In NY State our governor, Andrew Cuomo, has decided that casinos will bring about an economic upsurge for failing towns like Schenectady.
Eventually, this will only make the situation worse because the money flows from the pockets of the locals into the pockets of a billionaire who lives in NYC, San Francisco or Miami!
Casinos are a lose/lose for cities: They lose money and crime tends to increase. Just look at trump's Atlantic City if you want to see the future of "casino" towns!
127
I hope you enjoy your well deserved vacation. Small cities that have miserable winters are in a bind. Flip that concept and imagine our Northeastern small cities if air-conditioning had never been invented. And then imagine Florida which seems destined to pass Texas and rival California in population someday if it did not have air-conditioning.
29
Small Towns can't disappear completely, in my opinion some of them will revamp in the next decade, as Internet access and telework broads up. not all People can. afford to live in big cities
28
how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they have seen Paree?
26
Small towns become hamlets, then become only a sign on the highway.
"Hamlets of Lane County"
www.efn.org/~hkrieger/lane.htm
8
Hmm, interesting. I drove through a lot of small dead towns in the middle of America. The loss of the railroad was one large factor for them but I believe these places were tenuous in the first place. The locals are so hide bound, uneducated(most of them), have never moved farther than 5 miles from where they were born, don't welcome any new comers(white or otherwise). They are dying or dead. I don't feel sorry for them. Time for them to pull up their boot straps and think differently. Stop voting for the repulsives while they are on the dole. Strange folks. They want it both ways and like Gidot, they are waiting patiently for things to "get better". How about moving or innovation folks!
98
Please send this article to Dan Balz, who clearly misunderstands the impact (real or imagined) of globalism.
8
Small cities can become the ideals of urbanization that old white man controlled behemoths cannot. They are attractive to young educated people because they have all the amenities and none of the grubbiness and corruption (or at least very little of these). The billionaires of big cities are cruel old fools who are unhappy and bitter. A person who becomes wealthy and yet remains cruel is an evil person. Our major cities are controlled by cruel and corrupt people. NYC, Chicago, Washington, LA all want tp promote the urban life, but if one wants a good urban life you would not live in these cities. These are cruel places, with cruel people, who like it.
21
Dr. Krugman, your argument is clouded by your failure to define "small cities". The Rochester metro area has a population of 1,082,000... hardly small by any definition other than a smug resident of New York City or Los Angeles.
Certainly the future of Rochester is much brighter than forlorn smaller cities such as Elmira, NY (90,100) or Binghamton (251,700).
Is Amsterdam, NY a "city"? The canal town topped out at close to 35,000 in 1930 and has been on a continuous losing streak since then. It's current estimated population is 17,800.
the problem isn't Rochester, it is Ashtabula, OH; Amsterdam, NY; Selma, AL; Decatur, IL... and the list goes on and on... define your terms Dr. Krugman. I'm not only a Dowager Duchess.... I'm also a Professor of Urban Geography!
117
My wife was raised in Wilkes-Barre, PA, a perfect example of Krugman’s analysis.
10
"Some small cities got lucky repeatedly, and grew big."
"... smaller cities have nothing going for them except historical luck, which eventually tends to run out."
"Luck" is not an explanation. Krugman needs to come up with a theoretical model based on probability theory.
"... a relatively high likelihood of experiencing gambler’s ruin."
"Gambler's ruin" is already a probability model, so saying that there is "a relatively high likelihood of experiencing" it is gibberish.
In his "General Theory", Keynes has a comment about economists who use mathematics without knowing what they are talking about:
"Too large a proportion of recent 'mathematical' economics are merely concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols."*
I suggest Krugman research "probability models in geography" for some ideas.
* The quote is from Ch. 21, "The Theory of Prices", of "The General Theory Of Employment, Interest, and Money".
2017-12-31 19:40:14 UTC
17
In your "Gambler's Ruin" op-ed, you could have been writing about Shelbyville and Lewisburg, Tennessee - adjacent communities that started out serving their surrounding agricultural counties. Then they were both energized by the pencil industry, which moved to these towns because of the ready local availability of straight-grain red cedar and proliferated because of the "Marshallian trinity" that you mentioned. Now, for a complex of reasons there is only one small pencil factory left, and ill-advised or unproductive community coin-flips have caused Gambler's Ruin to set in - which may or may not be reversible. Nearby Murfreesboro, on the other hand, which started out similarly but is closer to Nashville and is the home of Middle Tennessee State University, has thrived.
16
Once upon a time, a high school graduate could pick up a diploma, walk out of school and directly into the middle class by working at any of several large industry's that were seemingly always hiring. The Amaco refinery is now a superfund parking lot. Armco steel is a shadow of it's former self. Western Electric is a vocational technical school and Bendix hasn't hired in decades. Think this tax cut/trickle down deal is really going to work? Really? Although the water won't be there for a few dozen years, I have some prime beach front in Topeka you might be interested in.
48
Sound ecological thought: increasing diversity leads to greater resilience.
16
What role do gasoline taxes play? European cities and villages seem to be hardier because of high gasoline taxes.
18
Yeah, right Paul. The fact that the small cities' products are now ALL made in China has nothing to do with it.
30
Krugman, having been continually wrong in his predictions of the effect of Trump on the current economic state, seems to be wallowing in fantasies of an America reduced to bi-coastal city states. A rather dangerous conceit to feed as the last election proved that the liberals Achilles' heel is their tendency to bunch up geographically which is electorally a suboptimal strategy.
15
An issue of perception and definition? The population statistics for the USA don't exactly support the thesis- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population
Obviously administrative boundaries make mega city agglomerations difficult to work out but of the 307 cities >100,000, only 24 are declining in size. 45 of the cities in the 200 smallest in the list (100,000 to 200,000) grew by over 10% 2010-2016 and only 14 of these saw any decline, with Rockford IL the standout loser at -3.4%.
11
As long as we allow companies to vertically integrate and form cartels our towns and small cities will suffer. As an economics professional you know that, but as a columnist in a banking town you are self-censoring . . . smalls towns and cities used to thrive because everyone had a stake in its survival. I remember there were clothing and hardware stores on main street and the insurance and travel agencies in town were well supported by industry and government alike. We had a group of businesses that distributed the goods that our local stores sold to locals like me and things seemed more affordable and we could buy what our manufacturers made. In some states locals have to drive up to 200 miles or more just to shop, go to a doctor or see a dentist. A guess this kind of woe just doesn't shake up New Yorkers, but it is killing rural America. Needlessly . . .
26
it would seem our epoch is dooming and doomed.
2
Oy! How can you possibly 'commune with nature' by thinking about cities?
Perhaps Nature has some things to teach about economics...
8
After the 2016 election I looked at maps for local States, Ohio Penn, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan. In ALL....the MAIN cities and some ' college towns, Went BLUE. Virtually ALL the Space between went RED.
Why? And what can Dems DO to win some of those red areas. Mr Krugman.....makes great points but.....it's not enough to build a plan, a full strategy. It DOES say that "business as usual" ain't working. i'm wanting MORE. Krugman, R Reich and a few other of our wizards are who may give us the insight. that said, it's No Easy Answer.
from where I am......I can drive to Adams County, Preble County, Pike County.
they Vote REPUB but get NOTHING for it. these Cornfield Counties have a BIG problem with oxy addiction, with low incomes. i can visit areas in kentucky, W Va, Indiana and it's similar. Main street is.. not doing well. By the highway, there's the McDonalds, the Burger King, KFC, There's a small mall.. mostly 'chain/Franchise" or just a Walmart. The LOCALS ... ain't getting GOOD jobs, they ...in some cases.. get NO jobs. Faced with few options.. their children become addicts. around town... farms... but fewer farmers than before, fewer actually doing well.
Repubs take for grantee the many cow towns, cornfield counties. dems... concede... fail to show up withn a GOOD idea.. or even a not good candidate.
22
As a subscriber to both the NY Times and Wall Street Journal, one invariably finds the devastation of individuals and communities beset by major employer or plant closings and its short and long term consequences. This remains unresolved and is in no smart the reason we have a President absent almost any quality of character, skills or substance to make a positive contribution. With all of our great minds, education and morality(has it all been superficial?), this leader is whom we have. Money finds itself in organizations, groups as it knows how to leverage it influence into every aspect of society.
16
What influence might legislative earmarks that bring Federal monies to a particular business in the legislators state or district have on the success of a particular small town?
9
The economic (manacles to eye glasses and microscopes to Eastman Kodak) history of Rochester New York brings to mind Dresden. Dresden was the center of Germany's ceramics industry, which allowed it to evolve into the center of
Germany's optics industry and a major rail center. During World War II Dresden produced the superb (best in the world) German artillery range finders, including those the Bismarck used to put plunging fire from ten miles away into the HMS Hood (which had heavy armor on its sides, but a deck made of wooden planks).
So, when the Allies got long range fighter escorts Dresden experienced a very severe Gambler's Ruin.
16
Let me throw another wrench into the mix. Small cities and big cities alike will survive in the future given what climate change will have dealt them. Also, as a retired person who hates the clamor and hassles of a big city, I decided to downsize my city and love living an easier existence in a smaller town. Granted, cities will offer opportunities to the better educated and ambitious over towns, but for myself a small town close to the great outdoors is what I worked for in the city.
15
We now live in the era of the big corporate farm. We now are able to easily migrate from place to place with increasing mobility. What we have left in many small cities and towns are the economically disadvantaged, under educated and the elderly. Nationally we have a growing sector of our population that is comprised of senior citizens many of whom are faced with the growing problem of not being able to afford to live in our major metropolitan areas. Here in Seattle a one bedroom apartment rents for over $1,400 a month. So how does one on Social Security in our era of few if any employer provided pensions afford to live here. Many of these small towns and cities could provide more affordable opportunities for seniors with limited resources.the intellectual nimbleness of our citizens, the boldness of our scientifi
13
There is a reason that here is no real Nobel prize in economics and Krugman demonstrates with his Wonkish musings, why most physical scientist have nothing but contempt for the economics profession. I spent my professional life in Boulder,Colorado, a town of 100,000, which went from a leader in Aerospace in 1970 to a leader in 1980 of disc drive to 2000 microbiology and solar energy to 2017 high resolution spectroscopy. You don't need millions of people. you just need 10s of thousands of very smart people
Palo Alto has a population of 67,000 and Santa Clara has a population of 110,000: small cities that run the digital world
And those small farming towns which don't mean much economically, well without them we would starve
15
There are social costs for any change. Some states (North and South Dakota) no longer have the population required for statehood, back in the day.
The only thing that keeps many red state 'relevant' is that 2 senators per state requirement.
The demise of agriculture as a mainstay of our economy is only 100 years old. 100 years of women's right to vote, as well.
And really only 75 years of true attempts towards equality for African Americans.
And the same for Women's Liberation. We are seeing the escalation of the impact of those changes, especially in the dissatisfaction of groups who have not seen enough change, for sure.
We have to wait longer than 100 years to see how it all shakes out, of course. And then Global Climate Change and the final loss of fossil fuels, the conflicts around the globe, all create additional factors.
Wish I could be around to see it all...but then, one does get weary of the change without improvement in human nature. We have outdistanced the human prehistoric brain, which dominates human nature. No statistics will help us there, I'm afraid.
15
Mr. Krugman displays a fundamental misunderstanding of economic geography when he declares that the "modern economy...has cut loose from the land". Nothing could be further from reality.
The modern economy is more dependent on The Land than ever. Cities like New York, London, Beijing and Tokyo are so dependent on the hinterlands that they could not function for more than a month if they lost their never ending supplies of food, water and energy that flow in like tsunamis from The Land. Not to mention the need to dump all of their toxic wastes and trash on The Land.
Mr. Krugman should spend some time on The Land. I would suggest a trip along US Highway 83 from Canada to Mexico. He would get a good education about the importance of The Land in the modern economy.
As a personal note, I would bet that Paul is enjoying his vacation somewhere out in The Land - Sedona, perhaps, or the Vineyard- free of the urban pressures of his tiny Upper West Side apartment.
10
Within a few decades, flooding caused by global warming may wreak havoc on significant areas of our coastal mega-cities. From here in the coastal San Francisco Bay area, New York I’m looking at you.
Smaller cities in the heartland might start to look pretty good by comparison as places to locate businesses and live.
12
And Rochester is now in decline from its halcyon days as both Kodak and Xerox have failed.
It still can survive as a cultural and educational hub for western NY. And in theory,its location on Lake Ontario with river access to the ocean could again support manufacturing but don’t hold your breath.
8
"Megacities" in the US and the West, are not doing away with the need for smaller cities, but new economic "agreements" have made it possible and legal for people and companies in the US to simply bypass US workers altogether and to choose to deal with seemingly pliant and apparently cheaper foreign cities and the areas foreign governments have designated as work and production zones for foreign manufacture. Places like CHina and Vietnam or Singapore and numerous 3rd world cities have decided that the needs of their 1 percenters and their immense numbers of easily disposable people who can be made to constitute any sort of work force,(when you pay less then a 20th of Western wages and little or no other support, the work ia being obtained almost for free).
The result is that with powerful but sensitive communication and delivery schemes based on the old government funded DARPA net, American companies and big cites are able to do away with the need for other Americans-who need be paid- to help them to constitute what was once all part of a single national grouping of business and labor entities. What is worse is that nobody seems to want to admit that , like the Carthaginians, we are sacrificing our own, to this new version of Moloch, feeding the beasts of commerce with the flesh and blood of other Americans.
Americans ought to remember that after the immense, and immensely greedy and successful trading state of Carthage was destroyed by Rome, it was sown with salt.
13
Thank you, as a former downtown development director in a small city and an elected official in another small city, not to mention driving many times between Atlanta and the Georgia coast, I've chewed over this topic too. I'm sending this to my newly elected state representative.
6
After we retired we moved from the LA-San Diego megapolis to this small town. We already owned property here so we agreed to try it out for a year or two. We are still here years later.
It was only after we moved that we fully realized how dysfunctional our major American urban complexes are, from a human perspective.
Our uniquely American distrust of government leads to helter skelter urban expansion along with underdeveloped public infrastructure. When it's too late and the problems become critical, everyone says, 'Why don't THEY do something?' And then begins an exquisitely painful, expensive and ultimately futile process of retrofitting infrastructure into a fully developed urban core.
Europe and Scandinavia are way ahead of us in this regard.
We can get anywhere we want out here without even thinking about traffic. But deer on the roads are a problem.
13
"Capitalism never solves its crisis problems; it just moves them around geographically." - David Harvey
One has to wonder - If Detroit, the "Arsenal of Democracy," and the 4th largest city in the U.S. was not immune to a catastrophic decline within a generation, is any place safe?
27
For environmental reasons it is better to have fewer but larger cities. Mass transit, waste management, recycling levels, medical care access scope and efficiency, labor quality and quantity, are all much easier with population density.
We need to contain the ever-growing impact of the human environmental footprint, not spread it willy-nilly into inefficiently dispersed populations. That's easy for me to say as a retiree living in a rural area by choice and definitely of the opinion that relocating to a large metropolitan area would not improve my quality of life.
The reality however is rural living is not efficient and homes and roads sprawling through the woods constitute a significant threat to habitat and water quality. Our local hospital struggles in a losing battle to maintain services. We maintain a lot of road miles poorly because we cannot afford anything else. Schools are under constant budget and student performance pressures as our population ages and deaths outnumber births.
A handful of internet entrepreneurs and remote employees will not cure what ails us.
21
When I was growing up in Georgia my grandparents told me often about my great grandparents and the farms that they had in rural Georgia. Agriculture now and agriculture in the 1880's are two completely different things. In the 1880's most farms in middle Georgia were about 100 acres and were farmed with horses and mules. The families tried to raise all of their food (many actually tried to be self sufficient) and raised cotton as a cash crop. Rural areas were thickly settle. Another factor that encouraged small towns was travel. Travel was easy once you got to the railroad; but going to and returning from town (which might be only 5 to 10 miles away) might take most of the day by horse and buggy/wagon. So denser population and slow local travel encouraged small towns and country stores.
The farmers that I know now specialize in one or two crops and buy things that they want at Walmart, etc. like everyone else Poultry, cattle, hog operations are largely automated; grain is raised on huge fields with GPS guided tractors and combines. People now think nothing of driving fifty miles to commute to work or to go shopping. The little town and country stores are no longer needed plus there are many few people living in the rural areas. One thing that is striking -- no matter how far back in the sticks people live, everyone that I know has a cellphone or smartphone.
The effect that technology/economics has had on life is amazing.
20
Drugs and gangs hurt small town living, but there are towns that are not as afflicted and worth living in. There seems to be a time differential when living in small town, that puts the squeeze on convenience, when getting in the car and drive to a home improvement center for example, which is way far away. Returning home to perform the DIY project before the weather changes or it gets dark is a juggling act at that point. However, if self driving cars take hold and afford small town dwellers more time to work in their car/office computers while being driven to points on their daily/weekly meeting and shopping locations perhaps that disadvantage of time out in the boondocks could be neutralized. Who knows, it might be possible to send the car on its way 100 miles away to pick up items, or people, and, without anyone driving the car, freeing up human resources. Overnight delivery would not be so expensive in that instance. I would be surprised to see lots of ghost towns popping up, though people need to be aware of how far away from hospital, fire, and police their small town life is located.
7
Manufacturing is becoming automatic and transportation the same. We are rapidly moving to green energy produce by small micro-grids. The internet makes communication easy anywhere. I think small cities are the canary in the mine. The rot will eventually reach big cities too.
1
True, but what then?
2
Interesting, but I live in an area of 5 small towns near the city of Santa Barbara. We are knitted together and have a singular identity as the Santa Ynez Valley. Our primary business are wine growing and tasting, tourism, and gambling at the Chumash Casino. I don't see them ending any time soon. If anything we are growing. We used to live in Montecito, a small town bordering Santa Barbara. That town and Santa Barbara also thrive on tourism and growth due to people escaping from the bustling city of Los Angeles.
I think most cities, big and small. of the California coast continue to thrive because of the desirability of living in them. Various industries thrive including entertainment, tourism, agriculture and technology.
6
Your points also acknowledge population growth, which the column really doesn't. There seem to be cycles as well. As we realize big Ag has destroyed agriculture that paid attention to nutrition and the well-being of farmers and the animals we consume, many areas are returning to smaller scale agriculture, some of it organic, and utilizing some methods more modern than in the old days, so it is still attractive to younger folks who are not exclusively wedded to making a financial killing.
That is why the harm being done by Republicans is so terrible and harmful to all of us, even Republicans. Trashing all government and yapping about eliminating it is crazy, and they need to be called out on it by their own, not just those of us of different political persuasion.
Happy New Year, and may 2018 see the demise of this administration's stranglehold on the three branches!
11
The editor doesn't realize that living in city no longer represents a convenient place to find work. The internet, the automobile and the train have made that concept obsolete. The majority of retired 80 year olds no longer need to travel to a place to work, However they still need a place to live and enjoy community services and law and order. Transportation is easier than it ever has been in the past, and health emergencies are better handled by the ambulance service.
The maintenance of a better quality of life is better suited to a small city than by a large city. Cost of living which often determines quality of life is often more affordable in a smaller city.
10
For a given set of natural advantages, the growth of a city depends greatly on the quality of its business and political leadership. If business people don't want the competition of new jobs and employers and the political leadership goes along with that, the city will stagnate. If everyone's a booster instead of a narrow-minded self-enricher, the city is likely to do well.
5
One size does not fil all. Yes, large urban centers have an obvious business and cultural gravitational pull. But there are those who thrive in a less crowded place, perhaps surrounded by mountains or the endless plains or the roar of surf. Those folks might be software engineers or 3D Print designers or video post-production artists. What's required is bandwidth and that's what's missing.
17
Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.
For many industries the considerations are the costs to acquire the raw materials and the cost to deliver the finished good to the eventual consumer.
As an example, a major foreign manufacturing concern was looking to build a plant in Western Pennsylvania using a brownfield site which was once the site of a steel mill. The positive considerations were ease of access to the railroads and the Ohio River.
Ultimately what killed the project were uncertainties about maintenance of the system of locks and dams (necessary for raw materials) and whether contemplated upgrades to the railroads would be completed. Given available transportation, the plant could be located no further than 800 miles from either supplier or consumer. Ultimately, a site in the South was chosen.
We are, as nation, too obsessed about new technologies and fail to appreciate the reasons for old technologies. Moving raw materials via the system of inland waterways is orders of magnitude less expensive than even the use of the railroads and moving people and goods costs far more, per individual mile traveled, by road than by rail.
Add the environmental costs and the differences are more dramatic.
Convince Congress to appropriate more money for river or rail projects?
The ideal successor to democracy is to be governed by artificial intelligence which would base decisions on what provided the greatest good to the greatest number of people.
17
don't let them hoodwink you, PA.
All those excuses really meant they wanted the lack of regulations, unions, cheap labor, cheap land, and cheap bribes more available in the South. also, nearly no taxes... so, how they'd expect more reliable infrastructure is a boondogle.
follow the money.
15
Do railroads have something to do with the demise of small cities? Many of them were important hubs. They were easily accessible for passengers and freight. Not true today. Interstate highways even bypass them.
12
The small North Carolina city where I now live is a compromise for retirees who increasingly do not like the heat of Florida or its over development. Our influx is gradually changing the political and social nature of the city to a more inclusive one, that and the large university and new industries such as film making which has developed because of low costs and other factors. It is hard to make generalizations such as those Dr. Krugman has made because so many factors play into the development of an area and these factors can often change in a social moment. North Carolina like the Colorado I came from is in great flux and the clash of social elements are fostering that clash.
10
A counterpoint to Krugman's argument here is the slow growth of America's largest city, the New York-Newark Combined Statistical Area.
New York: Population: 23.7million; Growth 2010-16: 2.65%
Rochester, NY; Population: 1.2million ; Growth 2010-16: 0.61%
For comparison:
Houston; Population: 7million ; Growth 2010-16 :14%
Austin,TX; Population 2.1million; Growth 2010-16: 20%
St George, UT; Population 160,000; Growth 2010-16: 16%
So some small cities are doing very well, while some large ones are stagnant. However, that doesn't mean that Krugman is wrong. There are more small cities than large ones, so you would expect to see more variability among small cities, and that is indeed the case. Also, GDP/capita in New York is higher than in the other cities I have listed.
I think that Krugman does have a point when considering cities of 200 thousand or less. Of the 389 MSAs in the US, 86 have shrinking populations. Cities of under 200k seems to be heavily represented in that list, while only 2 have a population of over 1.5million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas
5
>There are arguably social costs involved in letting small cities implode...
"Arguably", my [hindquarters]. There are big social costs to letting small cities or any community implode. "Community" is the key word there. When people have to leave a community, because it implodes or for more benign reasons, it's often hard to rebuild social networks. Friends (yours and your kids') aren't easily substituted nor (for example) is your church nor any of the other things that make a community a community. Many would much rather build up their community than bugging for a location where job prospects look better. More power to them.
By and large, economist don't get community. That's unfortunate. I wish they'd try harder to do so.
16
Communities exist in large cities just as in small ones. There is also not a question of 'letting' cities implode, unless we are in a planned economy, and those have not fared so well. The example of Rochester, New York, is a good one. That is a city which has repeatedly re-invented itself. The fulcrum for the current revival is most likely to be found in the group of high quality educational facilities as well as a tradition of a more highly 'qualified' work force. On a smaller scale, Bowling Green, Kentucky, has built a sort of revival around Western Kentucky University. The key is that the locals have thought about what they have to offer and made the most of it in an organised way.
6
PK's column is stimulating if for no other reason than it focuses on an especially American issue: growing urbanization and its impact on rural existence.
Some additional thoughts:
For one thing, rural areas are no longer isolated, thanks to the Internet and the mass media. Job prospects may be low, and economic futures dim, but the everyday reminder of these failures has contributed to a sense of political despair that was very much evident in the 2016 election.
For another, rural political influence, rather than declining, actually has increased due to redistricting, which in most states is controlled by rural-leaning state legislatures. Gerrymandering if often associated mostly with isolating minorities into urban concentrations. Less noticed, perhaps, is that gerrymandered districts are drawn in large part to preserve the once dominant political power of rural state legislators.
Lastly, the historical influence of the Electoral College is arguably most felt in pondering the urban-rural issue. It is there as a monument to our early settlers and farmers who instinctively knew that without Constitutional protections, their power ultimately erode. It's why empty Wyoming has the same number of Senators as huge nation California.
All to suggest that it is mistaken to think of rural America is devoid of political importance.
12
Here's the problem. Donald Trump came into power because he won most of the acreage. Hillary Clinton on the other hand won the areas that produce the most of the country's GDP. That's a serious imbalance of political power vs economic power, a condition that is even more serious than the imbalance that led to North vs South.
8
Your observations are valid, PaulB67, but the future is now, and it is happening in surprising places.
The new small cities to replace the ghost towns predicted by Paul Krugman (perhaps incorrectly) will exist in neighborhoods of the megalopolis he envisions. People necessary to provide services in the central city will be unable to afford to live there.
This already exists, and working-class Americans spend several hours every day, simply traveling a few short miles to and from their jobs. Snow is not a big part of the problem.
3
The states themselves were gerrymandered when they were formed. The congress of the time understood that large, low population states would ensure a conservative bias in the Senate. The major fault of the Constitution is having the electoral college be based on similar calculations. So now the president can be "elected" by a minority of the people. This will get worse as the major population areas grow due to jobs and the rural areas shrink in population- as it stand 11% of the population gets 40 senators, who can control, or at least block, senate action. The other 89% are stuck with what the 11 percent want. The majority of the electoral college was rural, low population areas. That will not change as the urban population grows. The tip of the tail now wags the dog.
8
Big cities used to offer unique access to a wide range of skills and resources needed for new enterprise. Now, thanks to the internet, these requirements can be identified wherever they are and made available to wherever they are needed.
In a wired small city we can participate online in the specialist communities that were found until recently only in large cities or university towns.
At the same time small cities are large enough to have a hospital, affordable high quality legacy housing, libraries, sports facilities, at least a few areas with good schools and some specialized markets for food, handicrafts or whatever you wouldn't necessarily want to buy online.
Ironically, it may be easier to find a good urban experience in a small city than in a larger one with it's long commutes and high prices.
Paul Krugman dislikes 'bad winters', but I would take trees and snow and the brisk sweet north air over the wretched confining heat of the inland southern summer any day.
I predict a renaissance of small northern cities as boomers who moved when young return to their roots to retire, introducing grandchildren to scattered, newly functional places of joy.
6
The article also explains why the European Union Common Agriculture Policy and its subsidies means that France will always be "all in" for the European Union. It keeps rural France afloat. Apparently one of the tragic oversights of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom was that voters outside Greater London did not understand the massive extent of EU subsidies on their local economies. In voting to take back "control" of their island, these voters moved to economically marginalize a majority of their counties. (The Murdoch media understand atavistic politics, not modern economics.)
The best strategy for a local region outside a mega-urban center might be to ensure that the national polity was increasing its integration into international economic and trade zones with trade assistance subsidies going to augment and strengthen local comparative advantages by extracting a political rent. The game always goes to those who know how to play the new game.
11
Your colleague Michael Porter had some things to say about regional value in a global economy. When everyone has the same machine made items, hand made takes of a new precious value.
Perhaps the global Balkanization starting in the breaking up of Yugoslavia is actually also the same dynamic; the seizing on local identity as a reaction to the new anomie and alienation brought on by multinational economic governance.
5
Small cities in Germany seem to be a counter-example to Paul's thesis. They are typically supported by a couple of companies, that have managed through efficiency and industry-labor and government cooperation to get a monopoly or a near-monopoly, frequently worldwide, on what they produce. These cities are usually very nice places to live in, nicer and cheaper than the metropolis. So perhaps what small US cities need is a closer cooperation between all the stakeholders.
11
All correct, but the smaller German cities have good transit, day care (for kids & elders) and medical care. They have almost zero SUVs or pickup trucks. But far fewer fast-food chain outlets.
9
This phenomena of rural decline must be mathematically describable and statistically predictable. It seems like a compact enough problem.
3
I'm uncertain what Dr. Krugman considers a small city. However, the town near where I grew up is booming. It languished for years as a small agricultural and medical center for the surrounding rural counties - covering a rather large geographical area. However, about 25 years ago it was discovered the area was prime wine grape country, and the town (now estimated to be about 35,000, county about 60,000) is a "destination". It's made many lists of "best small town" and "best place to retire". Tract homes seem to be going up everywhere. Home prices has risen significantly. The historic downtown is thriving. However, the homeless population is also increasing. Basically this small town's economic vitality is based on the wine industry, it's good medical facilities, two small universities, a community college. Basing your economy on wine is a little tenuous - 2008 say several go out of business, but things appear to have recovered. Most of the influx are people fleeing other high cost large cities. I have mixed feelings about it all. It's nice to see the town thriving, but it's certainly a different vibe from when I grew up. That being said, I'm not sure how many well paying jobs all this is creating. Median income is about 48K, per capita 24K. There are lots of retirees, but also many farm workers. I don't see the town fading away, but I do fear the stratification that is occurring as wealthy people move in.
11
Please do more articles like this--think pieces? Yes, we shouldn't take our eye off Trump but there are so many other interesting subjects to look at.
18
Man, Krugman can't find a reason for small cities to still exist. Which leads to the realization that he likely doesn't think the people need to be there either. Which leads to the realization that he thinks they are misguided for still doing so. As if they were all leading anachronistic lives in small towns, as if they should all just move to New York City where Krugman is from and become liberal Democrats, like Krugman. This piece reveals more about his motivations and biases than it does to any understanding about those who thrive and prefer to live in small cities.
5
Not so, his question is, why do some do well and others don't? It's comes down to the success of any given business started there. and most of the time, that cannot be engineered by government - it is the work of the people in the business. "good" businesses are started all the time - that is, a business that has some good idea. but few succeed simply due to a huge variety of reasons, many of which are out of the control of the business owner.
6
I agree that the social cost of small towns imploding is grossly understated by Krugman, and is missed by many who study the hard science of economics. That said there are important truths in the analysis that is important to come to grips with. You may be right that Krugman is challenged to empathize and understand the human costs. The "game" should be in service of humanity, not simply in service of "the economy", which some pretend will inherently serve humanity. Having grown up in a small town and now living in Chicago, I look forward to ever more creative ways of keeping small towns viable and thriving and leading in "community" in ways that are more difficult (though possible) to create and maintain in larger cities. It's also important to remember that it was changes abroad that caused most of our forefathers to uproot from their community to come to the US, and I have faith that however the cards fall, the people in the heartland of America will find ways to survive and thrive. Policy and principled leadership can make that more or less difficult and painful.
1
, "no big deal",
It sounds like your reading of Mr Krugman is clearly biased. Does it matter that he votes democrat or repub. ? You are missing the point/s.
He is trying to delineate the historical elements regarding the loss of industries in many small cities.
If you read his columns,I think you would find that his writing is far from cynical or disparaging toward people who live in the those cities. He doesn't pull his punches, and his writing is clear and accesible.
IMHO.
thanks,
Paula
6
One reason to hope for the survival of small cities is simply to disperse population and thus hold down housing costs, reduce congestion, and have smaller, more intimate, more governable communities. If Krugman is right and if there are no countervailing forces, the forces he describes would seem to lead to almost everyone living in a few titanic cities--costly, crowded, etc.
There are lots more than just a few potentially nice places to live, and lots of disadvantages to everyone trying to cram into just a few of them. The proverbial Martian visiting in the titanic-city future would think us crazy for paying exorbitant rents to live in tiny apartments in crowded, congested Bay Area/NYC while most of the beautiful country sat there empty.
Science fiction has considered this. Contemplating a future where work is not tied to a particular place, some writers have imagined the cities emptying out, everyone living in the beautiful countryside. Others see it Krugman's way: if there's no reason to be near the mine, the river, the forest or the farm, why not everyone live in the big city?
2
You miss some really big social features of smaller cities in your discussion. First of all, they are often very nice places to live and raise a family or even retire to. A smaller city also gives people a much greater ability to be a participating part of the commons. Whether it's volunteering for a food bank, playing an instrument in the local symphony, running for a local office or serving on the board of a local organization these things are much easier to accomplish in a place where the community needs its members. In the more successful smaller cities, people care about the commons in ways that upper and upper middle class people in large cities often don't: they know that the condition of the public schools is part of what makes a community, they use the local parks and public facilities, and they know their neighbors. I don't mean to idealize cities like Rochester that suffer from horrible weather and have lost major industries, but seriously, I think it would be hard to find places with worse weather than Boston or Chicago or Houston at the extremes of miserable winters and summers. I think a lot of what makes some places successful is the herd mentality of the business world that defines certain places as cool and others as lame.
9
In the modern economy, which has cut loose from the land, any particular small city exists only because of historical contingency that sooner or later loses its relevance."
Funny you should mention that. I "m certain that I live in such a place but nobody believes me. here are many towns along the Calif coast that have goon the way of the dodo and if it weren't foe tourists, (and now the wealthy looking for places to hide away in) they would have disappeared years ago. My city was ag-based, then the military came and then they partly left. I think the one item you left out is that they supplanted the losses of some work with shopping malls supported by the new investment growth workers , and the malls are now leaving or going broke and without some kind of industrial growth, the cites around here will eventually be "tourist traps". There is some bedroom community here where people work elsewhere, make lots of money, but that won't sustain the local community very long and we are doomed to irrelevance soon. We'll have the very rich, and the people too poor to move elsewhere needing the social welfare dollars that are drying up just when they are needed most.
1
Ah, vacations do stir the mind & soul, don't they, Professor? As you "commune with nature," make sure you leave some of those NYC $$ behind. This is the new form of income redistribution for the West: tourism and government handouts (without onerous regulations, naturally). Of course, a seasonal service economy and being on the dole do not themselves do much to support that famed 'quality of life' ethic, do they? I don't know what the long-term solutions are. But, in the meanwhile, perhaps there are others like me who found promise moving from Chicago to a town of 5000. After earning a PhD in the Windy City, I moved here to put it to use (with support from the feds). And I learned to cook (fairly well) and hang sheetrock (not so well) out of necessity. And, thank goodness for fiber internet and Amazon Prime.
