OOTS #1299 - The Discussion Thread

[brian 333]

Think about it: what do cities do now?

They used to be centered on food storage and defense. Now storing all your civilization's food in one place is an invitation to a potential enemy to attack it. Nobody has centralized food storage in cities any more.

They used to be trade hubs. With modern transportation, most long distance transportation of goods bypasses cities. Materiel goes into cities for the use of the city, but aside from natural ports like Los Angeles and Houston, most of the trade hub cities have faded into history. Even the big ports are being bypassed by smaller, single-purpose intermodal facilities.

They used to be manufacturing hubs. Large manufacturers used to need large pools of skilled labor from which to draw a workforce, and this required subsidiary enterprises to not only support the manufacturers, but food, housing, and entertainment for the work force. Very few 'factory towns' still exist in the USA, with some of the greatest, such as Allentown or Detroit, now being virtual ghost towns.

In the US, most large cities are experiencing suburban sprawl as everyone who can moves out of the cities, leaving them to the very poor and to legacy industries such as medical care and entertainment.

People still live in cities. But cities exist as relics of the past. The future is much more dispersed.

[Peelee]

Think about it: what do cities do now?

Consolidate and mitigate many of the challenges and costs of modern living with scale.

Absolutely nothing you have claimed goes against this, and your vision of the future involves laying extensive facilities and infrastructure in an unbelievably inefficient system for seemingly no benefit. Again, all the "solutions" you claim have existed, at least in the US and most other first-world countries, since the 1950s. And instead of moving away form cities, cities have grown and expanded. Literally the opposite of what you've claimed would happen in a few generations.

I'd advise against placing any financial stakes on future civilization layouts.

[brian 333]

Consolidate and mitigate many of the challenges and costs of modern living with scale.

Absolutely nothing you have claimed goes against this, and your vision of the future involves laying extensive facilities and infrastructure in an unbelievably inefficient system for seemingly no benefit. Again, all the "solutions" you claim have existed, at least in the US and most other first-world countries, since the 1950s. And instead of moving away form cities, cities have grown and expanded. Literally the opposite of what you've claimed would happen in a few generations.

I'd advise against placing any financial stakes on future civilization layouts.

We are seeing once great cities that can no longer afford to maintain the infrastructure they have being evacuated by those who can afford it. Detroit literally has houses for sale at prices lower than the property taxes.

Yes, cities are growing population. Everywhere is growing population. But where cities once we're generators of wealth, they are now consumers of wealth.

So, like the vast majority of millionaire investors, I'm not investing in cities. Like any cultural change, it will be slow, but the evacuation of the ancient technology we call the city is already underway, and it looks like it will continue as long as transportation remains affordable.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think you're really overlooking the social and cultural benefits of cities.

Mugging is such a benefit (I kid!). Cities create a center of mass of tech and service (financial in particular) and despite brian's assertion, are still major transportation and commercial hubs. (Airports, anyone?).

Think about it: what do cities do now?

The act as commercial, transport, and financial hubs. Still. Cultural hubs. Seats of government. Centers of education.

People still live in cities. But cities exist as relics of the past. The future is much more dispersed.

Hopefully. The bronze age collapse illustrated some of the fragilities of urban centers.

Lately we have been reading stories about the water supply in Mexico City being overburdened by the population, and population growth, in the area. (22 million or so). Your point on 'dispersing' isn't a bad one... any amount of land or water supply can only support so many people. But ... great public works to bring water from one region to the next, like aqueducts in the Roman era, have modern analogues.
(I hadn't realized how big that urban center had gotten. It's like almost three times the population of Houston Texas, and that's America's 4th largest city).

I'd advise against placing any financial stakes on future civilization layouts.

Has Sid Myers got Civ 6 or Civ 7 published yet?

[Peelee]

We are seeing once great cities that can no longer afford to maintain the infrastructure they have being evacuated by those who can afford it.

No, we aren't.

Detroit

is a specific case of industry-specific global competition coupled with corporate greed and mismanagement of a significantly non-diversified industrial focus, resulting in massive job losses. Like everything else you've claimed, nothing at all like what you have described.

Cherry-picking is the only way you can support the"cities are going away" argument with examples, as you yourself acknowledge that cities over the last 70 years have performed the opposite of the way you've predicted. Again, the infrastructure is more easily affordable at scale, not less.

[halfeye]

No, we aren't.

is a specific case of industry-specific global competition coupled with corporate greed and mismanagement of a significantly non-diversified industrial focus, resulting in massive job losses. Like everything else you've claimed, nothing at all like what you have described.

