The pandemic isn’t the one danger to Seattle enterprise

Seattle started the year as one of America’s superstar cities after seeing a remarkable run over the past decade. The pandemic brought it down much harder than the Great Recession.

But the crisis was exacerbated by the town hall.

In a hurry to relieve the police – without a serious Plan B – the city council treated police chief Carmen Best in a shameful manner, which led to her retirement. Mayor Jenny Durkan seems helpless.

This is the same council that wants to impose a tax on “high paying” jobs in the city while Seattle’s economy is in a historic downturn.

This downturn extends from Boeing and international trade to critical sectors such as tourism, conventions, hotels and cruise lines, the arts, and restaurants and retail.

Activists who run the council seem to fail to understand important issues. For example, a safe city is essential to have an economy that generates the tax revenue and social justice they are supposed to seek.

Looting, vandalism and arson, which hampered peaceful protests, have been catastrophic to the business. I spoke to a local trader, a colored immigrant whose shop had been ransacked three times. The buildings remain boarded up in the city center. So much for the “eyes on the street”, the over-urbanist Jane Jacobs’ observation of what makes cities safe and worth living in.

Big businesses feed small businesses, so both need to be understood as part of the same ecosystem. Now, especially with Amazon largely working from home, many restaurants and small businesses are reaching a point of no going back. My hairdresser is an example. He told me his business was down 85% and his lease expired in four months.

“Chef in the Hat” Thierry Rautureau sent an email this week saying he is temporarily closing his famous Loulay Kitchen & Bar “until further notice (that is, when people return to downtown) since the Core of our city currently stands still “. Position like never before. “

Seattle is certainly not the only city facing problems.

A recent New York Times story described national retail and restaurant chains leaving Manhattan.

“In Manhattan’s major retail corridors, from SoHo to Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, once overcrowded sidewalks are now almost empty,” because of the pandemic. “A fraction of the usual office workers go to work every day …”

Richard Florida, the influential urban researcher posted an angry Twitter response that I’ll be summarizing and editing for the room:

“After all this gloom and doom, I am fully confident that NYC will end well on the streets. This isn’t the 1960s and it’s not the end of the cities, especially NYC.

“Still, I expect retail and office and parts of the luxury housing sector to be impaled. But please, let’s not confuse vacuuming retail & office and luxury real estate with the end of the cities.

“Chain stores have been a big part of the gentrification and dumbing down of NYC. … Goodbye forever. And carry on with the rebuilding of the city and the metropolitan area around 15-minute quarters, in the city, in the suburbs, where people can work closer to where they live and shorten their commutes. “

He went on to dismiss “huge office towers” and an “overcrowded” central business district as “physical manifestations of a bygone era.” Commercial space can be converted into living space, especially affordable housing.

Florida concluded, “Most importantly, COVID-19 is a unique opportunity to better rebuild our cities and subways – in a fairer, more inclusive and resilient manner. Let’s do this!”

A lot here to unpack and argue.

I have been very reluctant to make sweeping statements about how COVID-19 will change everything – the case that brought a thousand hot takes to market. For example, CNN ran an article entitled “Our cities may never look the same after the pandemic”.

“Really?” The much more deadly 1918 flu didn’t stop the trends that were at work before the pandemic broke out, including increasing urbanization. And in America, the great flu was followed by one of the greatest economic booms in history.

Today, Europe and Asia are certainly not giving up their cities and their overcrowded central business districts. Studies show that neither density nor public transport are synonymous with the risk of COVID-19.

But America has come apart so badly. Perhaps my medium-term optimism after a vaccine is misplaced.

Retail chains were leaving downtown Seattle before the pandemic broke out, including Bed Bath & Beyond and Macy’s. The losses were not only a result of e-commerce, but also the city’s tolerance of shoplifting. Far from “dampening” areas like the pike-pine corridor, national retailers attracted shoppers who also frequented local shops and restaurants. They also served the residents of the central core.

Our Central Business District is not a burden, but an efficient creative and economic engine. With 88,000 residents, many of whom also work here, the city center is already a pleasant 15-minute neighborhood. And when it comes to transport links, such job centers are particularly important in the fight against climate change compared to car-dependent office “parks”.

A tectonic reorganization that shifts jobs and assets from so-called superstar cities to those left behind is, at least at first glance, a noble-sounding claim. The non-stars, mostly older cities in the heartland, are victims of 40 years of lax antitrust law, Wall Street vulture capitalism and offshoring that have looted their most important assets.

But in many cases they have been unlucky too. Underfunded education and inattentiveness to the preservation of urban goods, monument preservation, abundant traffic and tolerance – all of these hurt. Additionally, being blue cities stuck in anti-urban red states held back those urban centers without stars. Many have long-standing and deep racial differences.

I love cities like Cincinnati and St. Louis. Getting top tech talent there is another matter. These efforts would require enormous national investments and policy changes. In addition to the aftermath of the pandemic, abandoned cities are facing headwinds from some major employment breakthroughs that could spread across the country.

It is impossible to change habits to create 15-minute live work-play quarters in street war cities like Phoenix until CO2 is appropriately taxed. And to do that you would have to win many national and national elections.

As for Seattle, the Denny Party first christened it New York Alki – “eventually” or “gradually” in indigenous jargon – when it landed on the eponymous dot in 1851. Maybe we finally got there, but not in a good way: Lots of New York City’s challenges, some of its benefits, and a toxic City Hall.

Little by little, the next few months will show us whether a recovery can take hold and last. The November elections will be of the utmost importance. But the destructive political leadership in Seattle will be with us for much longer, regardless of the economic consequences of their policies.

With other superstar cities recovering quickly, the damage here could take years to repair.