"... came to seem almost a law of nature, effortless and eternal. Unfortunately, the pandemic broke the virtuous cycle.... I suspect cities have fallen prey to the same delusion as those people who carefully pack up their laptops while the plane fills with smoke: They are looking around at other people, most of whom seem to be acting pretty normally.... Yes, crime might have risen, and residents might be darkly muttering about moving to the suburbs. But when haven’t city-dwellers threatened to move to the suburbs if the mayor didn’t fix their pet problems right away?... It would be understandable for mayors to look at all the people who have stayed and thought, 'Well, that’s not so bad.'"
Writes Megan McArdle in "Mayors are missing a window to address the remote-work revolution" (WaPo).
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46 comments:
The problem is that the kind of people who are good managers are often not the kind of people who can envision the necessary changes. And, of course. Radical changes mean disruption of the existing order, including the existing opportunities for graft. So the mayor who is good at keeping the streets plowed and garbage picked up, and might also be the guy who looks the other way if the companies overcharge the city by a bit, isn't going to be the one capable of shifting on a dime when conditions change.
White collar privilege.
“Not enough skate parks” is a “pet problem.”
Skyrocketing cringe is not.
That column is a mess. It's filled with generalizations that aren't backed up and contradictions that aren't explained - the bars are empty/the bars are full, etc.
What was her point. Has her dalliance with progressivism stolen her composition skills?
Also, someone will write here that the big city Mayors are missing the window because it's broken.
My money's on Boyd.
Translation: You flyover people have bad jobs and living in non-desirable cities. Losers.
'But when haven’t city-dwellers threatened to move to the suburbs if the mayor didn’t fix their pet problems right away?'
But when haven’t actors and celebrities threatened to move to Canada if the politicians didn’t fix their pet problems right away?
Fixed it...
It would be understandable for mayors to look at all the people who have stayed and thought, 'Well, that’s not so bad.'
this is fine
Haha I meant “crime.” But I like cringe just as well.
but, seriously... By What Stretch, of the imagination; are "coastal cities" "central cities"?
Let's see..
LA, a coastal city... LA, a central city? What? Central to Los Angles county?
NY, a coastal city... NY, a central city? What? Central to Manhattan island?
Washington.. Isn't EVEN a coastal city.. What? Central to the District of Columbia?
Let's see...
Chicago.. NOT a coastal city... Pretty darn centrally located
St Louis.. NOW You're talking Central
Do the WaPoo people Really (REALLY?) think that the Coastal Cities are Central cities?
I'm SURE, i'm missing something... Could someone please explain? tnx!
I'll echo two points. I grew up partially in suburb of NYC, where family and kin exited NYC outer borough and commuted to Financial District. The urban decline in sixties and seventies was real.
Today my downtown LA office garage remains empty and many nearby food spaces vacant.
"It would be understandable for mayors to look at all the people who have stayed..."
It'd be hard to miss them, seeing as how so many are camping out in public and crapping on the sidewalks.
(read the archived article)..
So, she's saying people will move to the suburbs? OF the Coastal Cities??
New Rochelle?
Berdo?
Arlington?
I'm not sure THAT's Where people are moving to... Let's ask a self Proclaimed New Yorker..
Robert Cook! where are YOU living now? I forget, is it Florida? or Vermont? or WHERE??
is it 148 Bonny Meadow Road, New Rochelle?
But when haven’t actors and celebrities threatened to move to Canada if the politicians didn’t fix their pet problems right away?
OUT: Threaten to move to Canada IN: Threaten to acquire Irish passport
"It would be understandable for mayors to look at all the people who have stayed and thought, 'Well, that’s not so bad.'"
It would be understandable for mayors to look at all the people who have stayed and thought, 'Well, they'll vote Dem no matter what, so who the hell cares?' My voters don't, so why should I?
People have been moving out of the center of US cities for around 70 years now. "Urban" population growth is almost exclusively due to suburban growth, not growth of the cities proper. Look at any description of a US city that was a city (say, 100K population) in 1950, and almost all of them have lost population in the jurisdictional borders themselves, and in many cases by 50% or more. This is masked by the tendency to describe a city as itself plus its surrounding suburbs less than 20 miles from the center- the so-called metropolitan area. However, those suburbs have far more in common with the boondocks than with the city center.
This is a trend that is not going to change- ever- in the US. In fact, I expect the city centers and the immediate ring suburbs to empty even further as they turn into ever bigger shit-holes.
Laptop Layabouts
Cities have gone downhill due to bad governance, remote work just offered an easy way to escape and an educational contrast. Remote work isn't the problem, progressives are.
