Why Are American Cities Squalid?
unherd.com
unherd.com
Cities were less squalid in the early 2000s, and somewhere in the decade that followed we decided law enforcement and incarceration were doing more harm than good. So, we elected mayors like De Blasio and Progressive DAs like Alvin Bragg and Chesa Boudin.
It doesn't help that in addition, now 100s of thousands of migrants are being bussed in.
Now parks are no longer usable for citizens and sometimes people living on the street or on public transport threaten us physically, but we're reminded to check our privilege.
There's nothing magical - this was a planned trade-off. The goal of Progressives is to treat homelessness and drug use as a shared societal problem to pay attention to, rather than hide under the rug (in prisons and jails).
These two forces work in opposite directions of attraction. Because the country is less urban than Western Europe, the most attractive places to live are not exclusively the big 3 cities. Our wealthy people are pulled away from the cities as much as they are attracted to them.
Meanwhile, a lot of national problems - drug addiction, homelessness, mental illness.. are essentially handed down to cities to deal with. Blue cities by and large have more social services, shelters, lax drug laws, needle programs, etc.. which attracts people who have these problems. Further, some cities like NYC have laws on the books that essentially force the city to provide a shelter bed for anyone who wants one.
Right now we are seeing this made worse by NYC absorbing a disproportionate number of migrants which are then the cities responsibility to house/feed. Wherever you stand on migrant policy, NYC has received a number of migrants equal to the pre-existing number of homeless shelter beds, at a time when shelters were at a an all time high utilization. So our homeless/shelter budget which is already higher per capita than most of the rest of the country just needed to double.
So blue cities end up with disproportionate number of problems they need to solve.
Like we can lock people in jail for violating drug laws.
Or we can allow drug use & provide clean needles.
But it is very very hard to pass & enforce "we will force you into a rehab house" or "we will force you to take addiction treatment X / mental health drug Y". The bar for this type of intervention is very high, and ironically higher than "you broke a law and go to jail now".
One frequent response to this point, is for someone to say "I'm open to decriminalization arguments, but I'm not supporting anyone who says 'The entire country has to adopt my policy in order for it to work!'" Which sounds reasonable, on its face, but in this case it seems like it really is the best option.
So in the us it’s a budget and planning issue. Places with representation and money get stuff done and other places do not.. largely because nobody cares.
A $1M income for a single person in NYC results in an all-in effective tax rate of 46% with a marginal tax rate a bit higher than that.
Plus we have fairly high property taxes so if you were to own say a 3 bedroom apartment commensurate with that income, you'd probably be paying another $30-50k in real estate taxes which is another 3-5% of your income.
I'm NOT saying let's cry for the poor millionaires, but I question that assertion that we just aren't collecting enough revenue.
We have serious rich mans cost disease in US cities where we just cannot spend money efficiently. See everything from homeless services / subway construction / etc.
However, a $2M apartment is only going to be like a 2 bedroom, so a Texas $2M home owner might be in the market for more of a $3M-4M apartment in NYC, even accounting for smaller square footage, etc. With the proportional increase in taxes..
There are homes near Lake Travis that go for up to ~$20M, but the mean average is ~ $1.5m.
We all, the upper brackets in particular, pay less taxes than we would be 30-40 years ago.
The rich also have tools to reduce their taxes further, like deferrals, that's how Trump didn't pay taxes for several years.
But having my tax rate go from 40% to 55% or 60% isn't going to solve, for example, NYC subway construction costs being 8x per mile more than Paris (a more socialist / strong union / pro-labor country).
So we have a serious cost disease in our cities.
Look at crazy stuff like this - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/25/us/la-sombrita-bus-los-an...
But, you're right in that just having more taxes won't fix things. There's serious issues in our governments, local state and federal, around actual costs and mismanagement of projects.
It feels weird to hold the opinion that at the same time we need more pro-union and pro-workers rights movements, and at the same time we need to take a lot of unions and what-not to task. ("why do i need to pay $10k for this light to be turned on?")
Poverty and squalor are a result growing economic disparity. Sure citys were cleaner decades ago. But compare how many hours at minimum wage it'd take to pay a mortgage then vs now. We hear the octogenarians in charge talk about buying a house out of highschool on a factory workers salary. Not only can't you do that now, but the factory likely closed a decade ago.
