Paul Waldman talks with Christopher Carrick about urban planning and regional inequality:
I suppose what was so attractive about Richard Florida was the idea that he had uncovered a foolproof path to economic and cultural vitality. What is the current thinking about what cities can, and should, do?
After many years of debate among economic-development theorists between those who argued that “people follow jobs” and those (Florida among them) who claimed “jobs follow people,” the current consensus is that cities have to build local production systems and train their local labor force at the same time as they try to attract the “creative class.” Unfortunately, Florida’s ideas have been used to justify using scarce public resources to provide urban amenities that cater to the presumed needs of a very limited part of the work force.
Cities should focus on “the basics” — the essential needs of middle-class workers such as civil servants, nurses, teachers, and other service workers and the displaced manufacturing workers who want to remain in the area where they grew up rather than migrate to the South or West in search of work. Rather than catering to the desires of downtown developers by subsidizing luxury lofts, cities should address their crumbling infrastructure (especially in transportation), dysfunctional schools, city/suburban inequality, crime, and the needs of small businesses.
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