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Americans Don’t Know What Urban Collapse Looks Like

sprainedankles 6y ago
I had never even heard of Angkor until I listened to this episode of the Fall of Civilizations podcast (I highly recommend it): https://youtu.be/ghmjIBD2Fd4 https://youtu.be/ghmjIBD2Fd4 Resource management intertwined with poor leadership is a common thread in the demise of societies. Our ability to adapt to our environments is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as Mother Nature itself. I'd love if we took the hint from these histories, because the scale of change in our global climate looks like it'll far exceed past catastrophes. Some days I'm hopeful, but others, quite wary. Hmm.
- wbc 6y ago
  thanks for the link! I've only heard of Khmer empire/ Jayavarman VII from civ 6, this is much more detailed! Poor leadership is unfortunate, personally think it's just too hard for humans to plan hundreds of years out, so the rise/fall cycles are inevitable.
ndiscussion 6y ago
Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole. The second reason is because large cities offer many more benefits for the poor. People who cannot afford a car simply cannot live outside of city boundaries and bus lines. With increased crime, corruption, and decay, the taxpayers leave (NYC). Cities cannot fix this. If there will be any solution, it must be a national one. The problem of taxpayers leaving and net-drains arriving can never be solved at the local level.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >With increased crime, corruption, and decay, the taxpayers leave (NYC). Do you have numbers to back that up? Pre-COVID. Personal income tax numbers have increased until 2018 (last year I can find) which indicates that taxpayers were coming in rather than leaving.
  - ndiscussion 6y ago
    I believe these things come to a boiling point... covid has perhaps accelerated that boiling point in NYC's case. NYC was also kind of a bad example for me to use because actually, it's a really clean city. When I visited in 2016 I couldn't believe how much cleaner and safer it felt than my hometown (Portland Oregon). I went to all areas, manhattan, brooklyn, the bronx, harlem, queens, and I just didn't see the sad human decay (Giuliani kicked them all out I guess).
    - JAlexoid 6y ago
      There's plenty of sad human decay - it's just very compartmentalized.
  - medium_burrito 6y ago
    I agree with the other commenter that it's a boiling point issue. Things looked ok at the surface but... - rising cost of living, propelled by foreign investment in housing, pricing out even upper middle class - more taxes - more crime, and less policing - shitty schools As soon as you don't need to be in the expensive city for work, it's like hmmm, why the hell am I putting up with this? People with kids may be slightly less flexible, but anybody young and single can basically move very easily. People forget that companies can move easily too. In terms of amenities, city governments forget that the whole microbrewery/dispensary/expensive coffee shops/hot yoga/avocado toast ecosystem has basically been franchised out at this point and is trivial to stand up anywhere. Sure, it's not an opera house in Manaus, but lots of cheap places in the US have more culture than Bellevue or San Jose. Expensive cities will argue people will return, and sure, some will, unless the city is too dangerous and completely broke from the tax base leaving. If you are young and single, and want to be around other young single people, and let's say a little midwest spot becomes hip and has the basics, and lots of people move there, you don't really need NYC (at least not everybody). And $500/month rent for a nice 1 bedroom (or a mortgage) is appealing.
blr246 6y ago
>Instead, what kills cities is a long period in which their leaders fail to reckon honestly with ongoing, everyday problems—how workers are treated, whether infrastructure is repaired. Unsustainable, unresponsive governance in the face of long-term challenges may not look like a world-historical problem, but it’s the real threat that cities face. The feels correct to me. I lived in New York City for 15 years. Until last year. I've thought about this theme all year. Decades of policy supporting foreign investment and developer speculation gutted the chance for even affluent upper middle class New Yorkers to afford housing and setup a home base, and so many left. The situation has been incomparably more challenging for low income residents. I agree the urban collapse meme is much easier to spread than a thoughtful discussion about policy and priorities and how to balance the economic strength of a city's major players with the daily priorities of everyday citizens. I hope the New York remainders shift priorities and initiate a different kind of prosperous era than the one I got to enjoy.
- xxpor 6y ago
