At Maggie's, we love the charms of both town and country - when they get it right. The decline of industrial urbanization and the (government-subsidized) rise of the suburbs - with the move of industry and corporate offices to the suburbs, have left many cities as hollow cores of their former selves.
Lively people like to live in cities if they are vibrant, safe, interesting, attractive - and if there is work. For example, much of Manhattan is so appealing that few can afford to live there.
Malanga at City Journal: The Next Wave of Urban Reform - Mayors Cory Booker and Dave Bing fight to save two of America’s most distressed cities. One quote:
Since the mid-1960s, many big-city mayors and Washington policymakers had argued that the problems plaguing America’s cities—rising crime, deteriorating schools, sluggish economies, and social dysfunction—resulted from national and global economic forces that urban politicians were powerless to resist. Out of that period came an array of ambitious federal programs to aid city residents and revitalize struggling urban neighborhoods. Even though the programs—many of them carried out under the banner of the War on Poverty—did little to boost cities’ fortunes, the refrain that urban woes were Washington’s responsibility became commonplace among mayors and remained so for nearly three decades.
But just a few years after the summit, America witnessed the rise of a new group of mayors who rejected the notion that the federal government—or anyone else—should be their savior.
Read the whole thing. Malanga tells the story well. Link above.
