Why the Era of Urban Supremacy May Be Over

Paywall.

What’s the summary?

R1 People with money are leaving urban centers. Slowly. Interesting discussion in the comments section.

I like this thread so I'll say more. People in the comments were trying to claim that Santa Barbara is part of Los Angeles. I don't think so. Also, there were claims that the suburbs are somehow part of the city. They really aren't. It's a whole different lifestyle. For one thing, you cannot walk to most places in the suburbs, but you might be closer to green spaces such as state parks (if you are lucky). It's a tradeoff.

Sorry, I crave theater, fine dining and museums. I don't think I'll find fulfillment in Boise, ID.

It's the 1970s again. So much overbuilding in urban areas, and too much crime now to make it sustainable and livable.

Good! Leave! And take your fucking kids!

It is always surprising the massive urban rural divide. Such different ways of living. They both have benefits and drawbacks.The perfect life I find involves to go back and forth in a ratio which suits one Nice if you can do it. Remote work has brought a massive influx to the rural. Plenty of country people aren’t super happy about the influx of city people. Housing has become even more expensive. This creates friction. Rurals have to share their solitude.

The rurals now have more chances for online hookups. We need to look on the bright side.

Once they start converting the empty business district buildings into condos and making the downtown areas people friendly for living with grocery stores, etc., those new, now lower priced condos (due to higher availability) will draw people back. All the prices across the cities will drop. The cycle will continue, city to suburbs and back again. Maybe this will be an urban renaissance with artists filling the downtowns. No one knows what's going to happen.

Politically, maybe this will blue up some of the red areas of the country as people spread out more as is already happening across some of the South.

Similar article from last month (which I posted in the thread because I am not a cunt like OP)

Not by choice

High urbanity — unless you're very rich or very poor — is until the kiddies get to school age and until your 40's of you're child free. That's when the hassles stop being worth it. It's going to continue to be a conveyor belt like that.

[quote]Sorry, I crave theater, fine dining and museums. I don't think I'll find fulfillment in Boise, ID.

I don't think you'll find fine theatre in NY either. If you do, you'll have to pay the deposit on a car for it. If you've got money you don't worry about museums: you just fly wherever there's an exhibition on that interests you. If you live in NY now you've already seen all the main collections the museums have to offer. And the fine dining will flee if the office space collapses.

The death of cities was the one easily predictable outcome of the pandemic. Get rid of your investments in office space, because it's going to be a while before CBDs look attractive again.

We saw this before, in the late 50s and 60s, when reasonably paid office workers all fled to the suburbs and urban decay and general scariness was a big thing.

How often can you go to a museum?

So much culture is available online today. You can put together a private film festival using what is available on the internet that London or New York can’t compete with.

A lot of urban restaurants really aren’t fine dining.

Cities stil have something to offer culturally, but really only the biggest ones, such as London or Chicago.

The main thing cities can still offer is a variety of social contacts.

[quote] People with money are leaving urban centers.

This is the opposite of what is going on. People with money are monopolizing urban centers and driving out the vital middle class.

The thesis of the article is wildly wrong or the OP is a moron and didn’t summarize or understand the article.

See the Classic sci-fi film BLADERUNNER.

[QUOTE] Similar article from last month (which I posted in the thread because I am not a cunt like OP)

OP thinks everyone here should be subscribed to the New York Times. It’s not expensive.

[quote] Once they start converting the empty business district buildings into condos and making the downtown areas people friendly for living with grocery stores, etc., those new, now lower priced condos (due to higher availability) will draw people back.

It's always 1987 on Datalounge.

Stay gold boys.

Stay gold

[quote] This is the opposite of what is going on. People with money are monopolizing urban centers and driving out the vital middle class.

SMH

The point of the article was that post-pandemic those people with money are leaving for the suburbs.

Not rural areas.

Not smaller cities

Not the suburbs of smaller cities

The suburbs of the cities they were fleeing.

The problems with the article is that Thomas Edsall is a widely mocked hack who cherry picks stats handed to him by people he finds who are not actually regarded as experts, often professors at lesser known schools.

So it's just as likely that this is not in fact happening and that Edsall found some numbers that seem to support his point but don't hold up under scrutiny.

He has a tendency to rely on raw numbers -- 500K people did X, without framing it as "500K people is only 0.4% of the group in question."