  And this comment proves the point about why this stuff is hard: the paragraph about living in NYC for 15 years is entirely wrong.
  - nate_meurer 6y ago
    Why is it wrong?
- jariel 6y ago
  Massive investment and ever increasing market value of abodes is generally the opposite problem of 'urban collapse' - I mean, unless the bridges are falling down, which I doubt. NYC in the late 1960's and 1970's underwent a kind of urban collapse. Detroit underwent urban collapse and never came back. I think this is maybe what the author meant by 'we don't know what this means'. If companies, middle class and power flee a city, there is a 100% chance of urban collapse due to the lost tax base. A thriving city like NYC or SF that are a dysfunctional mishmash of 'barely effective' - well that's another kind of problem but it's not quite urban collapse.
VLM 6y ago
The point of the article is to normalize that "americans" is synonymous with "urban new yorkers" and the rest of the population doesn't count. Clearly, rural mining ghost towns are familiar with the concept of slowly shutting down a boomtown. See also the rust belt cities which were de-industrialized about three generations ago, and continue a slow decline, or at least slower growth than the rest of the country, since then. Some like Detroit are going to something like ghost town status, others like Janesville are doing OK ish, it all seems to depend on demographics. Compare Flint MI and Janesville WI pre and post their respective GM plant shutdowns.
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  The difference to me is that rural ghost towns kind of just disappear. Urban ghost towns require billions of dollars every single year: https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2018-11/Budget%20in%20Brief%20-%20Final%20-%2010%2024%2018.pdf https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2018-1...
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
  Quick question where do you think the huge population growth in large cities over the last few decades came from? Cities are full of people who lived through part of those declines and left, or grew up in those places after and left. Part of what "decline" means in this context is "your young and ambitious people all left for the nearest very large city or NYC."
  - VLM 6y ago
    That population growth doesn't seem to exist. Certainly not in NYC graphs. San Francisco was exponential growth until 1940, then flatlined since 1950. Detroit and Baltimore were those destination cities until 1970 or so. Huge population growth in large cities is a pre-WWII effect and its an outside the US effect. Last time NYC had Shenzhen-like population growth was over a century ago.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > The point of the article is to normalize that "americans" is synonymous with "urban new yorkers" and the rest of the population doesn't count. I RTFA and it absolutely does not do this or even imply it. "Urban collapse" is right there in the title, so it'd be odd if the article talked about rural collapse. You and/or your family were clearly hurt by rural collapse, and I'm sorry for your pain. Having grown up in rural Iowa, I know that seeing rural communities and towns wither away sucks in its own way.
Simulacra 6y ago
This article sounds like it's written by someone who read everything in a book, and painfully smacks of elitism. Big industrial cities like Detroit have fallen, and urban decay is abound, but it's not always a "major" industrial center. Take any moderately sized down in rural America and you will find a place that was once a boom-town. Employment, prosperity, and great strides in the live of its citizens, slowly evaporated as rail lines were cut, highways were built around, manufacturing jobs exported, and you will find not only urban collapse, but abandonment.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- JAlexoid 6y ago
  Just a reminder - urbanization is a millennia old trend. Even if you include abandonment of Angkor - people still favored urbanization. Your tears for small towns are utterly pointless. It is a trend "as old as Rome herself".
cronix 6y ago
I know what it looks like; I live in Portland, Oregon. In 4 years, we went from 3rd most desirable city, to 66th. They're facing a 17% budget shortfall and are getting rid of people in the permitting department which means it will take longer to get permits for new construction. We are in desperate need of high density, cheap apartments. We have a housing crisis. https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/01/20/a-key-indicator-of-real-estate-investors-interest-in-portland-shows-a-precipitous-decline/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/01/20/a-key-indicator-of-rea... https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/18/why-portlands-homeless-problem-is-the-worst-in-the-nation/ https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/18/why-portlands-homeles... We had over 150 