How A Conservative Can Be Happy In A Liberal Urbanist Environment

Pop some popcorn. Sit back and watch the squabbling between all the various special interest groups, competing for a limited amount of government money.

The first thing you do is basically keep your mouth shut. Let them do all the sparring. It’s like watching kids trying to play king of the hill, with a ditch. Liberals forget that conservative urbanists benefit from the same public amenities that they do. We like buses and other forms of transit. We just don’t see the need to virtue signal, so that we can increase our perceived self-worth, or at least its sanctimonious appearance.

I live in the suburbs. I moved here from the city in 1982. I would move back into the city if I could afford to. I can’t. I’m retired on a fixed income. I’m one of those selfish Boomers who won’t sell my 4 BR/2.5 BA house, with a $700/month refinanced mortgage for a $3,000/month 1 BR/1 BA apartment rent. I don’t envy the young people trying to buy a house today. But when my wife and I bought our house, we were house poor for about 10 years. Then we were house semi-poor for about another 5. We just did without. Vacations were staycations. We drove clunkers that we were able to acquire on the cheap, and we drove them until they fell apart. We also were not part of the everyone gets a trophy generation.

I’ve always loved riding subways, trolleys, and buses. Some of the most enjoyable activities I did with my dad were on the days when we would go into Boston and just spend the day riding the subway. I think Boston still had one streetcar line and not the Green Line either, and I do remember the trolleybuses. I developed a love of public transportation at an early age. As a conservative, I can see how good public transportation helps city economies exist. It’s worth the investment in public funds. We actually need to spend a lot more on our public transportation systems than we do now. Do you want to reduce car usage and dependency? Beef up the bus systems as a start. Then do your advertising homework, where you “sell the sizzle, not the steak,” about how cheap and convenient it is to take the bus. Then, keep your customer coming back.

Once you change the culture where you have more people wanting good public transportation, you can start thinking about replacing some of the suburb-to-city, and suburb-to-suburb bus lines with light rail interurbans. History repeats itself, but this time not as a farce.

As I am getting older, the idea of driving becomes less important. I would like to see more frequent bus service along the Route 1 corridor. I think it’s going to happen eventually. Metro did add a later evening bus to the 83 and 86 schedules. Thank you, Metro. There is also a county bus that runs every half-hour, until 6 pm. It would be nice to have those routes become part of the main transit system that provides 24-hour service.

The Route 1 corridor is starting to build up. There is a lot of infill construction in former light industrial areas that have been rezoned for mixed use. Behind them, there are neighborhoods of small, affordable SFHs. Many of the old-time residents have moved out, and the younger families moving in, are a lot more transit-oriented. I know one family with 7 kids, who use 2 of those multi-passenger Ebikes, that remind me of rickshaws. Get us used to rickshaws. China. Ok, I get the picture…

There is also a lot of construction from the university up to Greenbelt Road/University Boulevard. It’s urbanizing toward the Beltway. We are going to need a lot more frequent and later bus service feeding the Metro as well as going into DC. If not, traffic is going to become unbearable. You can’t have one without the other. We are definitely becoming a lot denser than we were ten years ago. A lot of the old-time residents around here are furious at all the construction. They also don’t like the fact that the city is starting to be taken over by young, urban professionals, who want fewer pickup trucks, the working classes that use them, and a lot more Ebikes.

I happen to like density. Manhattan to me is what the countryside is to others. One time at a Greater Greater Washington event, someone asked me how I could be a conservative and also an urbanist. My answer: I like cities. It’s that simple.

I have no problem with walkability. I like being able to walk to the corner store, or the corner bar if so inclined. I have no problem with bicycles. I ride one myself and am considering buying an Ebike. I don’t give a rat’s ass about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think the whole thing is nothing but virtue-signaling bullshit. Ebikes look like they could be quite useful for a lot of trips. I do small grocery runs every couple of days. I could easily do those trips on an Ebike with saddlebags. Why don’t I just put saddlebags on my regular bike? Because coming home from the grocery store, the last 1/2 mile is uphill. My 68-year-old legs don’t like hills.

I live in a university town. I’m used to seeing scooters and sit-down scooters all the time. I’m actually thinking about finally using my account and trying one out. Also, I see that College Park finally signed an agreement with Capital Bike Share. It would be great to have a docking station at the College Park Metro station, and in the North College Park area, around Duval Field. The bus stop at Rhode Island Avenue and Cherokee Street would be perfect. There is actually a bike lane there on either side of RI Av, and a beg button flashing light crosswalk. Either the park side or the residential side would work fine. I can’t wait until I can update this post with the information that there is a CapBi docking station at RI and Cherokee.

Getting back to the original topic as stated in the title, what should conservatives do, who are living in an urbanist environment that is 90% liberal, with many of the younger liberals being outright Marxists? Short answer: Stay out of their way. Their utopian worldview with them being the ruling class and the rest of us being their serfs is unsustainable.

First of all, they are from the “everyone gets a trophy” generation. They can’t handle any sort of rejection. Their parents all read the same books about how to raise enlightened children, written by “experts,” who never had children; however, they did have Ph. Ds. Discipline when they were growing up consisted of taking away their electronics for 10 minutes, and/or a time-out. We got time-outs too, but they were preceded by the wooden spoon or the belt on more than a few occasions. Many of us also served in the military. I retired from the Air Force after 26 years of active duty service. Most of them wouldn’t survive 5 minutes during the first night of basic training.

At the same time, we conservatives should support things like affordable housing and abundant public transportation, along with a well-developed route for those of us who ride non-gas-powered vehicles like scooters, bicycles, and Ebikes. We benefit from them too. That also means you don’t ban cars or tax them to death either. People are going to own and drive cars. It doesn’t make any difference if you are in the country, the city, the suburb, Germany, England, France Japan, Greece, Italy, China, or the United States. We can work together to make our cities great places to live, work, and play again.

We had great cities. We can have great cities again. It’s going to take effort from both the left and the right. Polarization and stagnation can only polarize and stagnate so far before the bottom falls out, and the entire system collapses. The scary part is it has been going on for years. Ernest Hemingway’s quote on poverty can be applied to more than just poverty. I can be applied across the board on a lot of things. He said about poverty that “it happens gradually, and then suddenly.” The collapse of our cities? Public trust? Economy? Rule of law? When it comes to fixing our cities, I’m going to let the left in on a little secret. Some of them might already know it, and I’m sure most of them can figure it out once they get past all the wear-on-your-sleeve superiorness: If the left would stop all the Social Justice Warrior bullshit that doesn’t work except for those of them that work in the Social Justice Warrior Bullshit Industrial Complex, they just might get a lot of the right to go along with the program.