Increased urbanity

Last week, as I was preparing for my trip to Italy, I wrote a post about the increasing immobility of the American labor force, and how it might be contributing to our continued recession (and stubbornly high unemployment rate). It got me to thinking more broadly about the changing face of American society, and the ever-increasing urbanization of our country.

In the early days of America (pre-industrial revolution), we were a primarily agrarian society, both in the North and the South. Things of course changed rapidly in the 19th century, culminating in the Civil War, which arguably marked the ultimate triumph of industry over agriculture in the United States.

The decades and centuries since have seen a relentless march toward urbanization, with our nation's rural roots largely fading into the background and the history books. For evidence, refer the following chart, which I put together with Census data culled from here and here (data from 1810-1840 was not available, so I smooth-lined the increase from 1800-1850, for the sake of comparison).

That's an increase from 5.1% of Americans to 79.2% of Americans in just two centuries; since 1920 alone, we have seen an increase of nearly 60%, from 51% to nearly 80% (and probably more, once the 2010 data is tabulated).

What has industrialization done to us? Has it ironically made us less flexible, less capable, and more dependent upon each other for survival? Have we become completely incapable of returning to our agrarian roots, or are we primed for a pullback on the above chart? Most importantly, with the internet making telecommuting possible, are we prepared to let any of our cities fail? Or is our inexorable march toward urbanization destined to bring us to 100%, regardless of the technology available to us?

In this interesting podcast, cities theorist Richard Florida wonders whether our cities themselves have become "too big to fail". It seems likely that our move toward urban lifestyle is in part to blame for our societal immobility, but are we ready to accept the urban blight that would almost necessarily result from a reversal in that trend? For now, it seems like we are willing to accept the devil we know instead of the devil we don't know.

For a capitalist society to function properly and achieve the progress that should be at its core, some creative destruction is not only inevitable but desirable. We must be willing to let dying businesses fail (hello, Blockbuster and the Walkman), and so too must we let dying cities fail. 

But just as we won't let General Motors or Citigroup disappear (but we did for some reason let Bear and Lehman fold...you know what, don't get me started), we also seem reluctant to allow cities to fail, or even to shrink. Cities themselves, when faced with crises (budgetary or otherwise), tend to respond by lowering corporate and personal income tax rates so as to attract industry and small businesses. This is in essence a devil's bargain, which solves nothing in the long run because it is inherently unsustainable. Cities have already begun declaring bankruptcy, and I have to wonder if more declarations are around the corner. 

The question is, how will we as a society (or, as a federal government) respond if and when they do? The answer to that question will have significant implications for the future shape of my chart above, and also for the future dynamics of the American labor force. Stay tuned.