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Lots of kneejerk answers bemoaning the cultural emptiness of American cities. What should be considered here is that American downtowns used to have a very vibrant culture. Heck, go back in the newspaper archives and read about it yourself. The real deterioration began a few decades ago. Today, the relatively quiet downtowns are very much the unintended consequences of governmental social engineering in the 1950s and 1960s. Three factors:
1) The astonishing rise in inner-city crime. The rate of violent crime per 1,000 QUADRUPLED from 1960 to 1993. Even today, with tougher enforcement and better security measures, that rate has only declined to 3 times 1960 figures. And most of that crime is inner city. There are many factors to this, from the misguided public housing policies of the 60s that only served to create dense poverty pockets in the downtown areas to more lenient sentencing. Only as inner city crime has begun to decrease are people actually considering looking back downtown for their entertainment.
2) Forced Busing. A Federal judge's disastrous ruling created the emptying out of the inner city. In his ruling, he attempted to even out educational disparities by having black kids bused to mostly white schools and vice versa. This incited a full-scale disaspora to the suburbs. Oddly enough, most middle- and working-class families weren't wild about walking their eight-year-olds to the curb and watching them get bused to an inner-city school ten miles away. The people who sneeringly use the term, "White Flight" never used their children as guinea pigs in some ill-fated social experiment, and seem to choose private schools for their kids. Meanwhile, middle- and working-class parents had no choice but to vote with their moving vans. Interestingly enough, black parents also have joined the exodus to the suburbs over the past twenty years, enrolled their kids in suburban schools, and typically have had little trouble assimilating.
So there you go. Ill-considered government programs having predictable effects. The automobile culture didn't cause American downtowns to empty out. Instead, American downtowns emptied out, creating the automobile culture. Think about that the next time you consent to another harebrained government effort.
However forced busing didn't start until the 1970s--when the auto culture and car-dominated suburbs had been around years already. Lots of major cities--Los Angeles for example, never had forced busing. The most famous example of a town with forced busing for integraton, Boston, still has a vibrant downtown area that never really diminished--along with the fact that a lot of the Italians in the North End and the the Irish in South Boston never left until more recent gentrification.
Sure forced integration probably cause more problems than it solved in a lot of examples. And crime rates did play a role in suburban flight. But as far as the vitality of downtown areas--even cities that had little ethnic diversity near their central cores, had no busing programs, and had lower crime rates, still saw their downtown landscapes lose vitality throughout a long period in the mid to late part of the twentieth centuries. You can find plenty of smaller-mid-sized cities and towns in the American West that had almost completely dead downtowns, yet didn't have high crime rates or white flight. And in a lot of cases the downtown areas became more prone to crime after the businesses had left. Meanwhile the activity shifted to newer suburban malls and big box stores on the outskirts.
Taking the example of downtown Los Angeles--corporate headquarters started leaving in the post World War-II era with the development of the Westside districts--long before crime rates started to peak in the area. The older buildings left in the area outside of the new skyscraper financial district on Bunker Hill weren't seen as useful enough to preserve, so many were either torn down to make way for surface parking lots or left as cheap flophouses.
However forced busing didn't start until the 1970s--when the auto culture and car-dominated suburbs had been around years already. Lots of major cities--Los Angeles for example, never had forced busing. The most famous example of a town with forced busing for integraton, Boston, still has a vibrant downtown area that never really diminished--along with the fact that a lot of the Italians in the North End and the the Irish in South Boston never left until more recent gentrification.
Sure forced integration probably cause more problems than it solved in a lot of examples. And crime rates did play a role in suburban flight. But as far as the vitality of downtown areas--even cities that had little ethnic diversity near their central cores, had no busing programs, and had lower crime rates, still saw their downtown landscapes lose vitality throughout a long period in the mid to late part of the twentieth centuries. You can find plenty of smaller-mid-sized cities and towns in the American West that had almost completely dead downtowns, yet didn't have high crime rates or white flight. And in a lot of cases the downtown areas became more prone to crime after the businesses had left. Meanwhile the activity shifted to newer suburban malls and big box stores on the outskirts.
Taking the example of downtown Los Angeles--corporate headquarters started leaving in the post World War-II era with the development of the Westside districts--long before crime rates started to peak in the area. The older buildings left in the area outside of the new skyscraper financial district on Bunker Hill weren't seen as useful enough to preserve, so many were either torn down to make way for surface parking lots or left as cheap flophouses.
See, I would partially disagree on that, too, despite some good points. While suburbs began to emerge as early as the 20s, the trend really didn't accelerate until the 60s and the uptick in crime. All you have to do is look at the trend lines in urban crime, and 1965 was when it began to soar. And while busing didn't begin until the 70s, it threw gasoline on the fire.
I remember my good-sized city growing up. There were shops and movie theaters and restaurants downtown until about 1972-1975. Then the vacancy signs started to emerge. By the mid 80s, it was almost deserted. Not coincidentally, we started seeing an increase in downtown occupancy in the mid 90s, about the same time crime prevention strategies changed.
