What Is Happening to the Cities?

“STRIKE! Strike! Strike!” The masculine voices that filled San Francisco’s legislative chambers with that chant belonged to policemen, who had never before in the city’s history done so.

Before that cloudy August Monday in 1975 gave way to dawn, two officers were hit by an irate motorist’s car and another was beaten with a baseball bat. Sniper fire rained down on others, precipitating the spectacle of police officers shooting out street lights to avoid being lighted targets. And from parking violations to murder, people took advantage of the absence of police.

Behind this turmoil, and an equally threatening firemen’s strike, was a massive top-level disagreement among mayor, city supervisors, police and fire officers: What share of spiraling city salaries and other costs should the officers get, and should public-safety officers have a right to strike over the issue?

“An entire city was kidnapped and held for ransom,” commented New York Times columnist William Saire. “The ransom was paid, and now the extortionists patrol the city’s streets, making sure nobody else breaks the law.”

On the other hand, public-employee unions in a growing number of cities say that, regrettably, there is no other way to achieve that to which they feel they are entitled. Thus, crippling strikes of municipal employees, though illegal in many places, hit city after city as contracts come due.

Money Squeeze

Underlying these visible symptoms, there are much deeper problems. Many big cities in the U.S. and in other countries are being squeezed in what has been termed a “financial vise”: On the one hand, soaring pay demands of highly organized public employees plus skyrocketing costs of everything a city has to buy, and, on the other hand, swelling numbers of poor city dwellers who require more and more services even though city income is waning.

This “financial vise” tightened early last year into a death grip on the so-called “financial capital of the world,” New York city. City spending had more than tripled in ten years. Even after slashing thousands of city jobs and frantic fund-raising activities by the hastily formed Municipal Assistance Corporation, the city remained under threat of financial collapse from week to week. And when New York State stepped in to help, its own financial integrity immediately began to crumble.

Economic shock waves spread rapidly. The financial journal Business Week declared:

“New York City’s problems are poisoning the well for everybody. . . . Already, states and cities​—even those not in financial distress—​are encountering difficulties borrowing, and paying higher prices when they do. . . . many states and cities may find themselves sliding inexorably into New York City’s dilemma: either cut spending and services . . . or see their increasingly shaky financial scaffolding collapse around their ears.”

Agonized cries for federal help raised this question in another journal of finance: “Uncle Sam can bail out New York, but who will ball out Uncle Sam?” (Forbes magazine, July 1, 1975, p. 42) The U.S. federal government already owes its creditors almost twice as much as it takes in annually from taxes, while New York city owes little more than a year’s income!

Furthermore, much of the world’s economic system is similarly founded upon layer after layer of credit. And many analysts believe that New York reflects the world’s credit structure in miniature. “Credit is faith,” noted a New York official. “Faith lies in the ability of a borrower to repay. If a major borrower like New York doesn’t, that affects credit transactions everywhere.”

Behind this far-reaching financial dilemma are numerous deep-rooted city problems that refuse to go away. Creeping urban “ghettos” hasten the flight of the “middle class” to the suburbs, public employees grow more militant, welfare rolls spiral, housing decays, pollution pervades and crime and violence thrive. Such problems tend to concentrate in big cities far more than higher population alone accounts for, and they are inexorably worsening in many of them.

A Worldwide Disease

“New York just got hit first,” said Mayor Henry W. Maier of Milwaukee. “All large cities are in the trend New York is in. It’s a matter of time.” And U.S. cities are not alone. Japan’s Daily Yomiuri, for example, reports that hundreds of cities in that nation are “on the verge of ‘bankruptcy’ with snowballing expenditures.”​—October 5, 1975, p. 2.

The scope of the world’s big-city problems is indicated by the fact that 116 cities world wide have entered the “million” population category in the twenty-five years since 1950, while it took all the centuries until then to produce just seventy-five cities that large. These metropolises are sprouting up fastest in “third world” countries that can least afford them. Many reflect, not only problems that face Western cities, but also others unique to their own culture.