Cherry-picking is the only way you can support the"cities are going away" argument with examples, as you yourself acknowledge that cities over the last 70 years have performed the opposite of the way you've predicted. Again, the infrastructure is more easily affordable at scale, not less.

I think he's talking about city centres becoming ghettos, which does seem to happen. The central shopping districts are in decline due in large part to online shopping. Suburban sprawl and expansion into the green belt is part of the decline of the city centre.

[bunsen_h]

Mugging is such a benefit (I kid!). Cities create a center of mass of tech and service (financial in particular) and despite brian's assertion, are still major transportation and commercial hubs. (Airports, anyone?).

The act as commercial, transport, and financial hubs. Still. Cultural hubs. Seats of government. Centers of education.

People who live in small, scattered communities want to have access to the same kinds of resources and facilities as people who live in population centres. But while it's a reasonable desire, it runs up against the hard fact that resources are limited. For example, hospitals are really expensive, and there's a shortage of doctors. We can't equip a zillion small communities with full-resource hospitals. Hospitals are built, equipped, and staffed to manage a certain "amount of care" determined by the population that's to be serviced. Ideally, a hospital will run continually at a little under its normal capacity, with a little slack in case some event triggers an unusual need for care. In a large population centre, the "amount of care" needed will be relatively stable over time, since statistically the needs will average out. In a small community, a lot of that very expensive equipment would be unused most of the time; specialists would be relatively idle some of the time, and sometimes overworked.

In a large population centre, if someone has a medical emergency, it usually takes less than an hour for an ambulance to pick them up and get them to a hospital for serious care to begin. People who live remotely don't get that kind of service. If we had some kind of teleportation, that wouldn't be an issue. But without that, people in small scattered communities just can't have the same kind of access to services that require direct person-to-person contact. It's the same issue for live entertainment. Going to a concert or a sports event just isn't the same experience as watching it remotely, and it isn't feasible to bring the live events to tiny communities.

Hell, we aren't even doing an adequate job of ensuring that native communities have basic needs met, such as clean drinking water.

[Peelee]

I think he's talking about city centres becoming ghettos, which does seem to happen. The central shopping districts are in decline due in large part to online shopping. Suburban sprawl and expansion into the green belt is part of the decline of the city centre.

He claimed that cities no longer generate wealth. He has also not backed up any of his claims with any evidence, and seemingly doesn't acknowledge that GDP largely comes from cities and that the states with the biggest surpluses also have the largest cities while largely rural states tend to have deficits, which the fed balances out.

Online shopping is killing malls, sure. But cities ain't going anywhere, for a multitude of reasons, and he has not given any backing for any of his claims, which isn't surprising since they either don't exist or would be wildly misrepresentative if they did.

[brian 333]

Mugging is such a benefit (I kid!). Cities create a center of mass of tech and service (financial in particular) and despite brian's assertion, are still major transportation and commercial hubs. (Airports, anyone?).

The act as commercial, transport, and financial hubs. Still. Cultural hubs. Seats of government. Centers of education.
Hopefully. The bronze age collapse illustrated some of the fragilities of urban centers.

Lately we have been reading stories about the water supply in Mexico City being overburdened by the population, and population growth, in the area. (22 million or so). Your point on 'dispersing' isn't a bad one... any amount of land or water supply can only support so many people. But ... great public works to bring water from one region to the next, like aqueducts in the Roman era, have modern analogues.
(I hadn't realized how big that urban center had gotten. It's like almost three times the population of Houston Texas, and that's America's 4th largest city).
Has Sid Myers got Civ 6 or Civ 7 published yet?

We have the internet. We no longer need financial centers. These exist now as relics of the past, like steel horseshoes. There are better options now.

We no longer need tech centers. Remember how well Google ran with its headquarters deserted during the COVID lockdown?

Airports for passenger service have to be near the passengers, but commercial air freight hubs do not. Of the top ten cargo handling airports, #2 and #3 are Memphis and Anchorage. Los Angeles barely makes the list. New York does not. Airports are already dispersing and specializing in exactly the same way shipping and cargo intermodal facilities have been.

Education is already dispersed across the internet. Doctors around the world routinely consult, philosophers discuss, engineers design, professors teach, and archaeologists share their exciting new discoveries online. Anyone with an internet connection and a desire to do so can learn anything for the cost of the internet connection, and they can buy the diploma that proves they learned it from an online university for a fraction of the price of traditional universities.

