Republicans and cities: Ill-starred romance?

From Wikipedia.com

With a graphic that mimicked the famous 1975 New York Daily News headline: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD” the last Sunday’s New York Times Review section had this headline: “REPUBLICANS TO CITIES: DROP DEAD.” It topped an article headlined “How the GOP Became the Anti-Urban Party.”

“The fact is that cities don’t count anymore — at least not in national Republican politics. The very word “city” went all but unheard at the Republican convention, held in the rudimentary city of Tampa, Fla.,” wrote Kevin Baker, author of the “City of Fire” series of historical novels.

To be fair, he also notes this about the Democratic presidential campaign: “There wasn’t so much as a mention of cities in the debate on domestic issues the presidential candidates had last week. Nor did the Democrats have much to say about cities at their convention in Charlotte, N.C.” At least he didn’t call Charlotte a “rudimentary city.”

Are Republicans anti-city? If so,why, and if not, why not? Not a few political observers have noted, for instance, that in North Carolina, Republican gubernatorial candidate Pat McCrory, former mayor of Charlotte, is running ads that mention he was mayor but neglect to say he was mayor of Charlotte, the state’s largest city. [Mike Collins, host of WFAE‘s “Charlotte Talks” radio show this morning asked McCrory about that, during an interview. McCrory said about half his ads mention Charlotte and said there isn’t much time in some ads to say very much.]

Obviously, there is anti-Charlotte sentiment in some parts of North Carolina, and in my observation it’s not so much a Republican-Democrat thing as a rural-urban thing and as Charlotte is blessed with a robust and bipartisan phalanx of boosters who display great zest for their city a “We don’t like braggers” thing.

What should the candidates be saying about cities? Weigh in below, if you have thoughts.

(Note: I moderate comments for obscenity, insults, lack of civility, etc., but not for the opinions expressed. So if your comment doesn’t instantly appear, please don’t be discouraged. )

Do cities matter? Whither the suburbs?

Do cities matter? Are the suburbs declining or healthy? I’m sharing a variety of links today that take differing looks at things. Note – I don’t necessarily agree with everything written here, but found the articles of interest.

First, the Center for American Progress writes about “Trouble in the Suburbs: Poverty Rises in Areas Outside Cities.” This is not unexpected: As center cities have gentrified, some of the low-income families who were displaced have moved farther out. And as jobs have moved to the suburbs, workers have followed, including those earning lower incomes. Then, the recession is forcing some middle-income families into the ranks of the poor.

The article links to a 2000 paper by the UNC Center for Community Capitalism, “Facing the New Suburban Housing Crunch,” which found that the problem of finding affordable housing is not just a problem for the poor but is moving deeper into the middle class.

The article also links to this Brookings look at the new map of poverty in the U.S. It reports, “The number of poor people in large metro areas grew by 5.5 million from 1999 to 2009, and more than two-thirds of that growth occurred in suburbs.” Last March Brookings had an interesting report, “Job Sprawl and the Suburbanization of Poverty.”

The natural order of land values would hold that being near the center would make land more valuable, hence most costly, hence center cities would be home to the wealthier people. That’s the pattern in European cities, where the poor live in the suburbs. (The very rich have in-town homes and villas or chateaux in the country.) The U.S. has been different, due in part to federal involvement in housing programs dating to the mid-20th century, when federal loan programs specifically encouraged suburban housing and pretty much forbade federally backed loans in neighborhoods inhabited by black people or other ethnic groups. That had the effect of reserving the suburbs for white, middle-class homeowners. Of course, the disinclination of many white people to live next door to black people played a huge role, too. And large-lot, single-family zoning created large areas where only middle- or upper-income homeowners could afford to settle.

But the end of those discriminatory policies and the efforts of many cities to add more multifamily housing in the suburbs seems to be changing the U.S. suburban landscape as well.

In some ways, spreading low-income families through the suburbs is not a bad thing. As several of the articles point out, it means poverty is less concentrated. But social services and public transportation are not as readily accessible in the suburbs, where local governments may not be equipped to serve the poor the way city governments are. (This, of course, raises the question of what is “suburban”? In a city such as Charlotte, with liberal annexation laws, the city limits themselves take in plenty of “suburban” neighborhoods that, in other areas of the country, would be separate municipalities.)

Changing topics, here’s a provocative piece from National Resources Defense Council blogger Kaid Benfield: ” ‘Cities’ may not matter as much as we think – regions and neighborhoods are where things actually happen.”

