Devolution

[supergee]

Can we give the cities more power?

Thanx to Metafilter

Comments

[weofodthignen]

I'm afraid that despite the guy's having written a book, this strikes me as seriously pie-in-the sky. I started to write a long comment including the huge problems here in Silly Valley, but decided there wasn't much use. So I'll just point to the fact the conservative suburbs—including places like Cupertino, full of immigrants who came to the US for its "traditional values" and whose residents overwhelmingly vote against gay rights and turn out against state-mandated sex ed (that's the other side of the great inversion; see also the DC suburbs), and the hugely conservative suburbs of Los Angeles and Minneapolis, and much of "outer borough" NYC—are indivisible from their cities. And that there are still poor people, and they have terrible schools in all but a few of even the best cities, so their children are growing up illiterate (and joining gangs and developing addictions). San Jose is more stratified by the year, and is notoriously badly run. (And if Bloomberg was a good mayor, I'm gobsmacked to hear it.) Some of this stuff makes me wonder whether the writer has ever used public transit as opposed to extolling it.

The internet's still up so I'll post this.