The new cultural hub is tik tok. For better or worse, in this generation, homogenization of American culture has been overwhelming the many regional cultures and traditions because of the influence of the internet. (I made a joke about Short Attention Span Theatre at our recent family reunion. The adults laughed, the kids made statements that sounded like questions.)

That leaves government. I'm not sure why governments need big, imposing structures in the middle of urban areas. Perhaps to create the illusion of permanence? In any case, governments no longer need central meeting places because a representative in Washington can talk to a representative in Washington in real time even though they are 2400 miles apart.

We are at the early stages of the abandonment of cities. It will require generations to accomplish. As in The Fall of Rome, people lived there even after the fall. The city went from a population exceeding a million to a population of 20,000 slowly. Each breakdown of infrastructure or failure of opportunity caused some to leave, and few were enticed to come to the city. It was not the desire to abandon cities that caused this. Paris, Berlin, Bruges, and many other cities came into their own during Rome's long decline. But the cost to support the infrastructure exceeded what the Roman governments could tax out of their subjects.

And that is what we are seeing now. The cost of maintaining cities exceeds the wealth generated by them. Until this changes, the collapse of cities is inevitable.

Now a word about scale economics. Some things scale efficiently. Others do not.
Diesel engines scale upwards very well, but scaling below a particular size, they become less efficient until the necessary compression pressure cannot be achieved. Gas turbines, (with appropriate modifications,) scale from microscopic size to the IAE 2500, are fuel hogs at any size, but effectively scale. 2-stroke gasoline piston engines scale down to very tiny sizes, but when scaling up become vastly less efficient until the engine tears itself apart from pressure and vibration which exceed the structural integrity of the metal it is made of.

There is a reason we do not build high rises where there is available land for dwellings: because they cost so much more to build and maintain that they only become economically feasable where rent is already inflated. The same applies to urban infrastructure. A waterpipe bursting in suburbia never makes the news, but in an urban center? If suburbia has to repair a waterline they put up roadblocks, bring in the equipment and workers, and a few days later they are tamping new asphalt over the repair. In a city, it gets much more complex, very quickly. You have to avoid all the other things buried above the waterline, mitigate damage to nearby structures, and reroute traffic around the affected area as careful excavation by specially trained workers begins.

Urban infrastructure that is outdated is not easily replaced. As an example, in the small town in which I currently reside and its surrounding urbanized rural areas, they recently upgraded to fiber optics for internet. They set up boring machines and drilled horizontally for miles. They even hit a few water lines creating outages, the worst of which lasted a day. A nearby small city, having far fewer miles of cable necessary, is still being upgraded and it is a city that boasts two high-rise buildings! Work stopped for nearly a month as the city shut down a block for a sewer repair.

So, scaling economy is highly dependent on what is being scaled. Urban infrastructure costs more to install, more to maintain, more to repair, and more to upgrade. It may serve more people, but as one can see by comparing rural and urban utility bills, it is not cheaper.

[Ruck]

is a specific case of industry-specific global competition coupled with corporate greed and mismanagement of a significantly non-diversified industrial focus, resulting in massive job losses. Like everything else you've claimed, nothing at all like what you have described.

Yes; without getting too specific as to run afoul of any of the rules, I'd say that by and large any problems associated with cities are largely due to factors like the above more than any "cities are outdated and no longer useful" assertion.

[brian 333]

Yes; without getting too specific as to run afoul of any of the rules, I'd say that by and large any problems associated with cities are largely due to factors like the above more than any "cities are outdated and no longer useful" assertion.

Then please illustrate how in modern times with modern technologies, cities are better than dispersed populations.

I stipulate that cities are neither necessary nor superior to a decentralized society. That we still use them is a matter of cultural inertia rather than necessity. What production does happen in cities today can be done cheaper outside the city, and cities are net consumers of wealth rather than wealth generators.

So far, I am wrong because in two generations after the technological improvements I cite, cities have not stopped growing. Why do you think I'm wrong?

[Coppercloud]

Then please illustrate how in modern times with modern technologies, cities are better than dispersed populations.

They make it vastly easier to build an extensive network of public transportation, or - better yet - to forgo any kind of motorized vehicle and have all common locations within walking or cycling distance, maybe? Avoiding the costs of manufacturing, maintaining and supplying a billion cars with fuel is already kind of a big deal, I think.

[Peelee]

Then please illustrate how in modern times with modern technologies, cities are better than dispersed populations.

