Urban Argument

The libertarian-leaning Democrat Joel Kotkin has offered his own Two Americas story, this time dividing the nation's cities into "aspirational" and "Euro-American" metropolises. The piece has provoked a lot of debate, including a vigorous defense from The American Scene's Reihan Salam. Both the article and the subsequent argument are well worth reading.

Comments

[E. Steven]

–Right now the demographic, economic, and political momentum belongs to the aspirational cities, places like Reno, Boise, Orlando, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City.

Now sing:

I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.
I couldn’t live like that, no siree!
I couldn’t do the things the way those people do.
I couldn’t live there if you paid me to.

[Jesse Walker]

I’ve never been able to figure out if that song is a straightforward statement of distaste for flyovyer country or an ironic putdown of urban elitists. (Ever since I learned that “Don’t Worry About the Government” was sincere, I’ve been wary about attributing irony to Talking Heads records.)

[Todd Fletcher]

Phoenix, becoming a Euro-American city?

That’s hard to imagine, though I’ve no doubt the busybodies in City Hall are trying their hardest.

[NoStar]

Pheonix as a Euro-American city:
Well, they did import London Bridge to Lake Havasu, AZ and the Cardinals would make a great European Football League team.

[E. Steven]

Hard to say. Keep in mind that a lot of late 70’s, early 80’s culture [Devo, Pee Wee Herman, Gary Panter, Talking Heads, B52’s, Ramones] was based as much on a rejection of late 60’s, early 70’s ‘hippiness’ as any kind of ’embrace’ of the era that preceded it. So, I guess, the Talking Heads were probably big on certain aspects of squareness without really being into the actual lifestyle that pertained to it. In other words, yes, you could like Esquivel records and kidney-shaped coffee tables as long as you did so in an ironic fashion. And, of course, as soon as the later 60’s stuff stopped being out of fashion, you could be into that too! And, heck, now we can reappreciate the very 80’s culture that spawned this cycle in the first place!

But, seriously, Orlando does suck.

[dlc]

I won’t bother with all the reasons why Kotkin’s article is 100% utter shit, other than to ask a simple question.

Does Kotkin understand that all cities, even the “Euro…” (ugh, won’t dignify that by finishing it), have suburbs? That’s right! People with big families and conservative politics, looking for low-cost housing and a place to start a business can move….five miles down the road.

Don’t like Seattle? Move to Bellevue! Don’t like godless Portland? Move to Tigard! Don’t like New York? Move to New Jersey! Don’t like Washington DC? Move to Virginia!

Another thing – why exactly does Houston, TX (isn’t that America’s 3rd largest city) get lumped in with Boise, ID? These two cities could not be more completely different.

Finally, I agree, Orlando does suck. Hard.

[Jesse Walker]

It’s not that simple, DLC. Thanks to state growth laws, regional planning, and taxes, among other factors, some suburban territories are more open to enterprise than others.

That said, you’re right about the ridiculousness of the “Euro-American” label. It’s the worst thing about the article, though I’m sure it went over well with the Weekly Standard‘s editors.

[E. Steven]

That’s my point, Jesse. You can feel the typical Weekly Standard Squares vs. Hipster resentfulness in statments like, “Euro-American politics do not work in aspirational cities. Where and when such policies do become influential, companies, entrepreneurs, and individuals will seek their future elsewhere, in places where they don’t have to subsidize fancy nightclubs, art galleries, gay bars, and yuppie lofts…” I mean, what is that supposed to mean? Kotkin’s gonna split any burg the second the inevitable coffee bar/comic book store/piercing emporium, often favored by the younger alt-culture entreprenerial types opens? I mean, okay fine, he doesn’t want to live in Silverlake, but he can spare me the Old Man Buzzcut ‘no kid of mine’s ever gonna be a freeaak!!’ vibe that emanates from a statement like that.

[Chuck]

You guys just think Orlando sucks because you like to be able to actually get somewhere while driving. Shame on you for trying to impose your narrow, goal-oriented, “get-there” values on the rest of us who ENJOY sitting on OBT or I-4 for hours at a time, inhaling exhaust fumes.

You probably don’t like hitting toll booths every quarter-mile either.

[Jesse Walker]

“Euro-American politics do not work in aspirational cities. Where and when such policies do become influential, companies, entrepreneurs, and individuals will seek their future elsewhere, in places where they don’t have to subsidize fancy nightclubs, art galleries, gay bars, and yuppie lofts…” I mean, what is that supposed to mean? Kotkin’s gonna split any burg the second the inevitable coffee bar/comic book store/piercing emporium, often favored by the younger alt-culture entreprenerial types opens?

I think that sentence was a dig at the “creative class” thesis, which in some hands really does become an excuse to subsidise cultural amenities.

[E. Steven]

Oh really? Then why didn’t he say Museums and Libraries and Concert Halls? Most galleries, nightclubs and bars I know are private enterprises.

[Jared]

And so how my lively Richmond Virginia has fallen in between the cracks of both.

