Cities in the 2020s

Source: istockphoto.com

These are the days of miracle and wonder--PAUL SIMON

This week, National Public Radio's "Marketplace Morning Report" discussed economic forecasts by the Oxford Economic Group which expects weak global economic growth in the near future, including the U.S. (Safo 2019). Actual results may vary, of course, and the authors suggest the cities best situated for a prosperous early 2020s are those outstanding on dimensions of economic mix, cost of living, and quality of life. So the U.S. urban economy expected to grow the most in 2020-21 is... San Francisco??

I'm not questioning the report's methodology, rather taking it as read, because [a] it's proprietary, and [b] I'm cheap. But San Francisco's cost of living is infamously high, particularly housing. Its cost of living ranked #2 among U.S. cities in 2019 by Kiplinger, trailing only the Borough of Manhattan (which is only part of a city), thanks to "years of relentless growth driven by high-paid tech workers." Average apartment rent: $3821 a month. So, given their criteria, however is San Francisco #1?

Poster, City Lights Bookstore, July 2014

Put another way, if San Francisco is in the best position in spite of its ridiculously high housing costs, what does that say about the rest of the country? For example, what is going to happen in Chicago, which ranks at the bottom of Oxford's list, thanks to the frightening budget and tax picture in the State of Illinois? What about small cities and rural areas, which can't compete with the big places for economic mix (or, arguably, for quality of life)?

The "winner-take-all" nature of the post-industrial economy applies not only to individuals but also to places (though see Sawhill 2019 for the argument that this situation results from political choices as well as economic fundamentals). In the modern tech economy, wrote Emily Badger (cited below) in The New York Times around the time Amazon made its HQ2 announcement, cities that already have wealth, opportunity, highly educated workers and high salaries will just keep attracting more of them.... A small number of rich and internationally connected cities keep increasing their economic advantages--and as a result, the inequality widens between them and everywhere else.

It looks like the 2020s will feature a big shakeout. I hope it won't hurt, but it probably will. Interestingly, Brookings scholars' list of the biggest economic stories of the 2010s focus less on places than on individuals (tax cuts for the rich, rising inequality, lower life expectancy, fewer teens in the workforce) and systems (monetary policy stuck on full-blast, good news on health care access and cost, no worker productivity gains, aging population). But it's fair to say that the fall-out from most of these individual- and system-level trends will impact localities, too, and not all localities to the same degree. Localities will have, already have, fewer resources to address either rising individual vulnerabilities or cutthroat economic competition.

Maybe the 2020s will be the placid sort of decade in which these sorts of issues can be thoughtfully sorted out. The 2010s certainly were, when you compare them to its immediate predecessor which featured a small recession, a massive terrorist attack, a debilitating war, and finally the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The 2010s have been quite a breather, comparatively, apart from a series of unforced errors. Future generations may well wonder why we squandered this opportunity in government shutdowns, highway construction, and the odoriferous politics of Donald Trump. The tasks of the 2020s will be hard enough without the possibility of additional pressure from:

• an economic downturn
• employment issues for the rest (of workers, of places)
• natural disasters exacerbated by climate change
• increasing refugee flows
• increasing homelessness, due to rising incidence of mental illness and/or poverty (see Hu 2019)
• changes in energy prices and supply
• intensified inter-group hostility
• crumbling infrastructure on which maintenance has been deferred too long

Pete Saunders, a planner and blogger from the industrial Midwest, anticipates the decade to come might fulfill the transition period underway throughout the 2010s, turning away from the auto-centric era that ran from World War II until the last decade's housing crisis.

Our development future will be even more urban.  It will be based more on the mobility options and opportunities --autonomous and alternatively fueled vehicles -- that will expand this century.  It will be more economically unequal in America, as America's economy becomes more equal with the rest of the world.   And our development patterns will be something that will adapt to the demands put on it by climate change. [For the next twenty years:] The rebirth of cities actually does take hold nationally, as growth filters downward from our superstar coastal cities to other cities.  Interior cities will tout their assets and amenities and become cheaper alternatives to the coasts. (Saunders 2019)

This fulfillment will be facilitated if millennials stay in cities, as seems to be happening where such opportunities exist (Lewyn 2019), rather than coming to expect the same subsidized suburban development their parents came to expect. It will require the masters of capital to notice all the talent in the cost-efficient interior of the country, and to move to take advantage of it, and for interior cities to position themselves for strength--culturally as well as physically and financially. It will require a willingness to adapt to climate change, even if we have to call it something else to soothe the deniers.

Some days my town seems to be about attracting entrepreneurs and removing obstacles to traditional development, and some days its long-term plan seems to consist of subdivisions and strip malls, not to mention the casino. I guess the glass is never entirely full, nor is it entirely empty, and that history progresses incrementally, even imperceptibly. Whatever this new decade brings, may there always be voices of hope and visions of common life.

SOURCES:
 Emily Badger, "The Same Cities Keep Attracting Tech. Why?" New York Times, 8 November 2018, B1, B2
 Winnie Hu, "Please, Don't Have a Seat," New York Times, 8 November 2019, A22
 Michael Lewyn, "Are Cities Really Losing Millennials?" Planetizen, 23 December 2019
 Nova Safo, "Economic Growth for U.S. Cities Will Depend on Mix of Industries," Marketplace, 23 December 2019
 Pete Saunders, "Revisiting the 'Big Theory' on American Urban Development," Corner Side Yard, 23 December 2019

SEE ALSO: "What Defined the Decade Since CityLab Launched," CityLab, 30 December 2019
EARLIER POSTS:
"Globalization's Challenge to Cities," 25 June 2016
"Can Cities Change Their Luck?" 20 June 2016
"Two Tales of Cities," 7 June 2016