I’m going to make my position on this quite clear right at the beginning: I love cities. I’m a city boy by birth (born in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, kinda like the Bronx in NYfC, and at one point, one of the most densely-populated places per square mile on Earth).
(Hillbrow/Berea, circa 1970)
Even though my parents moved to the suburbs when I was a kid, I missed the city and moved back as soon as I could.
I love city life. Whether it’s walking along a rainy London street en route to a cozy pub, sitting in a Paris bistro drinking coffee or buying a snack at a Viennese imbiss — you put me there, and ol’ Kimmy’s one of the happiest men on the planet.
That’s the ideal, of course; but the plain fact is that city life isn’t like that anymore, when walking along a rainy London street means that you’re going to get robbed of your watch, when sitting in a Paris bistro will result in gypsies stealing your shopping bags, and buying a snack at a Viennese imbiss will end up with your pocket being picked.
There was a time when I wanted to live on Paris — oh, how I longed to live in Paris — but the truth of the matter is that the Paris I wanted to live in doesn’t exist anymore. (Of Johannesburg, we will not speak.)
Granted, there was always the risk of those things happening, in any city and at any time. But nowadays, the risk of being a victim of urban crime has risen exponentially — not to mention the risks one takes when trying to navigate a street filled with homeless encampments, and avoiding the piles of trash and the detritus of drug addicts. In circumstances like these, the appeal of city life evaporates pretty quickly.
So on to a recent article which asks the question:
America’s Urban Desolation: Does Anyone Really Care?
The problems in urban America are at their core, policy problems. Politicians end vagrancy laws, attack law enforcement efforts to enforce property crimes (in many cases decriminalizing retail theft), and de facto if not actual drug legalization are making many cities unlivable. When combined with local education systems which simply fail to educate anyone as the teacher union power brokers pick their local elected bosses through sparse turnout elections, America’s cities are in distress.
And unfortunately, the very politicians who benefit from their votes don’t seem to care.
But that’s not the real question. We know that urban politicians don’t care, not really, about the state of the cities they’re supposed to be running because they’re unqualified, feckless Democrats and socialists [some overlap]. And the recent activities of some city managers haven’t exactly made the prospects of living there any better:
Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate organization known as the “C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group,” which has an “ambitious target” by the year 2030 of “0 kg [of] meat consumption,” “0 kg [of] dairy consumption,” “3 new clothing items per person per year,” “0 private vehicles” owned, and “1 short-haul return flight (less than 1500 km) every 3 years per person.”
C40’s dystopian goals can be found in its “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World” report, which was published in 2019 and reportedly reemphasized in 2023. The organization is headed and largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Nearly 100 cities across the world make up the organization, and its American members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.
And they hope to get all that “0 kg [of] meat consumption, 0 kg [of] dairy consumption, 3 new clothing items per person per year, 0 private vehicles owned” bullshit done in the next half-dozen years? I ask for the umpteenth time: how do they think they’re going to achieve that, and what planet are they living on?
Clearly, the real question is: in this modern era, and given their apparent suicidal tendencies, how important are cities to a nation as a whole?
Let’s be honest about this. With the growth of technology, a huge number of “office jobs” in a city have proven themselves to be irrelevant in terms of their location. The Covid nonsense, if it did nothing else, proved that. (Whether the actual output from those work-from home jobs is as productive as in-office performance is a topic for another time.)
So with the work force being dispersed to areas outside the city — heck, outside the state or even the country — one has to ask whether a tight concentration of workspaces and residences (a city) is all that necessary anymore. It used to be that cities were the places where factories and other such manufacturing activity were based. But no one would argue today that a Ford factory should be based in downtown Detroit rather than in Dearborn — that decision was made a long time ago — and as urban real estate prices have skyrocketed, more such moves have been happening for decades.
When I was still working, I liked working in the city — whether it was in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, a giant grocery chain’s headquarters building, or at Leo Burnett Advertising in downtown Chicago — there was something about the bustle of the city which created the right frame of mind to work, and work hard. The Great Big Research Company’s headquarters, in suburban Chicago, was less exciting; and later on, working from home still less so.
But the question remains: given that cities — all cities, not just Chicago, L.A. or NYC — seem to be in an irreversible decline, are cities still relevant, or even necessary?
Never cared for cities because, well, people. The more people the more assholes. Didn’t seem to be this way half a century ago. Now, I avoid them like the plague.
