Save Our Cities
America’s urban engines still power democracy. Abandon them and we forfeit the national project
Earlier this month, Los Angeles cracked. The LAPD declared an unlawful assembly, National Guard trucks rolled past Crypto.com Arena, and a governor and president settled their differences on social media. Commentators have framed it as the latest immigration skirmish. They’re mssing something.
What the country witnessed is one of America's world-class cities, with multimillion dollar condos and a two billion dollar police budget, discover it cannot even police its own downtown. If America abandons its cities through civic neglect, Los Angeles is only the trailer for the feature film.
Growing up in the suburbs outside of Tallahassee, I was never fond of the “big city.” I still believe in the cultural supremacy of the American South and the quiet moral authority of small places. I don’t romanticize bike lanes. I believe that the spaces between cities matter just as much as the ones within them, probably more.
And yet, I know this: cities are still the engines of democracy. More plainly, they are drivers of innovation and prosperity. They concentrate people, capital, and ideas, generating prosperity and opportunity far beyond their inputs. But right now, they’re losing. And far too many of us from across the political spectrum have decided that means we should stop trying.
From right-wing pundits to blue-state urbanites, there is a clear narrative: cities are increasingly lawless, dysfunctional, and conflicted. Turn on the news, and you’ll hear about fentanyl overdoses, taxpayer-funded incompetence, and policies that seem built to repel working families. The growing perception is that cities are a problem someone else should solve, or abandon.
This is a mistake & a failure of courage.
Cities are more than just cultural hubs. They’re also where progress is made. And when we treat them as lost territory, we lose both real estate AND the national project they’re meant to represent.
Conservatives, in particular, have spent the last decade mostly ceding urban governance. A few symbolic gestures here and there, but mostly exit, mockery, and even open hostility from those outside the beltway. Meanwhile, progressive leadership is often stuck in a feedback loop of performative equity initiatives and infrastructure neglect. The results speak for themselves: public services that barely function, productive ambition choked by regulation, and the slow death of civic trust.
Seeing the riots and seeing the city struggle to keep the peace, it’s not entirely hard to understand why some view the city as a lost cause. We are, after all, only months removed from the Los Angeles fires.
None of this is theoretical. It’s happening in real time, and it’s not just a left or right problem. It’s a leadership problem. We’ve convinced ourselves that cities are too far gone to be worth the effort, or the wrong people are showing up. That’s a lie we tell ourselves to excuse widespread apathy.
If you want to see what failure looks like, look at the growing number of Americans who’ve tuned out altogether. Civic participation is down. Voter turnout in local elections–it doesn’t matter which one, take your pick–is abysmal. Public meetings are either empty or overrun by professional activists. The default assumption in too many cities is that nothing can change, and no one sane wants to try.
That vacuum won’t stay empty. If the people who still believe in civic duty don’t fill it, the future of our cities will be written by those who treat governance as theater or conquest. Is that the future we want? Can you imagine it? It’s not hypothetical. It’s already here.
If civic leadership wants to rebuild trust in public institutions, the cities are the place to start. Build more housing. Streamline permitting. Audit transit. Fund police, and demand competence from them in return. Reestablish the idea that the government exists to serve, not perform.
That’s not a retreat from principle. It’s an affirmation of it. Civic order, economic growth, and local accountability aren’t partisan ideas, they’re American ones. If we believe our values work, then we should prove it where it’s most difficult and most valuable.
Reclaiming the city is firmly within our national interest. We can’t afford to walk away from the parts of the country that still drive innovation, concentrate talent, and house millions of working families.
We can’t build a stronger country by giving up on the cities that hold so much of its potential, the giants on whose shoulders we stand. We need to fix what’s broken. That starts by being willing to show up.