The Next President’s Urban Opportunity
Date Posted: November 8, 2016
Posted In: Ideas,
From CityLab: If voting patterns follow population trends, Tuesday’s election will be the most “urban” the United States has ever seen. More people live in America’s cities and metropolitan areas today than ever before. And for the first time since World War II, many U.S. cities are growing at the same rate or faster than their suburbs, which for decades absorbed most of the population growth in metropolitan areas.
The Great Recession caused younger families to delay (or avoid) purchasing homes in the suburbs, and demand for urban amenities has grown as both large employers and small startups have returned to central cities. Demographic changes in coming decades are likely to accelerate the growth of cities, as millennials, aging baby boomers and immigrants increasingly choose to live in urban neighborhoods.
At the same time that our cities are growing, income inequality is on the rise in the U.S., and this disparity is greatest in our largest cities. According to a Brookings Institution report from earlier this year, large metropolitan areas in the U.S.—as well as their central cities—tend to have greater income inequality than the nation as a whole. And the widening gap between rich and poor people within metropolitan areas coincides with a widening gap between rich and poor places. As colleagues at the Urban Institute recently demonstrated, the disparities between America’s most- and least-affluent neighborhoods within metropolitan areas have grown rapidly over the past two decades.
Income inequality has dominated national political discourse this year, taking center stage in the primary debates and party conventions (and to a lesser extent in the contentious general election presidential debates). Many observers, including President Obama, have declared that “combating rising inequality” is the most important challenge facing the next president. This should come as no surprise: after all, income inequality nationwide has surged to levels last seen before the Great Depression, and voters are feeling the squeeze.
But if inequality is greatest within cities and across metropolitan areas, why hasn’t either presidential candidate applied a distinctly “urban” lens to the challenges of this growing problem? And how can the president we elect on Tuesday harness demographic changes and economic shifts in cities to reverse this trend and help reduce inequality in these places?