The point of decriminalization isn't to let people do drugs. It's so when people do get themselves in trouble, it's easy to get them back on track, instead of punishing them, and pushing them deeper in a hole with prison, and debts from fines, etc.
You should've seen how empty the holiday food donation box for my apartment complex was. I swear only one other person donated anything.
Also, there are many more churches and religious organizations in cities that lack community outreach and are just a place for the congregation to gather once a week. This is in contrast to the very giving churches and food banks of the South.
In America the pinnacle of collective action is the corporation.
Corporations are required by law to maximize shareholder value - not maximize communal quality of life.
There are other levels of communal action in the US - churches and family mostly.
Cities are a product of intense collective action. In the US - it's very easy to hobble the collective action of a city. The days of Robert Moses are gone - which is a good thing - he was a bastard.
Even if we adopt strategies like "Strong Towns" that's not a guarantee of non-squalid street conditions.
Nation states need to re-evaluate what their purpose is. Not likely to happen though.
Re-evaluate all you'd like. America's purpose is to uphold capitalism at literally any cost.
> Corporations are required by law to maximize shareholder value
No. And saying it more often does not make it any more true.
In modern publicly owned corporations, most shares are actually held by intermediary banks, and votes are done via proxy. Most shareholder resolutions fail, and votes are given to those who most claim to maximize shareholder value. It doesn't NEED to be this way, but this is the way it is now. But it could be different.
[0] https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
[0]https://www.kqed.org/news/11943263/americas-highway-system-i...
In a way, the infrastructure is poorer because the US are richer. Better infrastructure means higher taxes, which not only cost money, but incentive. With enough money you can overcome the issues of poor infrastructure. Bad public transport? Uber is even better than good public transport. Bad roads? Buy a better car. Homeless in the city? Get a huge house in the suburbs.
There's a wide range of population centers and surrounding suburbs with their own economies that flourish.
We are not like your typical Western European country (or Japan) that has 1 city containing the national government, best colleges, and biggest companies in the economy.
So there's a relief valve at the top whereby anyone of even moderate means can relocate themselves to follow the money / their passion / whatever.
You lose a lot when you make these your priorities. You lose the magnificent airport of Singapore, the railways of Japan, the cycling paths running across the whole of the Netherlands, the twisting trails linking villages together in the Alps. You lose a lot of social venues and social cohesion.
But you also gain something. You gain something almost unique in the world, which is the ability of the majority of the population (especially outside high CoL areas) to own their own house, a real house, earth to sky, with four walls to the winds. Often with its own garage, often attached, allowing you to pass directly to your car without touching the elements. You get space - the tremendous space - that feeling of infinite possibilities that hits you when you first step out of the airport of an American city, squalor and all.
"Germany, like much of northern Europe, is a high-regulation society, but it’s also high-trust"
I've lived in Germany a long time, and while it's a wonderful place, I can tell you a lot of people who want to get out, who are tired of being trapped in their tiny cold apartment worried if they can afford heating more than just their bedroom or (the decadence!) the entire apartment. The kind of freedom you feel in a country where you can just drop everything and move to a different coast and find a job and speak the same language, you can't do that here, at least not with a tremendous number of barriers to cross. And don't even get me started on dryers.
"I like to live here, but the reality is we are rapidly falling behind the rest of the world in liveability (sic)"
Livability as defined by world rankings, no, American cities won't match up. Even NYC's public transit is a joke compared to much of the world. But livability as defined by, somewhere I have the freedom to live, to own, to dream... the USA might just be the place.
And you can’t go anywhere or survive without a car and honestly it’s getting too crowded to have a car as ironic as that sounds.
Uh, no. Only boomers and the rich can afford houses now.
Around 92% of US households have at least one car. That's higher, but not a lot higher, than some European countries.
France was around 86% in 2015.
I couldn't find recent household car data for Germany, but did find that 72% say they own their own car, 7% said that they have a company car, and 13% said they use a family member's car.
In Italy 89% of households own a car.
If it's communal, it doesn't belong to anybody, so we don't bother to take care of it. Or we trash it because 'It's not mine so who cares?'
