Predictions for 2010: Round Two
Martin Pettitt
Welcome to Round Two of predictions for 2010! (Click here to find Round One).
Last year, we invited a few thinkers and leaders to make predictions for 2009. You can take a look back at some of the predictions for 2009 from Ben Adler here and from Carol Coletta here. This year, we reached out to many of our writers, friends and the members of the Next American Vanguard to see what they think 2010 holds for America’s urban areas. This is the first installment of the responses we got; check back next week for another round. We’d also love to hear your thoughts, which you can post in the comments section below. Here’s some food for thought:
If 2009 was the year of economic crisis and recovery in cities, what will 2010 be the year of?
What sort of projects/initiatives are underway in your city that will begin to show results in 2010?
Who do you think will emerge as a power player in your city, or in national urban affairs?
Why is there reason to be hopeful about our cities’ futures?
And now, more predictions:
Lee Shaker, Research Fellow at Princeton University and contributor to Next American City
I think 2010 will bring a wave of consolidation in the newspaper industry. Cities that have more than one major newspaper at the start of the year will only have one at the end as the economy recovers and newspaper advertising doesn’t. Clearly, this trend is already underway - Seattle, Cincinnati, and Denver have already lost their second paper - but I think more publications across the country will tire of the uphill struggle and capitulate. At least for now, however, I don’t think a major American city will be newspaper-less: even though they are burdened by high debt loads, high costs, and high profit expectations, newspapers are still able to attract a large (if relatively smaller) audience. Even if it means raising the price and further slimming the product, newspapers will survive in print…for now.
Mara D’Angelo, Senior Policy Analyst
Smart Growth America
With the growing national focus on sustainability, I think we’ll see a more profound mixing of uses in cities - housing and retail, wind turbines and solar panels, transit and bike stations, and urban farms and gardens integrated in new, creative, and holistic ways.
Brendan Patrick Hughes, Writer, Contributor to Next American City, The Believer, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, Words Without Borders, and The Portland Phoenix
My predictions for 2010 are apocalyptic. With no end in sight to high unemployment and residential property foreclosures, along with a coming wave of commercial property foreclosures, 2010 will mark the beginning of a massive internal migration in the United States from suburbs and exurbs into large cities. The effect of this migration on cities will depend on municipal, state and federal governments’ ability to commandeer and utilize vacant residential and commercial spaces to provide essential services such as housing, health care, and education. If the public sector is unable to marshal these resources, then what will begin as an internal migration may well become an international one—the beginnings of an American diaspora.
Jeff Tiell, Graduate Student, City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania
I think 2010 will be the year of numbers, so to speak. What I mean is that given our 2010 census, this upcoming year will be pivotal year for cities as they count their inhabitants in order to obtain funds from governmental sources. This counting is shaping up to be made more difficult based on some of the anti-government sentiment brewing around the country as well as anger from the Latino community focused on the Obama Administration and its perceived lack of engagement with their needs and requests. A number of national Latino churches are organizing a boycott of the census, according to Douglas Massey at Princeton.
In short, never have numbers mattered so much for increasingly scarce dollars . . . and it’s hard to remember when a census has come under as much fire as it has thus far. This will be interesting—stay tuned.
Manni Marquez, Zilber Neighborhood Initiative Director, Clarke Square Neighborhood
Journey House, Inc.
I predict that in 2010, more so than in the past, neighborhood organizations will work closer together with not only other organizations but with city officials to revitalize neighborhoods and achieve plus sustain a high quality of life. The importance of these relationships and partnerships will be realized and produce results like never before.
More to come later this week!
