Debate On Cities: Cities Dont’ Die, People Do

Policy Debate On Cities: Cities Dont’ Die, People Do Roger Valdez Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Roger Valdez is Director of the Center for Housing Economics. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Sep 5, 2022, 09:30am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin The Lighthouse of Alexandria. Cities and bad housing policies persist, but will happen to people in . .

. [+] cities? (Photo by The Print Collector/Getty Images) Getty Images As I write this, in the late summer in Seattle, I’m watching the sun set from a roof top in the South Lake Union neighborhood at the building where I have shared office space. I’m considering the question I’ve been hearing lately more often: Are cities no longer the future of sustainability and growth, and, instead, will their populations drain away because of crime, decay, and policies that make them unaffordable? For people who earn less money in the economy, it is not an academic question; if cities fail to deliver compact, walkable, and affordable housing, many people will pass on economic insecurity to their children rather than prosperity.

The city is in peril as a model for sustainable and affordable growth. Can it be saved? Real Clear Politics posted a virtual debate between some scholars and writers on the question, “ Are Big Cities Past Their Prime ?” Two participants argued for the answer, “Yes,” and two for the answer, “No. ” Geographer Joel Kotkin, author of, “The Coming Neo-Feudalism,” argues that the populations of big core cities will empty into more dispersed suburbs, which he sees as the future.

Big cities won’t go away, their function will change. The world has changed, people don’t want to raise kids in big cities and so they’ll live in suburbs and possibly work from home, skipping long commutes. His debate partner, lawyer and environmentalist Jennifer Hernandez, thinks big cities are done because they are fundamentally unaffordable.

“You buy out, you can’t buy in,” she says, citing the familiar formulation that people looking to buy a house, “drive until they qualify” for a mortgage. Her point is similar to Kotkin in that she points to changes in technology – the Zoom meeting, for example – as facilitating people to make moves based on what they can afford without the need to deal with being in a city or getting to a big city to work. Answering, “No” to the question is Edward Glaeser, well known economist and writer about cities and historian Margaret O’Mara.

Glaeser takes a global perspective arguing that “cities are powering the growth of the developing world. ” As for the demise of the American city, Glaeser points out that “we’ve been here before,” citing the big shift away from cities culminating in what people thought, in the 1970s, was the death of New York. Then, with crime, blackouts, and decaying infrastructure, the city as an idea seemed to be over.

O’Mara leans on the basic human need to socialize. “We are social animals,” she says and that means that cities will never go away because they facilitate getting human interaction efficiently. Density of people means cities can facilitate the operation of government, provide entertainment, education, and meet social needs in central locations not in isolation through a computer screen but in social settings.

MORE FOR YOU Biden’s Proposed IRS Bank Account Snooping Authority Runs Into State Resistance 2021 Diversity Green Card Lottery Winners To Be Shut Out Because Of Visa Deadline The Swamp Grew – Even Under President Donald Trump Taken together, I think it is obvious that cities simply won’t disappear, and the scholarly debate seems to miss the other sense of urgency being expressed by city residents: cities have become unsafe, ugly, and unlivable. Seattle Times columnist Jon Talton writes about this more palpable sense of loss and dread in a column he calls “ a love story . ” “Politics changed, too,” Talton explains, “from a pragmatic liberalism to a City Council majority of far-left activists.

They defunded the police even as crime rose and shoplifting staggered the remaining retailers. Third Avenue’s rich assortment of shops are now closed and boarded up. ” Talton has surely been mocked for his gauzy memories about the poor ol’ Starbucks SBUX he frequented shutting down.

“Starbucks?” many locals would sneer, “Who goes to Starbucks except tourists from the Midwest or Trump voters?” But his point is well taken. Many of the cities most familiar locations, the kind of places that O’Mara might be thinking of as places of social gathering, are thickets of tents, garbage, and often, crime. Mentioning this draws howls of criticism from the left; cities don’t have a garbage problem, they have an equity problem .

Andrea Salinas might have agreed with that at some point. But in September of 2020, the downtown Seattle resident changed her mind and acted on it, forming We Heart Seattle , an organization premised on cleaning up the garbage created by locations of improvised housing and offering residents of those areas assistance and support for leaving the streets. She was later joined by experienced mental health and drug counselor Kevin Dahlgren who has worked with people experiencing homelessness for years.

In a long interview , the pair describe how the effort started and now has become the target of attacks from the left. Salinas, like Talton, talks about her love of the city as the motivator. But on the left, the visible mess on the streets is important as the wreckage of capitalism, a system of exploitation.

In a way, cleaning it up is simply sweeping that problem – the real problem – under the rug. They cite a head slapping McKinsey report from years ago that suggests, “Economic growth in the region is a leading cause of homelessness. ” That’s right, the bright eyed, ivy league consultants say that more jobs in the area is why people are living in tents surrounded by garbage.

Challenge this assumption as I did back in 2018 , and wait for the incoming shelling from the hellbent left. What’s really happening? As far as economics, it really is simple. It’s not jobs creating homelessness or higher prices for housing, it’s lack of new housing to meet the rising demand created by new jobs – at least before the pandemic.

People who hate capitalism and who want housing to be owned and operated by the government or non-profits simply can’t admit that a person doesn’t wind up living in a tent surrounded by garbage not because of jobs and economic growth, but because of mental health and addiction exacerbated by lack of shelter and support for some kind of sustainable and appropriate recovery. And the bigger question about cities as an idea? One of the greatest cities in history was Alexandria, home to the famous lighthouse and library . What happened to Alexandria? Did it die like some have suggested Seattle soon will? French archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur lead a writer for Smithsonian on a tour of an archeological dig at the current day city.

“’We supposed old Alexandria was destroyed,’ Empereur says, his voice bouncing off the damp smooth walls, ‘only to realize that when you walk on the sidewalks, it is just below your feet. ’” That’s the answer. When pagans blamed – maybe correctly – that Rome fell because of the Christians, Augustine created one of the central theological and philosophical arguments of Western culture, The City of God .

The visible city is subject to decay and collapse, just as human beings are; but the city of God, the spiritual city is everlasting. Cities do change, often falling apart and, like ancient Alexandria, getting buried under new generations of people building new things. But that past is there, “just below your feet.

” And yes, cities need and inspire love, both of the physical and social elements. So, Salinas, Dahlgren, and Talton can’t be dismissed as “Karens” who just want the garbage to go away along with the people who have very complicated issues. People living in these conditions do need help, and that does require more resources, and yes, money.

However, building subsidized apartment buildings isn’t the answer. To build those is costing as much as $500,000 per unit, and residents have to be able to pay rent to offset those costs; that housing isn’t “free. ” Cities don’t die, people do.

And they will keep dying on the streets until people who control cities stop believing that jobs create homelessness. Can we overcome the ideological dispute and do what is needed: allow the production of more housing by lowering regulatory barriers, and using subsidies to concentrate support for the complex needs of people struggling on the streets? We don’t need more money, but to use the money more efficiently. In the end, efficiency is compassionate .

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