Progressives Want Urban Density, but Do Voters?

“The era of urban supremacy is over,” Joel Kotkin, the executive director of the Urban Reform Institute in Houston, recently told New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall. The evidence Edsall marshaled in defense of this proposition is compelling.

American cities are hollowing out. A trend that began before the pandemic but was supercharged by it is sapping major metropolitan areas of residents who can afford to relocate – e.g., the tax base. With rare exceptions, most of them business-friendly urban centers situated in warmer climates, great legacy metropolises like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C. are hemorrhaging residents. Their downtowns are rapidly atrophying. Commercial and office space sits unlet. Retailers are closing their doors amid the dual pressures of rising property crime rates and reduced foot traffic, contributing to lower margins.