I'm Not An Urbanist. I'm An Urban Sociologist.

There’s a difference. And it shapes how I view the future of cities.

A commercial ship unloads on the Buffalo River, in Buffalo, NY. Source: gettyimages.com

I’ve written a lot about how growing up in Detroit was instrumental in my desire to improve and revitalize cities. Watching a city being hollowed out and disgraced in the ‘70s and ‘80s can have that impact. Yet, ever since I can remember I’ve always felt slightly out of step with the people most interested in improving cities. I think I now understand why.

I’m not an urbanist. I’m an urban sociologist. I believe cities are first and foremost social creations, not economic ones, and I ascribe city changes, positive and negative, to the social infrastructure that establishes the city itself. I think this differentiates me from the urbanist contingent.

Here’s how I arrived at this.

As a teen, I thought Detroit’s problem was violent crime and the aggressive police response. It was, and still is, a major factor. However, I began to view crime as something that wasn’t the cause of the city’s decline, but a symptom. Intuitively I realized that aggressively attacking crime, treating the symptom, might lead to a better city, but it was no guarantee.

Like conventional wisdom at the time, I thought Detroit was being failed by an auto industry that was falling behind foreign automakers. The city needed a rejuvenated auto industry that could once again excel and dominate the auto market, at a minimum, or perhaps a new, more diversified economy that would deemphasize auto dominance. But that didn’t happen either.  

I also saw Detroit as a city that lacked visual appeal. People were leaving, in my mind, because it wasn’t a beautiful city. The city was becoming disposable. I thought a city that became more attractive would bring more people; an incredible skyline, great open spaces, colorful neighborhoods would naturally attract newcomers. But when the city did things to improve the look of commercial districts, it hardly moved the needle.

I saw Detroit as a city that needed the right governmental policies to incentivize revitalization. However, it’s clear that the federal government and all 50 states were incentivizing the suburban explosion through highway extensions, infrastructure improvements, and financing policies that favored homeownership. It was working for those who could afford it, and that wasn’t changing, either.

But I’ve come to the realization that what fueled Detroit’s decline was none of those things, at least singly or directly. Crime? New York City’s crime began falling under the Koch and Dinkins administrations, before Rudy Giuliani’s law-and-order campaign brought him into office. Economy? It took quite a while, but eventually the Big Three automakers were able to close the quality gaps that plagued them for decades. Unfortunately, the Big Three still ceded their mid-century dominance over foreign automakers as the auto-buying public had widely expanded options. Automation played a big role in closing the quality gap, but came at the expense of tens of thousands of auto worker jobs.

Design and aesthetics? Detroit mostly missed the renovation of pre-WWII homes and neighborhoods spurred revitalization elsewhere; those structures have naturally decayed or been demolished, and the city’s undergoing a remake where the demand is strongest. Policy? There was a brief period following the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that saw the federal government intercede in housing segregation and discrimination issues. But when local governments fought back, with state government cooperation, the feds incrementally pulled away from their urban commitment. The Reagan administration’s arrival in 1981 gave the nationwide suburban expansion phenomenon a second wind.  

Detroit’s collapse, and the collapse of so many other Rust Belt cities, large and small, was due to the physical and mental divorce made by people who left for the suburbs, or left the region altogether for other places.

Fortunately, there was always a segment of people who were city lovers. They found new adherents among dissatisfied suburbanites who yearned for something more in their built environment. Changes in the global economy, like the rise of technology, finance, education, healthcare, media and entertainment, and the corresponding fall of the manufacturing economy, favored the places the city lovers adored. Cities have indeed gotten much better.

But not all cities. The cities that didn’t have a strong foundation in the economic sectors that drove city revitalization, like Detroit, lagged in the comeback. The same goes for other Great Lakes cities like Cleveland and Buffalo. It applies to midsize cities like Flint, Michigan and Dayton, Ohio, and numerous small towns throughout the Midwest that relied on manufacturing.

With every passing day I see this shift more as a social and cultural challenge to overcome, not an economic, design or policy one. Midwestern cities lost more than just jobs in this transition; they lost the social networks, connections and structures that enable effective city renewal.  

Decades of population and job loss, or the closure or relocation of key businesses or institutions, has eroded the societal infrastructure of Midwestern cities. They’ll be able to mimic the features of cities that have ridden the knowledge economy wave, but probably won’t fully rebound unless they are able to restore the networks that undergird them. That’s a sociological challenge.

Without a doubt there’s a racial component to this. In fact it’s the central component among the largest Rust Belt cities. Show me a Midwestern metro area, and I’ll show you a largely white suburban expanse that’s mentally divorced itself from the largely Black and brown cities. Within the cities there are pockets of affluence that have diverse demographics, but usually with a white plurality. In the suburbs there are pockets of middle class, working class and low-income communities that bring diversity to the suburbs. In neither place is there much interaction between groups divided by class and culture, as well as race.

You want to revitalize Midwestern cities? I offer three general principles:

Put an end to the demonization of cities. There is absolutely nothing fruitful in complaining about violent crime rates in Midwestern cities. There is everything to gain by continuing to support police in their efforts, but also supporting non-policing roles like conflict resolution and impulse control. That’s an area that social collapse has particularly failed Midwestern cities – the institutions that used to aid families have disappeared or been severely weakened.

Play the inside game – focus on inclusion. There is plenty of low hanging fruit to gain by closing the racial and geographical inclusion gaps in American metro areas, especially in the Midwest. The Brookings Institution’s annual Metro Monitor is an excellent source to viewing how metros achieve (or not) greater economic inclusivity. You should check it out.

Play the outside game – support immigration and naturalization.  Midwestern states have been in a population standstill for more than 50 years. Illinois’ population grew by 15 percent between 1970 and 2020, from 11.1 million to 12.8 million. Florida’s population more than tripled over the same period, from 6.8 million to 21.5 million. In fact, Florida’s population grew by 15 percent between 2010 and 2020 alone. The migrations from Europe and the Deep South that fueled Rust Belt growth ended a long time ago, and outside of strong Latino and Asian growth in a handful of metros, hasn’t been replaced. Migrants are often to blame for the ills of our society, but we live in a nation that desperately needs the influx.

I never read the book The Bonfire of the Vanities, nor saw the movie. But I am aware of one quote that always struck me. The story’s main character, Sherman McCoy, is a highly successful Wall Street executive who lives in Manhattan. In a conversation with another character, McCoy is told that if you want to “live in New York, you’ve got to insulate, insulate, insulate.” The inference: surround yourself with the people you like, in the places you like, and avoid all else. But I’ve always said insulation and isolation go hand in hand; there is no isolation without insulation.

Insulation is the ultimate ceiling we put on effective and inclusive urban revitalization. It’s a lesson we’ve learned all too well in American cities, and struggle to fix. Until we recognize this as a social and cultural phenomenon, and not one of economics, design or policy, it will always be with us.