An Old-Fashioned Name and a Brand-New Concept
The New Milwaukeeans: Making Sense of Population Growth in the Cream City
Best of the Web, 2009
Michael Isla in california on Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 8:53pm
A student in the studies of philosofia and Architecture design and one of the Urban thinkers of next American Vanguard ,i give my predictions. The coming of a new dust bowl will be trigged if we do not act upon it. Learn from history and put into place. The offering of labor without discrimination. companies offering Freelance work to any man or women who wants to work. There is work put a system been inplied to corporates to follow to many guide lines with CEO “s that only care about making the shock holders happy. and finding new ways to work around it. Survival of the fittest is set for companies. A giant monopoly pulling into our daily lifes. Our lifes is parallel to our interaction into sociaty in finding a datum to structure ourselfs will be controlled like the boom of houses being built like a railroad track. We only go forward and this train stops for noone. It will does that think ahead for greater good and seeing how a butterfly affect is set in motion. The law of the land will be challenge by the law of the universe. That is when innate thought and not how sociaty wants us to thinks when we will realize the affects.we all have upon each other.
Michael Isla in california on Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 10:49pm
Part 2 to predictions in the coming year 2010. The control of money and how is circulated. Banks capitalizing themselfs. enforcing the labor control by structural uniform. meaning an alliance of banks and land owners over the lower working class and profitting greatly. they are counting there chickens before they hatch. but the eggs are many so they have a gain percentage on the outcome . they will socialliace a private network of communication between banks and company owners that are great valued to the banks. this is no social network like facebook but the beggining of a corrupt private Government that has all client sold with idea of law of the land. If you are at the bottom you are there as punishment of bad investment. they will give a chance card that lets them go directly to go and collect 200 dollars only to there private network, they will try to find a way to work around the system, cause keeping the investers happy is number one. The coming of homes at a repo price will only influace the banks to place limits on on local business to gain more interest.at any cost. a very complicated fractus design: in other words i am saying that they are introducing and putting into effect mal practices in getting all that money back and are going to cover it up. once again people indedting them selfs again. supply and demand. and unemployment hitting higher digits. disrupting there structure form depends on the foundation and they got it.
Michael Isla in california on Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 3:10am
More predictions:.Law of land. The supreme law to protect. So why didn’t High school or community College teach it. Not even in my Architecture class was it introduce. Especially if you own property you are offer oppurtunities to make a good sum of money. So owning property makes you more like the romans, Above the law cause our Goverment needs to protect it at any cost. Like history show us when King Harold ordered the killings of all babies under 3. so that is the supreme law. But now is shared to most property own and gain fron tit. So the coming era is property owners vs. non owners. Then the right is not equal. Where is the equality, freedom to express. is all cover by the law of land and politians giving into it. I would like to know where to go and sign up for does reward cause i am in need of some reward and i do not ownproperty but i too would like to be invited to scam neighbors, friends, tenants, local people, drunks, my family, hey maybe my parents try to scam me why cause i would douth it State Farm offered then that, and i being there son was just a reward away . property detd could change peoples mind. Now State Farm Is trying to gain any Intel from me through my parents, cause i know they made a lot of calls trying to get that money. Insurance companies breeading a generations of spies. teenagers to small kids to the third generation. Creating Carnivals and a pleasantville to hepl raise property or just for the money. . Long beach i see is just speeding to get that next check. And still i see no change in helping the lower income class. Is the city in silent or just hiding. and still it happens. The program is in effect and money is involved then freedom of speech will need to balance it. You know how Proffesors encourage you to do your best but only to steal your ideas and inplied then to there concepts. Then I find this society corrupt and i find the law of land a means to control the people and gain profit. I am catholic and i see a younger generation change in a way that by allowing same sex marriege and being protected by this law and only cause money was involved and not true logical though in how our sociaty will be affected. That breaks us away from the true law. The law of the God.
James in NYC on Mon, Dec 28, 2009 at 10:07am
Is Brendan Patrick Hughes for real? The “ability of municipal, state and federal governments to commandeer and utilize vacant residential and commercial spaces”? There is no such ability. There is no police power than allows government to seize private property to provide public housing. That’s illegal and will never happen. Not only that, but government at all levels is flat broke.
I have no idea what the rant above my post is about. I could not make heads or tails of it.