3
Small towns could generate electricity, provide BnB's for week-end bikers coming from nearby Big Cities, and house Lyft/Uber drivers and delivery personnel for proximate Big Cities. like towns within 60 miles of San Francisco.
Mr. Krugman overlooks essential features of a small town - education and hospitality. Education is the cornerstone of jobs and makes life more interesting - essential in a small town with no movie theater, skating rink, public swimming pool, or even well kept parks an picnic grounds, preferably along a clean river where you can swim. A new transportation system could make many small towns more accessible to escaping city livers.
Small towns need to make themselves more attractive. Instead, idiots and money-hungry preachers make them more paranoid, angry, doped out on opioids, and misguided by government ruled by churches. Without a common source of news, small towns are often ill-informed about what goes on elsewhere in the world. Watch a Bernie Sanders talk in West Virginia - people haven't a clue about why they no longer have jobs. The only guy in the room who appears to have a job is a recently hired temporary worker in the coal industry, an out of date, dangerous energy source. So even the employed guy has no future. They don't have a clue about why they are in their situation and they voted Donald Trump to perform miracles. They don't see how education could improve their lives. They are not entrepreneurial. The smart folks leave.
Small cities that have a lower cost of living also happens to offer lower economic opportunities making the population to leave it. Small cities do have a better community feeling. It is an ideal place for employees who are allowed to work from home.
2
Small population centers have disproportionate representation in government. They can form a coalition (Republican party) to divert funds from big population centers and then use those funds to poach businesses by offering tax subsidies.
4
Enter the post office which is written into the constitution. Should be the provider of broadband and other communication technologies to rural communities as intended.
6
I am not sure what parameters are being used to define “small city” so I will use as the reference point cities (such as Rochester) that are mentioned. I believe that there is strong evidence of small city resurgence in the US now that will increase in the period leading to mid-21st century. A few examples are Asheville NC, Chattanooga, TN, Boise, ID, Portland, ME, and many west coast smaller cities. Common determinative factors of dynamic smaller cities seem to be progressive community leadership reflecting a progressive voter base with long range vision, attractive natural and/or recreational features, relatively inexpensive cost of living including housing, good healthcare access, readily available higher educational opportunities, solid local schools supported by the community, and infrastructural features such as interstates, commercial airports, and railroads (freight and passenger). I also believe that many larger (and smaller) cities will decline with intensifying effects of global climate change leading to “climate immigrants.” The high entry price associated with larger cities will lead to growth in smaller cities that will in turn continue to nurture revitalization. The practically universal access to markets, jobs, and opportunities related to efficient tech infrastructure (“I live in Omaha but ‘work’ in Seattle”) will make mega-city living even less attractive than it is now.
2
Climate change will determine where people live in the future. Clean water, land to grow food, and climate for crops. Many can live anywhere today and work from home. Water will be key.
8
Right, Paul Krugman, you’re incorrect about Rochester, NY.
First of course you ignore that Rochester has significant universities today in 2017–and that makes Rochester very different than other small cities, say Allentown Pennsylvania.
What undermined places like Rochester is not simply Kodak choosing to fight, that’s the right word, digital photography, but the destruction of union labor, decent paying jobs of the non-union type, and most importantly rewarding finance over the creation of goods and services.
I note Krugman ignores the fact that Bausch and Lomb was a significant presence in Rochester until not real long ago. It’s not simply that 130 years ago there was a Lomb optical company in Rochester.
So another column in which Krugman runs cover for high finance types, like those who run Bain-Capital, at the expense of ordinary people all over the world. This today, except it’s dressed a bit better, isn’t much different than the infamous Fortune Magazine column (The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit) from the later 1990s that Krugman wrote in defense of Goldman Sachs and Enron.
4
" Kodak choosing to fight, that’s the right word, digital photography, "
"fight" probably not true, since Kodak invented digital photography! Rather they couldn't figure out how people would use it and how to make money off digital photography and were too risk averse to cannibalize their lucrative film business. Contrast that to Apple which brought out the iPhone, which destroyed the iPod and cannibalized their laptop and desktop computers, but in the process pushed their business to the top of the heap.
4
An economist "thinking a bit about economics"? Surely you're joking, Mr. Krugman!
1
Would the One benefit of small cities be their usefulness as an Excape from the stress of Big cities? Until we run out of Baby Boomers.
Understatement of the year: "There are arguably social costs involved in letting small cities implode..."
The rise of big box and internet retailers (enabled by globalization) have accelerated the decline of rural small towns. However, I believe a renaissance in some smaller towns is possible but only through a conscious, thoughtful and concerted effort by those who think they are worth saving. Currently, we'd rather outsource to India than re-train and employ our own citizens.
Left to the invisible hand of the market, these towns will continue to whither away and along with it bring personal loss, drug addiction and despair with it.
4
Well, Sears was the Amazon of its day selling ANYTHING by catalog (even Amazon does not sell kit-houses yet, but Sears did!). that certainly did not help local businesses!
And some of the small towns would not have any stores if the megs brands did not open their chain stores - which are not as dependent on local profit as a stand-alone store. And a similar stand alone store would not even be opened.
The fact is that all small towns get business siphoned off by larger towns or malls within a 30 minute driving range. Just human nature to go where the variety is. This has happened for many decades.
1
The characterization of rural America is erroneous. Rural America has fewer individual farms, but these are being replaced with endless confined feeding operations, slaughter houses, corn-based ethanol plants and feedlots, all of which must be staffed by a growing rural population. The difference is that these workers, unlike the former generations of landowning farmers, are poor and, usually, recent immigrants. Rural America is becoming a desolate but populated meat factory, serving Krugman's cities. City folks and economists will look away as rural areas become a new form of colony to the mega-cities.
8
As ever the broad brush approach doesn't work. We have alll seen small/middlesized towns that are pleasant places to live and work, often fairly close to larger cities with diversified amenities and transpotation hubs. We have also been to declining, isolated towns/areas that smart young people are fleeing in droves. Why would any business want ot locate in such a place? Lousy schools, no hospitals, only fast food joints, no entertainment, sometimes no grocery store, and now many such places have an opioid problem. I remember being shocked 20 years when driving through upstate NY at the downtrodden look of it. Told my husband it looked like Appalachia without the mountains.
1
The worst schools in the country are often inner city schools, heavily segregated due to residential segregation, typically by race. None of the states that use to have legal segregation have been on the list of most segregated schools in about 40 years as most are in the north and east of the Mississippi, although California also some of the most heavily segregated schools. Most of the homicides are concentrated in these same urban areas. As long as the problems remain segregated people don't seem to care, in fact they pat themselves on the back for having such cosmopolitan places to live.
With incentives form NY state Upstate NY has one of more modern semiconductor fabs in the world, where over $12 billion has been invested. The Erie Canal was used to transport some large equipment. Nearby Saratoga Springs is a destination for the area and during track season for the country. But yes, some places will probably never see another boom. Essex up on Lake Champlain had it last boom during the Civil War, but it is a charming place with many pre-Civil war buildings.
1
The typical neoliberal perspective: labor exists to serve capital, following it to the ends of the Earth, if necessary. The idea that business exists to serve man is foreign to the neoliberal, but those who serve the capitalist agenda will strive to make us think that subservience to capital is the natural order of things.
8
Whatever the course that the future holds if we are to survive and prosper it is going to take some mass planning. We will need to come together as a people, as government and as industry to map out some of the dangers ahead.
Alas, we live in a Country that seems to believe mass planning to be some kind of communist plot to destroy our freedoms. I guess that would be the freedom to starve.
Were we to begin the massive infrastructure rebuild that is so needed today we might be able to delay some of the decline until such a time as saner heads begin to prevail in government and industry. At that point we might reverse the course and spread out the wealth.
Then we would see a reblossoming of American enterprise that benefits all, including the very wealthy.
11
In one of my many drives to visit family in Los Angeles, I recently took Highway 99 from LA to SF, mainly out of boredom. I was pleasantly surprised by the string of small cities along that route - Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno, Madera, Modesto. All of them are overshadowed by the megacities of Los Angeles and the Bay Area. And all of them sitting politically like wallflowers at a dance. Visalia and Chico are quite pleasant too. I haven't spent any time in the others.
Not that anyone is expecting California's bullet train soon, but the Highway 99 corridor should be linked by that train eventually. That should really change things along that corridor.
The point simply is that the small city may be replaced by the string of small cities. There is a geographic limit to megacities, which situation is made worse in California due to hilly geography. You need land sometimes, and land tend to be scarce in megacities.
4
Nowhere in this article do you mention a population range for what would be classified small cities, so how are we supposed to make sense of this? Just how small or how large is a small city?
1
Enjoyable musings of a Nobel Laureate, they remind me of the original inspiration of a great economist - though not so great a political thinker - whose birthday bicentennial is coming up this May: Karl Marx. The destruction of town life, to him, was the diminution, or even extinction, of humanity.
It all seemed so unprecedented then, this acceleration of technology and industry that depopulated regions that had been continually settled for hundreds of years or more. Now in this strange world of Moore's Law making dog years of our years, decades are centuries and a profoundly incapable buffoon rides the bewilderment in its wake all the way to the White House.
Practically speaking, universal broadband would serve, as the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 did, in opening opportunities to forgotten regions. High-speed rail would expand the bedroom town regions where local farms can survive, as they do in many places, by selling shares in upcoming crops, or raising grass-fed beef, high-end organic vegetables or even ancient grains.
But, sadly, the biggest boon to the backcountry promised by technology - productive teams comprised of remote workers living wherever they wanted - has yet to materialize fully. There is, as yet, no digital substitute for face-to-face human contact. VR perhaps?
4
Some comments puzzle at the Pittsburgh situation and that found in Cleveland. There is actually not much difference, other than the fact that Pittsburgh's role in the cultural wars is helped by having a large, diverse Philadelphia at the eastern end of the state.
Not only does Cleveland have extraordinary healthcare and medical services in Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals of Cleveland, it has great cultural amenities with the Cleveland Orchestra, which is one of the world’s finest, and The Cleveland Museum of Art.
The problem Cleveland – once the fifth largest city in America – has to deal with is a reactionary, backward population which has grown in the southern part of the state (John Boehner country).
As West Virginia became more impoverished, people migrated in droves across the Ohio River and northward. Unlike, for example, Chicago which has a large enough population to counterbalance politically the anti-education, anti-science rural and semi-rural voters in southern Illinois, Cleveland sometimes can pull it off against the newcomers and sometimes cannot. Various neighborhoods in Cincinnati and Columbus provide only limited help.
4
The social costs of letting small cities implode are merely arguable? Do you recall the 2016 election?
It's ironic that the purely capitalistic & free market policies of the GOP are the forces that are eroding the well being of rural America. Precisely the people supporting the GOP. Too bad that part of America seems mainly dependent upon media sources serving as propaganda vehicles for the GOP.
4
Social density contributes to greater violence, based on social psych research by Robert Barron and others. Not sure that living in high-density human ant farms offer the best existence, what ever the economics are. Something Dr. Krugman is speicifically aware of, as he's communing with nature while posting.
Information-intensive industry could save small cities. They have the advantage of lower housing costs and, often, proximity to recreation. For many jobs, it doesn't matter much if you are in New York, Chicago, or Podunk so long as you have reliable internet access.
3
How refreshing. An article neither left nor right ( nor Trumpian ) but centered on analysis of a problem. Would that every problem were so discussed. We are desperately in need of such an approach. KA
6
Dr. Krugman,
I have no thoughts on what for me is a brand-new topic, but thanks for introducing iy to me.
I am very happy to read your ideas of economics again. For the last year, or so, your opinions have seem mostly scary political stories, not economics. I'm glad to think of your thoughts and widen my horizons.
I guess if you are a neoliberal economist living in a country with two neoliberal political parties and have won international acclaim because you know and understand neoliberalism you see the world through a neoliberal lens.
I live near a small city of 200000 that is in the midst of an economic boom accompanied by a huge increase in ethnic diversity and attitudes of optimism not seen other places around the world. People not corporations know best. When democracy is working and governments not large private pools of capital hold the ultimate authority things can work. As the USA drifts away from the belief that people know best their plight the insane notion that one size fits all rules the roost.
5
Paul,
You neglected to mention Pittsburgh. While not a real small town, it has reinvented itself from a steel capital to a center for IT, education and health.
Richard
1
Thank you! For the past few months, I have been living in northern NH, a place I have visited all my life, and thinking about the many small cities here that were once thriving and are now shells. Some had multiple industries earlier in the 20th century -- agriculture, paper, textiles, tourism -- but when these declined, there was little to take their place. The vital question is: What kind of regional planning would encourage their revival?? In a capitalist economy, it seems that only private enterprise is really effective and when it becomes unprofitable, companies move on. More, Mr. Krugman and other experts, please!
One implication of the ideas Krugman considers here is the eventual decline and fall of Silicon Valley. It does not, obviously, depend upon the local abundance of the element Silicon which is, literally, dirt cheap everywhere. It depends, rather, on the local abundance of well-trained technologists, originally, in many cases, Stanford University graduates. But this resource, scientific knowledge and talent is as freely available world-wide as Silicon itself. Thus Silicon Valley's near monopoly as the center of computer technology is fated to disappear. And so will Google's, Facebook's, Oracle's, etc. dominance of the software industry. This knowledge will diffuse throughout the world but especially to the most densely populated parts such as China and India.
3
The same could be said of California's dominance of the film industry.
Highly paid denizens of the mega-cities (think Bay Area or Seattle in the West) who no longer want to deal with the hassles of a long commute sell their homes, and decide to relocate to a charming, smaller city such as Boise or Asheville NC (as one commenter did). They pay cash for their new homes -- at an inflated price but think they got "a screamin' deal" and purchase a couple of rentals. The formerly charming and affordable small city now has rents and housing prices that are far beyond the low-wage capability of the people who live there. Traffic increases, the infrastructure cannot contain the population explosion and all of a sudden the formerly charming small city isn't so charming, small or affordable anymore. These small cities appear to exist for the benefit of high-wage refugees from the mega-cities. Certainly not for those of us who have lived here and who have been expected to eat " our quality of life" rather than make a liveable wage.
8
There are two policy proposals that would begin to tilt things away from mega-cities, and toware small cities, and small towns: (1) Universal Basic Income (UBI) and (2) breaking up large corporations (not just large banks). (1) UBI is a scheme that would give all (adult) American citizens a dollop of annual income irrespective of need, income, or affluence. The immediate driver behind this is the automation revolution which is expected/feared to increasingly eliminate jobs. High taxes on the owners of the means of production/automation would fund UBI. Instead of fearing this revolution, UBI would embrace this future, and allow citizens to live secure lives and meaningful lives, either in the cutting edge, remunerative world, or as artisans, artists, organic farmers. And, related to the essay, it would induce people to migrate to places with a lower cost of living, such as small cities and small towns. (2) Breaking up corporations into much smaller pieces would create many new companies, and their headquarters would be distributed across America, where people live. The smaller incomes of the CEOs and top managers of these more numerous and more competitive firms would be spread across America, with local trickle down effects enliving regional centers, in addition to lower prices from that greater competition. This is a scheme that promotes innovation, obtains buy-in from citizens because so many benefit, and increases people's security.
9
We could call this scheme New Harmony, America, in deference to that wonderful utopia that flourished in Middle America for about two weeks.
The relevancy of small cities and rural areas in our country relies on our government make up. The electoral college and the rule that every state, no matter how small, have 2 senators and 1 congressperson. This silly rule keeps some small cities alive as capitals. The same goes for county seats in rural areas.
2
What keeps rural areas going is the need to feed, house, warm & cool urbanites packed into rat mazes. Cities cannot produce enough food, energy and raw materials to sustain themselves for more than a week. Cities are in essence epiphytes. Or, parasites, if you prefer.
Thoughtful article - on the migration of jobs! Dr Krugman opines that jobs have been cut off from the land quite some time ago, and modern technology in recent times has cut off jobs from smaller cities due to the massive intellectual and physical infrastructure to support modern technology. People move to where the jobs are.
The next phase, in my view as a technologist, is that jobs. (due to AI) will be cut off from big cities. I have several friends who work in the tech sector yet live in rural settings. Perhaps we will (because future jobs don't require large cities) return to the land from whence we came and we will be the happier for it.
19
I recall this exactly what everyone -Democrats and Republicans were saying back in the 70's and 80's about the then new migration of jobs to South America and the clsosing up of giant factories and firing of hundreds of thousands of Americans onto the dust heap of history.
Men like Bob, in Austin, said that we should celebrate as , in the future, all the design and computer writing for the "world" would be done by highly trained Americans who would sit in luxurious offices for a few days a week whowing the rest of the planet who to build and what the needed.
Doesn't seem to have worked out. We have , instead, like a junkie or an alcoholic, snuck foreign workers into the US to replace Americans who employers claimed didn't exist-and these non existant American computer specialists were forced to train their foreign replacements . Once Americans were fired-the employers claimed a permanent supply of underpaid Indians and CHinese laborers must be brought into America to supply what we could not-even though we had invented it all and had constructed and trained all our own replacements.
Cheap US readers can see how this situation might end by reading (for free from Gutenberg!) "Armageddon in the 25th century"-the original Buck Rogers stories, which actually were about an economic conquest of American labor, in the future in just this fashion. Han conquerors disposed of and eliminated Americans as superfluous, and used superior technology to try and eliminate them.
1
Smaller cities have lower costs and do not have the long-term infrastructure obligations that expensive places like NYC and San Francisco require. It now costs $3.5 billion to build a mile of subway tunnel in New York, and middle-class families are fleeing the Bay Area to smaller metro-areas. In a global economy where businesses can locate workers almost anywhere, why would they put all of them in places where they would have a high cost of living?
8
The longterm sociological implications are that as those better-paid persons leave a high-cost area, those remaining behind are more poorly paid and unable to migrate. If this resulted in lower costs, there would eventually be a balance, but that's not what tends to happen. As always, in the end, we as a society will be judged by our future for how well we take care of one another. (Quick quiz without going to Wikipedia - who was the wealthiest person in the United States in 1900? Don't know? That's how much wealth actually matters in the long term; for every J. P. Morgan or John D. Rockefeller you'll also find an Andrew Carnegie) People are usually expected in our society to move to where jobs are. The poor usually can't, which creates ongoing situations driving up costs nationally. Maybe it's time we started moving jobs to where people are, not the other way around, and proving as much training, hiring, and location services as are needed to allow our populace to take advantage of the changing economy. It's a known factor that genius drives forward societies, but if we divide society by quintiles, we find that no single one has a lock on genius, yet we tend to focus only on the top 1 or 2 (the donor and theoretically middle classes). Ignoring 60-80% of the genius in our population is not a winning formula.
8
The Chief Executive Officer likes the cultural institutions in the city with the high cost-of-living.
3
Because they can put a lot of them there and have all the ancillary services they need already in place. Why build a cheap road if it takes you where you have to expensively re-create the advantages of an urban location?
5
Very interesting piece. Having lived by a maxim posted outside my favorite undergraduate political scientists door (along with random cartoon clippings, office hours, syllabus, etc.), "once you have decided to quantify, you can only measure that which is quantifiable." I've always wanted to see analysis of the importance of leadership, particularly business leadership in the economic/political development and/or decline of different regions and towns. Once could point to the evident lack of leadership by US corporate business elite as management and boards bought into two dumbed down bullet points for CEO's, Milton Friedman's mantra of profit maximization and globalization. We can lay a host of current ills, including the withering of small towns on both these issues.
15
> "once you have decided to quantify, you can only measure that which is quantifiable."
Sounds like a variation on the McNamara fallacy:
"The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide."
- Daniel Yankelovich
5
If a city has a nickname linked to a commodity or single industry, it is doomed unless it has already installed a major driver of innovation such as a university - or, preferably, two or three research universities. Think Pittsburgh, the once Steel City, that is now a meds and eds hub driven by Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne and Robert Morris, among others. Hartford - the Insurance City - stands as an example of a city that has lost the coin flip after centuries of winning, first with shipping, then armaments (Colt) and other manufactured products such as bicycles and typewriters and aircraft engines. Since World War II, it has been hollowed out to an insurance core, a byproduct of its shipping days, and even now that is slipping away. Aircraft engine manufacturing and the R&D that goes along with it remain, too, but these are dependent on government defense contracts to smooth over the boom-and-bust cycles of the aircraft industry.
7
Krugman can apply the same reasoning to states and provinces or even nations. By his reasoning we should let whole countries implode.
2
I disagree with your interpretation of his analysis. Nothing he writes says "we should let cities explode." What I interpret from his analysis is that, if you let the economics work, cities that plan their future around one or two industries (i.e. Detroit) will eventually lose and cities that remake themselves and introduce new industries (i.e. Pittsburgh today, San Francisco - Bay Area thirty years ago) will thrive. Ultimately, what I believe leaders of smaller cities should take from this hypothesis is that they must constantly look to new industry, new science and new ways of thought to keep their communities alive. :-)
10
Not a bad idea; either that or you and I can continue to support them.
In the last paragraph, Krugman writes that there are social costs in "letting small cities implode". "Letting" implies that someone makes conscious decisions to let nature run its course. As a liberal, Krugman is quick to suggest a policy fix for the implosion problem. Regional development. Sorry, Paul you are way behind the curve. You need to get out of that cramped apartment more often.
Missing data alert about agriculture: One of the real reasons rural population has declined is the change in farming throughout the corn, small grain and soybean belt. Consider that one farmer growing one of these crops fed roughly 14 people in 1980 and today feed about 43 people. This is due to technological change as well as changes in mechanization. Average farm size actually farmed by one farmer (both his own land and land he rents) has more than doubled without the need for additional human labor. Average amount of land farmed by one farmer in many great plains states is between 2500 and 3500 acres. If you don't need the human power, rural areas are naturally losing population and it is not necessarily due to agriculture's economic importance.
18
A crucial point in this discussion. It also raises the question of whether if we had adopted a more European approach to supporting and subsidizing farmers with the express aim of preserving some semblance of a rural economy, we would be far better off than we are now. We have always been far more willing to subsidize our military/industrial complex than we have our people. Are small towns in England or France or Germany suffering the economic dislocation that we see in America? And if not, why not?
We have paid a steep price for losing the essential character of most of rural America with our great strides in efficiency, not least the bitter divisions we see today.
13
maybe. But the thing you forgot is that with the changes in communication, people learn about the world around them and are no longer satisfied living in rural poverty conditions or doing backbreaking work in the field. Military service may also be responsible for the decline in rural living as people who are stationed around the world get a different view of life OUTSIDE of the farming community. Go to the city, get a job, BE SOMEBODY. Even farmer's kids might rebel against that life. I think the parallel here is the Amish children who are now seeing that the "plain" life may be too plain, hence they move away from their community.
One farmer fed 14 in 1980? I think you meant 1880. And the food production in many states feeds about 100 people per farmer, according to recent farm country billboards.
There's a problem with the huge mechanization involved though. land in many places is hilly, with small hills, terraces, etc and large machinery can't operate well on that terrain. Some farmers just run their big machines in straight lines, up and down hills, creating channels for rainwater to efficiently erode topsoil. This can't be good for longterm soil fertility. For the good of the soil, I think it's necessary to use small enough machines to do what's called contour farming, either human-operated or robotically controlled. That would require quite a bit of investment and reliance on high-tech. the sort you might see news of on early morning farm TV shows. But as the commenter I'm replying to implies, food hasn't gone out of style, city people need to eat.
Having lived in both mining towns in Arizona & a shipping port on the Oregon coast as a kid I can recall..
The "smarter" people working underground in the mines & worried about the dangers of silicosis would eventually seek to work above ground in the mill or move to a town with an open pit operation. Those with the longest tenure seemed to accept the demise of industry due to foreign competition and lowering of commodity prices more readily than the younger folk raised to expect work in the mines & mills to go on forever. When operations ceased in the mining towns, the societal disruption was stunning.
On the Oregon coast, the "smarter" people watched in admiration as Japanese ships were loaded with whole logs for export. Some people in the lumber mills said, " Those Japanese are sure smart. They use the whole log with no waste." People whose jobs depended on producing lumber...hmmm.
So generally speaking, those patriots seeking to export freedom & democracy throughout the world, along with market forces, helped to topple the economies of their rural towns. Soon a population without blue collar skills or expertise & pushing pencils or should I say, tapping computer keys will occupy those same places. Heaven help us if the BRICs or other developing countries get mad & curtail exports. But then they'd be hurting themselves. Right? Right.
8
The megacity model is just as thoroughly broken as the small city/rural model. Real estate and rental costs, taxes, inner-city blight, gentrification, highway, mass transit and education infrastructure, etc., etc., all combine to make megacities less and less viable for larger and larger swaths of Americans. Having grown up in the Bay Area and worked a 20 year career in high-tech, we moved to a small city, albeit a destination resort in North Carolina. On reflection from Asheville, the Bay Area and other megacity economies seem to follow the model of ancient city-states that gathered all essential goods and services inside well protected city walls and treated surrounding inhabitants as serfs and slaves to be exploited. Megacities struggle constantly to find the highly skilled workers needed to fuel their continued growth, and even the cream of the crop, paid 6 figure plus salaries, can no longer afford to buy a house near where they work unless they are lucky enough to reach elite status in their profession or have cashed in on stock options from a previous company. The desire of mega corporations to gather their most valuable employees on one central campus is misguided. The synergies of R&D emerge most frequently in small teams of 10 or less and these teams can maintain a virtual presence with other less essential connections from anywhere on the planet. It's time for megacity America to move out of their walled cities into rural America and solve both problems.
43
I agree. What you describe is the exact opposite of what Dr. Krugman writes about in this piece. At some point, there isn't going to be enough land. Your example is spot on. When the formerly not too significant city of San Francisco/Bay Area (in the late 70s and 80s) began the transition to it's high tech monster of today, no one could have foreseen the unimaginably high cost of living that exists today.
Despite "success"; it seems to me that the new residents of the Bay Area aren't doing that well, when you consider the awful traffic, the inability to buy or rent a suitable home for a reasonable cost or the long distances needed to commute for the high paying job which allows them to live.
6
I think it has less to do with size than the ability to support itself. The economic forecast where I live is negative for a city of 200K. People come to Calif for the "weather" but they can't live on "air". They weren't thinking about reality --just the beaches. Malls and city-federal government are what keep this place going and the malls are dying thanks to the internet--and the decline in taxes will eventually do in the city. Beside tattoo parlors and hair salons there isn't much to do here for work, and how many employees are needed in tattoo parlors?
You are in an island. It's called Asheville. Around you are some pretty crazy people at this point in time. You live in a boutique town.
1
I believe we are looking at this problem through the lens of current transportation options. Huge commutes if you live in a big city and no public transportation outside of big cities. Basically the auto and the train, but this will all change and change quite rapidly and make this analysis outdated and irrelevant. I firmly believe that AI and resource management will once again make non mega city living attractive and economic.
9
At this point in time urban sprawl with large cities subsuming neighboring towns, and even smaller cities, gives them more power than still isolated smaller towns and communities. Industry will follow the younger workforce eager to leave their home towns for opportunity in the larger centers.
Rochester is an interesting example of how a huge employer with incompetent short sighted over paid executives, in control of a world renown company perfectly primed to grow exponentially in a digital world, sabotaged themselves and Rochester for short term gain - a small gain that was indeed very short.
As a single industry area, I wonder if silicon valley is safe - it seems like it is because of its ability to churn new ideas and businesses, where even if a Google or Apple rapidly collapse from a misstep, it would not end the valley as we know it. Then again, it has been subsumed by the urban sprawl from San Fransisco down south.
Enjoy your natural surroundings Paul. We are likely the last generation to be able to enjoy something so priceless as unmarred, untrammeled intact natural beauty when it can be found.
19
The area now known as Silicon Valley was already subsumed by urban sprawl when I moved to Palo Alto in 1968.
Nice article, Dr. Krugman! I have always wondered if geographers, historians, and economists collaborated much on their model building. Turns out that yes they do and Krugman is right in the middle of that. For all of you haters of big-city elites, note that Krugman is spending time right now in a natural area.
In the holiday spirit, I offer a few thoughts on this fascinating topic. First, it helps to look at other developed countries. In particular, Germany and Austria have smaller, often high-tech Mittelstand companies scattered throughout a largely rural or suburban landscape. Second, New England in the US has survived several waves of economic "ruin", only to rebuild perhaps at a lower level of population density. Vermont is a good example of current regrowth. Perhaps this is related to the fact that, like Austria, its population is centered mostly in river valleys. In the late 1900's the landscape of New England was pockmarked by decaying mill towns and fishing ports. Many of these have eventually found new sources of economic activity. A big wave of change is moving north through Maine. Brunswick has survived the loss of its naval air station. Portland is thriving now that people no longer have to breathe paper-mill fumes. Washington County is reeling from the loss of jobs in lumber and agriculture but is seeing at least a few signs of exploiting its spectacular scenery.
4
If we follow this reasoning to the logical extreme, based on the ever shrinking agricultural economic component, and all those coin flips, there will be no more small cities and towns, and only a few handfuls of mega-cities. Surely this can't be so. There must be, or should be, a set of equations that demonstrate that within the new information-based economy, with speed-of-light digital inter-connectivity, the continued existence of smaller cities represents some sort of market driven optimum.
3
I see nothing particularly "wonkish" about this piece, nor is it very enlightening, and certainly not visionary in any sense. While he does concede that "there are arguably social costs involved in letting small cities implode," the piece is a sort of passive endorsement of what he considers inexorable market forces st work. He fails to define exactly what he means by "small cities," discussing Rochester, NY (the third largest city in New York) in the same breath with rural communities, and the latter might include towns with a population of anywhere from one-hundred to ten-thousand people. The idea of the mega-city with its poverty, pollution, and accompanying sprawl, is not to be embraced lightly as the dominant organizing principle of any country by a policy wonk or any person with a humane point of view. Without a healthy mix of villages, towns and cities this country will suffer socially, aesthetically, and in many other ways. I say that as a resident of large city. It might sound extreme, but a corollary to the Krugman argument might be, if a person can no longer farm or adapt to the gig economy, what reason does he/she have to exist? I reject this kind of reductionism. We need social and political policies that value human beings, human happiness and well-being, our history and the value and variety of our towns.
20
The national demographic trends are for rural areas to lose population to urban areas . This trend has been going on for decades, and has accelerated since 2010.
A consequence of this decline of rural areas is the skewering of state politics. Most states, in their formation, imitated the United States legislative branch, with a senate based on fixed boundaries, proportionate when the state was formed (and often 70 percent rural), and a House which is redistricted every ten years.
As rural areas are depopulated, the senate representation starts to become more lopsided. Boundaries formed in the 17-1800s now permit rural areas to elect state senators with far fewer votes than the state senate districts that represent urban areas. State House Districts remain proportionate, but represent more urban areas where the population is growing.
As rural areas feel more isolated from urban areas, expect a backlash from the state senates that have fallen under rural control. Two examples of this is the bathroom bill in North Carolina, which was passed in Charlotte but nullified at the state level. Another example is Missouri, where St. Louis passed a $15 per hour minimum wage, only to have the Missouri State legislature pass a law that prevented localities from setting wages.
The Supreme Court decided years ago that states could over-rule the laws passed by localities in their state. How this will be resolved is anyone's guess, but it will impact politics going forward.
8
This was the "rotten borough" problem which was addressed in England centuries ago.
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Here in the western USA, many small cities succeed based partly on telecommuters who want to live in a beautiful natural setting with a pleasant climate, easy access to outdoor activities, clean air, friendly people, and no crowding. Many such small cities are thriving in several states.
9
what happens to those who CAN'T telecommute? they leave and eventually so do the others because there will be nobody to sell the gas for cars, bring home the milk, fix the broken washing machine because people want the cheapest labor they can get and workers in those types of cities can't live on the dregs provided by the wealthy. Economic slavery is STILL slavery.
Isn't it a question of who is calling the shots? In an ideal world, wherever that is, the public sector and the private sector would work in harmony to sustain the best habitat for the people. But while the private sector does its best to amass wealth, which enables power, the public sector tries its best to attain poverty, i.e. cutting taxes, which enables weakness. What better example than all those cities lining up like beggars to win Amazon's next big clump of warehouses and workstations.
Now that the private sectors has a lease on that quaint house on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the congress has advanced the cause of public sector poverty with "tax reform", the quality of habitat is a pie in sky issue, just the preoccupation of Habitat Huggers.
13
The private sector and the public sector are not as neatly divided as you present them. In many cases, individuals, or family members, have positions in both sectors simultaneously or successively.
Is Krugman talking about a specifically american experience of urban growth? Patterns of city and town growth were far different in say Europe for instance.
In Europe cities preformed many different functions, not just as agricultural markets. They were centers of political control and centralization, religious pilgrimage, locations of key strategic potential, dynastic inheritance. Also cities in Europe and beyond have been around for 100's if not 1000's of years, there are strong civic ties, people would rather reinvent than move. One only has to travel around France, Spain or Italy to see this in action.
To pin it all on ties to agriculture, seems to me to be taking a situation that applies to an american market town/city and expanding it all small cities.
6
It's not just an American phenomenon, apparently. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/opinion/the-gamblers-ruin-of-small-ci...®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&login=email&auth=login-email
"I found myself asking what might seem like an odd question: what, in the modern economy, are small cities even for? What purpose do they serve?"
That is indeed an odd question, although not for the reasons Prof. Krugman thinks.
It assumes that "the economy" is master, rather than servant, as if it's some kind of autonomous thing with a mind of its own.
The real question, which is the one that economists of every political persuasion never seem to ask, is: "What, is the ECONOMY for? What--and whose--purposes should it serve, and whom should it benefit, and who should decide?"
56
Consider Samuelson's "Vote Theory of the Economy". Consumers make purchases, each of which is a vote for the continuation of a merchant, a wholesaler, and a producer.
