More than twenty years ago, Joel Garreau observed that every American central city except Detroit had undergone a renaissance. Detroit’s problem then, and now, seem to be poor governance, something that can’t be fixed by federal subsidies.
Yet someone was bound to blame Detroit’s bankruptcy on urban sprawl, a benign settlement pattern that seems to get blamed for just about everything bad that happens. Surprisingly, perhaps, in this case the blame is cast by Paul Krugman, who claims that “job sprawl” doomed Detroit.
Krugman compares Detroit with Pittsburgh, noting that the latter has experienced a revival since 2005, while Detroit continued to spiral downward. The reason, says Krugman, is that “less than a quarter of Detroit jobs are within 10 miles of the traditional central business district, versus more than half in Pittsburgh.”
This is simply not buy viagra no prescription donssite.com accurate. An efficient business operation is only possible when you have a medical http://donssite.com/kid-surfing-surfer-boy-on-surf-board.htm generic levitra condition, or your body has a negative reaction. If you want to have the exact impact of the medicine on you as the doctor suggested then make sure you have it according to the coordinated dose of your human services master. online levitra have a peek at this link It is always suggested to take the pill cialis tadalafil generico as per the necessity from the dependable agency. The Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Wendell Cox, begs to differ. First, he points out that 40 percent of the area within ten miles of Detroit’s city center is either a lake or in Canada–and Canadian jobs aren’t counted in U.S. statistics. Thus, unless Krugman expects Detroit to have twice the job density at its center, the difference between Pittsburgh and Detroit jobs is inconsequential.
Second, Cox points out that Pittsburgh avoided bankruptcy by relying on Pennsylvania’s “Financially Distressed Municipalities Act,” allowing it to easily dismiss hundreds of employees and shut down many city services in 2003. Michigan has no similar law, making it politically difficult for Detroit to cut its costs earlier in the last decade.
More generally, USC planning professor Peter Gordon looked at the growth data for cities and suburbs since 1950. He concluded that fast-growing suburbs in one decade lead to faster growth of the central cities in the next. Thus, job sprawl actually benefits cities, rather than harms them as Krugman presumes.
Detroit has a lot of problems. Urban sprawl isn’t one of them.
Compared to other major cities, an extremely high percentage of Detroit’s housing stock is single family dwellings. The population of Detroit today is about one-third what is was 50 years ago, but it still covers 128 square miles. So now you have tens of thousands of derelict homes, and maybe one occupied house in a neighbourhood that still (sort of) requires street lighting, water, trash pickup, street maintenance, etc.
In this case, I’m not sure the the “settlement pattern” was “benign.”
That was the first writing of Krugman I’ve ever read.
What a disappointment. Did he really think the US Government takeover of GM was going to revive downtown Detroit???
Krugman is an idiot.
“…a benign settlement pattern that seems to get blamed for just about everything bad that happens.”
I don’t know, you’ve made the case that growth management is to blame for everything bad in America. I guess if you can’t blame it on sprawl, blame it on planners.
“More generally, USC planning professor Peter Gordon looked at the growth data for cities and suburbs since 1950. He concluded that fast-growing suburbs in one decade lead to faster growth of the central cities in the next.”
I love that you recognize the interrelationship between the urban and suburban. The fact is, these lower density suburban, utopian paradises wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have the communist, disputation, higher density, horrid, hellish plannerscape central cities to glom themselves onto. You can’t have one without the other.
Here is another nugget, in addition to his fake alien invasion and baby sitting cooperative:
I wish people would ignore Krugman. His claims, even given the limited space a column always, are far too often clearly outlandish and lacking thought. The first concern of mine with it isn’t in the details, it’s his general approach. He’ measuring modern day Detroit’s job density and declaring that it’s the cause of the problem, not a symptom.
If Krugman were a doctor seeing a 320 pount patient with a severe thyroid condition , he would declare it’s the patients weight has caused the thyroid problem. Never mind the other 8 patients he had previously seen that day that weighed 300+ and didn’t have any current health problems. And he wouldn’t even consider that this patient in his office right now may have gained the weight as a result of the thyroid problem. Nope, Dr. Krugman being on the anti-weight kick he’s on would declare the patient’s thyroid was caused by the patients weight.
Who needs logic when they have a NYT soap box to stand on, eh?
BTW – Has Krugman let people in Dallas and Houston know that their cities too are about to go bankrupt just like Detroit?
The only positive thing I can bring myself to say about Krugman is that, he appears to be a cat owner, and given the man’s affluence and aristocratic lifestyle, the cat probably lives a very decent, happy life.
Beyond that, I have nothing but awful things to say about Krugman.
The fact is, these lower density suburban, utopian paradises wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have the communist, disputation, higher density, horrid, hellish plannerscape central cities to glom themselves onto. You can’t have one without the other.
Just about any Sunbelt city and even a fair number in what is commonly called the “Rust Belt” refute this statement.
I wish people would ignore Krugman. His claims, even given the limited space a column always, are far too often clearly outlandish and lacking thought. The first concern of mine with it isn’t in the details, it’s his general approach. He’s measuring modern day Detroit’s job density and declaring that it’s the cause of the problem, not a symptom.
