To Stop Gen Z From DoorDashing, Make The Cities Safer
Every time a woman pays to have food delivered to her door, she is paying to avoid the consequences of government policies.Every time a woman pays to have food delivered to her door, she is paying to avoid the consequences of government policies.GOP-Run Indiana City Considers Democrat-Run, California-Style Homeless Center
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Dallasites need to focus on good schools, low crime, cheaper housing, and low taxes before culture and lifestyle.Does your city feel like Disney? Blame Robert Moses
A single man had near-unending influence over the infrastructure of the largest North American cities.
Robert Moses, born in 1888 in New Haven, Connecticut, helped pioneer large-scale urban infrastructure built around cars and commerce. His top-down planning approach later influenced other controlled, master-planned environments, including those created by Walt Disney.
'An extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework.'
Moses held many titles during his time in politics and city/park planning, including secretary of state of New York (1927-1929), the first chairman of New York State Council of Parks (1924-1963), and the first commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (1934-1960).
Mr. Moses' neighborhood
Moses' influence can be seen all over New York City, and he is predominantly responsible for turning a collection of neighborhoods into the common metropolis that most cities appear as today.
It was Moses' idea to run expressways right through the middle of cities to maximize access to commercial zones. He was responsible for infrastructure projects like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Staten Island Expressway, and the Cross Bronx Expressway. Many bridges that lead into New York City and Manhattan were his doing as well.
FDR Drive, where the United Nations headquarters is located, is also a creation of Moses.
All's fair
Aside from numerous bridges and expressways, Moses also built nearly 30,000 apartment units by 1939, which is discussed in his biography, "The Power Broker," by Robert Caro.
The book describes Moses as "an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives."
It was that influence and power in New York that led him to becoming the president of the World's Fair in 1964. Which, according to a documentary by Defunctland, led to Moses implementing mass evictions in low-income neighborhoods to make way for road systems.
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Moses planned to make at least half of the fairgrounds permanent and openly said that much of the infrastructure was meant to stay as part of his vision of a futuristic park. This plan mirrored Moses' suggestions for many of the city projects he worked on.
Shopping block
At the same time, the fair was more heavily commercialized than any before it. Moses abandoned the visual and thematic consistency of earlier fairs to maximize profit, allowing companies to design their own exhibits in exchange for high rental and repair fees — services that were allegedly monopolized by a small number of favored contractors.
Moses' success in commercialization was noted by Disney, who wished to replicate his overall design thesis when plotting out Disney World in Florida. The two had worked together on the 1939 World's Fair, for which Disney created a special promo cartoon and even licensed a Donald Duck Day.
The first animatronics were created for the 1964 iteration of the fair as well.
Moses' influence goes far beyond Disney, though. He either directly consulted on, or influenced, the planning of at least a dozen North American cities. He is responsible for the infrastructural theory that cities should be focused on commercial centers, not residential housing.
Room for vroom
The idea that cars should move swiftly through cities on expressways took hold in places like Portland, where Moses was hired to help design the freeway network.
In Pittsburgh, Moses put his skills in planning both parkways and parks into practice when he was hired by the Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association to solve congestion issues. He ended up building the Penn-Lincoln Parkway, the Crosstown Boulevard, and the Point State Park.
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Moses acted as a consultant for a "high-speed freeway" in New Orleans in the 1940s and "stressed the benefits of removing vehicle traffic from the crowded streets," according to an article by urban planning expert Jeff Brown.
While most of his suggestions were not taken in New Orleans, they were in Hartford, Connecticut, where he planned another freeway. The city declined his suggestion to build a parking garage in tandem with the expressway, though.
Interestingly, Moses' road was reportedly placed through a slum in order to capitalize on "urban renewal funds" to help pay for the project.
Goin' south
Other cities like Boston, San Francisco, Baltimore, Memphis, Phoenix, and Toronto, Canada, have seen indirect influence from Moses. In the 1940s and 1950s, Moses eventually faced resistance, and many of his highway projects were scaled back or canceled, according to the New World Encyclopedia.
As the desire for Moses' planning skills eventually soured, he and others looked to opportunities in Latin America.