3
Human being comes to all different sizes and shapes. They all have their own purposes and places in the world. In the same manner, megacities, cities, towns, they will co-exist as long as we continue to keep peace with each other. Why not? Unless robots of the same size and shape will take over the world, I will start to worry about our small cities and towns.
3
Lest we forget the elephant in the room, leadership is what is needed to address everyone of these issues. We are not getting the government leadership we need to prosper.
The space available to academic leadership is diminished in the minds of many of the voting public while many of our best educated choose careers in finance. Our civic leaders increasingly focus on the more pressing (paid lobbying) mercantile interests.
We need more 'great' men and women.
13
I'm surprised an economist hasn't looked at the hard numbers to support his big urbanism flyover thesis (common in the NYT). Looking at GDP per capita in 2015, Wyoming has a higher rate than New Jersey and California, while Nebraska beats Pennsylvania. And so on.
Why the assumption that agriculture and old labor is no longer a viable economic force? Especially nowadays with an increased movement towards local, organic sources of food, big cities, small towns and rural areas seem more intertwined than ever.
I'm not so sure that simplifying this to a urbanist dice game is a good idea. There might be more intellectual capital in big cities like NY, LA, Chi and SF, but if you look at mid-size cities, states and even smaller towns, there are many companies that could not exist in the bigger cities, with technologies and expertise that shows little sign of fading. What makes America great is this intertwining, a sharing of local traits, industry and culture between Alaska and Rhode Island, Kentucky and Hawaii.
6
GDP per capita of Wyoming might be good but it's based on one of the premises of Krugman's argument - "they served as central places serving a mainly rural population engaged in agriculture and other natural resource-based activities." But high salaries for a few means many leave. town.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/26/2017s-fastest-and...
This column approaches an economic topic I have been pondering for some years. There is a disconnect between much of what many economists discuss and the realities of jobs and the economic bases that support them. We need better-paying jobs all over the country. Small cities need to exist to provide hospitals, schools, repair shops, stores, and other services for people who live in the area.
The median income of full-time working America about $45,000. The median house price is about $199,200. The average price of a new car or truck in the U.S. is about $33,560.
Manufacturing jobs were solid middle-class jobs. One economists’ fallacy was that if widget manufacturing moved overseas they could be made much more cheaply, benefiting all widget purchasers. Therefor the loss of a small number of manufacturing jobs would result in a benefit for all. That would be true if widgets were the only thing that had manufacturing outsourced. Instead many items have had manufacturing outsourced and the percent of the population in manufacturing jobs has fallen in half. Automation has reduced the need for workers as well. Unfortunately, those manufacturing jobs provided the economic base that supported whole communities.
Some seem to think that access to training and education will fix that. It won’t. Service industry jobs represent more than 80% of our employment. Those jobs aren’t going to simply start paying more if their employees have a college degree. What is the solution?
13
The concept of economic gardening that Littleton, CO began in the 1980s might be useful when thinking about keeping smaller cities alive. Instead of looking for industries outside the community and offering them tax breaks to move, Littleton built up the community of local businesses and helped them market themselves to the rest of the world. It seems to have been quite successful.
https://www.nationalcentereg.org/
7
"Over time, however, agriculture has become ever less important as a share of the economy" - this is a flatly false statement. There are more people, and they all eat, and food production requires rural towns. No one is running a farm to feed the masses in an urban area.
Krugman's analysis seems to imply that small towns are irrelevant, and thus so are the people that live in them. But the people who live in rural areas, but the people who live in them still require services and housing, and embrace diversity and culture just the same as them big city folks. However, the structure of capitalism means that progress (broadband internet for instance) is directed to a critical mass of customers, and those who work in industries that inherently must exist in rural areas that provide the resources to support megacities - food, water, energy - are left disadvantaged, not dissimilar to the disadvantages experience in poorer urban areas.
In short, Krugman seems to say "small cities aren't relevant to large cities, are struggling, and small town America is a thing of the past." Well, yeah they're struggling, no duh. Why don't you provide some real analysis about why, or even better, some solutions to help those communities that make life in NYC, SF, LA, etc possible.
6
There is a component of 'economic Darwinism' which is a foundation of capitalism but the impact of excesses to a society or country is supposed to be tempered by reasonable policy. The larger contributor appears to be the wave of globalization that washed unchecked across much of the country, where wealth was basically extracted in many forms for the benefit of a very few. Moving to the big cities doesn’t help as the middle class is shrinking there too.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/19/economics-has-failed-america-globali...
"As a recovering economist writing on behalf of my erstwhile field, I would like to apologize to every American who has lost a job or a livelihood because of globalization. Economics has failed you. It has failed you because of ideology, politics, and laziness. It has failed you because its teachings are woefully incomplete, and its greatest exponents have done almost nothing to complete them.
…..In the United States, the big losers from the current wave of globalization have been working- and middle-class people, as Branko Milanovic of the City University of New York details in his new book, Global Inequality….
But we have only ourselves to blame. We never told our students the importance of managing the transition to a more integrated global economy. We never really told them how to do it, either. If we had done our jobs, it needn’t have been this way."
8
Another major deficiency of current economic thinking is it's obsession with growth. The basic needs of far more people in the U.S. could be met, as in Sweden, for one example, with current U.S. GDP, which is close to $60,000 per capita. Yet economists, and not just conservative ones, constantly worry about whether measures to increase general welfare would reduce growth.
The best argument for concern with growth is that the larger the GDP, the more effectively the needs of all can be met. Yet with close to $60,000 GDP for every man, woman and child, and roughly two and a half centuries since the beginning of the industrial revolution, large scale poverty still persists in this country.
It's clearly time to stop worrying about growth and give priority to general well-being. And, paradoxically, that might well accelerate growth, a possibility neglected by too many economists, and not just conservative ones, who pay much attention to the supply side and little or none to the demand side.
Freeing assets for investment through tax cuts does little to increase growth if consumers don't have the income to purchase additional products, while effectively meeting consumer needs for such basis things as health care and housing will free consumer income for purchasing the products of increased investment.
We need a demand side economics to replace the repeatedly failed supply side theories. And while we’re at it, a guaranteed minimum income would be a good place to start.
9
"and we’d be seeing much the same story – maybe more slowly – even without the growth of world trade."
Keep telling yourself that Krugman. BTW, have you ever been to Marysville Ohio?
1
Jp: I know Marysville and have friends who work there -- for the big Honda plant -- but I don't think Krugman or most readers know what or where it is, or why its an example, so you might want to say a bit more about it.
1
I actually read the entire Dr. Krugman article.....and I'll steer clear of my usual insults thrown in from the bleacher bum side of the ballpark......
I like it when Dr. Krugman avoids the political agendas and sticks to objective analysis....which he has done this time.
2
Yet it will be political decisions, or the lack of them, that may assist in determining the winners and losers over the next generation.
1
Quality of life figures in here, although not at the price of absolute destitution due to a lack of economic viability. I selected my home town, despite the longish commute because I like the life there, liked the public schools, liked my back yard.
The small towns heralded by Hallmark movies are always set against soul sapping, irreligious, workaholic big cities where a pretty girl can't find a decent man to save her life. The scripts rarely poke into the realities exposed in Paul's essay here, and when they do, it's mainly a plot device to save the town because the town deserves saving whether or not jobs exist there.
I think George Bailey, angry cynic that he was, had the idea. Find a pliant rich guy to establish his factory in town and let the job listing flow. I understand Amazon is currently looking for George, as long as he has a pocketful of tax breaks.
Paul is right, though. A remote small town is a crap shoot. All they have going for them consistently is a constitution that gives them a ridiculously fat share of political power, so they can ban abortions even as their towns die in the womb.
13
Most insightful.
6
Fox News Alert: NYT columnist, Paul Krugman, says red states are dying.
6
New York is where I'd rather stay.
I get allergic smelling hay.
I just adore a penthouse view.
Dah-ling I love you but give me Park Avenue
11
A disappointing article. The "small cities" of the title are never defined, and only one example (Rochester) is given. What is a small city? Ithaca NY at 30,000? Marion IL at 17,000? Springfield MO at ~160,000? As for your supercilious question What are small cities even for? - why don't you try asking the people who actually live there?
4
We live in Hannibal, Missouri a town of 18,000 people on the Mississippi River. Our economic base is multi-tiered. A regional Hospital, General Mills, BASF and many smaller manufacturing companies supporting these larger companies are a big portion of our economy. Tourism brings in over 60 million a year to the community around Mark Twain, art and theater. We also have a small thriving college. We are 1.5 hours away from St. Louis which, in this part of the country, is a short commute for cultural experiences and an airport, but a bit too far for employment commuting. Having lived in Chicago for years, we love living here for the inexpensive historic housing, low property taxes and good people. My husband has a national historic preservation consulting firm and we operate a national historic preservation artisan trade school. By being in the middle of the country, he can travel by vehicle or plane anywhere quickly. Most of his business in generated and handled online and students come to the school from every corner of the country including large cities. We also run a bed & breakfast for tourists that is thriving. Nothing is perfect, but we believe that if small communities work together they can re-invent themselves and become viable, especially within the digital age.
33
Having just visited Hannibal, I can second that. It's a lovely place and we enjoyed our visit two years ago so much, we are planning to return this spring and stay a few days longer!
4
Hannibal is great, and the river is beautiful
1
"I found myself asking what might seem like an odd question: what, in the modern economy, are small cities even for? What purpose do they serve?"
They serve the purpose of providing a home and a community for people who prefer not to live in a big city, many of whom have deep family connections to these areas. They also serve the purpose of providing a home for those whose jobs do not require that they live in an expensive major metro area -- including (for example) our fellow citizens who produce our food.
Another purpose that they unfortunately will continue to serve, if we continue to dismiss them as irrelevant in our "modern economy" and suggest that their residents have no choice but to abandon their lifelong communities and move to a big city, is to provide a solid base of support for Trump et. al.
4
While driving through the Plain States, and Midwest I saw hundred of ghost town/dying villages that once served farmers and now have no stores and farmers drive 50-miles to the nearest supermarket and McDonalds. to a shrinking small town. The regional cities are doing okay, especially if they have a university. There must be a million empty houses in the dying villages, towns, and inner cities (like Phoenix).
Manufacturing is shrinking because of automation;, service, medical, and tech are growing. Housing in Seattle jumped 13% this year, because Amazon is growing so much, while clothing,book and toy stores are closing.
7
I'll agree with the economic case, but I'll disagree with the prognosis. I think you vastly underestimate the social change that will occur in the near future, and partially it could be because of small city implosion.
People simply don't want this to happen, and in my belief they want it to happen less than the benefit they're getting from so-called big city productivity. Is there currently an economic mechanism to express these wishes? No. Will there be?
I think there's good reason to believe there will be, simply out of necessity. As I stated before, I think a better solution to the problem of r > g is simply to allow larger social decisions (not necessarily tax and spend) to make capital less efficient. It is totally unpredictable how this might come about, so it isn't the stuff of scientifically-minded economists.
In my mind, I'm seeing enough bubbles happening to believe we're on the verge of major social change. Nobody likes to think about it because of the unpredictability, but perhaps we should start thinking about what we might want rather what the 'economy' (the consumer) is going to demand.
Consumption is but one part of human behavior, and it is going to be put in its place eventually. What happens then? I think we're closer to finding out than most people would believe. Perhaps a decade or two, in my view, will see an end to the domination of consumption desires over other lifestyle choices.
I hope so.
9
In Minnesota towns located near taconite mines are in regular flux, booming when product demand is high, falling into a dependent condition when demand tapers off.
The effect on the state's politics is substantial with a recurring question: should the rest of the state pick up the tab to sustain the local populations, or find a way to encourage them to leave?
Elections can be won or lost on the issue. The state's flourishing urban areas are always on the hook for the cost of supporting out of work miners, and it creates great ambivalence - many of those living in those metro areas still have family living in moribund mining towns.
The harsh fact is that politically, those mining towns have helped turn formerly Blue MN into a Purple state. To many of us that seems like a poor payback for supporting out of work miners.
8
A good article and bravo for being brave enough to put chance at the center of the analysis.
I'll add a couple of thoughts:
1) The destiny of small and mid-sized cities (but not small towns) will be linked to the policies of the large, mostly coastal, cities. Particularly in California, state and local policies have created enormous strains within the cities - mostly in the form of very high housing prices, but also in the form of deteriorating services and quality of life. This pushes businesses and individuals to consider smaller cities.
2) Despite what you might read in "the Trump era", America is not sliding backwards. Thirty years ago if you wanted interesting food and open minds, you had to travel to a handful of cities. Today there are hundreds of interesting cities you'll feel at home in. San Francisco and New York simply are not as special as they once were, even if the former has irreplaceable natural geography and quaint old areas and the latter an energy that is unmatched.
3) A policy to strengthen small and mid-sized cities is a security imperative. Concentrating our intellectual assets and population in a smaller number of cities makes us much more vulnerable to a devastating attack even by a second rate power. With dispersed assets and population we are potentially much more resilient.
10
An outcome may appear random but not be random. Small cities are probably more vulnerable to the social and economic changes that influence the rise and fall of cities, large and small, or even the rise and fall of entire civilizations, but that doesn't make their growth or decline random. Attracting a diversified and educated population and encouraging a diversified economy, success factors Krugman identified, are not random occurrences. Perhaps it looks random because small cities that do these things grow and thrive and no longer resemble small cities.
Krugman also does not factor into his analysis the impact the internet has on business and jobs. Many more people can work from anywhere, and they can work with other people from everywhere. When Amazon or Wal-Mart want to build a distribution center, they don't look to big cities.
And, interestingly, when small cities become larger metropolises, they change politically. When politicians want to preserve the "real America," the small town America (and we know which politicians do that) are they supporting the viability of these places or just their Electoral College votes?
5
I read somewhere that a megacity the size of Texas could accommodate the entire world population. The idea has intrigued me since, imagining the recuperative powers of the Earth to recover our stomping on it, the agricultural possibilities to collectively farm and nurture the planet, the industrial complexes that could locate in the best places with only local populations there specifically to work.
Of course this is an impossible and hardly desired 'utopia' for any number of reasons but it conveys the concept of how humans can live in concentrated populations and reach out into the land as necessary to supply our needs.
1
Couldn't globalization make the small city if not more relevant, more resilient. The ease of communication and transportation make a network of small cities a more livable world than people crowded into megacities. Middle cities are where the population growth is now, at least in the USA. China is deliberately managing the growth of its largest cities directing growth toward its middle cities (which are now quite large) and strategically located villages (think Shenzhen 40 years ago). As a Pittsburgher, I am perhaps biased in favor of middle and smaller cities, but I believe there should be deliberate efforts to manage growth and direct it to these cities. Mega-cities (even the "global ones") are generally not pleasant places.
There are other forms of relevance other than bottom line economics-- which behavioral economics is starting to recognize.
1
I'm surprised Mr Krugman states toward the end of this piece that globalization isn't a central factor in this narrative. Even if our domestic agricultural sector has declined significantly, don't we still need to get our food from somewhere? If not from domestic production, then from other countries; no?
And small cities that once were centered around particular manufacturing industries can fail because that manufacturing now takes place in China and elsewhere.
Seems to me globalization is a central, indeed necessary, factor in the changes Mr. Krugman is describing.
Mechanization drastically reduced the need for human employment in agriculture. The food is grown here, but with fewer workers. That is an old story from the last century. Automation is now drastically reducing the need for human employment in manufacturing. An increasing share of human employment will be face-to-face human services.
1
I hope it becomes obvious that the best way to take on Trump (and sidekicks McConnell and Ryan) is “wonkish” and not the way most columnist have chosen—slapstick and ridicule.
The fate of smaller cities is also being shaped by their accessibility to the major airways. Little noticed is Boeing’s machinations (adding to Trump’s revamping of NAFTA) an attempt to put tariffs on the importation of Canada’s “regional airplane.” Because of the size of Boeing’s Dreamliner, it can only land in hub airports—which can be as much as a day’s journey from smaller cities and rural areas.
These smaller passenger jets can land at municipal airports with runways 1,000 feet. Because of their smaller size, two-hour preflight sign-ins aren’t necessary and security is easier to assure.
Because of your “wonkish” discussion of the fate of small cities, an all but invisible Trump tariff policy takes center stage and, if Trump’s base—is listening, they may be able to see the duplicity of Trump’s “rich man’s populism.”
Stay “wonkish.”
5
I'm you mention college towns, because they seem to have a distinct flavour - and I say that having not been to many, but hearing good things about (among others) Lincoln Ne, Columbia MO, Tucson AZ - and the one I've been to, Wichita KS. What do I mean? Well, as a musician, I would look for an 'underground' musical culture, but, more generically, I would look for the impression that there is something 'happening' there ('scuse the outdated lingo.) Which brings me to my point: these kinds of discussions often overlook my belief that in this post-industrial world of ours, a city centre should be a place where one wanders to have one's brain enriched by total strangers, in a hundred different ways. Otherwise, what the point of this pluralism thing?
9
oops. typo. "what's" at the end there
Interesting read, but I am left wondering why the heck Bausch decided to start grinding monocles in extremely cold and climate challenged Rochester? What, were the mechanics that worked on flour mills or the nursery tender somehow adept at optics?
1
Unfortunately nothing is said about reliable, low cost, fast public transport which allows, like in the northern EU countries, to tie multiple small towns together. Has Mr. Krugman a blind spot?
10
The internet will increasingly make your analysis irrelevant.
Postulate a future in which mining, smelting, factories and transportation are completely automated and where virtual reality makes a "meeting of the minds" as easy if one is in Kokakee as if one is in Shanghai and then tell me why megacities would be the preferred domicile for anyone with a bit of creativity or sense?
3
The migration to increasingly populated areas is a big reason why the Electoral College vote can diverge so dramatically from the popular vote. The EC is based on the House plus Senate membership of 532.
The Constitution did not set a fixed House number -- it intended the membership to grow with population. But in 1920, a rule was imposed that limited the House to 432. But as our population size and distribution has changed over the last 100 years, shifting toward population centers, our House has become more and more uThere is a way to fix the EC problem without changing the Constitution -- repeal the 1920 rule that limited House membership to 432. The House was supposed to grow with population. As demographics have changed, our House has become ever more non-representative, which spills over into the Electoral College.
In the 20th century, the EC and popular vote matched up 100% of the time. In nust 17 years of the 21st century, they have differed in 2 out of 5 elections, to the point where 80,000 votes outweigh 3,000,000.
We do not need to amend the Constitution or get rid of the EC -- just repeal the outdated rule that severed the House size from population size. Many smaller countries have much bigger national legislatures than our hige nation! 432 is NOT set in the Constitution; equal representation IS.
Unfreeze the House membership! No taxation without EQUAL representation!!
19
The Apportionment Act of 1911 (aka Public Rule 62-5) set the size of the House of Representatives at 435, but other than getting the date and the size of the House wrong, I agree with you.
I am confused that Paul Krugman separates the success of early Rochester from the export functions it fulfilled for European powers such as England that were buying up the raw materials that the US was producing in the 1815-1850s. Globalization perhaps need not be central to this story, but for Rochester, even in the early nineteenth century, I would argue that it definitely was.
2
There is a missing link in the description of small cities servicing rural farmers and today's megacities. It is the medium size cities doing the manufacturing of America. A place where several hundred trainable people could be found to fill a factory of sewing machines or stamping presses, turning out what all of America, and in many cases the world, needed.
Now that that work is being done by the Chinese, Mexicans, or machines, these are the places taking it on the chin, and where Trump sounded like a reasonable risk to take.
And one other issue: not from personal experience by any means, but I would think it would be pretty lonely being a billionaire in Cleveland or Youngstown. That the billionaire class might be only thinking and caring about what happens in NYC or SFO is a problem for the cities of mere mortals.
4
When I read thinks like, "agriculture has become ever less important as a share of the economy", I am reminded that agriculture is stll by far the most important share of humans daily food intake. For city folks it is 100%. For me it is about 90% and I kill enough deer and elk for two meals a week for my wiife and I. People are known to get by on 50% income cuts but not many will make it on half rations.
6
Perhaps some help to smaller cities would even be a good thing for the larger economy, or at least help tamp down the political heat. But we as a society have decided NOT to tax, that this type of redistribution is somehow immoral, that money should remain in the hands of the people who have figured out, by hook or crook, how to accumulate it. There is no will or pot of money for this redistribution.
4
This is not just a US phenomenon. Look at almost all western developed economies. Europe has plenty of cities that exist now only to tell the story of when they were something. They are frozen in time regaling tourists with their Old World charms. Perhaps the larger social safety net has kept the citizens off opioids, etc. Not so lucky here.
1
Finally a cogent article from this Nobel laureate, and I enjoy reading him when he leaves his luddite delusions behind. There are some exciting things happening that should revive many small communities around the world. As Dr. Hansen recently put it, the way to solve climate change resides within the soil. New methodologies are percolating up from the bottom that will solve climate change, eliminate hunger and revive rural communities around the world. Stay tuned.
3
There's a corollary, Professor Krugman. Large cities that have grown gargantuan on the three-legged premise you described also sit at a roulette wheel of fortune. Will their inability to move people from residence to work choke future growth and force an exodus? (Atlanta, D.C., Boston) Will the lack of water cause them to shrivel? (Las Vegas, Phoenix, LA) Will inability to scale and appropriately control city services mar their attractiveness for both residents and possible newcomers? (any place counting over a million population)
4
Good points, Tom. And I will add natural disasters. Since mega-cities cannot evacuate their populations, even with days of warning, hurricanes and earthquakes (no warnings at all, obviously) have the potential to impact millions, without any back-up resources.
1
For some reason I was having similar thoughts the other day while flying from Portland Maine to Charlotte NC. We skirted Boston, NYC, on down to Charlotte. My view of it made the word “hives “ pop up in my thoughts. High density population centers with ever growing perimeters. We expand in a mostly horizontal direction on the outer rim but vertically within the hive. It makes sense to have these hives of activity and life, we can’t all live on acres of land without inefficiently consuming and inadvertently destroying our natural world.
Small cities could be thought of as beginning hives and in order to prosper they need to identify sources for their communal nectar. Forward thinking development planning that recognizes and nourishes the local sources of growth will allow those areas to flourish and grow the hive in multiple directions and dimensions.
Not likely to find much support from our Federal Government under the current Administration. What we are at risk of losing is participation in an innovative future.
3
One factor not mentioned was spending on R & D, which is the difference between two fairly celebrated New York State examples; Kodak in Rochester and Corning Glass in Corning.
By now we have all heard that Kodak had developed digital photography, but Kodak's leaders were afraid to pursue it for fear of killing off the film business and that Corning developed a touch sensitive glass years before Steve Jobs asked for help with his new product, the iPhone.
The difference isn't always geography, sometimes it's R & D and of course leadership.
you can be sure that few of the billionaire class actually lives in the small cities so well described in this article.
1
Kenneth below hit the nail on the head. People cannot afford to move. The real estate people control our every move in the United States. Case in point: Our casino grifter/real estate "mogul" now ostensibly "runs" the country. People think about--Real estate is barely within the framework of honorable fields in this country, yet now days it calls ALL the shots.
Why? A myriad of reasons. One big one is we allowed it to. The classic American obsession with property of all kinds has finally caught up with us. Most of the country are prisoners in their own vastly overpriced homes. While a group of people who add virtually nothing to the national product are getting even more obscenely wealthy by the second. Why can't Americans figure this one out? We are nuts.
3
I loved the title of this piece. Quite relevant currently, no doubt. The Gambler's Ruin's mathematics is brilliance. Central Places theory has biologic origins to the hexagonal bee hive. Optimal space with maximal honey production. Darwin's Theory described this phenomenon exhaustively. Let me state upfront. I can not speak for my friendly neighbor states. There are towns in New Jersey where young family can raise their children with excellent public schools and have that quality of living. New Jersey's best kept secret. Just do the homework. Enough of digression. Global economy is in for the next millennium. Megacities will be born most likely the coastal US mainland. The heartland will not be wasted unless a physical extensive rapid mass rail system to transport this human capital to these loci of economic activities and at the end of the day they can rest back to their cozy heartland. Corollary, It requires reliable energy. Natural gas is cheap. For Pete's sake, nuclear energy. US uranium is waiting to be used. No carbon footprint.
2
Again relative to Eastman Kodak, you have Kingsport, Tennessee, home of Tennessee Eastman, an enormous industrial facility on an island in the Holston River. The river originally was perfect for carrying away waste, flowing, as it does, on both sides of the island. BTW, Long Island, as it is known, was the point from where Daniel Boone and his axmen started the Wilderness Road to Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.
This nice analysis raises a question: what is the relevant threshold between big and small cities? I ask because of where I live (but am not from), Minneapolis, a smallish big city that is thriving. Is it now large and diverse enough that it won't fall below the threshold where failure is just a matter of time and luck? I'm not and economist or geographer, so I don't know how to even approach answering my question.
1
In my experience it all began with the "brain drain" that commenced when Sputnik startled the world. Fearing the US was falling behind became the new normal. In our rural area it meant students going off to college to earn science and math degrees, and then on to large corporations employing those skills.
Technical innovation also mechanized local farming transforming the local landscape from four farming-families working and living on one square mile, to now, where one farm requires two to three square miles of land.
But lately I am seeing behavior I consider "salmon-like". More and more, people who left the area fifty years ago are beginning to return. After working decades in the big cities where the jobs were, they are trickling back to their hometown where the price of houses are a fourth, the pace is much more relaxed, and the people and surroundings are familiar. Always said that I know more people from the small town I came from than I ever did in the big cities I ended up working in.
And the financial crisis seems to be driving this. People not finishing their careers with a flourish, but rather a bang or bust. And now having to make-do on less retirement income than they anticipated.
So, like salmon born in local streams, journey to live their adult lives in the great oceans, then returning to live their lives final chapter in familiar surroundings. That is one way I make sense of it.
1
1 -- Where are those in the failing small cities and towns to work (for good pay) and live (in affordable housing)? Many of the children get higher education, and as a result many relocate successfully to the thriving big (mega) cities. But a similar possibility for the parents and the other than college educated children are daunting.
2 -- IT is enabling successful returns to smaller cities and towns by some of the college educated who prefer the lower cost of housing and greater community -- and in some cases the natural attractions -- that smaller cities and towns can offer, and that the returnees experienced growing up.
1
Agreed with the following important exception. Some intellectually curious folks--the type that tend to build successful, growing businesses--might be satisfied with a Kindle and walks in the woods in a small town/city like the one you describe. Most., however, like to share ideas, meals, music, theater,. etc. with people like themselves. I think that's why smaller college towns are listed as an (important) exception to the general rule of the decline of smaller places.
1
The fundamental and innate business problem within small, remote towns is the difficulty in achieving scale. Only businesses who can export product (agriculture is a good example) or market widely (internet based) can achieve reasonable sales and profits. Most small businesses however depend on an economically accessible (and reasonably prosperous) local customer base. Tough sledding at best for most.
The age of large companies setting up shop in small rural communities is past. I was part of that, working for a large manufacturer in the 80's, we looked for rural communities of 20,000 or so population with some college access to relocate or consolidate manufacturing operations (mostly SE & mid-west) . Many of the facilities being closed were in urban locations with higher labor rates. Most of those small town operations are long closed too.
Certainly there are examples of small towns re imagining and remaking themselves (see J Fallows in The Atlantic), but they are rather limited examples. The now and future impact of the urban/rural disparity on the US political system will be a painful test, as several have noted.
With the current "mob mentality" it is ironic that immigrants generally offer a real opportunity to rural town growth & prosperity. So much for logic.
1
All pretty accurate I'd say. Don't know whether this has been mentioned, but the future will involve robotic individual vehicles totally changing the relationship between individuals and where they work, how products are transported, etc. Drones, robotic trucks and the ability to work remotely will tremendously alter the equation of how life is lived and the economy works. No one could foresee in 1910 how the automobile would seal the doom of traditional transportation measures, including the dominance of the railroads, or, in 1995, how Amazon would alter retailing, a revolution still in progress. So the future is largely imponderable, but arguably going to very different from the recent past. Not to mention, that air pollution with microparticles, probably now the major cause of cardiorespiratory disease, is much worse in large cities, so people may choose to live elsewhere for health reasons.
5
But... we've been believing for decades that IT would permit people to work from home and developments have proved that belief wrong. The freeways are jammed. And we discounted the attraction people feel for fireplaces and woodcutting and vegetable gardens, which keeps rural poverty alive and... above all else ... the elimination of jobs by drones and robots is only as good as the security required to keep out the hackers. Watch out for that driverless semi-truck, it's about to...
2
There are 3 types of small cities, and Paul only addresses one of these subsets:
Market towns that serve the needs of the nearby rural (e.g., farmers, loggers) population. These are atrophying as the local population declines and people can get goods from Amazon or a single megastore (like Walmart.)
Towns that were spokes supplying the needs of a larger city nearby. Many Midwest cities supplied specialized goods to the auto industry (Akron: tires, Toledo: engines). The drop in shipping costs coupled with wage differentials has reduced the importance of geographic proximity, and so tires now come from Asia and engines from Mexico. These I believe are the cities Emily Badger was suggesting are losing out as megacities can source goods as easily from another continent as from their immediate hinterland.
Finally, there are secondary cities that have/had a dominant company, such as Rochester with Kodak and Xerox, which is what Paul is talking about. While his ruminations may or may not be correct, in any case they apply only to this small subset of secondary cities.
4
It has certainly been going on for a long time. In 1978, the Iowa Department of Transportation purged 900 towns that no longer existed from its highway map.
But in the 19th c., the determinant was often whether the railroad went through or not.
Nowadays, people are driven away from rural areas by lack of medical care, boredom, slow internet connections. Some of these conditions can be readily changed (slow internet), some not.
6
I appreciate Mr. Krugman's assertion that our modern economy has "cut loose from the land." This would imply that humans today have greater freedom to live according to personal preference as opposed to where exploitable natural resources happen to be located.
As a born and bread suburbanite, I earned my living off the sea of humanity around me. "I process people like Canada processes trees," I once wrote while working in financial services. (My natural resource was humanity itself.)
Beyond geographic location, is there some profound difference between exploiting land for a living vs. exploiting a human population?
I don't have an answer, but appreciate this thought-provoking essay.
1
My money’s on cities like Duluth and Winnepeg. Lots of water and soon to be decent weather.
11
Krugman mentions college towns as being an exception. College towns usually have very low unemployment rates, especially with large universities. The reason, of course, is that they have a specialized and technical base due to the university. The faculty bring in grants and contracts which generate employment for students and others. Often graduates will set up businesses nearby and, thereby, generate economic development. Large companies will often invest in specialized start-ups in these university towns. The result is a self-generating process of capital formation based on technical specialization.
Perhaps this model can be replicated elsewhere? If towns or small cities have a public university, the state can invest in it to grow and to become more specialized. In that way, new centers of research and development can start.
This is an alternative model that should be encouraged. Megacities have their own problems as they grow and it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to upgrade their infrastructure. In short, knowledge-based, technically specialized smaller cities are the emerging form for the 21st Century.
9
@MVT2216
You're generalizing from nothing. Name a "knowledge-based, technically specialized" small cities that fit your description.
The very small city we moved to 35 yrs ago lost its grocery stores, book stores, butchers, bakers, clothing stores, cigar store! Middle class families, whose workers could commute to jobs in big urban cities after demise of small factories that had grown up around a cheap source of hydro power in the 1800's eventually, left too. Over the past 2 decades some creative souls started small specialty tech/engineering/machine companies - robotics to track goods and stock shelves, unique hitch systems to rescue and haul large vehicles/tanks. A new brewery.
3
As a side bar: the internet and globalization have created an opportunity for many to support ourselves off the global, rather than local economy, and live where we choose. The economy in our small Colorado town has become more vibrant over the last two decades because individuals have moved here, e.g. LA firefighters or inventors with specially products or telecommuting programmers, and now we have a major employer who develops internet services and programs, and our local college is emphasizing STEM disciplines. In our case, the reason to be here is the quality of life that stems from being proximate to public lands, which it turns out has attracted dynamic people who want to live here. Our example does not dispute your analysis but rather demonstrates that there are some, perhaps limited, possibilities to develop dynamic small towns and cities where people want to live. To your point: we also have sunny winters with intermittent snow storms and quick access to skiing and the Utah dessert.
7
This isn't an economic argument, but quite frankly, Dr. Krugman, I just don't *want* to live in a big city with traffic congestion, noise, pollution, etc. (and, yes, I have lived in a big city in the past). For me, it's a lifestyle choice.
Having said that, in addition to @Linda's comment on diversity being a major advantage for larger communities, another important quality is good transportation infrastructure, including walking, bicycling, and mass-transit. Denver, my neighbor, is leading the charge in this regard, having just passed a $431M bond issue committing to building more cycling and ped infrastructure. That's one of the clearest reasons why Denver is the leading magnet for Millenials (who are much less likely to own a car, e.g.) in the US.
4
The concept of quality of life appears to be absent from this analysis. Larger cities, while more economically efficient, also have lower quality of life in terms of noise, traffic, safety, pollution, etc. That is why so many "nimbys" fight development in their neighborhoods, as they do not want the decrease in quality of life that comes along with it. Economists who focus on productivity at all costs dismiss these arguments, but there is real merit to them. So we find ourselves in a situation in wihch we are trying to pile everyone into ever-growing and increasingly miserable megalopolises in the name of economic efficiency, forgetting that the end goal of economics is to improve quality of life. A better approach would be to limit development in successful cities, maintaining their high quality of life and giving firms more incentive to invest in smaller, developing cities. It's better to have dozens of vibrant, mid-sized economic centers spread throughout the country than to have a nation of disgruntled citizens living in rotting cities with everyone else piled on top of each other in Manhattan and San Francisco.
9
True, but I don't think economic formulas can very well quantify "quality of life." The formulas leave out the human dimension by necessity, but ignore them at their own peril (see: Enron or, more recently, The Donald). However, as soon as you limit growth of a desirable locale, you skew the economics vis-a-vis supply & demand. See: Boulder, Colorado, where no middle income person can now buy a home. But be careful what you wish for. Boulder is now merely a high-rent Denver suburb. Perhaps that was inevitable.
