If you’re very online, or if you’re involved in local government, you probably know some “urbanists” or some YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yard). You might have friends or acquaintances who talk endlessly about walkability. You might follow an X account with a name like “Driving Is A Sin.”

The folks who care the most about walkability and “urbanism” tend to be young adults who are unmarried without children. A friend of mine noted once that a huge amount of public policy writing seems expended by 30-year-olds who want to be able to walk to a nice cocktail bar.

What if the folks who cared about walkability, about the built environment of our neighborhoods, and about the housing makeup in a neighborhood were young parents, or folks who thought less about cocktail bars and more about playgrounds?

I thought of these questions today while reading about this effort to build a new city in California.

For starters, I’m skeptical of utopian projects. The planner mindset is a big part of the contemporary problem. We think we can and should plan our whole lives, and this leads to so much unhappiness.

But let’s return to the thinking over this new city.

Here’s an exchange from an interview about a new community planned by California Forever:

“Realistically, for those first 5,000 residents, what is the appeal? A $600,000 home in Noe Valley would be great! Anyone would go for that. But the first 5,000 residents aren’t going to experience Noe Valley. Is the hope that they just have to build with the expectation that it’ll grow?

J: I think, on most things, it’s going to be worse than Noe Valley in the beginning. But it’s going to be better on a couple of them. 

Kids being able to walk to school right from the beginning is a really good example. In the first phase, we can’t start with 100 homes. It’s just not going to work at that scale. We need the minimum critical scale. We think of it this way: We need one shopping street to work. So for example an Italian restaurant, a Thai restaurant, an American restaurant, two coffee shops — one pretentious and one not. And then we need a grocery store and a bar. And of course a couple of schools.

What matters more to you: multiple coffee shops or the ability of your children to walk to school? A Thai restaurant, or the freedom of your children to run around?

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

If you have children, this isn’t a tough question. I recommend reading this article, which is a bit tortured about what should be our priorities in new cities.

For me, the obvious answer is that we should encourage more and bigger families. At the very least, all urban planners should ask how our plans promote families.