The Sorry State of U.S. Cities Is a Choice—A Really Bad One

The Greater Tokyo Area contains around 40 million people—roughly as many residents as in the entire state of California—all living within a region the size of Los Angeles County. As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Tokyo runs amazingly well for such a mammoth urban environment. The transportation system is world class. The neighborhoods offer a great quality of life with numerous cultural amenities, small businesses galore, and loads of affordable and delicious food. The streets are simultaneously busy and surprisingly quiet, all within a short walk. Crime is exceptionally low. There are very few destitute or mentally ill people on the streets. Residents are exceedingly polite, and the entire city is incredibly clean.

Having just returned from a family visit to the capital city and other parts of Japan, Tokyo’s charms and advantages are impossible to miss. Although every major city has potential downsides in terms of high housing costs, insufficient jobs offering good wages, a dearth of children, loneliness, or other social issues, Tokyo really is an urban success story. Cities everywhere around the world, and especially in the United States, could learn a thing or two from the world’s largest and best managed metropolis.

It’s important to recognize that Tokyo is not a utopia. It’s a city that works well and is highly livable for its residents due to very practical and wise policy decisions carried out by municipal authorities, businesses, and citizens. These are decisions that can be replicated by urban leaders running other cities with wildly different populations, economic models, and cultural attributes.

Tokyo’s urban success is a choice—not an immutable trait emerging from its location, history, or people.

Compare Tokyo to the current condition of many large U.S. cities like New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, which are a fraction of the size of the Japanese capital yet still the most populated metro regions in America. Not to knock these places unfairly (I live in Baltimore which is both great and has numerous unaddressed social and economic problems, believe me), but would anyone seriously say that America’s biggest metropolises are living up to their full potential? Are America’s largest cities relatively easy to live and work in, with good transportation options, solid jobs, opportunities for small businesses to thrive, and mostly crime-free and socially stable neighborhoods?

Not by a long shot.

For some, mostly wealthier residents, big American cities can be a delight. People with money can afford to isolate themselves in the best parts of town with spacious apartments or houses and keep out most of the bad stuff that afflicts middle- and working-class families much more acutely. Unfortunately, many American cities today are far too expensive for normal families to live in, with poor public infrastructure, shoddy schools, tons of social problems, and extremely high levels of crime compared to many other developed cities in the world—and even within America itself.

So, why does Tokyo work so well while American cities seem to languish in comparison?

---

People often chalk it up to two major differences: Japan’s collectivist culture and demographic homogeneity versus America’s individualist culture and strong diversity. These are difficult factors to measure with precision but certainly cultural and population differences matter greatly in terms of the relative success or failure of our respective cities. Tens of millions of people in the Tokyo area who are mostly polite, respectful of others, diligent, punctual, and tidy don’t just emerge from nowhere—they are inculcated with these values from childhood through their families, schools, peer groups, and work environments. Likewise, even as immigration policies are changing given the country’s aging population and labor shortages, Japan is still full of people who are mostly ethnically Japanese which surely makes it easier to increase cohesion and decrease social friction. Both of these national characteristics provide clear advantages for urban development in a place like Tokyo.

The average big American city is Tokyo’s opposite. Although Japanese visitors often marvel at the freedom, commerce, and individuality of our laissez-faire urban environments, American cities tolerate (or actively encourage) far more social disorder and dysfunction than any city in Japan would accept. Think “no-go” crime areas, widespread littering, people bothering strangers on sidewalks and public transportation, crazy drivers, unsafe parks, open drug use, and street encampments of homeless people.

Rather than being well-managed places for people to work and live in safely and affordably—with solid municipal governance, good public services, and thriving private businesses—too many American cities are failed ideological projects that drastically underserve their residents.

As is the case with many of our national dilemmas, politics is at the root of our urban ills. The particular political failures in America’s cities are almost entirely due to bad governance by supposedly “pro-urban” Democrats. Most large American cities are one-party environments (65 of the largest 100 cities are run by Democratic mayors) with often corrupt or sclerotic bureaucracies and status quo institutions that block necessary change and ignore decades of mounting economic and social problems.

It’s not enough for mayors and city council members to simply throw up their hands and say crime, poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and revenue problems in urban America are outside their control and there’s not much they can do to improve things given these structural factors. This is a political choice—and a dodge.

To make better choices and improve life for all Americans in our cities, urban leaders and residents who vote for these public officials need more sustained attention to three primary goals:

1. U.S cities must eliminate or drastically reduce crime, social disorder, drug use, and homelessness within their boundaries. This is a prerequisite for all other urban improvements. Tax-paying residents and businesses will not stay in neighborhoods or commercial districts that are unsafe and unclean. Residents, business owners, and customers do not want crime-ridden and sordid commercial areas, public parks, cultural districts, schools, subways, commuter trains, and buses. If you want to improve urban life and business activity over the long term—clean up the cities and get rid of the crime and drugs. Stop coddling miscreants and accepting social disorder as a normal part of urban life. These are political choices not natural conditions.

2. U.S. cities must make it easier to build more affordable housing and public infrastructure. Big municipal projects are serious and difficult undertakings. But if city and state rules, regulations, and incumbent activist or community groups constantly block or delay any and all building of new housing, energy infrastructure, and mass transit in urban areas, U.S. cities will never be in a position to deliver a better quality of life for their residents. Ezra Klein nicely outlined the negative consequences of these political impediments in his most recent column on abundance policies:

The Second Avenue Subway project in New York City was the most expensive subway project, by kilometer, that the world has ever seen. Has New York reformed its policies to make the next expansion easier and cheaper? No, it hasn’t. Did the decades of delay and the billions of cost overruns on Boston’s Big Dig change how Massachusetts builds? Not really. California has the worst housing problem in the country. The state has 12 percent of the country’s population, 30 percent of its homeless population, and 50 percent of its unsheltered homeless population. Has this undeniable failure led to California building more homes today than it was building a decade ago? No.

Again, these are choices by urban political leaders, not static conditions that can’t be changed.

3. U.S. cities must increase internal political competition and states need to reduce the “blue-red” partisan mentality that divides urban and non-urban populations. When there is no real competition in urban politics, except between ideological factions within one political party, there is no incentive for leaders to change much in terms of governance or delivery of services for citizens. One-party rule is the basis for stagnation and status quo bias in urban America. Cities need to reform their municipal political systems to break the unchecked power of Democrats (mostly) and encourage more Republican, non-partisan, and independent candidates to run for office. The competition of ideas for improving cities between candidates of different political backgrounds will help to bring up issues and policy suggestions that may be under-examined or ignored by incumbent one-party leaders. It also gives more representation to residents with diverse political beliefs.

Likewise, states, big cities, and surrounding county governments need to take the lead in rejecting artificial divides between urban and non-urban populations. The “blue state/red state” and “blue city/red small town” dichotomy that permeates national politics doesn’t help either side of the line. Small-town and rural voters tend to resent the power of big urban centers while urban voters tend to resent the lack of attention paid by states to the specific problems they face dealing with much larger populations and more complex social challenges. This is often needless and counterproductive conflict exploited by selfish political parties. State politics should seek to improve life for residents in all of these environments and encourage people to recognize the contributions of different parts of their state—cities and small towns alike.

---

American cities will never develop exactly like Tokyo, nor should they try to do so. But they can take inspiration from the practical decisions and successes of Tokyo and other urban areas by first recognizing that the decrepit state of many American cities is a choice—a really bad one that should be rejected in favor of decisions that can help improve life for people from all walks of life, regardless of wealth or power.