NewGeography.com blogs

These are strange times in American politics. Slowly but surely, the Democrats have been losing their historically working class and multi-racial base, with Hispanics in particular drifting Right. This shift was starkly evident in the recent New York Times/Siena poll which showed that, for the first time ever, Democrats had a larger share of support among white graduates than among non-white voters, achieving effective parity with Republicans over the Hispanic vote.

The shift has unsettled each party in less than attractive ways. The Democrats’ growing reliance on college-educated affluent white people reflects the policies pursued by the Biden Administration, which is both inept and widely unpopular. Although there are the de rigeur calls to help the middle class, the President has identified himself with the issues that animate the activist element in the upper classes. These include aggressive climate change policies, near limitless abortion access, lax immigration controls (opposed by two-thirds of Americans) and the implementation of critical race theory in schools. Amid soaring inflation, working class voters have been worst affected, many of which include the increasingly influential Latino voter as well small business owners, whose confidence is at a near half-century low.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

The Census Bureau has released an ”America Counts: Stories Behind the Numbers” issue entitled: “Fewer Younger Adults Drives Population Loss in Some U.S. Cities.” According to the Census Bureau, “Previously released population estimates for counties showed core counties of many large metro areas experienced large declines in their population from July 1, 2020-2021.” The net domestic migration dimension of this was the subject of our article Huge Spike in Domestic Migration from Urban Cores, which documented a 1.1 million net domestic migration loss by urban core counties of the major metropolitan areas (those over 1,000,000 population in the single year of 2021. By contrast, suburban counties gained about 400,000.

The new Census Bureau analysis shows, in the urban core counties covered, a disproportionate share of the 2021 population loss was “due largely to a loss of population in one specific group — younger adults in their early 20s to mid-30s.”

The article focuses on New York, San Francisco, where particularly large declines occurred among younger adults. This is an ominous trend for large core municipalities with the largest central business districts (downtowns), which have been particularly attractive in the past to this younger demographic and are most at risk of reduced office occupancy as a result of remote working. New York has by far the largest central business district in the United States, while San Francisco and Boston are among the top five.

Read the Census Bureau article: here

On June 19th Douglas Newby’s opinion piece titled, “Democracy Needs to Replace City Manager Ward System” was published with the assertion that the council-manager form of government (under which the City of Dallas, Texas is currently formed), is undemocratic. As the CEO of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), the former City Manager of Austin, Texas, and a city administrator who served under a strong mayor system like the one proposed by Mr. Newby, I’d like to address a couple of critical points and bring clarity to the ways in which the forms of government actually operate.

First, I’d like to address the idea that the council-manager form of government is somehow less democratic than the strong mayor system recommended by Mr. Newby. Understand that neither system is a pure democracy. That is, neither system allows residents to have a direct vote on all matters before the government. Certainly, there are certain issues that require a voter referendum, but most policy decisions are made through a representative democracy where the residents elect individuals to speak and act on their behalf.

The primary argument given to support the claim that the council-manager form is less democratic is that the City Manager is not elected by the people and therefore is not accountable to the people. However, the City Manager is appointed by the people’s representatives to Council and can be fired by the people through their elected representatives. Mr. Newby’s frustration seems to be that the mayor was not permitted to unilaterally fire the City Manager. And herein is the critical distinction that makes the council-manager form more democratic than the strong mayor system. Specifically, the council-manager form of government requires all elected officials (who represent the actual voices of the people) to work together, collaborate, and come to consensus on the best path forward for the city. No single official, not even the mayor, may act unilaterally against the will of the people – a will that can only be formulated through the collective voice of the people’s duly elected representatives.

The second issue I’d like to address is Mr. Newby’s argument for a strong mayor system, which is predicated, largely, upon a mischaracterization of the role of the City Manager and Council. First, is the claim that “each district is controlled by its City Councilperson and the City Manager.” The reality is that no policy may be advanced without the majority consent of the Council. Certainly, the council member in whose district a particular zoning decision is based will be given some deference considering that council member was elected by the people in the district who are most directly affected by the decision. However, that council member must convince a majority of the council to affirm their position. This is the case in both council-manager and strong mayor systems. However, in a council-manager system, the mayor has no authority to unilaterally veto council decisions or deny the will of the people. That power is, however, granted to the mayor in a strong mayor system.

The final issue is the claim that the City Manager controls the City Council. The ICMA Code of Ethics explicitly prohibits city managers from engaging in political activities or elections. While elected Council members and mayors rely on support from like-minded organizations and residents to support their campaign, these are areas of influence where the City Manager should not engage. Instead, the City Manager is a public servant employed by the people’s elected representatives. City Managers only hold their position if the democratically elected representatives of the people agree that the manager is running the city and implementing their policies effectively. Contrary to Mr. Newby’s assertion, the City Manager has no power to “defiantly refuse to pursue the priorities of the mayor and the City Council.” And recent actions taken by the Dallas City Council and the Mayor demonstrate this very issue.

