As the exodus gathers momentum, all the reasons people clung so rabidly to urban meccas decay: venues and cafes close, street life fades, job opportunities dry up, and yet prices for everything remain high: transport, rent, taxes, employees, etc. Friends move away, favorite places close suddenly, streets that were safe now seem foreboding, and all the friction, crime, grime and dysfunction that was once tolerable becomes intolerable.
I often wonder who used vision for so many urban areas, when developers went with the rich as tenants and prices to match. Well, that didn’t work. (Our small city fought against a wallymart to prevent the death of our downtown. So far so good.)
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Trace I tend to agree with Helena Norberg Hodge, who made the films Ancient Futures and the Economics of Happiness. She believes that big cities are unsustainable the way they are currently operated because of the immense amount of fossil fuel burned to transport food in and waste out. As economies and infrastructure in the developed world continue to deteriorate, they only really work for the very rich.
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