Having always been a fan of the Dying Earth subgenre of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, I am surprised at how emphatically I am not a fan of the Dying City subgenre of non-fiction. By now we have all seen enough pictures of Rust Belt urban decay, prairies springing up through concrete, and abandoned buildings to choke a camel. Having not been to the city in nearly seven years, I nonetheless feel confident that I could identify most of Detroit's derelict landmarks (Look, it's the train station! Look, it's that old Packard factory!) simply through sheer repetition and their omnipresence as stock photos (and lazy narrative devices) in that Feature Story on the death of a city that we have all read so many times. Maybe as a native Midwesterner this tale of urban decay hits too close to home for me to enjoy it as though I am an impersonal observer or a hipster faux-anthropologist. Or maybe it is a peephole into a world of intertwined social, political, cultural, and economic problems so overwhelming and depressing that even I can't handle thinking about them for too long.
Cities like Cleveland and Detroit appear to have entered the terminal stage of their decline, a self-reinforcing cycle of population loss, crime, blight, and white flight that sends cities into a torpor from which they do not recover. Detroit is resorting to turning off the streetlights in an attempt to auto-amputate the most thinly populated parts of the city – a not-so-subtle way of doing what eminent domain and rampant decay cannot, namely to force the few remaining residents out of neighborhoods that are 75% vacant or more. Detroit gets the most attention but certainly it is not alone. This is a problem everywhere, particularly in the large, older cities of the Midwest and Northeast but also in the logging and mining towns of the West, the depopulated rural South, and points in between. Yet we find it most compelling to watch the big, once-magnificent cities crumble.
What is happening to the Detroits and Clevelands reveals two particularly jarring realities about America and Americans. First, our cities are not built to last. Look at how quickly these things go to rot. During the height of the housing boom, we saw entire developments in places like Florida and Arizona – remember, we're talking about new housing here – rendered uninhabitable almost immediately upon being neglected. Suburban housing is designed by speculators to look pretty but at its core is slapped together in great haste and is built to last just long enough for the developer to cash his checks. The landmarks of a city like Detroit, not to mention its housing, retail, infrastructure, and so on, are remarkably frail as well. A big urban train station might look mighty and imposing, but it takes just a few short years to turn them into eyesores of dubious structural integrity.
The rapid disintegration of neglected cities leads into the second reality: Americans treat cities as disposable, much as we treat so many things in our lives. Can you imagine the British letting London rot? Can you picture the French saying "Ah, fuck it, let's move to the suburbs" and abandoning Paris? Would the Russians walk away from Moscow? Of course they wouldn't. In other countries, the government, people, and private sector work together to try to save major cities, even past the point at which it makes sense to do so. Here, we just defer to the unerring logic of the Free Market and build another subdivision. Oh, people are leaving your city? Well then it must suck. If it didn't suck people would stay there. In this way we treat cities like businesses – Come to think of it, what don't we treat like a business? – and the ones that fail, well, I guess they couldn't hack it. Adios.
Why do other countries fight to save their cities while we abandon them for illogical, thrown-together suburbs that we will also end up abandoning? There are a few theories we can consider. Perhaps the Eurasian sense of history simply runs deeper – the oldest American cities are about two centuries old, and in many cases much younger. Around the world the history of major cities is more likely to be measured in thousands of years. Perhaps Americans have done too much rhapsodizing about the yeoman farmer and the rural landscape to develop a true attachment to our urban centers. Perhaps we honestly believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that sprawling suburbs laced with strip malls and highways that scar the landscape like acne genuinely are a better mode of living.
Those theories are plausible. But I think it boils down, as it so often does, to our hatred of all things dark and poor.
When cities begin to lose some of their luster – or, say, when the government invests trillions dollars into a highway system that quickly whisks people from bedroom suburbs to urban employment and back, not to mention trillions more invested in land development and home mortgage lending – the first to flee are those most able to do so. As people with the means to move to newer, more expensive, and less "troubled" communities, the city ends up disproportionately populated by people who can't move…either due to poverty or due to those shiny new suburban communities' habit of keeping out the dark-skinned by any means necessary. As the problems of the cities intensify, the will of people beyond their borders to intervene disappears. "They" are just animals anyway. Look at how They ruined that once beautiful city.
Maybe if our cities had more history or a more prominent place in our cultural fabric we would fight for them rather than treating them like a soiled disposable diaper. Or maybe we don't care about them for the usual reasons that we use to identify who the government and our society should and should not fight to protect. When we redefine the city as places for the Negroes, the unwashed poor, the immigrants with their barbarian tongues, "union thugs", and meddling liberals, it does not take a very thorough understanding of American politics and society to recognize why we are letting them rot, and in some cases fighting to accelerate the process, rather than fighting to save them.
HoosierPoli says:
The reason the French don't flee to the suburbs is because that's where THEY keep THEIR black people.
Andrew says:
I was just speaking to a Parisian this weekend (he had flown in for the GP in Montreal) and he was lamenting how entire neighborhoods in Paris are being abandoned to crime and the city's infrastructure itself is being neglected if it's not in a highly touristy location. So yes, I can imagine the example.
Arslan says:
In Europe the city center is usually the best place to be, not in the suburbs.
Nostradumbass says:
Some of the comments on that io9 article you linked to are chilling.
argh says:
I'm afraid it goes beyond simply disliking cities- most Americans don't even know what a "city" really is. Most Americans think of a "city" as something resembling their local suburb- a collection of lawns, office parks, and stripmalls, knitted together by freeways.
J. Dryden says:
Don't forget the effect of what Paul Fussell (RIP) called 'prole creep'–when lower class people attain middle class income (or at least attain sufficient income to move into 'marked down' middle class housing.)
