1999, A10; and Daniel Immergluck, “Progress Confined: Increases in Black HomeBuying and the Persistence of Residential Segregation,” Journal of Urban Affairs 20, no. 4(1998): 443-57.

69. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 108-109.70. Steven R. Holloway and Elvin K. Wyly, “The Color of Money Expanded: Geo-

graphically Contingent Mortgage Lending in Atlanta,” Journal of Housing Research 12,no. 1 (2001): 55-90.

71. Rae, “Democratic Liberties and the Tyrannies of Place,” 173 (emphasis added).72. Lindblom, Politics and Markets; Lindblom, The Market System.73. Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters, 53; Anthony Downs, “Reduc-

ing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing Erected by Local Governments,” in Hous-ing Markets and Residential Mobility, ed. G. T. Kingsley and M. A. Turner (Washington,DC: Urban Institute Press, 1993), 257.

74. Downs, “Reducing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing Erected by LocalGovernments,” 263.

75. Elvin K. Wyly and Daniel J. Hammel, “Islands of Decay in Seas of Renewal,” Hous-ing Policy Debate 10, no. 4 (1999): 711-71.

76. Brian J. L. Berry, “Islands of Renewal in Seas of Decay,” in The New Urban Reality,ed. Paul Peterson (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985), 69-96.

77. Dennis R. Judd and Todd Swanstrom, City Politics: Private Power and Public Pol-icy (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 337; and John R. Logan and Harvey Molotch, UrbanFortunes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 115.

78. Thomas Michael Power, Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for aValue of Place (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996), 21, esp. chap. 3.

79. Fred Hirsch, The Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1977), 102.

80. Edward N. Wolfe, Top Heavy (New York: New Press, 2002), 8-9.81. Ibid., 15-16.82. Michael Walzer, “Pluralism and Social Democracy,” Dissent 45 (Winter 1998), 48.83. Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters; Kasarda, “Central-City and

Suburban Migration Patterns”; William W. Goldsmith and Edward J. Blakely, SeparateSocieties: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,1992).

84. See Dreier, Mollenkof, and Swanstrom, Place Matters, 102-11; Wilson, When WorkDisappears, 46-48; for the seminal work in this vein, see Kenneth T. Jackson, CrabgrassFrontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,1985).

85. Alice O’Connor, “Swimming against the Tide: A Brief History of Federal Policy inPoor Communities,” in Urban Problems and Community Development, ed. Ronald Fergu-son and William Dickens (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999), 79.

86. Jargowsky, Poverty and Place, 9-12, 14-16.87. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged, 58.88. Ibid., 21.89. Dreier, Mollenkof, and Swanstrom, Place Matters, 47.90. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged; and Wilson, When Work Disappears.91. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 106.


92. Elvin K. Wyly and Steven R. Holloway, “ ‘The Color of Money’Revisited,” Hous-ing Policy Debate 10, no. 3: 555-600.

93. Yinger, Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost, 215. Also see Donald L. DeMarco andGeorge C. Galster, “Prointegrative Policy,” Journal of Urban Affairs 15, no. 2 (1993): 141-60. Much of the same can be said of urban place communities with mixed income, whichare also elusive and unstable.

94. Richard A. Smith, “Creating Stable Racially Integrated Communities,” Journal ofUrban Affairs 15, no. 1 (1993): 131.

95. Ibid.96. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 92-96; and Smith, “Creating Stable

Racially Integrated Communities,” 131.97. Yinger, Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost, 214.98. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 107.99. Smith, “Creating Stable Racially Integrated Communities,” 131-33.

100. Karl N. Stauber, “Why Invest in Rural American and How? A Critical Public Pol-icy Question for the 21st Century,” Economic Review 86 (Second quarter 2001): 36. Alsosee Richard O. Davies, Main Street Blues: The Decline of Small-Town America (Colum-bus: Ohio State University Press, 1998).

101. Peter T. Kilborn, “Global Economy Taking Toll on Small Towns,” New York Times,February 16, 2002, A1.

102. Stacy Mitchell, The Hometown Advantage (Washington, DC: Institute for LocalSelf-Reliance, 2000); Kai Mander and Alex Boston, “Wal-Mart: Global Retailer,” in TheCase Against the Global Economy, ed. Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (San Fran-cisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), 337-41; and Christopher Gunn and Hazel Dayton Gunn,Reclaiming Capital: Democratic Initiatives and Community Development (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1991), 126-27.

103. Davies, Main Street Blues, 187; also see Wendell Berry, “Failing Our Farmers,”New York Times, July 6, 1999, A17.

104. Megan Twohey, “Far off and Forgotten,” National Journal 32, no. 41 (2000): 3160-66; and Davies, Main Street Blues.

105. Walzer, “Pluralism and Social Democracy,” 48 (emphasis added).106. Ralf Dahrendorf, After 1989 (London: Macmillan, 1997), 41; also see Leach,

Country of Exiles, 180.107. Richard Dagger, Civic Virtues (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997), 163;

and Hartman, “The Right to Stay Put,” 302.108. Dagger, Civic Virtues, 161. This figure has fluctuated over time. Current estimates

find the percentage of Americans changing residences near 15 percent; as recently as themid-1990s, it approached 20 percent. Moving rates also declined in the 1970s, only to riseafter 1980. See Leach, Country of Exiles, 22.

109. Dagger, Civic Virtues, 162; also see Elkin, City and Regime, 183-84; and SidneyVerba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Volunta-rism in American Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 452-55.

