Vast stretches of urban land were left virtually deserted. Louis, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Detroit each shrank by more than 20 percent. "Nearly half of large cities shrank by at least 10 percent" during the 1970s, according to the Kansas City Fed : By the mid-seventies, New York City was lurching from one fiscal crisis to another. Many households followed.īut for the most part, cities saw an exodus that took many years and slowly hollowed out the finances and tax revenues of big cities. The 1977 blackout in New York City ended in widespread riots that induced many businesses to pack up and never return. Transit and sanitation in the city became a disaster. The late sixties in New York saw several strikes by city workers. In some cases, there were dramatic events that illustrated the trend. (Forced busing for "integration" purposes was a factor as well.) Many concluded these were places that were quite inhospitable to doing business. Many Americans concluded these cities had become unlivable and crime infested. We may be seeing something reminiscent of what happened in America's large central cities during the 1970s and 1980s. It will come in the form of potential new business owners and homeowners will be decide to never purchase property to start a business in central cities in the first place. It will come in the form of families which decide their next home will be just a little bit farther from the urban dictator-mayors who have the heaviest hands in enforcing lockdowns and business closures. It will come in the form of families and shop owners who decide it's best to move their businesses ten miles down the road to a neighboring city that will actually do something about rioters. The real cost to cities is likely to emerge over time. They can afford to drop everything and leave cities overnight.īut the larger impacts are likely to be felt as middle class homeowners and business owners conclude they'd simply rather avoid the edicts and neglect of mayors and city councils in central cities who think nothing of issuing job-destroying "stay-at-home" orders while allowing rioters and vandals free rein. Yes, many in the upper classes have fled the cities for their mountain homes and yachts for "health reasons." But these people are relatively few in number and their thinking quixotic. This goes well beyond the fear of the disease many journalists have assumed is behind the observed beginnings of an exodus from cities. The ongoing threat of more business lockdowns, more riots, higher taxes, and failing schools may induce many Americans to flee, once again, to the suburbs as their parents or grandparents did. After more than thirty years in the city, the company isn't staying, nor are any of the company's fifty jobs.īut the costs of being victimized in protests is just one of many reasons homeowners and businesses may be realizing life and business in central cities has lost its luster. "They don’t care about my business,” 7-Sigma owner Kris Wyrobek old the Star-Tribune. Manufacturing company 7-Sigma made headlines when it decided to leave Minneapolis as a result of the company's plant being burned by rioters.
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