This has been rolling around in my head for a while, but here it goes,
There’s been alot of discussion recently about how various cities such as NYC or London are becoming prohibitively expensive for average earners to live in and have decent life. So if this trend was left unchecked, what would happen to the cities in question? Would they become a playground (more-so) for the rich, or would it just wither away due to the lack of any fresh ideas or innovation from people unable to live and survive in such a place?
IMO it would be basically a cultural vacuum, rich people are boring people, and it would consist mainly of them and the lowest income bracket being shipped into the city to cater to their needs (In a generalised sense) with not much going on in-between.
This is happening in San Francisco. Rather than making any big cultural change, the average earners are looking for work elsewhere, closer to home, so soon most of the people in the city will either be upper-management and above, or destitute, a lot like the world depicted in Soylent Green, only without so much cannibalism. Probably.
I agree: cities like this, such as New York, San Francisco, London, Tokyo and Sydney, tend to be much more culturally diverse and exciting places to live in. This is part of what drives people to live in them, and part of the reason for it being expensive to live in such places.
Truthfully there are few metro areas that are entirely wealthy. Southern Manhattan and parts of San Francisco may be overwhelmingly populated by rich people, but there are poor areas not that far away. Chicago is another example where extreme wealth and poverty exist side-by-side.
There is another answer that’s worth noting. In the USA, at least the middle class mainstream takes it as a given that one family lives in each house or apartment. But some groups, particularly immigrant groups, are willing to squeeze multiple families into the same space, which changes the question about affordability.
Seattle is losing affordable housing, increasing the number of homeless people (vs. the national trend). And it’s not just the unemployed. If you’re working a low end job, finding a place to live is difficult to impossible. Growth limitations, geography, etc., limit the amount of nearby housing.
Commuting isn’t a solution: it increases your living expenses.
Portland is also heading that way.
While both cities like to brag about their public transit systems, they are not anywhere adequate to meet the needs. They are choking on their own traffic.
Either you leave the city entirely, or you get a bunch of roommates, or you live in the suburbs or a satellite city or the only people left in the city are upper class. Isn’t that what happens now?
Cities with high rent charge high rent due to high demand. High demand comes from cities with vibrant artistic, cultural, scientific, and economic options. I guess if that goes away so does rent. Detroit used to be an economic and artistic mecca. Now you can buy a home for less than a car.
The OP somehow reminds me of the Yogi Berra-ism “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”
Mightn’t this be a self-correcting problem? If a city becomes so expensive that average earners can’t afford to live there, maybe those average earners will choose to live somewhere else, and those cities will become less crowded, less desirable, and hence less expensive?
I suspect ‘average earners’ is a relative thing; an “average earner” job in NYC likely pays more for the exact same job by virtue of the higher cost of living there than it would in say… Wichita, KS.
That said, I suspect that it self-corrects, in that most enterprises that rely on average or lower earners would relocate due to the difficulty of attracting workers, leaving the white-collar jobs in the expensive places. San Francisco used to be an industrial hub, but now the largest industrial employer is Anchor Brewing, which is a craft brewery. But the financial, tech and other white collar sectors are going strong.
Has this ever happened? The largest city in the world (Tokyo) is one of those where living is notoriously expensive, but it shows no sign of decreasing in size. People solve the problem there by living in small apartments and by commuting long distances to work.
Cities need plenty of average and lower paid employees to keep the place running. This leads to higher pay for those employees or higher taxes for the city. If they can keep that going the lower paid employees will move out to find a lower cost of living, commute in, and be relatively happy based on a better standard of living than they had in the city. Those who remain in the city may be unhappy with the higher costs, but they did have their chance to keep things under control.
I don’t know how many cities are affected by this, but it’s a common situation in the affluent suburbs.
You’ll get a situation like Manhattan. Lots of rich people. Lots of poor people living in subsidized housing. And “average earners” either suffering from longer commutes or more cramped quarters.
Which equates to a lot of unhappy people. Poor people don’t like living right next to the rich. The middle-class people will resent the poor people’s subsidies and the rich people’s luxuries. And the rich will be sick of everyone’s complaining and misery.
Rich people are boring? I associate with rich people enraptured with their every utterance consumed with the hope that they will impart a fraction of their largesse to my poor bereft self.
Take a look at small exclusive and expensive resort towns like Aspen CO. The waiters, bus boys, and cleaners all commute from way down valley for their jobs. Very few live in or near town, although I knew a few folks who lived in tents hidden in the National Forest for extended periods of time.