The article "Transforming the modern Latin American city: Robert Moses and the International Basic Economic Corporation" discusses how in 1950, the mayor of Sao Paulo, Brazil, hired a commercial corporation headed by Nelson Rockefeller to design the public works for the city.
Moses was appointed director of studies to work in the "Program of Public Improvements" for Sao Paulo and allegedly caused great controversy in Brazil due to his intentions to import American companies to operate in the country.
Moses' influence is still visible in major cities where congestion is chronic and housing is scarce. Disney World succeeded for a simpler reason: It was designed entirely around consumerism, without the complications of cars, housing, or civic life.
In that sense, Disney World represents a kind of Robert Moses ideal — an urban space devoted purely to consumption, perfectly controlled, and freed from the democratic friction and human needs that constrained Moses in the real world.
Homeowners' associations weren’t supposed to replace civilization
Homeowners’ associations exploded across America beginning in the 1960s. No one describes HOAs as “popular,” and the horror stories of petty rules and bureaucratic neighbors are legion. Yet more Americans fight for the privilege of buying into them every year. The reason is simple: The HOA is the last legal mechanism Americans have to artificially recreate something the country once produced organically — a high-trust society.
People want neighborhoods where streets feel safe, houses stay maintained, and neighbors behave predictably. We call these places “high trust” because people do not expect those around them to violate basic standards. Doors remain unlocked, kids play outside, and property values rise. Americans once assumed this was the natural condition of ordinary life. It never was.
Everyone complains about HOAs, but they remain the only defense against the chaos modern culture produces.
High-trust societies are not accidental. They emerge only under specific cultural conditions. Trust forms when people can understand and predict the behavior of those around them. That requires a shared standard — how to act, how to maintain property, how to handle conflict. When those standards come from a common way of life, enforcement becomes minimal. People feel free not because they reject limits, but because the limits match their instincts and expectations.
Every social order requires maintenance, but the amount varies. When most residents share the same assumptions, small gestures keep the peace. A disapproving look from Mrs. Smith over an unkempt lawn prompts action. A loud party until 1 a.m. results in lost invitations until the offender corrects the behavior. Police rarely if ever enter the picture. The community polices itself through mutual judgment.
Several preconditions make this coordination possible. Residents must share standards so violations appear obvious. They must feel comfortable addressing those violations without fear of disproportionate or hostile reactions. And they must value the esteem of their neighbors enough to respond to correction. When those conditions collapse, norms collapse with them. As New York learned during the era of broken windows, one act of disorder invites the next.
American culture and government spent the last 60 years destroying those preconditions.
Academics and media stigmatized culturally cohesive neighborhoods, and government policies made them nearly impossible to maintain. Accusations of racism, sexism, or homophobia discourage the subtle social pressure that once corrected behavior. The informal network of mothers supervising neighborhood kids vanished as more women entered the corporate workforce. And as Robert Putnam documented, social trust deteriorates as diversity increases. Residents retreat into isolation, not engagement.
The HOA attempts to reconstruct a high-trust environment under conditions that no longer support it. Ownership, maintenance, and conduct move from cultural consensus to legal contract. Residents with widely different expectations sign binding agreements dictating noise levels, lawn care, parking, paint colors, and countless other micro-regulations. A formal board replaces Mrs. Smith’s frown. Fines replace gentle rebukes. Gates and walls replace the watchful eye of neighborhood moms.
What once came from community now comes from bureaucracy.
With home prices surging, families dedicate larger portions of their wealth to their houses. Few want to gamble on declining property values because their neighborhood slips into disorder. Everyone complains about HOAs, but they remain the only defense against the chaos modern culture produces. People enter hostile, artificial arrangements where neighbors behave like informants rather than partners — because the alternative threatens their largest investment.
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This analysis is not about suburban frustration. The HOA reveals a far broader truth: Modern America replaced a high-trust society with a trustless system enforced by administrative power.
As cultural diversity rises, the ability of a population to form democratic consensus declines. Without shared standards, people cannot coordinate behavior through social pressure. To replicate the order once produced organically by culture, society must formalize more and more interactions under the judgment of third parties — courts, bureaucracies, and regulatory bodies. The state becomes the referee for disputes communities once handled themselves.