“Already up to a third of the people living in Manila, Caracas, Kinshasa, and Cairo are not citizens but illegal squatters, living in tents, tin shacks or waterless, drainless hovels,” reports the Milwaukee Journal. “The experts see no alternative to the slums and shantytowns becoming the dominant form of city life in many countries before 1980.”

A look back, though, reveals that city life was often quite different in the past. Kunle Akinsemoyin writes in the Lagos, Nigeria, Sunday Times: “I can well remember when Lagos Island was the pride of Nigeria. That was in my boyhood days some 40 or more years ago. . . . people were friendly, helpful, well-mannered and hospitable.” Now he says sadly that his home city is “fast gaining the reputation of being one of the filthiest capitals in the world.”

Many of you older city dwellers may find that you are identifying yourselves with Mr. Akinsemoyin’s reflections. Why is it that many formerly vibrant centers of civilization are facing serious setbacks? Is there something fundamentally wrong with big cities?

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CAUGHT IN THE MONEY SQUEEZE

CITY HALL

EMPLOYEE WAGES

COST OF SOCIAL SERVICES

Why Big Cities Are Breaking Down

BACK in 1913, the English sociologist Patrick Geddes theorized that big cities go through five stages:

1. Polis​—early city

2. Metropolis​—large but healthy city

3. Megalopolis​—unhealthy, oversized city with grand illusions

4. Parasitopolis​—parasitic city that drains its nation

5. Pathopolis​—diseased, shrinking, dying city

Many see cities like New York as having symptoms of the fourth stage, as having already begun to leech strength from the nation. Others fear that aspects of the final stage are also evident. A cancerlike municipal disease​—creeping urban decay—​is even now shrinking the hearts out of many American cities, as middle- and upper-income families flee to the suburbs.

The populations within the taxable bounds of some American big cities are actually shrinking to “their lowest size in this century,” according to recent census information. “The populations of Boston, Pittsburgh and Jersey City haven’t been so low since 1900. . . . New York’s population is down almost to the level of 1940.”​—U.S. News & World Report, September 1, 1975, p. 64.

Driven by a growing distaste for big-city existence, taxpaying citizens, business and industry are fleeing out of the big “central city” areas to noncontributing suburbs and beyond. A sore point in San Francisco’s police strike, for example, was that more than half of those demanding higher pay lived outside the bounds of its taxpaying community. And even though New York’s taxable population has fallen to well under eight million, some estimate that as many as another ten million people living outside the city in some way derive economic benefit from it.

A Vicious Cycle

Hence, a self-perpetuating “vicious cycle” of lost taxpayers, higher taxes, more lost taxpayers, and so on, has developed. When the more prosperous families and industries move out, taking taxes and jobs with them, the poor, unemployed, aged and minorities least able to pay taxes remain. Said Milwaukee’s Mayor Maier: “We, along with other cities, are part of a deepening trend . . . toward an ever-growing concentration of the poor and the relatively poor in the central cities of America.”

Meanwhile, regular city services, as well as programs for the mounting numbers of poor and unemployed, continue to skyrocket in cost. As New York city’s spending for all purposes tripled during the past ten years, welfare costs grew at almost twice that pace!

To compensate, cities raise taxes on remaining property owners, business and industry​—an encouragement for them, too, to leave. San Francisco has been forced to more than quadruple average property taxes since 1950​—a pace double that of the rise in the cost of living.

But such high taxation makes owning housing a losing proposition for some, and this, in turn, hastens urban decay. New York apartment owners will reportedly abandon an estimated 50,000 dwelling units in 1976, after having abandoned about 35,000 units annually in recent years! Not only are taxes on these properties lost to the city, but gone also are the former residents of block after block of rubble-covered land and condemned buildings​—thus feeding the “vicious cycle.”

When highly taxed business and industry choose to leave as well, tax revenue is not the only thing taken. Since 1969, for example, it is reported that New York city steadily lost half a million manufacturing jobs​—and taxpaying workers—​due to business moves. But the alternative to higher taxes, say city officials, is cutbacks in city services. Such cutbacks make the big cities even less desirable​—driving more “middle class” and industrial taxpayers away.