I don't know about other cities, but the people buying in New York are Chinese and Russian moneylaunderers, They don't live there, it's just a way to store and clean the cash. That's one major reason RE privces remain high even though stores and restaurants are closing due to less foot traffic, office workers and high-income actual residents.

The city will die without the day-to-day trade that the workers and actual residents bring, but who knows how long that will take.

[quote] OP thinks everyone here should be subscribed to the New York Times.

In this Ohio diner, the New York Times is still the “Gray Lady” dispensing world-class journalism to the masses, and not a relic relying on cynical clickbait contrarianism to meet its advertising revenue quotas. Here’s why that’s good news for Ron DeSantis.

[quote]The main thing cities can still offer is a variety of social contacts.

The main thing cities can still offer is the opportunity to walk to a grocery store, a drug store and the few artistic events that sill interest me.

There is no "overbuilding" in urban areas. That is complete BS. In fact, there was a NY times article a few years ago showing that Manhattan produced far more housing units in the 60s than it did in the last decade. What's crazy about that is that Manhattan actually SHRANK in the the 60s versus last decade where it grew. So you know that's really bad. There was far more building in the urban areas prior to the post-WW2 era because there was less strict zoning and restrictions as far as what could be built. Urban areas are not producing enough units to meet demand. It is an issue of supply, not demand. And really, what is this person talking about? Urban Supremacy in America has not been a thing since pre-WW2. Since then, America has become more suburbanized. The article includes quotes from Wendell Cox who is the urban planning equivalent of a creationist in the Evolution debate. I'm pretty skeptical of the entire article.

R13 Did you get all your ideas about urban life from Seinfeld? Culture will survive in the cities, it's not moving to your mall.

R14 You can have it. Live your life online. Sit in the drive-thru, eat in your car. Don't ever look away from your phone or you'll realize where you actually are.

click bate. as if NYC was the lodestone of the rest of the country

R25. The only thing I mentioned doing online is watching a film. You can’t or shouldn’t talk during a movie so what is the value of leaving your house to see one?

Maybe that’s why you’re stuck in a city. All you can think of doing is being friendless, stuck in your home, glued to your phone. There is such a thing as entertaining friends, gardening, and enjoying nature. But those things require initiative and imagination.

[quote] How often can you go to a museum?

There's always a new exhibit.

[quote] So much culture is available online today. You can put together a private film festival using what is available on the internet that London or New York can’t compete with.

I'd rather venture out to The Tribeca Film Festival.

[quote] A lot of urban restaurants really aren’t fine dining.

I'll take Smith & Wollensky over a Longhorn Steakhouse off the interstate any day.

Archived copy of the Times article.

I think this is all cyclical. People abandoned cities and then moved back in the 80s, 90s, 00s. I remember living in DC in the 90s and everyone was moving to Arlington because DC was so unsafe because of crack and prostitutes. And then living in the city became hot again. It comes and goes. Crime will go down, things will settle, and young people especially will want to be in cities.

I’m a twenty-five year NYer who has never considered leaving, and still can’t imagine I will. But in the past year, the thought has crossed my mind. The shuttered stores, sidewalk sheds everywhere, dog shit everywhere for some reason. Not to mention the growing number of stores that now lock up even low priced items so that shopping involves getting an associate to constantly unlock cabinets so you can get your goddamn shaving cream. I do still love all the things I’ve always loved about the city, like the food and culture and diversity. It’s just that the downsides right now are particularly down. Hope it gets better, but articles like this do give me pause.

I hope so, R30, but I’m not as sure this time. Young people seem like the want to be online, first and foremost, and they can do that from anywhere.

Where I live (Toronto) the centre has become unnavigable. Lousy transit, congested streets, empty bike lanes. I'm not going suburbs but country (granted, I grew up there so I know what I'm getting into) but I can't wait to live this crap town. Absolutely hate living here. It's such a grind.

R27 [quote] How often can you go to a museum?

This is all you needed to say.

I hope the cities empty out and rents go down. Some of us would just prefer to live there and we should be able to. Maybe the arts could actually make a comeback too.

The only suburbs I’ve ever liked are the ones fairly close to the city from the early 20th century.

R27 What's the value of ever leaving your house at all?

I entertain friends, I have a garden, I enjoy nature. I can go hiking in 15 minutes. I can be in the ocean in 45. I can ski in an hour and a half. When I want I can go to the theater, opera, museum, cinema, lecture, etc. I go to fun bars and amazing restaurants. I choose not to live my life through a screen.

