Round 4: Predictions for 2009
What city do you predict will be hit the hardest by the economic crisis?
I should have asked about the cities that will benefit from the economic crisis — that would have been a much more interesting question! I’ll wager that New York City is going to be hit hardest by the recession. Estimates suggest that about 200,000 white-collar jobs will be lost by the end of 2009. Without job opportunities, those people will have no reason to stay in such an expensive city. New York has been flourishing from real estate transfer taxes and now that revenue is drying up. A third Bloomberg term looks inevitable, but my too-much-of-a-good-thing alarm has sounded…without a new guard it’s hard to come up with fresh ideas for the city. In my opinion, Bloomberg stepped over the line with his term-limits reversal and I predict a few minor disasters, all in the name of power.
Will there be a comeback in Detroit (beyond the auto industry, but in the city itself)? If yes, how? If no, what will happen to the city then?
Yes, I predict Detroit will come back! I envision Detroit as becoming the center of the Rust Belt. Groups like Great Lakes Urban Exchange are working to revitalize the area with an influx of young people looking to make a difference — a NOLA of the north? All that city needs is a good mayor and who knows what will happen.
If 2008 was the year of “green” and “sustainability,” 2009 will be the year of .....?
2009 will be the year of moderation.
What is the story in your city that no one is covering that you think will make the news this year?
Mayor Nutter hasn’t lived up to the hype. His sneaky attempt to close down the libraries without city council approval and a new project that will digitize the city’s street lights while defacing street corners just smack of business-as-usual. I predict more watchdog press.
Diana Lind is editor in chief of Next American City magazine.
Greetings From an Awesome Future: BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh Comes to Philadelphia
CD in NYC on Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 7:52pm
I dunno about Detroit, seeing as how many young Ohioans and Michiganders end up in Chicago (not convinced? Walk around on a Saturday and check out how many twentysomethings are sport OSU and UM colors). Chicago has cheap rent compared to the coasts, a thriving culture/music scene, mass transit and a diversified economy. Detroit has a small cultural scene and a halfheartedly fixed-up downtown surrounded by a miasma of poverty, crime and rotting housing stock.
Unlike New Orleans, Detroit weather is dreadful. Slow, painful decline doesn’t exactly make for a trendy cause celebre that gets the undergrad set excited enough to pick up hammer and nails. Call me cynical, but Detroit has to get up off the mat on its own power.
If the D is going to thrive, it will probably be because someone found a way to make money manufacturing something. Simple as that. The infrastructure is there and the workers are there. There’s no need to make the town something it isn’t.
Dan in Hollywood, CA on Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 2:30am
Diana,
I couldn’t agree with you more. Detroit is on the up, along with all the rust belt cities that hover on the Great Lakes like Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. “Why” some ask.
Affordability:
Where else in the world could you get a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath townhouse smack dab in the middle of Lafayette Park designed by Mies van der Rohe for $119k?
Entrepreneurship:
If you want cheap rent, great food and an overeducated workforce come to the rust belt. Some of the best universities have students clambering for any job you’ll offer.
Infrastructure, Lackawanna “Steal”:
President Obama, are you there? I know Biden is a champion of the rust belt and hopefully some of that $350 billion will be distributed to the poorest cities in the US(4 of which I have mentioned). We have plemty of abandoned buildings from he steel days of old.
No Bust:
The mortgage crisis hasn’t effected these cities as much as some others because there was never a housing market to begin with.
Water:
If any of you care to know Intel alone uses roughly 10 billion gallons of water a year to create its chips. You need fresh water. The Great Lakes represent 84% of North America’s fresh water and 21% of the worlds fresh water. This stuff is GOLD. With the passing of the Great Lakes Water Diversion Act the states(and canada) that border the Great Lakes almost own the water in them as no large diversion will be allowed under law.