Thus urban problems tend to concentrate in big cities and get driven out of proportion to what higher populations alone account for. But there are other pressures that also enter this “vicious cycle’’ of big-city economic problems. Among them are . . .

. . . Minorities

Big cities tend to stack up minorities and economically deprived persons all together in older, decaying housing and “low-rent projects,” or, in some countries, shantytowns of their own making. The effects of concentrating minorities in this fashion are well known. A report from Sweden, for example, notes that the area surrounding her big-city “urban renewal” projects are “traditionally a decaying slum-zone, where the socially and economically handicapped and newly arrived immigrants are allotted to live. These areas become haunts of alcoholic and narcotics addicts”​—as well as a drain on city resources.

The growth of black and other ethnic communities in American cities has created intractable housing problems. Deep-rooted prejudices and fears sped the exodus of whites to the suburbs, creating another big-city problem: de facto segregation. Well-intentioned efforts to give blacks equal educational opportunities by “busing” pupils between the two communities have met with only limited success, while driving many whites even farther into the suburbs and beyond.

. . . Crime

Bad housing and cramped populations tend to breed far more crime, on the average, in big cities than normally affects outlying areas. West Germany, for example, reports an average of nearly twice as many persons affected by crime in densely populated areas as in the country as a whole. Yet almost three times as many police, on the average, are assigned to protect those same city people! Can you see why many prefer to “escape” from the big cities?

Overburdened big-city courts have actually spurred the “vicious cycle” of metropolitan crime problems. The concentration of crime produces so many cases that the process of “plea bargaining” has come to be viewed as an absolute necessity in many U.S. cities. Criminals are allowed to plead guilty to lesser offenses than first charged so that massive numbers of time-consuming trials can be avoided. As a result, criminals​—even murderers—​are often back on city streets in short order.

. . . Militant Public Employees

As crime mounts and cities decay, more police and firemen are needed, as are more employees to take care of swelling welfare and other programs. Before recent cuts, for example, the number of New York city employees had grown from about 200,000 to over 300,000 in fifteen years​—yet the city’s population had hardly changed!

Public-safety employees such as police and firemen, and even garbage men, in order to compensate for the increased dangers they face, as well as to offset the rise in the cost of living, have used the absolute necessity of their services as a powerful bargaining tool to gain higher wages and benefits. The mere threat of chaos without their services has usually driven their wages up far faster than those of most other workers. For example, while living costs rose to about two and a quarter times their 1950 level in twenty-five years, wages and benefits of San Francisco police and firemen multiplied to about seven times their 1950 level! Many other cities have been just as liberal​—but someone has to pay the bill.

. . . Pollution

Those who flee to the suburbs to escape pollution and other city problems have actually added to the problem. Traffic moving into the big cities for work is becoming “heavier and heavier, moving slower and slower,” notes a recent report from Sweden that is typical of many cities. Mass-transportation schemes have accomplished little to check pollution. “The persistent traffic tie-ups shatter a dream of urban planners​—that rapid transit would ‘get people out of their cars and off the freeway.’”​—New York Times Magazine, October 19, 1975, p. 84.

A National Academy of Sciences report notes that even though U.S. federal standards have brought some improvement, country air still remains ‘far superior to most city air.’ The concentration of industry adds much to big-city pollution. But cities need industries for jobs and revenue. To survive, many recession-plagued businesses are seeking a slowdown of costly-to-meet air-quality standards, thus keeping pollution in the “vicious cycle’’ of city decay.

. . . Dehumanizing People

Squeezing humanity together in great masses seems to accentuate the worst in many people. Rather than close quarters bringing them together in warm personal relationships, just the opposite is too often the case. A report from London tells of “sick and elderly people dying alone in their apartments and not being found for weeks afterward, because no one ever visited them.” The report adds: “This would have been absolutely impossible twenty years ago.” Other big-city dwellers know that London is not unique in this matter.

