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Hope for the Cities
Although I believe we're living through a long decline in our civilization, one which has been ongoing for more than a half century at this point, I have hope for the future of our major urban areas. In 2050, I expect most of the large cities in North America to be doing better than they are today, not despite of, but because of this decline. There will be exceptions (ex: New York will likely be dealing with quite damaging sea level rise), but overall, most cities will soon begin to recover as they are cured from a terrible affliction: suburbs.
The problems with suburbs are manifold, but they boil down to three major problems for their host city: the first is that they create a large number of people who are outside the city centre, but who regularly commute to the city, thus increasing the number of people the core must be able to handle, without providing money to the core the same way that people who live there do; the second is that they take a disproportionate share of the well paying jobs, and this results in an increase in the poverty rate in the urban core; finally the third problem is that they are quite good at taking control of local planning for their benefit, and in the process harming the city core.
The cure for suburbs is actually quite simple: they depend on car culture, and if something happens which makes that impossible, they will very quickly descend to their eventual fate: the ring of slums which will surround most cities mid-century. This arguably should already be well under way, but there are a variety of tactics which are being used to funnel money out of the cities and into their suburbs. One example has to do with public transit in the Toronto area: trips into Toronto from surrounding areas provide funding solely to those areas; while trips from Toronto out to the surrounding areas results in money going to both Toronto and the other region's public transit. The result is that the suburbs end up with more funding for the same services.
Meanwhile, oil, a necessity for car culture, is heavily subsidized, and the same is true of the automobile industry itself. All of this provides a transfer of wealth away from cities and to the suburbs. The reason is quite simple: without these massive subsidies, suburbs would not be viable. The results, however, of allowing them to fail would be horrific, and violate a number of our culture's taboos (one of the big ones being letting the well off suffer); and so everything that can be done to keep suburbs alive is being done.
Sooner or later, this will fail, the suburbs will fall apart, and when this happens the cities, no longer being suffocated by their suburbs, will begin to recover. There will be crises as this happens of course, but for the cities, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
The problems with suburbs are manifold, but they boil down to three major problems for their host city: the first is that they create a large number of people who are outside the city centre, but who regularly commute to the city, thus increasing the number of people the core must be able to handle, without providing money to the core the same way that people who live there do; the second is that they take a disproportionate share of the well paying jobs, and this results in an increase in the poverty rate in the urban core; finally the third problem is that they are quite good at taking control of local planning for their benefit, and in the process harming the city core.
The cure for suburbs is actually quite simple: they depend on car culture, and if something happens which makes that impossible, they will very quickly descend to their eventual fate: the ring of slums which will surround most cities mid-century. This arguably should already be well under way, but there are a variety of tactics which are being used to funnel money out of the cities and into their suburbs. One example has to do with public transit in the Toronto area: trips into Toronto from surrounding areas provide funding solely to those areas; while trips from Toronto out to the surrounding areas results in money going to both Toronto and the other region's public transit. The result is that the suburbs end up with more funding for the same services.
Meanwhile, oil, a necessity for car culture, is heavily subsidized, and the same is true of the automobile industry itself. All of this provides a transfer of wealth away from cities and to the suburbs. The reason is quite simple: without these massive subsidies, suburbs would not be viable. The results, however, of allowing them to fail would be horrific, and violate a number of our culture's taboos (one of the big ones being letting the well off suffer); and so everything that can be done to keep suburbs alive is being done.
Sooner or later, this will fail, the suburbs will fall apart, and when this happens the cities, no longer being suffocated by their suburbs, will begin to recover. There will be crises as this happens of course, but for the cities, there is light at the end of the tunnel.