The Bifurcated City In the progressive city, the rich do well while the poor founder. "In recent years, a relatively small downtown population has done better, but surrounding areas have not. Philadelphia’s central core rebounded between 2000 and 2014, but for every district that gained in income, two suffered income declines. Research by urban analysts Joe Cortright and Dillon Mahmoudi shows that the number of high-poverty (more than 30 percent below the poverty line) neighborhoods in the U.S. has tripled in the last half-century, from 1,100 in 1970 to 3,100 in 2010." Progressive politicians have used gentrification to create rich seams of graft and corruption for the transit mafia, the development mafia, politicians and other favored groups. "At its best, gentrification is primarily an organic process, part of the narrative of urban improvement. Its contemporary urban version, however, has too often been driven by targeted policy interventions, such as tax-increment financing, subsidized arts districts, sports stadiums, or urban-renewal projects, as in Portland, which typically depend on the exercise of eminent domain. Policies such as these can crowd out scarce public funds that could be spent more wisely elsewhere and have something to do with the high costs of housing (among other goods) that make it so hard for middle-class families to afford living in urban cores." The same progressive politicians use transit to reward the wealthy with pretty baubles while limiting access to those who most need cheap transportation. "Bus service, critical to poor and working-class residents, has often been reduced, even as rail service, intended to serve more affluent riders, expands. (Some cities have invested in passenger rail lines in an effort to reduce auto use, but transit market share has either stagnated or declined, a fact that rarely gets mentioned in reportage.) Public infrastructure spending on rail or on urban-containment policies does succeed in driving up the price of land, increasing economic pressure on lower-income residents. Many cities have emphasized the construction of high-density housing, which is largely funded by foreign investors, who often don’t occupy their units, creating expensive housing that sits empty. Nationwide, as much as 80 percent to 90 percent of new housing product is luxury-oriented." The politicians are the new feudalists building the new American feudalism, and it was useful idiots like Richard Florida who helped them. What Florida saw was the youth in their natural state viewing the city as a post-university Rumspringa experience. They come looking for excitement, lights, fast living, and the ability to hide while they act out some of their most base instincts. For most, the city Rumspringa ends when they marry or perhaps when they decide to have children. The city is a short term experience, not a long term lifestyle. Failing to understand that is curious in a researcher but not unexpected. "Public investment and regulation geared toward attracting high-income professionals to urban cores was inspired by the groundbreaking work of the University of Toronto’s Richard Florida, heralding the rise of a “creative class” of young professionals who would come into cities for economic opportunity but choose to stay there, recreating the dynamic grassroots economy and thriving urban middle class of yesteryear. Yet today, Florida believes this phase of the urban revival is now over. In his latest book, The New Urban Crisis, he sees the emergence of an increasingly bifurcated city, “accompanied by rising inequality, deepening economic segregation, and increasingly unaffordable housing.” Florida’s most recent research suggests that “urban crisis” conditions—wage inequality, income inequality, economic segregation, and unaffordable housing—are most pronounced in prosperous cities such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, San Diego, and Chicago." City politicians are not battling for the cities residents as they exist, they are battling to recreate the city in an image they desire. They want the city filled with people like them, single progressive, upper middle class, environmentalists. While they talk as if they care for the displaced poor, talk is cheap, actions, on the other hand, speak loudly. "Cities are battling for high-tech jobs, sometimes offering lavish inducements, but few poor inner-city residents are likely to work as coders for Amazon or Google. Little effort is being made to encourage the creation of sustainable middle-income jobs in industrial, warehouse, and business-service firms, which once sustained communities outside the urban “glamour zone.” A Brookings analysis found that, of the 30 U.S. metros that boosted their productivity, average wages, and living standard from 2010 to 2015, only 11 achieved inclusive economic outcomes. History shows that big income gaps and diminished opportunity can erode the civic order. Ancient Rome, industrial-era London, Manchester, St. Petersburg, and Shanghai, for example, all experienced revolts and, in some cases, revolutions led by the neglected classes. Tax breaks and subsidies for Amazon probably won’t help working-class residents of Queens or elsewhere." America cities may not have to become feudal enclaves of wealthy progressives surrounded by filthy serfs, but they are and will continue to do so as long as the electorate continues to elect progressives who seek to create new American feudalism. It is impossible for these people to change, they belong to the progressive cult. Cults and mass movement are created en masse but destroyed slowly when individual by individual they disintegrate. "Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds The way out for the progressive cultist is not through reasoned and rational debate and joint action; it is via the same mechanism trod by Detroit, the collapse. And it does not appear Detroit is ready to throw in the towel on progressivism just yet. I suspect we have a lot more collapse before we see the white flag in any number of cities. I hope the progressives enjoy their creation.
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