Cooped up in cramped apartments and narrow city streets, children, too, suffer. They lose much of the joy of openness, discovery and interacting with nature found in more rural environments. Destroying, crushing and breaking things are often the way they satisfy the need for excitement and experience. The consequent vandalism and graffiti bring further deterioration to the cities, and more seeds of crime are planted.

Thus many of the world’s big cities are caught up in a vicious cycle of degenerating forces that seem to feed upon themselves, ever worsening. But are not the big-city governments working to improve matters?

City Government

“No American big city is well-governed today,” asserts Milton Rakove, professor of political science at the University of Illinois, “and it is unlikely that any big city could be, given the kinds of problems confronting our cities, the demands being made on their political and governmental systems, and the inability of those systems to cope with those demands.”​—New York Times, October 23, 1975, p. 39.

Lack of permanent, stable leadership hampers many big-city governments. Says Business Week of one floundering city: “It is directed by elected officials who, because of the nature of politics, often have a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ philosophy of management.”

Such transient leadership may even have a corrosive effect on the habits of municipal employees, whose productivity is said to be below that of other workers. Extra workers have to be paid to get the same job done, further draining city finances. Why? An official of one of the largest municipal-employee unions in the U.S. put it this way: “When the municipal worker discovers the city isn’t interested in how he does his job, he loses interest too. . . . We want to feel we’re disciplined. Discipline means somebody cares. What we need is leadership.”

Rather than truly caring, the tendency of many politically motivated officials is to “throw money” at city problems in the hope that they will go away. Failing to get to the heart of the problems, their superficial, money-oriented programs often swell to huge proportions and suck the lifeblood from cities. The disastrous consequences of such policies are now being felt in a number of the world’s big cities.

Even so, most national governments stand ready to “bail out” cities in trouble, thus transferring the strain to the entire nation. So it would be an exaggeration to say that all big cities are facing imminent economic collapse. Some may even appear to be coping with matters. But time is not on their side.

The plight of many big cities today might well be described by this report on the condition of those in Britain:

“Their fabric is tattered and torn. Their services generally are diminishing in scope and effectiveness at a time when more is being demanded of them. It is unlikely that the national government will refuse to ‘bail out’ cities which become as bankrupt as New York. So it seems likely that the cities will struggle on, with ever less effective services at an ever greater cost. Standards of living will continue to fall as will life values in the cities. Life in the cities, like the traffic, will likely grind on slower and slower.”

Does that mean that the pathopolis of Patrick Geddes’ theory​—the diseased, shrinking, dying city—​is the only course that lies down the road for today’s metropolises? Is there no solution for the big cities?

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Owners abandon thousands of dwelling units yearly due to high taxes

The Only Remedy for City Troubles

NO, THE remedy for big-city troubles is not more money and give-away programs. That kind of “help” has only hastened the cities to their ruin. It does not reach the underlying problems. Municipal leaders have too often come to “look upon the ghetto as a walled enclave into which some money can be tossed to keep it quiet,” writes Sol Linowitz, president of America’s Federal City Council. “That view can only invite disaster.”

Then what is the remedy? Well, the experts say that some fundamental changes are needed. “[Municipal] bonds may help us avoid a financial crunch,” says Mr. Linowitz. “But we won’t have dealt with the central problems of our cities until we have learned how to devise another kind of bond one that will bind people together . . . in mutual trust and respect.”​—New York Times, October 25, 1975.

Additionally, a recent conference of several hundred prominent scientists, scholars and others at Houston, Texas, suggested another basic change. A number of the experts, it was reported, urged that, to avoid a “gloomy, catastrophic future . . . people should be given the incentive to return to rural areas from huge urban centers and be employed in smaller, more labor-intensive tasks.”​—U.S. News & World Report, November 3, 1975, p. 88.

