A major flaw in our system of government is fueling two long-term trends with acute consequences:
- Deterioration and decline are spreading beyond central cities to suburban cities.
- Development of new communities across the countryside is resulting in costs (for roads, bridges, schools, utilities) that are rising to unsupportable heights.
Those are findings of the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, which asks: What future do we want? More of the same? Or, more renewal and reuse of established places with less countryside development?
I think the answer should start with renewal – an inescapable need as communities age. But the existing way of producing renewal is not, nor can it be, effective. That is the flaw.
The existing way is the result of what our home rule form of local government has come to mean: “You (city X) govern yourself, therefore you – you alone – are responsible for your condition, and that includes renewal.”
If a city has aged to where properties are well-worn, some badly obsolete, and streets and curbs are crumbling, water lines are leaking, trees are dying, residents are moving out to where such conditions do not exist, and on and on, the city alone is held responsible. No other entity, local or state, has any defined responsibility.
As a result, assistance is paltry. Renewal is 95 percent DIY. But the tax base of aged places typically is grossly inadequate for the need. And when city hall cannot do its part, private investment goes elsewhere.
For decades, big cities such as Cleveland have experienced much more deterioration than renewal, the inevitable result of an inadequate tax base. Now, suburban cities are aging (it was only a matter of time) and hitting the same predicament: “Too many problems, too little revenue.”
“Regionalism” involving consolidation of public services, or even a merger, can provide temporary fiscal relief but the root problem remains.
Thus, decline keeps spreading and generating massive forces that push residents and businesses out to newer places and across the countryside.
Without substantial renewal, there is little choice but “out” even though many prefer “in,” as suggested, for example, by the bright spots in Cleveland that have been getting media attention – University Circle, Gordon Square, downtown, a few neighborhoods. They are precisely what is needed. But their impact versus the outward forces is modest.
State government is responsible for those forces (not local officials) because when it established home rule in 1912 it unwittingly saddled aged cities with incapacity as they, each on its own, attempt to deal with deterioration and decline. Thus, the state put itself in the business of:
- Promoting the decline of old communities and the growth of new ones.
- Undermining real-estate values for owners in old places and increasing values for owners in new ones.
- Creating winners and losers – in stark contrast to the Ohio constitution, whose purpose is to “promote our common welfare.”
The constructive way forward begins, as it must, with the state. Local officials will not, on their own initiative and for “our common welfare”, come together to define and implement a change in course for the region. Officials are prisoners of the place they represent, compelled by their independence to compete with each other for businesses, residents, grants, tax base, recognition – seeking to prevail in Cleveland Magazine’s “Rating the Suburbs.”
But the state can break the ice by altering its business from promoting the decline of aged communities to promoting their renewal. It can recast its policies, priorities and programs and target the lion’s share of its resources to support renewal and reuse. And the state can advise local planning agencies to align their policies and decisions accordingly.
The result, in time, would be a much more balanced Northeast Ohio in which old places exhibit regenerated attractiveness and economic strength while new ones continue growing but at a slower pace. Simply announcing the state’s commitment to that future would spark new vitality in the region.
Gov. John Kasich’s leadership is key. Without it, there will be no change. If he and legislators decline to alter the business that their long-ago predecessors put them in, then our likely future is a costly and dismal more-of-the-same. No, worse than that as the insidious forces topple suburbs that have passed their prime. Why would we, and our state government, want that?
Thomas Bier is the senior fellow at Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.