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God’s Little Acre
Challenging conventional wisdom on ‘fixing' state's cities
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Business New Haven
11/30/1998
By: Laurence D. Cohen
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When Governor Rowland says his top priority (beyond whacking the income tax) is “fixing” Connecticut's cities, what do you think he really means? And whatever it is that he means, why does he seem to think that it's so important?
As a matter of pure political calculation, Rowland might prefer to preside over the fine-tuning of “Connecticut,” a jurisdiction for which he is responsible, and a jurisdiction that would seem to be doing remarkably well. As a placid little suburban office park plopped between New York and Boston, Connecticut generates absurdly high per-capita income and has below-average unemployment.
With a state government budget surplus that should approach $200 million by the end of this fiscal year, with Democrats and Republicans incapable of finding much to fight about, the state seems well poised for a governor who would fiddle and piddle and fuss a bit at the margins, with little enthusiasm for such dreamy stuff as speculative and expensive urban renaissance.
The very fact of Connecticut's health belies the very argument that Rowland (and ten trillion urban-planning consultants) communicates so insistently: that Connecticut cannot “succeed” without prosperous cities.
Why is that? Where is the evidence that we cannot prosper in giddy, suburban satisfaction, shopping and eating and playing and working on plots of land that aren't named New Haven, Bridgeport or Hartford?
As little as Rowland had to campaign to win re-election, he did take credit for bringing many new jobs and businesses into the state - none of which, apparently, demanded that New Haven become the Garden of Eden before they would dream of locating in Connecticut.
The nostalgia for urban downtowns as centers of commercial activity is increasingly irrelevant, and the residential outflow to the suburbs continues unabated, across the country, even in small metropolitan centers with little urban angst.
Is it important to pretty-up Hartford so that snobby suburbanites can drive in to watch the opera or ballet or symphony? That's nice, but one could just as easily make the case that the culture should be plopped down in the middle of an empty field in the suburbs, where the customers already live.
Is it more important to subsidize a speculative waterfront retail complex in New Haven than it would be to help suburban Manchester pay for road improvements in its already-booming retail mall mania?
To Rowland's credit, he seems inclined to hold back on some of the promised urban largess until the cities can demonstrate actual demand in the private sector for the more outlandish ideas that depend on wishful thinking as a substitute for feasibility and profitability. If he is serious about demanding a real private-sector involvement and investment, it could be a long wait.
If what we mean by “fixing” the cities is to spiff them up for the entertainment of drunken conventioneers and suburbanites, then that sounds like a job for the private sector, which is pretty good at deciding how and where to entice those on expense accounts or disposable income to spend their dough.
There is little trickle-down benefit to justify government subsidy. Baltimore is as poor and segregated as it ever was before it opened its much-heralded waterfront development. The Providence convention center-hotel complex has had little impact, when you walk more than two blocks away from it.
As a matter of economics, you don;t need football stadiums or grandiose convention centers or waterfront bars to create a successful city. The metropolitan area with the lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. is Sioux Falls, S.D., which is never going to rival New York, London or Paris as a center of fun.
In truth, what needs to be “fixed” in our cities is the people who populate our cities. But that painful reality is hard work, full of yucky stuff about race and class and an array of government policies that reek of compassion, but make things worse.
Long after it became evident that cities were no longer reliable sources of entry-level manufacturing jobs, we encouraged the poor to congregate in hideous public housing; we trapped them in lousy schools that are immune to reform or competition; and we pretended that structural unemployment could be cured by mediocre job training for jobs that long ago had moved out of town.
Fix the cities? Good luck, Governor John. It could be a long four years. BNH
Laurence D. Cohen is a senior fellow of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy and a public-relations consultant.
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