The only backward value apparent from this article is an extreme defecit in holding people accountable. One could argue that every other value must be phenomenal since it is still a thriving city despite this impairment.
Oooof, spot on. They have governed pretty much unimpeded and what do they have 60 years later? The city might be great in some aspects but it is so in spite of its government not because of it.
Nice to see that all the people who actually make the city function -- so that those high-paid "value providers" can live there and get work done there -- are completely written off in your analysis.
That's terrible to hear. Is there any upside at all, you think? I mean things like communities coming together and changing the city over time without government intervention, or maybe some kind of hitting rock bottom is often followed by positive change.
You're getting downvoted, but it's true. If I recall, the city/state would've broken even not that far into the future, and then everything after that would've been pure profit for them.
The city government is still corrupt and incompetent, and the remaining population is largely unemployable. Yes it's a good thing that the city is going from broke to just poor, but I don't know if it will every truly recover.
The city became insanely rich and successful due to external factors. It never had to enact reasonable public policies around housing, policing or development because money and people just accumulated regardless. It became a testbed for the insane and incompetent.
Social progressivism exists among citizens, and in turn that's what makes a city progressive in the eyes of people. Although with the case of many older systems, legacy corrupt political rackets still exist and aren't going away any time soon, as many of these people hold powers that could cripple the city.
Dunno, seems pretty Kafkaesque for a city where you can get arrested by the police for the most minutiae things, and the reason for it is not because you’ve done anything wrong but just that the city needs to raise funds.
> Staggering lack of leadership in city government.
The paragraph explained the reason for the city’s downfall: deindustrialization and offshoring starting from the 1970s has shut down manufacturing jobs in the area, and the more affluent whites moved to bigger cities for better prospects, while blacks were left behind. This is much more than just lack of leadership in the local government, it has more to do with the deliberate macro-economic decisions of the US government starting from half a century ago.
What Strong Towns hasn't figured out, but which is obvious to everyone else, is that cities have really bad failure modes. Unfixable failure modes.
The people running the cities run them into the ground by applying more and more gold plating to the services they provide, making sure to lard the contracts for their friends who keep them elected, and pursuing their luxury beliefs through unworkable policies. Eventually it all collapses and is irretrievable. Then they whine about being underfunded. If only they had more money, they could make their luxury beliefs work.
People move out of cities because they do not feel safe, and the services suck.
It's really the only option they have, since the people running the cities are completely unaccountable.
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