Greatness of the city
Years ago, in another life, I was a college professor. I learned a lot in grad school, but I learned far more when I started to teach.
I trained in political science. In those days, a person was supposed to specialize in two of the four subdisciplines, which were: political philosophy, American government, comparative politics and international relations. I chose the first two.
So when I started teaching, I knew the literature on political parties, the presidency and Congress. But when I was called upon to teach a course in state and local government, then a standard course in most poli sci departments, I was clueless.
I knew where to look, though. I knew how to begin to educate myself so that I could, as the saying goes, “stay two weeks ahead of the kids.” It was good preparation for journalism, where the most essential skill is to be able to research and educate one’s self on a topic quickly.
State and local government became one of my favorite courses to teach, and it led to a second, followup course on the politics of cities.
That course gave me a lifelong love of cities — New York City, Rome, Barcelona, Toronto, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, LA, and Boston, to name a few. There are glorious cities. But notice that not one on this list is remotely like the others, either in character or challenges. Every great city is unique.
But there are common elements of greatness.
I built that course around the dialogue between the urban rationalists and Jane Jacobs, the author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Lewis Mumford, the classical urbanist and renaissance man, was the romantic rationalist who fell somewhere in between. When I taught the course at Trinity College in Hartford, I brought in practitioners and policymakers to talk to the students about real life choices.
The great thing about Jacobs, a self-educated writer and economist, was her insistence on the organic, and often messy, development of cities. Instead of “we have a plan to make you all better,” she insisted on human and intellectual diversity.
And something that comes with
diversity: density. Prior to Jacobs, many urbanists who wrote about human density saw it as the great curse of the metropolis. She saw it as the great blessing.
A city in which people do not live downtown is in trouble.
A city in which people do not interact, in close contact, or in which people are too spread out, or are separated by buildings, or prejudice, is in trouble.
A healthy city, Jacobs said, functions on multiple levels sociologically, economically, artistically and spatially. Public space is protected and so is private space.
A few years ago, my editors at The Blade, in Toledo, sent me to five midsize cities — Dayton, Ann Arbor, Youngstown, Grand Rapids and Cincinnati. The idea was to look at what was working and not working — ranging from taxation and investment, to city management, to downtown living, to rebuilding sidewalks, to attracting new industries.
One can only generalize at a high level because all of these cities, like the ones I mentioned earlier, have their own unique histories and character.
And, if we are honest, chance plays a part. Paul Newman was once asked the secret to his long marriage to Joanne Woodward. His one-word answer? Luck.
Some cities have risen and some fallen mostly because of accidents of history — good luck or bad.
But that does not free us from the obligation to see, learn and do what we can.
So, with apologies to Jacobs, here are four attributes that I think separate a good city (safe, affordable) from a great one (exciting, on the move); an Akron from a Nashville. I think these tests work for midsize cities as well as large ones.
1. A great city has spontaneous movement, action and initiation.
The city is happening; bubbling. Some of this might be because of luck. Some because of leadership. It is usually not because someone or some group made a master plan. But if a plan, albeit less than fully realized, fed a comeback culture and civic confidence, it added energy to energy and can be deemed “successful.”
2. A great city has economic enterprise.
Commerce is being constantly generated in a great city. And new commerce is being generated faster than old commerce dies. That’s key. And this usually has less to do with government incentives and tax breaks than a smart workforce, hence “eds and meds.”
3. It has civic enterprise.
Politicians do not make a great city. Neither do the business leaders. But politicians who are willing to spend political capital to move the city forward are an enormous plus, as are business people who have roots in a city and care about it and give back to it.
And a city with corrupt or inept leaders, public and private, will be crippled, probably decisively.
4. Its people are optimistic.
Pittsburgh never lost its optimism, its faith in itself. Neither did New York City. Both “came back.”
Many cities did lose faith in themselves, especially in the industrial Midwest.
Part of New York City’s comeback, after years of articles wondering whether the city was governable, and a string of hapless mayors, was the election of two mayors in a row (Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg) who had no doubt that the city not only would survive but would prosper. How many cities could truly become stronger after a paramilitary attack that destroyed its tallest buildings and took 3,000 lives?
So it is not the grand plans but the indigenous enterprise, energy, leadership and luck that make a city great.
Pittsburgh has beauty — tremendous physical and architectural beauty. It presents a skyline and cityscape that are breathtaking.
But it also has toughness, resilience. Pittsburghers are very proud, not just of coming back, but of coming back after they were counted out. Pride is both the how and the why of the comeback.