Thank God that San Jose has an active downtown where people work and play. Sure it's dead sometimes like Saturday and Sunday morning and nights from Sun-Wed, but it makes up for it during the workday with students/workers and Thur-Sat nights as people go clubbing. It has First Friday art walk and festivals where throngs of people walk and hangout there. I've been to Brisbane Australia and Stockholm, Sweden, which are lively, but Downtown San Jose, I feel, is more attractive and fun.
Americas decentraliztion, also makes us unique. Granted, I wish every city could have the vibrancy downtown, that NYC, DC, SF, BOS, CHI, PHILLY, ETC, has. But it is not so...On the flip side, decentralized places like LA, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, etc, SEEM(from the Northeast cities I've been to) to have more places better spread out throughout the metro with more vibrancy, amenities, etc, with the expection of NYC(being it has 5 large vibrant boroughs).
I didn't find Philly's Center City all that great or even vibrant, maybe just for a few block, and that's about it. Even San Jose has a cooler downtown than Philadelphia. When I came back to San Jose, I was very, very proud of my hometown. It really measures up to a lot of the east coast cities!
I didn't find Philly's Center City all that great or even vibrant, maybe just for a few block, and that's about it. Even San Jose has a cooler downtown than Philadelphia. When I came back to San Jose, I was very, very proud of my hometown. It really measures up to a lot of the east coast cities!
Yes Philly has a very compact Downtown, while San Jose has a more spread out Downtown, due to hight restrictions.
If the big reason so many city downtowns in the US are moribund is the car culture that arose during suburbanization after WWII, the flip side of that is that our most vibrant downtowns are usually in cities with great mass transit, especially subways. That can bring great numbers of peoeple into a small space and make it worthwhile for businesses and retailers to open up there. So you get the liveliest downtowns IMHO in NYC, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago, with maybe Philadelphia and Washington DC. Other than that the downtowns of most cities range from pedestrian to slightly interesting to downright dangerous. Simple fact is that more mass transit=more people and things to do downtown.
I have given this a lot of thought, and I believe that it is not so much the car culture as much as the transition of the typical US residence from a high density low square foot house or apartment (5 to 8 people living in 1200 sq ft or less with little or no yard) where people HAD to get outside more often, to homes with more land and fewer residents (2400 sq ft, 3 to 5 people, 6000 to 12000 sq ft property). There was less need to get away from home, and as entertainment became more home-based (radio, tv, video, pools, play areas, air conditioned rec rooms) people became more home-bound. The car may have allowed this to happen, but even if the cars were to go away, until residential density increases, there will be little effect on vibrancy of towns and cities.
As a previous writer pointed out, many places remained vibrant thru the 60s and 70s (or later) - about the same time that household size decreased and square footage increased. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average home size in the United States was 2,700 square feet in 2009, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970.
Great response Deezus! What you say is true, the automobile culture is responsible for drawing people out of downtown into the suburbs. The process is reversing, and with that I think this suburban culture isn't becoming AS dominant. It's still the preferred modus operandi for families, but increasingly young singles prefer a more urban lifestyle with more time spent outside their home, often a small unit or apartment. In the 1960s-80s it was more common to get married in your early 20s and settle down and get married but now it's common to be into middle aged and living the single life.
Yes many European cities have their activity more spread out. Ironically LA is like alot of European cities in that regard even if it's held up as being the auto-centric city. I think that's changing, however, and compared to the average American city LA is now probably not as car-dominated.
Asian cities have strong downtowns, but are dense all around. The built up areas of European and Asian cities are generally much more compact than American cities with a similar population (a city like Vienna, for instance, might be no more than 7-8 miles across, while Nashville might be 20-30 miles across the metropolitan area, even if both have similar population). Housing in the outskirts of Vienna is probably similar to the housing in the inner city areas of most American cities.
When you have huge country with virtually unlimited livable land you are going to have a population that is going to want their own chunk of it. This desire plus cheap gas caused sprawl in America.
I was thinking about this a few days ago when driving my grandma around her hometown of around 6,000 people in Iowa. We parked on the one city block square in the middle of town and walked around the 4 streetwalls surrounding it. It was all 2-3 floor old school buildings with retail on the ground floor and apartments upstairs. There was literally one store open, and almost not a single person in sight. It was pretty sad, my grandma talking about how she grew up there and the square was packed every single night with people just wandering around it. She pointed to where her and my grandpa would park their car on Saturdays and just watch the people walking around, talking, having ice cream, laughing. Now it's all dead.
Then up the road we drove down the highway running on the north side of town and all I could say is "how does a town this SMALL have SO MUCH traffic!!!!". It was only a three lane road, but damn if it wasn't packed with all this annoying traffic. Of course this is also where all the box stores, gas stations, grocery store, etc. were all located.
Everyone left the cute down square and just drove all over from box to box getting things. It made the town seem so DEAD of anything except cars and buildings. No people.
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What you say is true, the automobile culture is responsible for drawing people out of downtown into the suburbs. The process is reversing, and with that I think this suburban culture isn't becoming AS dominant. It's still the preferred modus operandi for families, but increasingly young singles prefer a more urban lifestyle with more time spent outside their home, often a small unit or apartment. In the 1960s-80s it was more common to get married in your early 20s and settle down and get married but now it's common to be into middle aged and living the single life. 
