The Downfall of American Cities
Having moved to the suburbs back in 2019, I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with “city life.” To be sure, this is due to a confluence of factors: my own life scenario of getting older and getting married, Covid policy, the George Floyd riots and subsequent increase in crime along with inexplicable efforts to reduce policing alongside said increase in crime.
But having just got back from a two-week trip to Europe, it reminded me: not all cities are bad places to live, but American ones certainly are.
We only spent a day in Paris en route to our final destination, but I was struck in contrasting it to New York City, which I had the misfortune of having to spend a chunk of time in during 2022.
Paris was lovely: it was quite clean, safe, with efficient and clean public transit throughout the city. Cafes featured abundant outdoor seating and many parks offered additional opportunities to escape the hustle and bustle. Swiss cities were similar, albeit smaller, versions of that. And generally, while there are exceptions, most European cities follow this pattern.
Contrast that to New York. Nominally the most prominent American city, New York is a dirty and disgusting place. The smell of urine permeates almost every block in the city. The city, hollowed out by insane Covid policies, has an array of closed and boarded up shops, and crime has risen substantially there (and in various other American cities). Increasingly, it is not safe to ride public transit in New York, and their governmental organizations are more focused on arresting those who try to help or resist the downfall into “crime-ridden shithole” status like Sgt. Daniel Perry.
And New York is far from alone in this diagnosis within the US. Most of the Eastern seaboard is succumbing to similar trends: Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC. Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis have been far worse for a while. And on the west coast, places like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco seem intent to battle the Eastern seaboard to see which cities can decline quickest.
While we can rightfully trash these places all day, what I’d rather focus on is how we could revive these cities and others across the U.S. Urban centers can be robust and enjoyable places to live.
So let’s take a starting look at what urban revivalism could look like in the U.S. and what a smart right-leaning political force would capitalize on. While many city dwellers are NPCs, there are plenty of people who could be won over by common sense policies.
Broadly speaking, cities need four things to be successful:
Safety - people need to feel safe walking the streets during the day and at night. To have this, you need a strong police force that actually enforces laws and a justice system that prosecutes offenders.
Cleanliness - you need a city to be kept clean on both public and private property. This takes investment and dilligence on the part of the local government, as well as an effort toward enforcing pre-existing laws against litter, public urination/defecation, et cetera. We don’t have to go to the level of, say, Singapore, but we can do better.
Good Transit Options - you need to be able to get around the city fairly easily, ideally by multiple options (walk, bike, taxi, public transit). This takes time, but is doable with the right investments.
Innovation - you need to permissive regulations so that people can innovate and come up with new things to do in your city.
Currently, almost every major city (all the ones we’ve mentioned thus far) are run by Democrats and have been for 50+ years, as is the case with Baltimore, St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Chicago, and DC.
New York is really the only notable exception to this, as they elected Rudy Giuliani in the 1990’s, who did actually oversee a crackdown on crime and cleaned up New York City before it was handed back over to Democrats.
The fact is: these four things are eminently doable! We know this not because of what happened in American cities in the past, but rather what we see in European cities today. They aren’t perfect, sure. But they are largely cleaner, safer, and easier to get around than American cities.
Thankfully, cities are not what makes America great. Lost on many until they mature is the fact that suburban and semi-rural American life is one of the best broadly-accessible living situations on Earth today.
But that said, we don’t have to have dirty and dangerous cities. But achieving this will take a change in psyche on the part of those who call these cities their home.
Until that happens by choice or by necessity, I’ll stick to living in the American ‘burbs and exploring European cities.