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Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

theatlantic.com

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Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#51

Post by myWindoonn »

cronix wrote: post #28

I know what it looks like; I live in Portland, Oregon. In 4 years, we went from 3rd most desirable city, to 66th. They're facing a 17% budget shortfall and are getting rid of people in the permitting department which means it will take longer to get permits for new construction. We are in desperate need of high density, cheap apartments. We have a housing crisis. https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/01/20/a-key-indicator-…

The new district attorney is a boon, not a problem; he was just voted in on precisely a platform of not being an extension of the police.

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#52

Post by ruined »

jariel wrote: post #18
blr246 wrote: post #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 l…

Massive investment and ever increasing market value of abodes is generally the opposite problem of 'urban collapse' - I mean, unless the bridges are falling down, which I doubt. NYC in the late 1960's and 1970's underwent a kind of urban collapse. Detroit underwent urban collapse and never came back. I think this is maybe what the author meant by 'we don't know what this means'. If companies, middle class and power f…

maybe it's not collapse yet, but it certainly isn't making the city an easy place to live, and seems to fit the precursors mentioned in the article. the paper valuation of real estate and landlords don't make a city. referencing their efficiency of extraction as a metric for city health works right up until the moment the burden becomes too great.

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#53

Post by gspr »

ndiscussion wrote: post #17
gspr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our cities have already collapsed. Pardon me, but that's the dumbest thing I've read so far in 2021. > There's crime Broadly speaking, there's less serious crime than in a long time. > corruption Do cities have more corruption than society in general? > decaying buildings Are city buildings in a particularly bad state? > Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. Detroit has become famous for precisely that,…

Check out the map here. "Serious" crime may be down, but quality of life has gone down the toilet, even in our richest cities. https://allthatsinteresting.com/san-francisco-poop-patrol Who wouldn't want to enjoy the fine scenery while stepping around HIV-infected needles and fresh poop? Ah, this hamburger tastes so much better when I get to interact with the local people while eating it - they are so quirky, they alw…

I think you're a bit confused about how this works. You can't mix and match different bad things from different cities, take the union of all of them, come up with some dystopian fictional place that suffers from all, and use that as a basis for your claim that real-world cities have collapsed.

Also, dude, did a city hurt you or something?

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#54

Post by gspr »

throwawaysea wrote: post #43
Simulacra wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is San Francisco a special case, though? It's a one party government that tends to tilt towards the extreme in its decision making, with an extraordinarily wealthy class of citizens, and a very difficult homeless and drug population, all compounded in a small area. I'm old. I remember San Francisco of the 80s, prosperous, wild, open armed, and beautiful. Today it's a concrete jungle with terrible management.

Seattle is pretty much the same. It retained its old Seattle credentials until the mid 2000s and then it started a rapid change politically, maybe due to a tipping point in terms of California transplants or some other such trend. Now it is a one party city with extreme (far left) politics being normalized. The effects of that are apparent daily - despite ever increasing city and state budgets, urban blight is everyw…

It is truly mindbogglingly fascinating to see Americans talk about "the extreme far left", and also very cute how you guys somehow think that left-wing politics cause homelessness and drug abuse.

These people just need a stern order to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, then all the poop will be gone from the streets, am I right?

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#55

Post by gspr »

ndiscussion wrote: post #29
Simulacra wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is San Francisco a special case, though? It's a one party government that tends to tilt towards the extreme in its decision making, with an extraordinarily wealthy class of citizens, and a very difficult homeless and drug population, all compounded in a small area. I'm old. I remember San Francisco of the 80s, prosperous, wild, open armed, and beautiful. Today it's a concrete jungle with terrible management.

Portland, Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Columbus, LA... I guess you're right, it's all in one-party cities. But, that's like, almost all of the biggest cities? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... I'm sure there's some cities on that list that occasionally vote for the other party, but I think cities inherently become democrat-leaning because the people inside cities ten…

Ah yes, kicking the homeless out is sure to fix things! Maybe also try banning hunger?

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#56

Post by ndiscussion »

gspr wrote: post #55
ndiscussion wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portland, Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Columbus, LA... I guess you're right, it's all in one-party cities. But, that's like, almost all of the biggest cities? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... I'm sure there's some cities on that list that occasionally vote for the other party, but I think cities inherently become democrat-leaning because the people inside cities ten…

Ah yes, kicking the homeless out is sure to fix things! Maybe also try banning hunger?

Not saying that's the solution (they gotta go somewhere), just observing that it's remarkably clean for it's size. And that's probably the reason.

Sadly, whichever side is in power, nothing seems to help reduce the homeless problem...

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#57

Post by taylodl »

I think this pandemic will transform American cities because of economics. I live in the suburbs of my city, but pay income tax to my city because that’s where I work. Well, where I used to work prior to the pandemic. My company is about to announce that we’re going to be working from home from now on so my income tax will switch to my suburb. The city stands to lose a lot of tax revenue. We’re not the only major employer in the city making this decision. I figure this can’t be unique to my city so these huge income losses are going to be hitting cities across America and will lead to rapid decline.

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#58

Post by JAlexoid »

blr246 wrote: post #38
jariel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive investment and ever increasing market value of abodes is generally the opposite problem of 'urban collapse' - I mean, unless the bridges are falling down, which I doubt. NYC in the late 1960's and 1970's underwent a kind of urban collapse. Detroit underwent urban collapse and never came back. I think this is maybe what the author meant by 'we don't know what this means'. If companies, middle class and power f…

We are agreeing that NYC is not at a moment of urban collapse. The processes that drives away the tax base includes policies and social and market forces that erode the city's effectiveness as a sustaining economic and social hub. The 1960s and 1970s crisis had a lot to do with the end of NYC's industrial epoch. Suburban development and globalization eliminated manufacturing and pulled workers and residents out of th…

NYC isn't going to collapse, but I believe it is going to degrade. But it's going to degrade primarily for the middle and lower income families.

Median household income in NYC is actually below median across US, making the existing tax base small. The flight of the middle class, that was only accelerated by COVID, was already happening.

We left NYC just a few months ago. And we are one of many, who left.

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#59

Post by JAlexoid »

Simulacra wrote: post #23

This article sounds like it's written by someone who read everything in a book, and painfully smacks of elitism. Big industrial cities like Detroit have fallen, and urban decay is abound, but it's not always a "major" industrial center. Take any moderately sized down in rural America and you will find a place that was once a boom-town. Employment, prosperity, and great strides in the live of its citizens, slowly evap…

Just a reminder - urbanization is a millennia old trend. Even if you include abandonment of Angkor - people still favored urbanization.

Your tears for small towns are utterly pointless. It is a trend "as old as Rome herself".

Re: Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

#60

Post by JAlexoid »

burntoutfire wrote: post #47
nostrademons wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, corrupt…

> 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. This sounds like a perspective of someone who's lived their entire life in the US. Meanwhile, here in Poland, you can have relatively large metro areas (Warsaw + suburbs is probably over 2 million…

Crime in Europe is generally lower, than many American cities.

I can also assure you, that it's not hard to come by drugs in Poland (I have procured marijuana in Warsaw, without issues). Drug laws create more criminals, but then a cohesive society creates invisible "exceptions" to the rules. You're more likely to be sent to a rehab facility in Europe, than to be sent to prison for drug use.

Let's also remember that US has a massive problem with mental health.

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