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When we were headed up the mountain to Globe, Wende said, "Hey, did you see that article in the WSJ on dying cities?" and then let me yammer for 15 miles.
Where to begin? And let me cop to these facts: I am extremely cynical, I have no sentimental ties to any particular place, and I have been working on this post for about a year.
Look, those cities are dying for good reason. There's no job opportunities, first off, They're talking a good game now about attracting new people, incubating business, revamping themselves but honestly? Too little too late. And frankly, getting upset about people talking about your problems? Quit being delusional that not actually being honest and direct about the state of the community will somehow help you to keep business and population.
When I was in Cleveland, SuperC and I went over to her exhibit at the Levin College of Urban Affairs, and I about flipped when I saw one of the poster for an upcoming forum, one that to my eyes prioritized green housing and agriculture over the more basic elements of livable wages and a diversified economy. Priorities, people!
It's not that I don't think that housing is an important piece of the puzzle though. When I was doing some research on housing issues, I spoke to someone at The Drachman Institute who had some great observations about building communities. She said that the most important things to build a community were public transportation accessibility and energy efficient housing, and that the beauty of Arizona is that too many mistakes hadn't been made yet outside the two major cities. The problem with trying to revamp these cities, is that even if you get an interest in terms of population and water availability, you're looking at 50+ years of decaying and unmaintained infrastructure, a surfeit of housing that can't be retrofitted to meet the same standards as new, and crap public transit. You're looking at bulldozing most of the city in an attempt to start for fresh, and at that point, do you really have the same city?
Oh, but wait--young intellectuals, the artists, the skilled entrepreneaurs will save the cities!
Those people that have the skills to revive cities are not necessarily homegrown and that's a challenge for two reasons. Part of it is that in a smaller cities with a limited business climate, there's fewer connections to make, fewer chances to take chances, and fewer ways to hone your skills through competition. It's like being the best student in a crappy high school, getting into a great college, and failing out because you just can't compete in the larger world not because of innate talent but because you just don't have the background. Or for example, the musician/firefighter in "More Than A Union Job" who says about his own career, living in a place where there's no possibility of advancement just traps you. He should be at captain level, but with the cutbacks in his department there is no position for him to be promoted into.
But if the people who can revive cities are coming from other places, those cities are going to have to change their attitudes and become more welcoming and friendly towards outsiders. One of the reasons why the cities have had such trouble is that there's been little migration into the community--there's no one who can shake things up, point out flaws, make suggestions and bring new ideas to the table. Those cities will have to stop treating non-natives like interlopers who don't understand their special circumstances and pitching fits when people point out things don't work and need to change.
And over reliance on the large scale manufacturing that the cities have typically hung their hats on doesn't allow for the mix of skills development and creativity that can make manual work rewarding. When you spend 50-75 years inculcating an attitude of fatalistic fuedalism in your population and dependence upon a set of jobs that require limited skills but pay well, you cripple your working population. Ben Hamper's memoir Rivethead, telling of his years on a Flint auto line, is a darkly funny/depressing story of a smart guy who winds up in a dehumanizing and boring situation that nearly destroys him.
I think that there's a weird strain of preservation in American culture, a feeling that since we are such a young country that everything must be memorialized and stay exactly as it is rather than acceptance that things change, cities die, industries die, we move on and regroup. And that's not bad or sad, but natural.
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