Ok. Also, for the first time in American history, rural populations declined in the last decade. Coincidentally, the decade with the most recent and advanced technological enhancements!

AGAIN, actual data shows the exact opposite of your claims. You keep claiming it regardless, and provide zero sources while asking others to back up their rebuttals, which is not how the onus of evidence works. I can't remember, but are you also the one who made that really weird claim that Jon Stewart lies to his audiences? At this point i think that whatever sources you get your information from are probably so inherently unreliable and you are so entrenched in the views you develop from them that it's probably pointless for me to continue discussion since you'll just continue planting your flag on demonstrably incorrect claims that you absolutely insist are correct with no evidence whatsoever.

[brian 333]

They make it vastly easier to build an extensive network of public transportation, or - better yet - to forgo any kind of motorized vehicle and have all common locations within walking or cycling distance, maybe? Avoiding the costs of manufacturing, maintaining and supplying a billion cars with fuel is already kind of a big deal, I think.

+1

Ok. Also, for the first time in American history, rural populations declined in the last decade. Coincidentally, the decade with the most recent and advanced technological enhancements!

AGAIN, actual data shows the exact opposite of your claims. You keep claiming it regardless, and provide zero sources while asking others to back up their rebuttals, which is not how the onus of evidence works. I can't remember, but are you also the one who made that really weird claim that Jon Stewart lies to his audiences? At this point i think that whatever sources you get your information from are probably so inherently unreliable and you are so entrenched in the views you develop from them that it's probably pointless for me to continue discussion since you'll just continue planting your flag on demonstrably incorrect claims that you absolutely insist are correct with no evidence whatsoever.

First: I don't recall any comments about Jon Stewart. He has not been on my radar for decades, so I don't know why I'd care enough to take a stance on whether a comedian lies or not. My only question is, is he funny? And my personal answer is, at first The Daily Show was, but after a while it became repetitive. TV shows tend to do that.

Yes, rural population has declined. So has city populations. People are moving to suburban areas as fast as tract houses can be built.

Bloomberg reports on the issue in the context of the recent pandemic.

But it has been in progress my whole life. I have watched big cities become traps for poor people while those who can move out. As the poor migrate into cities for easy access to public services, their employment opportunities have moved to suburbia.

The Boston Federal Reserve agrees that the urban abandonment has been underway since the 1960s at least.

Access to healthcare in rural America is, in part, the cost of modern medical equipment, (why put an MRI in a town where it will be used five times a month when it can be put in a suburban clinic that will use it five times an hour?) But it is also in part due to the change from medicine being administered by independent practices to medicine being controlled by massive insurance conglomerates which see no financial incentive to invest in underserved rural markets while there are still underserved markets in denser regions. The medical needs of a region are being determined by corporate planners who never go to the clinics they operate rather than by a doctor who lives in the community. While huge advancements in treatments are available, the large corporate model has not produced better results. It seems that in yet another case dispersion is superior to consolidation.

A final note about rural employment: agriculture, mining, and manufacturing are the main employers of rural populations. They are also all the primary beneficiaries of technological improvements that reduce the need for workers. Worker productivity has skyrocketed over 60% in the last few decades with less than a 12% increase in man/hours worked due to technology. Rural employment opportunities are shrinking, and all across America, farmlands near the urban centers are being sold for housing tracts.

What the actual data shows is that people are searching for the good life and finding it in Suburbia. This is the dispersión I've been talking about.

[bunsen_h]

Education is already dispersed across the internet. Doctors around the world routinely consult, philosophers discuss, engineers design, professors teach, and archaeologists share their exciting new discoveries online. Anyone with an internet connection and a desire to do so can learn anything for the cost of the internet connection, and they can buy the diploma that proves they learned it from an online university for a fraction of the price of traditional universities.

The new cultural hub is tik tok. For better or worse, in this generation, homogenization of American culture has been overwhelming the many regional cultures and traditions because of the influence of the internet. (I made a joke about Short Attention Span Theatre at our recent family reunion. The adults laughed, the kids made statements that sounded like questions.)

Some things can be learned only through practical, hands-on experience. This requires expensive infrastructure.

Tik tok is a new cultural hub. There are other kinds of entertainment that people aren't going to be willing to forgo, which involve large numbers of people in expensive facilities. Major sporting events, theatrical productions, and concerts by popular performers are among them. Notwithstanding concerns over infectious diseases, in general, live performance is much better than watching a broadcast or recording.

