Urban Planners Live in a Fantasy World
22nd April 2014
A few recent articles reveal just how out-of-touch with reality planning advocates are today. In the New York Times, architect Vishaan Chakrabarti claims that “millions of Americans [are] gravitating toward cities,” so we need to subsidize them with “subways, great schools, innovative work spaces, affordable housing and high-speed rail.”
Thousands? Maybe. Millions? Hardly. Relying on actual data, rather than wishful thinking, demographer Wendell Cox shows that, between 2000 and 2010, only about 206,000 people moved to within two miles of city centers in the nation’s 60-plus metropolitan areas of one million or more people. But the area just a little further out–two to seven miles from downtowns–lost 272,000 people, for a net change of minus 66,000. That doesn’t sound like millions are “gravitating” to the cities.