Bulldozing our cities may wreck our future

The Obama administration is reportedly considering backing a radical plan to shrink deteriorating American cities by bulldozing entire neighborhoods and returning the land to nature. The idea, which originated in Flint, Mich. -- cratered by the auto industry implosion -- is to persuade disintegrating and depopulated cities to embrace their shrinkage, destroy abandoned infrastructure, save money and thereby stave off fiscal ruin.

The plan makes sense on some level, but it's disturbing on another. Anyone who's driven by miles of empty lots in Detroit knows that urban demolition does more than destroy blight. It also erases history and what a city was. Traces of the past have always been jumping-off places for the next chapter (think rehabbed Victorians or sleek post-industrial lofts). And, of course, the back-to-nature plan -- which could be used in cities such as Memphis, Baltimore, Philadelphia and others -- is fundamentally an admission and may be an assurance that these cities will never rise again.

Sure, it is a given that cities -- like nations and civilizations -- rise and fall. We can find comfort in the fact that even as some U.S. cities decline, others thrive. And in the era of environmentalism and a romanticization of nature, the back-to-nature plan is certain to find a large degree of support. But in our rush to curb the excesses of industrialism and reduce our collective carbon imprint -- to "right size" -- I'm not sure we aren't undervaluing the role of cities in our society.

Indeed, over the last half a century, in studies and the popular imagination, the image of old cities has taken a beating. With a few exceptions, like the ever-buoyant NYC, cities' amplified poverty, evident inequality, racial strife and crumbling schools are viewed as the embodiment of everything that's wrong with our society. A 2001 survey by the National Assn. of Home Builders found that 68% of Americans preferred a rural, or "outlying suburban," location in which to live. Only 28% said they'd prefer a "close-in" suburb, and a mere 5% favored the central city.

Of course, millions of Americans have also voted with their feet, and employment opportunities have followed them. In this new century, the loss of jobs in city centers has continued apace. According to an April Brookings Institution study, between 1998 and 2006, 95 out of 98 metropolitan areas saw a decrease in the share of jobs located within three miles of downtown. In the top 98 metro areas, only 21% of workers are employed in the city center. To the extent that we attempt to rehabilitate shrinking cities, it is as amusement parks for yuppies. Those inner-city loft developments that get so much attention in the media have done little to stop the exodus of jobs and people to the edges of urban areas, to the suburbs and single-family-home sprawl.