The pull quote was so confusing, I decided to bypass the paywall and read the article. She starts by claiming knowledge from writing a book in which she was surprised that not everyone panicked in an emergency. She then quickly jumps into wondering why cities and mayors are not panicking post-pandemic about people working from home (rather than people losing their jobs). After spending paragraphs explaining why they should panic, she ends her article with this gem:
"This time is not unlimited. Mortgage rates have already come down and will probably fall further as inflation does. The clock is ticking. Mayors need to act like it."
Retired in 2010. Moved 150 miles. It appeared I was semi-indispensable. I worked half-time, more or less. My wife wanted me to dress professionally when I worked so she got me a bathrobe.
Kept things from getting boring. Was in the office about once a year, when I might be in the area on other business. That's how I got my copy paper
Timing was the issue. Much of what I needed to do in my practicum had been rearranged to be done on the web and people were used to that and by phone. Probably couldn't have been done much earlier.
Lasted about six years until they found a replacement.
One more thing, about Megan claiming we are post pandemic:
The Biden administration has extended the Covid-19 public health emergency declaration yet again, despite President Joe Biden claiming the pandemic was 'over.'
'But when haven’t city-dwellers threatened to move to the suburbs if the mayor didn’t fix their pet problems right away?'
I don't recall this ever happening, at least on the West Coast, and at least prior to the "Summer of Rage". San Franciscans just moved out when they had kids and needed a car and schools that worked. Or just matured past the point when viral pillow fights at the Embarcadero were fun.
Mostly people are staying now. San Francisco, the hardest-hit city, lost 6.3 percent of its population during the first year of the pandemic — which means it kept 93.7 percent of its residents.
I don't remember Megan McCardle being such a fucking idiot.
I suspect that most big-city mayors regard the decline of their cities as a desirable situation. The people who leave are the people who can, and the mayors don't want them around anyway. They want people with problems, not people with solutions.
Urban real estate prices are no longer conducive to manufacturing, or any high square footage to employee ratio. So urban business activity is significantly in the cube farm domain. Well, cube farms are urban amenity coupled since they are dense with workers, who can generally work wherever there is an internet connection.
Abstract
September 2021, Paper: " Will COVID-19 end the urban renaissance that many cities have experienced since the 1980s? This essay selectively reviews the copious literature that now exists on the long-term impact of natural disasters. ...These facts suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic will only significantly alter urban fortunes, if it is accompanied by a major economic shift, such as widespread adoption of remote work, or political shifts that could lead businesses and the wealthy to leave urban areas. The combination of an increased ability to relocate with increased local redistribution or deterioration of local amenity levels or both could recreate some of the key attributes of the urban crisis of the 1970's"
HKS Author - Edward Glaeser
I just heard a thing - on Freakonomics maybe? - dating that Dallas is now the third (? Could have been fourth) biggest city in the US. Echoing the commenter above concerning population decline in city centers and population growth in the burbs, it is patently obvious that people moving in to central Dallas did not drive the overtaking of Chicago.
Reading this, you wonder why she has a column and Althouse doesn't.
It is a five alarm fire, and there is nothing any mayor can do about it. The shark has been jumped. The crime and the rotten public schools were pushing people away, the remote work has simply made it possible to take a move that was once financially too difficult. All the tools for addressing the problems were abandoned long ago.
I moved from a central city to a small rural town 35 years ago, because city schools were in a downward spiral and my mother-in-law was knocked down by a purse snatcher in front of our home. It was clear to me then that the city government had no interest in my problems, and leaving them behind was a great move.
The future is in gated communities, with their own security services.
Stay in the city, folks. Don't come to the country. The urge will pass. You won't like it here. Freaks will play banjos whenever you walk by and your canoe will tip over at the worst possible time and toothless hillbillies will bugger you in front of your friends. You don't need that. Just stay in the city.
Cities attract the young, who look for adventure and opportunity to be part of a scene. Creative companies loved this influx of young talent. But the scene is greatly diminished in many cities these days and the creative class is drifting online.
The Mayors in these cities are going to have much more to address very soon. The vacancy rate in some of our major cities is continuing to rise. Those leasing offices are leaving, as they cannot pay those leases any longer. They've trimmed their teams since covid, and those still working are doing so remotely. Employees no longer come into their thousands of square feet of prime office space. So, either they can no longer pay rent, or when their lease is up, they're out. And those holding the bill on these buildings are seeing their interest rates skyrocket, and soon many of these buildings will be taken back over by the banks. At which time...the cities will have more to contend with.
And- no- using those buildings as residences for your homeless experiments is not a good idea.
