Joel Kotkin, author of The City: A Global History seems to think so:
From New Geography:
More important, Obama’s urban policy also marks a critical shift from the traditional American preference for decentralization of power — including at the city level — to one that embraces ever greater concentration. It could also mark a public embrace of hierarchy every bit as serious — and perhaps less reversible — than has occurred in the relatively unregulated marketplace environment of the past quarter century.
Scary stuff, though what’s meant by “the public embrace of hierarchy” isn’t exactly made clear, or how this embrace would differ from the embrace of hierarchy that led to the current morass.
Kotkin then confuses urban life, with its tolerance of difference, ability to incubate of culture, and be a launching pad of ambition, with the messy morass of Chicago politics.
Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is a tough-guy player from the variously effective and consistently corrupt Chicago city machine. The members of the Cabinet and top-tier apparatus are longtime residents of such large cities as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston and, of course, Chicago.
As the continuing Roland Burris saga reveals, the Chicago connection, in particular, seems likely to wreak continued damage. Chicago’s corruption could run like a sore through this administration, much like Arkansas with the Clintons. But rather than deal with almost laughable hillbillies, we may witness the exposure of some of the toughest, and brazen, baddies in American politics.
Eh, ok. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen dirty politics in rural counties, too—Kotkin does mention a certain couple from Arkansas, but considering that so far both Emanuel’s and Obama’s—and, for that matter, every once else in the administration—hands are clean from this kind of ward boss politics, it’s a little unfair to say that necessarily geography equals destiny.
Kotkin avoids the negative effects of our suburban century—the over-reliance on automobiles, the role the rush to home-ownership played in the our current economic debacle, the devastating effects white flight had on the urban underclass.
And the balance of power in terms of public policy has so far tilted in a rural/suburban direction over the decades, that any course correction by the Obama administration would likely do far too little to reverse the current imbalance.
