December 5, 2008
By Gary Gibson
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.
One of the conditions of
employment as managing editor for Whiskey & Gunpowder —
aside from rabid adherence to Austrian School economics — was
relocation to Baltimore. I really didn’t think much of it at the
time. I’d spent nearly my entire life in one of the four
boroughs of the City of New York (anyone who’s lived there can
tell you that secession-longing Staten Island doesn’t count) and
I was ready for a change of employment and venue. Writing for
Agora in a smaller and more affordable mid-Atlantic city seemed
the perfect prescription.
A couple of trips to
Baltimore during the interview process only served to convince
me that life here would be much better. Agora’s “corporate
campus” is comprised of a handful of beautiful buildings in the
center of the Mount Vernon neighborhood, one of the
best-preserved bits of historic urbanism in the U.S…and I’m an
absolute sucker for historic urbanism. I’d be able to live in an
architecturally lovely part of a cheaper city, just a couple
minutes’ walk from work that I would truly enjoy. What could be
better?
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I even did the usual due
diligence and wandered around a bit at night to get a truer
sense of how safe the neighborhood really was. Thing is, a
cursory walk-through cannot substitute for actually living in a
place. For example, I’m sure even downtown Baghdad has its
moments; you’d have to stick around a bit to see exactly why the
property values are so low in places. I’ve since come to know
just how unsettling this otherwise lovely neighborhood can be in
the dead of night. I’d heard endless stories of how rough
Baltimore was (“Haven’t you seen The Wire ?”) and I
knew it looked bad on paper, but what I’d seen of historic Mount
Vernon assuaged any doubts…until I actually moved in…
My last neighborhood in
New York was historic as well — in fact, last year it became
NYC’s newest designated historic district — but it felt safer by
an order of magnitude. I would often venture out to the local
24-hour grocery stores or all-night food carts at 2:00 or 3:00
in the morning. There were many other times I couldn’t sleep in
the hours past midnight and would walk the 10 blocks to the
24-hour gym. I can’t remember once feeling the least bit afraid
while doing so. New York has had the distinction of being the
safest big city in America for a while, a phenomenon I’ll
address in a bit. Baltimore’s not nearly as big...nor nearly as
safe.
Ironically Baltimore does
resemble the fictional New York in the movie adaptation of the
classic Richard Matheson novel
I Am Legend. For those of you who didn’t catch that
Will Smith vehicle, the plot in the movie is as follows: A
treatment that was supposed to cure mankind of an age-old plague
becomes a virus that transforms over 99% of humanity into
violent, blood-sucking, mindless monsters.
I hope you see where I’m
going with this.
Federal
Ghetto-ization
Baltimore — like a host
of other old central cities in the U.S. — has for the past
couple of generations been an ulcerating hole surrounded by
affluent towns where the sane people with money would rather
live. The ostensible reason is the flight of the pale, pale
middle class while those with less access to capital — and who
tan easily — remained stuck in the middle. Most folks take the
decline of the American city as some sort of mysterious but
certain given…like ageing and death…but I still point the finger
of blame squarely at government.
Government at all levels
— local, state and federal — is directly responsible for
hobbling our cities, draining them of their human capital and
mentally and economically crippling those that remain. And all
the programs to “help” the cities after the initial wounding
just wound up making things worse. Government created the
problem and all its supposed balms turned out to be poison. Of
course, this is government we speak of…so we really shouldn’t be
surprised. Friend Jim Kunstler has made the point that the
suburbanization of America was the manifestation of the will of
the masses to escape the nightmare of the industrialized
city…and that’s true…but it was the federal government that
greased the wheels on that particular road to hell. They built
the highways and subsidized the housing tracts miles from the
daily necessities of work and commerce. They knocked down the
neighborhoods in the old core cities and replaced them with
housing projects where the poor devolved into listless and
violent wards of the state.
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I suspect that market
forces would have worked to keep the cities and suburbs in
balance, that they would have fostered the co-existence of
multiple modes of transit between them, which in turn would have
kept center cities and surrounding towns both distinct and
compact, both internally walkable and efficiently linked by road
and rail. Instead, the federal government catered to the fantasy
that no one should ever have to walk again anywhere. In turn the
built environment transformed into a place where no one can ever
walk. A byproduct of all this is that the land between distinct
urban zones that used to be devoted to local food production
(“farms”) have been gleefully paved over to cater to the
auto-dependence fetish.
Allow me to anticipate
the criticism that I’m just a luddite and an anachronist in love
with some romantic notion of pre-automobile life…and that I’m
nurturning an unreasoning but increasingly popular hatred of
suburban icky-ness. What I am is a realist. Our living
arrangement is an affront to human instinct…and it was never
sustainable. We are returning — as things do — to the mean. We
are going to be inhabiting our cities in a way more in line with
how other humans have throughout history…and in the process we
are going to be reversing the federally-funded ghetto-ization
that has all but killed our core cities.
The Middle
Class Comeback
The neighborhoods of
Baltimore clinging to the Inner Harbor are actually quite
wonderful…but I defy anyone reading this to venture for a stroll
in the other two-thirds of the city. The resettlement of the
city by people other than welfare-recipients, hustlers and
muggers is well underway in those more pleasing precincts along
the water, but the rest of the place remains marginal at best
and downright seedy and dangerous at worst. The reason I felt so
safe in my New York neighborhood and many others in that vast
conurbation (with the notable exception of East New York and a
lot of the South Bronx) was that the New York has been
experiencing massive re-colonization by middle and upper class
people for years.
My own neighborhood in
Baltimore is a curious case; it’s a nice collection of blocks
just atop the so-so downtown and that inner ring around the
water. It straddles North Charles Street which bisects the city
into east and west; it’s surrounded on three of its sides by a
ring o’ ghetto. The more disruptive inhabitants of that ring
often wander on through. It’s especially bad after sundown. It’s
best to not to venture out too late at night, but if you do,
travel in a group, stay on the main drag and avoid eye contact.
In the movie referenced above, the monsters come out in hordes
at night and the hero has to board up his home and lie
completely still till morning, lest they find and devour him.
Yet he could move about in the daylight in relative safety while
the monsters hid from the sun. I know how he feels.
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Reality has begun to
trump the vagaries of energy excess, government interference and
government misallocation. The current financial crisis is
symptomatic of the new reality and will proscribe what was
considered normal throughout the latter half of the last
century. The middle class is choosing to move back to the
cities, not because of D.C. diktat, but because of market
forces. The lifestyle the feds sought to encourage with their
highways, sins of railroad omission and their vigorous
corralling of the poor within city lines…all of that is simply
becoming unaffordable and therefore unsustainable. It’s all
going away. Our cities will — must — become places where
everyone can live again without having to get into a vehicle on
a regular basis…or constantly worry about getting assaulted. The
presence of honest citizens going about their business and doing
honorable and necessary work will make the city streets much
safer again. When the purposeful outnumber the idle, the tide
will have turned. Lord, haste the day.
Regards,
Gary Gibson
Managing Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder
P.S.: I
know people come here for investment advice...and sometimes
investment advice is lifestyle advice.
If you live in a suburban
tract…leave now and avoid the rush. Help reinvigorate an actual
city or town. Move within walking distance of the place you’ve
been driving to for work and groceries all these years.
Or don’t…
But at least get yourself
a little financial protection so you can afford the gas for
your commute.
