Will cities experience a second decline?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Qubert

People say this but it's something of a misnomer. Many european cities have exceptionally dense and urbane inner suburbs which hold much of the working class and immigrant communities. Outer London or Seine-St-Denis are nothing like Long Island or Naperville, IL.

Hmm, Seine-St. Denis, yeah. But that isn't typical suburban Paris.

Outer London is low density, probably lower density than the South Shore of Long Island. And probably a lot less diverse and immigrant oriented.

Not sure what you mean by "urbane". Isn't that the opposite of what you're arguing?

[Minato Ku]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

Or in other words, the European model.

No it isn't.
Even in France, suburbs are wealthier than city proper.
La pauvreté se concentre dans les « villes-centres » plus que dans les périphéries
Obviously the most elegant streets of downtown areas tend to be wealthier (like in the US where high incomes come back to downtown) but the inner city districts around the downtowns house the working class in France.

Paris is more an exception than the norm just like Manhattan is in the United States.
A large wealthy core and like Manhattan there are still plenty of poor people living inside the City of Paris.

Contrary to the stereotypes, the suburbs in Paris are not just home to the poor. Paris has many wealthy suburbs and most suburbs are middle class.
The poorest towns of Seine Saint Denis are not all accurate representation of Paris outskirt.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by Qubert

People say this but it's something of a misnomer. Many european cities have exceptionally dense and urbane inner suburbs which hold much of the working class and immigrant communities. Outer London or Seine-St-Denis are nothing like Long Island or Naperville, IL.

As far as the question at hand, no, as long as we don't go down the road of fighting gentrification based on misguided arguments over "character" and "affordability" and don't cede the progress made in fighting crime. If we do those two things, then yes I think it's quite possible recent gains could be reversed.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Hmm, Seine-St. Denis, yeah. But that isn't typical suburban Paris.

Outer London is low density, probably lower density than the South Shore of Long Island. And probably a lot less diverse and immigrant oriented.

Not sure what you mean by "urbane". Isn't that the opposite of what you're arguing?

It depends which parts of Outer London you are talking about, the 'whitest'/least diverse parts are the Eastern fringes which are quite white and blue collar and SE London which has some more middle class predominantly white areas. But Outer West London has large Indian Hindu and Sikh population while parts of Outer North London are home too most of London's Jewish population.

Inner and Outer London


















New immigrants tend to first move to Inner London, especially Eastern Inner London in recent years, but then they and their children don't necessarily stay there forever, minority families are just as likely to suburbanize over time moving to outer London or beyond for similar reasons like house prices that have caused white Londoners to move out over time.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by memph

My impression, and correct me if I'm wrong because it's just my impression:

Dallas allows multi-family development in certain areas.. Denver.. Pittsburgh.. Chicago..

Who said anything about multi-family? The OP said "housing was outlawed" but most cities in Middle America are pro-growth and explicitly encourage SFH anywhere it will fit, so no, housing is not "outlawed" there in any sense.

The ones with healthier economies and a larger percentage of singles (Grand Rapids and Columbus come to mind) are even building townhouse developments and true multifamily.

[ue]

Originally Posted by photoLith

People for the most part have been living in cities for most of recorded history, ie the past 7-10,000 years since farming was invented. I think the advent of the suburbs was a minor blip localized mainly in North America. People like being in cities and I think the suburbs were just a short term North American trend that will hopefully not be sustainable and is already reversing. The suburban golden age only lasted about 55 years from 1950-2005.

Wrong.

Cities only began to hold large sums of people following the Industrial Revolution's inception, prior to that cities existed, some even at decent sizes, but most of society was rural.

Suburbs were not and are not localized mainly in North America. The "Australian Dream" is centred around the very idea of owning a suburban single family house. Cities in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America also have plenty of suburbia and you'd have to be very myopic to think otherwise.

Last I checked, while some older suburbs seem to be declining in many cities, the suburbs are still a very popular choice. What has happened over the past couple decades is that the suburbs have been getting more competition from urban living, which has surged again in popularity. Nowadays, both urban and suburban areas are growing.

