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The Revolt of the Cities

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  • The Revolt of the Cities

    The Revolt of the Cities

    ittsburgh is the perfect urban laboratory,” says Bill Peduto, the city’s new mayor. “We’re small enough to be able to do things and large enough for people to take notice.” More than its size, however, it’s Pittsburgh’s new government—Peduto and the five like-minded progressives who now constitute a majority on its city council—that is turning the city into a laboratory of democracy. In his first hundred days as mayor, Peduto has sought funding to establish universal pre-K education and partnered with a Swedish sustainable-technology fund to build four major developments with low carbon footprints and abundant affordable housing. Even before he became mayor, while still a council member, he steered to passage ordinances that mandated prevailing wages for employees on any project that received city funding and required local hiring for the jobs in the Pittsburgh Penguins’ new arena. He authored the city’s responsible-banking law, which directed government funds to those banks that lent in poor neighborhoods and away from those that didn’t.

    Pittsburgh is a much cleaner city today than it was when it housed some of the world’s largest steel mills. But, like postindustrial America generally, it is also a much more economically divided city. When steel dominated the economy, the companies’ profits and the union’s contracts made Pittsburgh—like Detroit, Cleveland, and Chicago—a city with a thriving working class. Today, with the mills long gone, Pittsburgh has what Gabe Morgan, who heads the local union of janitorial and building maintenance workers, calls an “eds and meds” economy. Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, and its medical center are among the region’s largest employers, generating thousands of well-paid professional positions and a far greater number of low-wage service-sector jobs.

    Peduto, who is 49 years old, sees improving the lot of Pittsburgh’s new working class as his primary charge. In his city hall office, surrounded by such artifacts as a radio cabinet from the years when the city became home to the world’s first radio station, the new mayor outlined the task before him. “My grandfather, Sam Zarroli, came over in 1921 from Abruzzo,” he said. “He only had a second-grade education, but he was active in the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in its early years, and he made a good life for himself and his family. My challenge in today’s economy is how to get good jobs for people with no PhDs but with a good work ethic and GEDs. How do I get them the same kind of opportunities my grandfather had? All the mayors elected last year are asking this question.”

    They are indeed. The mayoral and council class of 2013 is one of the most progressive cohorts of elected officials in recent American history. In one major city after another, newly elected officials are planning to raise the minimum wage or enact ordinances boosting wages in developments that have received city assistance. They are drafting legislation to require inner-city hiring on major projects and foster unionization in hotels, stores, and trucking. They are seeking the funds to establish universal pre-K and other programs for infants and toddlers. They are sketching the layout of new transit lines that will bring jobs and denser development to neighborhoods both poor and middle-class and reduce traffic and pollution in the bargain. They are—if they haven’t done so already—forbidding their police from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in the deportation of undocumented immigrants not convicted of felonies and requiring their police to have video or audio records of their encounters with the public. They are, in short, enacting at the municipal level many of the major policy changes that progressives have found themselves unable to enact at the federal and state levels. They also may be charting a new course for American liberalism.

    New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio has dominated the national press corps’ coverage of the new urban liberalism. His battles to establish citywide pre-K (successful but not funded, as he wished, by a dedicated tax on the wealthy), expand paid sick days (also successful), raise the minimum wage (blocked by the governor and legislature), and reform the police department’s stop-and-frisk policy (by dropping an appeal of a court order) have been extensively chronicled. But de Blasio is just one of a host of mayors elected last year who campaigned and now govern with similar populist agendas. The list also includes Pittsburgh’s Peduto, Minneapolis’s Betsy Hodges, Seattle’s Ed Murray, Boston’s Martin Walsh, Santa Fe’s Javier Gonzales, and many more.
    “Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

    ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

  • #2
    I don't think it is fair to call Mayor Betsy Price a Republican. She is I guess, but Fort Worth mayoral elections are non-partisan. Also, she is not what you think of when you hear the word "Republican." She supports things like bike lanes and public rail and generally attempts to govern effectively and Republicans loathe effective government.
    “Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

    ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Billy Jingo View Post
      I don't think it is fair to call Mayor Betsy Price a Republican. She is I guess, but Fort Worth mayoral elections are non-partisan. Also, she is not what you think of when you hear the word "Republican." She supports things like bike lanes and public rail and generally attempts to govern effectively and Republicans loathe effective government.
      Who knew that Republicans don't like bike lanes? That would be news to Congressman Bill Young (deceased) and Mayor Rick Baker (gone) .
      The year's at the spring
      And day's at the morn;
      Morning's at seven;
      The hill-side's dew-pearled;
      The lark's on the wing;
      The snail's on the thorn:
      God's in his heaven—
      All's right with the world!

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Billy Jingo View Post
        I don't think it is fair to call Mayor Betsy Price a Republican. She is I guess, but Fort Worth mayoral elections are non-partisan. Also, she is not what you think of when you hear the word "Republican." She supports things like bike lanes and public rail and generally attempts to govern effectively and Republicans loathe effective government.
        This meme is really getting tiresome. It's not true, everyone knows it's not true, and repeating it will not somehow make it true.
        It's been ten years since that lonely day I left you
        In the morning rain, smoking gun in hand
        Ten lonely years but how my heart, it still remembers
        Pray for me, momma, I'm a gypsy now

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Novaheart View Post
          Who knew that Republicans don't like bike lanes?
          People from Colorado.
          “Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

          ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Billy Jingo View Post
            People from Colorado.
            Explain
            The year's at the spring
            And day's at the morn;
            Morning's at seven;
            The hill-side's dew-pearled;
            The lark's on the wing;
            The snail's on the thorn:
            God's in his heaven—
            All's right with the world!

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Novaheart View Post
              Explain
              Here's a bit.
              “Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

              ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

              Comment


              • #8
                In fairness, the only Republicans Bok likes are those that are Democrats.
                Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live...
                Robert Southwell, S.J.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Maybe we should put progressives in charge of Detroit.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Hondo View Post
                    Maybe we should put progressives in charge of Detroit.
                    Or maybe Madison, WI.
                    “Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”

                    ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Billy Jingo View Post
                      People from Colorado.
                      Really? Republicans vote for bike infrastructure out here all the time. Do you mean specific elected officials don't vote for some statewide bike ideas? Or losing candidates who opposed certain bike ideas?

                      Most of the massive bicycle stuff we have out here (and we have a lot) is done at the local level. The bike share program doesn't get coverage out here now so the kind thing to say is, "we don't know" how it's being used. I don't how other people use it and I ride. When I use a bike in Denver it's my own and I'm just passing through - not commuting within Denver. I've never seen anybody with a bike share bike on Cruiser Night.

                      The entire state is pretty much covered with bike stuff from dedicated lanes on roads to really extensive separated bike paths. We have locker rooms and bike lockers where I work and that's becoming really common now (we were trend-setting 15 years ago). A huge number of stores have bike racks. A huge number of stores sell and service bikes. The major professional charity efforts out here are charity rides that attract thousands of people every season.

                      Not sure where you're going with this bike thing.
                      "Alexa, slaughter the fatted calf."

                      Comment

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