I have friends who moved from medium-sized cities to large cities because the large cities could support their needs for particular social interests and the medium-sized cities couldn't. Me, I couldn't stand to be surrounded by millions of people, and on the whole would prefer to be living in a somewhat smaller city than I'm in. But I'd have trouble living in a small town.

Access to healthcare in rural America is, in part, the cost of modern medical equipment, (why put an MRI in a town where it will be used five times a month when it can be put in a suburban clinic that will use it five times an hour?) But it is also in part due to the change from medicine being administered by independent practices to medicine being controlled by massive insurance conglomerates which see no financial incentive to invest in underserved rural markets while there are still underserved markets in denser regions. The medical needs of a region are being determined by corporate planners who never go to the clinics they operate rather than by a doctor who lives in the community. While huge advancements in treatments are available, the large corporate model has not produced better results. It seems that in yet another case dispersion is superior to consolidation.

Countries that have very different medical models than the U.S. have the same issues regarding health care expenses and distributed health care. The problems of infrastructure are not solely because of that health care model.

[Peelee]

+1



First: I don't recall any comments about Jon Stewart. He has not been on my radar for decades, so I don't know why I'd care enough to take a stance on whether a comedian lies or not. My only question is, is he funny? And my personal answer is, at first The Daily Show was, but after a while it became repetitive. TV shows tend to do that.

Yes, rural population has declined. So has city populations. People are moving to suburban areas as fast as tract houses can be built.

Bloomberg reports on the issue in the context of the recent pandemic.

But it has been in progress my whole life. I have watched big cities become traps for poor people while those who can move out. As the poor migrate into cities for easy access to public services, their employment opportunities have moved to suburbia.

The Boston Federal Reserve agrees that the urban abandonment has been underway since the 1960s at least.

Access to healthcare in rural America is, in part, the cost of modern medical equipment, (why put an MRI in a town where it will be used five times a month when it can be put in a suburban clinic that will use it five times an hour?) But it is also in part due to the change from medicine being administered by independent practices to medicine being controlled by massive insurance conglomerates which see no financial incentive to invest in underserved rural markets while there are still underserved markets in denser regions. The medical needs of a region are being determined by corporate planners who never go to the clinics they operate rather than by a doctor who lives in the community. While huge advancements in treatments are available, the large corporate model has not produced better results. It seems that in yet another case dispersion is superior to consolidation.

A final note about rural employment: agriculture, mining, and manufacturing are the main employers of rural populations. They are also all the primary beneficiaries of technological improvements that reduce the need for workers. Worker productivity has skyrocketed over 60% in the last few decades with less than a 12% increase in man/hours worked due to technology. Rural employment opportunities are shrinking, and all across America, farmlands near the urban centers are being sold for housing tracts.

What the actual data shows is that people are searching for the good life and finding it in Suburbia. This is the dispersión I've been talking about.

1.) The Jon Stewart comment was from someone else and i misremembered. My bad!
2.) Suburbs exist because of the city. No city, no suburbs. Even if you want to argue against decentralized city with minimal downtown presence and mostly suburbs, that also exists currently and is still a city. There's a prime example of this you've probably heard of, the people who live there call it "Los Angeles".
2.) Your links on medical issues in the US refer to the entire medical industry and not to the difficulties of rural medicine. Rural medicine in the US is, to put it lightly, even more of a ****show than the medical industry overall in the country. Equipment is an issue, but so is the number and specialization of providers. This issue also exists globally, and is hardly US specific.

[brian 333]

1.) The Jon Stewart comment was from someone else and i misremembered. My bad!
2.) Suburbs exist because of the city. No city, no suburbs. Even if you want to argue against decentralized city with minimal downtown presence and mostly suburbs, that also exists currently and is still a city. There's a prime example of this you've probably heard of, the people who live there call it "Los Angeles".
2.) Your links on medical issues in the US refer to the entire medical industry and not to the difficulties of rural medicine. Rural medicine in the US is, to put it lightly, even more of a ****show than the medical industry overall in the country. Equipment is an issue, but so is the number and specialization of providers. This issue also exists globally, and is hardly US specific.

Okay. Suburbs = cities is a point of disagreement, but I acknowledge that it is your opinion. My opinion is that cities are distinct from the suburban areas that previously served them and now are more decentralized and servicing themselves rather than the urban hubs around which they grew. I don't see any point in arguing that, as there is no clear definition of where a city ends and a suburb begins. I'll cede the point to you on technicalities.

I'm not certain I can discuss medical care without breaching forum rules. Indeed, I only discussed it at all in response to another poster's claim that it was a reason folks would choose urban lifestyles over rural ones. (Again, ignoring suburbia or allowing it to be considered urban.)

