Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
theatlantic.com
Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
1–10 of 79 posts
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#2I had never even heard of Angkor until I listened to this episode of the Fall of Civilizations podcast (I highly recommend it): https://youtu.be/ghmjIBD2Fd4
Resource management intertwined with poor leadership is a common thread in the demise of societies. Our ability to adapt to our environments is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as Mother Nature itself.
I'd love if we took the hint from these histories, because the scale of change in our global climate looks like it'll far exceed past catastrophes. Some days I'm hopeful, but others, quite wary. Hmm.
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#3Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb.
There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole.
The second reason is because large cities offer many more benefits for the poor. People who cannot afford a car simply cannot live outside of city boundaries and bus lines. With increased crime, corruption, and decay, the taxpayers leave (NYC).
Cities cannot fix this. If there will be any solution, it must be a national one. The problem of taxpayers leaving and net-drains arriving can never be solved at the local level.
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#4Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole. The second reason i…
>With increased crime, corruption, and decay, the taxpayers leave (NYC).
Do you have numbers to back that up? Pre-COVID. Personal income tax numbers have increased until 2018 (last year I can find) which indicates that taxpayers were coming in rather than leaving.
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#5>Instead, what kills cities is a long period in which their leaders fail to reckon honestly with ongoing, everyday problems—how workers are treated, whether infrastructure is repaired. Unsustainable, unresponsive governance in the face of long-term challenges may not look like a world-historical problem, but it’s the real threat that cities face.
The feels correct to me.
I lived in New York City for 15 years. Until last year. I've thought about this theme all year. Decades of policy supporting foreign investment and developer speculation gutted the chance for even affluent upper middle class New Yorkers to afford housing and setup a home base, and so many left. The situation has been incomparably more challenging for low income residents.
I agree the urban collapse meme is much easier to spread than a thoughtful discussion about policy and priorities and how to balance the economic strength of a city's major players with the daily priorities of everyday citizens. I hope the New York remainders shift priorities and initiate a different kind of prosperous era than the one I got to enjoy.
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#6Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole. The second reason i…
Kinda like when cities build roads but fail to budget for their maintenance costs? .. but keep building new roads.
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#7Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole. The second reason i…
When you say, “Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb.” What are you referring to? I’d love if you could share a link.
Out of curiosity I searched images of Detroit after reading your comment but couldn’t find anything like what you describe.
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#8Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole. The second reason i…
Crime, corruption and decaying buildings were much more prominent in NYC of the 1970s than NYC of today. Or Chicago in the 1960s than Chicago of today. Or Boston in the 1920s vs. Boston today.
The problem with this explanation - even though it sounds reasonable - is that it lacks predictive power. There's always crime, corruption, and decay, because whenever large groups of people come together there's crime, corruption, and decay, and cities are defined by large groups of people coming together. But for this to be the cause of collapse, you need to explain how cities can have high levels of crime, corruption, and decaying buildings and then recover back to lower levels of crime, corrupion, and decaying buildings.
I'll posit a simpler explanation that sounds a lot less sexy. Cities rise when the industry they specialize in becomes a regional or global powerhouse. (Here, I use "industry" broadly - it can also refer to power & governance, like with Rome or Washington DC, or to culture, like LA.) They fall when that industry becomes relatively less important.
So Detroit fell because the American auto industry is no longer competitive vs. the Japanese & Koreans. New Orleans fell because the Mississippi river trade lost its importance when steamships & containerization happened. Boston fell when the textile industry moved south, and then renewed when it was replaced by the education, minicomputer, and biotech industries. There is very little cities can do about this other than refocus on another industry, like Boston did.
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#9Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole. The second reason i…
When you say, “Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb.” What are you referring to? I’d love if you could share a link. Out of curiosity I searched images of Detroit after reading your comment but couldn’t find anything like what you describe.
I think they mean like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/7h077...
At 70k, the median house price is still very cheap. https://www.redfin.com/city/5665/MI/Detroit/housing-market
Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like
#10Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole. The second reason i…
When you say, “Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb.” What are you referring to? I’d love if you could share a link. Out of curiosity I searched images of Detroit after reading your comment but couldn’t find anything like what you describe.
I'm from there. It's worse than Hiroshima.
Look for flat areas that are 1 sq. mile in size near the Detroit River.
One of the largest truck parking lots in the world combined the lots of thousands of homes.