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We don’t have to choose between beauty and affordability. We don’t have to trade our unaffordable single-family neighborhoods for dreary socialist rectangles.
American housing is missing its middle. The vast majority of our new developments are either unaffordable sprawl, or unaffordable high rise pill boxes.
Most of the “missing middle” housing in American cities is actually very old. Done in vernacular American style: brick and mortar, bourgeois ornament, staircase-scale, not elevator-scale. It works, it’s cheap, and it’s comfortable, yet nobody builds like this anymore.
How much of the opposition to *more* building is driven by the way *modern* buildings look? People hear housing and think disgusting tower blocks, crime, and ugliness. And the alternative? Practically a golf course.
They don’t think of the middle. Our towns, the red brick, the awnings and terraces over broad sidewalks, the main streets, the squares, the courthouses, the lodges, and the churches.
When people talk about how ugly cities are, and about preserving the character of their communities, they aren’t talking about this. So we should.
This is what an actual libertarian housing policy looks like. This is the outcome of a market process. A spontaneous organization of building styles around the demands of utility and aesthetic value. This is what Americans build when left to their own devices
This violence is possible only through the state
