Like so many urbanists, Richard Florida went into a “state of shock” on the election of Donald Trump. And yet, on reflection, he ends up agreeing with Trump’s basic principles regarding the cities.
Even if Clinton had won, he realized, “we would have been unlikely to see anything like the sweeping new set of urban policies that I’d recommended” in his books. As a result, he reached the “stunning” conclusion that, “When it comes to urban policy and much else, the federal government is the wrong vehicle for getting things done and for getting them done right.”
This, of course, is exactly why Trump and his supporters want to end federal funding of urban programs. Unfortunately, Florida doesn’t really understand the reasons for the blue-red divide, arguing it has more to do with gay rights and homophobism than economic stagnation and declining working-class jobs.
In fact, the real problem is that most of the policies advocated by progressives such as Florida, from high-speed rail to urban density, are aimed at making cities comfortable for what he calls the “creative class” (meaning the college educated) while shutting out the working class. Because he doesn’t understand this, many of his prescriptions will only exacerbate the political divide.
Rather than say cities should be responsible for paying for their own projects, as Trump urges, Florida is more interested in social policy. Using growth boundaries to increase density drives out the working classes who can’t afford housing. Increasing the minimum wage to $15 drives out working class jobs. Building light rail to downtowns while letting streets crumble favors white collar commuters over blue collar workers. Agreeing to the Paris accords on climate change makes middle-class people feel good while it threatens working-class livelihoods.
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Florida is dimly aware of some of this. “Large, dense blue cities,” he admits, “suffer from higher housing costs and higher tax burdens. Sprawling red cities benefit from lower housing costs and an easier path to the American dream of home ownership.” The trade off, he claims, is that the dense cities have “higher rates of innovation, productivity and wages.” However, much of that is an artifact of the policies that made those cities unaffordable: if all the low-wage jobs fled to more affordable cities, the jobs that are left will be, by definition, high-wage jobs. But that doesn’t mean a janitor in San Francisco can earn enough money to live in a house equal to the house they could afford in Houston.
For example, half of the people age 25 or older in the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose urban areas have bachelor’s degrees or better and thus are a part of Florida’s creative class, while only a third of those in the Houston area have such educations. But does that mean the San Francisco Bay Area has been better at attracting the creative class or that it has been more successful at pushing out the working class?
Florida believes in cities because, he says, “The world’s 50 largest cities and metropolitan areas house just 7 percent of the Earth’s population but generate 40 percent of its economic activity.” But this conflates “cities” and “metropolitan areas,” meaning cities and their suburbs. What Florida doesn’t see is that, without the suburbs, the cities can be crippled.
I’m glad Florida agrees that the federal government can do more harm than good for the cities. Unfortunately, many state and local policies have done even more harm.
I’m curious if the author also advocates for suburbs and rural areas pay for their own projects as well or feels urban ares should be the only ones. Also does the author have any data on how much urban areas pay into the federal government compared to how much funding they get in return.
I know on the state level in Minnesota when it comes to transportation infrastructure the Twin Cities pay more into the state infrastructure fund then they get back meaning that rural areas are SUBSIDIZED. Also the city of St. Louis pays more into the state infrastructure fund then they get back in return. Knowing of these two disparities on the state level in funding for urban vs rural areas I would not be surprised if those disparities appear on the federal level as well but I’m sure the author will provide some DATA to support his claim and dispute the notion that urban ares don’t pay their fair share when it comes to federal projects. .
https://streets.mn/2015/01/14/map-of-the-day-state-highway-taxes-vs-state-highway-spending/
http://www.startribune.com/metro-contributes-half-of-transportation-dollars-gets-fewer-in-return/416565963/
http://www.mocbt.org/urban-transportation-donors/
Everyone should pay their way. I suspect that if this rule were followed, it would not result in fewer people living in suburbs; it might result in more; but I don’t care, I just want everyone to pay their own way. If we want to help poor people, we can, but our efforts should be targeted on the poor, not on everyone in a city or urban area. BTW, suburbs are a part of urban areas.
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I know on the state level in Minnesota when it comes to transportation infrastructure the Twin Cities pay more into the state infrastructure fund then they get back meaning that rural areas are SUBSIDIZED.
” ~sketter
This talk has been around for quite some time. It’s fundamental problem is that people are ignoring the base issues:
a) The purpose of having a state government is for the counties, for the people within the state, to work together to get done what _everyone_ needs to get done. The system was not designed to distribute funds based on purely on where the money comes from, it’s largely need based. It is quite fair.
b) The measurements are quite limited. They don’t including all state spending for all transporttion projects like US212, MN610, Northstar, Hiawatha LRT, et al. They appear to be measuring income and spending accordance to the Highway Users Tax Distribution Fund that is enshrined in the MN state constitution. They’re not measuring all transportation spending in the state.
c) There are lesser but important questions. Because of the nature of auto sales ( more sales volumes == lower prices ), some of the measurement is going to skew toward regional centers and high volume areas. 3.1 Million people live in the MPLS-STPL area. 3.9 Million live in the greater CSA. A large part of that 700,00+ people are in counties not in the MSA but buying cars and gas in the MSA and even in the urban area. No one is talking about how much those numbers are goosed upward because of this activity.
