Redefining the City
As I mentioned in my last post, the White House Office of Urban Affairs has recognized that the massive agglomerations of population in American suburbs necessitates incorporating them into traditional urban policy. The Washington Post writes, “In the last few decades, the cities and suburbs turned inside out. Poverty spread in the aging suburbs, as many encountered rising immigration, unemployment and crime. Wealth flooded once again to the cities, as urban living and enterprise came back in vogue. City and suburb started to look economically alike.”
That is, to be generous, a gross over-simplification. In fact, poverty rates remain much higher in inner-cities than in suburbs. Concentrated poverty, which is a major predictor for crime and other social ills, is especially more common in the urban core. As I wrote in my recent feature on crime in D.C., much of the recent economic growth in the D.C. region benefited the suburbs. Gentrification is a real trend in many cities, especially D.C., but, as I wrote, the economic benefit generally does not trickle down to the impoverished. And, if you’re talking about urban America, you’re not just talking about D.C., much less Northwest D.C., you’re talking about Cleveland, Detroit, and other cities that have a long way to go on the gentrification curve.
While inner-ring suburbs have seen socio-economic and racial diversification in recent years, that’s more a function of the upwardly mobile moving to out to new exurbs than to the city. A more accurate depiction of the “urban” problems facing suburbs would be traffic and uncontrolled development. Problems like that, as the Post reports, are leading suburban Fairfax County in Northern Virginia to consider incorporating as a city so that it can better organize its miserable sprawl and manage its roads. Likewise, Richard Wells writes that a national economic strategy needs to be organized around modern “mega-regions.” I’m all for that, but the real thing that needs to be regionalized is education. The inequality between urban and suburban schools is a major cause of urban problems, from crime to depopulation. But unlike feel-good bromides about economic growth and regional planning, doing that would require some real political courage.
Ben Adler reports on Republican and conservative politics and media for The Nation as a Contributing Writer. He previously covered national politics and policy as a staffer at Newsweek, Politico and the Center for American Progress. Ben also writes regularly about urban and environmental policy, and he was a 2008-2009 urban leaders fellow at Next American City.
Issue No. 26 Launch in Washington, D.C.
Jonathan in Dallas on Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 11:54am
“A more accurate depiction of the “urban” problems facing suburbs would be traffic and uncontrolled development.”
I wholeheartedly agree. I would also contend that automobile based development forces certain caste structures that may not exist otherwise. Unless you have a robust public transit system or well planned walkable communities with a diversity of housing, employment and retail options, certain socio-economic sections of the population become isolated and fester.
You also lose the casual encounters that reinforce a common sense of community. For the vast majority of us living the the ‘burbs and exubs our daily interactions involve kissing our spouse/family goodbye, getting in the car, and then interacting with the same people at work, then going home to the family again. You never experience the chance encounter of sitting next to someone interesting on the train, or buying a coffee from a streetside vendor.
Suburban planning and zoning is broken. We really need policy level changes to fix it.