[Rhywun]

I guess all the new housing and businesses I constantly see sprouting up around me in NYC is just my imagination.

[trostky]

Haven’t been to Orlando since the days when Disney World seemed like heaven (and mom bought all the hot dogs), but Phoenix is definitely hell.

On the other hand, Phoenix always struck me as a newer, beachless Los Angeles (which is increasingly a Latin American and Asian-American, not Euro-American, city). I mean, L.A. invented sprawl. Yes, it’s dense, because there are 10 million people in L.A. County.

California is growing by about 600,000 people (three times the entire population of Boise) per year, a growth largely attributable to immigrants with many aspirations of their own. Yes, there is a NIMBY industry and a legal framework to support it, but it has hardly stopped Southern California from becoming the epitome of sprawl.

San Francisco and San Jose in fact have lost population in the last few years as the tech industry continues to limp along (and equity refugees cash out), but Kotkin is old enough to remember 5-10 years ago when the Bay Area was the center of the aspirational-to-the-point-of-delusion Internet bubble that was going to create an entirely new world.

That real estate prices have continued to go up at a shocking pace in the past five years can’t very well reflect anti-growth, BANANA (“build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything”) attitudes when the population is shrinking. Oddly enough, way up in Shasta County, real estate prices have also doubled in the past five years (from a far lower base). They’ve done the same in Las Vegas and Phoenix (also from a lower base). How come that isn’t the fault of rentier liberals?

I don’t like featherbedding public employee unions and high taxes either, and I can’t speak for Boston, but Kotkin’s thesis certainly doesn’t explain the West Coast very well.

[Brian Carnell]

Here in Michigan we actually have a state program called “Cool Cities” which is designed to subsidize bullshit “creative urban development” projects.

Here in Kalamazoo, they gave a $100,000 grant to move a private metalworking art studio/gallery downtown.

[joe]

I had no idea that aspirations were the exclusive domain of people in the position to found their own medical instrument companies.

You want aspirations? Look at the folks working 16 hour days in hole in the Thai food and dry cleaning establishments, and sending their kids to state colleges. A word of warning, though don’t look for them in Reno.

[J]

Wait a second…”Don’t Worry About The Government” wasn’t meant to be ironic? That’s insane! Where did you hear that?

—
I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I’m a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along
—

What the hell was he thinking writing that shit seriously? I’ve always interpreted The Big Country to be straightforward, but now you’ve got me re-thinking my take on a bunch of Talking Heads and David Byrne songs. (But “Cities”, now that’s a great song!)

[joe]

Steven E.,

Places to park
By the factories and buildings
Restaurants and bars
For later in the evening.
Then we come to the farm lands
And the undeveloped areas.
And I have learned how these things work together.
I see the parkway that passes through them all
And I have learned how to look at these things
And I say
I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.

Jesse, I always read the song as being about generic suburbia, not “flyover country.” They mention the shoreline and whitecaps.

[joe]

While we’re on Talking Heads Lyrics…

NO COMPASSION

In a world
where people have problems
In this world
where decisions are a way of life
Other people’s problems they overwhelm my mind
They say compassion is a virtue, but I don’t have the time

So many people…have their problems
I’m not interested…in their problems
I guess I’ve…experienced some problems
But now I’ve…made some decisions
Takes a lot of time to push away the nonsense
Take my compassion…Push it as far as it goes
My interest level’s dropping, my interest level is dropping
I’ve heard all I want to, I don’t want to hear any more

What are you, in love with your problems?
I think you take it…a little too far
It’s…not so cool to have so many problems
But don’t expect me to explain your indecisions
Go…talk to your analyst, isn’t that what they’re paid for
You walk, you talk…You still function like you used to
It’s not a question…Of your personality or style
Be a little more selfish, it might do you some good

In a world where people have problems
In this world where decisions are a way of life
Other people’s problems, they overwhelm my mind
They say compassion is a virtue, but I don’t have the time
(Here we go again)

[Jesse Walker]

Wait a second…”Don’t Worry About The Government” wasn’t meant to be ironic? That’s insane! Where did you hear that?

Never mind. I just dug out my source and discovered that I had misremembered it. Sincere apologies!

What’s especially embarrassing is I’ve been misremembering it for several years now. That’s years of putting on that album and thinking, “Wow, they really believe that.”

[Zero]

The Kotkin article describes us here in Bloomington Indiana perfectly. The primary aspiration here is to be Euro-American and they wouldn’t think a putdown. The university is the primary catalyst for this feeling, they too are an Oxford want-a-be. Then on the other hand we have the so-called backward euro-phobic fat white Hoosier. In many ways the battle between the 2 sides is raging quite nicely here. It truly is stereotype against stereotype. Alfred Kinsey against Bobby Knight, and if you care much for either then ye’r some-kind-a Commie-Republican.

[Anon]

Miscellaneous thoughts:

First: Jesse, “The Big Country” is, at least in one way, the anti-“Don’t Worry About the Government”, as noted here.