days of protests, most of which turned violent at some point. Here's an article going over the first 100 days. https://apnews.com/article/b57315d97dd2146c4a89b4636faa7b70 https://apnews.com/article/b57315d97dd2146c4a89b4636faa7b70 Gun violence has risen 166% in a single year. Back in July, at the height of the riots, the Mayor and City Council got rid of the Gun Violence Reduction Team and "defunded" the police department by $15M. https://www.kptv.com/news/gun-violence-in-portland-continues-to-rise-in-2021/article_a6dccf3a-62c3-11eb-8661-9bbec831b7f5.html?block_id=994431 https://www.kptv.com/news/gun-violence-in-portland-continues... https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/defunding-portland-police-city-council-budget-15-million-cuts/283-239c5e3a-cfed-4dce-8775-d2c52a9df9aa https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/defunding-po... Pedestrians visiting downtown drop 80%. https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2021/01/oregon-insight-pedestrians-vanish-from-downtown-portland.html https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2021/01/oregon-insight-p... Many businesses are facing increased insurance costs, and some facing not being renewed, after the violence and destruction of property in the city. They also found out most of the damage was not covered by insurance due to "not covering civil unrest." https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/downtown-portland-businesses-face-rising-insurance-costs-decreased-coverage-after-riots/283-f29140a0-9442-44b0-b555-295c8697c509 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/downtown-portland-bus... The violence is still going on. Last night, as with the last several nights, they attacked the Federal ICE facility. The week previous, they attacked the Democrat Headquarters. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/portland-rioters-attack-ice-building-local-dem-headquarters-after-biden-inauguration/ar-BB1cXNU2 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/portland-rioters-attack-ic... The district attorney chose not to prosecute many of the people arrested during the "peaceful" protests. Many have been arrested multiple times at multiple events now. 90% of those arrested by the police had their charges dropped. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/08/multnomah-county-da-to-announce-protest-policy-watch-live.html https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/08/multnomah-county... https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/7/portland-drops-charges-for-90-arrested-during-rece/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/7/portland-dro... Not unlike San Francisco, we have a large poop problem on the sidewalks. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/06/portland-has-a-plan-for-its-human-poop-problem.html https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/06/portland-has-a-p... And a massive drug problem. Don't worry though, the solution was to decriminalize all hard drugs across the state. Will that decrease the homelessness and crime? We will see. Something tells me it won't. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54809825 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54809825
fmajid 6y ago
Then there is Saint Louis, Missouri, that lost its claim to be the capital of the Midwest to Chicago because they neglected their infrastructure, just as Bruges went from major economic center to quaint historic town because they let their canal to Zeebrugge silt down, impairing their access to the sea.
fumblebee 6y ago
Last year I was working in Midtown, Manhattan. It was a normal day just like any other, except when I arrived at my desk there were tens of shocked colleagues looking down to the street below. It transpired that a piece of the facade on the old, brick walled building opposite had somehow dislodged, fell, and ended someone's life who was walking by. Her body remained there during the day because it was too dangerous to remove it. For obvious reasons, this was traumatic. My instinct tells me NYC will not suffer from the mass abandonment that the article refers to, but it needs a tremendous investment to avoid further rot. Modern skyscrapers are a bandaid over the scores of ill fated and fragile buildings and infrastructure NYC is home to.
taylodl 6y ago
I think this pandemic will transform American cities because of economics. I live in the suburbs of my city, but pay income tax to my city because that’s where I work. Well, where I used to work prior to the pandemic. My company is about to announce that we’re going to be working from home from now on so my income tax will switch to my suburb. The city stands to lose a lot of tax revenue. We’re not the only major employer in the city making this decision. I figure this can’t be unique to my city so these huge income losses are going to be hitting cities across America and will lead to rapid decline.

