Centerfield

IMO the big question is whether the 21st century needs big cities as much as the past few centuries needed them.

Plus, whether you are a smart person or a smart business, you have to ask whether the things you do require big city residence strongly enough to justify the cost. The combination of vastly increased flexibility due to better communications and sharply rising costs for urban real estate have more people answering that question with a "no."

And in case anyone wonders, I don't have anything against big cities. They have the criticl mas to support all sorts of wonderful things like museums and universities and baseball teams and cultural events. All good stuff. It's simply the case that the 21st century is going to ask big cities to be made from a different fabric...

Withut getting into specifics because I don't know how to....

I think socio-economically, cities are a "canary in the mine" in terms of human potential (good and bad), the effects of captialism (good and bad), the effects of economic policy (good, bad and well-itntentioned but bad)and the effects that all these factors have on the human condition in general.

In cities, we see, at the same time, the need for social assitance, social reform, as well as arguments against both or at least the manner in which both are handled. We see the reality of immigration and practicality of certain policies.

And, most importantly, we see an excellent caser study of the effects of large wealth disparity and what it does to society as well as arguments against certain policies that can be argued lead to sky-rocketing costs.

Pandora's box...

John, do you think income disparity is inherently bad? Or that large cities must thrive and grow, so that such falure to thrive this shows that the economy is unsound?

I have no idea how to decide how much income disparity is desirable. I tend to think that anything approaching absolute parity is both impractical and undesirable for motivational reasons, while continuing to believe that minimum provisions for the leaast fortunate should be met by any morally sould culture. But I'm no fan of grotesque disparity either, and am not averse to various forms of democratic mitigation of that.

Presuming that some income disparity is practical and even desirable in some sense, I take it as a positive if democratic actors (the people, IOW) migrate to places where their costs are lower, the school systems may be better, and reasonable job opportunities exist. It seems likely to me that it will growingly be the case that blue collar urban job opportunities are dependent on servicing urban white collar needs. I'm not sure what kind of future promise there is for staying in the blue collar class. Seems to me there's far more hope for upward economic mobility in leaving the blue collar service sector than there is in hoping to get well-compensated for doing jobs that don't take a whole lot of skill. That probably sounds cold, but then the forces of supply and demand operate awfully cruelly upon unskilled labor.

Brian,

I'm actually not offering any approval or condemning it. It's just a dispassionate, cold observation of reality.

Income disparity is a natural part of life and capitalism. I accept it and have no problem with it. However, to play devil's advocate, it does cause some problems because it's a double edge sword.

On one hand, it can cause resentment among poorer, desperate people and can lead to other problems since "poor" is relative to how others are doing. This sense of being left behind also leads others with some means to over consume in an effort to keep up the appearance of wealth.

On the other hand, this mass over-consumption drives the economy forward and creates opportunity and motivates people.

This said, I agree in some forms of mitigation. And though I don't totally agree with what I'm about to say, one can argue, as laisse-faire types will, that massive local intervention and more taxation (like in the Northeast) hasn't solved these disparity problems. They'll posit vague theories on how all this has helped lead to the over-priced life of metro-areas (and exodus)...though I'd need to see why. But who knows? they may have some point there.

Again though, I mentionned immigration. cities are much more diverse than rural, small town areas. This diversity has pros and cons. I believe, though I wouldn't change it, that the aggregate condition of massive income disparity, the lack of a homogenious society and high living costs lead to civil unrest, mistrust, stress, school problems, crime and other social imperfections. Not to mention, the migration of society's strengths to other places.

Again, just an observation. I'm not suggesting some types of communism or ethnic cleansing.

Again, just an obsrvation.

This comes as no big surprise to me. My wife and I moved ourselves during this period... and for many of the same factors mentioned in the article.

I work in what would be described as the suburbs and we were already living in what could be called an ex-burb. Then we had our son, and it looked like my wifes mother would be moving in with us as well. It was pretty clear we needed a bigger house. Even though the town we were living in was getting too crowded for our tastes, we initialy decided to look localy since it had a very good school system and I already had a 40 minute communte. The cold, hard, reality of looking around told us that what was in our price range was 60-70 year old homes in the 1500-1700 sq ft range on 1/4 acre lots.

Adding 25 minutes to my commute got us a 15 yr old 3000 sq ft home on 1.3 acres in a nice, spread-out kid freindly cul-de-sac in an equaly good school district. My wife and I couldn't be happier.... we're alot more rural/small town type folks then city folks anyway (i.e. we would have prefered to move to a rural area even if the price differential wasn't so pronounced).... so it worked out perfectly for us.....but even if we prefered city life.... the price difference would have made it a no brainer. We are talking about moving from exburbs to farther exburbs here....if it we were looking in a decent suburb or metro area....the price difference would have been double again (at least). To top it off... we were able to sell our old home for double the price we had bought it at 3 years before.

Definately worth the extra 25 miles drive.... and to make this topical for another subject.... gas prices would have to be up around $40/gallon for the next 30 years to even out the price difference in real estate between where we were living and where we moved to. Which is why I basicly flubbed off the arguement about higher fuel prices bringing commuters back into Metro areas. Bottom line, high fuel prices definitely make my extra commute more painfull....but it's a pin-prick compared to the difference in housing prices.

Brian,

Here's a small telling example of part of what I'm saying:

I live in a small town. My girlfriend lives in a large city for the time being.

She likes to go to a Dunkin Donut in my town. Unlike in the city, she'll sit down and relax in the store to have her coffee and whatever.

She says, without being racist (because she's as bleeding heart as they come in terms of helping minorities and is an inner city school teacher) that it's "so nice" to go to Dunkin Donut and have a friendly normal American kid or young adult take her order instead of some stern-faced Indian or other minority immigrant who can barely speak English and won't even smile or say hello. Then, she's not comfortable to sit there and eat.