The popular tastes bred by the culture of contemporary America do not demand an urban setting–indeed, they're contrary to it, which is why Walmart always builds outside city limits.
And as the zeitgeist* goes, so does the market. Fewer and fewer people care to do the things that cities have always provided as their justification: culture! diversity of eating and shopping and what not! galleries and museums and operas! live theater! art movie venues! etc.!
These things are challenging, awkward, and unfulfilling to those who prefer the starch-and-sugar approach to self-pleasuring. (They also have an air of exclusivity that's a little off-putting.) You can watch TV anywhere. You can see movies at a megaplex anywhere. You can eat at Oliver Garden and TGI Fridays and Appleby's anywhere. And you can shop at Walmart anywhere. So if that's what you want to do, why the fuck bother to stay in the city, and why care if it falls apart, taking with it a culture that you were never a part of to begin with?
*Apologies. I know it's pretentious, but it's actually the right word for what I want to say in this instance, I swear.
Middle Seaman says:
Never thought about this problem. European cities are built of stone or cinder blocks. We build living quarters from match sticks and cardboard. Stone doesn't decay, cardboard does. One finds many small villages in countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal very sparsely populated. They will have only one or two stores left, limited or non existent services. Yet, the ghostly streets didn't change for 200 years.
Europeans have a much stronger emphasis on aesthetics. Cities, large and small, are full of sculptures, monuments and decorated frequently for special events. We are almost devoid of street art and we decorate for Xmas only.
Lastly, our brand of so called capitalism is socialism for the rich and constant attempt to achieve a modern type of slavery for everybody else. The rich don't care about Detroit.
wetcasements says:
Huh. Usually I love your pieces but I think this falls short of the mark.
"the British letting London rot"
Parts of London are lovely. Parts of it are terrifying (remember those riots?).
First off, as mentioned, the Parisian suburbs are effectively the French "ghetto" for immigrants. And they have tons of problems with crime and social decay.
Second, never been there but the thieves in Moscow have come up with a brilliant way of robbing people. Instead of, I dunno, pulling a knife or gun, they simply walk up behind people and smash their skulls in with bricks or rebar. Take the dead/permanently brain-dead person's wallet, rinse, repeat. I'll take a bad neighborhood in my hometown of DC over that any day.
Third, I don't think you can extrapolate American rust-belt decline with, say, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, DC, or many other American cities that are actually doing well relative to the disaster that is many US suburb s and rural areas. Detroit is bad but Cleveland? Really? I haven't been there for a while but I think even mid-Great Recession people could still point to it as a positive moment of urban renewal compared to where it was in the 1970's, flaming Cuayahoga and all.
So yeah, I think you're being way too hard on non-Rust Belt US cities and far, far too easy on European ones.
Also, Pittsburgh. Talk about a success story.
Hank Layfield says:
I'm with wetcasements, here. Reading this piece made me wonder whether you've ever been anywhere but the South or Midwest. Many U.S. Cities are legitimately urban and thriving. I know this because I live in one. And you seem to have an overly romanticized view of cities in Europe. When I went to Prague, just as an example, I was amazed by the beauty and vibrancy. Then I got to watch a neo-NAZI riot, which reminded me that Europe has plenty of problems,too.
Anyway, do yourself a favor, and get to know Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, or any of the dozens of great American cities that don't follow your strip mall/urban rot duality.
Chris "Limey" Lewis says:
Interesting point on the UK refusing to let cities die – on the whole this is true, except for the sheer contempt members of the Conservative Party showed Liverpool (A city which is, it seems, detested by the entire rest of the country):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-16355281
If you check out the original Guardian article that kicked off the fuss:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/30/thatcher-government-liverpool-riots-1981
And also, on a wider point, shortly after the Toxteth Riots, the far-left council of Liverpool played a game of chicken with the Thatcher government, daring them to visit the city and see how dilapidated much of it was. Expecting to find their claims spurious, sec. of state for the environment Jenkin went and visited the city – and was "visibly shaken", agreeing to give the city £20m to regenerate – coincidentally, he was replaced in this post by Thatcher.
http://gerryco23.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/liverpool-1984/
Chris "Limey" Lewis says:
And being a Londoner, I can verify wetcasements assertion of "some parts are lovely and some are terrifying". Haringey and Tottenham, where much of the rioting took place, are absolute shitholes which (it seems) are left to rot as the white middle class move out to the "commuter bases" in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Sussex.
I still love it, even if where I live (the formerly-sleepy borough of Harrow, in what is known as "Greater London") I've seen muggings, streetfights, and even had a police shootout in our cul-de-sac!
Grumpygradstudent says:
Thanks to the inanity of the large corporatized university system, I have been teaching a class on urban policy for the last two years, despite never having studied the subject in any formal setting. But I think I've done a fairly good job of catching up on the basics of the urban crisis, and its variations across the country. Yes, this story is most clearly applicable to rust belt cities, whereas many sunbelt cities were built later and thus were more able to grow with the post-industrial economy instead of being rammed in the ass by it. And a few large cities have adapted to the post-industrial economy through gentrification, tourism, corporate headquarters, and the like. But the few shining examples of post-industrial adaptation shouldn't distract from the fact that MOST of the cities in the rust belt, and many in the south, have not been able to do that.
By the way, regarding the abandonment of city space, an interesting little tidbit I discovered in getting up to speed for my class is the prevalence of arson in deteriorating neighborhoods. Rick Burns's excellent multi-part documentary of New York discusses this. When landlords can no longer charge enough to make owning the building worth it, they burn it down. Apparently there was a period in New York during the height of the urban crisis when large sections of the city just completely burned out.