I had never even heard of Angkor until I listened to this episode of the Fall of Civilizations podcast (I highly recommend it): https://youtu.be/ghmjIBD2Fd4 https://youtu.be/ghmjIBD2Fd4 Resource management intertwined with poor leadership is a common thread in the demise of societies. Our ability to adapt to our environments is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as Mother Nature itself. I'd love if we took the hint from these histories, because the scale of change in our global climate looks like it'll far exceed past catastrophes. Some days I'm hopeful, but others, quite wary. Hmm.

wbc 6y ago
thanks for the link! I've only heard of Khmer empire/ Jayavarman VII from civ 6, this is much more detailed! Poor leadership is unfortunate, personally think it's just too hard for humans to plan hundreds of years out, so the rise/fall cycles are inevitable.

ndiscussion 6y ago

Our cities won't become "lost" like Angkor. Our cities have already collapsed. There's crime, corruption, decaying buildings. Detroit looks like it was hit by a nuclear bomb. There's not enough money for two reasons. The city overspends on everything due to contract corruption and misled ideals. The money doesn't go where it needs to go, and when it goes to the wrong place, it's like a black hole. The second reason is because large cities offer many more benefits for the poor. People who cannot afford a car simply cannot live outside of city boundaries and bus lines. With increased crime, corruption, and decay, the taxpayers leave (NYC). Cities cannot fix this. If there will be any solution, it must be a national one. The problem of taxpayers leaving and net-drains arriving can never be solved at the local level.

marcinzm 6y ago
>With increased crime, corruption, and decay, the taxpayers leave (NYC). Do you have numbers to back that up? Pre-COVID. Personal income tax numbers have increased until 2018 (last year I can find) which indicates that taxpayers were coming in rather than leaving.
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  I believe these things come to a boiling point... covid has perhaps accelerated that boiling point in NYC's case. NYC was also kind of a bad example for me to use because actually, it's a really clean city. When I visited in 2016 I couldn't believe how much cleaner and safer it felt than my hometown (Portland Oregon). I went to all areas, manhattan, brooklyn, the bronx, harlem, queens, and I just didn't see the sad human decay (Giuliani kicked them all out I guess).
  - JAlexoid 6y ago
    There's plenty of sad human decay - it's just very compartmentalized.
- medium_burrito 6y ago
  I agree with the other commenter that it's a boiling point issue. Things looked ok at the surface but... - rising cost of living, propelled by foreign investment in housing, pricing out even upper middle class - more taxes - more crime, and less policing - shitty schools As soon as you don't need to be in the expensive city for work, it's like hmmm, why the hell am I putting up with this? People with kids may be slightly less flexible, but anybody young and single can basically move very easily. People forget that companies can move easily too. In terms of amenities, city governments forget that the whole microbrewery/dispensary/expensive coffee shops/hot yoga/avocado toast ecosystem has basically been franchised out at this point and is trivial to stand up anywhere. Sure, it's not an opera house in Manaus, but lots of cheap places in the US have more culture than Bellevue or San Jose. Expensive cities will argue people will return, and sure, some will, unless the city is too dangerous and completely broke from the tax base leaving. If you are young and single, and want to be around other young single people, and let's say a little midwest spot becomes hip and has the basics, and lots of people move there, you don't really need NYC (at least not everybody). And $500/month rent for a nice 1 bedroom (or a mortgage) is appealing.

blr246 6y ago

>Instead, what kills cities is a long period in which their leaders fail to reckon honestly with ongoing, everyday problems—how workers are treated, whether infrastructure is repaired. Unsustainable, unresponsive governance in the face of long-term challenges may not look like a world-historical problem, but it’s the real threat that cities face. The feels correct to me. I lived in New York City for 15 years. Until last year. I've thought about this theme all year. Decades of policy supporting foreign investment and developer speculation gutted the chance for even affluent upper middle class New Yorkers to afford housing and setup a home base, and so many left. The situation has been incomparably more challenging for low income residents. I agree the urban collapse meme is much easier to spread than a thoughtful discussion about policy and priorities and how to balance the economic strength of a city's major players with the daily priorities of everyday citizens. I hope the New York remainders shift priorities and initiate a different kind of prosperous era than the one I got to enjoy.