Litigiousness rises, contracts proliferate, and coercion replaces custom. The virtue of the people declines as they lose the skills required to maintain trust with their neighbors. Instead of resolving conflict directly, they appeal to ever-expanding authorities. No one learns how to build trust; they only learn how to report violations.
The HOA problem is not really about homeowners or housing costs. It is a window into how America reorganized itself. A nation once shaped by shared norms and informal enforcement now relies on legalistic frameworks to manage daily life. Americans sense the artificiality, but they see no alternative. They know something fundamental has changed. They know the culture that sustained high-trust communities no longer exists.
The HOA simply makes the loss unavoidable.
Colorado’s Zoning Tyrants Go To War Against A Christian-Owned French Bakery
Is it truly in the county’s best interest to destroy a thriving business and a cherished community hub simply to enforce its zoning ordinance?The DC nobody talks about — and Trump finally did
President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration — placing the D.C. police under federal control — cited a now-famous stat: Washington, D.C., has higher violent crime, murder, and robbery rates than all 50 states.
Yes, even higher than my home city of Los Angeles.
DC is bigger than the Mall, and outside the quaint Capitol Hill and Eastern Market townhouses, the city sings a much different tune.
The order also noted that the city’s homicide rate — 27.54 per 100,000 residents — surpasses that of Havana, Cuba, and Islamabad, Pakistan.
Left-wing media immediately scoffed. They downplayed the numbers, pointing to D.C.’s “declining violent crime” stats — conveniently reported right after city leaders reclassified crimes like felony assault and carjacking as non-violent offenses.
It’s a neat trick to save face at the expense of victims.
In Georgetown, Woodley Park, and Chevy Chase, the chaos hides well. But walk through Columbia Heights or Dupont Circle and men strung out on drugs sprawl across the sidewalks. At Union Station, homeless people bathe in the historic site’s iconic fountains, just a few blocks from the Capitol.
“All cities have a homeless problem,” they say. Sure. But not all cities are the capital of the free world.
D.C. is bigger than the Mall, and outside the quaint Capitol Hill and Eastern Market townhouses, the city sings a much different tune.
A tale of two DCs
Take Anacostia.
This historically black neighborhood in Southeast D.C. has been ravaged by decades of violent crime and neglect in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Today, it holds an “F” public safety grade and ranks in the seventh percentile for safety nationwide. The neighborhood sees 12.3 violent crimes per 1,000 residents annually, with assault topping the list, followed by robbery, rape, and murder.
As D.C.'s cost of living explodes, many young residents — like my friends — are pushed into cheaper, more dangerous areas. They often choose Anacostia.
I’ve stayed with them several times. It’s the kind of place where you don’t stop at a red light. Homeless men stagger toward your car. Groups of young men tail you from stop sign to stop sign. If you're catching an early flight, you’ll see prostitutes walking home from the night before.
Residents of this once-vibrant neighborhood mourn what it has become. Times were never easy, but now crime has made it unlivable.
One neighborhood, a larger pattern
Anacostia isn’t an outlier. It’s the blueprint.
It’s the story of every community that doesn’t fit the left’s narrative and so gets ignored. As more staffers and young professionals move into these neighborhoods, perhaps they’ll finally draw some media coverage. But reform shouldn’t wait until political aides feel unsafe.
D.C. was meant to be the crown jewel of American cities. In many ways, it still is. But beauty doesn’t excuse such damning crime statistics.
Unchecked crime in forgotten neighborhoods is spilling into tourist hot spots and government grounds. Elites can’t ignore it any more.
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President Trump’s order is delivering what Anacostia residents — and so many others — should have received years ago: law, order, and the simple freedom to walk outside without fear.
That’s not too much to ask. That’s the bare minimum.
It’s a promise every American deserves.
So thank you, President Trump, for doing what should have been done long ago. I hope D.C. is just the beginning. Do L.A. next.