Talisker says:
London, Paris, and Moscow are not good comparisons, particularly the city centres full of government buildings and famous monuments. These national showcases are the last places that will be permitted to fall into ruin, much like lower Manhattan or the National Mall in DC.
I'm no expert, but as I understand it other Russian cities have urban decay as bad or worse than Detroit. Soviet-era cities in Siberia are being abandoned wholesale as it becomes uneconomic to live there. However this is happening for particular Russian reasons (post-Soviet economic chaos and population decline).
In the UK, better comparisons to Detroit would be places like Glasgow, Sheffield or Liverpool — the mighty industrial cities of the past which have fallen on hard times and are losing population to more prosperous areas. Life here is not pretty, and they also have plenty of cheap modern construction which is now falling apart.
That said, I think you are correct that the UK was more willing to fight for these cities than the USA. The government, with the general consent of business and other groups, has tried to keep them alive. Often in a haphazard and ineffectual way to be sure, and public spending cuts by the current coalition government are hitting deprived cities hard, but on the whole there is still more effort than in the USA. Glasgow is probably the worst case in the UK and it has extremely serious social problems, but is still more livable than I imagine Detroit to be.
@Middle Seaman: In fact the London riots weren't necessarily in the poorest neighbourhoods. A lot of severely depressed cities (Glasgow again) didn't riot at all. The causes of the riots were a lot more complex than urban decay alone.
@Middle Seaman, Hank Layfield: Agreed, those cities are doing well. (I think Pittsburgh is the most relevant example, as a place that lost its old heavy industry and had to reinvent itself.) There are similar success stories in the UK, such as Manchester and Newcastle. But I think the difference is greater intervention and coordination by regional/central government in the UK, while American cities are left to sink or swim on their own.
c u n d gulag says:
Not to rain on anyone's pity party, but in fact, many American cities are being "gentrified" by rich white young people.
White people with bucks moved out to the suburbs after WWII. Their children and grandchildren are moving back, taking over neighborhoods, and "yuppifying" (aka – "gentrifying") them.
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5794048-white-people-are-moving-back-to-big-cities
Take a look at NYC, which may be unfair, because it's America's most international city, but the Lower East side, east of 5th Ave to the East River, and north of Houston Street, and south of 14th Street, was a dangerous dump when I tended bar in a Ukrainian bar there in the early-mid-80's.
Now, while it still has some ethnic hold-outs of all colors, it is predominantly the place for young white people with money. There are countless boutiques, pubs, coffee places, shops, etc.
Except for the fact that the same 3-4 story apartment buildings are still standing, and have been for well over a century, since that's where the immigrants lived when they first came here – the area's unrecognizable from 30 years ago, And all of that started in the mid-late-80's.
The Lower East side went from dump, to chic!
And it happened pretty damn fast.
And I've read that that's happening in Cleveland and other cities, too.
When the white people with bucks move back to the cities, they make them unaffordable for everyone who doesn't have a "rent-controlled" apartment.
So now, cities have "black/brown flight" – and THOSE folks are the ones moving further and further from the center of the cities, to outlying areas, and yes – the suburbs.
And the black/brown ones who can afford to move there, or already live there, are joined by younger white people with money.
So, the cities are being "gentrified."
Take a look at Philadelphia, where two well-known Liberal bloggers live. They live in neighborhoods that were probably dumps like the Lower East Side was back in the 70's and 80's.
Give Detroit another decade, and see where it is then.
I'll bet the downtown area will be mostly white, with some wealthier "ethnics" mixed in, with boutiques, pubs, coffee places, shops, etc.
White people are learning that, once they move back to the city, that they like living in gentrified neighborhoods, with easy access to work, museums, ballparks, parks, etc.
So, the news about America's cities ain't all bad.
Just bad if you don't have the money to keep-up with the wealthier Jones's who are moving back.
Talisker says:
Another thought: The reason for the "sink or swim" attitude towards US cities may originate from the much less centralised government in the USA. In the UK, the decline of Liverpool is very much considered London's business. This means not just direct efforts at urban renewal, but a significant transfer of funds through "automatic" mechanisms such as unemployment benefits and government services. Washington is much less willing/able to step in for cities such as Detroit. This is left up to state and local governments; if Michigan isn't up to the task, well, too bad.
The nearest European equivalent I can think of is the formerly Communist nations (Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, etc.) which might get some limited support from the European Union but mostly are on their own in terms of solving their post-Soviet social and economic problems.
Major Kong says:
And if it can happen to Detroit, do you really think it could never happen to Houston or Atlanta?
I'm talking to you, smug red-staters.
Orpho says:
I do think perhaps there's a bit of romanticizing of cities here. Check out one of the exposes of shack housing in London in part because of the influx of workers for the Olympics – http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/09/london-landlords-desperate-tenants .
I think there's also been a growth in the status of living in the city in many even mid-western American cities – Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland among them (Cleveland's waterfront restoration of the past decade, its Rock and Roll hall of fame, new sports stadium, renovated tourist traps along the lake, and the not-catching-on-fire rivers being its current big draws). http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/opinion/sunday/now-coveted-a-walkable-convenient-place.html?_r=1 also suggests the increasing cache of walkability in property values and the growth of New Urbanism among a certain set.