I won't insult you by saying that you lack initiative and imagination because I'm not a cunt, but I have far more choices in my life than the ones you have limited yourself to.

Why do people assume you can’t go to restaurants or cultural events if you live in the suburbs? I can get to major destinations more easily than people who live in the city because I live near transit and major highways.

R38 it’s often cheaper for me, a rural broke gay, to see certain shows or films or sports games (only select ones depending on availability, though), because the closest venues to me are cheap smaller ones in country towns that aren’t selling many seats so they’re going cheap.

The hot-ticket major events in the big city centres are expensive, pricing out poorer spectators or cramming them in like sardines. Not something I’d be interested in.

The only expense and annoyance I find about living rural is all the time and money for travel. I can’t do much spontaneously or without advance planning, or without shelling out for fuel or a train ticket. It’s kind of a hassle, and it turns you into a lazy recluse in the dark cold months.

[quote] Politically, maybe this will blue up some of the red areas of the country as people spread out more

Not when you consider the reason they are leaving the cities.

Another thing going on is the world has a lot more people in it. They have to be somewhere. I live east of the Bay Area and we are having a massive ongoing migration of every demographic piling in. Places that 15 years ago were basically only used by the locals like trails swimming spots climbing rocks, etc now have 10 to 50 cars parked at their entrances and weekends are worse. Housing is going up and up but funnily enough the down towns are still barely surviving. Wall mart, Safeway and dollar generals dominate. Galleries small eateries and movie theaters just barely hang on or die quickly after opening. The rural economy is strange. I realize the economy is generally low and slow but many those that have a bit seemingly would rather spend 20 dollars at Mickey D’s than the same on real burger or real bread. It’s frustrating to watch.

[quote] I realize the economy is generally low and slow

Huh?

Why do you say that, R40? Not everyone leaves because they support rightwing policies. I left the city and I’m still a Democrat.

The main reason people were in the cities before was because of work. Many of those city dwellers, post 1990 or so, looked at the comparison between suburban living and city living and found the idea of short commutes and an urban lifestyle to be worth the fuss.

The pandemic upended a lot of that, because now you can work remotely and live in Cooter Holler but work remotely. It will be interesting to see where the chips fall over the next 5 years or so.

R37. Haha. It’s too late to say your not a cunt. If you had more self-awareness, you would have realised I was only imitating your vileness to me. Of course , I have no reason to believe you have no initiative or imagination any more than you had any no reason to believe I’m tertres to my phone or car. It was just something said out of your stupidity and rudeness.

Stay in the suburbs and eat hummus folks.

R34. Is there some value in going to to the same museum dozens of times a year? Is that enriching?

[Quote] So much culture is available online today. You can put together a private film festival using what is available on the internet that London or New York can’t compete with.

R14 uses "can" endlessly in all of his posts. The problem is by far the vast majority ....won't and don't. After they age they stay home and play games online or just watch tv. Network tv even as much as streaming.

At least in a major city, there is always that feeling of joy or camaraderie when you go to that Baroque Instruments recital or South African film and you interact with others having similar interests.

Also, as you really age, good luck finding elder care or child care if you have children.

Also, there's obesity in the city, but watching people waddle out of New Jersey Transit hub downtown is always.....enlightening.

R48. Are you illiterate? I specifically said there are social advantages to cities. I never said everyone would take advantage of the culture available to them the country, just as most people in the city don’t. You should respond to what I say not the idiot voice in you head

You seem really nice, R49. How are those social advantages working out for ya?

R50. I’m not nice to people who are vile

I'd guess it's a long list, Mary.

R14 aka r49 and his endless qualifications to his inane posts is indeed amusing to watch. Unless one agrees with him he so common and predictable. He is the nosy suburban neighbor right out of a 1950's film or a sitcom - the one who gives the suburbs a bad name.

Girls, girls, girls, take it easy, you're all pretty.

Every place has value, but it's important to me to get the crotch drippings away from the good bars and restaurants and museums...

What's the deal with city kids who were raised in the aughts as sheltered, coddled suburban-style kids? Very weird...

I'm tired of citylife. A part of it has to do with my age as I don't need clubs and a nightlife as much any more. But would I get more stupid if I become a rural person?

I like the idea of country life, but culture happens when groups of like minded people conglomerate. Would online culture offer an adequate and new alternative?

[quote]The only suburbs I’ve ever liked are the ones fairly close to the city from the early 20th century.

