Having visited there some decades ago, I recently fell into learning about the precipitous decline of Portland, Oregon. One video that I viewed about Portland mentioned Hartford, Connecticut, a city where I lived for several years that has been experiencing a decline comparable to Portland. This led to me reading articles about the economic and crime problems facing other cities that I have either lived in or visited in the past—Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and others—which was both enlightening and depressing. Apparently, a lot of our great urban centers are no longer quite so great.
The inflection point for American cities this century was the Covid-19 madness that fueled an astonishing and unprecedented move toward remote work and online education, which has decimated the corporate work environments and higher education institutions that were once the lifeblood of so many of our urban centers. Those office workers and students fed a matrix of stores, restaurants, bars, retailers, hospitals, clubs, movie theaters, cool little shops, and all the associated amenities and infrastructure that created money and fun for everyone in cities across our nation—but that was six very long years ago.
Over just the past couple of months, I’ve been told three different times that every customer service representative at the companies I was calling for assistance are now working from home, and I’m part of the problem myself because I tutor students throughout the country from my laptop. It is not surprising that so many downtowns are ghost towns during the week, and those still doing business in our major cities are often plagued with shoplifters, vandals, and crazies. My wife and I recently ate lunch in a restaurant during the middle of the workweek just a few blocks from our state’s Capitol, and we were the only customers being served. It was rather sad—but it was super easy to find a parking spot.
Cities throughout America are experiencing a shocking reset to a new reality that few could have imagined before the insane—and entirely pointless—Covid restrictions were put in place to placate the perpetually panicky. Although a good many jobs ranging from pizza delivery to police officer cannot be done remotely, a shocking number of office-based jobs can be done quite well while wearing your bedroom slippers in the comfort of your own home, which is the reason office vacancies throughout our country are running very far beyond what they were prior to the pandemic house arrest imposed on us all. No wonder our cityscapes feature so many storefronts plastered with plywood.
The big question now facing us is whether urban areas that were once engines of economic, cultural, and intellectual advancement are being slow to adjust to an entirely new world—or in terminal decline.
Our cities could certainly experience some immediate economic improvement if voters can be convinced it’s a terrible idea to elect Communists/Socialists who hate private businesses but love taxing them to death. The same lack of logic applies to failing to connect the dots regarding rampaging crime and a fanatical hatred for your city’s police force or the inability to recognize the direct line from tolerating crummy public schools to the wasted lifetimes later spent on public assistance because their graduates have never learned to read, write, or do any math beyond the barest minimum.
It is difficult to see our largest cities occupying the same central role in the economic life of our country unless they return to the commitment to manufacturing jobs that they have increasingly abandoned during the period since World War Two. Producing products—and a little sweat—might not immediately appeal to workers used to wandering around an air-conditioned office with a vanilla latte clutched in their hand, but their tech skills might be readily transferred to factory environments where computer control and robotic fabrication have dramatically changed manufacturing jobs over the past decade.
Unfortunately, what could be a straightforward and smart strategy (no tariffs on domestic production!) will likely be an uphill slog because residential property owners, protective of the values of their overpriced co-ops and condominiums, will challenge the necessary zoning changes. Banks might well join in this obstruction because they fear any possible hit to the value of their residential loan portfolios. This could easily forestall any revival of manufacturing in our nation’s struggling cities and stop the wealth that could be generated in its tracks, which would leave the remaining residents and businesses struggling to survive with the burden of paying escalating taxes and fees to cover the costs of their city’s services—ones that those taxes on manufacturers might have mitigated.
Our nation as a whole needs a manufacturing renewal, but our urban centers are uniquely positioned to succeed because of their proximity to highway, rail, and harbor networks that will facilitate the transport of raw materials in and finished goods out. Unfortunately, the NIMBY warriors might stop any new manufacturing facilities from being built by resorting to their favorite weapon: environmental impact statements that privilege the habitats of hummingbirds over new investment and economic growth. Lawyers and lobbyists have spent decades crushing the dreams of entrepreneurs and frustrating investors by starting endless and expensive paper chases through our courts and regulatory agencies, so the promise of well-paying manufacturing jobs can easily evaporate.
There is still, of course, the troublesome question of leadership—or the lack thereof. Many parts of our once-great cities already have been all but abandoned, and these desolate areas might offer the best starting points for rebuilding an urban manufacturing base, but this cannot happen until these same cities have new leaders who do not pander, lie, and line their own pockets through public office—oblivious to the suffering of their citizens. We must hope that salvation for our cities is possible, but this might depend more on what happens on Election Days in the years ahead than any other factor.