Providence is on the right track in its decades-long quest to remake itself from a has-been industrial port city into a manageably small cultural mecca, according to three urban studies scholars who recently served as panelists at a Brown University conference on cities.
American cities are struggling to adjust to a new global capitalism that has robbed the cities of their role as financial hubs, according to the academics. In the past, large cities with sprawling downtown business districts had the advantage. In the future, cities will look the same, but they will perform an entirely different function – and big cities will be at a distinct disadvantage, said the academics.
The next successful cities will be smaller, and they will thrive by positioning themselves as attractive cultural and entertainment centers for “customers” who will come in from the suburbs surrounding it, and from the bigger, dilapidated cities nearby.
As it continues to remake itself, Providence should not try to compete with Boston or New York City. Indeed, mayors in those cities may well wish their cities were more like Providence in the future, said the panelists.
The three experts made their comments at an annual two-day conference on the problems of American cities, sponsored by Brown University’s A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy.
The panel discussion, “Where Cities Should Go in the Future,” was held on Sept. 27, and was followed by the first Providence mayoral-candidates debate. Speaking as though to the candidates at a moment of political and economic transition in Providence, the three academics discussed the perils facing cities today and laid out scenarios for creating successful cities in the future.
In short: Providence is doing well, they said, and the challenges the city faces – revitalizing schools, reviving neighborhoods and improving race relations – are typical. Cities are facing a crisis brought on by a shift to a global economy, they said. Technological breakthroughs in the exchange of money, people, and ideas have made doing business a placeless endeavor. As a result, cities will no longer be successful at attracting business based on their size and location.
Cities need to sell themselves in a new way in the new economy, said Wilbur C. Rich, a professor of political science at Wellesley College, and the author of “Black Mayors and School Politics: The Failure of School Reform in Detroit, Gary and Newark.”
“The new economy doesn’t need a Detroit, and the retail function of cities has declined as stores shift from downtown to the mall. Most industrial production is now outsourced to third-world countries,” said Rich. “In the new global order, cities will either adapt or they will perish.”
As cities today try to attract new investors, providing tax abatements and creating business empowerment zones is no longer enough, said Susan S. Fainstein, professor of urban planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation. She is the author of “The City Builders: Property, Politics, and Planning in London and New York.”
“There has to be much more flexibility and entrepreneurship among city leaders,” she said. “These qualities used to be associated with the private sector, but it has to be adopted by the public sector.”
One approach mayors and urban economic development planners have taken in the attempt to attract new business – in Providence and many other cities – has been to raze large portions of blighted city centers and replace them with shiny downtown office parks and shopping malls.
The approach has mostly been a failure, according to Fainstein.
“All around the nation, you see these monuments to the egos of developers and the ambitions of mayors that aren’t necessarily prospering,” said Fainstein. “The economic impact has been an inch deep. Urban renewal – destroying, razing and rebuilding – didn’t work.”
But Fainstein admitted that the strategy was successful in Providence. She said the reason is probably Providence’s emphasis on rehabilitation of historic buildings, rather than on new construction.
“That Providence has succeeded in this strategy is interesting and unusual,” she said.
James Jennings, professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, and the author of “The Politics of Black Empowerment: Transformation of Black Activism in Urban America,” offered a more traditionally urban-activist approach to guiding cities in the future.
He made five suggestions for Providence, based on his study of Boston’s highly successful Demonstration Distribution Program, which has built 1,900 housing units for $330 million in Boston’s poorest neighborhoods since 1995.
Jennings’ list of suggestions: Providence should physically rehabilitate the city’s poor neighborhood housing stock. The city needs to maintain the long-term affordability of the units. It should transfer as many of the units as possible to outright ownership by city residents. City leaders need to foster economic growth by encouraging small business owners in the neighborhoods. And the city will not flourish until it remedies the discrimination against minorities in the city, said Jennings.
His argument is a traditional one, born in the urban renewal movement of the 1960s: that raising the living conditions and economic opportunities of its residents is the best way to make a city attractive to outside investors.
“Utilize the potential work force in the neighborhoods. Make them part of city planning, design and monitoring of economic development. Make the neighborhoods strong. The tourists and big business will follow,” said Jennings. “Residents have to be involved in where the city is going. Don’t think about housing as part of economic development. You don’t need to make money on housing. Government has to be aggressive in eliminating housing, banking and business development discrimination.”