greg says:
Usually I'm amused by the depths of your bitterness, but between equating Cleveland and Peoria (with the lesser of the two Mike Polk videos, no less!) and this, I'm feeling grumpy. I moved to Cleveland FROM NYC, and I can tell you the commenters are right that you opened your mouth a bit too wide. Plenty of NYC is also bleak and depressing (google Myrtle Ave and Jefferson St., Brooklyn, NY for an example) — or see the Pfizer safety section of Fahrenheit 911. Cleveland is definitely struggling to create any kind of tax base since, as you accurately point out, much of the affluent population fled decades ago (Euclid, just down the road to the east, was the town which tested the constitutionality of zoning laws in the Supreme Court — its ordinances were designed to keep the steel industry out, so as to keep out all those Slovenes, Poles, and Hungarians who worked in them; now the Cleveland Style Polka Hall of Fame is in Euclid, honoring the music of those same folks), but it also has a world-class museum (I mean it compares favorably with the Met in NY), a serious couple of pockets of affluent and educated in the east, and lots of new development, some of which is cheesy and desperate (see Medical Mart, Horseshoe Casino) and some of which is really pretty cool (see Ohio City Bicycle Co-op, wind farms, and the local micro-distilling foodie scene). Yes, that doesn't mean it's hit a death spiral, but neither does it mean all is lost. The wooden house I live in was built in the 1920s and still manages to survive each winter, and housing stock in the city and the older suburbs is almost uniformly of that vintage or earlier, just like NYC. Much of it as shittily maintained as the old housing now so beloved of the yuppies in NYC was at the end of the 90s. Park Slope, now affluently friendly to parent raising, is full of houses that were abandoned shooting galleries until someone with money and time raked out the works and rat droppings and refinished the floors for sale to somebody with even more money and less time. I can't speak for Detroit, but Clevelanders are pretty loyal and always interested in finding ways to save/restore the city. Which may not go anywhere practical, but says not death spiral yet to me. Maybe I don't know that you grew up in Cleveland and have very specific experiences in mind when you write this, but it sounds like you picked it for the same reason that you picked Detroit: Everybody knows it's nowhere; I've been surprised that it's more somewhere than that, even if I don't intend to stay here forever.
Ten Bears says:
Skip the TV show, read The World Without Us for an idea of just how quickly these things come to pass. Two hundred years and very little will remain to mark that we had once walked these lands. Pyramid Builders, we are not.
ladiesbane says:
When I lived in Portland, OR, its urban growth boundary forced people to build up, dig deep, or reclaim underused city spaces. The alternative was to shuffle on down the road to Beaverton or Wilsonville — which helped those nearby towns thrive as more than bedroom communities. The downside was that older urban neighborhoods became gentrified, and poor people and college students couldn't find affordable housing. The upside was that it made life harder for gangs and drug dealers in poorer neighborhoods. But it seemed to work.
Then I moved to Phoenix, which encourages horizontal growth both to keep from spoiling the view, and (indirectly) because it's far, far cheaper to throw a new house onto a concrete pad than it is to sift out the broken glass and cigarette butts from the burnt-out city center. Cardboard, spit, and lint are all you need to build a house there, and with very little care, it will last a long time.
But Phoenix is like a transient hotel for many and gypsies don't invest in infrastructure. Van Buren Avenue, in the city center, is a mile of burned out trailer parks and dead hooker motels and an abandoned jail, for crying out loud. It's not a ghetto, it's hell. I threw a lit match over my shoulder and ran to Albuquerque…a small town with a lot of sprawl, a certain amount of Phoenix-envy, and much less stagnation.
Sometimes a reworked freeway pushes people into a new part of town and leaves the old main streets to crumble. Some places are simply planned and managed better than others. Others have the misfortune to overextend themselves during boom times and end up with way more town than they need once the party is over. But given that the problem is caused by so many different things, I don't know that there will be one simple solution for all.
Kulkuri says:
Maybe part of the problem is that in this country since the very beginning you could always move west and even after they reached the West Coast there was a lot of spaces left to move to. Over in Europe and England all the available space is already in use and it is harder to move to a new area.
Nan says:
Ed, when the jobs go away, so do the people. Detroit, Flint, and other Michigan cities are dying because the auto industry decided they'd rather build cars elsewhere.
We've seen the same thing happen on a small scale repeatedly: this country is full of ghost towns that once were boomtowns until the ore played out so the mines closed or all the timber was cut and the sawmills shut down. Why do we act surprised when it happens to a city that was basically a one-industry town?
Pam says:
Nan, you nailed it.
Mr. Prosser says:
True, Pam, between Nan and J. Dryden the subject is pretty well wrapped up. ladiesbane's description of Phoenix also summarizes the situation in a lot of Western cities where the retired go to bake and die.
Amused says:
As someone who grew up in a suburb of Moscow, I have to say that the Russian — and as I later learned, generally European — mentality on this issue is the complete reverse of typical American preferences. Living in the city is highly prestigious; things like educational opportunities, cultural wealth and so on are prioritized over "fresh air"* and greater housing space. The lower classes, by contrast, are relegated to the suburbs; having to commute in a regional train every day is a reliable mark of being "inferior". For an aspiring, successful middle-class couple, buying an apartment as close to the city center as possible is top priority, followed, if possible, by a house in the country for weekend visits and such.
And that's another thing: Americans have a culture of believing that you need a house with a back yard to raise children, that raising a family in an urban apartment, even a spacious one, is borderline immoral. Most people in Europe don't see it that way, and even very affluent people, who could easily afford a big house, raise their kids in apartments.
*I put "fresh air" in quotes because this argument in favor of suburbs is so tenuous. Anything within a 90-minute commute of a major city is so densely populated these days, there is no appreciable difference in air quality between the suburbs and urban areas. Millions of people driving their millions of cars to and from work every day doesn't help matters, either.
Arslan says:
"Second, never been there but the thieves in Moscow have come up with a brilliant way of robbing people. Instead of, I dunno, pulling a knife or gun, they simply walk up behind people and smash their skulls in with bricks or rebar."
