The end of cities
I recently reviewed the results of the mayoral election in Chicago, which appear to have sounded the death knell for America’s third-largest city. The buildings will remain and the people without the means to escape will still huddle in their homes (at least those who have homes), hoping to avoid being the next statistic in a crime wave that shows no signs of abating. Commerce has slowed to a crawl and its once-famous entertainment district is now too dangerous for most to risk an evening out on the town. At the Washington Examiner, Stephen Moore takes a similarly dim view of Chicago’s prospects, but he notes that the Windy City is not alone in its downward slide. Many cities across the United States are simply becoming unlivable. And the real tragedy in all of this is that the decline was completely avoidable. But an epidemic of suicidally dangerous liberal policies has opened the gates for the barbarians that were always waiting outside.
It’s not just Chicago that has become a war zone. Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco were not so long ago the crown jewels of the West Coast. They were said to be progressive cities that worked. No more. Now, they are unlivable. San Francisco is overrun with homeless people on seemingly every downtown street corner, feces on the sidewalks, and trash everywhere.
In Portland, major businesses are pulling out in the aftermath of the takeover of the radical anarchists during COVID-19. Crime is so rampant that Walmart recently said “adios,” shutting down its last store. Rains PDX, a clothing store in Portland, shut down last November after a string of break-ins made it impossible to stay open. This printed sign pasted on the door says it all:
“Small businesses (and large) cannot sustain doing business in our city’s current state. We have no protection, or recourse, against criminal behavior that goes unpunished. Do not be fooled into thinking that insurance companies cover losses. We have sustained 15 break-ins. … We have not received any financial reimbursement since the 3rd.”
For all of recorded history, large portions of humanity have tended to cluster together in centralized strongholds, while others have lived in less populated areas where agricultural activity was more common. Having cities simply made sense. Larger numbers of people could better defend themselves from aggressors while trade and economic activity were more convenient when centralized. But city life also required an unspoken agreement that everyone would have to play by the rules and establish methods of maintaining order. More people can accomplish great works but when a significant portion of a large population turns into a mob, the destruction it can wreak is similarly exaggerated.
Sadly, that is what we are clearly observing in America today. Moore describes the “cults of economic and political quackery” that have hypnotized metropolitan residents, leading to calls to defund the police, empty the jails, and the turning of a blind eye to crime in the name of “social justice.” Those bothering to seek solutions inevitably attempt to “tax the rich” to the point where the most productive flee for safer havens.
These cults have not impacted the entire country evenly. It’s true that all communities experience drug overdoses or deaths and inflation puts pressure on all households while the dollar weakens and prices rise. But particularly when it comes to crime, America’s cities have taken a far more radical downward turn than the suburban and rural areas such as the one my wife and I are blessed to live in. The county where we live recorded only one murder in all of 2022. You would be hard-pressed to find a single day last year when nobody was killed in Baltimore or Chicago.
The current situation in America’s urban centers is not sustainable. And for some reason, nearly all of the larger cities are controlled by liberal Democrats who impose the insane policies that allow this mayhem to flourish. Even Austin, in the heart of the red state of Texas, has a municipal government that is hiring wolves to guard the henhouse. And the recent election in Chicago suggests that there is no path back from the brink for many of our formerly-great cities. You simply cannot help those who refuse to help themselves.