But how soon do you think most city dwellers will ‘learn to devise bonds of mutual trust and respect’? Or, can you imagine the majority of business, industry and city folk willingly reverting to a less production-minded, convenience-oriented way of life? Even if political leaders should attempt such innovations, they would be stymied by forces beyond their control. Is the kind of farsighted leadership and power that it would take to make such far-reaching changes anywhere to be found?

Superior Direction Needed

Well, consider the Source of earth’s marvelously balanced and complex natural cycles. These cycles function flawlessly when men do not tamper with them. Is not the power and intelligence behind these obviously successful systems just the kind of direction that humans and their cities sorely need? That One can bring success to the human condition as well, because He is “the Former of the earth and the Maker of it, . . . who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it even to be inhabited.”​—Isa. 45:18.

There can be no question that earth’s Maker designed it to be a happy, comfortable home for its inhabitants. However, they have rejected the Creator’s standards and veered from patterns of life that harmonize with his creation’s natural cycles into ever more artificial life-styles. But how can these seemingly “locked in” big-city patterns of living ever be changed?

Well, since the big-city way of life is part of a worldwide system of things that does not work, the only remedy is to replace it with a global system that does work for the benefit of all. Man’s Creator has purposed such a new system of management with the kind of farsighted leadership and power needed to make it a success. The Bible calls it the “kingdom of God,” and it is carried on by means of his Son Jesus Christ.​—Mark 1:15.

But such directing of earth’s affairs from heaven will obviously not be welcomed by either present power-hungry heads of state or proud city governments. That is why the Bible says that the Kingdom, for which we pray, “will not be passed on to any other people.” Rather, “it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms” before it successfully takes charge of earth’s affairs. Dan. 2:44.

A New Way of Life

Thus God’s kingdom will make a clean sweep of all vestiges of this failing system’s way of doing things. So differently will earth be managed that Bible prophecy pictures the changed human society then as being like an entirely “new earth.” It says that “death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”​—2 Pet. 3:7, 13; Rev. 21:1-5.

We can be sure that among former causes of outcry and pain that will pass away are the giant metropolises that jam people into row after row of multistoried concrete apartments, robbing them of sunlight, fresh air and privacy, and surrounding them with noise and irritation. Though we do not know the extent to which community living will prevail for that “new earth,” we do know that it will never again be allowed to become a source of oppression. There are some indications of this from God’s past dealings with humans.

After the earth was cleansed by the flood of Noah’s day, God repeated his original statement of purpose for humans on earth: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth.” Later on, that purpose was tested when men chose instead to concentrate in a big city. “Let us build ourselves a city,” they said, and “make a celebrated name for ourselves, for fear we may be scattered over all the surface of the earth.” God registered his disagreement with that way of doing things by taking actions that did scatter the would-be big-city builders “over all the surface of the earth.”​—Gen. 9:1; 11:4, 8.

Additionally, the inspired law that later governed the nation of Israel had provisions that were not encouraging to big-city living. Any person living in the small, unwalled settlements of Israel who sold his house, perhaps due to economic need, always had the unchallengeable right to repurchase it. And if the seller was unable to repurchase his home, it reverted to the family anyway when the Jubilee year came around every fifty years. On the other hand, those living in the larger walled cities retained the right of repurchase for only one year, after which the new owner held all claim to the property. Thus the more rural location was advantageous.​—Lev. 25:29-34.

In view of such expressions of God’s viewpoint, a more agricultural way of life will no doubt predominate for the soon-to-be-realized “new earth.” Bible prophecy portrays the kind of existence that God can provide in these words:

“They will certainly build houses and have occupancy; and they will certainly plant vineyards and eat their fruitage. . . . The work of their own hands my chosen ones will use to the full.”​—Isa. 65:17, 21, 22.

Then, too, even the attitudes of people will reflect their new environment and its righteous governing procedures when God ‘makes all things new.’ Mutual trust and respect will prevail, “for the earth will be filled with the knowing of the glory of Jehovah as the waters themselves cover over the sea.” This is the only true remedy for today’s troubled big cities.​—Rev. 21:5; Hab. 2:14.