One thing that can give small cities and towns hope is quality of life. For more and more knowledge based workers, physical location is arbitrary, so long as reliable Internet is available. For many people, you can live better in a small town or city because the costs of living are significantly lower. This is why it is important for city councils and governments to focus on quality of life —education, clean water, reliable power, and transportation infrastructure — to attract and keep knowledge workers with well-paid jobs to feed the local economy.
9
The winner-takes-all effect has concentrated the creation of wealth in large cities: this isn’t news.
But at the same time it has made expansion difficult for the wealth-creating companies. Wages have to be high enough for workers to afford shelter and food, and shelter in places like N.Y. and Sili Valley is outrageously expensive. So it’s hard to grow by importing workers from Janesville and Kankakee: they can’t afford to live in the big city.
Back in the late 1980s a company where I worked had this problem in suburban Boston. A spike in housing costs made it hard to get new hires from other parts of the world. We had to rely mostly on raiding competitors.
Dr. K., what do your models teach us about the limits to growth of mega cities due to cost of living escalation? Can small cities thrive as cheaper alternatives?
5
This would seem to apply to giant and major cities as well, for example Detroit.
2
Disheartening, and yet not surprising, to read of the ongoing decline of small towns that are now taking the inhabitants on long commutes in search of work. A competitive spirit among the community remains lively, word-of-mouth, networking and references are keeping our town barely solvent, if uneasy.
The 'Tourist Trade' is not enough to keep an historical village alive. The antique dealers are beginning to close shop. 'This is normal' an Old-Timer relayed recently, adding that these stores come and go, change hands and keep bringing customers from cities to visit.
Apparently Our Town is not For Our Town. The concept of introducing a small grocery store with staples is rejected on the basis that it would not work, or be competitive with the large supermarket, tailored to fit 'Blue and White Collar' shoppers. Not everyone in the dead of winter, however, is going to buy a lobster for dinner.
There are 'sleepy' towns that are frowned on for resisting the installation of large convenience stores. Not far away are the big City-Dwellers and they have deep pockets to purchase farming land and large estates at a bargain.
You are right, Mr. Krugman, it's going to be an uphill struggle. Some of the most beautiful views of America, its history, its architecture and landscapes are to be found. The long-time residents.
But if it's a long way to Tipperary, it's a far longer journey to Washington, D.C. to ask for some help in restoring our Heartland and making it thrive.
4
I read recently that China is the structural planning stage now and readying itself to start building its first mega city for 250,000,000 residents. Yes, your eyes aren't deceiving you and this ain't no typo. 250 million. Seems that they share your thesis enough to actualize it. I'm wondering how all the land taken up by small cities and their current purposes will be re-purposed?
1
If that is true then it is a perfect example of the perils of centralized planning and control. Only an apparatchik could envision a city of 250MM as an improvement.
1
Assuming the world can automate in a way that funds leisure for all, the climate and amenities of locations may decide where people cluster.
5
Motor vehicles.
You found yourself asking, 'what are small cities even for?' Really? Maybe you could explain to me what your city is for. I mean besides a great place for rats and cockroaches to congregate.
You can have your megacities Dr Krugman, wall yourself off if you want to. I'll stay out here with the people who are actually growing the crops and raising the livestock that your megacities so readily consume.
5
You read Dr. Krugman's piece as judging, which I don't think it is. He is trying to explain real-world observations.
3
Large cities undoubtedly offer many things that small ones do not -- critical mass for arts districts and sports teams, a wide array of employment opportunities, and large markets to serve for business. However, in an internet-enabled society, living in proximity to a business is not always relevant (my team includes people in India, Germany, Mexico, and on both coasts in the US). For many people, the lower level of social issues in small cities combined with lower cost of living, less traffic and pollution, and a more relaxed pace of life are attractive. I can understand and agree with Mr. Krugman's economic analysis, but I thinkit is perhaps missing a mix of mobility and connectivity that makes even rural life possible for many people.
4
Small cities are often homes to universities.
5
Does Mr. Krugman eat? In the rural Midwest, there are hundreds of small cities surrounded by prosperous farms. Although agriculture has a diminishing share of the national economy, this reflects its sufficiencies rather than an elimination of its existence as a necessary cog in the great “chain of being” called human life! “Our town” can claim other psychic necessities transcending market share: we don’t have to escape from the concrete and steel metropolis to commune with nature, unlike Mr. Krugman; nature in all its glories is present in its orchards, vineyards and grazing meadows for lo these many generations of rapid change. Anytime he needs to, he may come out west, watch the corn grow and tune into the sylvan muses of our town in Southwest Michigan.
6
I just finished Jared Diamond's Collapse, which gives great examples of how several communities collapsed through environmental degradation, loss of trading partners, and a few other factors (which are basically your coin flips). Your and Ms. Badger's writing struck me that perhaps a modern small city is inevitably doomed. But, Mr Diamond points out that when cities collapse, people get angry and violent (and perhaps vote fascist). So, I think our task is to help these people who seem to have holes in their boats, as perhaps we're all in the same boat!
7
How blithely and oddly you dismiss farmers who provide ...FOOD. Farmer's market, farm to table, food that is not tainted by the inhumane to all animals (human included) -- you blow this off as no longer an essential part of the economy when we should be encouraging the opposite? Dig deeper. Look at the laws and a system that has run the small farmer out of business. There are more and more of us who want to know where our food comes from, who prefer to buy eggs from two farm kids raising chickens to pay tuition for college. And sadly, they will likely leave that family farm since it no longer is viable in a world that bows to agribusiness.
Small towns may not be for everyone, but the quality of life can be stellar. It is the brutalization of the middle class that is killing them off, and the small towns disappear as the middle class disappears. Baffled that this goes right over your head. Study the works of Wendell Berry for insight. Commune a little longer. I have hope for you.
8
An all too familiar arrogant insouciance from one of the foremost champions of destructive liberal policies - such as killing middle class jobs in extractive industries, pricing energy and taxes in the stratosphere so places like Rochester lose their companies, and finally, cheerleading trade pacts that have hollowed out small environs all over America. We know all about the costs. Hopefully your ilk will soon learn about the price.
4
I totally disagree. Our small towns around where I live are doing fine, thank you...so fine, I don't even want to say where in order to avoid big city slobs to infest our area. Further, I live deep in the woods, 17 miles from the closest small town...surrounded by nature in all her glories. Within 30 miles, we have access to Wally World, 2 hospitals, good shopping, great neighbors and friends and an openly accepting community. Please, Kruggie...stay with econ 101 and leave the rest of the world to the rest of the world!
3
Trump is a buffoon, who if successful at anything it is completely by accident. But it can possibly be the case he stumbled upon a way to push down the inequality affecting the country. By lowering the amount in state and local taxes to $10,000 he is incentivizing movement to low tax states. Why not Oklahoma, Salt Lake City, or West Virginia, instead of Silicon Valley, NYC, or Austin? Should 90% of all wealth be concentrated around a dozen or so metropolitan centers? Probably not. (BTW I have a stake in this, and stand to lose under the new law.)
3
The larger the city, the more acute the tyranny of the majority. NYC is example #1. Smaller cities will do quite well as long as there are people who feel governments headed by a deBlasio are not for them.
2
I wrote an entire book on smaller industrial cities, covering their histories and their critical role in a low-carbon economy. Mr. Krugman should take a look: Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World (MIT Trade, 2012)
4
We are on the cusp of near total automation for all basic jobs, especially agriculture. The truth is right now, American agriculture would die without government subsidies. We have a decision to make, fight the inevitable, or bend with the times. We can continue to exploit immigrants on our farms, even as we try to kick them out, but eventually the law of comparative advantage will take over. These jobs will increasingly find themselves south of the border, as if Americans wanted them anyway.
1
Your "truth" is wrong. Most of agriculture does just fine without subsidy. Most of what you probably think of as "subsidy" is actually handouts to the poorer urban dwellers through food aid.
Most of ag does not depend upon subsidy at all but thrives in a free market.
To Diz Moore’s comment re the political imbalance that will result by 2050 from migration to the mega cities, it is already a reality! Our nine most populous states hold just over 50% of our total population. So today half of us have 18 U.S. senators, and the other half have 82. If that isn’t a recipe for further cynicism and loss of faith in our institutions, I don’t know what is. All the early focus in our interminable presidential elections on Iowa and New Hampshire with their infinitesimal and disproportionately elder, white populations only adds to the problem. The growing mega cities need much more influence in shaping our national policies than they have now!
18
In population, what constitutes small? Where is the line drawn?
1
Small cities need to exist so when megacities die of natural or man-made disaster, people will have some place to go.
3
And, then again, why do we need big cities with all their crime, welfare, workaholism, overcrowding, congestion, inconvenience, taxes, livability, etc.? Folks seeking a retirement destination usually don't pick big cities. Why not move businesses to smaller cities? Spread the wealth so to speak.
4
So what's an example of a city with the minimum scale needed to survive today? Or is it some combination of scale / diversity?
Ummm…. Prof. Krugman, NAFTA, most favored nation status for 1.3 billion Chinese communists, financial market deregulation, and general transnational corporate empowerment are not random events. Your explanation is Ivy League nonsense passing for intellectual discussion.
There aren’t any “Market Gods.” Mankind makes the rules governing our economy and the financial elite own our governing class … and you.
3
I usually agree with the author but oh this article he does not really explains why do we need small cities beside nostalgia. I don’t want to sound Shumpeterian but this article is like an essay that try to explain why horse carriages are disappearing after the invention of cars.
This analysis is spot-on.
"Gambler's ruin"?
I've never knew of this until reading this article, THANKS !!!
I found an excellent article about this in Wolfram MathWorld.
It was here sometime ago that learned of Benford's Law.
I'm somewhat of an amateur math nerd. Reading about things such as this is one of the top ten reasons why I read your articles.
1
And because it is all about profit with no consideration for a humane environment. Let them all move to Silicon Valley and then complain about zoning regulations.
Actually good public educational institutions located in at risk areas could easilty provide the basis for an interes
Maybe Professor Krugman can offer the state of New Jersey
some solutions to solve its economic problems. He taught at
Princeton from 2000-2015. Certainly cities like Newark, Trenton,
Camden could use his advice. Sorry, i forgot, he lives in
NYC now.
Walmart, Amazon, Target, Homedepot---goodbye Main Street. American shopkeepers are dinosaurs. Big city, small town, it doesn't matter.
Don't "Go West Young Man." Go get a job in a restaurant, or start your own, you can work 60 hour weeks serving the folks who service the new economy.
"Yes", you say, "but things are cheaper."
"Yes", but at what cost?
3
This is really too funny. Paul Krugman spends his holiday wondering about the reason flyover country exists. He sounds as though he is talking not even about Mars but an entirely different galaxy. The mainstream media's disconnect from anything outside of the coastal bubbles of DC/NY/Boston and LA / San Fran / Seattle is unbelievable. Steve Bannon said the media has no idea why Trump is president. They still don't and never will. Krugman was writing about econ. But the piece showcases the left's view of the rest of the country. It's completely alien to the left.
2
Paul predicted a stock market crash after Trump won. LOL. Why does anyone listen to this political hack? He has no credibility.
1
I'm not sure what is being defined as a megacity here and what is a smaller city, beside the obvious bigger/smaller comparison, Is the argument that eventually there will be only one megacity surrounded by unpopulated land? Or is it that cities below a certain threshold are bound to fail? Or is it that smaller cities will gradually be incorporated within the boundaries of megacities? The process described here is intuitively convincing -- more multi-functional cities taking over businesses from less multi-functional cities. But other processes arise too -- preferences to live away from the centers of megacities, housing costs in megacities, desires to live in communities of like-minded people who may not be appreciated by those who run the megacities, etc. -- An interesting piece begging for further study,
1
I'm not an economist, but I would think small cities would have to think carefully about their competitive advantages and how to exploit them. I think the issue here may be less "small" and "large" than "redundant" or "not redundant." Austin Texas is a relatively small city but it seems to have discovered a relatively clear function. Philadelphia is much larger, but it's future seems less certain. Size is a relative concept.
5
Another important characteristic of small cities is that real estate prices are lower. A farmer can (or could) move to a small city and look for work without completely giving up his way of life and his friends. He might keep a few cows and still live on a few acres of land. These are not people who would enjoy living in a Manhattan co-op. Small towns can be charming places. Didn't the Greeks believe that democracy could not survive in a town larger than 40,000?
4
Historical luck whose time had run out. As in the rust belt. Though these small cities have lost their dynamism they still have people who live in them. A well of discontent that is fed by the opioid crisis and the lack of any change, except voting with one's feet. Trump, the last in a long line of demagogues who pretend to be populists, who claim they are going to take up their cause, but simply use their votes to go out and largely disregard them after their election.
5
The key is mobility, which we have lost over the last few decades. Americans are less willing and able to move to new economic opportunities due to being locked in to their current housing situation, and unable to afford moving to cities that have had a winning hand. If a small city that ran out of luck cannot be saved, every effort should be made to depopulate it and incentivize it's residents to move to places that have won their gambles.
I wonder if it's helpful to think of a game of "double or nothing" working to the advantage of large cities in the same way that "gambler's ruin" works to the detriment of small ones. E.g., let's say you bet $10 and lose, so you raise the stakes to $20. You lose again and raise the bet to $40. You lose again--so now your total loss is $70. But because your bankroll is huge, you bet again. Your $80 bet pays off, so now you're $10 ahead. You reset the bet to $10 and repeat the process, always continuing to double the stakes until you win.
Perhaps a larger city can more easily tolerate business failures until it finds a winner. This winning industry makes the city a bit stronger and gives it the ability to accept more failures until another winner emerges. Over time, the larger city transforms itself into an economic powerhouse by amassing a cluster of successful industries. The larger city wins precisely because it can afford to lose.
1
The growing irrelevance of towns and small cities is a metaphore for the unravelling of the traditional society where most everyone had a useful if sometimes benign role to play in a grander framework we call society where everyone is interconnected with everyone else.
And the place where all those people met and traded with each other was the village, town or city, big or small. But the demise of labor intensive economic fields like agriculture, mining, logging, fisheries and now manufacturing has eliminated the need for the meeting place that those towns had become. We don't need each other like we used to, anymore. And as each of us becomes less and less useful to others, or should I say more irrelevant, what will there be to bind us together? What will our unravelling society be replaced with?
7
People love to blame globalization for everything bad these days, but the truth is that's what makes the world go 'round.
And sooner or later, Donald Trump is going to realize that as he tries to force this country down an isolationist path to nowhere.
It's also easy to blame big cities for the downfall of smaller ones, and living here in New York City -- one of the largest cities in the U.S., being a target for these kinds of cast aspersions has become part of the everyday norm.
What everyone needs to remember is that we're living in a different age, where things are speeding up -- not slowing down, and in order to keep up one has not only got to be fast, but strong enough to keep the pace.
This is also a factor that has helped in the decline of smaller cities, even though inarguably, there's a certain quality of life to be found in a more bucolic environment.
That said, there are pros and cons about wherever one decides to reside -- and in the end, there's still no place like home.
1
What seems missing from “the conditions for small-city decline” is an observation of what has been and will be destroyed as industrial agriculture continues its relentless growth. There’s little recognition among contemporary economists generally of what it is that creates and sustains community. Instead, we’re treated to some supposed truism that “the economy” and work are the sociological engines and dynamic controlling rural/urban movements.
The economists in Chicago have been crying about the need to recognize the irrational (a poor word choice, of course) in economic analyses for some years now. If you’re going to be wonkish maybe you need to get a little more wonkish.
1
What are small cities for? Obviously they are for people. People born in them. People who live and die in them. PK's review of the functioning of cities is fine, but it treats people as some sort of nuisance--too typical of economists. A culture of governance that neglects people to such an extent hastens its own demise. And before the demise comes something like Trump.
As I read it, the drift of people into larger conurbations is as old as agriculture but it continues apace, even in Ireland. In the USA over 40 American cities have lost 20% or more of their populations since their peaks, which came in the period 1930 to 1960. Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Youngstown, Ohio declined by > 60%. Governments that ignored such disruptions of peoples' lives deserve to be pilloried and cast aside.
2
People in small towns and surrounding rural areas have, at least since the Reagan administration, voted for candidates whose policies devastated the economies in those areas. They voted for tax cuts that closed their post offices, medical clinics and schools. They voted to cut regulations that kept local small businesses alive in the face of competition from big box stores. They voted for candidates who killed unions and refused to raise the minimum wage, destroying their own ability to make a living.
Then they blamed all their problems on liberals and doubled down on the very policies that were impoverishing them. I know these people, I'm related to them, I live among them. I feel sad for them, but I have despaired of ever changing their minds.
43
I couldn't agree more. I too live among them. Many are brainwashed by religion and the NRA. And these forces have worked themselves into the DNA of many populations, and at this point it is simply tribal. There is no consideration of facts or reality.
4
I thought this was a bit odd, but maybe it's the end of year mood. Smaller cities stick around because people live there, often for several generations. If you mean by "small cities " cities smaller than Atlanta, Chicago, NYC, etc. then youre talking about most cities, because I wouldn't call Rochester a small city; I'd call Lockport or Binghamton small cities. Growing up in Buffalo, I left when i got married at 26, eager to get away from from a dying behemoth, and moved down the road to Rochester that was still booming. Thirty years later I deeply wish I could return home to Buffalo, that's been reborn to showcase what was always there to attract and keep residents, but got lost in another conversation about Rust Belt economics.A big college town to start with, with medical teaching hospitals, fabulous housing stock at reasonable prices, abounding with natural beauty of the Great Lakes, Niagara region, hills, forests, CANADA for lunch! charming villages, ARCHITECTURE, theater, technology, and FOOD, and managible traffic. I must admit moving to Rochester left me very disturbed about Rochester's interpretation of a hot dog. Young people are staying in this smaller city, and expats are coming back. It even ranks #33 in best places to live in USNews.
After growing up in Chicago and spending the bulk of my life in large urban areas I have retired to a rural area. What I have come to believe is that centralization is great for some things and terrible for others -- the efficiency that everyone touts is matched by vulnerability. A failure in the water plant means instant thirst for many. A blown transformer and huge swaths go black. And no place for power generation -- that comes over long distances that leak energy with every mile. And in the absence of a planned public transportation network the traffic exacts its own prices.
Around here the local manufacturing has largely been squeezed out by the mega-purchasing of the big box stores. Fortunately, small scale food processors still cling to life and provide us delicacies. And there is enough room for a decent garden to enjoy fresh, yes really fresh food.
As the climate continues to change, one thing seems clear -- these huge masses of humanity are very vulnerable. And sacrificing everything in the name of 'efficiency' seems more and more like a false tradeoff -- where is the gain when thousands of jobs are lost locally so production can be moved to a distant country? Who picks up the social costs of these people?
And as for rural isolation -- we talk (and see) our families in distant parts, routinely read news from all over the planet. And one could easily work remotely over those same links. More like a better suburb -- we like it a lot.
5
"In the modern economy....any particular city exists only because of historical contingency that sooner or later looses its relevance" Yeah, well, that is true for me, too, and, come to think of it, for Donald Trump and for everyone else. We're all part of historical contingency and will loose our relevance sooner or later.
In the meantime, let's work on making life worth living for people caught in those shrinking loser cities and small towns. No wonkish ruminations are necessary to see that need.
At the same time we read about the decline of these specialist cities in the US we also read the rise of specialist cities in China. They have Nuclear Power cities, and sock cities. Is it the cities that have failed or have these cities been abandoned by Capitalism. Corporate America abandons with ease and leave everyone to clean up the mess. Their punishment, generous tax cuts.
3
Words to ponder. But the power of 'small' ought not be underestimated. You could live happily ever after in a small city, perhaps contiguous to a large one (a prudent distance from each other, it's saving grace), so a sense of community is maintained, and the ravages of loneliness postponed. Just imagine knowing your neighbors (in person, that is, not the cold distance of the anonymous thousands of 'friends' milling in the social media, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like), and interacting with them after work and weekends; walking to work, using your bicycle instead of a car or public transport; enjoying nearby parks, theaters, and warm spots to eat and entertain, etc; in other words, a livable city of human proportions. As you know, even mega-cities lead to it's people to find refuge and contentment by having smaller communities within, so to express themselves culturally, and make a difference politically at a local level. And it would still allow it's survival by well educated and professionally imaginative, and socially-inclined folks to serve each other; and hopefully spread a spirit of cooperation, and inclusion in this rich diversity of ours. That we have a vulgar bully in the WH should call for reflection, so we can mend our biases and redeem ourselves by become relevant again, a lesson in civics for sure, and the urgency to get involved in politics (the art of the possible) so demagogues and charlatans 'a la Trump' won't have a chance.
1
Did I miss the portion of this wonkish analysis where we discuss the degree to which the big city taxpayers support the small city under-employed? And how the small city voters fall prey to the self-serving promises of charlatans who only degrade their plight further?
9
Here is Ohio, small cities were anchored by a few industries like injection molders, machine shops, heavy equipment/appliance manufacturing, tool & die makers, rubber products, etc. Globalization and consolidation of manufacturing ruined these towns. Was it inevitable? Was it an unstoppable force of nature or economics that had to play out? In retrospect, it looks more like a collection of bad decisions and bad policy by powerful capitalists and their politicians. The elite got what they wanted and the rural folks got poorer, fatter, sicker, dumber, and irrelevant. Enter the welfare state so loathed by the very makers of it.
14
Another example is New Britain Connecticut, which at peak had nineteen factories: Stanley Works, Landers Frary and Clark, Fafnir Bearing, Corbin Lock and others. They had no natural transportation, resources, but labor and demand for the hardware they made for the expanding country. Now, the only things made there are those metal tapes that say Stanley on them. The rest is pizza, coffee shops and memories.
5
Further thought: might you research/write a monograph on this, keeping it manageable by sticking to economics? It'd be timely & great for use in classes on various topics. 'Small Cities: An Economic Approach' could be a classic like Heinrich's 'Bumblebee Economics' (also on a now endangered kind). But what is a small city? Eg San Diego's now a million larger, but when we lived there in the 50s my big brother told me it was an ideal size 400k): full service shops, bus transport, large cultural & civic institutions (library, parks, zoo &c)--an where you might see people you know but don't run into the same ones all the time. (PS Dunbar could take that beyond his 'numbers'.)
The Krugman makes some decent (although shallow) observations; however, there is another phenomenon happening in my part of North Texas. My small town has literally been engulfed by the two large cities to our south (Dallas and Ft.Worth). Those two cities have spread across north central Texas like an Exxon oil tanker disaster destroying every small town along its way. And the radius shows no sign of slowing. I think the small town needs to create an environment were the creep of a mega city is felt more like a hug, rather than a punch in the face.
Based on this line of reasoning, small companies will always lose out to big corporations and small investors will always lose out to big investors. The opposite of trickle down economics!
1
There are other factors that have adversely impacted small cities -- and even some bigger ones. Amazon and its imitators have crushed local businesses that can't compete. NYC is a big success story despite the withering away of its industrial base as "the" place to be for ambitious professionals and foreigners, who have priced the indigenous population out to the suburbs and exurbs. Some once major cities, like Philly, have faded as banking and businesses have conglomerated and moved to other places. We are fast becoming a nation of two or three dominant businesses for every service and product. And outsourcing to Asia is destroying our industrial base -- Trump's boasts notwithstanding. Technology is now America's business, and it likes to be where there's lots for its denizens to do in their limited spare time.
1
The weak point of the article is that big town disappear as well and very quickly (in historical terms) too.
As example, look at Rome in the antique or Palermo in the Middle Age (a town with one Million people!).
In my modest reckoning in the USA this will happen too: who needs Washington for instance? Besides unnecessary papers and twitters it does not produce anything.
Rather than asking 'what are small cities for?', perhaps a better question is 'what are people for?'.
If economic growth is the only value to be pursued, then the destruction of small towns seems like a 'win-win'. Corporations that have off shored production to countries like China, India, and Mexico, can benefit from the unimaginably low wages paid in 'developing countries', while the corporate over lords reap the profits.
What's not to love? Stock prices soar on profits. Aren't these the great Walmart and Staples stories of American success?
There is a profound blindness in Economic thought, at least in its modern incarnation in the 1970s as a science fiction writer's idea of science. It isn't science. It's become a religious cult.
All life depends on the environment. If you doubt this, try not breathing clean air, or drinking clean water, or eating safe food. When environmental resources collapse, all economic activity which depends on those resources must also collapse.
We either preserve the Earth's natural resources, habitat and biodiversity, or we wait our turn in line to join the cities who 'don't seem to serve a purpose'.
3
The fate of small cities are often mitigated, or drawn out, by the states in which they reside. States will pump dollars into failing cities so as not to lose the investment and infrastructure already in place, and also in hopes of someday getting a federal infusion of defense dollars, etc.
The notion that ghost towns loom is just not likely these days, given this variable of state spending. I think it would be interesting to take a single state -- say, Tennessee, or Pennsylvania -- to see how a state manages to keep a city that is bleeding jobs and industry on life support. Sometimes, a state loses a small city to more or less complete decline, but I think that is an exception rather than the norm.
Not that these small cities thrive! They are often half empty, with populations that keep dwindling. But their states keep them alive, much as a family keeps a loved one alive long after quality of life has passed beyond the pale.
Tell me about it. I grew up in Tucson. It used to be an important city in Arizona and the Southwest. Then Phoenix became a megalopolis and Tucson became unimportant. A nice place to live, but not much more of a reason to exist than a "nice place to live."
Location will cause some small cities to be relevant as freight cost will always play a role in manufacturing and distribution.
A small city that made it: Burlington, VT.
Thanks in part to its one time Mayor, the cantankerous Bernie Sanders, who against many odds transformed its industrial waterfront into a destination. You couldn't ask for a nicer place, cold weather notwithstanding.
Why? A good university (and a couple colleges to boot), an ever growing medical center, a great music scene, a good (but not Great!) lake and most importantly, progressive city government.
Beyond that, I can't tell you why Burlington gets to survive while others perish.
Maybe just dumb luck?
1
When I first moved to New Jersey some years ago, I wondered how these small cities could support themselves. The towns and small cities of Eastern NJ are. to a large extent,"bedroom communities" to the megacity of New York. Gradually, it became obvious. These places are meccas for small businesses. Plumbers, electricians, interior designers and renovators, roofers, concrete workers, handymen, auto mechanics, antique shops, farmers' markets, restaurants, mortgage firms, and many other small businesses compete quite well with big chains like Home Depot and Office Depot. The older housing needs renovation; the infrastructure needs maintenance; and residents insist on keeping the environment as clean and green as possible, so taxes are high and money flows freely here. Probably it does not cost much less, all things considered, to live here than to live in the large cultural centers, which are a brief but traffic-frustrated drive away. Such places survive shutdowns of large companies, such as pharma.
Those who flee to such towns and small cities seek less-stressful lifestyles, safety for themselves and their children, and a sense of community. They do not consistently find those things, and they generally find that living here is not cheap, but those needs and delusions will keep small cities strong as suburbs for the megacities and employment pools for artisans and tradespeople.
1
With the rise communication technology and internet shopping people can live almost anywhere and participate in the culture and economy of the country (and indeed the world as a whole). Given the high cost and inconvenience of living in large cities, many young professionals may choose to live and work in suburban and rural communities that provide cultural and recreational opportunities.
What's missing from the prescription at the end of this essay is recognition that a country might benefit from having a portfolio of cities, just as a city benefits from having a portfolio of industries. If a country puts too many eggs in the baskets of a few large cities, then a few corrupt city political machines or a few nuclear bombs or a few bad coin flips more generally could be devastating for the country.
I noticed Mr. Krugman doesn't take his vacation in a big city. I hope that means there is at least some relevance remaining for quieter places to live. 10+ billion people of the near future crammed into a few megacities sounds like dystopian nightmare to me.
Sorry, Mr. Krugman, your theory does not work. The reality is that most of the huge corporate empires that exist today are comprised of DOZENS of companies they swallowed over decades. Many of these originator companies had survived 30, 50 and even more than 100 years before being purchased. Do you know where most of these companies resided? They were not in the mega cities on the coasts.
Another missing ingredient is that most technological innovations are NOT a one and done deal. They are the product of incremental improvements starting with theoretical then technological evolution and then widespread market acceptance. Many of today's technologies would not exist if some unheard off engineer or scientist or mathematician did not do what seemed to be an inconsequential (at the time) change. But they do build up over time. The reality is that the "winners" rewrite history to glorify themselves ignoring all those who came before them.
It is a conceit that innovation is based solely in the major cities. The economic theory that large organizations can exist by only generating rents does not only apply to companies. It can apply to political entities, social classes and groups.
NOTE: I have no idea what NYT considers a "small" city. Given that NYC has population over 8 million, does someplace that has only 250,000 people considered a "city"? Or is that cutoff at 100,000? If that is the case there are literally HUNDREDS of "small cities" that are doing fine these days.
Sigh, you need to get a hobby, one that will support your R&R downtime.
Thankfully, not everyone resides in FB and Twitter cyberspace like lonely Russian or domestic hackers, or social introverts. (FB and Twitter make it too easy and convenient not to move out of your house for social interaction purposes.) But many people go to the nearest small city not just to work, but for community interaction, like dining out, supporting the local arts, etc., checking out the library, and for the purposes of local commerce.
A lot of small American cities draw in people due to their historic charm and the feelings of nostalgia they produce. Man is still a social animal and we still like the physical presence of others and are not content to just being reduced to binary packets of transmitted data.
An interesting analysis, and an example of a single-lensed thinking, in this case economic. Where might the analysis lead if it added in other relationships, for example, to the fact that people like to live there (in small cities).
Professor Krugman--
Test your theory on modern Germany, which has a very successful industrial economy widely dispersed among small cities.
"The social costs of letting small cities implode" ? Mr. Krugman, if you ever gave thoughtful consideration to what would happen to a "megacity" in a true disaster scenario (such as the failure of the grid for even two weeks), you would only wish to be in a small city or better yet, no city at all.
In the future when more work can be done remotely via the internet, what need is there for big cities?
Small cities like Boston are just neighborhoods of bigger cities like NYC. Really, the entire coastal region is just one big city from Portland to Washington. Watch how those neighborhoods are changing. NYC population is growing and pushing people into satellite metropolises. Public transportation struggles to keep up. The new NHHS Rail will provide commuter service to Springfield MA and beyond. Long commutes and partial week commuting serve the Urban center and sustaining local services and businesses grow when smaller centers learn to accommodate the hub and spoke economy.
Based upon my experience, I agree with this notion. In the mid-1800's, Dundee - a beautiful city of 170,000 on the banks of the River Tay in northeast Scotland - reputedly had more millionaires than any other city in Europe, due largely to the jute trade (think burlap bags). That trade was the result of a lucky coin toss since it relied upon whale oil, a byproduct of Dundee's previous incarnation as a whaling centre. One or two other coin tosses has kept it going but now our luck may be running out.
Good-intentioned folk are doing their best to rejuvenate it. A lucky coin toss saw the Grand Theft Auto video game invented here, so government is ploughing money into the 'creative industries' sector. A £1bn redevelopment project is seeing an offshoot of the V&A museum being built. Time will tell.
But to what end? The Economist magazine suggested that we focus upon saving the inhabitants through improved transport links to larger, thriving cities. (City sicker: Some towns cannot be preserved. Save their inhabitants instead, Oct 12th, 2013).
I like this. Let's go with natural forces, spend the £1bn on fast rail so we can live in this beautiful place but commute easily to the larger and growing Edinburgh. Businesses to service the commuting population would thrive - restaurants, painters, teachers.
The problem seems to me that we think that each small city needs to be a productive entity. Is there not a role for beautiful, bedroom cities that service the larger host?
2
You missed an important factor that favors small cities, lower costs. Land, labor, everything costs less. That’s why I live in a small city and work in an even smaller one.
Glad to hear that you are communing with nature. I assume you are somewhere warmer than my small city.
Mr. Krugman says, “I found myself asking what might seem like an odd question: what, in the modern economy, are small cities even for?”
What are small cities for? Actually that is not an odd question. Out here in a small city in Kansas we hear it (or some variant) all the time. People come out from big cities, try to apply their world view to a small town, and it doesn’t work. Then, they draw the wrong conclusion: small cities don’t work anymore. (Agriculture ain’t what it used to be! Yeah, we know.)
Mr. Krugman has fallen into the trap of analyzing the economic landscape as if it were a rational whole. Like a boy taking an alarm clock apart and assuming that all the gears are connected — and necessary. But societies are not like alarm clock. Meanwhile economists continue to contend that economies work rationally if only for the simple reason that we must assume they do so in order to make economics work.
Mr. Krugman, would you like to come to small town Kansas for a couple of days.?
So then, what happens in a city like Vancouver, BC, where it has become too expensive for most people to live in? Even its suburbs are running out of space for new homes. People sometimes move to a smaller city because of lifestyle. I moved to Prince Rupert, which has a population of less than 15 thousand. I guess this is not considered a city. the economic situation has been teetering for the last thirty years. That is the problem with small towns, because there is not enough diverse industries, so if one big industry, such as fishing fails it can be devastating. Luckily another industry, a new container port, picked up some of the slack, but the town is smaller than it was during the fishing boom of the seventies and eighties. On the other hand it is much cheaper to live in, easier to get around without a car, closer to nature, and a lot quieter and pleasanter than Vancouver. I've lived in big cities most of my life, but I prefer living in a small town now.
1
Like you I have spent most of my life exploring this topic. It is difficult to do justice to this topic in 1500 characters but let me share with you the determinants of human development that I and others have concluded are the basis for human development.
Modern civilization is supported by 5 fundamental technology pillars:
• Transportation
• Energy
• Food and Water
• Manufacturing
• Communications
Without them, modern civilization would not exist. Humans would be back in the hunter-gatherer World, walking around, looking for plants and animals for food, and exchanging grunts when they meet another human.
The 5 technology pillars are not isolated entities, but are critically interdependent in complex ways. To get our food and water, we depend on transportation, which in turn depends on energy. Extracting the finite fossil fuel energy from the Earth requires transport of the fuel product and manufactured equipment. Making the equipment takes energy and communications about what to make and were to transport it. Growing food and obtaining water takes energy and manufactured equipment and communications, ordering the energy and equipment, and finding out where to transport the food and water.