xxpor 6y ago
And this comment proves the point about why this stuff is hard: the paragraph about living in NYC for 15 years is entirely wrong.
- nate_meurer 6y ago
  Why is it wrong?
jariel 6y ago
Massive investment and ever increasing market value of abodes is generally the opposite problem of 'urban collapse' - I mean, unless the bridges are falling down, which I doubt. NYC in the late 1960's and 1970's underwent a kind of urban collapse. Detroit underwent urban collapse and never came back. I think this is maybe what the author meant by 'we don't know what this means'. If companies, middle class and power flee a city, there is a 100% chance of urban collapse due to the lost tax base. A thriving city like NYC or SF that are a dysfunctional mishmash of 'barely effective' - well that's another kind of problem but it's not quite urban collapse.

VLM 6y ago

The point of the article is to normalize that "americans" is synonymous with "urban new yorkers" and the rest of the population doesn't count. Clearly, rural mining ghost towns are familiar with the concept of slowly shutting down a boomtown. See also the rust belt cities which were de-industrialized about three generations ago, and continue a slow decline, or at least slower growth than the rest of the country, since then. Some like Detroit are going to something like ghost town status, others like Janesville are doing OK ish, it all seems to depend on demographics. Compare Flint MI and Janesville WI pre and post their respective GM plant shutdowns.

ndiscussion 6y ago
The difference to me is that rural ghost towns kind of just disappear. Urban ghost towns require billions of dollars every single year: https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2018-11/Budget%20in%20Brief%20-%20Final%20-%2010%2024%2018.pdf https://detroitmi.gov/sites/detroitmi.localhost/files/2018-1...
8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
Quick question where do you think the huge population growth in large cities over the last few decades came from? Cities are full of people who lived through part of those declines and left, or grew up in those places after and left. Part of what "decline" means in this context is "your young and ambitious people all left for the nearest very large city or NYC."
- VLM 6y ago
  That population growth doesn't seem to exist. Certainly not in NYC graphs. San Francisco was exponential growth until 1940, then flatlined since 1950. Detroit and Baltimore were those destination cities until 1970 or so. Huge population growth in large cities is a pre-WWII effect and its an outside the US effect. Last time NYC had Shenzhen-like population growth was over a century ago.
CharlesW 6y ago
> The point of the article is to normalize that "americans" is synonymous with "urban new yorkers" and the rest of the population doesn't count. I RTFA and it absolutely does not do this or even imply it. "Urban collapse" is right there in the title, so it'd be odd if the article talked about rural collapse. You and/or your family were clearly hurt by rural collapse, and I'm sorry for your pain. Having grown up in rural Iowa, I know that seeing rural communities and towns wither away sucks in its own way.

Simulacra 6y ago

This article sounds like it's written by someone who read everything in a book, and painfully smacks of elitism. Big industrial cities like Detroit have fallen, and urban decay is abound, but it's not always a "major" industrial center. Take any moderately sized down in rural America and you will find a place that was once a boom-town. Employment, prosperity, and great strides in the live of its citizens, slowly evaporated as rail lines were cut, highways were built around, manufacturing jobs exported, and you will find not only urban collapse, but abandonment.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JAlexoid 6y ago
Just a reminder - urbanization is a millennia old trend. Even if you include abandonment of Angkor - people still favored urbanization. Your tears for small towns are utterly pointless. It is a trend "as old as Rome herself".