Trump to DC: Crime is a choice
President Trump announced Monday that he will federalize control of law enforcement in Washington, D.C. The move follows his threat to act after a brutal attack on a DOGE staffer who tried to defend a woman during a carjacking. National Guard troops will supplement D.C. Metro Police in an effort to quell violent crime. Americans are tired of excuses for why their cities feel dirty and unsafe when we already know how to fix them. Crime is a policy choice, and Trump has taken decisive action with a promise to restore law and order to the nation’s capital.
The United States is the most powerful nation on earth, and Washington is its imperial capital. History shows the state of the capital often mirrors the health of the civilization. The comparison is not flattering. In Japan or Singapore, a woman can walk alone at night without fear. In Washington, ordinary people are routinely harassed, assaulted, and robbed. Everyone knows why this disparity exists and how to solve it, but political correctness has made the truth unspeakable.
To succeed, Trump must ignore the inevitable accusations of racism and authoritarianism and focus on results.
Ideally, crime declines when a virtuous population maintains strong cultural norms and self-control. When virtue isn’t enough, the state must deliver swift and certain justice. If laws go unenforced, honest people quickly learn they are fools for obeying them, while marginal characters drift toward crime. Arrests must be followed by real penalties. As Rudy Giuliani proved in New York with broken-windows policing, consistent enforcement of even minor laws dismantles a culture of permissibility and encourages respect for the rules.
If we know regular enforcement and strong penalties work, why do Democrats choose the opposite in the cities they run?
Their answer always returns to racism. Crime data shows black Americans commit a disproportionate share of crime. Enforcing the law honestly will result in more black arrests and incarcerations. Neither Democrats nor most Republicans will discuss this fact or ask the black community to confront it. Instead, they declare the system racist by design.
Once the system is branded racist, “criminal justice reform” becomes the only solution. Because the underlying causes go unaddressed, disparities persist. To make the system look less racist, enforcement is scaled back. Heather Mac Donald calls this the “Ferguson effect”: Police who fear becoming national pariahs simply stop policing black neighborhoods. Law enforcement retreats from the areas where crime is highest. Officers are told to overlook minor crimes to lower minority arrest rates. Prosecutors cut deals, and early release programs proliferate to improve incarceration statistics. This is exactly the formula for more crime and less safety.
As a former crime reporter, I’ve had candid conversations with officers about this. Police know where most crime happens and who commits it, but politics make addressing it a nightmare. Officers say they sometimes ignore domestic violence or burglary calls in certain neighborhoods. They want to go home to their families, not become nationally infamous for answering the “wrong” call. The number of incarcerated black Americans may fall, but deaths from traffic accidents to homicides rise. Policies enacted “for” the black community make life more dangerous for them — and for everyone else.
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When asked about the chain of command under Trump’s initiative, D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith, a black woman, replied, “What does that mean?” Not reassuring. It suggests that in many cities, police chiefs are chosen less for competence than for their DEI value to activists. If the officials charged with maintaining public order under the dictates of gay race communism cannot grasp basic law enforcement concepts, they will fail.
Trump has taken on a complicated challenge. Restoring order may be straightforward in theory, but the politics are treacherous. To succeed, he must ignore the inevitable accusations of racism and authoritarianism and focus on results. In an era when most politicians flee responsibility, Trump is embracing it. If he succeeds, he will restore safety and dignity to the capital and create a model that could shame other cities into action.
Some compare Trump’s move to Nayib Bukele’s crackdown in El Salvador. The most important lesson from that comparison is that success speaks for itself. If Trump’s takeover produces a radically safer capital, Americans will demand the same in their own cities.
Time to redraw America’s borders — cities, counties, and beyond
Maps of the United States haven’t moved much lately. They should.
A cursory glance at historical maps over time — whether in the U.S. or globally — shows the dynamic movement of political boundaries. Since the birth of the United States, new states have been carved out of existing ones, county lines redrawn, and so on. Nowadays, though, aside from the occasional annexation or incorporation, boundaries have become relatively static.
Next time a state like Illinois comes crawling to Congress for a bailout, federal lawmakers should make border reorganization part of the deal.
That’s a sign of stagnation, not dynamism. And it needs to change.
Similar to how failing public schools precipitated the school choice movement, the failure of municipalities is spawning a growing movement for secession, annexation, and political reorganization.