One could go on in detail about the complex interactions between the 5 technology pillars, and how they affect governments, social behavior, and economics but it would require much more than just this comment. Settlements depend on many factors, jobs, terrain and feeling of well being.
1
Krugman asks: "What do small cities have going for them?" vs. mammoth "super cities". What about sense of community, higher quality of life, access to natural areas, any accountability at all for civic leaders?
1
If gambler's luck is all it is there should be small and medium cities coming in to their own as older ones fade and shrink. But it looks like shrinkage all the way down outside the thriving urban megacities.
Even in a still prosperous state like Massachusetts the small cities are dying. Pittsfield, Gardner, Fitchburg, Brockton, Fall River . . . all have lost their manufacturing income flows (and not a single one of them has lost them to automation; they've lost them to lower cost seeking labor-arbitraging), while also losing part of their income from serving as regional centers, not because of shrinking regional populations, but because of Boston and New York's increasing ability to service even such far flung places through the improved communication and transportation technologies available today.
"Oh well, " you seem to be saying. "Not much we can do about that. Thank goodness our superior virtue and intelligence makes us good here in Princeton."
And you don't even seem to realize that makes you an ally of the Kochs and the Ryans.
Happy to hear your thoughts while communing with nature. I'd also like to hear your thoughts on the sustainability of small and mega cities.
One POV:
I live in Pullman WA. The reason we exist is Washington State University (Go Cougs!). The winter is semi-miserable, but it's a very nice place to live. Lots going on, good economy, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Ph.D.
Without the university it would sink back into the Palouse loess.
The little towns around here in rural WA and Idaho are not so nice. They're dying. Meth is rampant. It's depressing even to drive through some of them.
Germany seems to still to do well with manufacturing.
They have faced the same globalization.
They have better schools for the working class. They train their children for trades. And they train and re-train workers for high-tech manufacturing.
BMW is even training Americans for high-tech manufacturing in Charlotte, SC.
After 35 years of trickle-down Reaganomics, we have increased economic inequality and an Opioid crisis.
So by this logic, there should only be one megacity on earth, and that's it? Too radical? OK -- how about one per continent?
Given the huge numbers of real world problems with any huge city, this looks pretty silly to me.
In fact, if my top city were to get a lot bigger, say growing to a top 25 city or so, the predictable problems with taxes, traffic, crime, expense, and just general stress and livability would make me inclined to move before it likely got there.
Now, let's ponder this thing called the internet. With so much of the modern work product being primarily idea and data based, why should it matter where people live? If one can tele-commute from a small, safe, pretty, low stress, low cost, climate friendly small town, you'll need to explain to me why they should put up with big city hassles and danger like NYC's beloved subway -- because I just don't get it.
And yes, I get the simple math and concept behind "gambler's ruin", I just think that as he so often does, Paul Krugman has gotten this completely wrong, by making various unsupportable assumptions, including that he must be right because he's "smarter than everyone else".
Something I didn't see mentioned about small cities is their more affordable housing, especially when combined with their proximity to big cities with booming job markets. I live in a city with a population of just under 100,000 in the SF Bay Area. That's a small city. And it's viable. I believe it will continue to be viable in the years ahead.
Most people who live here don't work here. They commute. Some drive all the way, some drive to BART and take it for the final leg. They live here because the housing's MUCH more affordable than it is in the places where many residents work, San Francisco and Oakland chief among them.
Residents here tend to be young-ish families with kids. They want an affordable single-family home with a back yard. They want decent schools, a place with a low crime rate and desirable amenities, including entertainment, shopping, retail stores (including several grocery stores), banks, credit unions, good hospitals and dentists, libraries, a community center, and financial service providers.
They get all that here, at a bargain price (by Bay Area standards, anyway). And I believe that these factors will continue to be a draw.
1
I'm not convinced that you spend much time outside of large urban areas, Paul. You color your loose argument with Mississippi River-wide paint brush. Have you been to Lexington, Charlottesville or Blacksburg, VA in the past decade? These small university-oriented cities are booming and supporting constellations of even smaller towns surrounding them. I live in a town of 700 that is an outdoor recreationist's dream 30 min. outside of a booming small city with 8,000+ jobs available today, enjoy a low cost of living, and am on track to pay off my first house within two years (I'll be 32). This is all possible because I planted my feet in a small city after school and refused to accept the litany of negative trade-off's incurred by moving to a large metro area like D.C. or the Bay area. Urbanites can keep their 2 hr. commutes and paucity of affordable housing--I've found my sweet spot on a river town on the banks of the James River and the future looks bright.
I lived in Rochester NY. It was ruined by the Japanese, that copied the digital camera invented by Kodak, and willing to work for less, put Kodak out of business. They had previously done the same to the German camera industry. Fuji, using workers willing to work for less , killing Kodak film's business. The same happened to Xerox, that invented the copier.
Competition with cheaper labor abroad ruined it.
Small cities are as necessary as wilderness for the continued sanity of humanity.
Since there is a minor agricultural component here (my interest) I would like to make one point. This is very important. Not all farmland is equal. We as a country are blessed with some of everything from Illinois to the Palouse to the hills and valleys of upstate NY and everything in between. What I see in my area is the conversion of highly productive farmland to real estate. All you need to do is look in on our current president to understand that the industry could care less about the hicks in agriculture. Some wise planning for the future is critical. Once you site a big box or housing or whatever the land is RUINED.
1
Robotics, computers, the coming Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution will destroy jobs by the hundreds of millions world wide.
Some manual labor intensive jobs must be protected by international legal agreements from automation. For example clothing wherever its made in the world should be done by hand as it was around, let's say, the 1950's. There are many more other examples.
We must not let the worship of automation/science by Wall Street, literally, threaten the survival of humanity.
1
I think "globalization" and corporate "free trade" are primary reasons for the destruction of so many small cities.
1
It would certainly be useful to move the discussion beyond anecdotes. Conduct a serious study of the evolution of 100, ... "small cities". Is there a case to be made for their evolution being modeled by coin flips? Very interesting premise!
The robots are coming. Perhaps they will inhabit the small cities where they can make more robots. We can have a 3 class society of sick and starving workers, robots and corrupt republicans on the Trump gravy train.
This is Professor Krugman’s best article in a long time. He talked about economics and not politics.
Gamble? OK! I'm all in !
I am telling my children to stick around the Great Lakes.
Buy land here.... LOTS of it.
We have the Fresh Water. We are the future.
There's a good chance the coasts will flood. Certainly Phoenix and Las Vegas will boil and melt away once the Colorado River dries up. And all of those areas are presently comparatively overpriced....and will be EXTREMELY overpriced when the structural work to save them gets underway
3
cities rise and fall, and have throughout history. nearly every city that has ever been built has disappeared within a few hundred years. the outliers, damascus, jericho, varanese, are the exceptions that prove the rule.
To test the validity of your premise (small cities owing to chance their existence and continued prosperity) you should probably contrast it with a few planned cities to see how they fared throughout the years.
Does this economist know who invented HTML (the original base language of the Internet)? Look it up!
Here's a clue: it wasn't someone from either coast.
The implication in the article is that great ideas can only arise in major cities. The other conceit is that smaller but extremely important contributions to major social, technological and political changes can only come from major cities. If you are a student of economic geography, you should know that a simple reading of just a few corporate histories shows the theory to be hogwash.
One observation I have noticed is that certain economic entities remain large even after they fail to actually contribute. They simply exist to extract rents. This theory doesn't just apply to companies. It can apply to social and political entities as well (like class or political parties or social groups).
The industrialization of agriculture has gutted the rural midwest, to the detriment of all except our corporate overlords. As the member of the 5th generation of a farm family, I know that our way of life is as gone as those of the Plains Indians that we displaced.
This column, without really saying it, explains one of the reasons a city like New York has seen it's population skyrocket since 1980- up 22% from about seven million to 8.5 million.
Excellent work. For anyone teacher AP Human Geography, it's time to rewrite the chapters dealing with location theory.
1
Paul, you do yourself a disservice, this is not Wonkish, it is quite clear and illuminating and math-free; thanks, and keep it up. Also thanks for linking to Emily's piece, which I missed.
Perhaps you could follow up with a rumination on what winner cities can do to ameliorate their good fortune - are they to be cities on a hill, spreading the wealth into the hinterlands, or will they become psychic black holes, sucking the spirit out of their resentful geographic hosts?
Paul, I need to ask a favor of you. In today’s column, Ross Douthat wrote a mea culpa about the errors he has made retrospectively. The biggest was his deficit hawkishness in the years immediately following the Great Recession. I recall a certain Noble prize winning economist who at the time, and since, railing at those deficit hawks telling them that they were putting recovery at risk by trying to limit the stimulus of deficit spending, even though it was a text book case for doing so. Ross didn’t give us readers an opportunity to comment so I thought a humble bit of I TOLD YOU SO was in order.
Your analysis may work for big and relatively thinly settled countries like the US. It's clearly not applicable to small and thickly settled countries like the Netherlands, and, yes, Germany.
Although posed as a background to the main story, Isaac Asimov’s "I, Robot" stories on the evolution of self-aware robots foretold the collapse of small towns and the concentration of population in conurbation styled “mega cities.” Massive machine managed farming, no rural population, ultra-high-density population centers apparently are not science fiction after all; more accurately, the inevitable outcome of unlimited population growth and free-market AI development.
My concern: Are the Three Laws of Robotics being built into the firmware? I certainly hope so!
What small cities have going for them is decent, affordable housing.
I would like to amend my earlier comment to say that I have since reread the Krugman piece, and from that linked to Emily Badger's, and I then linked from there to the Guardian piece on Schenectady. This ability to link back and read more and more is terrific and I appreciate it.
Re: Rochester
Unemployment (not seasonally adjusted), Cities, NY State
November 2017* November 2016
Albany-Schenectady-Troy 4.3 3.8
Binghamton 5.4 4.9
Buffalo-Niagara Falls 5.3 4.9
Dutchess-Putnam 4.3 3.9
Elmira 5.5 5.2
Glens Falls 5.2 4.9
Ithaca 4.3 3.8
Kingston 4.5 4.1
Nassau-Suffolk 4.4 3.9
New York City 4.0 4.7
Orange-Rockland-Westchester 4.6 4.1
Rochester 5.1 4.5
Syracuse 5.1 4.6
Utica-Rome 5.3 4.7
Watertown-Fort Drum 6.8 6.3
Non-metro Counties 5.6 5.1
1. With the exception of NY City, unemployment is higher in every metro
area than one year ago. Where is the recovery ?
2. Outside NYC, it's Albany (government workers), Putnam Duchess (NYC
City related) and Ithaca (College Town) that do relatively well
3. The rest of Upstate continues his dead spiral, driven chiefly on every
higher property taxes on a shrinking population, due to the policy of
Cuomo not to increase the NYS income tax on the rich (they might flee)
and instead loading unfunded mandates on local districts.
and, to continue my previous rant about the failings of megacities, if small towns are being sucked dry by urbanization and in a slow death spiral, and megacities are major sources of pollution and potential disease epicenters, what then? Good urban planning needs to consider these long term trends and possiblities. I don't see it happening, except in places with lower population density that are politically and economically stable with good access to clean water.
Big cities have major problems such as transportation, infrastructure maintenance, painful cost's of living and frequently, racial tensions. New York is a prime example with the current subway failures and a quick look at Los Angeles and Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia, and you see traffic problems at their worst. Over-crowding is the culprit.
Perhaps we should combine low population states of our country into larger states with their own state capitols so our current coastal mega cities could disperse.
1
I am not an economist and have only a considerd layman's view. This is an interesting idea on how cities, or centers of economic gravity, begin and evolve. What I've read here must certainly be only the initial musings. There just isn't enough here to really make a convincing thought model. I would be interested to learn more.
So this musing about the origins and fates of small cities didn't lead Krugman to contemplate the fates of those cities denizens and the politics entwined in those fates? How Brooksian.
i wish that Mr. Krugman wold follow the tradition of some other columnists and tell us what he got wrong and why. Perhaps he cold start with his election night meltdown in which he predicted a recession, perhaps even depression, and an imminent stock market rout. The he could move to his multi-year prediction of disaster because our elected officials were not following his advice. And so on.....My son tells me that he reads Krugman once a year, sees that he is still in the same place and just as wrong, and moves on. Mr. Krugman should express his gratitude for being in the position of not being paid for being right, only for talking and marrying well.
The change from small city to large urban area is magnified when we change to a service economy. People run services from areas that have a lot of potential customers.
Manufacturing and agriculture were well placed to encourage transportation hubs, areas of expertise, communities built around the support of a major employer. Services are different. Some can be supplied remotely, but many rely on the proximity of customers. Megalopolises result.
The rural problem and the problem of rust belt cities won't be solved by political action, as much as the regions need help. Northern cities can look to the future and realize that redemption will come from natural resources, if they are smart enough to protect them.
Northern areas - rural and rust belt cities - have water.
5
I agree that Paul's prediction that large cities are uniquely positioned to continue to grow and prosper. I would also add that major universities and research institutions are a large driver of economic prosperity - possibly the one of the most important resources. In the era of innovation driven by highly specialized research Boston is thriving largely due to the quality of its universities and colleges doing research in emerging technologies and healthcare anchored by Harvard and MIT.
1
I grew up in Canton, Ohio, which has been struggling for years. It was a thriving industrial city for my immigrant grandparents, and a satisfactory place for my lawyer father to make a living and raise a family. It has a lovely art museum and a great symphony for a small city, but it's declined dramatically since I grew up there, initially because the factories closed. Despite the efforts of local boosters, it doesn't looked poised for a major comeback. Canton made at least two big mistakes back in the day that could have mitigated the decline: They built a mall out in the suburbs that eviscerated the downtown, and they declined the offer of a major university to open a branch. The Pro Football Hall of Fame seems to be the only thing Canton pins its hopes for recovery on now. More forward thinking might have protected it better.
3
In 2001 and '02 I wrote for Georgia Trend magazine. My beat was economic development in rural counties. Without question, the decline of many of the smaller communities was NAFTA. The loss of major employers was a pall on economies and created social issues related to parents driving 30 to 40 miles to work with school systems and churches coordinating after school programs. On the flip side, some communities rebounded with the construction of retail oriented distribution centers, and the use abandoned warehouses/factories for similar purposes. Many small communities are attracting a variety of new manufacturers, high tech R&D labs etc. The driving force for these relocations is quality of life and lower labor costs. Of course, the need for adequate energy, internet connection and road/rail transportation is integral. Media companies, Meredith, Time and others have made similar moves to medium to not so large cities like Des Moines and Birmingham to great success. Some states are more advanced in their economic development plans than others, and competition for new employers is fierce. However, small town life has its benefits, and once newcomers settle in they work to improve every aspect of the place they call home.
The imperatives of enterprise capitalism are relentless. Consider this: if processes are "improved" enough, there is destruction and devaluing involved of what had existed around that process previously. The unending drive for profit above all else contains within it the seeds of its own failure and eventual collapse. Doesn't matter. To the manager and owner of a business making things, whatever they be, better and faster, more profit is the ultimate definition of success.
We are losing many small towns because of industrial scale agriculture. Humans are not taken out of the production equation, but they aren't needed to the extent they once were. Robotic machines now milk cows, for heaven's sake. With industrial farming, the less we need the towns that supplied farmers with goods, banking and social life. Famers now compete with products from around the world, making corporate farming the only path to survival for many.
Rochester and Kodak once were synonymous. Digital photography, which Kodak first created but failed to exploit, changed all that. Now it is a very cold place trying to re-make its purpose.
Larger cities, like Baltimore, are simultaneously being born anew and dying and are in a race against becoming crime ridden holes. They can die a lot and still rebound (Detroit?). They lose or lost their reason for being, but creativity, energy, determination and new enterprises spring up in the ruins of yesterday. In the long run, however, almost nothing is safe.
3
On road trips it can be seen that many small towns realized this years ago. When one approaches the city limits and sees a sturdy sign that states: "Visit Historical Downtown", you know there isn't any economic base left. Economic activity is based on some sentimental emotion the townspeople refuse to let go. Really sad when the market for that hardly supports a resale shop. Then e-bay is used to mine whatever material value is left, in the end small towns do go global.
Sad to say that Republican conservatism is merely mining the soft cultural value of small towns rather than any salable item. The young leave of course because there is no outlet for their own soft skills.
So people get cranky, don't want to move, look for government bailouts, nothing works. It is just time to move on...
Once again an excellent piece by Mr. Krugman. Thoroughly describes what some of us have recognized happening throughout Ohio, including my hometown in west central Ohio (agriculture; the discovery and disappearance of oil; the rise of national industries to a handful owned by multinationals; the creation of a regional retail center to empty malls; what has remained constant, at least for now, is agriculture, healthcare and county government) and my current home in northeastern Ohio.
1
Dr. Krugman's misses the consequences of free trade. During WWII the U.S. produced half the world's industrial goods via clusters of industry; Bridgeport, CT for machine tools, Burbank for airplanes, Pittsburgh for steel mills, Ohio for tires and small cities near Detroit for car and truck parts. Little has been written on the subject except for a few articles on planning for the WWII mobilization.
With free trade first Japan then China undercut these centers using inexpensive labor and1890s-style health and safety rules. The old American centers withered and died. Textiles went from RI, where I grew up, first to the American south, then to Japan and China and now India.
At the same time most of the high end NYC jobs were protected by a web of politically motivated restrictions. For example any attempt to move stock trading and dollar clearing operations offshore is forbidden
Immigration from 1920-1965 was very limited so cities imported blue collar labor from the U.S. hinterland and had to pay living wages and provide decent housing or people would not come. DC carpenters came from rural VA and were well paid; now they come from Mexico and are paid minimum wages.
The combination of protected big city industries, free trade in goods and the influx of low-wage immigrants have altered the traditional 1920-1970 relationship between big cities and small ones. For NYC, LA and SF this is a transitional phase; they will be replaced by Singapore, Shanghai and Mumbai.
4
I think I am a hop away from where Mr. Krugman is communing with nature. Our county seat is a very fine example of the small city evolution he describes. It has been and I agree with Krugman that it will continue to be very painful to watch our little city/biggish town struggle to stay alive.
I particularly note how that the community clings with great passion to ideas of how everything will be fine -- high-speed internet, local-grown restaurants, and incoming companies. The loss of the agricultural world here that I grew up in has changed everything, not least the landscape which is growing in like the gardens of overgrown briars at Sleeping Beauty's castle...
3
And remember the power of the railroads and their shaping of the landscape because of their need for periodic stops that became small market towns. Without the railroad, their is no need for a small town. Except - the need to refuel, i.e. gas stations, and to take refreshments, are the current shaper of small towns.
1
As agriculture and other major industries become concentrated, there is a tendency for small, specialized entities to emerge. It could be craft beers and whiskey, locally grown organic farms or other specialized farm produce.
Second , there will be some industries where the labor content is enough to tap into the lower cost of living that outside major cities will make locating in small cities beneficial.
Also, there will be areas of reduced cost where retirees will want to have a less expensive home. Each of these will also have support and service.
If a small city is too large or doesn't fit one of these (I'm sure there are a couple of other hooks) they will drop in size.
Ganbler's Ruin and Small Cities (Very Wonkish)
Gambler's ruin is a probability theorem that states that if two players with EQUAL chances of winning play with different amount of chips, the one with the larger number will win.
But as Mr. Krugman himself points out, that was not the case with Rochester. Rochester had a HIGHER than equal change of winning in the camera game because of its expertise in optics, partly due to German immigrants, partly to the excellence of the University of Rochester in Optics.
If a player with a higher probability of winning plays on opponent with lower, the higher probability player will win, even when starting with less chips.
So the argument can not be applied to smaller cities (such as Rochester) playing against big ones (say NYC ).
In short, to apply the Gambler's ruin theorem to small vs large cities in the US makes not sense, as chances are very rarely equal.
Now forward to the issue of chances in a global economy. There the chances are not equal when workers abroad are willing to work for less. Even when having , initially, a smaller number of chips, cheap labour will win. China, that took over the Iphone manufacturing from Silicon Valley is a classic example.
Mr. Krugman comment that globalziation is not "central" shows that he continuous to fail to understand the economic consequences of globalzation
1
Many small cities in the US and Canada were established from one particular industry, like pulp and paper mills, mining, etc. With the decline in these industries, the cities struggle to find new sources of employment. Some interestingly advertise as retirement communities when real estate values decrease, allowing pensioners to relocate to less expensive areas. Mega-cities like London, Toronto, New York are becoming too expensive to live in.
1
Whether a town thrived or failed has less to do with luck than whether it had a great entrepreneur with a vision. Missing this key point leads Krugman to think regional government policies could make a difference which is his answer for everything.
Or ... as shown by the links in this op-ed, today's "great entrepreneurs with a vision" seem to tend to go to big cities rather than preferring small, isolated towns.
So if this tendency continues (and all that this op-ed is doing is trying to explain why it's happening), the question is: will we just let people living in dying small towns die with them, or will we, as a nation, decide that America's greatness also lies in supporting people still living in small towns through government aid at a time when the economy became such that it can't use small towns anymore?
Any ideas?
"whether it had a great entrepreneur" - I think you can still call that luck.
Whether a town has a great entrepreneur may be luck but it still leads to a different policy prescription. Government intervention will limit the chances an entrepreneur will be successful.
It would be a disaster for society if small cities were to fail. The alternative would be the development of "megapolis" with 20 or 30, or more, millions which would make life insufferable. If we had wise and rational governments, we would make sure that small and middle-sized cities prospered. We should encourage, even using economic incentives, the placing of industries in those areas, developing the necessary infrastructures to make them viable. But I see very scant possibilities of this happening.
1
Krugman's analysis seems very similar to that of island biogeography, wherein species richness declines over time because a small species population, with no way to renew itself, can become extinct as a result of a single catastrophic incident. Perhaps there are some parallels to be drawn.
11
Perhaps R vs K selection as well. Large cities structure their environment to their benefit.
I wonder if there isn't an effect related to low capital gains tax rates.
Don't these low rates tend to increase the size of businesses which in turn outgrow a small city and leave?
If the tax structure makes it cheaper to install a national chain (think Dublin Donuts) than for a local shop to startup, doesn't each widget sale further impoverish the local capital stock as money flies to the corporate office?
4
30 years ago, I thought that the internet would lead to the decline of mega-cities, as the revolution in communications would lead to dispersed peoples being able to work efficiently together. The requirement for suppliers in close proximity would diminish as computer-aided logistics would allow dispirsed suppliers to efficiently work together. I thought that to ability of the internet to bring a world of information and entertainment to any individual anywhere would also act to disperse mega-cities, and promote smaller cities.
Obviously, I got this wrong. So what exactly is the central magnet that is promoting mega-cities? Is it primarily social-and not economic--the desire of people to physically contact, smell, and touch each other? Why exactly do people want to spend $1M on a home in L.A. where then then commute for 45 min each way to sit in an office in front of a computer, when they could be at my smaller city, with an acre of garden and grapes, and then sit in front of a computer?
10
Because people value human interaction with their intellectual and professional peers. When successful people move to smaller cities and the country, they move to certain areas with other affluent, successful people. This concentrates growth potential to certain small cities and rural areas. You can find other people in your high tech industry in a small city like Boulder, Colorado but perhaps not in Evansville, Indiana.
Charlottesville has the University of Virginia, having an elite research university makes it much more likely for your city to come up with "New Tricks", and at least to make the town more culturally interesting even if that economic success doesn't come.
The modern economy has cut loose from the land? Some people actually like to have land on which to live, houses that don't cost $1M, woods and lakes and streams, stores you can drive to and park at, etc.
Just as mechanized agriculture is untethering rural people from the land, the information age is untethering urban dwellers from offices, social gathering, and entertainment. Robots are untethering workers from factories. Amazon is untethering us from stores. The main reason left to live in a big city today is restaurants (and hopefully that will be roboticized in our lifetimes). In the long run, it is the big cities that will face decline.
6
I don’t agree. There’s a huge draw having everything you need within walking distance. Or having a transit system nearby that can take you where you want quickly. The thought of living in a place that requires maintaining an automobile and having to use that auto to do everything in life is just too much for many people. Myself included. I think the key here is that cities don’t exist by accident. Cities exist because they attract far more people than they repel. Will that change? I highly doubt and wouldn’t bet against it.
1
Farm centers withered with mechanization of farming; manufacturing centers with globalization and automation.
The one thing that provides a small glimmer of hope for the outback is telecommuting. Hard to quantify but it must have some impact.
A nice analysis, and certainly correct.
To take it a little further, and on a more basic level: Having worked on both the positive and normative sides (in English: what happens and why, and what to do about it), I know of no instance anywhere in the world that shows that "place" policies" are better than "people" policies. Take care of the people, help the people, and let the places rise or fall. Don't worry about Appalachia; worry about the folks who live there. But as it happens, politicians are tied to places, not to people, and so all over the world we get programs to halt the decline of places -- from the Northeast of Brazil to Appalachia to southern Italy. The outcomes of this misguided strategy range from downright failure to occasional modest successes, which themselves are triggered more by the process Krugman describes than by the programs or the politicians.
BTW I was born and raised in Wilkes Barre, PA. Nuff said...
6
I wonder if the reason small cities are losing is their social habits. Young people are just that, young. They thinking is more liberal, certainly more moderate. They want theater, good restaurants, opportunities to learn, etc. If smaller cities are not providing the proper opportunities for what they consider proper growth and fairness, the young and moderate are leaving. I think of Austin and San Antonio in Texas. They are exploding because of their social scenes.
People are not staying in stagnating towns and cities.
3
One factor that might be added into Krugman's analysis of smaller cities is the increasing growth of mega corporations. These large national or international corporations regularly buy up successful businesses in regional centers and then move their operations and products elsewhere because they have no particular connection to the local area.
We see this a lot in Syracuse New York - relative to Krugman's list a city with harsh winters (-) but with several strong universities/colleges (+).
It happens with longstanding businesses that have been profitable for decades and remain so, as well as with newer start-ups. It is a 'catch 22' situation. If your local business stops being profitable it dies, but if it innovates and remains profitable then a much larger corporation buys it and moves it elsewhere. Either way the local economy suffers.
New ones keep getting started but a large percentage of the successful ones just get 'hijacked' and taken elsewhere.
3
Good piece to get the conversation started.
What's missing is a recognition of extent to which federal government subsidies played a role in accelerating the decline of many central cities ( via FHA/VA loans, highway construction, MI deduction, sewer/water infrastructure, etc). The nexus between the growth and decline of a city's industries and the growth and decline of the city itself was not entirely random, as this piece suggests. Perhaps the growth could be deemed "random," but the decline of many of these places was fostered by a pro-suburban national agenda beginning in the 1950's.
Many of our struggling small industrial cities in the Northeast or Midwest are actually located in metropolitan regions that are still growing in population and economy -- an important point to stop and think about. It's just that the central city in that region has been saddled with structural impediments that constrain its growth within narrow municipal borders, which conveniently serves as the warehouse for the region's poor minorities.
It would be a mistake to see the decline in the many of these places as a permanent trend or condition, just as it was a mistake to write off NYC or SF or Seattle or Portland or Boston as declining industrial relics in 1970's. Demographic trends are in favor of urban re-entry, and our smaller cities are not immune to these trends.
7
Among many other things, I'm struck by all the people commenting as to how an important aspect of rural and small-city life is connection to "nature". (Even Mr. Krugman alludes to this in his opening.)
"Nature" isn't just trees and flowers. It's a fundamental set of processes. It doesn't go away just because we happen to be in the city. We couldn't get away from nature even if we wanted to. Humans and our creations are no less "nature" than grass or foxes or earthworms.
Among the many challenges of our near future, reframing our understanding of, and relationship to, "nature" may be one of the most important and productive.
7
The main technological argument for smaller cities and more dispersed populations center on improved communications. For intellectual workers glued to computers and the internet, what is the advantage of living in a stuffy apartment in NYC rather than a smaller town with cultural amenities near Ithaca? We can voice or video conference conveniently etc. What about manufacturing, especially light manufacturing? Once you get out into the truly rural areas the argument holds, but places with special qualities like Taos with its magnificent scenery and vibrant native cultures still have hope, arguable more hope than a decade ago.
1
One unmentioned factor is the form of ownership. The German Mittelstand of family-owned businesses is a big reason for the continued success of German small cities. This contrasts with the American model, which is ownership by publicly traded corporations. A family-owned business plans for future generations, not the next quarterly earnings report. And it is committed to the city in which the business is located because that's where future generations of the family will live.
17
WW2 mobilization of the Home Front played a role in this too. There was a massive effort to locate and utilize every resource in the economy. It reached underutilized possibilities of smaller cities, and in fact built some entirely new ones in what the British called "green fields" projects.
An example near me is the Willow Run project that turned farmers' fields into the plant to build almost all the B-24 bombers (our most-produced heavy bomber) of the mighty Army Air Force efforts of WW2. A city grew around it. People migrated to it.
As that happened, efforts were also made to find and employ every little machine shop and small plant that could do anything, all conscripted to maximum capacity and helped to expand.
That is how the Great Depression was turned into the resources free to do the Arsenal of Democracy and turn the US into half the world's industrial capacity. It mobilized the underutilized capacity spread out over the whole country's small regions.
Therefore the smaller places of America boomed for key years, and emerged from the War with savings to greet the returning work force released from the War.
The slow death of smaller cities is also the slow death of that industrial capacity. It went first. More follows. Willow Run meanwhile returned to green fields.
9
For a Nobel Laureate this is a surprisingly anecdotal piece. It weaves an interesting tale, but stops short on follow through. How is Rochester doing now in the post Kodak era? This much I have heard: There have been replacements built on the expertise of those in the area. Unemployment is low. How does that compare with much bigger Detroit and the loss of its signature industry?
Schenectady lost the major part of GE and Alco and has struggled ever since. Proximity to Albany offers other employment, but the latest stab at revitalization, a casino, is suspect. I think the insight about nearby universities is important: Pittsburgh's success story.
3
Apparently, you didn't click on all the links included in this op-ed, and which provide more than "anecdotal" evidence - without providing absolute certainty about the hypothesis formulated here either, of course.
That means that if you want to refute it, you have to come up with more than anecdotal evidence too ... ;-)
Yes...I just did that! Thanks.
While Krugman is right about the historical process of urbanization, I think he may be wrong about small cities. Predictions are notoriously hard to get right. One thing small cities have going for them is quality of life. As a student of urban history (Ph D), I love big cities, but they can be expensive and overwhelming (the flip side of exciting and dynamic). Small cities have many of the attributes of large cities, but on a more manageable scale. And while large cities do have diverse economies, with the rise of the internet economy, being physically close to people with whom you do business is less important than it used to be. Without the need for physical resources (coal, iron ore, e.g.), quality of life can be a bigger factor in determining business location. So I do think there will be a place for small cities, and they may even thrive (especially if they can be attached to the bigger cities by a good transportation system).
7
What if agriculture were again a major share of the economy?
The criticism of sustainable farming we most often hear is that it's too labor-intense. As one commentator noted, however.
"Is it the goal of business to employ as FEW people as possible?"
(Actually, it is: the internal logic of capitalism is to seek efficiencies - in effect, to minimize labor's share of the power to grow)
There are other efficiencies to consider. The farm was home and employment. Disconnecting 90% of the labor force from food production "freed" their buying power toward manufactured goods, but then required everyone to buy a house, a lawnmower, a car and so on, for no real gain except to the entities who financed the debt treadmill.
And this is without considering the completely overlooked environmental costs of "cheap" food. In terms of marginal return, food is no longer cheap anyway, and the fact is simply being disguised by convenience and processing. You "can't afford to buy local meat" but you paid $30/lb for the sausage in your 99-cent breakfast biscuit.
If food, which everyone needs every day, three times a day, employed 30% of the work force, as transportation does now, we could afford to remediate that environmental (and health, and communitary) damage.
6
I have thought that the erosion of the family farm, replaced to a large extent by industrial sized farming, has contributed significantly to the decline of rural towns and small cities. Perhaps, we should look at eliminating government policies that have contributed to large-scale farming (corn subsidies, etc.) and promote small-scale farming. Food would cost more, but could be healthier and more environmentally sustainable.
13
Paul, I think I disagree slightly with part of your premise about small cities. It's true that many have changed over from pure agrarian economies to more industrialized centers of commerce. The risk in this has been that these cities were single-sourcing their economies to a few, and often just one, major company. So, in places like Rochester, when Kodak declined, the city had little economic backstop to assume the loss of jobs and income. This is true for small cities all over the country. As technologies and markets evolve, companies either close or move to other locations. That leaves gaping holes in the economies of small cities which depended almost entirely on them. Look at how the decline and fall of IBM has hurt the Mid-Hudson Valley in NY, something from which the area has yet to recover. This particular example might be largely due to the lack of leadership for the company, but there are global impacts involved, too. The trend to offshore manufacturing jobs to cheaper countries is the key example of this, and it has no genesis in the changeover from agrarian economies.
Small cities need to diversity their economies if they want to escape the bad business decisions or unfortunate luck of the few companies they depend on for survival. The question is how to do that with the smaller infrastructures and labor pools which make up these cities. And it's clear that the current administration doesn't care a whit about this.
7
We are watching an example of your argument now as Bass Pro decides what to do with Cabela's human resources and infrastructure at Sidney, NE (Bass Pro and Cabela's merged). As the flows of profits and pay checks shift away from Sidney, that place will lose the basic economic engine that has generated growth in it's ancillary sectors for decades.
See this report from Omaha.com:
http://www.omaha.com/money/bass-pro-begins-detailing-what-cabela-s-opera...
And this one from NPR: https://www.npr.org/2017/12/16/566934885/cabelas-sale-sends-ripples-of-a...
Thanks for the shout-out to my adopted hometown of Rochester, NY, doctor. I was thinking of this city while reading the previous paragraph, so it was a welcome segue.