110. Leach, Country of Exiles, 22, 29.111. Quoted in ibid., 29, 21.112. Kasarda, “Central-City and Suburban Migration Patterns”; Dreier, Mollenkopf,

and Swanstrom, Place Matters.113. Peter Beinart, “Battle for the ’Burbs,” New Republic, October 19, 1998, 29.114. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random

House, 1961); Robert J. Sampson, “Local Friendship Ties and Community Attachment inMass Society,” American Sociological Review 53 (October 1988): 766-79. New York


Times, The Downsizing of America (New York: Times Books, 1996); and Wilson, WhenWork Disappears.

115. Jason Schachter, “Why People Move,” in Current Population Reports (Washing-ton, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2001), P23-204 1-10.

116. Paul Peterson, City Limits (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981); PaulKantor, The Dependent City Revisited (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995); WilliamsonImbroscio, and Alperovitz, Making a Place for Community; Bluestone and Harrison,Deindustrialization of America; Jeffrey R. Lustig,“The Politics of Shutdown: Community,Property, Corporatism,” Journal of Economic Issues 19 (1985): 123-51.

117. R. Moe and C. Wilkie, Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age ofSprawl (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), xi.

118. O’Connor, “Swimming against the Tide.”119. Clark, Interregional Migration, National Policy, and Social Justice, 139.120. Imbroscio, “Fighting Poverty with Mobility.” Also see Goetz, Clearing the Way.121. Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters.122. See, for example, Williamson Imbroscio, and Alperovitz, Making a Place for

Community, for a book-length discussion of this issue.123. Power, Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies, 36.124. Williamson Imbroscio, and Alperovitz., Making a Place for Community.125. The desirability of doing so follows the sagacity of Walter Lippmann: “It should,

therefore, be the aim of public policy to mitigate this human evil [the need for rapid popula-tion movement] by using controls to induce inanimate capital, rather than living men toachieve high mobility” (quoted in Dahrendorf, After 1989, 41).

126. Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters, 211; and Turner, “Moving outof Poverty,” 387-89.

127. Scott A. Bollens, “Concentrated Poverty and Metropolitan Equity Strategies,”Stanford Law and Policy Review 8 (Summer 1997): 13.

128. Myron Orfield, Metropolitics (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1998); andDreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters.

129. See Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land (New York: Vintage, 1991).130. Schram and Soss, “Making Something out of Nothing.”131. Jerry J. Salama, “The Redevelopment of Distressed Public Housing,” Housing

Policy Debate 10, no. 1: 95-142; Peter Marcuse, “Comment on Elvin K. Wyly and Daniel J.Hammel’s ‘Islands of Decay in Seas of Renewal,’ ” Housing Policy Debate, 10, no. 4(1999): 789-97.

132. Massey and Denton, American Apartheid, 229-33.133. For example, Yinger, Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost, 215-16.134. Ingrid G. Ellen, “Stable Racial Integration in the Contemporary United States,”

Journal of Urban Affairs, 20, no. 1 1998: 40.135. Yinger, Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost, 316.136. Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters, 194-96.137. Ibid.; Bollens, “Concentrated Poverty and Metropolitan Equity Strategies”; and

Orfield, Metropolitics.138. James H. Carr, “Community, Capital, and Markets: A New Paradigm for Commu-

nity Reinvestment,” NeighborhoodWorks Journal 17, no. 3 (1999): 20-23; and AngelaBlackwell and Heather McCulloch, “Resident Ownership Mechanism’s: Low-IncomeNeighborhoods Take Control,” Building Blocks, 3, no. 1 (2002): 1-4.

139. James H. Carr, “A New Paradigm for Community Investment,” Housing Facts andFigures 2, no. 1 (2000): 1.


140. Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, The Stakeholder Society (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1999).

141. Williamson et al., Making a Place for Community; Jeff Gates, The OwnershipSolution (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1998); National Center for Employee Owner-ship, “A Statistical Overview of Employee Ownership,” the National Center for EmployeeOwnership, www.nceo.org/library/ec_stat.html. 2001.

142. Williamson, Imbroscio, and Alperovitz, Making a Place for Community. Gates,The Ownership Solution; John Logue, “Rustbelt Buyouts,” Dollars and Sense, issue 219,(September-October, 1998):37.

143. Elliott Sclar, “Urban Revitalization: The Short Road to Long-Term Growth,” inReclaiming Prosperity, ed. Todd Schafer and Jeff Faux (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996),303-19.

144. See Michael E. Porter, “The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City,” HarvardBusiness Review 73 (May-June 1995): 55-71.

145. Peter Medoff and Holly Sklar, Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an UrbanNeighborhood (Boston: South End Press, 1994).

146. David L. Imbroscio, Reconstructing City Politics (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,1997), 110-11.

147. Joel Kotkin, “If We Let Rural America Die, We Shall Lose a Piece of Ourselves,”Washington Post, July 21, 2002, B1.

148. Paul E. Patton, A Report of the Governor’s Smart Growth Task Force (Common-wealth of Kentucky, 2001); Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters, 256-57.

149. Robert Fishman, “The American Metropolis at Century’s End: Past and FutureInfluences,” Housing Facts and Figures 1, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 11.

150. Ibid., 13; Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, Place Matters, 232-33.

David L. Imbroscio is associate professor of political science and urban affairs atthe University of Louisville. He is author of Reconstructing City Politics (Sage,1997) and, with Thad Williamson and Gar Alperovitz, Making a Place for Commu-nity (Routledge, 2002). His scholarly work has appeared in Polity, Policy StudiesJournal, Review of Policy Research, Journal of Urban Affairs, The Good Society,and Urban Affairs Review. He currently serves on the editorial board of the Journalof Urban Affairs.


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