Does that make sense? They’re not measuring all transportation spending and income, just one silo. And at that the point of the system is to pay for all those outstate roads since – according to the current political paradigm – roads are a public good.
And of course, this brings things full circle. The streetsMN crowd seems to have enjoyed several times in recent years chattering about state road spending going toward counties that couldn’t otherwise afford to maintain the roads that they do. I have not seen anything streetsMN questioning why the Federal government is spending so much money on projects like Northstar, Hiawatha and US212 when they don’t create federal level benefits.
I know on the state level in Minnesota when it comes to transportation infrastructure the Twin Cities pay more into the state infrastructure fund then they get back meaning that rural areas are SUBSIDIZED.
” ~sketter
Where does all your food, fuel, and electricity come from?
If those of us outside the big city walled you off, how long would you last without us? A lot less time than we would last without you.
You need to help pay for the road upkeep in Polk County so the farmers can get their harvest to market and so you can eat.
I have to say that I’m heartened that the left is suddenly enamored with federalism, although it’s funny to hear them talk about it:
Why would a nation of 300 million-plus people, 50 states, 350-plus metro areas, 3,000-plus counties, and thousands and thousands of cities and communities choose to vest so much power in one person and one office?
…
And if that sounds like going back to an old-fashioned, conservative conception of how federalism should work—a kind of extreme localism—to address the sorts of issues liberals worry about, so be it. America needs nothing less than a revolution in how we govern ourselves, or we’ll only end up poorer, angrier and more divided.
Mr. Florida should realize that a revolution was already fought, with the United States winning in 1783. It’s just been in the past 100 years or so that people of his ideological persuasion have weakened federalism to the point of the US almost losing their federal government and gaining a national government.
But better late than never. And right now is an excellent time for the big blue states to become more independent, considering their fiscal condition. It wouldn’t take much arm twisting for the red states to agree to a much smaller federal government, just as long as the red states don’t have to bail out the blue states.
Which is probably the reason that the left is so absolutely freaked out about Hillary’s loss. They were counting on that Chicago gal to bail out their overextended finances. Now…what? Illinois has pretty much stopped paying their bills, CA just dumped any hope of universal health insurance, and other big blue states are in even worse shape.
It’s going to be an interesting eight years.
“You need to help pay for the road upkeep in Polk County so the farmers can get their harvest to market and so you can eat.”
Muh roads!
SJW’s and teahadi’s are both destructive. :$
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The real measure of success is not, “did we meet our ridership projections?” Instead, it is, “Is this the most cost-effective way we could achieve our goals?”
” ~ The Anti-Planner
The trade off, he claims, is that the dense cities have “higher rates of innovation, productivity and wages.”
The core problem that Florida and others have is that they don’t yet realize – or maybe just lack the decency – to admit that innovation is a nebulous, largely immeasurable thing.
What they actually do instead do are mainly measure 2 things: credentials and patents. Patents overwhelming are measured almost solely by patents. Sometimes you’ll see people throw in some things involving credentials, either PhDs, “tech jobs ” or something else like that.
The minor problem is that they don’t take on definiing innovation. Without a solid defnition you can’t measure something.
Then by using number of patents, they are arguing that patents are innovative. They still do this today despite the overwhelming evidence that most patents are ___WORTHLESS____. They’re not measuring innovation. They are measurely counting a pile of pennies… a pile of patents and declaring whomever has the biggest pile to be king. It’s purely puerile, irrational foolish hubris behavior. It’s how PhDs earned the nick-name “pissing for height and distance”.
Not only do they ignore that clear evidence that the lion share of patents are not innovative, but they ignore how government research work. Government programs don’t allow for them. So as the government churns out really innovative, groundbreaking stuff like HTTP and the microchip, the credit goes elsewhere because Intel or iBM has a few hundred PhDs whose lives revolve around research that generates patents. Silicon Valley gets credit for the innovation while the government that created the stuff gets none.
Now that’s not fully true. There is a type of innovation about taking the microchip, http, an OS and throwing a touch screen with a GUI in front of it ( aka the iPhone ) and making it easy to use. But that’s really a mash-up and tweaking of technologies that were created elsewhere.
And of course not all innovation has value. I can patent a flame-spewing kazoo that never sells because, a) no one buys kazoos and b) because no one wants fire that close to their eyebrows. Heck, there’s probably a handful or two of patents that could go into that flame-shooting kazoo. It may be innovative but it’s value is pretty much bupkiss.
Folks like Florida seem to assume that all innovation produces value.
Personally, I’d rather see a lot more value placed on innovation that lasts and is embraced by the masses. Juarez should get mad innovation points for inventing the burrito. That’s worth way more than Amazon’s patent on the shopping cart browser cookie. And if we ever figure out who invented General Tso’s chicken, they too should get a butt ton of innovation credits.
That said, I wouldn’t throw Florida into the big city cheerleader crowd. At some level he seems to get that a lot of small cities like Rochester ( MN ), Boulder, Ann Arbor, Oak Ridge, Burlington ( Vt ) and others are very innovative by his and other measurements. I think at some level he gets that it’s not about being a big, dense city but can’t fully come to terms with that reality.