That's exactly where I live and I love it. I get the relative safety, room, and quiet of the suburbs but am only a half hour drive or 20 minute train ride to one of the biggest cities in the country and the world class museums, theaters, hotels, lakeshore, etc. that it provides.

You aged out, R54. Things change. Good scenes are ephemeral. That's the reality.

I find this subject fascinating because I love cities. But I also understand why people flee cities (or at least downtown areas). There's been urban doom loops before, but of course now we live in an era where a significant portion of people can work remotely.

Is it truly "urban" supremacy that's over or the supremacy of the central business district - which was declining in a lot of cities even before Covid and the remote work revolution.

R53. Haha. The simpleton in your head must keep you constantly amused. I don’t live in the suburbs. I split my time between a big city and the country.

There are no endless qualifications—not even one— just you grappling with your illiteracy.

If you do in fact live in a city it’s proof not all rubes live in the county.

[quote]There's been urban doom loops before, but of course now we live in an era where a significant portion of people can work remotely.

Some of you don't even know you're living in a bubble, do you? Define significant portion because the 25% that is the actual number is in no way a significant portion...and that's including people who work from home occasionally. The vast, vast majority of jobs cannot be done from home.

25 percent seems significant, especially when you consider the effect of that percentage on urban centres.

[QUOTE] The vast, vast majority of jobs cannot be done from home.

But the vast, vast majority of jobs don’t pay well, R61. The ones that do involve a computer, and it’s indeed work that can be done from home. And these are the people who pay the most taxes. That’s the point of the article. What will cities do with so many of these people leaving, and what happens to the jobs downtown that rely on their presence and spending money? Hence the doom loop.

When was 75 percent a vast, vast majority?

Better go back to math class, R64...or kindergarten. 75 >>> 25

[quote] Why the Era of Urban Supremacy May Be Over

Silly headline.

The phrase 'Urban Supremacy' is hyperbolic.

The verb 'May Be' is wishy-washy.

I believe it when the rents budge even an inch.

This article is based on 2021 and 2020 which are wonky years from which to derive larger conclusions.

The proof is in the pudding as they see and I’ll believe it when nyc or dc rents come back into a sort of normal range

The level of Eldergay Hissing on this thread is off the charts

I get allergic smelling hay

Another NON story from the NYT

Better go back to reading class.

"Some of you don't even know you're living in a bubble, do you? Define significant portion because the 25% that is the actual number is in no way a significant portion...and that's including people who work from home occasionally. The vast, vast majority of jobs cannot be done from home. "

No, I think most of us realize this. 25% is significant to everything the article is talking about - having workers in urban cores and the trickle down negative effect to retail and services when workers are absent - permanently or even partially - as with hybrid workers. And following that, an erosion of the tax base. Second, multiple times the article specifies a type of high-earning "knowledge economy" employee who is likely to work in offices in urban cores. So yes, maybe only 25% of jobs can be done from home, but those types of jobs may be overly represented as the reason for, for example, low vacancy rates in downtown office towers.

The 25% includes all the people who OCCASIONALLY work from home. Jobs that can be done completely from home are rare and almost all in the tech or sales fields. And, from the looks of it, a lot of those tech people working from home are about to lose their jobs.

[QUOTE] Jobs that can be done completely from home are rare and almost all in the tech or sales fields.

But the number of jobs that can be done completely from home are growing everyday, r73. It’s not like the number is going down—it will only go up from here.

I feel this. All love I had for my hometown of Portland has vanished in the past few years, getting out to somewhere smaller where I won't have to deal with the crime and homelessness and all the crap that has crept in over the years, seems no longer unimaginable. The possibility of remote work is the game changer

Cities are too dangerous thanks to progressives with their bleeding heart woke ideology. These places are crawling with criminals and crime.

Exactly which of the Red State cities on this new list have "progressives with their bleeding heart woke ideology" r76?

15 Most Dangerous Cities in the US

St. Louis, Missouri

Mobile, Alabama

Birmingham, Alabama

Baltimore, Maryland

Memphis, Tennessee

Detroit, Michigan

Cleveland, Ohio

New Orleans, Louisiana

Shreveport, Louisiana

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Little Rock, Arkansas

Oakland, California

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Kansas City, Missouri

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

PS: Datalounge.com has its faults but susceptibility to white trash trolls such as yourself has never, and in all likelihood, will never work here. Nice try though!

