If there’s any local issue that I care enough about to blog regularly, Renaissance Square — estimated price tag, $230 million — is it. I simply don’t believe it’s a good use of taxpayer money. I don’t care how much is funded by the feds or the state. It’s too much money. It’s too much risk. It just can’t be a priority right now.
Now look at this: an article on the DLC website about the folly of municipal planning built on the single leg of attracting “creatives” (young, progressive, artsy people):
The new mantra advocates an urban strategy that focuses on being “hip” and “cool” rather than straightforward and practical. It is eagerly promoted by the Brookings Institution, by some urban development types, and by city pols from both parties in places like Cincinnati, Denver, Tampa, and San Diego. It seeks to displace the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Economy Indexes with what might be called a “Latte Index” — the density of Starbucks — as a measure of urban success. Cities that will win the new competition, it’s asserted, will be those that pour their resources into the arts and other cultural institutions that attract young, “with-it” people who constitute, for them, the contemporary version of the anointed. Call them latte cities.
This is exactly the thinking behind Renaissance Square. Build a performing arts center, and Rochester will become hip. Young people will want to live here. Downtown will be revitalized.
That’s B.S. We would be fools to fall for it.
Here, from the article, is a round-up of the metro areas — all of which have considerably more resources at their disposal than Rochester — who have pursued this municipal strategy:
San Francisco, according to economist David Friedman, has actually lost employment at a rate comparable to that of the Great Depression. Roughly 4 percent of the population has simply left town, often to go to more affordable, if boring, places, such as Sacramento. San Francisco is increasingly a city without a real private-sector economy. It’s home to those on the government or nonprofit payroll and the idle rich — “a cross between Carmel and Calcutta,” in the painful phrase of California state librarian Kevin Starr, a San Francisco native.
. . . Seattle has also lost jobs at a far faster rate than the rest of the country and has its own litany of social problems, including a sizable homeless population; the loss of its signature corporation, Boeing; and growing racial tensions.
Although Portland is often hailed as a new urban paradise, it is in a region suffering very high unemployment. “They made a cool place, but the economy sucks,” notes Parks, who conducted a major study for the Oregon city. “They forgot all the things that matter, like economic diversification and affordability.”
New York City has also suffered heavy job losses. Gotham’s population outflows, which slowed in the late 1990s, have accelerated, including in Manhattan, the city’s cool core. In contrast, New York’s relatively unhip suburbs, particularly those in New Jersey, quietly weathered the Bush recession in fairly fine fettle.
So where are people going — and why?
Today, economic growth is shifting to less fashionable but more livable locales such as San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, Calif.; Rockland County, N.Y.; Des Moines, Iowa; Bismarck, N.D.; and Sioux Falls, S.D.
In many cases, this shift also encompasses technology-oriented and professional service firms, whose ranks ostensibly dominate the so-called “creative class.” This trend actually predates the 2000 crash, but it has since accelerated. Since the 1990s, the growth in financial and other business services has taken place not in New York, San Francisco, or Seattle, but in lower-cost places like Phoenix; Charlotte, N.C.; Minneapolis; and Des Moines.
Perhaps more important, the outflow from decidedly un-hip places like the Midwest has slowed, and even reversed. Employers report that workers are seeking more affordable housing, and, in many cases, less family-hostile environments.
To be sure, such cities are not without their share of Starbucks outlets, and they have put great stress on quality-of-life issues — like recreation and green space — that appeal to families and relocating firms. But the watchword is livability, not coolness.
Affordable housing. Family-friendly communities. “Livability.”
Sounds dull as dirt, doesn’t it? But it’s the foundation our community needs if we’re going to reverse the exodus of young people.
The politicians who back Renaissance Square will gladly drive Rochester off a cliff, if they can look all flashy while they steer. We have to stop them.
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