Other countries have different cultures: If it's communal it belongs to all of us, me included, so I'll take care of it.
New York Train Station: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/F9Y3KY/new-york-city-subway-statio...
Moscow Train Station: https://media.gettyimages.com/id/616625206/photo/mayakovskay...
Unfortunately, this means turning America into a grossly-unequal banana republic that includes either malicious neglect or malicious disadvantaging groups without power or influence. A proper response would be organized, collective action by those who are most at risk and impacted led by leaders with specific, actionable demands but, unfortunately, there is no appetite and the same Americans lack balls. The result is continued shrugging by some, squalid misery for others, stressful struggling for more, and easy privilege for a few.
You can't say those words here without half of the country screeching about the evils of Communism. This country is horribly propagandized and programmed to resist anything to the left of uninhibited free market capitalism.
> led by leaders with specific, actionable demands
I'm surprised anyone would seriously suggest collective action in the US after watching the absolute popcorn fart that was Occupy Wall Street. The first thing anyone who attempted organizing anything was to compile an enormous list of grievances, and then failed to rank them or clearly and consistently articulate, as you said, "specific, actionable demands." I'm not sure most of the organizers even got around to attempting to do a second thing.
In NYC and a lot of US cities, things can vary from block to block. You could live in Manhattan in a $3M apartment and the nearest grocery is the same one that NYCHA residents use. I'm not saying being poor makes you do crime, but if you are someone who is in a gang and doing crime, you are more likely to live in NYCHA than in the $3M apartment.
It's pretty normal in neighborhoods like UWS, Chelsea, LES/East Village, North Brooklyn to have block to block variance like this.
My subway stop has had 2 drug/gang related murders in the last 2 years, and it's also the first stop into Brooklyn from Manhattan. You'd not expect that.
So yeah, I think we also hide the problem less in our cities than Europe.
Is that a lot, or not a lot, to expect [EU perspective. I'd....expect....fewer than 2 in 2?
There are 472 subway stations in NYC, and generally less than 400 murders city-wide per year.
Generally murders happen a lot of places other than just subway stations, so having a murder at my subway station 2 years in a row is.. surprising.
If you look at who is doing it super well, like perhaps Japan? It's largely due to a 99.99% conviction rate on all crime accusations, which I take as a kangaroo court system, into penal labour. I don't think there's much to learn from there. Japan should stop their penal labour.
Switzerland, norway do a good job? Which came down to largely speaking a change about 10 years ago where people may live in the war fallout shelters but also a huge difference in labour laws. Mainly being no minimum wage. There's some brilliance to this, but not the entire answer. North america doesnt have these equivalent policies which isolate the squalid issues to another place. So often the social nets are located downtown and so they isolate these issues to their downtown. Moving the problem, isnt necessarily solving the problem.
You look at countries which have universal mental health care AND universal parental leave and supports. There's a huge correlation to solving these sorts of problems. Early childhood abuse reductions have huge impact toward criminality in general, including frivolous crimes like speeding and littering.
But then you look at the 'who is even responsible for cleaning up the mess' and generally speaking its the municipalities.
>But NYC’s problems only seem to be getting worse, especially for those who have the least.
I never researched NYC specifically back in the day but I am aware of what's happening there.
If you research Coleman Young's failures with detroit. NYC is basically following lockstep with how he failed detroit and caused the city of detroit's decline. Hows the saying go? Don't learn history and repeat it?
Thousands of years ago the political class figured out that the more control you apply to your populous, the more powerful you feel but the less actual control you have.
I cant point to any specific year for NYC but they've been in decline for at least a decade or more.
Basically what happens, the political class increases control, pushes out those who oppose and end up with increased support. They claim success. They rinse repeat. After a number of these cycles, the richer people who can afford to flee, have fled. Then you start getting tax hikes because they don't quite have the same tax base anymore.They dont blame themselves for the problem they caused.
So later on, you really struggle with your budget. NYC recentlyish announced deep cuts to police, education, libraries.
So NYC is deeply reducing the services they provide for what exactly? They take a percentage and have had many tax hikes.
Obviously, cleaning the squalor has already been cut. How many people just look at the tremendously high taxes and regulations, but then compare it to the now greatly reduced services. Where's all the money going? So you leave as well.