The one point I will make about it is that without the lifesaving leaps in medical technology that we enjoy today, when medical practice was performed in much the same way legal practice is, with independent professionals serving their customers from small clinics they owned, life expectancy was on the increase. Now it is in decline. While a lot of this is attributed to cultural factors having nothing to do with medical care, the downturns in life expectancy coincidentally occurred simultaneously with the consolidation of the practice of medicine from independent contractors into a medical industry. Correlation is not causation in every case, but it is often enough that it should be looked into when it occurs.

[KorvinStarmast]

We have the internet. We no longer need financial centers. These exist now as relics of the past, like steel horseshoes. There are better options now.

Urban decay began in the 50's and 60's, and yet cities are still with us. I find your examples not to fit current facts. I was not going to go into the medical bit (bunsen handled that nicely) but I've been following the medical mismatch between urban areas and the rural areas, and it's striking how badly served non urban areas are (and that trend has been in play for over a decade).

The airline industry, and it practices for the past 15 years, are in utter opposition to your assertions.

Beyond that: MD Anderson can't exist in San Angelo. The critical mass of the urban and suburban metro area is necessary to support an operation like that.

[Peelee]

Okay. Suburbs = cities is a point of disagreement, but I acknowledge that it is your opinion. My opinion is that cities are distinct from the suburban areas that previously served them and now are more decentralized and servicing themselves rather than the urban hubs around which they grew. I don't see any point in arguing that, as there is no clear definition of where a city ends and a suburb begins. I'll cede the point to you on technicalities.

I'm not certain I can discuss medical care without breaching forum rules. Indeed, I only discussed it at all in response to another poster's claim that it was a reason folks would choose urban lifestyles over rural ones. (Again, ignoring suburbia or allowing it to be considered urban.)

The one point I will make about it is that without the lifesaving leaps in medical technology that we enjoy today, when medical practice was performed in much the same way legal practice is, with independent professionals serving their customers from small clinics they owned, life expectancy was on the increase. Now it is in decline. While a lot of this is attributed to cultural factors having nothing to do with medical care, the downturns in life expectancy coincidentally occurred simultaneously with the consolidation of the practice of medicine from independent contractors into a medical industry. Correlation is not causation in every case, but it is often enough that it should be looked into when it occurs.

Ok, disassociating suburbs from cities gets me to understand your argument a lot better. The problem is that would just reinvent cities. Most big cities exist because there's strong reasons for them to exist - San Diego, San Los Angeles, New York, New Orleans, et al are all major shipping hubs, NYC and Los Angeles doubly so with also being enormous ports for international trade, both by sea and air. Atlanta was at a railroad nexus, which is still valuable as rails are still vital to modern nations, but then Delta decided to make it their hub, kicking off a chain reaction that made ATL the busiest airport in the world (BHM was the other consideration and believe you me, i am grateful every day that Atlanta got the pick).

If you want me to go more local, Birmingham basically exists because it's the only known place in the world where all three components for making steel naturally exist simultaneously, and while our steelmaking fell by the wayside decades ago, we now have a massive medical district downtown - UAB alone, a Tier 1 university, spans over 80 city blocks with educational, clinical, and research facilities that are highly ranked globally. Bham is headquarters many major corporations, including Fortune 500 companies, and has major corporate presences for numerous other corporations. Huntsville exists because Von Braun found out about the Redstone Arsenal and planted his base of operations there to repurpose the military rockets to space exploration and transportation. Due to this, it is home to one of the ten NASA field centers, and the unique combination of the military base and the Marshall Space Flight Center attracted enormous corporate presence for companies like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, IBM, The Aerospace Corporation, etc. UAH, one of the three schools in the University of Alabama system, offers a Space Science graduate program which effectively prints internship passes to NASA and aerospace corporations thanks to this incredible focus. And even with all that, circling back to Birmingham, UAB (which isn't even the mothership of the UA school system - that's the Tuscaloosa campus) has such an enormous focus on medical research that it is the single biggest employer in the state.

