Minneapolis aims for Portland, hits Detroit

This week, newly-installed Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges gave a speech at a joint meeting of the Minneapolis and St. Paul chambers of commerce, “Hodges pushes for transit at business breakfast.”

I didn’t attend the meeting and I am relying on the Minneapolis Star Tribune account of her speech.  The Star Tribune reports,

Mayor Betsy Hodges told Twin Cities business leaders Wednesday morning that transit and transportation investments are crucial to attracting new residents.

She said that focusing on “livability factors” will help spur growth as young people increasingly choose the city they want to live in before choosing their next job.

Yes, the new Mayor has big plans for growing the city’s population.  The Star Tribune reports,

“One of the core pieces of that is ‘Do we have the kind of transit and transportation network that allows people to live without a car?’” said Hodges, who hopes to grow the city's population by more than 100,000 people.

You read that correctly: the big plan for growth is to add another 25 percent to the city’s population.  And the additional residents will consist entirely of…carless single adults.

The Mayor is advocating for the classic Smart, Creative Class formula for success:  replicate the trappings found in cities where the young and hip congregate, and the young and hip will flock to your city.

It’s true that a number of large American cities—New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco—have been able to maintain their populations by attracting ambitious young people from the hinterlands, decade after decade.  But if you are a hinterland city, how well is that strategy going to work?

To quote myself from a year ago,

In a massive example of cart-horse misplacement, Minneapolis believes that by acquiring the accoutrement of the world-class city--mass transit trains, bike lanes, stadia, and museums--we will attract the "creative" class of young, single professionals.  Like some South Pacific cargo cult, we apparently do not understand that it is surplus wealth that produces the trinkets of culture and not the other way around.  It is like thinking that building the Colosseum is what made the Roman Empire great.  Leaders of the Twin Cities region suffer from a lower-grade strain of the "world class city complex" afflicting second-tier cities like Chicago.

One internet commenter on the Star Tribune’s report hit the bull’s-eye,

Their eyes are set on being the next Portland and their actions will make them the next Detroit.

A city economy based on childless, carless young adults is literally a city without a future.  As these young adults marry and start families, they will leave town and move to someplace where minivans and station wagons are welcome.

The secret to building a strong local economy is no secret:  low taxes, common sense regulation, good schools, family-friendly policies, and working basic infrastructure (roads, bridges, electric power, and water).  It’s not glamorous, like billion-dollar stadiums and train lines, but it works.