Is It Too Late to Save America’s Cities?

I’m from Lancaster, Pa., a city whose tag line I wish was “We’re more than just the Amish.” Alas, we are known for being the home of the Amish. 

We’ve had our ups and downs — which have been bunny slopes not black diamonds, thanks to our diversified economy and local investments that have stayed local and attracted outside investment. We still suffer from rampant racism (there are plenty of country folks who won’t come to the big city because of “crime”), but mostly we do ok. We were dubbed “The New Brooklyn” in 2016, which was both a compliment and an insult to local residents. 

As a Pennsylvanian who has run for office, I know lots of towns that look like Lancaster and lots that were worse off — like former steel towns Bethlehem and Allentown. So, I’ve spent a lot of hours of my life driving in the car contemplating difficult questions like: When do you revive a city/town or decide that too much damage has been done (redlining, white flight, and reliance on a single industry) and let it go? What, if anything, does the government owe to citizens who remain? Why was it a strategy of so many of these cities and towns to encourage their children to “go to college and get out of this town”? It goes without saying that’s a terrible long-term strategy.

I’ve had the privilege over the past few years to travel to some of America’s left-behind cities for work and for fun, where I got to think about these questions further. I saw how cities/towns reinvented themselves (or thought they were, but weren’t), how they are implementing  their American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funding, how the differing structures of states and municipalities impacted possible results, what citizen really need, who in the community is actually benefiting, and how we will be able to tell if real impact occurred.

All of my questions basically boil down to one: Is it too late to save America’s cities?

The Biden administration and Congress are betting big that we can — through ARPA, Tech Hubs, and CHIPS. They firmly believe that our national security depends on it. And I agree with them.

But can smaller cities that have been neglected for decades in favor of their big siblings (New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco) bounce back?

I was once admiring the amazing Art Deco architecture in El Paso and said to a former mayoral candidate how beautiful it was — untouched like it was in a time capsule. The man quickly quipped, “That’s what happens when no one invests in your city for 50 years.”

Fifty years is a long time to not have real investment — in business, education, and communities. “Coming back” requires a resilience that I know these communities have, but also a willingness to work together with potential adversaries and to bring the resources necessary to fund initiatives that will have a knock-on effect, including education.

So how will communities do this and how will we know it’s successful?

Government, non-profits, and business must come together as collaborative coalitions — what the federal government is trying to encourage and what should have been happening ages ago if egos weren’t a thing. 

These coalitions need to shift their mindsets from a scarcity model (the main source of imposter syndrome from these cities) to an abundance mindset. As we say in the human rights community — it’s not pie. More for me, does not mean less for you. There is enough for all of us.

We need to think critically about how we are reaching the people who most need to be reached — black and brown folks, rural folks, poor folks, LGBTQIA folks. Madison Avenue ad firms and political canvassers who knock doors have known for decades that the best way to get someone to buy a product is to be approachable and have a friend who uses the product. Our pathway to reaching people is by earning the trust of those THEY trust and having those people vouch for us. It’s not fast and it’s not easy, but it’s critical to our success.

And how will we know if we’ve been successful? This is the hardest part because what we are trying to do is so big and it’s being done on an incredibly short time line (four years). It depends a lot on what we think the goals are, but in my experience we want to be watching:

Did small businesses grow or did big businesses just get bigger?

Did people who need to be skilled-up or reskilled get the training they need at low or no cost, and were employers supporting these initiatives?

Did we resolve barrier to entry issues, like child care and transportation?

Did higher education become more flexible and innovative?

Did government become more efficient and accommodating to meet the needs of its people and businesses?

Oh, and did we beat China?

Christina M. Hartman is a global democracy advocate who served as an international election observer for the National Democratic Institute during the 2019 Ukrainian Presidential elections. She ran for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 16th district in 2016. She is currently a senior associate (non-resident) at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).