“The Twilight of Great American Cities Is Here,” screams the headline of an article by my friend, Joel Kotkin. He argues that, between the pandemic and the riots following the George Floyd death, people are not going to return to the cities.
Certainly, rents are down and vacancy rates are up in New York City and San Francisco. But does that mean that the cities won’t bounce back after the pandemic is over?
A major pandemic does not “introduce something novel,” observes a historian named Stephen Davies. Instead, “it accelerates and magnifies trends and processes that were already under way.” It can also bring “a final stop to processes that were already exhausted.”
There are certainly many trends that the pandemic is likely to accelerate, including the decline in transit ridership. But the downtowns of some cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, were growing before the pandemic. So why should we think that the pandemic alone (or in combination with the Floyd protests) would be able to reverse this trend?
There are at least two trends that suggest that Kotkin is correct. First, a recent analysis of pre-pandemic data indicates that Millennials, who were supposedly going to live their entire lives in dense cities, are echoing their parents by moving into the suburbs. Multifamily home construction peaked in 2015, while single-family starter home construction has been growing. Thus, the trends for the inner cities weren’t all positive before the pandemic.
Still, many people believe that the value of face-to-face communications will keep many businesses, particularly in the finance industry, downtown. That was the argument of Edward Glaeser’s 2011 book, Triumph of the City, which — as far as I know — only got one negative review.
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However, a blog post by New York City investor James Altucher points out that there has been a major change since Glaeser was writing his book: bandwidth.
“In 2008, average bandwidth speeds were 3 megabits per second,” says Altucher. “That’s not enough for a Zoom meeting with reliable video quality. Now, it’s over 20 megabits per second. That’s more than enough for high-quality video.” Face-to-face meetings may still be important in some instances, but those instances are rapidly declining.
People do lots of things on line today that they wouldn’t have thought of doing a decade or so ago. They buy clothes and shoes on line without getting a chance to try them on. They buy groceries on line. I always imagined people would buy canned and packaged goods on line, but would insist on picking out their own produce and fresh meats, but instead many people are buying on line produce, meats, bakery goods, and other things whose quality can vary.
Manhattan and downtown San Francisco aren’t going to become ghost towns. Someone is going to occupy that space. But the demand for new skyscrapers is going to fall. The push for density, in housing or in jobs, is going to have less relevance. If the San Francisco Bay Area wants to compete against Houston or Phoneix, it will have to jettison the urban-growth boundaries that have made housing expensive. Transportation policies centered around urban transit will make visibly less sense than ever before.
It’s interesting that whoever wrote the headline for Kotkin’s article took the phrase “Great American Cities” from Jane Jacobs’ book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. That book, even more than Glaeser’s, has become the bible of those who support policies that promote dense urban living. The reality is that Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, and Phoenix are just as great, if not greater, than the San Francisco Bay Area, though their densities are much lower. The lesson is clear: it’s time to stop identifying “great cities” with density.
South Korea subsidized a massive fiber optic data network for it’s cities in Villages, that’s why they have the fastest internet net in the world. You can download a bluray quality movie in 5 minutes.
As for cities; Dem platforms argue they should “Rise Up”
They never “Rose up” against the democrats who turned their cities into ghettos; they didn’t rise up against the Dems who turned their schools into prison pipelines or when the welfare state chased all their fathers out of their homes; they didn’t rise up when they die in droves in violence strewn inner cities. 100 years of democratic management……they still cant rise, this I suspect is by design. They’re to be kept complacent, sedentary and stupid.
In the 70’s New York City saved itself from financial oblivion with Municipal Assistance Corporation where the tax money went to the state and they spent a portion on city services and a portion paying off debts. That wont work for NYC, because the states is in no shape to contribute neither is the city. 420,000 high income earners packed and left for good. You cannot recover from that; that was nearly a quarter of the City’s tax base. When the rich leave; middle and lower income people become the DeFacto tax base. It’s something people just don’t understand; because they just cry “ME ME, MINE MINE”. Instead of attaching stipulations to welfare that required volunteer work or pass co-pays for food stamps, they pushed it with virtually No restrictions. Or revamp pensions in public sector by defined contributions.