It depends on perspective. I work in the chemical industry, so when I think about “big cities”, the closet one to me is Houston (I’m in a semi-suburb of it). And then I think about the Port of Houston. We have tankers, barges, container ships, coming and going 24/7. We have industry up and down the ship channel. All of this industry is interlinked, heavily. If I were to take my current plant and relocate it 500 miles west (middle of no-where), it would never be profitable due to the isolation and cost of shipping and lack of basic resources.
So in terms of industry, big cities allow more concentration of resources and interlinking of common utilities. That’s vital to world class manufacturing.
With the internet revolution and new technology, this may no longer apply to other types of work/industry. But with hard assets and real materials, it’s kinda important to be in common area. Note that most of the people I work with don’t actually live in Houston, though. Most of us commute from way out yonder in a small suburb. I’d rather go have all my teeth pulled than walk a street in downtown Houston.
“But with hard assets and real materials, it’s kinda important to be in common area.”
Hammer, meet nail.
Cities are still relevant and necessary, if for no other reason than to act as holding pens for those with antisocial tendencies.
…if we set them up as such, yes.
[/Escape From New York]
I just read this little bit on ‘Red State’ following a link from ‘Maggie’s Farm’ :
“In a move that is just downright daffy, not to mention leaning hard into totalitarianism, 14 American cities are aiming at what is sure to be an elusive target: banning meat and dairy consumption and the use of private automobiles – in just seven years.” This little bit of feel good crap included two Texas cities, Austin and Houston and they wish to do this by 2030.
https://redstate.com/wardclark/2023/08/21/14-american-cities-aim-to-ban-meat-dairy-private-cars-by-2030-n2162855
I can’t imagine how they plan to actually plan to enforce this silly shit in Texas and I hope I am around in seven years at age 85 to watch these elite numb nut whack-o’s trying to tell Texas to lay off of both meat and dairy. I have some vegetarian friends who don’t eat meat however they do consume and feed their kids a whole lot of dairy and eggs to get the amount of protein growing children need, they also do some fish and the pay attention to what they eat and when they travel they don’t look too close to all of the ingredients in bean burritos.
I respect the right of folks to choose their food groups however the vegan crap is very difficult and next to impossible with raising healthy children. No dairy and not meat is plain stupid and I don’t think we will see any of that crap being done in Texas. I have had wonderful barbecue in Austin and lovely steaks and seafood in Houston. Houston was always a mess of a large city, the traffic of Los Angles with the climate of Calcutta and Austin, years ago was one of the fun cities of the world with lots of great food, a real night life with good music and lots great rivers and lakes for outdoor fun including legal naked swimming. Of course the traffic in Austin has been a total mess for decades with the I-35 Nascar race out of Waco slowing down to a slow moving parking lot for about an hour driving on down to San Antonio.
It’s funny how each city seems to have its own rhythm for traffic and when I lived in the Twin Cities in Minnesota the traffic drove me nuts, I came back to Dallas and it was like a breath of fresh air driving in traffic that made sense. Same thing trying to dive in the L.A. area where folks just bog down and hardly move, they don’t seem to realize that the object is to get on, get going and get off as fast as you can, just like the old whores used to say about their business.
Retired (mostly) out in the VERY rural sticks of central NV, where it’s a 50-mile round trip to get groceries or a “dinner out”, after growing up and working in the Greater Metropolitan Area of L.A., surrounded by family and friends – it’s quite a change.
But, here, I don’t have to worry about any muggers, or encountering any Bloc-Black Mobs – our most serious form of crime seems to be the one or two people in town that have to syphon fuel from others to keep their rattle-traps operating – though one was encountered in-the-act, and told very matter-of-factly, that they will seriously regret it if it ever happens again, because it will be the last thing that happens in that life.
The pace is good, but many of the projects that you could accomplish in and around The Big City, out here give a new definition to the term Delayed Gratification.
Heavy sigh. The Morgan Library. The Rogers Auditorium. The Cloisters. Haven’t seen them since ’71, when I left Compass Island for Ranger, but just knowing they’re still there helps light the trail.
Perhaps they could be moved to Pittsfield.
.
In my (former) home town of Minneapolis, which is joined at the hip with St. Paul, there is very little productivity occurring within the circle of the “ring-road” (aka, the 494/694 loop around the cities). Almost all of the economic activity consists of parasites robbing the productive, or one set of parasites robbing another. Almost all of the manufacturing and productive activity occurs outside of that circle, primarily because of the choices of the politicians elected by the clueless. Between zoning, permit requirements, regulations and taxes, you’d have to be completely insane to locate a business within that area. Heck, it’s hard enough to locate a business within the state itself.