He starts off noting that, of course, cities do matter. He also notes the problem of city limit lines having little to do with the reality of a metro region’s functioning. But, he says, not enough attention is being focused on the suburbs (he means separate municipalities). He writes: “Stormwater runoff per capita is much worse in suburban sprawl, as are emissions of all sorts (CO2 per capita from transportation). One can even make the case that we should be going easier on cities than on sprawling places: To paraphrase David Owen, why put skinny people on diets? My personal view is that our environmental framework absolutely should be tougher on sprawling places than urban ones, but that urban ones should also do their fair share to heal our ecosystems, through appropriate standards, safeguards and mitigation.”

He continues: “Unfortunately, I think we remain relatively less attentive to the suburbs, largely because our crazy patchwork of municipalities makes them legally so diffuse and with very rare exceptions there simply is no regional authority to address them as a group.”

Illustration from San Jose Mercury News/MCT

Do cities matter? Whither the suburbs?

Do cities matter? Are the suburbs declining or healthy? I’m sharing a variety of links today that take differing looks at things. Note – I don’t necessarily agree with everything written here, but found the articles of interest.

First, the Center for American Progress writes about “Trouble in the Suburbs: Poverty Rises in Areas Outside Cities.” This is not unexpected: As center cities have gentrified, some of the low-income families who were displaced have moved farther out. And as jobs have moved to the suburbs, workers have followed, including those earning lower incomes. Then, the recession is forcing some middle-income families into the ranks of the poor.

The article links to a 2000 paper by the UNC Center for Community Capitalism, “Facing the New Suburban Housing Crunch,” which found that the problem of finding affordable housing is not just a problem for the poor but is moving deeper into the middle class.

The article also links to this Brookings look at the new map of poverty in the U.S. It reports, “The number of poor people in large metro areas grew by 5.5 million from 1999 to 2009, and more than two-thirds of that growth occurred in suburbs.” Last March Brookings had an interesting report, “Job Sprawl and the Suburbanization of Poverty.”

The natural order of land values would hold that being near the center would make land more valuable, hence most costly, hence center cities would be home to the wealthier people. That’s the pattern in European cities, where the poor live in the suburbs. (The very rich have in-town homes and villas or chateaux in the country.) The U.S. has been different, due in part to federal involvement in housing programs dating to the mid-20th century, when federal loan programs specifically encouraged suburban housing and pretty much forbade federally backed loans in neighborhoods inhabited by black people or other ethnic groups. That had the effect of reserving the suburbs for white, middle-class homeowners. Of course, the disinclination of many white people to live next door to black people played a huge role, too. And large-lot, single-family zoning created large areas where only middle- or upper-income homeowners could afford to settle.

But the end of those discriminatory policies and the efforts of many cities to add more multifamily housing in the suburbs seems to be changing the U.S. suburban landscape as well.

In some ways, spreading low-income families through the suburbs is not a bad thing. As several of the articles point out, it means poverty is less concentrated. But social services and public transportation are not as readily accessible in the suburbs, where local governments may not be equipped to serve the poor the way city governments are. (This, of course, raises the question of what is “suburban”? In a city such as Charlotte, with liberal annexation laws, the city limits themselves take in plenty of “suburban” neighborhoods that, in other areas of the country, would be separate municipalities.)

Changing topics, here’s a provocative piece from National Resources Defense Council blogger Kaid Benfield: ” ‘Cities’ may not matter as much as we think – regions and neighborhoods are where things actually happen.”

He starts off noting that, of course, cities do matter. He also notes the problem of city limit lines having little to do with the reality of a metro region’s functioning. But, he says, not enough attention is being focused on the suburbs (he means separate municipalities). He writes: “Stormwater runoff per capita is much worse in suburban sprawl, as are emissions of all sorts (CO2 per capita from transportation). One can even make the case that we should be going easier on cities than on sprawling places: To paraphrase David Owen, why put skinny people on diets? My personal view is that our environmental framework absolutely should be tougher on sprawling places than urban ones, but that urban ones should also do their fair share to heal our ecosystems, through appropriate standards, safeguards and mitigation.”

He continues: “Unfortunately, I think we remain relatively less attentive to the suburbs, largely because our crazy patchwork of municipalities makes them legally so diffuse and with very rare exceptions there simply is no regional authority to address them as a group.”

Illustration from San Jose Mercury News/MCT