Smiting America's Cities
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Why are U.S. cities coming to resemble doughnuts -- decayed central cores surrounding by flourishing
suburbs and exurbs?
Researcher Steven Hayward blames Great Society and other liberal programs for the plight of
America's cities -- areas which were once magnets for those seeking professional opportunities.
Between 1960 and 1994:
- The population of Washington, D.C., declined 26 percent while its suburbs grew by 186 percent.
- Cleveland lost 44 percent of its central city population while its suburbs gained 29 percent.
- Inner-city Detroit declined by 41 percent as the city's suburbs were growing by 30 percent.
- Downtown New Orleans lost 23 percent of its population, with an increase of 136 percent in the
suburbs.
Hayward blames the trend on three failures of liberal social policy, which victimized the cities and
their inhabitants:
- Believing that the public sector was the key to economic growth and taking the economies of cities
for granted, liberals overlooked the harmful effects of taxes and regulation on urban economies.
- Being oblivious to the dynamics of neighborhood social structures, they displaced local residents and
institutions -- using the mantle of "urban renewal" to bulldoze whole residential areas.
- They lost interest in promoting moral and behavioral standards -- condoning permissiveness, while
legitimizing welfare as an entitlement.
Hayward says that these three failures led to disaster in nearly every conceivable area of urban life --
crime, education, welfare and the family and race relations.
Source: Steven Hayward, "Broken Cities: Liberalism's Urban Legacy," Policy Review, March-April
1998.
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