Anyway, the point is, most major cities have at least one industry with a major focus that requires a lot of people, which then have other companies spring up to provide services to, which themselves require additional people. If "proper" cities, let's call them without the metro areas, were abandoned in favor of suburbs, the suburbs would grow much larger and become "proper" cities themselves. Again, consider Alabama (because I'm familiar with it). Birmingham proper is the third most populous city in the state, Montgomery and Huntsville both beat us in population. Neither of them have much of a metro area while the greater B'ham area has 1.1 million - on the lower end of big city, but it's about a quarter of the state population, so not bad for a mid-population state. Mountain Brook and Hoover and Vestavia Hills and Homewood and... simply wouldn't exist without Birmingham proper, and Birmingham won't be going away, because even if it somehow did, all the surrounding suburbs would gobble it up immediately and simply use everything that's already existing there.

This, of course, presupposes that there is no critical disruption of one of the pillars holding the community up, which typically be unique city-to-city (eg Detroit).

I could go into much more detail on the issues of rural medicine and how it is largely failing, while easily keeping within the Forum Rules, but I've already got a wall of text already.

[brian 333]

Urban decay began in the 50's and 60's, and yet cities are still with us. I find your examples not to fit current facts. I was not going to go into the medical bit (bunsen handled that nicely) but I've been following the medical mismatch between urban areas and the rural areas, and it's striking how badly served non urban areas are (and that trend has been in play for over a decade).

The airline industry, and it practices for the past 15 years, are in utter opposition to your assertions.

Beyond that: MD Anderson can't exist in San Angelo. The critical mass of the urban and suburban metro area is necessary to support an operation like that.

MD Anderson supports my position, not yours! Of the five locations in Houston, only one is in Houston. The other four are in suburban communities outside the Houston City limits.

The passenger airline industry and the air cargo industry are not the same, though there is overlap. Airports are expensive, and are primarily built by governments that want passenger air services. These governments build the airports and airlines lease space and services. Passengers go to the nearest, but cargo service goes to locations where available space and lack of traffic exist. Another difference: passenger service is heavily subsidized. No, the airline industry does not prove me wrong. It is very much like saying sports fans prefer stadiums in densely populated areas. The truth is, stadium owners generally build in populated areas, and those who would use them have no other options. Even so, urban sports fans have no problems traveling half an hour to an hour to watch the Patriots play in the suburbs.

Having already defended my stance on medical care, I will not go into it again. But Medical was posited by another poster as a draw to urban areas. Okay, how much wealth generation does the medical service sector provide? The initial argument was not that rural medical was equal to urban, but that the traditional cities are no longer attracting industries that generate enough wealth to support the taxation required to maintain urban infrastructure. Even MD Anderson does not generate enough taxable wealth to maintain Houston's water distribution infrastructure. Houston used to rely on its cargo port and the oil industry for its tax base. Both are moving away as smaller, specialized ports open along the Gulf Coast. Any guesses about Houston's prospects once oil is rendered obsolete?

The question is, what do cities produce? What jobs are available in modern cities? What wealth can cities generate to sustain themselves?

(I consider a city to be the historic city lines, not the sprawl that currently surrounds them created by people evacuating the city for suburbia.)

[Timy]

Do they cook to order? I live right by a place that is willing to do rare burgers. Only two kinds of owners would allow that, ones who know everything about their meat they deal with and ones who won't be in business long. This place has been in business longer than I've lived here.

Ain't nothing like a rare burger.

There's ways to mitigate that and reduce the risk to acceptable levels. It's still on the restaurant to take on the risk, of course, which is why most won't do it, and which leaves the two aforementioned categories of restaurants that will.

Sorry for going back in time but I stumbled on that...

So you actually LIKE rare burgers ?? But you don't eat any because restaurants are afraid of potential lawsuit ??

It makes my french self very sad for you :'(

[danielxcutter]

Perhaps they're rare because they're uncommon

[Peelee]

Sorry for going back in time but I stumbled on that...

So you actually LIKE rare burgers ?? But you don't eat any because restaurants are afraid of potential lawsuit ??

It makes my french self very sad for you :'(

I love rare burgers, will usually cook them that way myself when i grill at home, and there is at least one restaurant I know of that will cook its burgers rare. I don't eat them often, but i do get my fix when i need. I appreciate the concern for not getting one, though!

[LadyEowyn]

What are the benefits of cities?

1) They give large numbers of people easy access to services. Most education is still delivered in person, not online; some education (like science labs) has to be. They give easy access to hospitals. People who live in cities are, statistically, healthier than those who live outside them (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/.../c-g02-eng.htm). Suburbs live off off cities - you can’t have a suburb without a city, because the services and job opportunities of a city are what make people want to live in the suburb rather than in a small town or rural area.

2) They bring large numbers of diverse people together - if you have a niche interest and want to find products or people associated with that interest, they’ll be a city. Our lives are not yet 100% online.