Nick Gillespie at Reason pretty much nailed it the other day when he identified Krugman as an intellectual shut-in. He doesn’t even bother to engage his intellectual counterparts any more, much less understand their positions. He basically holds anyone with contrary positions to his in contempt and as being intellectually inferior. Or just evil or mean-spiritied. He can, of course, get away with it given how slavish and fawning his audience at NYT is.
BTW – Has Krugman let people in Dallas and Houston know that their cities too are about to go bankrupt just like Detroit?
JOB SPRAWL!!!!???!!!
Any discussion of Detroit’s demise is incomplete without the…erm…social dynamics behind White Flight, and also the reign of Coleman Young and his graft-demanding cronies. White flight is a strong driver of out-migration in that place.
DS
Dan wrote:
Any discussion of Detroit’s demise is incomplete without the…erm…social dynamics behind White Flight, and also the reign of Coleman Young and his graft-demanding cronies. White flight is a strong driver of out-migration in that place.
Consider one of Coleman Young’s contemporaries, former District of Columbia Mayor-for-Life Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr. By the time Barry was sworn in as D.C. Mayor in 1979 (over 11 years after the April 1968 D.C. riots), white flight out of much of the city had already happened (there are certain (large) parts of D.C. where white flight never happened). During Barry’s first three terms (which were to lead up to his arrest on crack cocaine charges at the Vista Hotel in 1990), black flight out of D.C. was much more the problem.
I don’t know the demographics of Detroit, but I would assume there was a fair amount of middle-class black flight leaving that city after the whites had left.
It would have been better to mention the percentage of jobs that are greater than 20 miles from downtown Detroit and downtown Pittsburgh. Virtually no jobs are farther away from downtown Pittsburgh than 20 miles, except for the jobs near the airport. Jobs in Detroit are scattered throughout what seems to be a 1,000 square mile area, while jobs in Pittsburgh are concentrated in downtown and Oakland, the university district. Detroit stands out even amongst other American cities for its sprawl and decrepit transit service, which strands the poor in crumbling inner city blocks and ex-urban quasi-shanty towns while the slightly better off have to drive miles just to find a decent grocery store. But yes, the poor placement of downtown Detroit at the extreme south-east portion of the city adjacent to the Canadian border has probably contributed to its decline.
Iced Borscht wrote:
The only positive thing I can bring myself to say about Krugman is that, he appears to be a cat owner, and given the man’s affluence and aristocratic lifestyle, the cat probably lives a very decent, happy life.
Most domestic cats that own humans are able to live a decent and happy life. Cats don’t concern themselves with the politics of their humans.
Beyond that, I have nothing but awful things to say about Krugman.
Please don’t forget one of Krugman’s best-ever columns (in 2005) was about (excessive) land use regulation and how it was contributing to the bursting of the real estate bubble.
I usually agree with Krugman more that I disagree with him, but in this case, I believe that Krugman was wrong. I don’t see how “job sprawl” had much to do with the bankruptcy of Detroit.
I think corrupt and often racist (as in reverse-racist) municipal government, combined with the decline of a dominant (but often mismanaged) industry that needs to have large (and sprawling) plants in order to build its products, has helped to push Detroit over the fiscal cliff.
“Any discussion of Detroit’s demise is incomplete without the…erm…social dynamics behind White Flight”
And that discussion is incomplete without looking at the racist effects of the war on drugs and its contribution to “white flight”.
Frank wrote:
And that discussion is incomplete without looking at the racist effects of the war on drugs and its contribution to “white flight”.
Black flight as well. Certainly the so-called “War on Drugs” (and a spike in murders, directly related to drugs) contributed greatly to the flight of thousands of (mostly black) middle-class families from the District of Columbia while Barry was Mayor. And his arrest for smoking crack cocaine at the Vista Hotel was also related to the so-called “War on Drugs” (and municipal corruption, even though Barry has never been convicted of stealing from the till or taking bribes).
Good points. There’s also the CIA involvement in crack. Then the fed gov legislates severe mandatory sentencing for crack use/possession (used largely by poor inner-city minority residents) many orders of magnitude greater than punishment for powder cocaine (used largely by wealthier whites). Both crack and meth might never have been invented or used to the extent they reached absent unconstitutional drug prohibition.
White Flight began long before the official War On Drugs – it increased in earnest after the riots of 1967. Nevertheless, my dad used to have lots of stories about his friends and associates who tried to move their businesses back into Day-twa – Coleman Young’s cronies required so much grease on their palms it ended up not being worth it.
DS
Most domestic cats that own humans are able to live a decent and happy life. Cats don’t concern themselves with the politics of their humans.
I’d like to give a shout-out to cats
It is so interesting to see “white flight” portrayed as a “cause” and not a “symptom”. Millions of people made independent decisions on what was best for their lives. That is pretty much the definition of “freedom”. Even the black middle class certainly doesn’t owe anybody enough to force their kids to live in dangerous neighborhoods and go to bad schools to perhaps help, “under left wing theories”, the other kids in the failing schools.