One point that I agree with is that city living for the nonpoor is a niche market, and probably will remain so until problems like urban schooling are resolved. This needn’t mean that downtown revitalization is impossible, however. Many downtowns are relatively small compared to their metropolitan areas, so in theory only a small proportion of the MSA needs to develop a taste for city living in order to bring a downtown back. But this is not to say, I should emphasize, that those with a taste for urbanity are deserving of a subsidy, or that “bringing back” the downtown will do ameliorate some of the center city’s most difficult problems. These issues should not be lumped together. The question of whether the downtown can be brought back is separate from the question of what impacts this comeback would have, which is in turn separate from the question of whether any of these impacts warrant taxpayer support.

The more interesting question raised by the commenter is why suburbanites support downtown revitalization efforts. The commenter suggests that the explanation is pure self-interest: politically connected suburbanites who own land or businesses in the downtown want government money to shore up their investments. I buy this to an extent, but many suburbanites don’t own land or assets in the downtown. In fact many suburbanites have almost no connection to the center city at all. We should expect them therefore to be at best neutral and more likely opposed to urban redevelopment projects.

But the evidence suggests this is not the case. The General Social Survey regularly asks Americans if they support aid to big cities, and since 1990 a majority of suburbanites have said they do. This might be a sign that the suburbs and central cities truly are interdependent, as some New Regionalists have posited. Or it may be a classic case of expressive voting; suburbanites might feel so disconnected from cities and urban policy that they cast the vote (or express the opinion) that makes them feel good. The danger of expressive voting—which has been well-documented in the case of foreign aid—is that expressive voters simply want to know that “something is being done.” They don’t necessarily care if it works. So to the extent that central city assistance is designed to appeal to suburbanites, it may be biased toward large visible projects that suburbanites will see and possibly use. And few urban programs are more visible than downtown revitalization, with its stadiums, skyscrapers and rail lines.

So that’s one explanation. A colleague of mine suggested a second one, which is that suburbanites believe they do have a stake in urban growth, and that their support for downtown revitalization comes from perceived self-interest. If over the last decade many suburbanites have absorbed the arguments of Smart Growth, then they might support downtown revitalization because they want to channel growth away from themselves. Suburbanites who believe that denser, transit-oriented downtown living will forestall development and ease congestion in the suburbs might see direct subsidies to downtown as indirect subsidies to their own way of life.

Of course, that argument depends on downtown living being a substitute, rather than a complement, to suburban living. The evidence here seems to be mixed. Arthur Nelson and his coauthors have argued that anti-sprawl policies can help revitalize central cities. But Anthony Downs has argued that ameliorating central city decay will probably do little to contain sprawl and vice-versa.

-Mike Manville

As always on UPR, very thoughtful analysis. Thank you.