Although struggling with our share of troubles, I believe we're taking a successful route with the University of Rochester and it's excellent medical centers, and the Rochester Institute of Technology, to mention just two of our great institutions.
Woof seems to forget that technology transfers implies increases of labor productivity and decreasing of the ratio of machinery to labor. On the other hand, there are value transfers from production that implies more labor in relation to machinery like third world agriculture. Workers in the first world can eat cheaper foods as a consequence thus lowering costs of production in US and Europe. Either way workers get exploited and capital keeps accumulating. Cheap nationalism is nothing to be proud of. Look at Trumpism.
Marx and Ricardo discovered in 19 th century that the concept of capital implies the world market. Forgot the role of India and the British colonies in the propping of its capital? Self valorización of capital was not invented by Krugman. Although he often overlooks its deleterious effects
3
"The only constant is change." Somebody said that a long, long time ago, probably before we even had writing.
Anybody who played the original Sim City computer game 20 years ago found that if they left their designed city for a period of time, then started the game again, they found that decay had changed or destroyed everything they had created in the make-believe computer world.
So it is in the real world. The dream of every resident of a small village was for it to grow into a small town. The small town people wanted to grow into a small city. And every city dweller dreamed of their home becoming the next Rome, London, or New York, or Tokyo. The world is strewn with the ruins of great cities, buried in time.
What we remember is just a snapshot of a moment of reality. Change is not a gamble. It's a certainty.
9
For many of us who live in small cities or large towns, our dream is not to see it grow, but to find ways to preserve the values of small town life. To be sure, it helps to be a reasonable distance from a big city - a place to visit for its culture, entertainment and shopping - but the values of life in a town where neighbors still celebrate together and help each other make many who live there want to keep those values alive. It is often outsiders - corporate interests, real estate developers and others who see profit in growth - that support and promote the growth from a small town to a city to a suburb of a larger nearby city.
4
The whole idea that being who we are or what we are is not enough, kind of drives this argument. If a city is debt free, happy and successful (on it's own terms) at 400,000 population, then why must it struggle mightily to achieve growth to 1,000,000 ....or whatever number. Without any reason to do so for growth sake's only?
Economic mobility can solve some of the labor pool issues. But there is none of that when the wages are too and rents are too high.
Perhaps, This is where the "progress" gets confused with the word "progress"
4
Paul Krugman may be right in his theory about the fate of smaller cities, but if he is, the next logical event would seem to be an emptying of populations in the area surrounding each of the new ghost towns.
It would by highly ironic, in the age of internet connectivity and easy exchange of information, if vast areas across America would either be empty or sparsely populated by physically isolated people.
Maybe the theory needs some tweaking.
1
Interesting column, Professor Krugman! It would be weird if the population distribution were to remain frozen as it was in, say, 1950. But central place theory is still relevant. Health care, education and many other services still need central places and will still produce a hierarchy of cities, though some former manufacturing and resource centers may shrink relatively, while those specializing in services, such as college towns, may grow. The relative shrinking and growing of different places suggest that we need better ways of facilitating the adjustments and making them less traumatic to people.
4
Perhaps Norway could give the US some pointers. Most Norwegians have some rural background whether it is relatives who still live there or origins. Possibly because of this there has been a general consensus that it is desirable to try and encourage and facilitate people living outside cities. In economic terms: they appreciate the externalities involved in migration to the cities (and the concomitant decline of rural towns and villages) and are willing to provide subsidies and government expenditures to make it easier to continue to live in rural areas by providing subsidised public transport or even direct subsidies to farmers (NOT to agricultural mass production)
11
While the economic analysis is compelling I am drawn to the sociological analysis. Recently I learned about the Mormon system, of creating a central town, surrounded by the agricultural lands worked by the people in town. That was in contrast to the plains states, where people lived in isolation on their own agricultural lands, and the town was a place of commerce.
The Mormon plan, apparently was modeled on the English model, both of which led to strong, perhaps insular, social ties within communities.
I don't know whether the Mormon plan is economically viable these days, but I wonder what Mr. Krugman would come up with if he included the social aspects of the small towns in his analysis.
8
As "jobs" are changing in nature - and many are simply disappearing into low-wage countries or being taken by all that we call automation, robots, A.I.s, etc. As this happens perhaps some of the economic evolution will swing to favoring smaller, more liveable cities. Albuquerque and Santa Fe here in New Mexico are treading water in the "gambler's ruin" mode of the old economy, yet have huge promise in the emerging new economy simply because they are nice places to live, big enough to provide big-city amenities and have a wonderful climate.
The meta-question, "what's wrong with unfettered capitalism?" might be answered in how we save and re-energize our small and mid-sized cities.
4
Two thoughts:
One, beware the fallacy of composition. Even supposing that any given town or small city is vulnerable on the basis of size, you can't conclude that towns and small cities per se will disappear from a large area like the lower 48.
Two, towns and even small cities may be too small for an ethnically distinct immigrant group to settle in comfortably from a social point of view. Individuals might be too isolated and substantial groups might be too visible in a town or small city. The age group seeking marriage partners might be considered an honorary ethnicity from this point of view -- it needs a city of a certain size to have the numbers to sort itself out while not overwhelming the local demography. Once assimilated/married, such groups may see less advantage in the large city and be available to cycle out to towns or small cities.
1
I might hesitantly suggest that economics might suggest ways to reconnect big cities to smaller cities. This may prove feasible due to lower wages, lower costs and near proximity to resources. To a certain extent that already happens; government policies like taxes and education could encourage that.
4
Maybe the US could even begin to have a good passenger railway system? [Please don't start praising "autonomous" automobiles, please, please.] What kind of national self-abnegation or perverse pride keeps us from having what countries all over the world have figured out how to do?
1
A lot of urban enclaves developed as a result of how far you could travel round trip with a horse and buggy in one day. In Kentucky we have far too many county governments as a result. Some counties have fewer people than some small towns in other states. Single industry towns are very fragile. Along the Atlantic Seaboard many towns developed at the fall line as it was a good place to build dams and take advantage of water power. Further West towns developed along rail routes and river crossings. It used to be you could identify which city dominated a region by the newspapers people read and the TV Stations and radio stations they followed. That has changed with the internet, cable, and satellite. We no longer need stores and malls to do much of our shopping. Will the proximity of a FEDEX or UPS terminal determine where we live in the future???
5
@ Denis Pombriant,
Quote from Michael Roberts in regards to K waves:
“Alongside this profitability cycle, there is a shorter cycle of about 4-6 years called the Kitchin cycle. And there also appears to be a longer cycle (commonly called the Kondratiev cycle) based on clusters of innovation and global commodity prices. This cycle can be as long as 54-72 years. The business cycle is affected by the direction of the profit cycle, the Kitchin cycle and and K-cycle and by specific national factors.
The drivers behind these different cycles are explained in my book, The Long Depression. There I argued that when the downwaves of all these cycles coincide, world capitalism experiences a deep depression that it finds difficult to get out of. In such a depression, it may require several slumps and even wars to end it. There have been three such depressions since capitalism became the dominant mode of production globally (1873-97; 1929-1946; and 2008 to now). The bottom of the current depression ought to be around 2018. That should be the time of yet another slump necessary in order to restore profitability globally. That has been my forecast or prediction etc for some time. Anwar Shaikh in his book, Capitalism, takes a similar view.“
3
Next time I visit our local farmer's market, purchase foods at our co-op or relatively locally owned grocer, or sit down to a meal, I'll remind myself that at a meta scale, we've cut loose from the land. But here, Mr Krugman subtly makes a valid point, one that we might pay closer attention to: By taking time off to get closer to the land, we can regain perspective. Walk on, sir.
3
Farmers do not need to take "time off to get closer to the land."
Maybe from an economic perspective many small cities are a gamble, and as Dr. Krugman pointed out, college towns don't fit the small city mold. But, having lived in a small city/college town for over 20 years, I can attest to the quality of life and from that perspective they most definitely serve a purpose. Traffic and crime are non-existent. Air and water quality are excellent. Kids can be kids - play in the neighborhood without hovering parents. Doors don't need to be locked. Having lived in big cities, the most notable difference is lack of stress and ease of every day life.
9
Your children will not be prepared for life in the wider world.
Excellent piece. Thanks for assembling in some order a lot of random thoughts on the subject. None of us know the answer to your inquiry. In one sense the demise of certain small cities is an inevitable slow motion wreck. In another sense it is but a series of forks in the road. Some of which lead to dead ends others which lead to opportunity.
Whatever happens small cities on the cusp must absolutely be self aware. These cities must also be welcoming and willing to engage beyond their borders as in joining at the hip with nearby mega cities. Area redevelopment policies have a limited role but it is probably best in most cases to let nature take its course, painful as it may be.
1
In their book, "One Nation after Trump" EJ Dionne and Norm Ornstein point out that current demographic projections indicate that by 2050, 70 % of the American population will live in 15 states with their megacities which means that they will be represented in Congress by only 30 senators. Meanwhile 30 % of the population will be represented by 70 senators mostly in the rural states. The rural states will have a ruling minority. The policies that Dr Krugman proposes to support the small cities in those very states are antithetical to the party that currently dominates in those states. It should be an interesting next couple of decades.
11
There are CITIES and there are cities. Boston is not a small town, neither is Vienna. Both have populations between 1 and 2 million people and are diverse. You must admit that the cultures of NY and London are vastly different from these cities. The small town may be decline but small cities are not. You are watching human cultures readjust according to a a set of laws that can be characterized as "Emergent". This process on the grand scale is only several hundred years old relative to the growth of civilization which is likely 10,000 years in the making. It may be that in modern society there is a minimum population necessary to form a viable cluster. Certainly the maximum is a big number (San Paulo, Mexico city, etc.)
1
Intriguing perspective, the idea that collapse comes from within. I live in North Dakota and hear people in small towns complain that the towns are disappearing, yet those same people will shun the local stores and go, instead, to Walmart. Most are unaware that they are part of the problem, defending their actions by stating that the local stores charge too much and offer too little. It’s difficult to persuade them that their behavior is causing the high prices, meager offerings, closure of shops, and eventual evaporation of their town.
106
Even if ALL residents of a town agreed to only buy local, the local businesses could not compete with Amazon, Walmart, on line etc. The problem for local towns is they lack scale which is the golden goose for AMZ WMT on line etc. Hence cities/towns are selling their souls to get a piece of Amazon action...
1
Good to see your comment. My husband and I are from St. Thomas and Grafton, north of you, respectively. When I was growing up, a shopping trip to Grand Forks was a once every two months or so “big deal”. My parents bought almost everything we needed on Grafton’s main street. Now, people think nothing of driving and even commuting to Grand Forks on an almost daily basis. All of the stores I grew up with in Grafton are gone.
My mother in law refused to shop for groceries at the small Hartz store in St. Thomas because the prices were so high. She drove to Grafton. She then complained when the Hartz store had to close and there was no place to get groceries in St. Thomas. Her absolutely favorite shopping experience was the Walmart in Grand Forks. Her wish was that Grafton would get one.
St. Thomas has a school. I believe without it, St. Thomas would disappear and become nothing but potato warehouses.
Anyway, thanks for giving me a reason to comment (even if it is not especially relevant to Mr. Krugman’s column). I have fond memories of Grafton and the stores that filled its main street. Fond memories of Grand Forks too.
2
Well, I guess I am fortunate that I am able to leave my small town and venture to the big city - Montreal for instance, is the closest and I get the added adventure that it is in a foreign country, ie. different money, French-speaking. I love it. But do I love to cross that border and return to small-town Vermont. Sometimes in Middlebury, the traffic is so bad it reminds me of driving in Delhi or Kolkata and say a small prayer that at least the air is cleaner, for now anyway.
7
I wonder how reliable generalizations are in a modern, complex economy. Rochester, NY, for example, has a great university, which has seeded start-up technology companies, as happened in Silicon Valley or around Route 128 near Boston and MIT. Youngstown, Ohio, on the other hand, has fallen on hard times, because the steel mills closed. Whether it could revive is uncertain. Much depends on the energy of its political and business leaders. If they could work with local universities and technical centers, take advantage of low labor costs, and apply tax policies wisely, they might be able to attract advanced technological start-ups. A lot depends, as always, on the ingenuity and energy of individuals, such as a John Jacob Bausch.
9
In the case of Rochester, which came first, the city or the technologically focused universities? I am confident much of RIT and U of R's success was fueled by and involved the leading edge companies located there. Much as Silicon Valley is a natural offshoot and feedback loop to Stanford.
Colleges and universities are also the life force for many smaller cities and towns--bringing in new money, young people, and companies.
1
Rochester's great university is almost entirely the work of the Eastman Kodak Company. The company diminished, leaving the university great and feeding the optical industry and optical enterprise within the federal government.
This is a very good view. I want a solution to the economic decline of small cities because those small cities produced Donald Trump's victory even tho he has no policies that will help them. My home town in upstate NY had 3 factories 50 years ago and still has 3 factories. Only then they employed 6,500 people and now they employ 2,000 people. Some of that was technology, some that was corporate takeovers moving management jobs to other places mostly in the sunbelt. Bottom line, my home town population declined 34%, the downtown is decimated, housing is stagnant or in decline and Trump won overwhelmingly there. Democrat's need to develop policies that will give these people hope that there will be something for their children to remain for. I left and have no regrets.
15
Ireland has a long tradition of relocating branches of government departments to rural towns outside Dublin for precisely this reason. It's all about adding an extra pillar to support the towns' jobs and adding numbers to those living, working and spending in these mid-rank towns. It sort-of works and helps support market towns that might otherwise wither. Relocation tends to draw those in the Civil Service originally from rural areas, or those looking for much cheaper housing. Could work at the State government level here.
56
And with modern telecommunications, it is easier to disperse government: both with records and meetings.
NY State has done this extensively and while it does work, it does not prevent population decline, a lack of opportunity and voters sufficiently angry to vote for Donald Trump because he gave them hope.
The initial premise was interesting. You started off with an idea to explore then you ran out gas.
Mid sized cities are just easier. Born and raised in NYC was an experience for me but nothing is easy in megacities. Life is about give and take. Yes, exploring the Met is great but for everyday life in terms of cost and time mid sized cities are just easier.
11
When I think of a smaller city that constantly remakes itself I think of Wooster, Ohio. A beautiful town about 60 miles south of Cleveland that has rebounded over and over. They lose Rubbermaid and restore all of the jobs within a decade with progressive tax abatement policies. A small rural town with a mix of agriculture and industry that should be the model for any small town that is looking for a blueprint of survival.
18
So the key ingredients to a small city's chances are connectivity and innovation. Policies associated with helping small cities develop these would typically be at the state and local levels, but with federal support from say Economic Development Administration, Commerce and the Highway Administration.
Connectivity is needed for both Internet and physical transit. Cities need high speed Internet and nearby points of access to highways, rail or air. If what they do can't move, it can't grow. If it can move, it can grow.
On the innovation side, rural populations need to understand that they need to look to the future and that their perspective is crucial to finding areas of innovation where they can succeed. They also need to study hard and learn new skills.
If the key to success is a roll of the dice, then we need more dice and more rolls. The policy is how to help people find the dice and learn to roll them. Let's go.
10
Well said!
1
Sorry to ruin an otherwise Trump free and interesting discussion, but we need to stay focused on the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Saving small citiies and towns from economic decline will not be easy but we need a better vision to offer red state voters than an academic shrug that it might be hopeless, and maybe you should move.
A connection to nature and the land, family, community, old friends, a sense of history and place, a five minute commute between work, home and our kids school; this is why I stayed in upstate NY. Not everyone wants to live in a big City.
What confounds me is red state voters have the power (by constitutional design) to help, but continue to vote against their own interests. For starters we need infrastructure investment for water, sewers, transportation, and broadband for rural ares. How can we argue with the success of past public investments like canals, rail roads, the interstate highways, rural electrification, public education, and research?
122
Connectivity seems to be the key concept and also a key paradox. Whoever is located close to an ocean, a river, an airport, a train line, and an interstate highway system has an obvious advantage for economic development. That's been true for centuries. Globalization is the ultimate expression of economic connectivity. However, national linkages that were once strong have had their vitality sapped by globalization. A decentralized national economy has been undercut by a decentralized global economy. The growth of the internet is a most recent addition to the story of connectivity. Ironically the decentralization of the web has strengthened the development of powerhouse nodes such as San Francisco, New York City, and Boston. Whoever controls the engines of artificial intelligence will be the most vital nodes in the economy.
Yet, people still have a strong desire to commune with nature. That's a value in itself worth pondering. Maybe small cities will slowly vanish, but that doesn't mean that people won't be dispersed throughout the land in the future. A new model of economic activity needs to replace the old model of cities vs. rural communities. Perhaps agriculture will lead the way to a rejuvenated decentralization where crops and other plants will be grown in climate -controlled structures that don't depend on the vicissitudes of local weather conditions.
7
Education and resulting innovation are keys to success in any city, or rural setting. The old saying is that necessity is the mother of invention, and indeed, a farmer might get an idea for a farming implement improvement, a salesman will hear about it and his company will make it and market it nationwide even worldwide. A company making it will prosper along with it's employees, the salesman, the farmer, the shippers, other salesmen, and on and on. Education and innovation are the keys to furthering all economies.
7
I agree, but in fact what comes from small cities and rural area in red and blue states alike is anti-intellectualism, anti-science and those able to push the social and economic fabrics forward are considered elite.
Small cities, like all places, have another marketable factor: lifestyle.
In my biased opinion, people benefit from a balance of congestion and open space. Crowding can be fun, and provide efficiencies as well as critical mass for opportunties in work and entertainment. But space also enhances life, from housing to leisure, and even provides psychological relief. Paul does not mention his current location, but many urban dwellers head to more rural settings for vacation, as do retirees (at least those who can afford to).
Like others, I suspect that mega-cities already aggravate as much as provide opportunity. What makes a good life? And what are people willing to pay for, in terms of money and time? Anecdotally, I see young people who graduate from the college in my small city who give up easy career opportunities elsewhere, presumably in big cities, in order to stay here for the lifestyle.
Quality of life matters, and should be a benefit of a successful, advanced economy. In some countries, migration to mega-cities is not a choice when rural areas literally starve. We have more choice.
38
Mr Krugman's sentence : " globalization and all that isn’t central to this story" is rubbish.
He needs to read the NY Times: " Becoming a Steelworker Liberated Her. Then Her Job Moved to Mexico"
Why did he stick it in. Because his record is a relentless promotion of globalzation, the opposition to which he termed "morally outrageous" when
those hit by it send him complaining letters:
To quote : " I guess I should have expected that this comment would generate letters along the lines of, "Well, if you lose your comfortable position as an American professor you can always find another job--as long as you are 12 years old and willing to work for 40 cents an hour."
Such moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization--of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries
Mr. Krugman's ill thought advocacy has done more harm to American Workers than any other economist, as it was eagerly picked up by the elite bend to profit from it.
6
I don't think your quotation has him saying opposition to globalization is "morally outrageous." He says people opposed to globalization feel moral outrage -- that is THEY (you) think HIS views are morally outrageous. Not the same thing, as you must know.
Analysis not advocacy.
1
If you want to read the interesting and challenging article @Woof is distorting, it's here: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_pra...
This is a thoughtful article. It reminds me, though, of when I bought my first car, a Subaru. Everyone claimed there was no way it could be as good — let alone better — than a G.M. model. General Motors enjoyed the greatest economies of scale, lowest costs, best engineers, etc. Or when I bought my first personal computer, an Apple. Everyone said I.B.M. was the way to go. The largest companies traditionally hit the wall sooner or later. The same could happen to metropolitan areas. How are congested cities going to replace their subway systems? How did Silicon Valley come from nowhere to become a hot ticket? Things change. People react.
6
Much appreciate the article. The plight of small town America should be of high interest, still home to a large but shrinking portion of the population depending on the definition of urban. Is there any receipe for turnaround? It appears not, as Mr. Krugman’s article would indicate. Eight years ago we returned to SC after 15 years and immediately noticed that once vibrant, not necessarily flourishing, small towns were decimated. I wish we had some answers. Would agree with Mr. Beard’s comments - the impact of globalization of which I am a proponent, must be considered.
6
This is a bit comparable to species disappearing from small remnants of the Amazon rain forest. While 'gambler's luck' can explain an individual species loss, the big picture is a large, complex, interdependent ecosystem which is dying.
Many of these small cities were once part of a thriving manufacturing region around the great lakes. To the extent that that former region could be described as an ecosystem, that ecosystem has moved to China. In a global economy, there is little reason to locate a factory along the great lakes anymore.
If not located in a dying region, small cities have their advantages. Lower land costs. Lower housing costs. Less urban congestion. Less bureaucratic government. More community spirit. More committed employees. If the US bounces back, the bounce will be biggest in the small cities.
9
Please keep ruminating. This was a fascinating and refreshing take on our modern day economic situation. Deserves a lot more thought, but makes me thing of the need for intermediate technology that is less efficient and more labor intensive than what the general push is in our economy. It would be a more controlled form of capitalism, where unbridled profit was not the major mantra.
8
I am surprised that you didn't mention Amazon and the online economy. How can any local store survive when Amazon is cheaper, has a much greater selection, and delivers right to your door (which saves a lot of time and transportation costs)?
30
Well, some people do see the downside of encouraging monopolies and refuse to set foot in a Walmart, pursue local sources for things that are cheaper at Amazon, and understand that by doing so, they support local businesses and pay state and local taxes to support their local governments. So you save a few bucks, but the local Walmart employees are abused and underpaid, while the profits flow back to a handful of execrable hereditary billionaires in Arkansas whose idle hobbies include buying and selling our government.
There are a few things changing in our societies that likely will affect the future of urbanization that the professor didn't consider: the aging population and the less industrial depedence on workers with automated production systems. The elderly don't work but use services that will flourish where they are: entertainment, healthcare etc. With a production industry with less need for a workforce on the premises, workers will move towards service businesses or intellectual work that you can perform from home. Both these trends will drive people to live where quality of life is high and the cost is low. This is the less densely populated areas, i.e. smaller cities, which will adapt to this trend.
15
What is missing in both Krugman's and Badger's articles is environmental analysis. Megacities may be a global trend that seems to be, for the time being, unstoppable. On the one hand, it is might be a better environmentally to have a high density population centralized in one area, rather than spread out over the landscape. On the other hand, megacities, especially those suffering from very rapid population growth, suffer from failing and overburdened infrastructure - water and wastewater treatment and distribution, garbage disposal, public transportation and roads, public health care. Environmental regulations don't exist or function in most parts of the world, and are rapidly being eroded in the U.S.; Europe is hanging in there, but barely. The result - air and water pollution, poorly treated drinking water,. Cities with high population densities that lack good medical care and quality public health systems that can dispense vaccines to huge populations are at risk of experiencing the worst of an epidemic. These issues are being exacerbated by climate change, and are already having negative impacts. There are plenty of examples: Bejing, Mexico city, Jakarta, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Houston, Cairo, to name a few. Megacities are not sustainable, not with current population and environmental trends.
11
Yes, when you look at urbanization vs rural living and the environment, there are pluses and minuses. The only solution can be reducing population in both. However, the Paul Krugman's of the world believe we need more people to grow and succeed. I have never figured out why they believe this. Last time I checked, the planet was 24,000 miles in circumference and no economist was forecasting an increase in size.
1
I am not an economist or a geographer. I understand Prof. Krugman's argument that the modern economy has upended central place theory. Still, I remain hopeful that smaller cities will endure and even flourish. I suppose that all 326 million Americans could cram into a handful of the nation's largest cities, even perhaps even pack into New York City and drive real estate prices even higher. But I also believe that the contemporary economy and internet technology makes decentralization possible, and that it is no loner necessary to live in a megacity to have access to cosmopolitan culture. Also, people still have to eat. As a result, the agriculture and the physical environment still impose real constraints on humans' behavior and on society. To put it plainly, people still have to eat. So I am not giving up on the possibility of decentralization or the future of smaller cities yet. While I don't like to predict the future, I will venture that small towns will decline and vanish, but small cities will endure.
19
It sure seems to me that Mr. Krugman fell out of a boat and failed to hit water on this one.
Can anyone explain, for the purposes of his analysis, the difference between what he refers to (without defining them) "small cities" and everyone else who doesn't live in or near a big city?
There is no difference. There are many places in this country - the vast red swath, "heartland", that is imploding because we have outsourced our infrastructure. OK more accurately: We have outsourced everything we can and refused to finance maintenance and expansion of our own physical infrastructure.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the jobs this economy chooses to ignore would be the exact remedy for what ails "small cities" - the rest of the country, Paul. That vast swath.
This focus on big cities versus small is simply too narrow. It's the financial and corporate elite versus the entire rest of the world.
31
I think you're missing the enormous reach of globalization, even in the most rural of places in the US. When the sustaining foundation of our local economy --- manufacture of textiles and furniture -- were thrust overseas in a fairly short time, our area has yet to recover. Our two largest employers are now nonprofits, healthcare and education. Tourism is the only lifeline we have as far as economic growth. Our state government continually funnels all economic opportunity from incoming businesses to the wealthy urban areas, leaving us to fend for ourselves. It is doubtful that we will ever again see gainful employment numbers at a competitive wage. Our young people who are able to go to college never return. Such is the fate of much of rural America.
28
And your state government seems to have been obsessed lately by trying to restrict voting rights and access to public restrooms.
I wonder if there isn't an obverse to Krugman's analysis, which is obvious as far as it goes. Globalism has made distance irrelevant, so it should also make placement of cities less relevant as well. He mentions the social reasons for smaller cities as an addendum, but if I were raising children, a well organized small city with a decent school system would be mighty appealing. My son works in Palo Alto and manages teams in Salt Lake City, and two eastern European cities. Given the housing crisis in California, I wonder if his company will some day move its headquarters to Salt Lake City, or maybe an even smaller place. At the moment, the talent is around Palo Alto, but when employees have to raise their kids in a trailer parked at the end of the cul de sac, they might be convinced to move elsewhere.
11
Not sure if you are correct about this (some data would help), but if you are, this should concern us all. America’s megacities foster greater inequality. The cost of living in our most “successful” cities means those on the bottom struggle simply to find and keep shelter. Recent technological revolutions make it possible for teams of workers to communicate constantly and effectively across space, and companies like Amazon might do better if instead of seeking to identify a second mega headquarters they maintained one large center and then dispersed the rest of their workforce into smaller satellites in medium and small sized cities. Surely such locations would be attractive to a significant portion of their workers, who would swap access to the trendy restaurants and coffee shops for reasonable commutes, affordable housing, and family friendly, human scale communities.
10
Small cities (small towns, the definition, seems arbitrary) still serve an agricultural base, though not in the same way as in generations past. Grain milling and other crop processing is moving to larger cities and costal sites.
Farms are getting larger. Efficient farmers, today, typically net about $50 per acre in an average year. A 1,000 acre farm provides an income of about $50,000 and that is sufficient to keep a farmer on the land. So, that 1,000 acre farm is an economically viable unit. That is up from about one section (640 acres, one square mile) in the '70s and '80s. There are other factors such as the crops grown on the farm and supplemental employment opportunities that affect the economic viability of farms.
That means that a township (land survey unit comprising 36 sections) that supported 36 economically viable farms in 1980 supports only about 23 today. The small cities that provide farm services, retail outlets, schools, libraries, medical care, governmental services serve about 1/3 fewer customers today than in 1980.
19
Regions of the US differ in fertility and length of growing season. That is, the analysis offered in paragraph 2 does not obtain throughout the US.
For once I disagree. We live in an era of decentralization in which I see small cities becoming more important. The examples cited fit nicely into the prior two K-waves and are inappropriate for the K-wave now forming. Small cities have the exact thing that mega cities don’t have and can’t get. They have space, real estate. In a decentralizing era and one in which the human population is still increasing—there will be an additional 2.5 billion humans sharing the planet by mid-century—we need every bit of space to raise crops and livestock as well as people. The missing component is energy. Raising crops in greenhouses is energetically expensive and can’t be done well right now. However, the energy paradigm now taking off that generates usable electricity and heat from solar, wind, and geothermal will be a perfect fit for redistributing society back to the smaller cities. Also, in a decentralized era look for rail to out compete air travel which will open up the middle of the continent as a strategic meeting place of east and west. Over the next 30 years much of what’s in this piece will necessarily change and small cities will shine. I cover this in “The Age of Sustainability.”
35
"small cities survived and grew by becoming industrial centers, generally specialized in some cluster of industries held together by the Marshallian trinity of information exchange, specialized suppliers, and a pool of labor with specialized skills."
With the advent of Corporate VPNs and teleconferencing, the need to be in an industrial center for a means to make a living is greatly diminished. All you need is a laptop, an internet connection and a headset.
My wife and I grew up in Cleveland, moved to Orange County, California for a number of years and finally to a small city in western Michigan in 2004 - and despite the snow, we couldn't be happier - the crime, congestion, pollution and cost of living make our recent retirements nearly idyllic.
6
Denis,
China the center of world production contradicts that assertion. Many cities grew in the lapse of two decades there to the detriment of rural population and small farm production. Centralization and concentration of capital have been the constant for 500 years and with it larger concentration of labor. The financial character of western capitalism is a symptom of its decline perhaps including with it the fate of large and small cities. Unaffordable rents and unoccupied luxury condos may be an indication of the exuberance before the ruin.
Michael Roberts has an interesting take on k waves and the possibility of another crash within the next few years.
1
What number of human beings are sustainable on this planet? Many of those additional 2.5 billion people will be born in the equatorial belt where deserts are expanding and temperatures rising to levels that kill in hours, and they will probably migrate.
1
The jobs in my small city are increasingly concentrated in three areas: healthcare, education (K-12 and, fortunately, college), and various government jobs (police, courts, social services). Many of these jobs depend on government money (federal, state, local) to keep it all going, and the government jobs and school jobs still provide good pensions. Ironically, many of the people working at these jobs are "against" government and usually vote republican. And they don't see the irony.
454
Agreed, a lot of the Republican states are "taker" states, getting more than $1 back from the Federal government for every $1 of taxes.
They vote for the Republican economic policies that hurt them.
How do we get them to understand this?
3
They’re often against it because they see those people benefiting. You know, Those People.
6
They don't see that the one third of the economy they comprise steadies all the rest of it. It is the most awesome display of cluelessness in the US. I can only figure that all the guns keep smarter people out of government work.
2
Agriculture is always going to be an important part of the economy. While it's share of GDP has dropped as a percentage of the total over the last hundred years, it's also had the largest productivity gains outside of maybe computer processing. At some point productivity gains in Ag are going to slow down, population is going to increase and demand for food and healthier food is going to go up especially as consumers become more educated or less propagandized about what they should eat. I'll call a bottom and look for a resurgence in small towns over the next 20 years.
13
At least as a control on this interesting and important topic, I suggest expanding data class into Europe. Norwich, eg, is around 1/4 million & without the extent of suburban sprawl of US cities, as villages around tend to have distinct natures and histories. It's 100 mi. from London, with half-hrly train service but not the kind of highway systems we find in North America. It, too, has a long(er) history of economic and population development, & is diversified in shops (incl. originals), plus has university, modern hospital, good theater. It's kept history & modernized. N. America needs more such. Eg, Vancouver, like London, is too expensive for many young, able people, and could use Norwich-type small cities around it.
14
In 1500 the river cities London and Norwich were near equivalents in population.
London is closer to Southampton, a port that can handle the large ships that were important from 1800 onwards. Presumably this accounts for its larger population now in addition to the proximity to the channel port, Dover.
Delivery of health care is one area of growth that is sustaining small cities and contributing to their growth. The delivery system requires a minimum level of dispersal, so it cannot be efficiently delivered from large cities. So, hospitals in large cities are becoming regional centers of excellence, routinely providing world class treatment in specific sectors, while small cities are improving quality of health care for treatment of trauma, routine health monitoring and initial diagnosis, elder care, nursing homes, and home care in order to attract the middle class and upper middle class retired population. These folks need to visit big cities occasionally, but do not need to live there. Therefore small cities will not disappear, at least not until the demographic trend towards an older population is reversed.
8
let's not dismiss globalization altogether. I lived in Ohio for a few years and watched as the machine tool industry disappeared - a consequence partly of globalization.
we also have agricultural supports which, starting with the Nixon years, pushed large mono crops over diverse crops. monocrops require fewer laborers, and less support.
the details are too much to ignore. the percentages may be small, but reducing a local economy by a few percent is real if the percent lost is your job.
6
I spent 40 years working in the machine tool industry. That industry went overseas because 30% of the workers did as little work as possible. Don't blame globalization, blame the guys who punched in and hid.
worked up to shipping manager (and parts cleaner, polisher). i don't know. the US has always labored under a wage differential. if our jobs went to Germany I agree, but they went to China and Mexico.
"Over time, however, agriculture has become ever less important as a share of the economy...." How is this possible? Through industrial agriculture, which provides food that is bland, poisoned with pesticides and antibiotics, stripped of nutrients and flavor. At some point we have to pay the piper. At some point the cities will be wishing the countryside was populated with real farmers on real farms.
23
Absolutely.
1
It is true that big cities are the most resource efficient ways to organize a society. For example, on average, big cities consume about 10% less energy per capita than small cities or villages. Having said this, the cost of living and in particular for housing tend to be significantly higher in big cities than in small cities/villages. This, in combination with IT tools that allow for work from home schemes may stop the secular decline of small cities. In addition, there may be societal benefits associated with living in smaller places as they tend to better nurture family bonds and social networks.
13
Perhaps someone can run the numbers on small cities with large universities, especially universities with large teaching/research hospitals. Compare to places like Rochester MN with a large teaching/research hospital but without a large university.
6
The analysis makes sense to me. I would add that historically the spacing of cities was also a function of how far a person could walk in a day. With cars in the equation, the grid of small cities is much denser than it needs to be. That will not kill small cities in and of itself, but makes it that much harder to recover from a patch of bad luck.
6
The answer is to get rid of (or at least, reasonably limit) the cars, then, not to trash the dense, walkable grid!
2
Very interesting observations which brought to mind for me the watchmaking cities of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds in the Jura region in Switzerland. It's story is similar is some ways to Rochester.
