Urban real estate losses due to race riots, civil unrest, and urban planning

From Not Just Tulsa by Howard Husock.  I am leery of the argument he is making but consciously or not, he is shifting a frame I have encountered before.  And that shift in framing is interesting.

What he is effectively arguing is that we should define our category as "all destroyed neighborhoods" and that within that category are going to be race riot destruction (a la Tulsa 1921), self destruction a la the George Floyd riots, and deliberate destruction arising from urban planning.  

There is a lot to argue about in terms of defining the category in that way but it is refreshing to have the definition challenged.  Were we to take these definitions, which of the causal mechanisms for community decline might be the most common, broadest in impact, and most lasting?  It would be interesting to see a rigorous quantification but I am pretty certain it would look something like:

Deliberate destruction arising from urban planning - 50%

Self-destruction as in South Central, Ferguson, and the George Floyd riots - 35%

Race riots - 15%

Post-World War II it is probably more like 75% urban planning and 25% self-destruction.

Where have I seen this kind of reformulation of categories before?  On the fringes of the gun control debate.

There is an argument, which I endorse, that gun ownership was always a critical element in the thinking of the Founding Fathers as a mechanism for constraining centralized government.  They were obsessively, and appropriately, concerned about constraining government.

As Heller made clear, citizens are entitled to the Freedom of self-defense.  Against the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, there are real and tragic consequences to common gun ownership.  Accidents are greater, suicides are higher, and almost inherently, interpersonal violence must be more lethal.

But when you look in detail in the US and across countries, these variances are far more associated with community culture than they are with gun ownership and access.  Some areas which are nearly saturated with gun ownership have exceedingly low gun death rates and correspondingly, some areas subject to the most onerous gun control laws have dramatically high gun death rates.  

In the middle of that whole debate, others have expanded the categories of gun violence to include state action.  In other words, there are deaths from suicide, there are interpersonal gun deaths, and then there are state sanctioned gun deaths.  In the latter category they include officer involved mortal shootings as well as judicially sanctioned executions.  But they also include citizen deaths arising from any State repression as well as, occasionally, deaths from State launched wars.  

The core argument is that a well-armed citizenry is an effect which ensures that State power is constrained from either strong repressive actions or from unsupported martial actions.  Maybe a better way might be to say that with a well-armed citizenry, it is more likely that government actions will comport with the consent of the citizens.

As with Husock's argument, I am leery.  But it is an interesting insight that arises from a not completely unreasonable redefinition of categories.  I don't dismiss the argument either.  

Getting back to Husock's argument, how might it be tested?  I think the strong argument would be that Urban Planning destroys urban communities and economic vitality.  The weak argument might be Cities with higher urban planning requirements and greater regulatory burdens end up with slower economic growth, greater instances of social dysfunction (e.g. homelessness, substance, abuse, etc.), greater resident churn and loss of population, and loss of embedded residential and commercial real estate value.

I suspect that the strong argument actually might have some viability but certainly the weak argument is achievable and seems intuitively likely.