Never heard of that. Hooligans might do it, and most robberies are done with knives. However, in 6 years I've been through some pretty rough neighborhoods and never had a problem. Of course I am rather large but that wouldn't stop two or more thugs from attacking me. And in Moscow the snow and ice forces criminals to fly straight for several months. When the pavement is covered in 3 inch thick ice, you can't run away.
Talisker says:
@Amused: Yes, although the UK is something of an exception. Everyone wants a back yard. This has helped bring on (a) some suburban sprawl, though nothing like as severe as the USA because of space limitations and building restrictions, (b) tiny, tiny new houses with handkerchief-sized gardens, (c) absurdly high property prices.
There are a few exceptions in cities like Edinburgh, which has pleasant and desirable city apartments largely built in the 18th/19th centuries. Since 1945, most British attempts to build urban apartments have been pretty dreadful and given the whole concept a bad reputation, which only exacerbates the demand for houses-with-gardens.
WillyPGuts says:
Nan:
Detroit was certainly not a "one-industry" town. It's economic collapse has mostly to do with changes in the national infrastructure, technology, and the cost of transportation. The Rust Belt cities were all cities with industry agglomerations that depended on water and rail transportation to mass move goods to major markets and ports (NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Toronto, etc). Think about it, almost all of the Rust Belt cities lie along the Erie Canal or Lake Erie (Buffalo, Rochester, Utica, Cleveland, Toledo) or, like Pittsburgh, connect to Lake Erie via river. The major industrial decline of these cities began in the 1950s as innovations in manufacturing and market power allowed firms to become more mobile (less dependent on a consistent labor force) and a massive new interstate highway system was being built that allowed firms to utilize the trucks for freight movement, which was far cheaper and farther reaching than other forms.
Detroit was an important intersection on the old waterway and rail network for moving goods east and west, but when that network became less important to manufacturing firms (or, weight added firms in the production process) that needed to be close to markets, the city lost its value. Eventually it did become a one-industry city–automobiles–and that is the only thing keeping it alive.
terraformer says:
Kulkuri gets to what I was going to post.
We in the States simply have more space to move to when we're tired of an area.
Europe? Not so much. Population density is much higher, generally. They kind of have to keep things up because there's nowhere else to go.
The day when people leave a city to build somewhere else, and that new place is a previously abandoned area that was left before, is when we Yanks will probably start thinking beyond fiberboard.
mothra says:
Albuquerque…a small town with a lot of sprawl, a certain amount of Phoenix-envy,
Ha. The only people with Phoenix-envy in Albuquerque are those people who moved from Phoenix to Albuquerque. But Albuquerque is a good example of Ed's point–and a contradiction: back in the 70's, when everyone was moving further from downtown (not truly to the burbs, but just further away to newer developments), the city government decided that downtown was toast and therefore they'd just give up on it. So it declined and they even tore down the beautiful Alvarado hotel, a Fred Harvey hotel and restaurant and long an Albuquerque destination. The complex was also was the railroad station. A true part of Albuquerque's identity. But the city government didn't see any reason to spend money to save it because no one came downtown anymore. A crying shame. Downtown wallowed for a while until the city government got a lightbulb and started encouraging businesses to open up downtown. Ironically, they even "rebuilt" the Alvarado, although there is no hotel. It's the main transportation hub. The city is trying NOT to abandon downtown–finally recognizing that indeed there are folks who want to live, work and play down here.
But then, Albuquerque was founded in 1706, making it a good deal older than almost all other American cities. Maybe that's the difference…
Elle says:
This surprised me, so I tried to find some figures on population trends for those three cities. All of the figures I found suggest they're growing, although there are concerns about Liverpool's population growth, which is slower than in comparator city Manchester, and is being underpinned by immigration from outside the UK.
None of these cities could be compared to Detroit in terms of the outcomes of political indifference, although I think Liverpool could argue that it has been depleted, or at least had its growth constrained, by the political indifference of Westminster past.
Yes, your entertaining description of Glasgow made me think you must live (or have lived) in the Far East. Probably not in Pilton, though?
I've been lucky enough (if that's your kind of thing) to have lived in a bunch of cities, in Europe and elsewhere, and to have travelled to lots and lots, including all across America. There are no charming tourist cities, in my experience, in which you can't tell that people are exploited to make the window-dressing pop. I've never been to a city in which there wasn't a great deal to love, and I find it's generally best to ignore the modern Here Be Dragons dire warnings for travellers, which are usually extrapolated from one person's terrible (and rare) experience. If you have an average amount of common sense then people are people and cities are cities.
HelenaHandbasket says:
This post reminded me vividly of my own experience, moving to NYC in 1978 as a poor artist. The muggings, the robberies, the scary subway rides.
I'd like to know what I should have done instead. It would appear that, simply by being educated and daring to believe I might be able to have a life that wasn't just about survival, but actually about great music and art, like the New York City Opera (of blessed memory), but too poor to live in any of the then all-white areas, my moving into New York City back in the late '70's constituted some kind of imperialistic gentrification.
Best I can figure – my presence, in my frequently-robbed West 98th Street micro-studio (under the rafters of the building – it used to snow onto the top of my refrigerator) led to the gentrification of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. This makes me a sickeningly privileged, rich spoiled brat whose whiteyness should have been banned from the island of Manhattan. . . and Brooklyn . . . and Queens . . .
So – where would I have had a right to live in New York? Yeah, I was white, but I was broke as shit. I worked two minimum-wage jobs to afford my apartment. I was an aspiring opera singer. I didn't realize that I shouldn't be allowed to live in my "urban" neighborhood unless I was related to at least one drug dealer, and at least one prison inmate and at least one low-income young woman with two or three children by random men by the age of 22 or 23 or so.