What will San Francisco look like when their office vacancy rate is over 30%? When large and tall buildings are sitting...empty while just outside, the homeless encampments keep growing, needles and feces up and down the avenue. Who is going to go in there and pay a premium to set up their company, employ people, and get them to come downtown SF to work?
I had the opportunity to drive many miles down the Happenest Main Drags of the 60s today with the wife. The shop vacancy rate was probably %20 on a once throbbing road of even 4 years ago. Covid lockdown crushed the entrepreneurs and their dreams. We've not begun to experience the devastation caused. Your kids are F*cked.
Years back I rode in a car where my driver, a project manager, held a national conference call driving at the Mackinac Bridge. Taught me a lot.
“ Reading this, you wonder why she has a column and Althouse doesn't. “
Althouse has never wanted a column. Nor does she want to write “long form” on Substack. Nor does she want to publish a book. Althouse is a dedicated blogger, 3 days away from completing her 19th year of blogging without skipping a day. Tomorrow is her 72d birthday and she is doing exactly what she wants.
Happy Birthday and congratulations.
"Tomorrow is her 72d birthday and she is doing exactly what she wants."
And making this person's life better.
Happy almost birthday.
Cities, like anything else, exist because they serve a purpose. Things that no longer serve a purpose often linger on past when their value is no longer worth it, half out of habit and half because it would cost too much to switch to something else. You just need something to shatter all that and things can reorganize quickly.
Oh well.
No bar, no pinball machines, no bowling alleys, just pool... nothing else. This is Ames, mister.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday, Ann. My wife's 78th is Friday.
If you’re going to write something in the Post that sounds like it could be a warning to urban libs, you have to add some ego-stroking (the bit about the jobs). I can see the mid-40s northern Virginia school teacher nodding “yes, we in the coastal cities have our problems but this is still where all the goods jobs are.”
And yet, before COVID there was talk about people moving back into cities. Land was getting scarce in many parts of the country. Suburban housing was getting expensive. People were sick of long commutes and high home prices. Older couples wanted to downsize. The McMansions in the suburbs were ridiculous. People who grew up in them, like people who grew up in the Gilded Age mansions wanted something smaller and more manageable and less isolated.
Now all that is gone. Fear of crime. Fear of viruses. Nobody wants to go into the office any more. They want to work from home and they can do it. The irony is that the riots and the lockdowns that helped put the democrats back into power made the progressives' dreams of sustainable development and high density land use unattractive to people who found them appealing. But our rulers will force their schemes on the country anyway.
Despite an occasional burst of frustration, this site is still the first place I check in the morning. Must be over 15 years now.
You once described this as "performance art", I think. Am I remembering correctly?
Drawn like moths, we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night
Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights...
Rush, "Subdivisions"
After spending paragraphs explaining why they should panic, she ends her article with this gem:
"This time is not unlimited. Mortgage rates have already come down and will probably fall further as inflation does. The clock is ticking. Mayors need to act like it."
Megan has a high priced home (I think it's a townhome) in Washington. She's fretting about the state of her city and wondering if she's the sucker for staying. She likes big city life. She grew up in NYC. She's used to city living. But she sees that big city government is more worried about pronouns than crime and homeless littering the streets. She'll end up leaving.
I expect most big city (read liberal) mayors would look at Megan's column and figure the solution is to ban people from leaving the city...
An eroding tax base should be a concern but of course Dem mayors consider they just need to raise taxes a touch. It'll be the next mayor's problem with rotted out center cities.
Well, damn. Happy birthday day ,Ann. I hope Meade does something nice for you for your birthday.
(wait for it)
You don't look a day over 71.
Missing from the article: any mention of commutes. The city isn't the issue, the highway is. I used to commute 2 hours each way. Once in the office, I didn't leave the building. I gave up buying overpriced food in downtown Seattle restaurants over ten years ago ($11 for watery vegetable soup - will never forget it). Once you ditch sitting in traffic in a bus/train or car - very hard to go back.
It isn't the city it's the highways.
Retail establishments in downtown SF took a hit with the massive closures and then the ensuing damage that the riots doled out. There's a small indoor shopping arcade in the financial district called Crocker Galleria. Its wedged in between two large office towers and was loaded with places to grab food and do random shopping. Now, it's just an empty glass pass-through with every storefront closed and papered over.
At the same time, massive construction is going on further south along the bayside by the new Chase center, where the Warriors play. Visa Corporation is apparently building their world headquarters nearby with a combo of office/retail space. What companies are going to lease space when a good 50% of the workforce will not commute to the city? Yes, the public transpo is doable but if you live in the near East Bay or points further east the highways are the issue. And BART is going feral as the lack of any type of policing is making commutes dangerous.
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