Remember ‘everything old is new again?’

by Jack Stapleton, Jr.

If you’re at least as old as Jack Benny (39), you may recall the old Tin Pan Alley tune reminding listeners that “everything old is new again.” Strange, how some old songs were wise before their time. I was reminded of this recently after finishing a book, written 40 years ago, entitled “Death and Life of Great American Cities.”

The author is the renowned economist Jane Jacobs. She has recently written another book entitled “The Nature of Economies.” I do not understand every point this respected scholar is making, but I did catch enough to remind me of the once-popular Roaring Twenties song.

The principal premise of Jacob’s first book was hinted at by the title. Forty years ago few recognized that America’s large cities were experiencing a kind of metamorphosis, much less had already taken their first steps toward civic decline. It seemed to the casual observer back in the late 1950s and early 1960s that our nation’s civic, social, economic, cultural, educational and political centers were located in large metropolitan areas, after moving from America’s rural, small-city, suburban regions, which seemed destined to become the newest residues of dust and decline.

The author’s seemingly erroneous title transposition, as Jacobs’ book makes quite clear, was right on target, even if few recognized its validity at the time. America’s great cities were, indeed, beginning a decline that would not become obvious to most of us for another decade or so. If there’s any doubt, check the population totals of the center of Missouri’s largest metro area, St. Louis. In just four decades, the gem of the Mississippi has hemorrhaged population; at the start of the last century it ranked fourth in the U.S. in population; today it barely clings to the fiftieth position. It’s now smaller the Colorado Springs, Mesa and El Paso.

Jacobs’ second book is even more alarming than her first. She argues that our much vaunted U.S. civic fabric is about to unravel. Suburban residents, thwarted by residential impacting in once- remote countryside, hour-long traffic nightmares to and from work, urban structural decline and loss of community allegiance and spirit, are about to create still another revolution. The author notes that some residents of suburbia believe they can resolve their dilemma by moving back to the core city, only to find life far less amenable than had been the case four decades earlier. She raises the question, which she eventually leaves unanswered, of what corrective steps are available to millions of citizens who earlier left core urban neighborhoods and now face the prospect of further displacement and disenchantment in outlying regions.

Does all this mean American commerce is doomed, that the once-innovative suburban shopping centers will become ghost towns, emulating smaller, rural areas that have continued their developmental decline unabated for more than a quarter of a century? Frankly, no one seems to know, even those who have made a life’s work forecasting both the degree and direction of American civic life, as well as its economic, social and political engines.

One of the difficulties Missouri governments faced in the 1970s and 1980s was their failure to recognize changes occurring within the state’s borders and provide needed services to an altered constituency. Governors during this era were not unmindful that corrections were needed. But they were at a loss to shift vast service systems quickly enough to meet actual needs. Entire statewide service systems, from elementary to university education, public health, tax structures, welfare, mental health and criminal justice services were stuck too long in an inflexible pattern still wedded to huge core cities and smaller towns and hamlets.

According to Jacobs, the same challenge faces governments today, except with a reverse twist. Our cities have been vacated, factories have been dispersed, farmland is disappearing and citizens are increasingly detached from their communities, their loyalties up for grabs without any bidders.

I wish it were possible to promise these problems would be discussed in this year’s campaigns by officials who will soon enough begin to confront these realities. Anyone remember the old Willie Nelson song, “The Storm Has Just Begun”?

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