Second: Though he ends a bit overblown, Jeremy Reff is far more readable than Kotkin, and he seems to be getting at the more interesting point. Many of the people who have moved inland are not antagonistic towards the cities they have left — but the costs of living in those cities outweighs the benefits. So the question is, what aspects of those cities are they going to bring along when they move inland? I don’t believe its clear whether they’ll be “red” or “blue,” and I imagine some interesting sociology is emerging about it as I write. The notion that American cities die is not news — Jesse, I believe your current city of residence has been dying for years — the question is what _sort_ of cities replace them.

Third: The poor of the cities cannot afford to leave the cities. They will remain poor there. The poor of the inland are happy that jobs are coming to town. The notion that the truly poor are somehow more mobile in this economy strikes me as nonsensical. They certainly don’t constitute the “home-based workforce” Kotkin and Reihan are so excited about.

Fourth: All this Talking Heads talk and no one mentions “(Nothing but) Flowers”? Don’t leave me stranded here, I can’t get used to this lifestyle…

Anon

[Gary Gunnels]

These sort of uber-reductionist analyses always founder when the lense of reality is applied to them. They remind me of David Hackett Fischer’s classic analysis of the “fallacy of essences” found in Historian’s Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (1970), p. 70:

The fallacy of essences is tempting to historians, because many of them begin with an article of faith (which I happen to share) that history happened in the way that it happened and no other way. But it does not follow from this premise that there is one “essential” inner reality, which can be united and found. There are many factual patterns – an infinite number of them – which can be superimposed upon past events. A historian’s task is to find patterns which are more relevant to his problems, and more accurate and more comprehensive than others, but he cannot hope to find that “essential” pattern, any more than he can hope to know all of history, and to know it objectively.

“Essences” are, in other words, the useful constructs of a historian, but that’s all they are; the same is true for the reductionist units of analysis found in the article linked to in the write-up.

[VoiceOver]

joe wrote

“You want aspirations? Look at the folks working 16 hour days in hole in the Thai food and dry cleaning establishments, and sending their kids to state colleges.”

awwww, try and tug those heartstrings, buddy.

read again from TFA:

“San Francisco, among the most consistently leftist of American cities, also boasts the highest percentage of income stemming from dividends, rent, and interest. ”

Pretty tough work, sitting on your ass, collecting rent. Probably from people at those Thai food establishments.

[joe]

Wow, places that have lots of rental housing attract low income people. Real breakthrough you’ve got there,VoiceOver.

If you think operating rental property amounts to “sitting on your ass,” you don’t know much about real estate.

[joe]

The only quantitative arguments Kopel makes to support his thesis that America’s older, larger cities are in decline are 1) the populations of the central cities are steady or declining and 2) job growth has been sparse in some of them since 2000. Let’s take these one at a time.

Boston is almost 400 years old, and has not expanded its city limits in almost a century. The city’s population is not growing, but its metro area is. The metro region has now expanded to include northern Rhode Island, central Massachusetts, and southern New Hampshire, all of which are experiencing significant growth. We’re on our fourth ring of booming suburbs, yet Kopel posits regional decline because the central city is full?

Second, “since 2000” is cherry picking of the worst sort. We’ve been in, or recovering from, a recession since 2001. Massachusetts has an extremely dynamic economy – we go higher during the hights, and drop further during the lows. If I were to cherry pick the priod from 1982 to 1987 the way Kopel does, I could demonstrate that Massachusetts is the most economically vibrant location in the country. This is the nature of being at the forefront of the economy, and has defined greater Boston’s experience since shipbuilding was the New World’s most high tech industry.

Kopel makes far too much out of the fact that medical technology and software development industries have spread out of the northeast into the back country, thinking like an alarmist anti-globalist noticing that data entry jobs are being outsourced. If Mr. Kopel was better read, he might have noticed that those industries sprang up in Massachusetts while computer hardware manufacturing was moving to less advanced regions and coutries in the 1980s. Or that machine manufacturing grew into a great industry here while the textile mills were being shut down between 1920 and 1960, and those jobs moving to North Carolina. Boo hoo hoo, there are x-ray machines being made in Lee Country, Florida. I guess we’ll just have to limp by with the biotech, advanced medicine, and global finance industries as our industrial base.

[joe]

Also, the “aspirational cities” of Atlanta, Orlando, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City all vote Democrat, have high levels of racial and cultural diversity (which seems to matter a great deal to Kopel, though as a negative factor), and are working on revitalizing their downtowns and/or inner city neighborhoods and expanding their cultural offerings.

[Mark Borok]

“San Francisco, among the most consistently leftist of American cities, also boasts the highest percentage of income stemming from dividends, rent, and interest. ”

Translation; investment is good because it spurs economic development, unless the investors happen to be San Francisco liberals, in which case they’re wealthy elitists.

“I think that sentence was a dig at the “creative class” thesis, which in some hands really does become an excuse to subsidise cultural amenities.”

I can’t speak for all attempts to “subsidise cultural amenities”, but in my narrow experience such attempts have been targeted at depressed areas and have definitely been an improvement over what went before. My hometown of Providence being one example.