Where do you think all the criminals are going to go when people leave? They'll be right behind you.

Like rural areas are some safety refuge. As if. There are higher crime rates in rural areas when adjusted for pop.

They are always beating their wife or shooting someone’s dog or cooking up meth or plying pain pills. You name it.

You’re much safer in the cities.

R77, everyone of those cities you listed are blue majority with progressive Dem mayors.

R79. Your general argument about rural areas not being safer is probably true but some of the crimes you list don’t affect strangers.

Suburban areas are definitely safer.

Yeah, the suburbs are the safe zone between the handgun-ridden, crack hole cities and the AK-ridden, meth hole rural areas.

Suburbs aren't inherently safer than just about anywhere else.

But they were built specifically to make it difficult if not impossible for people to get to without a car.

Until it isn't.

The era of urban supremacy really WAS over for five decades, but it's far, far, far too soon to make this claim now.

[QUOTE] Suburbs aren't inherently safer

Yes, they are.

[QUOTE] But they were built specifically to make it difficult if not impossible for people to get to without a car.

And that’s a big part of the reason why they’re safer.

[quote] Yes, they are.

No, they aren't.

[quote]And that’s a big part of the reason why they’re safer.

I've lived in a city my whole life, your "Safety" is meaningless to me

What R86 means to say is "Because I don't have any of those scary black or brown or poor people around, my PERCEPTIONS tell me I am safer."

in my humble opinion, putting an enormous grass lawn in front of you and your neighbors never makes you safer.

I live in a suburan heavy city with a small downtown. It is often rated as The Worst Place to Live in the US as well as The Dumbest City. There are few cultural opportunities and no natural wonders.

But I am introverted and married with a kid homebody. So, those type of things aren't of much value to me. However, the city has the lowest cost of living in the country.

I live in a rural setting 9 minutes outside the city limits on a 20 acre farm with two houses. The cost we paid for all this was 300,000 dollars cheaper than the tiny ranch house my cousin bought in California this month.

What city, R91? It doesn't sound like much of an actual city if it's so small and the rural area is 9 minutes away.

[quote] Where do you think all the criminals are going to go when people leave? They'll be right behind you.

They can’t afford it. Cities are for the poors.

Do people really not know how to write out dollars in words/numbers?

$300,000

[quote] They can’t afford it. Cities are for the poors.

Except no. As cities have gentrified and expensive condos are built, low income people are moving primarily to the "inner ring" suburbs - usually the oldest ones, built in the 50s or early 60s, where the population has moved or died out, and where younger families are not moving, because they want a McMansion in the far out suburbs, out in the far right Republican boonies.

[QUOTE] "Because I don't have any of those scary black or brown or poor people around, my PERCEPTIONS tell me I am safer."

There’s plenty of black and brown people in the suburbs with cars, R89. And they don’t commit crimes. People of all races who live in the burbs commit less crimes. YOU are the racist for assuming that’s what I meant.

[quote]I'm tired of citylife. A part of it has to do with my age as I don't need clubs and a nightlife as much any more. But would I get more stupid if I become a rural person?

[quote]I like the idea of country life, but culture happens when groups of like-minded people conglomerate.

R55, I'm always a bit wary of older people setting their sights on rural life, as if the only antidote to having tired of city life is a Green Acres experiment. Americans like to be surrounded by land and not neighbors, and I understand the impulse of people moving to the country to enjoy privacy and quiet. The flipside is that the large property needed to maintain privacy and quiet requires steady maintenance; having to drive 20 minutes or a half-hour to a small town to buy coffee or milk or groceries and the most basic of other supplies starts as an adventure but can turn suddenly with one's health. People who escape to rural areas and enjoy keeping to themselves may find themselves in the disadvantage of having few to call upon should they need to run into the hospital for physical therapy every day for a month.

If someone wants to enjoy rural surroundings late in life, great, but have a backup plan in mind should you have to change gears and be closer to medical or care services, should property maintenance (even managing the people you hire to tend the property) become too troublesome, its good to have in mind Plans B and C, and to implement them before doing so becomes too stressful.

[quote] A part of it has to do with my age as I don't need clubs and a nightlife as much any more.

I'm an elderly and live in the city, I went on a wild crazy evening date the other night - TO THE MUSEUM OF ART! Oh, the HUMANITY!

