Cities are not destined to decline
I remember riding the Philadelphia subway as a kid and looking at the hollowed-out neighborhoods with boarded-up rowhouses and entire communities abandoned to permanent decline.
It was the kind of blight we would call slums. I didn’t have much of a language for federalism then, but the image of decay stayed with me, even after seeing more extreme poverty in Africa or the Mississippi Delta.
Years later, I came to understand something that the scene reinforced: Many of the problems that shape our daily lives are fundamentally local problems. National promises and federal money seemed to not be able to solve what I was seeing.
That observation was at the forefront of my mind for this issue of American Habits: “Big Cities, Big Problems.” But as I worked on the issue, the possibility of urban renewal became a bigger focus. Big cities may have big problems, but those problems are not inevitable. As Peter Reichard argues in this issue, decline is a choice, not a destiny. Cities can govern themselves well, restore order and create the conditions for people and communities to flourish.
That became especially apparent in our conversations with seven mayors from very different American cities: Fort Worth, Grand Rapids, Wichita, Colorado Springs, Shreveport, Columbia, South Carolina, and Carmel, Indiana. None pretends that Washington is irrelevant or that a mayor can solve every problem confronting a city. But the interviews point toward a more hopeful idea: Cities possess considerable power to shape their own futures. And the people that live in them matter.
Mayors deal with government at its most tangible level. Streets either get paved or they don’t. Neighborhoods are safe or they aren’t. Families decide whether a city is a place where they want to put down roots or somewhere they start thinking about a quick exit.
And unlike so much of our national politics today, those outcomes are difficult to disguise behind increasingly combative rhetoric and an online “hot take” culture. Local leadership must produce results. Before a city can pursue grand ambitions, it must do ordinary things well.
That distinction runs through this issue. The health of a city ultimately depends less on sweeping promises than on whether local institutions can maintain order, deliver basic services and create the conditions in which citizens can build good lives. That concern at the heart of Patrick Tuohey’s essay, “The job mayors actually have.”
There is another consequence when cities fail at the basics. When housing becomes unaffordable, everyday expenses climb and public institutions seem incapable of delivering order or opportunity, sweeping political promises become more attractive. That helps explain at least some of socialism’s renewed appeal in American cities. The Rev. Ben Johnson examines that resurgence in this issue, tracing the long history of municipal socialism and asking what today’s reinvigorated movement has inherited from the past.
Before a city can pursue grand ambitions, it must do ordinary things well.
Cities sit at the intersection of larger national debates, particularly the divisive issue of immigration. Two essays in this issue widen the lens, examining immigration’s relationship to partisanship and national identity, as well as the assumptions that shape how we understand the issue.
Still, the mayors are at the center of this issue. Daniel Rickenmann, Yemi Mobolade, Lily Wu, Tom Arceneaux, Mattie Parker, Sue Finkam, and David LaGrand lead very different cities and bring different experiences to the job.
What connects their conversations is something less ideological and more practical: a belief that cities are not simply prisoners of national trends or destined for decline.
Taken together, these conversations offer an important reminder about leadership. More importantly, it reminds us of the primacy of citizens. Mayors can set priorities and institutions can create the conditions for flourishing, but cities are ultimately shaped by the people who live in them. In the end, that brings us back to our capacity for self-government.