Again, she meant no harm. But she inadvertently stumbled onto a unspoken condition in many cities...ala "Crash".

Link.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Nobody expects to get a letter from a member of Congress that ends with an expletive. But that's what happened when Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., recently corresponded with a resident of her southeast Missouri district. The letter ended with a profane, seven-letter insult beginning with the letter a - ``i think you're an. ...'' Emerson says she can't explain how the offensive language made it into the letter, which otherwise reads like a typical response to a citizen's question about last year's testimony of oil executives before the Senate Commerce Committee.

Todd, interesting story. But what does it have to do with the thread topic?

C'mon John, if you go to Dunkin Donuts, you're part of the problem, man! LOL

That's an interesting story though, which IMO reinforces how much mileage varies from person to person. I very seldom consider lingering in ANY dunkin donut. But when I visit any such service place, all I want is fast, effficient, competent interaction. If the stern Indian can get me my coffee and my change 45 seconds quicker, he's my man. I am much less tolerant of surly entitled local kids.

But another thing to notice is that urban food service locations are both impersonal AND congested, yet another function of real estate values. A suburban dunkin donut is probably more likely to offer a seat and tree outside the window. Boston is getting filled up with all sorts of urban food service places that are practically closets...

Brian, it was more a micro-example of something that happens in cities. I'm not saying its all bad. But when my liberal-cosmo-city-lovin-girlfriend makes such off the cuff comments, I chuckle and am very quick to point out an innocence about small town life. Part of that innocence is a largely homogeneous community with less income disparity. Result: the simple act of walking into a Dunkin Donut is more pleasant and friendly and since most people are middle to lower middle class, there's less tension from rich and poor rubbing shoulders all the time.

I'm not trying to change it. It's just how it is and that's reality. How we deal with change, pain, differences and other social imperfections and curve-balls is up us.

I find it interesting that DFW was one of the top 5 cities that saw growth. Do they really mean DFW or they mean the city of Dallas and the city of Fort Worth? I moved to Wylie last year, a suburb of DFW and I would say I left the big city. However, it sounds like they would have counted me as still a part of it.

DFW is so weird as a concept that I don't think people really get it. I once heard that to drive from the east side of dallas to the west side of Fort Worth was over 120 miles. I live in a town that's considered a part of DFW. However, I definitely feel more rural given that we only have a 30K population. It would be interesting to see their criterion.

You know if you really wanted to I'm sure you could figure out something similar to a Laffer curve on income / wealth disparity. Too high and you invite social unrest, too low and you kill off initiative. The problem is, like with the Laffer curve, that you rally can’t know where the tipping point might be. An economy with a broad and strong middle class and a relatively comfortable working class seems to me to be one with the fewest social pathologies, the problem is that for many there is only one metric in deciding what economic policies to support that that is economic “growth” of the economy as a whole.

I read the link but didn't go to the actual census site. How do they define "metropolitan area"? It seems rather intuitive that if you put a boundry on it, at some point it's full and the population will decrease, whether it's the actual city of Chicgago (or Boston or LA etc.) or including a defined number of incorporated suburbs that surround it.

Isn't the term "metropolitan area" fluid? Cengel's comment illustrates how you just keep moving out as things get crowded or too expensive. Perhaps a generation from now, people moving away from Cengel's (or scotchdrinker's) town will also be included in the statistics showing people leaving "metropolitan areas".

For example, Aurora, Ill is 40 miles from the lakefront. A generation ago most Aurorans wouldn't consider their city a suburb of Chicago. It had a distinct downtown with a local economy that included manufacturing, finance and service. There were no incorporated cities of any size to the west or south of it. Now Aurora is surrounded by incorporated development where only farms previously existed and in conjunction with Naperville to the east is the center of a population area of probably 500,000 and is considered (by the locals at least, if not the census) part of the Chicago metropolitan area.

Rick, funny you mention Laffer curves and narrow measures of progress thru "growth".

There is an interesting, albeit contraversial, theory about zero growth policy. it's quite interesting and argues that zero growth and maintenance will solve out energy and economic problems. food for thought I guess.

but it's politically unfeasible.

Tim, it's called "Metropolitan Statistical Area" or MSA for short.

Example: Denver proper is only about a half million, but the Denver MSA is almost 3 million.

That's what make this look like a different deal to me. Previously, people left the city proper for the suburbs of that same city. They didn't leave the metro area. It's shocking to me that the NY metro area lost population. 200k+ isn't a big percentage of the population, which, without looking it up, is not far from the 20 million range. But just that it's a net loss at all is significant. I'm curious to find out what the city itself did. NYC had been picking up people later in the last decade after a fairly long period of major flight.

NYC is an interesting example. If you are lower income, you find yourself trapped in rent controlled apartments. Being rent controlled, if full of long time residents, landlords are unwilling to put money in to maintain them. I know a few people trapped in this situation right now. Unable to get out. Can't afford a car to even look elsewhere becuase it costs more to park the car then it would for their apartment rent. The other end of the spectrum is the high dollar, very affluent condos and apartments. There is not middle ground in the NYC area, it seems. Only rich or poor. The middle class live out of town. I do not see how this model of urban construct can continue. Eventually, more businesses are going to realize that they do not need the full presence in NYC and will start to only have facade type locations and move more operations out of the city closer to where their workers are.

After reading article I note the discussion of Riverside and the growth of AZ. The key issue here (as previously mentioned) is the growth of the "ex-urb". In Phx we see communities such as Anthem and others. Most folks in Anthem work in Phx or one of the suburbs. How far out do you need to be to be an "ex-urb". I'd suggest two hours (witness the growth of Prescott)

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