Alan Ehrenhart, former editor of Governing magazine and one of the nation’s most prolific writers on urban affairs, is one of my favorite opinion spewers on all things urban, not because of a particular ideological tic on his part, but because of the very opposite: a certain dollop of humility.
Whenever he wandered in one direction or another on the ideological scale, he would pause, slap himself in the face, and recognize that reasonable men can differ.
That caution, that sense of “on the one hand/on the other hand,” can lead to some boring “opinion,” but research on and about city life is riddled with variables that make certainty a dream not yet come true.
His new book, “The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City,” is a perfect example of Ehrenhart at work. Even with his core argument in place (the “inversion” is the return of the rich folks downtown, and the migration of the less-wealthy to the outskirts), Ehrenhart can’t help arguing with himself. His pointing out that clashing and conflicting research makes it a bit unclear whether suburbs will continue to offer up their magical appeal; whether young professionals are afraid to buy property, and will choose to rent in cool downtowns; or whether social media will make the notion of interacting in close quarters — downtown — irrelevant.
After an objective look at competing studies, Ehrenhart takes a deep breath and comes to a conclusion. Sort of.
Urban Renaissance?
“This is the question that will determine the face of metropolitan America in the next 20 years. This seems to me a case in which common sense wins a battle of dueling statistics. Most of the major demographic trends going on right now work in favor of an urban preference…smaller households, later marriages, decisions not to marry at all, decisions not to have children…point to some form of re-emergence of urban choice.”
Ehrenhart sees the urban renaissance emerging in the form of bars and cafes and restaurants and smallish entertainment venues – an image hardly mysterious to large pockets of Boston and Cambridge.
Ehrenhart makes clear that the future revival of the cities will require the march of the rich folks, economic diversity be damned. “The inhabitants of the inner cities of the 21st Century will be largely those with money – those who have the greatest choices about where to live. Those who live on the periphery will be for the most part those for whom prices in the center are prohibitive.”
For the most part, Ehrenhart is writing about the Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston and New York environment. Left unexplained is the more dubious future of the New Bedfords, Worcesters, Springfields and Hartfords of this world: largely social service venues with arguable relevance as residential sites for those who can afford to live elsewhere.
As Banker & Tradesman put it in a recent editorial, “What these cities need is their own brand of home-grown vision and leadership, plans to make the cities attractive again to both residents and the companies they will ultimately support.”
The old adage that you can’t have a healthy region without a healthy central city? In truth, many central cities have become largely irrelevant to the suburbanites who live, work and play somewhere else, while seldom stepping foot in the “city.”
The appeal of city life today, expressed in part by Ehrenhart’s book, is for those who are cool; if you can afford overpriced drinks at cool cafes, then you’ll have an itch to move back to the mean streets of the big city.
As the chairman of the Royal Society of the Arts recently put it in an essay for Financial Times, “Tranquil country living is all very well, but for someone who has a fire in their belly and an appetite for glory, only the roar and mania of a huge metropolis can satisfy.”
This kind of giddy over-enthusiasm by urban apologists needs a dose of Ehrenhart humility. The future might well bring a demographic lift for the cities, but if it is based on no more than conjecture, the risk is over-investment in urban residential and retail.
