The Urban World,
J. John Palen
th
9
Ed.
Chapter 11: Cities and Change
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Introduction
The Urban Crisis: Thesis
Urban Revival: Antithesis
A Political Economy Look at the Urban Crisis
21st-Century City Developments
Gentrification
Decline of Middle-Income Neighborhoods
Successful Working Class Revival
Summary
Introduction
• There is confusion and dispute about the
future of the city
• It is a cliché that we live in an age of urban
crisis
• Certainly there is no lack of prophets to
passionately catalog urban ills
The Urban Crisis: Thesis
• The last decades of the 20th century heard
voices raised everywhere proclaiming the
inevitable decline, if not death, of the city
• Are these pessimistic predictions accurate?
– Loss of manufacturing jobs
– Growing need for services while revenues
decreased
– Aging city properties and municipalities
Urban Revival: Antithesis
• The last two decades have witnessed a rebirth
of hope
• An urban renaissance has taken place
• The recession and housing bust kept people
from moving to the suburbs
• In 2010, many cities posted their highest
growth rates in a decade
A Political Economy Look at the Urban Crisis
• Political economy academics hold that city
problems do not occur in a vacuum, and city
problems cannot be examined separately from
the political, historical, and, particularly,
economic systems of which they are a part
• The quest for ever-greater profits by large
monopolistic corporations is seen s leading to
government policies
• Gentrification is seen as a conscious product
of land-based interest groups able to control
the real estate market
21st-Century City Developments
• New Patterns
– The economic and social health of cities shows a
mixed pattern
– During the 21st century, it seems clear, not all cities
are going to experience similar situations
– The urban renaissance is uneven, but clearly more
prevalent than a decade ago
• Central Business Districts
– The Central Business District (CBD) is the
economic heart of the city
– Generally have been reasonably successful in
retaining business and government offices
– Downtown buildings use space effectively
– Cities are actively promoting downtown
convention centers as an economic growth
strategy
– Downtown stores will never again have the
unchallenged control of retail trade they exhibited
during the centralizing era of the streetcar and
subway
• Mismatch Hypothesis
– Central-city offices provide new jobs—but only for
those possessing specific white-collar skills
– City factories and manufacturing plants continue to
move to the suburbs—or, more frequently, abroad
– The so-called “mismatch hypothesis” is that cities have
blue-collar job seekers and white-collar job
opportunities
• Downtown Housing
– In the last decade downtown population in major U.S.
cities increased about 10 percent
– The most successful North American city in bringing
residents downtown is Vancouver
– There is a need for balance of people and business
• Fiscal Health
– Today municipalities are largely left to sink or swim on
their own
– Without federal help cities have substantially
abandoned their earlier programs to fight poverty and
solve social problems
– Of every dollar of taxes, 65 cents go to the federal
government, 20 cents go to the states, and only the
remaining 14 cents go to the local governments
• Crumbling Infrastructure
– The most severe problem is often antiquated water and
sewage systems
– 80,000 acres of lad are polluted with toxic chemicals
and deserted
• Neighborhood Revival
– There is now a clear movement, especially by
young professionals, toward residence in the
central city
– The gentrification movement is taking place in
older neighborhoods that are recycling from a
period of decay
– The last decade has seen the rapid expansion of
gentrification with cities such as Boston, New
York, Chicago, and San Francisco
Gentrification
• Government and Revitalization
– In the postwar years the federal government sponsored
urban clearance and renewal
– By contrast, until recently urban gentrification has been
funded almost entirely by the private sector
– Today, municipal governments overwhelmingly support
gentrification, largely because it brings more affluent
taxpayers
• Who is Gentrifying?
– Gentrifiers are perhaps better described as “urban
stayers” than as “urban in-movers”
– Generally young or middle-aged adults, childless, white,
urban-bred, well-educated, etc.
• Why is Gentrification Taking Place?
– Demographic Changes
• Decline in marriage, later age at marriage, increases in
unmarried couples, and declines in the umber of young
children per family
• All factors represent a decline of the sort of “familism”
that played such an important part in the postwar flight
to the suburbs
– Economic Changes
• Commuting and utilities are expensive
• Revitalizing existing city housing can be less expensive
than new construction on the suburban periphery
– Lifestyle Choices
• Urban living is “in”
• A serious liability of many central-city neighborhoods—the low
quality of city schools—does not weigh as heavily on urbanites
without children
• Older restored houses are now considered more desirable
• Displacement of the Poor
– Those displaced are most often low-income renters, and
low-income renters as a group have high residential
mobility
– Elderly property owners do face higher property
assessments, but higher assessments mean that their
property is sharply appreciating in value
Decline of Middle-Income
Neighborhoods
• The number of middle-income neighborhoods
is shrinking
• U.S. middle-income neighborhoods made up
six out of ten of all metro neighborhoods in
1970, they made up only four out of ten in
2000
• Rising income inequality has led to rising
income segregation
• Neighborhoods are becoming more and more
economically homogenous
Successful Working-Class Revival
• Is it possible for cities to provide decent
housing for low-income working-class
residents?
– Working with community groups and local
nonprofit housing corporations, the city of New
York, for example, has worked a quiet revolution,
building just during the early 1990s some 50,000
new residences in what had been the most
devastated areas of the city