WestportWiki / Wikimedia Commons"For all of the attention showered on hipster enclaves like Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Portland, Ore., America is only in the beginning stages of a historic urban reordering. After over a half-century of depopulation, cities have been filling up — and not just with young millennials, but with families and even older workers and retirees," begins Vishaan Chakrabarti in a recent op-ed for the New York Times.
Chakrabati lays out a few reasons for why so many are making the choice to move to the city:
Chakrabati is not out, however, to continue to describe the trend toward urbanization, or its possible causes and correlations. The op-ed's main point: "Given these demographic shifts, we have an unsurpassed opportunity to transform the United States into a more prosperous, sustainable and equitable country by encouraging a more urban America."
Yet the federal government, according to Chakbarati, continues to shower the suburbs with "largess" (for instance, "[the] largest subsidy in the federal system is the mortgage interest deduction, about $100 billion annually"). Finally: "I am not arguing that people should not live in suburbs. But we shouldn’t pay them to do so, particularly now that our world and the desires of our population are evolving."