The watchmaking industry was created there in the 17th century when a local watchmaker persuaded the farmers to manufacture watch components during the very long (and cold) winters. Karl Marx, in fact, used La Chaux-de-Fonds to illustrate his theories on the division of labour. The two towns never got to be very large, but were comfortable, orderly (it is Switzerland after all) and prosperous.
Fast forward to today. The watchmaking industry is in slow decline as is the population. It's hard to imagine other industries taking advantage of the particular skills of the local population, and since the area is somewhat remote (and cold), continued out-migration seems likely. Today, the towns feel flat and tired. A good microcosm perhaps of the professor's notion that historical luck "eventually tends to run out."
18
While globalism might not be central to this story, logistics should be. Cities have always competed with each other, for investment, government authority, talent, markets, etc. But the geographical zone of competition is defined by the cost and time required to access resources and deliver products. Intermodal shipping by truck, rail, air and sea and the proliferation of on line services means that the companies in a city can’t be just good enough to compete in their region, as they once might have. For a city to prosper, it has to have a critical mass of companies that compete all across the cost effective logistical reach of their products and services, which now is global for just about anything. The exception being cities, like DC, that are fueled by government offices, lobbyists and the like instead of competing on value added work.
4
500 years ago there were no big cities except Venice, Florence, and other commercial centers in Flandes (however, they did not surpass the million mark). Paris and London were on the ascendancy.
With the development of capitalist production (its centralization and concentration) cities were developing and growing as centers of production. Agriculture was important and most people lived off its products and it provided raw material for industry (cotton, wool, etc). There was also the extractivist industry (coal principally).
However, the growing ratio between constant and variable capitals (machines versus people), or the increase of labor productivity since then, has facilitated the migration to urban centers. So the relative decrease of labor in regards to machinery explains some of that rural depopulation.
If you look at the so called third world subsistence agriculture, it has been in decline due to in many cases the violent dispossession of peasants lands, which have cleared lands for transnational agricultural conglomerates. See Colombia’s case in the last few decades. It sort of replicates the enclosure or violent dispossession of English peasants during the 16th century.
Now, climate change caused by the overproduction in general and in particular of co2 threatens agriculture and of course the disruption of industrial processes. We still need food and clothing to survive in the big cities. The cities still depend on the rural production.
10
There were big cities in China and the Middle East like Constantinople, but they had a different development and depended on feudal organization of social production. Their growth nowadays correspond to industrial development. China’s big cities mushroomed recently.
The Midwest and west in the US developed after the end of the civil war, which saw the birth of industrial agriculture and the industries based on it. The industries that produced combines, tractors, etc. At the same time, small farmers progressively succumbed to agribusiness. Notice the surge in the futures market in cities like Chicago.
6
An interesting argument, Paul. I would caution that in the classic gambler's ruin scenario, a "fair" coin is assumed and results are skewed quite strongly if this condition is not met. In this application, such "special cases" as college towns or immigrant destinations could be modeled as perturbations in the coin's probabilities but the magnitude would be pretty hard to estimate and likelihoods of survival produced by the model would depend quite strongly on them.
6
Agriculture has not become less important. Rather to our detriment, the farmer has become less important. Big Ag/Big Food does not need small cities. They run the operations from central locations, and control everything coming going and produced on the "farms". People need cities as a centers of info, technology, culture, and community. Big Ag/Food does not need any of these things because it is more like a machine, not a human, and does not want the humans it controls have any exchange of info or ideas.
69
I agree that big Ag is pretty soulless and also produces bad food although it is cheaper.
Cheaper may be just in the short run. In the long run, we have the costs of obesity and cancer.
More and more of the professional class, which is to say those with a good standard of living, are moving away from big Ag.
We are buying grass fed and local.
It may help a little.
It is certainly healthier for those of us who can afford it.
1
Ceteris paribus. You're forgetting that oil is finite and that the sky is already too full of CO2. Transportation costs are likely to skyrocket in the next few decades, meaning that cities will increasingly be forced to meet their needs for food and other goods as locally as possible. The economic circumstances of small cities may look bleak today, but that doesn't mean the situation will not be turning around soon.
5
So green energy and batteries,, etc. which I see growing exponentially (even if still a small percentage of first world economies) aren't going to be a major "thing" in a few decades or so?
It seems to me that they are. And so certainly in 3 to 5 decades, the idea that transport HAS to be ruinous due to CO2 production just doesn't follow.
I'm an AGW alarmist -- I just think things will change radically due to economics (See Tony Seba et al -- though I think his transformation prediction by 2030 is two decades too aggressive).
3
We are 7 billion people on a planet made for about 2. The small city’s only future is to be absorbed by the larger city. I grew up in a small city with a 2 lane freeway running both ways though it about 20 miles away from a larger city. Most people I knew had local jobs. Few people commuted into the large city not far away. That freeway is now 5 lanes each way, and the majority of people I know work in the big city. Essentially, the big city has consumed the small cities around it. I think that’s the new trend.
9
Many small cities aren't imploding and some large ones have. Detroit? The idea that they are somehow "obsolete" does not seem to be supported by observation. There are a lot of small cities that are thriving for the same reason large cities do, they have successful businesses that attract people by creating opportunities.
You won't find many small cities that were built around agriculture and are now obsolete. This is partially because agriculture didn't really ever disappear. It was transformed by technology that replaced many small family farmers with much larger operations. That hurt the small towns that served family farmers, but was not a huge hit for small cities that served the larger agriculture industry as a whole.
Perhaps equally important, many of these small cities developed relatively diverse economies. The cities, large and small, that have been hammered are largely those that were dependent on a single industry, like steel or textiles, that simply disappeared into the world economy. Youngstown comes to mind.
In truth, I wouldn't worry about small cities becoming obsolete. I would worry about places like New York that depend on taking a cut out of commerce as middle men. The finance, retail, communications and entertainment industries are all ripe for having technology shed that middle layer or have it drift overseas.
Moreover, the dense urban business center that Manhattan offers does not seem to serve the current business model of suburban campuses.
28
Many small towns are toast without some special gimmick, such as tourism or a college. But so are some aspects of very large cities such as NYC, particularly their elevated real estate costs. At one time, very large cities were essential for finance, entertainment, culture, and society. Those places could command high prices for real estate since so many people could not live elsewhere. This provided a fertile environment for developers and speculators. But like so many speculations, a bubble can form and then pop. And it will, as more things can be done and enjoyed in more places.
The very large cities will always have their attractions and delights for visitors and a select population of residents. But they will not be the sine qua non of a productive rewarding life.
7
That's right. It's very much about trade-offs. I'll give up various museums, the opera, etc. being local, if in exchange, I get a lot of economic and personal advantages in return.
After all, there are vacations, TV, the internet, etc. -- this isn't the 19th century.
6
Detroit is a special example of a one-industry town. It and its surroundings ran downhill because of competition in the car industry. It basically shows that "small city" should be used to refer to the diversity of the economic base, not to the number of people in it.
The Professor seems to be arguing that we need to figure out a way to let small cities die. He is too polite to utter the d-word, but death is the natural end of any organism that is starved of sustenance. Many people receive artificial nutrition before they die. Indeed, some people live for extended periods of time due not only to artificial nutrition but a whole assortment of machines and pumps. Is it too impolite to suggest we (metaphorically) also do this with cities when governments pump in dollars in dying and decaying cities, fervently hoping, incorrectly, that the city will spring back to life? Is it wrong to think that when the results of the initial set of investments are not good, governments worry about sunk costs, double down, and pump in even more? How do governments decide which cities to try to rescue and which cities to abandon?
5
How about letting free market economics, and taxation that residents agree to pay make such decisions? I know - perish the thought for liberals to just let such things happen, but they could.
Meanwhile, how much should taxpayers from central red states pay to help NYC fix its hapless subway, deal with the rising ocean and its coastal issues, etc? Let's not pretend that the 435 clowns in the beltway aren't all fighting for as much funding for THEIR fiefdom as they can possibly get.
Unfortunately these decisions are too often made by the old, white men of Congress. We have a grand and rare example of presidential leadership in Detroit but ....
Are you really suggesting that states like yours are subsidizing NYC? It is - or should be - common knowledge that in the ledger of where federal taxes are raised and spent, the net flow of federal dollars is from blue to red states.
1
"Over time, however, agriculture has become ever less important as a share of the economy, and the rural population has correspondingly declined as a determinant of urban location."
Agriculture may have become 'less important', but it is still essential: We all have to eat. Looking ahead as energy prices increase and transportation becomes more expensive, local farming will become increasingly viable. And desirable. I see more and more farmers' markets in the area I live in and more and more support for these markets.
The Gambler's Ruin wildcard for us might well be climate chaos. Diversified agriculture is needed for food security and is not as vulnerable to total loss as large, mono crops. I appreciate those I meet who are working the land and providing us with healthy food, and I hope that more and more will be drawn to it ~ God bless the farmer.
89
It seems you haven't mentioned women's changing role in society. If you are a house wife with 3-4 kids you probably have different wants to a full time working mom with 1-2 children. The former would prefer a larger house with close community -ideal in a small town or city, the second would appreciate a choice of careers and cultural stimulation - big cities increasingly fit the bill. Certainly that is true of my family.
8
Perhaps a totally new way of thinking is needed in accordance with the changes of life styles. Instead of thinking of an industry to support the population, think of a population to support the town.
Consider a population of creative people, and others who primarily work on computers, who love the quiet and serene environment of nature, and do not need the proximity of a school or movie theater to live comfortably. Perhaps an older population.
Since bricks and mortar businesses are no longer needed to provide jobs, or to service the population;a return to the country store and gas station may be all that is needed to provide the basics, food and fuel; good internet and telephone access, Fedex and UPS routes, and a very small police and fire department. No expensive municipal facilities to support.
Rather than trying to save dying small cities, maybe only plans for large cities and tiny towns should exist. Existing small industrial cities should remain only as long as they are self supporting.
5
But where is the sense of community in this model? Where's the population diversity? No public library? Sounds like the worst suburb where everyone is the same and hides in their houses.
2
150 years ago, people came to America to exploit the open, cheap, productive farmland in relation to Europe. Somehow, that spirit of mobility and diversity got corrupted into thinking that towns are owed a living and existence. Heartland universities are being defunded and their missions to diversify state economies with research and development are being weakened. They need to rewisen as to their competitive possibilities or refind mobility. Also immigrant diversity.
6
Interesting. But wouldn't the same gambler's ruin apply to decentralized things?
In another vein, I wonder what percentage of red states fit the Gambler's ruin idea proposed here-- All of them? The bitterness is then lack of opportunity. that is ll pervasive geographically.
5
My city, San Francisco, recently bought a McDonalds, so they could tear it down and build affordable housing on the site. Affordable housing is needed because "megacity" housing tends to be expensive. Cost for that plot of land: $15.5 million. In a small city in the US, it would have cost $15,000, tops, not that you'd need to even build subsidized housing there.
Meanwhile, most of my co-workers, especially those with children, have a commute of 1-2 hours to the MegaCity Jobs Zone. Each way. And traffic his horrendous.
It seems deeply irrational, in a country as big as ours, to pack in like sardines into a small number of such densely populated places.
178
Most large, famous cities such as SF are where they are because of circumstances and physical features that made them desirable and it continues. Much like a unique and priceless work of art highly sought after. Obviously, SF is priced right for those that have the money, others be dammed. The Rich have always had the abode high on the hill.
4
Housing affordability for the truly middle class in the S.F. Bay area has hit insanity levels - impossible to find. What kind of life is a 3 hr + daily commute to live somewhere that won't bankrupt you? You should read the recent N.Y. Times article about hundreds of thousands leaving the state every year for these reasons, not to mention one of the highest state income tax rates in the country. Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Soon, all that will be left in the Bay Area are those millenial yuppies riding to Google or Facebook in those paid for, giant , double decker buses, faces buried in their devices. And you can bet that they won't stick around long once they start having families. CA dream died long ago, with the Beach Boys fantasy- surfing, endless summer, and hot cars. Back then, maybe a middle class family could make it. Hear that giant sucking sound? Last one out, take down the flag and lock the doors. The bubble will burst.
4
That's been a question I've asked my entire adult life. Why do employers cram all of the affluent jobs into dense urban areas in which housing becomes unaffordable and transportation becomes a daily nightmare, especially when so many of the good jobs are now in technology? You have extremely profitable corporations whose products connect us all together via the internet, yet they cluster in very tight geographical locations.
Yes, I know about the job-jumping phenomenon, where a lot of the younger achievers have as little loyalty to any given employer as employers have to them. As such, it makes a certain sense to be able to jump from job to job without relocating, but the downside is the heavy price of astronomical housing costs and brutal commutes, let alone the inherent disruptions and long-term uncertainty.
Meanwhile, perfectly livable communities in the regional periphery wither, shrink, board up their downtowns, and devolve into reactionary politics.
3
But Mr Krugman, if you live in New York isn't everything else a small city? I recently read a news item that a burned bagel closed a portion of the St. Louis Airport and the author was puzzled because he mused that the only way to make a St. Louis bagel better was to burn it. Culinary art in St. Louis in not my expertise, but I have lived in small cities and New York City. Both are acquired tastes and both have lived through their obituary notices more than once (I believe Thomas Jefferson wrote one for NYC). And I for one will be most happy to escape the coming legion of robots aimed at megacities to do all this work we are told they will perform (parking Uber vehicles?). And because the small cities won't be able to afford them. And I do enjoy the conversations in Spanish that predominate the small city where I live, especially since Herr Bausch didn't speak much English either!
7
Economic geography can be complicated by other factors, including politics. I have spent 8 years teaching university-level chemistry in Longyearbyen, Svalbard (look it up), a town of about 2000. During that time, the largest employer, a coal mining company in business for more than 100 years, went bankrupt, eliminating up to 400 jobs. Yet because of its location, the town survives as a tourist location. Tourism can not replace the lost mining jobs, but the politics of the location, close to Barentsburg (look it up), leaves Svalbard officials little choice but to prop up Longyearbyen against being displaced by aggressors from elsewhere. So even when the resources are gone, politicians may decide that a small town is worth supporting with a contrived economy. A gamble on a contrived economy is a weighted coin toss that will be funded by taxpayers.
11
Ordinary peoples' quality of life cannot be left to market forces and chance; we only go around once; a good government; one that honors some sort of humanist social contract, must provide an adequate safety net and guarantee all of us a bit of happiness as we pass through.
32
Paul,
Michael Pollan believes we are in an interlude where we have used fossil fuels to make it possible to cut ourselves off from the land. This talk in San Francisco is now 9 years old, but he makes some convincing points about long term conditions, relating them to climate change and healthcare.
See http://longnow.org/seminars/02009/may/05/deep-agriculture/
4
Back during my days with a large drug and chemical company I was assigned to a plant-site team to find and develop a factory in the South. I was taken aside by one of the town's wealthy and prominent businessmen. "Surely, you won't pay the kind of wages paid in your headquarters city " he said. "That would upset our wage scales." We "got the message," and so moved on with our search. Small town thinking and small town culture can present problems.
37
If these premises were true, Flint, Michigan and Rochester, New York should be surrounded by depopulated agricultural lands which don't count in Mr. Krugman's scheme. Instead they are ringed by comparatively affluent white towns and exurban areas to which resources have flowed. Hardly a game of pure chance.
18
Some people will always prefer living in a small city. People that live in the suburbs of large cities can spend hours each day commuting. A resident of a suburb near a smaller city can be almost anywhere worth going in less than 30 minutes. Big cities are fine for a visit if you want to take in a few shows, visit some museums/galleries, and eat in some fine dining restaurants, but the sheer weight of humanity begins to wear on a person fairly quickly.
53
Rural areas have two basic economies, farming and extraction. They may process what they produce to some extent, but that is often done more economically else where due to cheap transportation and economies of scale. So there tends to be no other economic activity other than small support roles.
What the cities have, and larger ones have more, is networking and concentrations of populations which make the support roles viable. Plus innovation is a iterative process, and works better with more input (people) leading to faster evolution of the best ideas.
It all feeds on itself. Rural areas will continue to feed us and provide raw materials, but in the end that is all they will ever be, since the evolutionary innovation train has picked up speed and left the station long ago.
5
I've believed for sometime that the Founding Fathers somewhat saw the future of American states as one in which each state would have a vibrant economy and durable population, yet may never all be equal in size. They therefore created the Electoral College and the 2 Senators system. It's obvious for a number of reasons, many of which Krugman points to, this did not happen. Between East Coast and West Coast there exist a number of states which are not powerhouses to our National Economy. It, to me, seems reasonable to now do away with the Electoral College or (more easily) move that each state alots its delegates to the winner of the popular vote. For some unexplained (?) reason, I'm remaining partial to the two Senators.
3
The economic reason for smaller cities to enable a lower cost, higher quality of life experience for businesses and residents.
Try to locate a major manufacturing plant in Boston or San Francisco. Even if possible it would be tremendously expensive, and require workers to endure 2 hrs+ of daily commute.
Locate the plant in Charleston (like Boeing did for the Dreamliner) and the cost advantages for the business and and cost of living advantages for the workers are a huge boost.
Surprising that Dr. Krugman could not think of that.
17
Dear Dr. Krugman,
These economic histories always make more sense looking backwards than forwards. I can remember not that long ago, 15 to 20 years, when distributed computing and the internet were going to give people so much flexibility in where to live that it was the mega-cities which were going to have trouble staying relevant.
On vacation, I suggest you stick to your vacation. Avoid all thoughts about economics.
Happy new year.
11
Small cities are wonderful to live in, including and especially places like Rochester. There are various interesting communities there of fine arts, music, science and medicine, and it's affordable relative to any big city in the country.
I think the possibility for it (and others like it) to flourish again requires a focus and investment in developing the aspects of it that would motivate interesting, smart people to want to stay and/or move there. Instead of trying to give big tax breaks to big companies, NY State should offer smaller (less expensive) incentives and financial assistance to small companies, with an eye towards developing artisanal enterprises and whatever existing industrial specialities already exist. If NY State put in a SUNY school in Rochester specializing in something like nursing, it would be a force multiplier building on the city's existing medical research industry (and help alleviate the shortage of nursing training schools both in the state and country).
Rochester (and other cities like it) could focus on developing a particular part of downtown in a way so that people can live there without having to own a car. Build walkable neighborhoods (with heated sidewalks for wintry weather), with affordable, human-scaled living, working and fun spaces. There's plenty of old industrial buildings and parking lots that could be vertically developed that way.
Finally, legalize recreational marijuana in NY: its smaller cities would become hipster havens.
19
The University of Rochester has a long-established nursing school.
1
Also add urban agriculture.
As technology allows more people to work physically disconnected from their business, small cities and towns can become magnets for lifestyle and a sense of connection with our neighbors. Maybe that sounds old fashioned, but I think that it appeals to a wide swath people, particularly some of the new millennials.
99
However, affordable, reasonably comfortable, efficient public transportation has to be up-and-running so that residents in one small town can do business and socialize with residents in others, even distant ones, as well as with city dwellers. It's quite possible that the battle for infrastructure in many countries was lost a decade or more ago.
4
Self-driving cars and buses may be the perfect solution to efficient public transportation in and between smaller cities.
1
Not if the small town does not like 'the others': non-locals. I am Caucasian but not borne here and experienced it first hand.
3
Paul, I'd like to expand a little on your thought process. True, some companies grew organically in small towns, but that's rare IMO. Many times the plant is placed there by choice. I worked for a large US multinational, and am familiar about how they went about choosing locations for their factories. They were looking for several things; they wanted the town to be small but not too small. Say a minimum of 5000 people, but NOT more than 25,000. (NO big cities, where labor was more likely to organize). They wanted to be the dominant employer in town. The place where everyone wanted to work, if they had the chance. They wanted loyalty. They wanted the town to have a variety of skill sets; operations, technicians, pipe fitters, electricians, etc. that could operate, maintain, and expand the plant. If you met their criteria, you might win the small town lottery. They would bring 500-1500 good manufacturing jobs at above average wages for that area. Everyone seemed happy until mid-1990's, when free trade agreements entered the picture. Management discovered they could pay much less than our minimum wage for the same work in lower cost countries like Mexico, China, Vietnam and return the surplus to shareholders and executives. The factory employed 500-1500 people, but there were at least an equal number of others that made their living off those who worked at the plant. The ecosystem surrounding the factory that developed over those 30 years was destroyed.
218
Laying the blame on free trade is bogus. Manufacturing started moving to low wage countries before those agreements. Case in point: on my first teaching job one of my colleagues was a Harvard educated fellow who had managed a large factory making electric motors, The factory went out of business, unable to compete with motors made elsewhere than the US. That was the late 1980s. There have never been tariffs high enough here to compensate for a 10:1 wage ratio.
4
The internet, starting in the mid 1990s, dramatically lowered the organizational cost and quality control of distant manufacture and supply chain management. The foreign stes already had substantial cost advantages. Whether the free trade agreements were critical is an open question.
Yes. I remember that in the early 1960s, everything made of plastic said 'made in Japan'.
2
Paul misses the obvious (not unusual and not at all “wonkish”). Towns and small cities arose because rural populations needed convenient access to affordable taverns and women of easy virtue. The problem with Nobel laureates is that they have a tendency to dive into their models and become ensnared in the weeds, not even sensible to the big picture. This happens with the Nobel-struck even on vacation.
But this observation challenges Paul’s basic thesis that we should do something about sustaining small cities even as they tend to implode these days for lack of continuing central purpose. No need to do anything extreme. Unless we re-settle most of America in our megacities, that would need to become gigacities and terracities, Americans will remain largely dispersed – a fact that presents endless frustration to liberals who are having such problems end-running our Constitution and the electoral structure it imposes to assure balanced representation. So long as they do, there always will be fairly high demand for taverns and women of easy virtue.
I hope Paul is having a restful vacation, and that he (and all of you) have a great New Year.
1
As a woman, I have little use for taverns or women of easy virtue (not that there's anything wrong with that). What would really be helpful is efficient and dependable train service--so that people could travel between cities, big and small, without the expense and hassle of flight. I yearn for the day when I will no longer have to take a plane anywhere in the USA. (Maybe driverless cars will fill in, but I would still prefer trains.)
10
carrobin:
Yes, but, then, since we're ruminating over trains, there's always Pelican flesh, that I'm told tastes like oily chicken.
Oh Richard, I would love to hear your defense of how both California and Wyoming get two senators in our most powerful house of Congress is somehow "balanced" representation. Population of Wyoming: 500k. Population of California: 40 million.
You are, to put it bluntly, flat out wrong. Americans are manifestly *not* "largely dispersed." Our political and electoral system takes our concentration on the coasts and urban centers and artificially disperses the power of individual citizens -- redistributes it, as it were -- via the electoral college and the senatorial system. And maybe that is wise!
But don't try to tell me this is a balanced system. It's just not. It is a redistributive political system. Again, maybe that is wise. But let's be honest, at least, about what we do here in the US.
3
The Darwinian adage of “adapt or die” asserts that if an organism does not adapt to its environment, it will die. Those who will survive are those who transform themselves to live with the new environment. The principle applies to industries, companies and the ever changing technology environment around them.
Why should population areas, medium-small cities; and occupational areas, rural farming areas, extraction industry areas be different?
5
"The Darwinian adage of 'adapt or die' "
Saw the same thing occur in my Detroit neighborhood. Parts of the city have adapted to the point of becoming a center of professional sports as well as financing led by Quicken Loans.
However many neighborhood and folks in those neighborhoods have not adapted. They are living in rundown homes and have essentially no prospects for a better future.
They have not adapted. You are spot on HapinOregon!
Ecology and evolution are not merely studies of individuals, but also of populations. Collective survival is crucial for individual survival. When a human neighborhood or city reaches a certain level of decline, no amount of paint and yard work will keep one residence viable. You can blithely blame the resident for not having packed up and moved on; however, that home often represents years of investment, and the homeowner might not have the social network nor the years left to recoup that in another town.
1
Read Ted Koppel's book about what will happen if a foreign power attacks our national electrical grid system, which is still outdated. With no electricity, all the food in New York city would spoil withing 48 hrs. They have maybe 2 days of emergency supplies to last for about 7 million.
Guess what? All those "backwards" folks in the hinterland won't starve. Maybe that would be a better model for you of Darwin at work. Those that can adapt, overcome, and fend for themselves will survive. And they have guns.
Look at how easily the North Koreans hacked into Sony Pictures, and ruined that company for making a movie about killing off their leader. The Russians were all over our social media, and easily hacked into about 20 state voter registration files, when interfering in the election. A cyber attack is not that far fetched. So don't so easily write off the small cities and rural areas - they could save a lot of lives.
I've always wondered about Portland's economic geography. We are a mid sized city between Seattle and San Francisco. We always seem to get passed over for one or the other. We aren't dying by any means, but I've always wondered how much of our destiny was determined by geography. And whether it could change based on some technology change we have no control over. Example, right now it's hard to maintain our port, because we are a river port and ocean going ships are getting too big to want to come up the Columbia. Not so long ago it was a reliable economic engine.
10
"but I've always wondered how much of our destiny was determined by geography."
Of course it greatly determined my geography and driven by Manifest Destiny - a wonderful thing.
There was a time when Oregon City was bigger than Portland because of all the industry driven by Willamette Falls. Water power wasn't everything, however, so that Oregon City is now a bedroom community to Portland.
Katie - Our family loves Portland but I too worry about the longterm prospects for the growth of the city.
I believe the greatest threat you face right now is pending approval of new rail yards and port upgrades to your neighbor, Vancouver, WA. Oil transport represents a real threat to the air quality of everyone in the valley and water quality when oil spills reach the Columbia river. And, it will spill. (Think Texas coast, east of Houston ship channel.)
A second problem is the need for more students graduating from area universities when compared to Seattle and San Francisco. It has been argued that Nike would see a real increase in value if it leaves Portland. Owner loyalty keeps Nike there now but the pressure to relocate will increase as time goes by.
The state tax of 9%, the highest in the country, also stops many from relocating to the area.
And then there are serious concerns about an earthquake west of the Cascades that puts all land east of I-5 in harms way.
Lastly, the combination of rivers and hills in the city make transportation expensive in terms of both time and money. It can be very difficult to get around in Portland in spite of significant public-transportation infrastructure.
The dinning, culture, arts, a liberal population that accepts others and jobs all combine to make Portland what it is today; an amazing place to live and visit but I too worry about the 20-year horizon.
A very large portion of America falls into the sort of decline described by Dr Krugman for ailing small cities. As a child who grew up - on a farm - in an area which probably had it's most prosperous years around the turn of the 19th to the 20th Century, I've watch local leaders try to find solutions to the declining tax base, loss of jobs and economic fatigue. One of the issues is that young people who get educations have been moving away for decades - for more opportunities of all kinds including work. The existence of colleges and universities ( NY should really really be thankful for Nelson Rockefeller's dogged push for the SUNY system) helps a great deal to keep communities alive - and has helped bring in high tech companies which would not otherwise be present.
18
To survive, smaller towns need, in my view, two viable resources - education and reliable transportation. The towns have to be able to educate/train the population both youngsters and oldsters. The education has to enable the oldsters to adapt to changing technology, requirements and lifestyle factors. The youngsters need to be exposed to not only to academia - math, history, literature et al but also to the technology that surrounds them. Schools are adapting technology to education at the lowest grades and should be adapting technology to the oldsters. Make it a place where there is a "why" for people to stay there. Viable transportation is also a needed so one can get to the big city when needed with a measure of ease.
15
You are addressing the question of cities being a convergence of goods and services and thus the need to be a transportation nexus, but I wonder with the rise of internet retail and the decline of brick-and-mortar stores as distribution points, how everybody will get all their endless "stuff"? Are the streets to be an unrelenting pile-up of Uber cars, and trucks delivering packages and groceries that once would have been picked by an individual up at the expense of actually walking a few blocks? Organisms develop things like circulatory networks of ever diminishing vessels to most efficiently distribute nutrients but we seem to heading towards civic entities that consist of just a massive heart and billions of bursting, overworked capillaries. During the heyday of the telegraph, the streets of major cities sat upon networks of pneumatic tubes, some of which are now being used to house fiber optics; is this a way to go?
10
Gambler's ruin demonstrates the reason unregulated capitalism, 'free markets' worship, and 'invisible hands' are not ideal paradigms.
Gambler's ruin was perfectly understood by Adam Smith (though he may not have known it) who advocated progressive taxation to correct the deficiencies of capitalism, and avoid the sclerosis of economic aristocracy.
366
I can't help but think that Adam Smith would rally against the perversion that capitalism without a tempering morality has become. From Reagan onward following the dictates of the far right Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan, Rand Paul (libertarian lack of morality). Too bad he isn't here to say "That's not what I meant!!"
5
To compare a relatively simple mathematical exhibition like gambler's ruin to an infinitely complex economic system like capitalism is reductive. Yes, one entity eats up the other, but for vastly more complicated reasons; it's not even apples and oranges; it's apples and cellphones.
Excellent term: the sclerosis of economic aristocracy. We are heading there quickly.
4
I find this puzzling. Rochester is not exactly a small city, or at least it wasn't when I was there, a long time ago. It has a university and a technical institute. How many people have to have their lives implode to suit this theoretical construct?
Much smaller cities also thrive. Perhaps we need to focus more on community and communication, and working together to solve problems, and less on some measure of objective viability.
Unless we do so, it doesn't matter what size city or town one is talking about, they're all in trouble.
7
Living in Kansas under the Brownback tax plan, now coming to your neighborhood as the national Republican tax plan, it's been painful to watch our rural/small town areas take the hit from the cut backs in government services, specifically, public education. Opposition to expanded Medicaid has also imperiled another source of local economic activity, medical care. I don't know how much critical mass of economic activity it takes to sustain a small town. A county seat with a school, a grocery, a gas station and a medical clinic? I just know that ruining tax revenue so that you can, "drown the government in a bathtub" pretty much means drowning rural and small town America.
821
An irony, considering that small town and rural America keep voting for Republicans who defund public education, social services, medical care, and the infrastructure needed for rural and small town areas to survive.
19
Yes, the Republican policies will strongly impact every town outside of the "star cities" (and regions like Nappa Valley, and Silicon Valley). Many towns get their outside income from government funds from the state (for education) and federal government (for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security). Many of the most respected and wealthiest citizens are paid by funds from government. Most of the businesses exist solely to provide goods and services to the local townspeople, recycling money already in the town.
Cutting funding for Medicare, Medicaid (nursing homes) and Social Security reduces the only source of external funds these towns have. People who lose their jobs because of these cuts will leave, so the local businesses will also lose business.
Paul Ryan wants to create this "death spiral" for Republican small town core voters. Why?
13
The Republicans are creating this "death spiral" because it gets them votes and places them in power - and once in power they enrich themselves and abandon their voters to their fate, secure in the belief that these voters will be even worse off in the future and will continue to vote for them.
5
This analysis makes a ton of sense. I wonder if the same logic can apply to countries. There are many small struggling countries that are heavily dependent on certain natural resources. If those natural resources are depleted, or become readily available elsewhere, that country has, from an economic point of view, seemingly little to base its existence on. Unless it can transform, such as the way Taiwan and South Korea did, from agriculture to information technology, by means of economic AND cultural investment in education (and the protection and defense expenditure savings of the US military umbrella).
5
The thoughtful comments alone demonstrate what a rich vein Dr. Krugman has tapped, and I hope he will continue to expand on and write about this issue. I divide my time between New York City and the Hudson Valley (primarily the latter for the last decade). Since the downsizing of IBM, exacerbated by the 2008 debacle, HV towns and small cities in my area have been struggling, with what seems to be no end in sight. The places that have the most vibrancy and sense of hope are those artists have made their homes (Newburgh is one interesting example), suggesting that a much larger investment should be made in the arts. Sadly, the powers that be, mostly conservative, don't rank this as something worthy of support.
188
"Artisan" covers a lot of different sorts of small-scale, (hopefully) high-quality production of ... well ... stuff. Local stuff can attract local and nearby money.
This country is run for the benefit of multinational corporations, and no one else.
5
Paul, your article displays a broad knowledge of Rochester’s past, but perhaps a less informed appreciation of its current state or its future prospects. Optics did not die when Kodak, Bausch and Lomb and Xerox shrank, it gave rise to well over a hundred smaller companies in the Rochester metropolitan area that are leading the way to making optics just as important to a whole range of new technologies in this century as electronics was in the last century. Photonics, quantum optics, nano-optics, medical optics, optical materials processing, remote sensing and dozens of other rapidly developing fields depend on Rochester’s expertise in optics. The University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics’ faculty, students and alumni have started over 200 companies. Rochester and its entrepreneurial spirit are not about to fade away.
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Actually your comment reinforces what Paul was saying. Rochester is morphing by technological developments on its expertise in optics. The question is what happens when these new developments run out of steam. Another evolution of development? Hopefully Rochester will not run out of luck but continue to change, building on the shoulders of what has come before.
12
My father came from Rochester -- I am glad to hear this.
2
The US population has been moving towards the coasts and mega cities since the 1980s. This has now speed up and with the Republican vision of spending less on support, it will accelerate. The mega cites will have the wealth to help those who are not doing so well, which will attract more folks. Something similar happened in the early years of the depression when states like NY had programs while the Federal Govt did little. Amazon is going to Kansas or Kentucky, and while manufacturers have moved to the South, they have chosen to move to regions that already have manufacturers, like the area from Atlanta to Greensboro NC. The future are these mega cities with pockets around universities keeping many states alive.
5
There is an interesting puzzle here. Small cities are too small to survive in a volatile world, big cities are too complex to survive in the long run ( just look at the nyc subway system). There must be some way to combine the viability of big cities with the livability of smaller cities, perhaps a network of affiliated small cities could be both viable and livable.
11
I was thinking the same thing. Mega-cities in India like Bangalore or Delhi are hardly examples of success. Bangalore is expected to run out of drinking water in the next five years. In the end, communication technology may save the small cities. It's been my experience that more and more people work remotely every year. If there's no longer need to physically aggregate resources, the viability of the more livable smaller cities may return.
