The easy answer to who will solve the Midopolis problem is: Yuppies!
Ok, that isn't going to happen. Young upwardly mobile professionals are looking towards the newly revitalized central city in almost every MSA in the US (Detroit excepted) and once they start families, it is off to the outer ring.
But look, there are two groups that seem to be attracted to Metropolis. First is immigrants and upwardly mobile ex members of the inner city. These groups include entrepreneurs, shop keepers, and restaurateurs, etc. that can bring a vitality to areas abandoned by affluent whites moving out. To once again quote Kotkin (2001 -- cite below): "[T]he best course for these new melting pots may be not so much clinging to their demographic past, but finding ways to seize the advantage fo their more diverse roles, both economically and demographically. No longer homogeneous enclaves, midpolitan communities increasingly must draw their strength from the energies, skills, and cultural offerings of their increasingly diverse populations."
The second group are recent, non-professional, college graduates starting out and looking for a location that is vital and stimulating with access to a wide array of employment opportunities in the central city and edge cities that dot all MSAs in the US. And for those with entrepreneurial aspirations, inner-ring suburbs offer access to all the city's support services, but also office space at a moderate cost. The one thing that continues to hold the populations together in cities is the agglomeration benefits that accrue to clusters of firms in the same industry. Fostering the development of clusters of firms in the same or related industries can be a powerful force for economic growth.
But how do you get these groups to buy in and move in to town?
Again, Kotkin (2001): "The key to securing a thriving economic and social future for midopolitan suburbs is developing a distinct identity and sense of place. Older suburbs with low quality housing stock and deteriorating infrastructure may continue to struggle, but the fate of Midopolis does not need to be dismal. Their success will depend mostly on local entrepreneurs, government, and volunteer groups who can shape the future of these communities.
Sense of place... the sounds like hard work. Damn.
Kotkin, Joel (2001). Older Suburbs: Crabgrass Slums or New Urban Frontier, Reason Public Policy Institute Policy Study 285.
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Again different cities have different conditions, but the many towns in inner rings have different make ups. In my region some are transforming as you describe, but others are bastions of blue collar workers, others of old money. How do you approach this analysis without generalizing?
ReplyDeleteAll I can do is try to identify the common economic forces that may be shared by all such areas and use that as a baseline. Once you can do that, you can take the next step to try and figure out what makes them different and wht strategies work better than others.
ReplyDeleteGentrification has been an issue for years. What do we know about it? Well, it seems that the market has been able to do on its own what city planners were unable to accomplish for decades. But even so, gentrification is a pretty limited phenominon. We now know that for a neighborhood to gentrify, it helps to have a great location and be made up of historically interesting buildings.
With inner ring suburbs, I can already say that prewar versions with larger historically interesting old houses are doing better than those that housed factory workers. Outside of Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park is doing better than nearby Cicero. I can also already say that those inner ring suburbs in the so called "favored quarter" are doing better than others. But beyond that, I hope to find enough variation that it is possible to find strategies that work better than others to make a wider variety of these towns successful for a long time.