Introductory Essay for a Symposium on Urban Interventionism

Although events of the past decade have significantly undermined the intellectual case for hard-core macroeconomic planning, the idea of central planning continues to enjoy legitimacy at the local and regional levels. Much of the intellectual energy of those critical of the unhampered market process seems to have channeled toward more piece-meal environmental and social-policy interventions at the level of the city and suburb, particularly in the form of “Smart Growth” initiatives and an urban-design movement often referred to as “The New Urbanism.” The relevance of the Mises-Hayek critique of central planning seems then to have been lost on academic and practicing planners. Lessons from eight decades of research into the fundamental problems underlying both thorough-going collectivism as well as the more limited forms of central planning of interventionism have been largely ignored by this group.