The New Republic has an interesting article on the way cities in the past twenty years or so have found their central cores filling up with rich people, while the poor displaced by the resulting higher prices are moving out into the suburbs. (The Atlantic had a story on the same theme, “The Next Slum?” in its March 2008 issue.) The phenomenon is a bit frightening to me, as I have always preferred living in cities to living in the suburbs, and have never in my life run the risk of being described as “affluent.” I think it’s certainly a good thing to encourage density, street-level retail, public transportation and all the other New Urbanist recommendations in central cities. But I wonder if there’s not a way to do so that could also allow teachers, nurses, waiters, and artists—important but not (usually) lucrative jobs—to live there, too. (Taxing rich people at a higher rate seems an obvious solution, though my social democratic tendencies are at war with my distrust of government on this issue. I would like to see greater income equality, but I’m not comfortable with giving our federal government such a giant windfall.) All the high-rises going up in Austin, for instance, are luxury high-rises. If rich people live in them rather than in McMansions built on pristine suburban land, I suppose that’s a good thing. But if cities become playgrounds only for the rich, they will lose much of the diversity of population and activity that made them interesting in the first place. Perhaps in thirty years, children who grew up in cities will lament their sterile surroundings and seek out the gritty reality of places like Windy Ridge, North Carolina.
{ 2008 07 28 }
Brian Crowley | 28-Jul-08 at 4:46 pm | Permalink
I’d imagine that taxing the wealthy sufficiently to have their incomes brought within the ballpark of the middle class is unlikely any time soon. (It’s been at least 28 years since that was the case. And while I’m wary, too, of government misallocation of funds, if it pays for near-universal health care, higher teacher salaries, and university education, then I’m all for it.)
Another possibility is to have cities demand that all high-density housing in desirable, central areas be mixed income–such that not every unit is ‘luxury.’ But then we are faced with the ugly social and psychological fact that having mixed-income or mixed-race buildings would likely drive down the value of their higher-end units.
Governments could try to encourage middle income coops, like the late ’40s one I live in in NYC. But the unions organized mine and it’s unclear to me who would do so today.
Recently, my suspicion is that those who want urban living and are priced out of NYC or Chicago, might seek out smaller cities (like Portland, ME, or Scranton, or Lexington, KY) that are affordable, where they may be able to float up on the rising tides of urban real estate prices.
Damian | 30-Jul-08 at 12:05 pm | Permalink
I think this is getting to be the situation in Paris, at least as far as the immigrant-filled banlieuex.
Julien | 30-Jul-08 at 3:10 pm | Permalink
Brian: I think some people are already doing what you recommend. The New York Times recently published a story about recent college graduates staying in towns like Binghamton, New York; Providence, Rhode Island; Missoula, Montana; and Davis, California. Of course, in typically obtuse Timesian fashion, they present the least newsworthy aspect of the story, that some college graduates stay in their college towns after graduation, as the news, while mostly ignoring the fact that these towns are smaller than the cities people my age moved to (or stuck around in) after college (places like Portland, Oregon; Brooklyn, New York; Austin, Texas; etc.) Anyway, that’s another potentially good side effect of this phenomenon, that people who want but can’t afford to move to New York City or San Francisco will promote good urbanism in hitherto neglected smaller cities.
Damian: Yes, that’s certainly true of Paris (and has been, to some extent, for a very long time, though it might have become worse over the past twenty years). I think the rich city/poor suburb pattern is much more common in Europe than here, but of course in most European conurbations, social welfare programs are extensive, income inequality is less extreme, and there is ample public transportation, so the economic effects of any displacement are less painful.