3) They bring together large numbers of well-educated, skilled people. Employers locate in cities because that’s where they can find a workforce. Again, most work is not remote at present, and some work can’t be - engineers go to construction sites to look at them, surgeons work in hospitals.

I understand that a lot of things are online now, but many things still are not. For anything that isn’t online, a business want to be in a city in order have access to 1) a large number and variety of prospective employees and 2) a large number of prospective customers, and people want to live in cities in order to have access to a wide variety of products and services.

And objectvely, cities are not shrinking - they are growing. Even as living downtown becomes extraordinarily expensive in places like New York and Toronto and Vancouver, people still pay a premium to do it. The ones moving out are the ones (many) who simply can’t afford it due to property costs, and property costs are high because of high demand.

If people wanted to live in small towns rather than cities, and small towns were equally convenient for business and labour, Canada wouldn’t have a housing crisis. It’s not like we’re short of land.

Here’s the numbers for Canada. Downtowns are growing fastest:

Downtowns are growing fast, and more rapidly than before. From 2016 to 2021, the downtown populations of the large urban centres grew faster (+10.9%) than the urban centres as a whole (+6.1%). The populations of downtowns also grew at over twice the pace compared with the previous census cycle (+4.6%).

At the same time, urban spread continued, and was accelerating in many [urban areas]. Overall, suburbs farthest from downtowns were generally growing at a faster pace (+8.8%) than the urban fringe (+3.7%) and suburbs closer to downtowns (+5.8%).

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dail...20209b-eng.htm

Why are outer suburbs growing faster than inner suburbs (bu5 slower than downtowns)? Because the inner suburbs are full: restrictive zoning and NIMBYism prevents them from adding more people.

As a final note, the “inner city slum” is an problem created by specific political, social, and economic structures in the United States (with racism and ‘white flight’ having played a large part in it). In some Canadian cities, and many European ones, and some Latin American ones, the pattern is reversed (also for reasons related to racism and classism, but expressing itself in different policies): it’s the suburbs that are poorer. When you hear about the banlieus of Paris and the favelas of Latin American cities on the news, those are their suburbs. The rich live downtown.

[KorvinStarmast]

MD Anderson supports my position, not yours! Of the five locations in Houston, only one is in Houston. The other four are in suburban communities outside the Houston City limits.

No, it doesn't. The Houston suburban area exists because of Houston. it is part of the greater Houston area. You seem to be putting the cart before the horse.

(I consider a city to be the historic city lines, not the sprawl that currently surrounds them created by people evacuating the city for suburbia.)

That makes your lens badly selected, and is a case of special pleading.

So you actually LIKE rare burgers ?? But you don't eat any because restaurants are afraid of potential lawsuit ??
It makes my french self very sad for you :'(

Yes. I usually ask for medium, and I get them a little pink on the inside that way. It makes my wife angry with me, since she thinks I'll die from eating that. She won't even order medium well because even a little pink makes here think we'll die. So she orders burgers well done.

[Peelee]

Yes. I usually ask for medium, and I get them a little pink on the inside that way. It makes my wife angry with me, since she thinks I'll die from eating that. She won't even order medium well because even a little pink makes here think we'll die. So she orders burgers well done.

You should introduce your wife to carpaccio. Getting her to try to might be an uphill battle but one bite and she'll almost certainly ease up on you eating meats cooked for less time.

ETA: Back to cities/suburbs, "fastest growing" is always a misleading metric, since the smaller something is the easier it is to grow faster - a neighborhood with ten people that has ten more move in has a 100% increase in size while a neighborhood with a hundred that has twenty move in only has a 20% increase. The smaller neighborhood is faster growing if you look at the percent, but the larger neighborhood is attracting twice as many people. Suburbs that are farther away could be "faster growing" statistically while still less popular in terms of real numbers.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics, and all that.

[Tzardok]

What's her opinion on rare steak? On sushi? On ... dare I say it ... Mett?

[Peelee]

What's her opinion on rare steak? On sushi? On ... dare I say it ... Mett?

My German friend, why no love for Tyrolean speck? Sure, it's cured, but most sushi fishes are frozen to kill potential dangers.

[Tzardok]

Never heard of it before, but it sounds tasty.

[Peelee]

Never heard of it before, but it sounds tasty.

You need to have it as soon as possible. It is DELIGHTFUL. Quick trip to Innsbruck, do a little skiing get a nice tan apparently today, grab a nice large hock of speck, and just be happy with life.