Is there anywhere that young educated white people who are not financed by their parents or accepting of their parents' rules, who would like to make common cause with poorer people, less educated people and darker-skinned people, can reach out effectively and make a serious political difference?
Major Kong says:
I live in the city, well suburbs actually, because I can't afford to live in the country.
By the time you buy the camper, boat, trailer, motorcycles, 4-wheelers, various guns, lawn tractor and the heavy-duty pickup truck to haul the whole assembly around with……
cromartie says:
Cleveland has it's bad patches, but it is trying to right itself economically around healthcare. Perhaps, as a Richard Florida would point out, not the best plan, but with two world class healthcare organizations it's something.
Between University Circle, the CSU campus, the Clinic, and Ohio City there are pockets of innovation that may, eventually salvage the city. It's rejuvenation post steel industry collapse is much slower and more halting than Pittsburgh, to be sure.
Having lived in both cities, I hold out less hope for Detroit. And, as perverse as it is, I'm a supporter of turning the lights off and consolidating population. Consolidate the cost of services and bank the land for either urban farming or future redevelopment, if there is any.
On the plus side, another 20 years or so and this romanticism will go away. Why? Because when all the people in the Sun Belt realize they've sucked all the water out of the ground they'll come running for the places that still have it.
That is, if the fact we're running out of oil doesn't bring the current era of suburbanization crashing down on us first.
eau says:
Damn you, Cromartie! Beat me to it!
I read 34 responses without noticing anyone mention Lake St Clair, the future scarcity of water, and the likelihood of Detroit starting to look pretty attractive when that whole situation gets pointy. Then you go and do with the last dang comment.
Or, if you prefer: Yes, good point.
Talisker says:
@Elle: Far East? Um, no. Canadian who has lived in Scotland and England for the last 20 years. I admit I didn't check on population trends for Liverpool etc, but that's my point — even the (relatively) less successful British cities are doing a lot better than their US counterparts.
"There are no charming tourist cities, in my experience, in which you can't tell that people are exploited to make the window-dressing pop." I don't know exactly what this means, but I spent 9 years living in the charming tourist city of Edinburgh and I don't think people there feel terribly exploited. And yes, maybe I absorbed some of the local prejudice against Glasgow. ;-)
Of course all this is generalisation, there are good and bad parts to any city and very few of them are outright war zones. But you can identify general trends which indicate "successful" and "less successful" cities.
The Raven says:
And when gasoline is $6/gallon…?
Tim H. says:
…We'll grab our ankles and say "ahh", for as long as we can, what else?
Nodzou says:
A Romantic Lament – but with more than a little shade of truth… I often read and generally like ginandtacos, but am saddened by the lack of theoretical reference.
The thing is, I am a perfessor – one of those eggheaded types who always wants proof. And not only that (proof is one of those things easy to fabricate – and difficult to 'prove' as it always depends on future experience, and so, carries with it the potential of falsification), I also want a clear theoretical framework through which to grasp.
So let's pause with the sentimental yearning for cities (which, as other commenters have pointed out, has led the author to imply some absurdities about Europe, where I live). You and I both want more of us to understand the role of cities in the world, great! here's a few references… read up everyone! I will list only a few classics. The following are a little dated, but the concepts have only been 'proven' correct countless times since they were written:
The death and life of great american cities, Jane Jacobs – a one of the best books ever written on the state of culture in the US – specifically tied to the subject of the post.
Cities and the wealth of nations, again Jane Jacobs – specifically about the necessary functions of cities within capitalism – if our cities go, so does our economy.
The City in History, Lewis Mumford – required reading for everyone who wants to understand what cities have meant for the development of the human race
The Highway and the City, Again Lewis Mumford – brilliant collection of essays – buy the book and read it!
I could go on, but would rather leave it up to you to find your own way…
Elle says:
@Talisker
'Far East' is what quite a number of people in Glasgow call Edinburgh. It's sarcastic, obviously.
I thought your point was that those cities were depopulating too? By what measures are you comparing British cities to US cities? There are not insignificant challenges to comparing cities within Europe, and probably even within the UK, given the plethora of different indicators of health, wellbeing, and so on that are collected at various administrative levels. I'm not sure that "X is a better city than Y", absent some robust analysis, tells us a whole lot more than what an individual's personal preference is.
I would think it rather odd to speak for the whole population of a city. Edinburgh is not a chocolate box paradise for all its residents, is my point. Like Manhattan, Paris, Tokyo, and Sydney, it relies on the low-paid army of hospitality workers' drudgery. The delightful linens at the Balmoral Hotel do not wash themselves. (Data point: The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) for 2009 (the most recent) places 6.8pc of the 5pc most deprived data zones in Scotland, in Edinburgh. There is poverty in Edinburgh.)
I agree with the last part, but you have to identify what you mean by 'success'. I would argue that a successful city facilitates its citizens' wellbeing, as equitably as possible. Others have a different view. A lot of discussion about what is or is not a 'good' city appears to rest on thinly veiled classist assumptions about poverty and community.
KZat says:
@Major Kong – Atlanta is blue, GA may be red but as more people from up North (yes, I'm one of them) move here the state is going blue like ATL, Savannah and Columbus.
I'm out in the burbs here because of traffic. If it were not such an issue I'd be in midtown in a flash even with ATL's water issues.
@Eau – water is going to be the death of Atlanta if we don't deal with it. When I moved here ATL had 30 days of drinking water. Here in the burbs the county has a reservoir, so no issues.
I'd still love to live in midtown though.
bb in GA says:
@cromartie
"That is, if the fact we're running out of oil doesn't bring the current era of suburbanization crashing down on us first."
