The Future of Cities

I used to like cities (as opposed to suburbs, towns, and rural areas). I grew up in one (Minneapolis) and was devoted to it. It was a nice place to live, and the only reason I left was because it was too cold. There are a lot of opportunities in cities, and the bigger the city, the more the opportunities (generally speaking). I remember talking to a young woman who had just gotten her master’s degree in philosophy and was planning to move back to New York City. “But what will you do with just a master’s rather than a Ph.D?” I asked. “Oh, I’ll think of something,” she said, and she did. (She became a professional photographer.) Cities are like that. They are replete with diverse ethnic restaurants and movie theaters (or film societies that show obscure films) and specialty stores and nightclubs and stadiums for important sports teams and offbeat neighborhoods and large art museums and giant malls and international airports and important financial institutions and lots of other things. And lots of jobs that don’t exist outside of cities.

But sometimes cities can take a wrong turn. The woman mentioned above from New York City talked of being mugged there, and that was a common occurrence back then (the 1970s), but it was something that rarely happened in Minneapolis. And while New York City got better under Giuliani, it has gotten worse again under De Blasio. And he and the people who voted him in somehow can’t see this. Even worse is what has happened to Seattle, Portland, and Minneapolis. They are all engaged in self-destruction, yet they keep at it night after night. It’s hard to know where this is going to stop, but whatever the end is, it won’t be enjoyable for anyone.

I also used to look forward to the future. The other night I watched the first hour of 2001: A Space Odyssey (which was on Turner Classic Movies). I first saw it in 1969, a few months before we landed on the moon. At that time, I just assumed that by 2001 we would have colonies on the moon and that maybe we would have reached Mars, too. The future was going to be exciting! But after a few more moon shots, we gave up, and in retrospect, it was because of the social unrest. And now although there are people excited about the idea of going to Mars, we are being inundated with social unrest again, and I assume that that social unrest will destroy any plans to go to Mars. Plus, the year 2001 turned out to have a very different and unhappy meaning than the one that Arthur C. Clarke tried to give it. Anyway, I no longer look forward to the future, which seems likely to contain dreadful events of one sort or another. A friend died recently, and my wife’s colleague died less than a year ago, and I don’t know whether to feel sorry for them or to envy them.

What about the future of cities? That looks bleak, no matter how much urbanites may dispute it. Both the Wuhan virus and the unrest make living in a city dangerous and unpleasant, and a lot of people will leave (or are already leaving). Why deal with all that when one can live in a pleasant town and visit a nearby city every now and then?

Comments

[Charles N. Steele]

Interestingly enough, having worked to make cities unlivable, Democrats now plan to destroy the suburbs.

And their Green New Deal would definitely destroy rural America. They are pretty much trying to make all human life unlivable at this point.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/21/joe-bidens-disastrous-plans-for-americas-suburbs/

[John Pepple]

I have a feeling they think their actions in their cities will win them lots of votes, but I think the opposite is true.