It’s the entitlement mentality the left has cultivated. There’s an entire class of people in America; whose overall obedience and compliance with the law/order is bought solely by entitlement spending; You think the Floyd riots were bad? What do you think is gonna happen when they run out of food stamps or unemployment. Worse the pension system collapses from the decline in tax revenue you think the police and emergency workers will show up for work one day. When Stockton, California went bankrupt they laid off 2/3 of their police force, with 17 murders per 100,000 they’re now 4 times the US average.
Sandy Springs, Georgia is notable among US cities; incorporated in the 2000’s, as a new city from scratch they had No real government workforce to speak of. Rather than sink into the pension trap or debt from huge public service sector, contracting private companies to perform the majority of its services, landscaping, paving, infrastructure, etc is all done by competitive bids from subcontractors.
At some point urban residents will have to galvanize some sort of independent effort to handle affairs rather than wait for government. Waiting for government got them into their situation in the first place. Especially among the African American community. The problem is White leftists and people in government always hijack their movement. In 1969, the Black Panthers created the free breakfast program to serve families in Oakland, California. By the end of 1969, the program fed 20,000 children across 19 cities. Other survival programs included clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Today they do almost none off that anymore
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Manhattan and downtown San Francisco aren’t going to become ghost towns. Someone is going to occupy that space.
” ~antiplanner
I think it’s wise to emphasize that this isn’t about places being empty. Some places that were bad off before covid19 + the riots – like Minneapolis’ Lake St & Chicago Ave area are toast. They weren’t good to start with and they ain’t comin’ back.
But ya, places like downtown San Francisco are not going to empty out. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a lot of pain. If companies start to clear out there’s going to be a lot more commerical real estate bankrupcties before the market find an equilibrium. Even at that, it may be that the demand isn’t high enough – even at massively lower valuations and rents – to fill all that space. It’s a lot of space.
The first act when a government is overthrown/collapse is non-constitutional, non democratic authorities fill in the gap. Africa fell to warlordism. MidEast fell to a fundamentalist theocracy. What you saw in the CHOP/Chaz zones was the return of Tribalism. A group mentality that stresses survival by inflicting violence in ALL directions even at their own.
The cultural and intellectual mindset of how societies collapse is clearly understood and we’ve seen the experiments worldwide both in the last 2000 years and last century. South Africa, MidEast, Asia, and European nations, etc.
1: Put groups with different average IQs and cultural mindsets together.
2. Different group outcomes emerge on factors like education, employment, wealth accumulation, etc (lots of individual exceptions) but largely cultures that stress education, knowledge, industry, science and set moral standards do well….Societies that don’t; huge sums of their populace become wards of the state, welfare collectors or future prison inmates.
3. Destroy anyone who talks about differences; degrade education and institutions that foster intelligent debate and freer societies. Then condemn the successful til they leave
4. Attribute the differential outcomes on Bigotry rather than performance and acceptance of personal behavior and admitting faults
5. Watch the bloodshed in the streets.
Analytical and historic research shows low-IQ groups are incapable of sustaining a democracy or beneficial form of government. Sub-Saharan Africa; IQ’s range in the mid 60’s to low 80’s. Had we been allowed to discuss IQ and do cognitive/intelligence research that colleges largely banned after the WWII; the Iraq War would never had happened…Because no one would have been under the illusion a “Jeffersonian Republic” would emerge from a population with an IQ in the low 80’s. Geopolitical stability and political freedom Cannot survive average IQ’s below 90.
Many indigenous socities; average IQ’s occupy the range of the low 80’s that is why tribalism was their main form of governing. 400 years of exposure to modernity still fail to progress. The opposite of extirpation is fleeing; which High IQ Jews and Chinese and Koreans did. They fled the Holocaust, Cultural Revolution and Korean War respectively, fled their homeland with NOTHING in their pockets and no English skills, Were discriminated against; and in no more than 2-3 generations matched or exceeded US median Incomes, constitute the lowest crime demographics.
IQ Matters far more than skin color or what you call God(s).