cronix 6y ago

I know what it looks like; I live in Portland, Oregon. In 4 years, we went from 3rd most desirable city, to 66th. They're facing a 17% budget shortfall and are getting rid of people in the permitting department which means it will take longer to get permits for new construction. We are in desperate need of high density, cheap apartments. We have a housing crisis. https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/01/20/a-key-indicator-of-real-estate-investors-interest-in-portland-shows-a-precipitous-decline/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/01/20/a-key-indicator-of-rea... https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/18/why-portlands-homeless-problem-is-the-worst-in-the-nation/ https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/10/18/why-portlands-homeles... We had over 150 days of protests, most of which turned violent at some point. Here's an article going over the first 100 days. https://apnews.com/article/b57315d97dd2146c4a89b4636faa7b70 https://apnews.com/article/b57315d97dd2146c4a89b4636faa7b70 Gun violence has risen 166% in a single year. Back in July, at the height of the riots, the Mayor and City Council got rid of the Gun Violence Reduction Team and "defunded" the police department by $15M. https://www.kptv.com/news/gun-violence-in-portland-continues-to-rise-in-2021/article_a6dccf3a-62c3-11eb-8661-9bbec831b7f5.html?block_id=994431 https://www.kptv.com/news/gun-violence-in-portland-continues... https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/defunding-portland-police-city-council-budget-15-million-cuts/283-239c5e3a-cfed-4dce-8775-d2c52a9df9aa https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/defunding-po... Pedestrians visiting downtown drop 80%. https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2021/01/oregon-insight-pedestrians-vanish-from-downtown-portland.html https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2021/01/oregon-insight-p... Many businesses are facing increased insurance costs, and some facing not being renewed, after the violence and destruction of property in the city. They also found out most of the damage was not covered by insurance due to "not covering civil unrest." https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/downtown-portland-businesses-face-rising-insurance-costs-decreased-coverage-after-riots/283-f29140a0-9442-44b0-b555-295c8697c509 https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/downtown-portland-bus... The violence is still going on. Last night, as with the last several nights, they attacked the Federal ICE facility. The week previous, they attacked the Democrat Headquarters. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/portland-rioters-attack-ice-building-local-dem-headquarters-after-biden-inauguration/ar-BB1cXNU2 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/portland-rioters-attack-ic... The district attorney chose not to prosecute many of the people arrested during the "peaceful" protests. Many have been arrested multiple times at multiple events now. 90% of those arrested by the police had their charges dropped. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/08/multnomah-county-da-to-announce-protest-policy-watch-live.html https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/08/multnomah-county... https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/7/portland-drops-charges-for-90-arrested-during-rece/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/oct/7/portland-dro... Not unlike San Francisco, we have a large poop problem on the sidewalks. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/06/portland-has-a-plan-for-its-human-poop-problem.html https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/06/portland-has-a-p... And a massive drug problem. Don't worry though, the solution was to decriminalize all hard drugs across the state. Will that decrease the homelessness and crime? We will see. Something tells me it won't. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54809825 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54809825

fmajid 6y ago

Then there is Saint Louis, Missouri, that lost its claim to be the capital of the Midwest to Chicago because they neglected their infrastructure, just as Bruges went from major economic center to quaint historic town because they let their canal to Zeebrugge silt down, impairing their access to the sea.

fumblebee 6y ago

Last year I was working in Midtown, Manhattan. It was a normal day just like any other, except when I arrived at my desk there were tens of shocked colleagues looking down to the street below. It transpired that a piece of the facade on the old, brick walled building opposite had somehow dislodged, fell, and ended someone's life who was walking by. Her body remained there during the day because it was too dangerous to remove it. For obvious reasons, this was traumatic. My instinct tells me NYC will not suffer from the mass abandonment that the article refers to, but it needs a tremendous investment to avoid further rot. Modern skyscrapers are a bandaid over the scores of ill fated and fragile buildings and infrastructure NYC is home to.

taylodl 6y ago

I think this pandemic will transform American cities because of economics. I live in the suburbs of my city, but pay income tax to my city because that’s where I work. Well, where I used to work prior to the pandemic. My company is about to announce that we’re going to be working from home from now on so my income tax will switch to my suburb. The city stands to lose a lot of tax revenue. We’re not the only major employer in the city making this decision. I figure this can’t be unique to my city so these huge income losses are going to be hitting cities across America and will lead to rapid decline.