The only way NYC prevents their collapse is a huge reduction is their control. But politically that will never happen, so the squalor will increasingly get worse.
Could you explain how Coleman Young caused Detroit's decline? My understanding - but maybe I am wrong - was that the decline was caused by the auto industry gradually moving production out of Detroit and into suburbs in the 1950s, causing massive unemployment among low-mobility black workers in Detroit proper in the 1960s, causing the 1967 riot, causing white and wealthy black families to flee the city, and by the time Coleman Young was elected in 1973, the city was doomed to spiral into economic and social failure.
This subject could be a book. It probably is a book but I dont have any recommendations on hand sorry.
Much of your understanding is correct, if not all. But it's a matter of timing. Worse yet, it's impossible to disconnect the racism factor for sure. But also makes understanding the situation so much worse.
The huge missing factor here is the 'interstate blame' but you cant move the packard plant down the road. That's too costly, businesses will stay as long as they can tolerate.
If you look at metro detroit, it didn't decline until Kwame.
But the big question, why move to the burbs? Why not move to another city? That's the depth which is missing from a wiki page that matters.
Poor unemployed workers is a godsend to businesses. Businesses move in to gain access to high unemployment and cheap labour. Basically Chinese coast 101 and globalism.
Even outside detroit, the flint michigan strikes had lasting major consequences for detroit.
The riots only lasted a few days and were insignificant compared to the BLM riots or the Seattle insurrection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot
These obviously being heavily influenced by MLK and Rosa Parks; but also the underground railroad which saved so many slaves and deposited them in detroit or windsor. But they were only isolated to the black ghetto, white people really didnt care here. The riots never really left the black neighbourhood. The looting was of their own community. Why would white people necessarily be upset to any large degree about 5 days of unrest?
At the time of these riots, unemployment of black people was the same as white people. Roughly around 2-3%. The high unemployment occurred after.
It had everything to do with taxation policies, but you can get away with taxing successful businesses for a long time. If you increase taxes, the army of accountants will crunch the numbers. They figure out the number of years of ROI vs amortization of moving.
when coleman young got into power, 1973. The city was still pretty much white people, but blacks were extremely high turnout to vote and whites were busy in the burbs and didnt vote, voting was heavily down racial lines, and businesses hadnt yet fled to major significance. The interstates allowed commuters to drive into the city. I believe in terms of actual census, blacks didnt get parity with whites until the early 80s.
But the writing was on the wall. Nobody would invest into the city of detroit at that point when they are actively looking at the burbs. No investment means decline, but not significant quick decline.
Coleman right away had to deal with this and he knew it.
You don't hear about racist 'affirmative action' stuff anymore, but that was him. He did that. He had tons of racist policies, taxes were largely speaking only spent on initiatives for black people. It was literally a sort of 'ill get back at you for segregation' which the civil rights act and desegregation had been as expected rocky at best before him. He had pools which were 'blacks only'.
Imagine you're white, you pay increasing amounts of taxes. Your part of the city is declining and poor blacks who arent paying taxes are getting the benefits. Take from the rich, give to the poor. But you can simply leave and deprive the city of your taxes... that's the choice you make.
You then have a competing suburbs who say your taxes will go to your needs. I dont care what skin colour you are, you leave when it's so imbalanced and hostile to your needs.
So in coleman's term he went from a declining detroit into a bankrupt one and black unemployment went sky high because of his actions.
To his credit, he was always great at balancing the budget after this. He learnt what bankruptcy meant.
If I could take a Tardis to 1973, the decline of detroit was barely expected, and certainly not a set in stone reality.
Later on, Coleman tried to attract white people back to the city, but that was so impossible. To make up for his first term and pull out of bankruptcy, his taxation largely speaking targeted white businesses. Making the problem worse.
Detroit had a migrant crisis in exactly the same way NYC is experiencing today. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/05/us/migrant-crisis-new-york-bu...
They blame texas and arizona...migrants leaving the south for the north. No idea if true, but NYC chose to be a sanctuary city? Do they not want that anymore?
Also in exactly the same way, they have tried to control the populous and have pushed everyone who paid taxes out.