It may seem that “Abundance” is the latest buzzword in democratic policy circles, being thrown around without a deep understanding of what it means. And I think that would be an accurate representation of the current state of this policy idea.
Writers, typically wonkish policy reporters with elite publications such as the New York Times (Ezra Klein) and the Atlantic (Derek Thompson and Jerusalem Demsas), have set the stage for the policy agenda: government must reconsider the impact of everything it does and what it can do to decrease the costs and increase the supply of the goods and services people need more of: housing, clean energy, quality education and healthcare, etc. But unlike Project 2025, abundance is not a prescription for exactly what should be done but rather a mindset of growth and innovation from which solutions that help people meet their needs can emerge.
As a policy wonk who reads elite publications, I’ve followed these ideas for years. And they’ve made sense to me, particularly around the government’s role in housing. In Santa Monica, the government has restricted housing supply through zoning and other planning and building requirements. This has, as one would expect, caused housing prices to rise in Santa Monica. As someone who was once an aspiring condo owner in Santa Monica, I very much felt how these high prices impacted what my family could afford because the economy doesn’t value policy wonks as highly as those who can get people to click ads on the internet.
At the same time that I was looking to buy a home, I was also very aware of Santa Monica’s policy efforts to subsidize affordable housing for low-income individuals. I attended my first (and only) Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR) steering committee meeting, where affordable housing and the possible gentrification effects of a project to make Michigan Avenue safer for people walking and on bikes were chief concerns. The steering committee members were mostly homeowners, interested in making progressive changes at the margins to benefit labor (hotel and city employee unions) and the environment (but usually through a degrowth mindset that exacerbated the city’s global environmental impact), but under the surface much more concerned with maintaining the status quo (stopping development) even if the status quo primarily benefited long-term tenants and landlords who lacked competition. SMRR’s policy mindset is certainly not an abundance mindset, but I’ve met some great people who work very hard to use information about laws to reduce the power gap between landlords and tenants.
But for decades, Santa Monica’s City Council has been filled with candidates hand-picked by either SMRR or a coalition of neighborhood groups largely representing property owners’ interests rather than renters. This led to a city policy that served the wealthiest and the poorest and ignored most people in between. A plan to produce 4- and 5-story housing along Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards was overturned to allow only 3 stories. A plan to create 500 new apartments near the future 26th Street Expo station was overturned to preserve the existing building. And a 30% affordable housing requirement was added to the 2017 downtown plan, leading to smaller developments and drastically fewer affordable units than anticipated.
That isn’t abundance. And the aggregate effect of cities acting similarly to Santa Monica has made it harder for more and more people to afford housing in California. Such housing affordability pressures led to changes in state law to allow for more housing. When Santa Monica kept up this approach in spite of state law changes, it triggered a provision in state law that has permitted two developers to create 4,260 new homes in buildings ranging from 8 to 18 (or more) stories. The lesson here is that if a city doesn’t move towards abundance policies on its own, the state may intervene.
But abundance policy issues span far beyond housing. On most issues, Santa Monica excels at providing services for people to meet their needs. The city’s plan to bring water demand and supply in line with what can be produced locally will ensure reliable access to water if imports to Southern California dry up. Public fitness options include a $4/day gym and $4.50 pool.
On policy issues that require construction, Santa Monica needs substantial improvements. In addition to increasing the supply of housing, a staple of abundance policy, the city is not keeping up with the demand for service from those who already live here. We have too few eldercare and healthcare facilities for our aging population. The city’s repeated capitulation to the demands of neighbors has limited the supply of preschool and childcare spaces and undoubtedly increased the cost of such services. Based on conversations I or my wife have had with others, the difficulty in finding affordable infant and childcare spaces, combined with higher rents and the scarcity of two- and three-bedroom apartments, is one of the reasons those who have lived here for many years leave after having kids. This trend is reflected in declining SMMUSD enrollments amidst a relatively stable city population.
To do more with the assets we already have, the city would also need to become more tolerant of even small changes to the built environment that don’t require construction projects. Activating struggling parks with small cafes is a tried-and-true approach proven multiple times over, notably with the first Shake Shack that helped turn around New York’s Madison Square Park. Vending machines or designated areas for food trucks would do the same in Santa Monica, making it easier for parks to become neighborhood meeting places.
Quick-build, low-cost street safety improvements are an effective strategy employed by dozens of cities with less financial resources and staffing support than Santa Monica to keep vehicles out of daylighting zones, shorten pedestrian crossing distances, and safely channel traffic in areas where lanes are wide.
Tasteful architectural lighting on Ocean Avenue, perhaps with a nightly show, could create a new Instagrammable view from the beach and pier and another view of Santa Monica (other than the Ferris wheel) for news and sports shows to highlight.
Pursuing even modest abundance-minded changes will require strong leadership from a City Council and new City Manager committed to challenging the status quo. Commenting on the supremacy of money in poverty, Wu-Tang Clan recorded the hip-hop classic C.R.E.A.M. But at Santa Monica City Hall, the prevailing track is S.Q.R.E.A.M. The city staff’s watered-down, risk-averse Entertainment Zone proposal for the lagging Third Street Promenade depicts a scarcity-minded process, in which each department adds conditions that, cumulatively, create insurmountable barriers to activating the city’s existing assets to develop new amenities and revenues.
Abundance-minded approaches look at how permitting reforms can help get to “yes” to enable desired outcomes. And good governance would suggest that motions passed by the council to “get people to come to the Promenade” for the sake of economic development downtown meet the definition of desirable. Under an abundance agenda, city staff would develop success-oriented permitting processes instead of the status quo of constraining economic development and revenues.
While the abundance agenda is a recipe still being formulated, my favorite variation includes a mechanism for achieving abundance: a “how” to enable the “what.” By increasing what some call “state capacity,” or the ability of government to get things done, governments can be more effective and productive in meeting people’s needs through service provision. Santa Monica’s city government provides many services: code enforcement, building inspections, traffic and parking services, policing and crime prevention services, fire and medical services, water and wastewater, parks and recreation, libraries, and even programming and camps for children. I can think of many examples where the use of technology and process improvements would demonstrably improve productivity and customer experience for these services without displacing jobs, a key concern for city staff.
In fact, an electorate that knows the city staff has their back on these services would be more likely to support ballot measures to increase city revenues to make up for the city’s emerging chronic budget deficit. I would support using increases in city revenues to provide higher compensation to teams with the greatest productivity and customer satisfaction. But that’s an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset and requires a change in how the city government thinks about Santa Monica.