Liberating red America
The municipal secession movement already has its “Lexington and Concord moment” in Baton Rouge and St. George, Louisiana. Fueled by failing schools and rampant crime, a section of East Baton Rouge Parish began its long, litigative battle for secession. In 2024, its work paid off. The parish successfully seceded from the consolidated county government, forging the new city of St. George, Louisiana, which is now the fifth most populous city in the state.
It won’t be the last.
Several local secession movements are emerging in conservative regions across the nation that are under the thumb of Democrat governments, with little hope of initiating regime change at the ballot box due to current districting laws.
The “Greater Idaho” movement, for example, is growing in conservative Eastern Oregon, now encompassing 13 counties that have approved measures to secede from deep-blue Oregon and be annexed by Idaho.
In rural Illinois, 33 counties have passed referenda seeking to leave the state entirely. Some want to form a new state, and others propose annexation by Indiana. Lawmakers in Indiana even established a formal boundary adjustment commission earlier this month to explore the idea.
Northern California’s long-standing movement to form a new “State of Jefferson” could one day merge with similar efforts in Southern Oregon.
Unchaining red municipalities
At the municipal level in large, deep-blue cities, purple-red neighborhoods like Staten Island in New York City or Buckhead in Atlanta could lead the charge for de-annexation.
Even in ultra-liberal cities like Austin, the de-annexation movement is gaining ground. The Lost Creek neighborhood, forcibly annexed in 2015, had had enough. Higher taxes, dismal city services, and left-wing pathologies drove residents to demand freedom. The Texas legislature intervened, passing a bill that allowed Lost Creek to vote itself out. It did — and won. More neighborhoods may follow.
This is the way it should be done, with the state stepping in to rescue disaffected neighborhoods from mismanaged cities.
Where cities have collapsed — Detroit and Baltimore come to mind — state governments should consider carving up failed urban zones and allowing them to reorganize under fresh charters. Let those areas be resettled under new leadership, new institutions, and new expectations.
In places where Democrat stronghold cities dominate entire counties — often electing radical officials who impose their ideologies on rural areas — states must step in.
In Harris County, Texas, radical leftist Lina Hidalgo runs the show from Houston. In Travis County, home to Austin, Soros-backed District Attorney José Garza applies “justice” as his donors see fit.
County residents who live outside of the big cities calling the shots would be much better served by county officials who reflect their values — not the radicals deeply planted in their city halls. They deserve a way out.
Bankruptcy poses an opportunity
States and municipalities filing for bankruptcy pose a tremendous opportunity to redraw the lines. In 2023, for example, Wisconsin’s GOP-controlled legislature bailed out bankrupt Milwaukee. The legislature could have liberated neighborhoods that never wanted to be annexed by Milwaukee in the first place. They missed the opportunity, however.
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Next time a state like Illinois comes crawling to Congress for a bailout, federal lawmakers should make border reorganization part of the deal. Downstate counties could be annexed by neighboring red states. Bailout in, blue control out.
During the Civil War, when Virginia seceded from the Union, West Virginia was born — its counties carved out and reorganized under federal protection. Today, as California’s officials promise to defy federal law and actively rebel against national authority, it may be time to ask: If rebellion defines California’s government, why not liberate its non-rebellious counties?
Beyond the US
Even national boundaries are up for reconsideration, too. That may sound radical, but it’s happened before.
Canada’s strange political experiment is showing signs of collapse. The ruling class in Ottawa derides the very existence of their country — obsessed with “stolen land” narratives and hostile to their own national culture. Their last remaining shred of civic unity is anti-Americanism.
But not all Canadians share that view.
The prairie provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — stand apart. Their culture, economy, and values are more closely aligned with those of the American Midwest than with those of Toronto or Quebec. Suffocating under anti-energy, anti-farmer policies, Alberta, in particular, is ripe for annexation.
Let’s add another star or two to the flag. The cowboy provinces would be a better fit in the U.S. anyway.
No borders are forever
Existing city, county, state, and national borders are not sacrosanct. If history is any guide, they will eventually change.
The only question is whether we’ll wait until the change is forced upon us — or whether we’ll act while there’s still time to do it peacefully and deliberately.
The map will change. Let’s make sure it changes for the better.
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