The coming split in our civilization is not going to be geographic like the last civil war (mostly North/South) but far more productive vs. parasite, which largely translates to urban parasites vs. suburban/rural producers.
If the collectivist/statist/authoritarians currently running our governmental systems get their wishes, we will see a breakdown in civil society, but I don’t believe that will work out as they hope. All you have to do is imagine that (to use an example) no truck traffic were to pass across those boundaries. Exactly how long would it be before the cities went up in flames? How many of our dazzling urbanites have a 3-day supply of food and (more importantly) water? Much less a 3-month supply? When the grocery stores and convenience stores have at most a 2- or 3-day supply, and the shelves are empty? When the electricity goes off and the pressure in the water lines and natural gas lines drop to zero, how will they survive?
And when the shooting starts as one human wave after another attempts to empty these urban megalopolises, what will happen? I used to think that you’d have to be a least a one-hour drive outside the circle, since that’s at least a 2-day hike (figure 60 miles), but for the most part many of these urban dwellers have never been on foot outside of the city, and would have no idea how to navigate once their “smart” phones die. I could just see a gang of inner city “youth” trying to strong-arm a small rural town with their Hi-Points and AK’s, and getting shot from 400 yards away by deer hunters who routinely shoot at those distances.
I lived in the Heart of the Hive™ for 27 years watching the leftist policies get increasingly crazy to the point where it was obvious that it really was their goal to destroy the civilization that kept those cities alive. We left when I retired and moved to a small town in NW Wyoming; the nearest big city is 100 miles away. If the excreta ever does hit the air impeller we will be speed bumps on the road to anarchy since we’re dependent on medications to keep us alive long term. We’ll be able to kick back and watch things go down the drain in relative comfort right up until we die.
Cities are no longer relevant to anything except politicians looking to harvest huge numbers of votes from parasites. Given that you can have modern manufacturing facilities in suburban areas, with sufficient infrastructure to provide materials and tools available with a decent transportation system, there’s no need to be so extremely centralized. Your assembly line is going down because you need a left-hand thread #10-32 socket-head bolt? The distribution center for Fasteners-Are-Us is just down the road. They used to be located near downtown, but the government-encouraged riots of 2024 burned down their facility and they re-built somewhere else, mysteriously enough.
It’s important to remember that there are no “red states” or “blue states”. There are only “blue” enclaves in otherwise “red” states. In Minnesnowta the state is run by the politicians from Hennepin County (Mpls) and Ramsey County (St. Paul), plus the populations in Duluth and Rochester, who routinely vote communist. They are bankrupting the state, but have almost complete control. The rural producers, including farmers and manufacturing, are taxed by the state largely to pay for things from which they get a less-than-zero benefit, like the under-funded massive pension schemes of the unionized city/county workers.
Note that if you eliminated the largest 20 or 30 cities in the US that this country’s politics would be entirely reversed. Given that pure democracy is well-illustrated by “two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner”, it is to the collectivist’s advantage to eliminate the aspects of a Republic within this country. A wonderful start to kill the country was made with the 17th Amendment providing for direct election of Senators, which has made both houses of Congress into popularity contests, along with the executive branch. I believe that their next push will be to eliminate the Electoral College, which will mean that New York and California will solely determine the presidency.
Sorry for the length of this rant, Mr. Du Toit, but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I used to live in a beautiful city, and have watched it destroyed by the left wing over the past 65 years. As Rand once said (paraphrasing), “…with so much evidence we can no longer view them as either blind or innocent”, and I’m no longer willing to grant them the premise of “good intentions”. They’ve deliberately destroyed the cities, let them reap what they’ve sown.
Good comment.
Despite my preference for living rural (as I do) I could live in a city if need be, adapt and enjoy the setting…for a time anyway. But, as you say, those places are lost because The Left destroys everything it touches. Their choke hold on cities was a six-lane boulevard paved by ensconced Liberals who continued to vote the cretins and reprobates morons into office, then stand around in wide-eyed wonder [some at best] – like the guy in Home Depot staring like a deer in the headlights unsure where to find said part or piece – while saying to themselves, “I dunno what happened to my city”.
Gone…maybe forever…but what did they expect? The Democrats fix what ain’t broken and break what works, all the while telling you what great things they did for you as they target societies lowest common denominator (who used to get help from churches and good community people, not bureaucrats).
I can only speak for myself. I live in a small city (population 180K) adjacent to a larger one (half a million). I never go into the Big City if I can avoid it, and I almost always can. It offers virtually nothing that I can’t find closer to home (or online). The only exception I can think of is The Container Store, which mostly exists in California and Texas; I’m lucky to have one anywhere near me. And even that only lures me into the Big City about once per year.