[quote]great, but have a backup plan in mind should you have to change gears and be closer to medical or care services

a geriatric relative just decided that recently, she loves living out in the country on her two acres of land. but in her late seventies she's decided that being less than forty miles from the nearest medical facility is a better idea

[quote] There’s plenty of black and brown people in the suburbs with cars

Yep. All three of em.

Maybe in your lily white neighborhood, r100. I have plenty of black and brown families in mine. White people aren’t the only ones fleeing cities.

Some people on here really do have an antiquated vision of the suburbs. There are many metro areas that have more diversity in their burbs than in the main cities. Washington DC is a great example. Enormously diverse in the burbs but not nearly as much in the city. I say this as someone who is more of a city person.

My answer to R14 - how often can you go to a museum?

The constantly changing temporary exhibits aside, the answer to this really depends on what you get out of going to a museum. If you feel that once you’ve seen a particular work of art, or walked through a permanently installed gallery, you’ve seen it, and would be bored doing it again a year or three later - then you have a point. I personally feel exactly that way about hiking, because how many times can you look at a tree - walking in the woods frankly bores me.

Museums, and urban environments in general, have the opposite effect on me. I can wander around my neighborhood endlessly. I love looking at the details on the buildings and the varied compositions of the blocks, even if I’ve walked down those streets daily. I’m sure nature lovers feel this way in the woods.

Same with museums - the dozens of times I’ve sat looking at the Temple of Dendur, or walking the European Painting Galleries at the Met combine the comfort of the familiar with the enjoyment of seeing something you never noticed before, or not in the same way before. An afternoon in a museum is like a mini vacation for me.

My biases are I’m an urbanite who grew up in the suburbs but would never move back to one - no matter how things go in NYC I’m sticking it out. This is a preference that works for me, everybody else should do what works best for them.

You don’t have to live in the city to go to a friggin museum or anything else there. I’m a suburbanite who loves and goes to museums and good Italian restaurants in the city all the time—then I drive the fuck home.

[quote] Why the Era of Urban Supremacy May Be Over

Well, is the era of "Urban Supremacy" over or NOT over?

To be honest, a lot of the culture you can enjoy, even in a city as large as New York, can be pretty hackneyed. The programs of New York Philharmonic and The Metropolitan Opera are heavily tilted towards the old warhorses. Art Museums favor blockbusters, like Impressionism exhibits. The problem is even more acute in smaller cities where orchestras turn over large shares of their seasons to film scores and pop concerts.

In the end, in the age of the internet and mail order delivery, how enriching and cultural your life is depends more on you than on your location. Cities have always attracted a disproportionate share of intellectuals and creative people, but there have always been a signifiant number of artists and creative people who have lived in the country or in the suburbs.

"Some people on here really do have an antiquated vision of the suburbs. There are many metro areas that have more diversity in their burbs than in the main cities. Washington DC is a great example. Enormously diverse in the burbs but not nearly as much in the city. I say this as someone who is more of a city person."

Very true. Suburbs vary a LOT and come in all types. Some are lame stereotypical suburbs, some aren't.

Were we ever actually in an era of urban supremacy or do the people that live in those urban areas just believe that to be true?

Amazon and work from home are absolute game changers and will most likely change so many things that we can’t even fathom yet.

I think in our natural states we are drawn towards people and bustling areas. When we are not being saturated by divisive propaganda and pandemics and too much social media, people like to congregate together. Big cities are natural imo.

Decentralization has been an American preoccupation since 1945. Why? Because of nuclear weapons. America's suburban sprawl is not the fault of the car, or developers. It was a conscious decision to make the country safer from nuclear attack because the genie is out of the bottle and nuclear war will happen sooner or later. Right now only America is in a position to survive such a thing with an intact society. Russia will go back to being nomads. China, India, and Europe will be wastelands. It's not the best life for anyone, but it is survival for the species.

"Were we ever actually in an era of urban supremacy or do the people that live in those urban areas just believe that to be true?"

No, I think it was true from a purely financial standpoint - in terms of jobs and economic production. That's basically the entire reason metro areas form and keep on expanding. Whether those urban areas were/are "supreme" in other aspects is debatable, though I think we usually associate a lot of cultural output with urban areas, if not exclusively.

I'd add that "urban" doesn't always refer to the same thing. "Urban" financial supremacy usually refers to cities AND their surrounding suburbs - i.e., metro areas. While the article seems to use "urban" to mean central city cores, but not the suburbs. "Urban" blight was often in reference to central cities, but has probably expanded to include any blighted suburbs.