Am I being 'Foxified" when I keep reading that recent discoveries show we have about a 200 year supply of shale oil in the USA? Could that be true, but at what price per barrel?
//bb
bb in GA says:
@KZat
We have discussed the water war here before. As Gomer Pyle would say "Surprise Surprise!":
We need coordinated government action on water in GA.
The fact is Georgia has NO natural lakes of any size. (When does a pond become a lake?) That is kind of odd considering that we are the largest state east of the Mississippi.
We need to tax ourselves (or in true Right Wing fashion – stop spending so much money on poor people (Sarc)) to build reservoirs.
Either that, or move to DEE-troit…
//bb
drdale says:
I admit that I like living in a city in the USA. There are a lot of cultural events that occur and many are free, depending on the city. Certainly there are more cultural events cities than suburbs. When moving The first thing that I look for are good schools. The problem with cities is that although there are plenty of good elementary schools, the number of good public middle/Jr. high schools decreases and fewer good high schools. I know of many people who will only live in a city if there children are in a magnet school with great test scores. If their children cannot attend these schools then they move to a suburban location with better schools. This of course adds to the declining state of the high schools. Additionally, with more than one child this dynamic continues.
Magnet schools are overall a bad prescription for an entire school system, but it does help retain people who might otherwise leave a city.
Major Kong says:
@bb
Am I being 'Foxified" when I keep reading that recent discoveries show we have about a 200 year supply of shale oil in the USA? Could that be true, but at what price per barrel?
As with most subjects, it's a little more complicated than that. I see numbers like that tossed around very casually, but what matters is proven reserves that can be extracted with current technology at an economical price.
1. All barrels of oil are not created equal. If it costs $100 to blast that barrel out of the shale, nobody's going to do it if they can only sell it for $90.
2. Equally as important – how fast can you pump it out of the ground? Ultimately it's about rates of production. There's no shortage of air – but just try breathing through a straw sometime.
3. Oil is a commodity that is traded and priced on the world market. It ultimately comes down to global supply versus global demand. The price of oil here would still be effected by supply/demand issues elsewhere.
4. To be able to set the price we would need to be the "swing producer". That's like being the guy at the poker table with the huge stack of chips who can run the game. Right now that's Saudi Arabia, because only they have enough excess capacity to be able to swing the price.
Off topic, but that's what mostly brought down the Soviet Union. The Saudis broke ranks with OPEC and ramped up production. That caused a glut of oil on the market which coincidentally drove the price of oil down to where the Russians (oil was their main export) went broke.
cromartie says:
eau,
Anecdotally, Las Vegas seems to be pretty water conscious. Phoenix, notsomuch. Denver and the Inland Empire/Fresno are mountain snow melt dependent, but at least Denver is upriver from Phoenix and can tell Phoenix to get bent if it comes down to it. Atlanta's water problems are well chronicled.
Many areas of the West, as well as Atlanta, are out populating their freshwater coverage. I pay for water in a year what my friend in Phoenix pays in a month. That is not sustainable.
Many old decaying cities were settled where they were for a reason, and that reason was an abundance of natural resources that originally made large populations sustainable. It was the invention of air conditioning (ironically, something perfected in Buffalo) and the automobile (in Detroit) that made large populations in places where the weather and habitat were not sustainable for them possible.
As large populations in places not equipped with the natural resources to sustain them become cost prohibitive, society has only two options: 1) find a way to make it cheaper or 2) move back to where it isn't cost prohibitive.
And while people bandy about the idea of a pipeline that would send Great Lakes water into the Southwest (prohibitively expensive), and/or are too cheap to come up with alternatives to energy problems (such as, oh, I don't know, using public funding for large scale solar energy farms), the cities currently in decay will eventually benefit. It may take a generation or two, but the pendulum will swing, eventually.
/bb in GA
YMMV, but I stand firmly on the Peak Oil side of the equation. Also, while you were sleeping, another 10,000 Indians just purchased their first car. The consequence of global industrialization is an ever increasing demand for oil. I've seen it first hand.
Talisker says:
@Ellie: OK, so I'd forgotten the other meaning of Far East. And I'm really not interested in some sort of Edinburgh vs. Glasgow stushie. Not having been born yesterday, I'm perfectly well aware that there are nice parts of Glasgow (I have close family in Bearsden), bad parts of Edinburgh, and good and bad jobs, happy and unhappy people in both.
I do wonder why you're singling out the tourist industry for so much venom. Folding sheets in a posh hotel isn't the most enjoyable or best-paid job in the world, but I fail to see how it's any worse than working in a supermarket or a call centre. Who's really being classist? :-)
More generally, I am not an expert in urban planning and I don't have the time or inclination to do a detailed quantitative analysis for a ginandtacos comment thread. Weirdly enough, I post here as a distraction from real work, based on whatever I can recall from memory. My posts are not researched, footnoted, or 100% serious and I am happy to be corrected on factual errors. Further disclaimers and fine print are available from my legal team.
Talisker says:
Oh, and I have no specific argument with the following:
But as ever, the devil is in the detail.
Elle says:
@Talisker
You're not having one. I have no skin in that game.
No venom at all, just that tourism (or business visiting, which involves an even heavier use of hotel / conference-type facilities) is the mode by which we generally access other cities, thereby forming some kind of opinion of them. You felt that the city you lived in didn't contain exploitation. My point was that the tourist industry is notoriously (perhaps inherently) exploitative and appropriative, and that the 'nicest' place on earth, according to some value judgments, is made that way by said exploitation of labour and resources.
Knock yourself out. I think the reason I generally like reading the comments here, and participating in the discussion, is that the commentariat is extremely well-informed and interesting. I've learned lots of fascinating things at G+T about American politics and life, and try to reciprocate by making the things I write about Europe as accurate as possible.