Employment? I have worked remotely, from my apartment in the suburbs, for 90% of the last decade and a half. I work in information technology, and that’s almost all based in a research park outside of the city. The last time I worked in the Big City was two decades ago, as a contractor for a global corporation. Midway through my contract, the corporation shut down that site and moved us all out to the research park. They weren’t the only employer abandoning the Big City for greener pastures, where commercial real estate is much cheaper and the commute is less brutal.
So for me, the answer is no. The Big City is not relevant, and not necessary.
If the cities continue to decay, I will miss some of the architecture. Not much, mind; most of the buildings put up since WWII are pug-ugly. But it’s a shame that the collapse of LA will mean the Bradbury Building will end up as trashed for real as it looked in BLADERUNNER. I have fond memories of both the Cleveland Arcade and its close neighbor the Colonial Arcade. And while I never thought too much of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building is gorgeous.
My thoughts on the World Trade Center can be deduced by the fact that my first thought on seeing it burn was “this is taking architectural criticism a little far”
We operate a small organic teaching farm near the outskirts of Eugene, Oregon.
Other than deliveries to local-owned family-operated grocers and farmers market, I could easily never leave the acreage.
.
About two decades ago, to help move a chum from a house to a duplex, I tugged my utility trailer a couple hours north to someplace inside that Portland conglomerate.
Three days of weirdos cured me of considering a return visit.
.
To travel anyplace, we needed to time the 4am-10pm ‘rush’ of trudging at one mile per hour for months at a time.
.
.
1993 — I took off that summer to re-live my care-free childhood in the California coastal resort of Santa Cruz.
Again, bumper-to-bumper, slugs on a track.
My local buddy went everyplace on a bicycle, and she arrived anyplace a half-hour ahead of me.
.
I don’t need that.
Speaking of Santa Cruz, I also have zero interest in bums sleeping across the sidewalks in the downtown tourist zone.
After three decades of fermentation, I imagine mid-2023 might be worse.
Hard to say.
A tribute to the old Hillbrow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCcZHZSf1qU
Cities evolved serving purposes; first as trading centers and as bases for defense, and later as centers of production, which accellerated and enabled the Industrial Revolution, which is only a couple hundred years old. To the extent that they serve as centers of culture and education, IMO that’s a secondary function due to their concentration of humans. Concentration of culture and education also lead to concentration of healthcare, all the best hospitals are still found in cities. It is this concentration of labor, human talent and materials that in large part enabled production at massive scales and all the prosperity that followed. Offices and administrative work followed and was based on manufacturing and trade.
That brings us to today: what is the relevance of low skilled labor and administrative work when there is no manufacturing? And without manufacturing, where is the trade, other than by residing temporarily in warehouses awaiting shipment?
Whenever I drive a car through the cities of the Northeast, most notably Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, I ask myself…where is the production? I see enormous building after building to house seething masses of people…but where do these people work? What productive thing are these people doing? They can’t all work in the offices found primarily in the city cores…and are increasingly found on ther periphery, or not at all…and what exactly are these offices in the city cores administrating?
In the ever shrinking prosperous city core of Philadelphia, I see very little that can’t be done elsewhere, and a city administration that seems hell bent on driving out any enterprise that might setup shop. I conclude therefore that cities are intrinsically stupid, unproductive places that are completely dependent upon a constant stream of energy, fuel, food and goods that they cannot produce for themselves. I don’t want to be anywhere nearby when that pipeline finally breaks, and the teeming masses within twig to the fact that they’re screwed. Of course, they will never be allowed to conclude that it’s all self inflicted and that they’ve voted themselves into oblivion.
What purpose do cities serve?
(Sidebar: other than as human fodder for Marx derived social revolution?)
And this brings us all to a crucial question: where are the engines of prosperity now?
I dislike cities generally. They’re too crowded, too noisy, too much crime, too many totalitarians, too smelly and too disgusting. When I need to go into one I go do what I need to do and get out. They’re only getting worse
JQ
There have been cities for at least 9000 years. Whenever people do people-y things, cities are one of the inevitable by-products.
They are self-organizing systems. If people are functioning at any scale larger than very small groups of hunter-gatherers, then there WILL be cities of one kind or another.
So your question about the relevance of, or need for, cities is a little beside the point. Cities are here to stay, regardless.
Granted, our various world cultures today seem to be engaged in a myriad of experiments to see how badly they can abuse their cities; but – while the failure of those experiments may well spell the doom of those societies – said failure won’t be the end of cities.