5
But ancient cities like Rome, London, Paris, are still thriving-- so decline is not inevitable for large cities.
2
Richard Florida, in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, says cities that are thriving are the ones that welcome diversity, and that diversity includes LBGT. He also says artists and eccentrics are welcomed. The cities that die are the ones that fear diversity.
Fear of diversity describes the small town I live in. People here seem to despise African-Americans, LBGT, anyone not born in America and not white and anybody who went to college. They go so far as to reject anybody who didn't attend the high school here. A common phrase is "He's not maroon," as a way of rejecting a person because he or she didn't go to school here.
Despite all their bigotry, they are surprised that the town is dying. Even Walmart pulled out of town saying, "It doesn't fit our business plan." The town's people are in a panic because Walmart is gone, but they'll never change and welcome diversity here. With all the bigotry here (they hated Obama) I say, go ahead and let the town die. If it refuses to join the 21st Century, it will be left behind and good riddance.
950
Wow Linda, that town really does sound backward. I realize it's not always easy to pick up and move, but after reading your post, I wonder what's keeping you from moving somewhere more progressive, say Colorado, for example.
I understand full well about bigotry in small southern towns, but at the same time, I like to remind people that the rest of the US isn't really so much more virtuous. Around 40 percent or more of citizens in most red states vote Democratic, and around 40 percent of voters in blue states support Republicans, so the differences really aren't large enough to generalize about people based solely on where they are from.
Nevertheless, you have done a great job of describing the worst elements of small town life in many parts of the US, and particularly in the South. Does everyone there have a "We've got it so good here" bumper sticker to boot?
18
Regarding my suggestion of moving to a more progressive state such as Colorado, I'm reasonably sure that it supported Trump too, but my impression is that it's quite progressive relative to most other red states. I'm sure it has its backward towns as well, but if one is seeking more open-mindedness, it's probably best to stick to the high road and head for a larger city.
9
Paul Krugman makes the larger point: small towns with no special advantages will very likely loose out over time, despite their best efforts. By driving out some of the more creative and hard-working, willing to try new things, your town is simply worsening the likelihood and speed of decay. It is not making its best efforts.
Of course, it is easy for long-time residents to decide that the problem with your town's increasingly hard times is caused by "those others", because it can't be caused by "us" "maroons". While this attitude may make things worse by driving out those who could generate some growing businesses, thinking the problem is not "us" could well be correct--as Paul Krugman makes clear.
It is hard realizing that there is no economic reason for the town to exist, and there is no obvious way (like a great university or tourist attraction) to generate growth. Falsely positioning the problem as "us" versus "them" is easier. So is despair.
My current town invented a gopher trap, the "Pet Rock", the "Koosh Ball"--and now NetFlix. You've got to keep trying. You've got to keep and get creative people willing to do something new--and support them. And it still may not be enough. At least the kids can move to a luckier town (as I had to do).
7
I lived in Austin, Texas from 1976 through 2014. When I got there, it was an endearing, overgrown small town with a huge University and the State Capitol and all its functionaries. But also IBM, Motorola, Texas Instruments and, soon, Apple had manufacturing sites there... Their presents lead the US government to site the research consortium Sematec there. Of course, Michael Dell founded his company from his University of Texas dorm room in the mid 80s. The engine of Austin's growth was clearly hardware development... Though it was still relatively small, something around 250,000 residents in the late 70's.
What changed everything was the .COM bubble in the mid/late 90s... Even though that burst, the dye was cast and the information economy that now dominates Austin was set in place. Wild growth and a horrendous lack of infrastructure development have made Austin a gridlocked mess.
I think it's a mistake to use Austin as an example... By the mid 1990s, it was bigger than San Francisco and the 11th largest city in the country. In fact, if you include 3 other nearby cities,.. Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio... the combination becomes a gigantic megacity... In between the "stars" of this constellation of huge cities you have small cities and towns... San Marcos, Wimberley, Blanco, Round Rock (to name a few near Austin) which are actually part of the larger megacity economy.
4
Would posit that illegal immigration and migrant workers have exacerbated these trends. Because they result in many of the people that agriculture does employ -- even if that number is not as high as it once was -- not being tied to the locality where they are harvesting crops or performing other agricultural labor.
1
I think not. I'm not sure what the oft-mentioned "full employment in the US means" but clearly "the need for jobs" is also a reality. I'd look for much more complex explanations.
So what does it take for a small city to reinvent itself? I was raised in Grand Rapids, MI. Furniture and autos were the keys to good jobs. They're both gone for the most part now. Yet the city's population has remained constant, even expanding by 11K over the past 20 years. So what enabled GR to survive if not thrive? Guess I have some research to do!
4
Inexpensive housing?
hello,
i live part of the year in montreal, part of the year in the north east kingdom of vermon, and part of the year in a small province in central italy. all three share the same problems. in canada it was a government choice to close the outports of newfoundland and turn the province into abandoned beauty. in vermont, without access to transportation, the only things going is the forest. people leave when they can. in italy, the hill towns are dying for lack of industry and imagination. we don't want small cities, thats the sad fact. i don't see any change in the future.
3
It sounds to me as though a large part of this problem is that our country is simply too big. While this problem exists to some extent in France and the United Kingdom, I've not heard of it to the same extent in Germany or the Scandinavian countries.
Politically, this is not a problem that can ever be solved by a Republican administration because it would require a massive program of something perilously close to social engineering of the entire country by the federal government. That sort of thing is so far removed from Republican dna that it could never happen.
I'm not saying today's hapless Democrats could pull it off, but at least they'd be open to trying.
3
What happens to small cities in small countries, such as Canada? Does Quebec City face ruin, then, or is there still a connection to the hinterland (mining, hydropower) that keeps it alive? Or is Ottawa, a top-five Canadian city, small with a population of just over a million, or is it large-ish because it's top-five in a small country?
2
As I was driving through Springfield MA on my way to Vermont I was thinking how a once thriving city is never going to come back in my lifetime. What does it have going for it? Sure it has the Basketball Hall of Fame and Springfield College but other than that it's pretty much urban blight. What's the draw of living there?
If not Springfield there are countless other cities that fit the mold and Paul Krugman premise.
26
Yes. But they're good as museums, nice as tourist destinations.
Another consideration probably is whether a small city is a government centre -- state or provincial capital, for example?
1
We need cities designed specifically for those on pensions and public assistance.
Such a place would be small, dense, walkable, bike friendly, relatively car-free, leafy, clean-air, scholarship and entertainment oriented.
Idleness and/or voluntary activity is the wave of the future.
The City of Buffalo, NY is working it's way in that direction.
I look out my window at the urban prairie.
Sadly, critters of the cloven hoof--goats, sheep, cows, etc. are not permitted.
3
There also dormitory cities, which have no industry of their own but that can survive and even prosper by providing human services. If a city has doctors and clinics, restaurants, coffee shops and bars, bakeries, supermarkets, shopping centers, schools, churches, beauty parlors, nurseries, corner stores, repair shops of various kinds, gas stations, places of entertainment and recreation like sports clubs and gyms, funeral parlors and cemeteries, legal services and so forth it can provide employment to a lot of people that will then not conmute to work in a bigger city.
Not all economic activity is directly related to the production of high tech goods.
8
You may wish to include two additional reasons for the many small towns that sprung up, railroads & mail. Steam engines required additional water frequently to replace water used to make steam. Likewise, mail delivery by pony express & stage coach required fresh horses on a regular interval, so many small towns got their start as a way to meet water & fresh horses.
5
I guess it depends on what you consider small city as compared to a town. I started school in Middletown CA, which was primarily there because of the mercury mines and some ranching. My great grandfather built the general store there in the 1870s. It also was near the Bartlett pear farms which began to die out in the 1950s. At one time it had its own newspaper, and a couple of banks, grandfather was a Wells Fargo Agent also.
It still has local schools for the area but was mostly a gas stop for people on the way from Calistoga to Lower Lake. When I was a kid, it had 5 saloons on its four block main street. However it and the whole are around it burned down two years ago. What saves it from extinction is the distance Calistoga, about 30 miles over Mt. St. Helena, or the drive to Lower Lake.
IOn the San Joaquin Valley there are cities like Manteca, Fresno even Bakersfield, whose main economy is linked to agriculture and the railroad. On the other hand many smaller cities, I call them towns have almost disappeared. Some of them were centers for the agricultural workers, many who have left because of the anti immigrant movement.
5
Technology may be the key to small/mid urban resurgence.
With sharing technology development and communication improvement it's already becoming less necessary for employees to be near each other. Even the university system is embracing this, mitigating location constraints. ASU, for example, has innovated with this model.
I work at big multinational and we have expanded to a few small cities made possible with some excellent communication tools allowing us to train employees as if they were local. And these are solid jobs -60K + with benefits in very, very affordable areas.
In addition, the tax cut has changed our offshore geopolitical/risk benefit model to where we will start relocating jobs back to the USA.
Anyone who has experienced overseas labor can tell you, while much cheaper, has lots of hidden cultural and logistical constraints.
Technology will pull the mask off urbanizations popularity.
3
Unfortunately technology is one of the missing pieces in many rural areas. I live near a major research university but my internet access is ancient twisted pair copper wire. No local provider will pull high speed service into a low density area. The final irritant is that I pay more for low speed service than my friends in Atlanta pay for much higher speed.
Another major problem in rural areas is lack of transportation other than individual vehicles. If you can't drive, you can't even buy groceries. I keep hoping that driverless vehicle technology will advance faster than my abilities decline!
I really like living in this beautiful area but there are serious deficiencies to be addressed.
7
Ideally, cities will become ecocites. They will evolove into self-feeding, self-energizing, waste-recycling entities that are largely independent of outside agricultural input.
That, in turn, will allow for much of the currently expanding agricultural land base to contract, returning a certain amount of the planet to nature and increasing diversity (and carbon absorption).
The proper scale for an ecocity is yet to be determined. Too small, and it cannot scale up sufficiently to feed itself. Too large, and it's population could outstrip its productive capacity in a matter days, should something go wrong. Humanly enhanced natural selection will determine the right scale range.
This evolution is possible, and promising. I recommend reading Ecocities, by Richard Register.
12
Curiously, the town to which I have retired, Bozeman, Montana, is sustained by its large university, Montana State University, and has become a center for laser technology development... which feels very similar to where Austin was in 1976 through 1986 (I lived in Austin '76-2014). Missoula and Billings are about as far away from Bozeman as Houston and Dallas are from Austin by car..
What I'm trying to describe is the notion of a constellation of cities being a new paradigm. You can live in a Constellation and while you won't commute between cities... you can stay in easy contact. There's the Internet of course, but also the ability to spend the day in another city whose economy is connected,.. easily... In fact Bozeman has a substantial airport. You can get on a plane in Bozeman and be in Austin, Texas by noon, the same day.
So here's a question, what is rural? Is Bozeman rural? It certainly feels that way and yet....
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Tom, I wholeheartedly agree with you. Great universities have become essential to growth.
A big part of the story behind Austin's successful growth was a man named George Kozmetsky. http://bit.ly/2q9G3xh Before Mr. K, there was no tech.
An early visionary who envisioned a future where healthy-city economies would define growth. Mr. K was behind much of the tech growth in Austin. It would be impossible to list all of his contributions in the space available but one example was as a critical advisor to many local entrepreneurs, including a young student named Michael Dell.
Now, like NYC and many US cities, Austin just needs someone with a clear vision for our public transportation system.
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Small cities have other possibilities beyond servicing the agricultural sector that has gone mostly industrial now.
* Regional hospitals and medical centers handle urgent care and older clientele.
* Smaller towns let oldsters remain in control of their transportation without intimidation or hassle. Many small towns are attractive to retirees.
* Small towns are providing recent immigrants the spaces they need to be entrepreneurs on an affordable basis. Housing costs are generally, but not always (put Aspen, Boulder and Santa Fe to the side), lower in smaller towns.
* Community colleges offer low-cost entry for beginning college and specialized training programs; they are the best bargains in the education marketplace.
* Someone already mentioned small cities as the seats of county governments. That's not going to change.
* The internet has made physical proximity to customers irrelevant for many. The Mountain West is full of invisible, small software shops run by people who want to live there for the outdoor recreation opportunities.
* Even agriculture works, in a different way. There are farmer's markets everywhere. In my town they have a permanent building that shuts its many garage doors in winter and continues to provide spaces for vendors who have things to sell, from bread to frozen lamb and hothouse-raised produce.
While Dr. Krugman is spot on about the advantages of large cities, there is another side to that coin.
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This is very interesting. I have had the seed of a thought for some time that small cities that are seen as 'losers' in the global economy aren't entirely to be blamed on external factors. They have tended to be cities where the culture is less open to change and the future, and more wedded to (or invested in) the maintenance of the status quo. So seeing the correspondence in your piece between successful small cities and the presence of immigrants and/or a university would seem to support the same conclusion.
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I'm every bit as concerned about the disappearance of family farms and small towns as I am about the fate of smaller cities. It's not that growing up in the country automatically confers common sense on anyone, and there's a reason for terms like country bumpkins, but there's something about a lifestyle of working with livestock and machinery that most people would never trade to grow up or raise their family in a big city. Then again, “big city” is relative - my cousin, whose family operated a dairy farm, used to call us "city slickers" - and we lived in a north Texas town of less than 2,000.
There are educational and other advantages to city life, but I deeply regret that my son has far fewer opportunities to work in Yokohama than I had as a kid in rural Texas. John Cougar Mellencamp's song “Small Town” is full of nostalgia for a way of life that's far from extinct, but fewer and fewer people will ever understand it, and while city dwellers today are generally healthier and more prosperous than their poorer counterparts in the country, many of the country's historical, social, and cultural losses due to urbanization are simply immeasurable.
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If you want to live in a really small city( think 2700 people ) that will not die, as I do, choose one that is the county seat. All the legal business of our large county goes through the courthouse which attracts customers for our restaurants and shops. Most county seats are as old as the state in which they exist which means there are historical sites and interesting old houses which would cost much more in larger cities. There is also a sense of community that is not found in more populated areas.
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I have noticed that about our county seat as well. The county has boomed in population and the numbers of people coming in for whatever reason has boomed, supporting a large number of businesses in a rather small town. Commercially it is thriving compared to what it was decades ago when I moved here.
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Aaron - Agreed. The designation as county seat helps overcome the winnowing of businesses due to big box stores, which are themselves now giving way to the ubiquitous Amazon. Businesses which provide vehicles to the county, banks that provide services, contractors that provide construction services, etc., are often located in these county seats, and well-positioned to provide those same services to other county burghs. And counties make special efforts to recycle funds locally, somewhat allaying the ill effects of large, out-of-state financial institutions having replaced local institutions that used to heavily influence such activities, trying to ameliorate the gambler's ruin scenario.
Sidenote: there are many many infrastructure opportunities in such cities/towns, where residents are dependent on satellite TeeVee services, because the cable companies still (!!) after all these years (and broken promises) provide no high speed data connections, just token fiber optics.
Merging telecom companies with cable companies aggravates the issue, since telecom companies are more interested in investing in broadband streaming for mobile devices, not laying lines to provide more on-demand home services.
Dr. K. might get further illumination on what's happening by investigating what cable monopolies/low-grade service do to the biz environment as well as public school students' education/studying opportunities in small cities vs. the information stream available in larger cities.
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If rural areas had better broadband infrastructure, secluded small towns surrounded by beautiful nature would be very attractive for location-independent small businesses (I for one would love to work there). An increasing number of startups already employ geographically distributed teams. The need for a presence close to an urban center is getting more and more irrelevant.
German government currently promotes a subsidized "Broadband Everywhere" initiative, which would probably be decried in the U.S. as a socialist pipe dream. Time will tell how it works out, but broadband Internet certainly is a much needed utility that has great potential to keep rural areas alive.
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Good point. And, since buildings are generally available for low rent in small cities and towns, they give startups a leg up on the overhead issue. The downside, however, is that many small towns/cities lack the facilities, such as hospitals, and amenities, such as some kind of night life, that tech workers need and like.
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The biggest job expansion in smaller towns that I have encountered recently is telemarketing and teleservice. While these are jobs, they are usually fulfilled from inside a home and are fairly low paid. Good broadband certainly encourages these positions.
While I have had great service recently from among others, a Cruise Ship coordinator working from home, these positions seem to be pretty insecure and quite isolating. (I always ask where the person I am talking to lives, and usually get a replay. One dish washer repair specialist was "100 miles outside of Alice Springs, Australia" or about as far from a fellow human as it is possible to get.)
There can be a lot of good to small town mid-American life--but not when what little work that is available is isolating and low paid.
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Take the telecoms to court. Most of them have been allowed to apply fees for expanded networks then use it for 'other'. Imagine an class action lawsuit to force the issue with the payout being improved service rather than payouts to the lawyers.
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Why isn't that also true for larger cities?
Buffalo was once in the top 10.
Cleveland, Philadelphia, and especially Detroit come to mind as well.
Cities that place too much emphasis on single industries or means of commerce are at risk no matter what size they may be.
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You are correct. However, as Krugman says, "while a big, diversified city can afford a lot of dead ends, a smaller city can’t." Some relatively large cities manage to keep going, leaping the discontinuities of changing conditions in technology, trade patterns, resource exhaustion and politics. So London, Paris, Vienna continue their run while middle-sized cities fail even to attract tourists. St. Louis, although a relatively large city, suffered for decades when railroads routed through Chicago. A bigger, diversified (key word) city can have more irons in the fire and extend its run.
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You can say a lot of things about Cleveland, but it was NEVER a "one industry town" like Pittsburgh was with steel.
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But, while Pittsburgh was steel dependent, it used that money to finance research, education, and health care. Now its biggest industries. No longer big, it is comfortable middle sized and doing pretty well--- although has a hard time attracting as much immigration as it should and is trying to and also suffers from inequality although not to the extremes of the largest cities. Diversification of an economy is important as is looking ahead. Cleveland has education and health care too of course. Don't know why it hasn't done as well as Pittsburgh (Browns v Steelers??)
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Although the influence of small cities have diminished, except in unique circumstances which allowed their growth, on a macro-scale, their influence remains, largely through the representative democracy we have on the State level and more importantly through the Electoral College, as vividly illustrated in the 2016 national elections. I think there is little hope of revising the method of national elections, but the power of small cities and will continue to be felt for decades, somewhat to the detriment of the higher populated cities and their constituencies (i.e., low/non- wage earners, immigrants, people of color, etc.)
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There is a way to fix the EC problem without changing the Constitution -- repeal the 1920 rule that limited House membership to 432. The House was supposed to grow with population. As demographics have changed, the House has become more and more unrepresentative, and it spills over into the Electoral College. In the 20th century, the EC and popular gave the same result 100% of the time. In less than a quarter of the 21st century, it has differed in 2 out of 5 elections.
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Many small cities, especially in the South (I live in one), depend heavily on a military base for jobs and customers at local retail outlets, restaurants, etc. Member of Congress representing these areas are big supporters of an ever larger share of the federal budget going for national defense. This may be one reason that spending on the military has more support in Congress than shoring up the safety net in a time of growing wealth inequality.
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Yes, military bases are basically a government stimulus program. These same members of Congress who decried a stimulus package in 2008 LOVE the military bases for the reasons you list.
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Larry Chamblin,
I have read, somewhere, that every Congressional District in the country has at least *some* piece of the military procurement pie. Smart Congresspeople saw the gravy train sitting there on the tracks and saw to it that they and their constituents would be at the trough.
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@Larry Chamblin, I have military relatives whose livlihood depends upon continued support for big military budgets. Those on active duty can't really discuss it, but I get the impression Obama was anathema to them partly because he was exercising some fiscal discipline that threatened their jobs. They support (sometimes begrudgingly) the current President, and I suspect that's the reason. It's also why they support the deep-red Congressional delegations they send to Washington.
Upton Sinclair explains it best:
" "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
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I generally agree with most of your conclusions but your premise is flawed. They were not accidents. Cities were built at transportation choke or transit points. Paris is at a ford, DC is on the Potomac fall line, Chicago and Rochester at transit points on the great lakes, Atlanta is a railroad terminus. Almost all have a transportation component.
As transportation changed, their relative importance changed. Dallas, Phoenix and Orlando supplanted even the great railroad centers. We now live in an era where transportation is essentially digital. Thee factors that drove the economies are less critical and arguably a drag on growth. Supporting an industrial infrastructure is counterproductive. The small cities that 'thrive' like Santa Clara, Austin and RTP pulled from the academic talent pool.
However old cities have advantages. They are cheap and many, such as Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Cleveland have remnants of 20th century greatness that can be preserved and exploited to provide a high quality of life for the creative class.
Small cities' fortunes have ebbed and flowed since colonial times but if a city has good bones and a commitment to adapt they will survive.
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Correction. Austin is now the 11th largest city in the US. In fact, I believe the 4 cities, Austin San Antonio, Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth comprise, effectively, a "megacity". I lived there from 1976 through 2014 when I moved to Bozeman, Montana (which very much fits in the category of small city).
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The "gambler ruin" hypothesis seems more descriptive of an industrial economy than an information age services economy, and therefore may do a better job explaining how things evolved up until about 1990 than how things evolved since then. Does the success of big U.S. cities still stem from industrial clustering? I doubt it. You can start a successful information economy business as easily in Manhattan, Seattle, Boston, or Boulder as you can in Silicon Valley. More to the point, it doesn't matter whether that business is FinTech, EdTech, RetailTech. The key skill sets are increasingly similar, and to the extent that they aren't, you'll find key people willing to relocate between marquee cities. The surrounding ecosystem of lawyers, consultants, etc. is pretty homogenous between marquee cities, and anyway most of those services can be rendered remotely. Increasingly, the role that cities play in our economy is simply that of a consumption good. Big successful, cities are successful now because of a big city vibe of sophistication, which makes them destinations of choice for knowledge economy workers, which makes them destinations of choice for the employers of such workers (or vice versa -- in some but not all cases the employer comes first, and the employees follow). The success of a small city (e.g. Boulder, Austin, etc.) will now hinge on whether it offers something attractive that the big cities can't -- not on whether it happens to bet on a good industry.
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"You can start a successful information economy business as easily in Manhattan, Seattle, Boston, or Boulder as you can in Silicon Valley." That does not appear to be true. Those businesses are tending to cluster strongly. What lets you think the appearances are deceptive?
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Well, it works both ways. Small towns in the middle of nowhere now have access to shopping like never before through Amaon, etc. Entertainment, also, via the web. Connection through facebook. And even, employment, if your job is web-based. I thought that these factors would make small towns boom with restaurants and other local services for the new wave of people living there. Somehow, I seemed to wrong. All the millenials want to live in an urban apartment with nothing but restaurants around them. I still don't see how I was so misguided.
However, having said that, small towns should make a play for web-based workers by offering restaurants, high-speed internet, etc to attract the millenials. Might still work once they start having families.
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Richard, I agree with your recommendations and might add "high-speed transit" connections to "healthy" major metros. I believe that most of us wold place a high value on living closer to nature (the right small towns) and "immediate" access to liberal cities offering a wide choice of cultural experiences.
This model is close to what we saw in the northeast when workers commuted from city centers to the burbs. We just need to rethink the same model but add greater travel distance for more choices.
in the mean time, I also believe that very effort must be made to reverse the growing (well funded) trend to tax earned income (people) to fund weapons, while lowering taxes on capital returns (oligarchs) -- or few of us will have the time and money to enjoy the fruits of a full life -- either urban or rural.
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This is not a totally new phenomenon. While rural agricultural bases for small cities were stable, minerals and mining was not. The ore would run out. Thanks to the Comstock load Virginia City NV became a boom town peaking in 1875 at a population of 25K. then the silver ran out. As of the last census the population was 855. The city had lost it's reason for existence so it ceased to exist as a city. Troy New York peaked around the same time, it was a steel and munitions center. It has hung on largely do to RPI, as was mentioned becoming a college town helps. It allowed Pittsburgh to reinvent itself as a technology/biomedical hub. Every city will not be able to do it. It hurts those left behind in the city but there's good way around it if regional developement doesn't work.
If the productive large cities could grow faster people could move from the places with no reason to exist to those that do. Local land use laws in places like New York and San Francisco effect national productivity.
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I agree with Dr. Krugman's hypothesis.
I split time between a very large city (Chicago) and a ski resort town in the west. The ski resort town seemed somewhat insulated from this phenomenon, but given our lack of snow the past few seasons due to climate change, perhaps nothing is immune from the winds of change.
What I fear much more than places like Peoria losing relevance, however, is if this same type of phenomenon comes true when it comes to businesses.
Right now, the Amazons and Walmarts of the world do still support a relatively health and diverse supply chain. Amazon, more than Walmart, has started producing a huge number of private label products and brands. If Amazon truly becomes the monopoly some people fear, what will be left of the small and medium-sized businesses who now rely upon Amazon as a primary route to market?
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This post is interesting, and it's a much needed respite from commiserating over the dismal state of politics in the US.
America's Interstate Highway system and our vast network of “Farm to Market Roads” at least allows Americans to explore the hinterlands. The latter in particular lack proper funding since agriculture and small towns just don't matter anymore, unless some billionaire or Ag giant is opening a massive chicken factory, or a dairy of a hundred thousand cattle – in that case, farms are summarily bought out and funding is provided.
Japan too has a long and growing trend of urbanization, with ever more of its population centered in a few major urban areas, primarily the Kanto region, made up of the greater Tokyo-Yokohama area and a few other prefectures, and Kansai, comprised mainly of Osaka and Kyoto, plus Kobe and a few large suburbs. Abandoned houses litter most of the rest of the country, and far cheaper land and housing generally aren't sufficient incentives to draw significant numbers of people back, so the cities, prefectures and Japanese government are making a few efforts at reversing the urban centralization trend.
What, if anything can save small to medium-sized cities, let alone small towns and family farms? Hopefully something can be learned here and I look forward to other readers' comments.
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Even when a city anchored to the land can get outmoded. For example environmental degradation that kills agriculture or tourism.
5
Small cities thrive on small businesses such as good restaurants, hardware stores, and local artisans. If retail rental prices are good for these businesses they do well and bring a lot of benefit to the city or town. There's no mention of mega malls and Walmart and how they impact small cities. People tend to go where there are better prices at the expense of the smaller businesses in their communities. We must all realize that those communities support our towns and prop up our tax base so supporting them does more for property values and education than saving money at a big box store. Small cities have a charm that appeals to many of us and the more we do to keep them afloat the better off we are throughout our states and our nation.
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“Small cities thrive on small businesses such as good restaurants, hardware stores, and local artisans”
These would appear to be ancillary products of a thriving small city, not the engine of its success. Cities don’t fail because the Home Depot replaced a less efficient small hardware store.
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Smal businesses keep much more money in local communities. Big box stores may not be the primary cause for small town decline, but they may be a significant contributing factor.
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To a certain extent they do, because the profits from a local hardware store are likely to be recirculated in the local community whereas the profits from giants like Home Depot go to the corporate headquarters located far away.
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Very god analysis. I would like to expand upon it. Agriculture back in the olden times was labor intensive which required these small towns to supply the needed workers. Farming has become largely an industrial process operated with large machines which greatly removed the need for labor. Then farms consolidated from most being small family operations to components of large scale agribusiness. Again, fewer people needed. The big machines are kept busy by being transported to different areas as the growing season moved through the territories. This also eliminated the need for many shops that support the machines. The whole thing has been spiraling down for decades.
As far as the factory town is concerned, most have one plant. The big corporation would chose a place for its hard working, reliable labor pool, transportation logistics and low rural property taxes. With automation, union busting, and offshoring, these plants have been closing all over the plants. When that happens, the town dies. The town grew up around the plant, just as happens at military bases.
Nowadays, jobs are high tech. Companies have to set up shop in big cities because that's where the labor pool is. Small towns don't have sufficient critical mass to generate the education infrastructure that a big city has.
States are cutting education budgets like mad, so it's up to the cities to take up the slack. That's another nail in the coffin for small town America.
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The last point may be the most important. The reduction in education investment and support by states is a serious problem not just for small towns and cities but for the whole nation. This is due to the zero sum game that small government politicians have imposed on the political landscape. Voters have been sold a bill of goods regarding the many public goods that they need and don't realize that they buy. Lower priced government looks like a great deal - who wouldn't want to pay less for them. It's the mirage of something for nothing induced by the drugs of tax cuts that Republicans and neoliberal (New) Democrats have pushed that may eventually strangle our country in a bathtub.
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The article is about small cities, not small towns. Small cities, as PK says, often have universities, which are a good source of education infrastructure, no?
Mr. Krugman did not define “small city”, but I don’t think he meant anything under 50,000.
4
Small-town American labor pools are being decimated, too, by the drugs crisis. If fewer and fewer potential workers can pass a drug test, businesses—particularly small manufacturing businesses—are hurt.
7
Interesting to consider in the context of recent reports that Americans are far less mobile than they used to be. By staying put, people may be tying their fortunes to these failing small cities. If Krugman's hypothesis is correct, moving for better opportunities may be the only solution; if attempting to prop up old small cities is unlikely to be effective.
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People are "less mobile" because in the last 35 years or so, a huge division has opened between the "affordable" small towns, rural areas and rustbelt region and the Big Blue Coastal regions (and couple of ritzy interior areas, like Chicago).
If I WANTED to move to a Big Blue City for any reason -- jobs or weather or just what the hey! -- I could never do so. I could never remotely afford it. No job I could do would ever come close to paying rent on a tiny studio apartment -- most rents in such places exceed my entire take home pay -- and forget about owning a home.
I am locked into my general area not by lethargy or lack of ambition, but by REAL ESTATE PRICES.
Short of winning the Powerball Lotto, here I will stay for the rest of my life. There is no place left to go.
2
I read an article recently that told about artists choosing small towns, because the cost of housing is low, and they can more easily afford to live and do their art. Not sure how they support themselves unless strictly through their art, though.
I am finding about many groups in blue states that do volunteer work calling and/or texting into red state races. They've realized that the south, and small towns are doing in the whole country, so they are banding together to help red states. There are groups that are set to profit from their efforts, but many operations are running on cost and volunteers alone. Many state parties won't bring in a tool unless there's a way they can profit from it. It reminds me of why charter school are blooming, republicans couldn't understand why anyone would want to educate kids if they couldn't build profit into it. But this is us doing that. I'm going to keep searching for the at cost folks who are doing it for the common good of all. The high school kid who developed my phone system for me is now a freshman at Stanford, he and some classmates are developing a new phone tool that will make it easier for blue states to call into red states. We won't all do better until red states start coming through. Their plan is to be free or low cost. And I am getting to weigh in on features, which is very exciting, because other venues for such have major flaws. I run field, so I have a hands on knowledge to provide them with.
Enjoy your vacation.
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I was struck by the parallels to businesses: mostly, it's grow or perish. It is known, though, that innovation isn't the strong suit for big business. Even in pharmaceutics and medical device businesses where you need considerable capital to launch new products, new ideas are often bought rather than developed in-house. We also know that only a strong presence of small and medium sized businesses provides for an over-all healthy economy.
I know: analogies might stretch things too much but I wonder if this one doesn't carry a little truth.
As a retiree in a small village on the ocean I can attest to the high quality of life that comes with it. Yet, the social structure isn't healthy, the village lives off retirees and summer guests.
Enjoy communing with nature, Paul, and keep up the good fight in 2018!
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Must get pretty cold living by the ocean in Antartica.
1
We need a society where prosperity is shared, regardless of whether one lines in a rural area, smaller city, or a megacity.
This leads to the following problems:
- Larger cities have longer commutes, to the detriment often of those who commute (2-3 hours each way daily is not uncommon)
- Larger cities concentrate inequality. (https://blog.euromonitor.com/2013/03/the-worlds-largest-cities-are-the-m...
- The rents squeeze all but the top 10% or so out of the downtown core
Inside the smaller cities:
- There are few good jobs and what's left is replaced by low wage, temporary jobs
- They lose their tax base and infrastructure declines
We need a society where there is shared prosperity regardless of where you live. That's a lot easier said than done, but it's got to happen one way or another.
There are small to medium sized cities that are doing ok right now. My current city, is an example. WE aren't perfect though - we need to address rising real estate costs from our growing tech sector or we will share extremely disturbing fate of Seattle and the SF Bay area (tech salaries pretty much squeezed everyone else who cannot afford such high housing costs).
Outside of the US, I will also note that quite a few medium sized cities in nations that still have manufacturing and have done well. A dramatic example may be Wolfsburg, Germany, which is also the richest city in Germany by GDP and Volkswagen's headquarters. A hard question, if the Germans can, why can't we?
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Sure, a very important goal. But if Krugman's hypothesis is correct, it may be economically infeasible to make these small cities work well for sharing this prosperity. American have historically been very mobile, moving to wear the economic opportunities are, but lately this mobility has decreased significantly .
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Sinclair Lewis' Main Street is disappearing, and Jakarta is on the horizon.
Lewis refused to return to his moel, Sauk Center, and in Alberta, the failing tar sands have made fire-ravaged Fort MacMurray a sad shell of its former boomtown, where fortunes were made by mechanics and apartments that were tents in backyards fetched 4-figure rents.
Farm towns, boom towns, desert towns: dinosaurs doomed because they can not evolve in our economy. Brooklyn was, after all, a farming centre once.
6
One part of the answer, which also applies to your city in Canada, is that the government insures access to medical care. This means it is less risky for doctors to locate in these areas. It you have no access to decent medical care, which our Republicans are trying their hardest to accomplish by making it impossible for rural hospitals to stay open and less than wealthy people to afford it, all the beauty in the world will not be sufficient. A poster from Germany also discussed our failure to develop the infrastructure that would allow people to locate away from present tech hubs.
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Also too: general acceptance of longer commutes (and the wider distribution of job centers out to the old suburbs) has turned a lot of small towns into bedroom communities.
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The modern world is a challenge for those averse to change, It remains to be seen if this will result in evolutionary changes to our species or, like so many other tumultuous periods of human history, largely be lost in the ripples of time.
Most or all of us will not live long enough to find out, unfortunately.
9