[Quote] The programs of New York Philharmonic and The Metropolitan Opera are heavily tilted towards the old warhorses

You say that like it is a bad thing.

[quote] White people aren’t the only ones fleeing cities.

as mentioned above, poor residents of regentrified neighborhoods, many who have lived there their whole lives and are generally people of color, have been displaced. the areas they generally can afford to move to are the "inner " suburbs, usually the oldest. Suburban areas supply the least infrastructure, thus these areas, despite the lawns and such, lack more key ingredients for sustainable living for these residents than many times living in the inner city.

[quote]. Right now only America is in a position to survive such a thing with an intact society.

you just made that up. none of that statement is true

[quote] but has probably expanded to include any blighted suburbs.

the oldest suburbs weren't constructed to last, so they are indeed crumbling

[QUOTE] poor residents of regentrified neighborhoods, many who have lived there their whole lives and are generally people of color, have been displaced.

Well now they can move back to the city.

[quote] Right now only America is in a position to survive such a thing with an intact society.

But mostly not intact cocks.

Philly’s population drops for second year in a row. Largest single year decline since 1990.

2 million people fled big cities between 2020-2022

We really are heading toward realizing dystopia, aren't we? I mean, another twenty or fifty years maybe, but it's all falling apart, isn't it?

I'm not sure if people leaving cities amounts to dystopia.

I meant the various factors contributing to people leaving are indicators of where we're heading.

Meta tells all employees to prepare to work from home

these threads are like catnip for the angry shut-ins of the DL.

They're more or less the exact type of person who'd panic and shoot someone who rings their doorbell.

R126, they just don't want anyone to open a barbecue joint near their house!!!!

Spiraling in San Francisco’s doom loop

Haven’t cunts been saying this for the past 40 yrs.

I wish this there were true. Instead demand for NY area apartments is not residing and rents continue to be pushed to be expensive as hell. It would be great if people were actually fleeing, get the cost to go down.

Exactly, R131. It is the prices more than anything else that are blighting the urban centers. In their greed and hollowness, the investors and speculators have overlooked the simple fact that you can't have a vibrant, creative city center if you price out the vibrant creators who make it attractive and the small indie businesses that make it liveable. Now they are letting those investments sit empty rather than lowering the rents . . . and there's your "urban blight" formula.

Big city public transportation systems are collapsing from revenue loss

So is Commercial Real Estate going to tank? That means the banking crisis is far from over.

NYT: College workers fleeing coastal cities

For a quick second...I thought I read, "white supremacy". Wishful thinking..

R136 Our brains must be similar. Every time I glance at the title of this thread I read white supremacy at first. Every time.

Meh - ebb and flow. The hot cities became too hot. The pandemic/WFH allowed people to spread out and took some of the pressure off the hot coastal cities - which is being catastrophized as the “end of the city”. Whatever. Prices are still sky high - but hopefully they will subside after the mania of 20/30-somethings flocking to the cities to make up for their 3 lost years of socializing. The doom-loop stories are click bait getting caught up in the spin cycle of left/right politics.

Sure everyone is moving from NY to Florida and soon NYC will be empty and Florida will sunk under the weight of all the extra people (after climate change raises sea levels). Modern media is such a dram queen.

The doom loop is hitting the Midwest as well.

R139 that’s an interesting opinion piece. Partly true but not sufficient to really help matters.

It All boils down to money and the variety of sharks crusing the area. They bought "urban" at the lowest low ever, then upped it to young and gullible people with cash. Of course that pushed out the poors who live at the edge of downtown, which needless to say saw fresh crime victims. The young and gullible grow older, wise upand get out. Now the value will goback down. And in twenty or thirthy years the cycle repeats. End of story.