Well, quite. That's why it's important to select a yardstick before trying to measure things. Otherwise our perceptions of cities can rest on things like whether our hotel in Amsterdam was in between a bunch of lovely restaurants, or right at the epicentre of roving gangs of bachelor parties vomiting on streetlamps.
Facehammer says:
Hey Ed, as a fan of the Dying Earth subgenre, have you read The Book of the New Sun? If you haven't, you really should. It's incredible.
Talisker says:
That's really not what I was saying. I said (in what was intended to be a jocular fashion) that the residents of Edinburgh, as a group, don't feel terribly exploited. That's not the same as believing there's no exploitation at all. Good grief, it's a city of half a million people with (among other things) a significant sex industry, I'd have to be a complete idiot to think everyone within the city limits was leading a shiny happy and non-exploited life.
Notoriously? Worse than oil or arms manufacturing? I don't think so. I don't agree it's inherently exploitative either. Last month I spent 4 days cycling around Yorkshire, staying in hostels and bed-and-breakfasts, and I'm not convinced that caused anyone to be exploited.
Don't get me wrong, tourism can abuse people too, especially in poorer countries where there's a serious imbalance of power between local people and the Hilton corporation or whoever. I just don't think tourism is so bad in the context of a US or British city. (The plight of the low-paid is very important, but it goes far beyond the tourist industry and I think it's distinct from urban planning and development.)
Yeah, fair enough. As I say, happy to be corrected on factual details.
I think the technical term for assessing quality of life in an entire city based on one brief visit is "stupidity". Of course some people still do just that, but I try not to be one of them.
Elle says:
That's not what I said, or meant. I'm not sure on what basis that those sectors could be compared, and what the point of that would be.
At the micro level, tourism obviously doesn't always involve exploitation. I'm not even sure that at the global level it's inherently exploitative, which is why I suggested it as a possibility, because I don't have an opinion either way. Unfortunately, we know from the data that economic exploitation is endemic within the sector.
Across Europe (and no doubt elsewhere, but I know about Europe), the tourism sector employee base is predominantly young and female. It's characterised by short-term stints of employment, and a degree (although there is geographical difference in this, with much in the South and almost none in Scandic countries) of seasonality. Ceteris paribus, there is relatively weak unionisation of tourist labour, and the work is relatively low-paid and low status. In many European countries, and regions, the tourist sector depends on migrant labour. With such a high level of vulnerable workers in the sector, there are significant levels of unlawful exploitation and straight-up abuse of employees. I think that paying people below a living wage is exploitation, and it's hard to find wages at that level or higher across the tourism and hospitality sectors.
There are interrelationships between urban planning, particularly with regard to urban renewal, and economic development and strategic growth plans for tourism. Cities that have positioned themselves as international conference destinations are an obvious example of this, but I can't imagine a city-level economic strategy that didn't include tourism and the built environment.
Globally, I think there's little argument with the idea that tourism is a grotesquely destabilising force. Tourism that seriously engages with sustainability is the exception.
Talisker says:
@Ellie: All I meant was that, insofar as comparison to other forms of industry is possible, tourism is not necessarily that bad.
None of what you wrote about bad conditions in the tourist industry was much of a surprise to me. What I take away from it is not that tourism (or hosting business conferences) is bad, but that refusing to allow unions and pay a living wage is bad.
Elle says:
Well, yes, these things are bad (and unlawful, with regard to proscribing trade union membership in the EU, per Art. 11 ECHR), but the point as it relates to urban renewal (far though it may be from the original point) is that a city or country that prioritises the development of its tourism sector, without taking steps to mitigate the impact of that, will be making some de facto choices about income inequality and wellbeing.
Jon says:
All this talk of dying cities hits a little close to home. Having grown up in Toledo, Ohio, (a dying city in its own right) a place where Detroit is the place to go for "culture" (music, sports, etc), I can attest to everything mentioned in this post. I personally love Toledo, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone living within city limits that is doing so by choice.
mclaren says:
'S funny… Was reading John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes the other day about alien invaders who head to the bottom of the ocean and promptly start melting the polar icecaps and causing general havoc… And it occurred to me that the kinds of insanely apocalyptic catastrophes science fiction writers used to depict evil aliens subjecting the earth to, are now being perpetrated by humans against ourselves.
Oh well. "Smart primates, foolish choices."
Perhaps when the horseshoe crabs evolve intelligence, they'll have better luck sustaining a civilization.
Dan says:
Chris Lewis has beaten me to it. Anyone who's been to Liverpool in the last thirty years will know that, while it can't compete with Detroit's donut of devastation, it has square miles that have been bulldozed and others where gorgeous Victorian villas have been trashed to build cramped maisonettes, which don't meet the old Parker Morris space standards but provided a brief shot in the arm for the construction industry.
As Chris says, the UK wing of the Chicago School were up for abandoning Liverpool to market forces, not least because Liverpool's Militant Tendency created a radical (if not necessarily viable) alternative which Thatcher (aka "TINA" – "There Is No Alternative") sought to deny. But some of the more paternalistic "One Nation" Tories got spooked. The centre ground has moved far further to the right now – most of the Tories are out-and-out free-market fundamentalists now. If the Euro goes south, the UK elite will have no compunction in facilitating the depopulation of Liverpool, Middlesborough and other Northern post-industrial cities which are now too reliant on the public sector for employment ("crowding out the private sector" – according to the Tories – but who wants to invest there?).
Harvey Jamison says:
Nice article!! This is all new to me. Thanks for the information.
Dexter Barnett says:
I guess even a city or any kind of dwelling has its own life span. You just hope that people don’t forget but often times, they do.