The mistake is believing that the decline of Minneapolis is due to incompetence, poor governance, bad luck, or forces beyond their control. Decline is a choice. In this instance, decline is a strategy.
After which a disconnected twitter thread breaks out (each leading hypen marks a new entry):
- And the end goal being ….
- A city that better matches the interests and goals of the people in charge.
- The goal of the last crop of leaders was to create a “luxury city” along the lines of New York and San Francisco. A walkable city for empty nesters full of interesting restaurants.
- What went wrong do you estimate?
- Empty-nester progressive condo owners don’t share the same goals as the wokerati.
- I am gonna think about that. Sure are a lot of “luxury condos.”
- The more luxury condos, the greater the demand for public safety, walkable streets, and functioning services. The wokerati have no ability or interest or providing those items. Too “conservative. ”
- The current skyline and downtown housing boom is evidence of their success. But that success brought new expectations for public safety and functioning services.
- Two different and incompatible visions are in conflict. New Detroit is winning, luxury condoland is losing.
Somewhat later a a mini-twitter thread arose around the Curley Effect (which I discussed before):
- The reason why Detroit and Newark never recovered is that the people in charge of the ruins preferred to rule over the ashes.
- A model of the Curley effect, in which inefficient redistributive policies are sought … by incumbent politicians trying to shape the electorate through emigration of their opponents or reinforcement of class identities.