The Mayor and members of City Council raised concerns regarding specific process improvements they’d like to see implemented by the City Manager. Yet, they also recognize the progress made to advance many of their goals and policies. And so, through a professional performance evaluation process, the Mayor and City Council clarified specific process improvements they’d like to see in the city. The City Manager now must deliver on those improvements. This is how any effective organization is managed. The governing body establishes policies and sets expectations for the organization, and their employee (in this case the City Manager) is held accountable for achieving those goals and expectations. In well-run cities, elected officials, the city manager, and staff all work collaboratively to strengthen the city. Yet, Mr. Newby’s solution is to advocate for a strong mayor system in the hopes that a like-minded mayor will be elected in order to “do more to push [his] ideas further forward.”

At ICMA, we recognize that local governments are essential to meeting the needs of the people. Public servants in local government deliver programs and services to assure public safety, provide public amenities, build essential infrastructure, and deliver quality public utilities. They do this to enhance the quality of life for all people and businesses within their jurisdiction.

Certainly, there will be disagreements on how best to move forward. That is why strong democracies encourage robust debate and public engagement. The ability to cast a ballot to be heard is an important aspect of democratic societies. Yet, the real power of democracy is only realized when we value diverse views and opinions in making decisions that affect our communities. In the council-manager form of government that includes granting the Council the power to hire and fire a manager based on their proven ability to carry out their vision of the future and assuring all the people’s representatives have an equal voice in determining how government serves the people.

Marc Ott is CEO/Executive Director of the International City/County Management Association.

Southern California has always had a casual relationship with reality, but West Hollywood’s decision to stop funding the LA Sheriff amidst a mounting crime tsunami takes the fantasy to a new — and dangerous — level. As usual this policy was concocted by woke politicians and not approved by the voters, who might be less than enthusiastic about the notion of replacing police officers with 30 unarmed “security ambassadors”.

We will see if this action gets pushback, particularly in a heavily gay city that has long embraced progressive politics. Yet there are signs that a struggle is emerging even within the Left-of-centre space, as people begin to weigh their ideological fixations against their personal safety.

Right now, remarkably, the defund movement is far from dead. Los Angeles, which has its own crime surge, just elected or placed first several new members who favour the so-called “people’s budget”, which seeks to take funds from cops to give to “community” groups. In Los Angeles, these Left-of-centre candidates have had strong support in media and gained much of their backing from the far-Left Democratic Socialists, in one case displacing a liberal labour-oriented Latino LA councilperson with an ally of Black Lives Matter.

It would be one thing if this insanity was restricted to LA-LA land. Despite the election of pro-police Mayor Eric Adams the New York City council has become, if anything, more amenable to defunding policies. Much of this could be ascribed to low turnouts, the media’s race obsessions, or the continued contraction of middle-class households in big cities across the nation.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

The Supreme Court has handed down another win for skeptics of progressive overreach. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to set national energy policy and regulate carbon emissions from power plants. The ruling was a blow to the Biden Administration, which has pursued an aggressive clean energy agenda. But it was a win for democracy—as well as for a politically sustainable approach to climate change.

You won't hear much about that in the mainstream press. Expect instead an endless litany of hysteria about our dying planet and the right-wing plot to accelerate the end of the natural world. "Run out of words to describe this court, but, among other things, it's now a threat to the planet," tweeted MSNBC host Chris Hayes in a typical missive.

Yet the issue here is not really environmental; it's fundamentally political. The new Court may be too doctrinaire in its states' rights approach, as we have seen in the sweeping Roe and gun decision, but so far it has hewn to an important principle: Major policies should have approval from elected representatives rather than being handed down from the bureaucratic Olympus.

This was the Supreme Court's primary objection to the Obama-era limitations on power plants: These limitations were never passed by Congress but imposed by decree. In this, SCOTUS identified a frightening trend that has been building for decades under both parties, and has worked to overcome it; what kind of policies we enact, and how draconian they should be, should be left to the people's representatives, the Court has ruled. Our legislative electeds may not always be the brightest bulbs, but that hardly matters. What matters is that they are accountable to us.

This is not how many in the green movement wanted things to shake out. Their modus operandi is to couple relentless exaggeration and predictions of imminent doom with a barely disguised desire to exercise direct, unconstrained control over the everyday lives of citizens, much like the medieval Catholic Church, or Stalin. Indeed, for some of the Green New folks, the draconian lockdowns from the pandemic were not so much a tragedy but a a "test run" for the kind of rule by a global technocracy that some progressive pundits now seek to impose.

Read the rest of this piece at Newsweek.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.