[nito]

There is a great diffusion of people across London’s Boroughs as noted by Jonesy55, possibly driven by the crazy house prices in the Inner London Boroughs. The (Outer) London Borough of Brent by GLA estimates has the highest foreign-born population of any of the London Boroughs. Outer London has a population density half that of Queens, although it should be noted that Outer London also includes an area of Green Belt that is larger than the combined area of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by ue

Cities only began to hold large sums of people following the Industrial Revolution's inception, prior to that cities existed, some even at decent sizes, but most of society was rural.

This is true. However, for the most part rural villages were built at what we would now consider "urban" density levels, just at an extremely small scale. Farmsteads only tended to move away from villages to more isolated areas as the need for communal defense began to wane in the modern era. Even then, it was hardly universal across all cultures.

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Why the hell would this hurt the rust belt more than anyplace else in America?

My thoughts exactly.

You mean the Lake Belt? Shipping by water is much more affordable than by other sources. Also, drinking water...exists.

[mrsmartman]

This might happen in America.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Per the Census, the city of LA builds more housing relative to population than its suburbs. The same is true with SF, DC, Boston, Philly.

And NYC absolutely dominates regional housing construction trends, and builds far more than even Houston. The only NYC suburbs that allow lots of density are older, urban suburbs. The sprawly suburbs are ultra-NIMBY.

Certain urban neighborhoods, like the West Village, are ultra-insane NIMBY, where even the smallest project will be protested/litigated, and delayed by regulatory obstacles for years, but cities overall tend to have more opportunities for growth than suburbs.

LA allows a little more housing than the surrounding cities, but we're still talking about epsilon > 0, and the same is true in most closed access cities.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Who said anything about multi-family? The OP said "housing was outlawed" but most cities in Middle America are pro-growth and explicitly encourage SFH anywhere it will fit, so no, housing is not "outlawed" there in any sense.

The ones with healthier economies and a larger percentage of singles (Grand Rapids and Columbus come to mind) are even building townhouse developments and true multifamily.

I'm talking about coastal cities. Theres basically no demand for middle American cities, so even with their aversion to multi-family its not binding.

[muppet]

The 'European' model is not a wealthy centre and poor outskirts (that's the prototype Third World city), but traditionally was a wealthy centre, a ring of working class areas (aka the Inner City, with usually an upper class district thrown in), then the middle class suburbs.

Of course all that has been upended due to house prices as the middle classes and rich now colonise the Inner City ring, and the working class sell on at profit and become middle class suburbanites. Meanwhile the classy mansion districts subdivide to make it more profitable for the upper middle classes to take over in higher densities. This is seeing a current half-way house of rich and poor and middle class mixing that's a tradition since Victorian property speculation.

An apartment in a former council estate tower block, and one in a subdivided former 20 bed mansion both sell for the same price ($500,000). Your neighbour on one side may be working class, on the other upper class.





This is why there is currently White, Caribbean, Jewish and South Asian 'flight' away from the centre and into the suburbs as the last generation cashes in for leafy suburbia, while new arrivals from the world's rich take their place (aristocracy, Arabs, French, Chinese, Italians, Indians, Nigerians, Russians). Of course their children will probably move back into the city starting the whole cycle again, so ongoing the mixing.

In the future there won't really be large tracts of working class districts any more, though anything on the peripherals may well turn out that way - in other words a transformation toward a natural Third World set up of a rich centre, middle class suburbs/ inner city, and working class peripherals, though more mixed still (for decades all new developments, even luxury ones, have to have a proportion - as high as 30-50% under Mayor Livingstone - devoted to affordable housing).

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Cities are seeming invincible these days.

But I wonder if, when newer generations start seeking more space, and when the bills are due to update depreciated residential units (i.e. stuff built or rehabbed in the past 20 years) the capital will be available.

Sure we will never see the same degree of White Flight we saw 50-60 years ago, but is some decline in cities going to happen?

I think so. But I see the City vs Suburb thing as an unpowered pendulum, with each arc being smaller than the previous one. The first arc saw huge declines in our cities, followed by the same in the suburbs. But with each wave, like a swinging pendulum that weakens with friction, the changes become smaller and less substantial.

My prediction is that the long term health of cities is excellent, but they aren't free of market fluctuations, hence hard times, yet.

your going to see two parallel trends with growth in both of them. suburban growth will continue unabated until we run out of room and urban growth will continue as long as people can afford to live in central cities or aren't scared to do so. urban murder rates are up in the double digits in over 20 east coast and Midwest metros since 2015.