I think it's too soon after all the upheavals of the Pandemic to identify long-term trends. People are still finding their footing. Many people (myself included) have gotten out of the habit of attending something significant (a play, an opera, a symphony concert, a rock concert) on a weekly basis, and debate whether to do that even once a month. Same with dining out and other activities we associate with urban living. That doesn't mean that people won't eventually get back into those habits. We just don't know. In my life I have been a small-medium sized city dweller, a NYC dweller, a college town dweller and and am now right back where I started. Work, school and opportunities took me hither and yon. I could say there are advantages and disadvantages to each, but I found fun and friends everywhere I've lived. Living in a small-medium sized city (500,000 metro area) is a good fit for my age. I can live 7 minutes from downtown in a house with a yard and garden. I don't face long commutes or a scary mass transit ride. My life is safer and less stressful, with fewer physical challenges (such as I'd find toting groceries and laundry up 4 flights of a walk-up building). But I don't encounter the wide range of personalities and stimulating events and ideas, never mind the international diversity I did when I was living in NYC. And I have always worked in the arts, so I crave that sort of stimulus. People are in a guessing game at the moment. We don't know what the new economy is going to look like, what climate change is going to do to migration patterns, and how people will feel about working from home after 5 years of doing it. I wouldn't believe any prediction made right now. Wood Allen liked to quote an old Jewish saying, "if you want to make God laugh, tell Him what you had planned for tomorrow".

[QUOTE] Downtown San Francisco’s office buildings have been quieted by some of the highest vacancy rates and slowest return-to-office trends in the country. But when walking around the area, what makes it feel still so uninhabited is a different but related phenomenon downstairs from all those empty offices: the vacant ground floor.

[QUOTE]It’s the windows with their shades tightly drawn, the phantom deli counters visible through dusty glass, the lingering signage for a Verizon store that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s the glum handwritten notes — “this location is closed” — and the brokerage signs trying to be cheery. Around nearly every corner, they’re seeking someone to lease 822 square feet of former coffee shop, or 5,446 square feet of empty bakery, or 12,632 square feet of what was once a Walgreens.

[QUOTE]Like much of the office space above it, the ground floor will probably have to be reimagined in San Francisco’s business district and other downtowns that have long taken for granted a captive audience of commuting consumers. In fact, it will be hard to solve the problem upstairs without also solving this one. Because who wants to return downtown when its most visible spaces have been darkened, boarded up and papered over?

[QUOTE]“There’s nothing worse than the butcher paper,” said Conrad Kickert, an urban design scholar at the University at Buffalo who studies storefronts and street life. “And only one step above that are these sad stickers with happy smiling people on them.”

This ABC special called it back in ‘09;

Leaving the cities?

Or leaving the areas progressive government has allowed the rabble to destroy any semblance of safety and order

[quote] Like much of the office space above it, the ground floor will probably have to be reimagined in San Francisco’s business district and other downtowns that have long taken for granted a captive audience of commuting consumers

I’ve seen in a bad area of a city where buildings have the windows taken out and filled in. That allows security to focus on the entrances to prevent bad people from entering.

r 145 -progressive government is the reason you have any rights at all you stupid conservative homo.

[quote]Amazon and work from home are absolute game changers

plus Obamacare + gig economy - During the pandemic, families realized they could get by with less money. Some people (like me) had been chained to jobs because of a pre-existing condition, some people had to work full time to qualify for group-health insurance.

I'd be glad to have more people work from home, or juggle their jobs and homes so they commute less. That would be a painless way to reduce fossil fuel use.

I really like Carthage, MS. It has the world's largest chicken processing plant.

[quote]I hope the cities empty out and rents go down. Some of us would just prefer to live there and we should be able to. Maybe the arts could actually make a comeback too.

Unlikely, unless you get a blighted city like Detroit where everybody's fled. But in the major centres you'll just see some exists, while the divide sharpens between the really rich, who can secure their urban lifestyle, and everybody else. Cities are finite. They can sprawl out but that's not living in Manhattan or the centre of any city. Manhattan was so packed they had to make Brooklyn cool. Now Brooklyn is now bargain. Look at the story upthread... transit use is down but residential rents are rising. It's already happening. Cities will become the province of the really rich and the really not rich to really poor.

36% of San Francisco office space is now vacant

You’d have a death wish if you move to a city now.

I condole you, r33.

Toronto is horrible. The complete absence of urban planning, sky high rents (and forget about buying), siloed, rude foreigners and locals who seem feral - it's just a soulless place. How far it's fallen since I lived there.

I also wanted to mention the completely undeveloped waterfront, homeless crisis and transit and road crisis as you've pointed out.

And I could go on.

R153, I was just thinking back to the late 80s and the 90s... it was fun then... energized and optimistic, lots going on, it was safe. It wasn't New York or London but it was fun. Not now, at all.

There is a lot more fun to be had at home now, R155. In the 90s you pretty much had to go out.

Maybe that's part of the decay of urban supremacy... we can have so much more sent to or done at home, rather than go out. And a suburban or rural life would make it worse because it's just easier to stay home.