The Fringe of History

Yesterday, I got back on the bicycle, and found myself traveling down chipseal roads on the fringe between town and country in my neighborhood of the Rural Republic.  As I pedaled between subdivisions and sorghum fields, between pre-fabs and pasture, with nothing to occupy my mind beside the next foot-stroke, I found that what I saw around me reminded me of an article I'd read a few months earlier about the shrinking of a city, rather than the growth of one.  The article was a piece from The Economist about efforts to “right-size” Detroit, and in hunting it down, I found a New York Times piece dreaming of using that shrinking city as an opportunity to “green” the city.  At issue here is not what to do about Detroit, however.  It got me thinking instead about the fringe between urban and rural. 

America is a young country.  Ours is a country with a history devoted almost entirely to unhindered growth and expansion.  In fact, the idea of shrinking and disappearing cities barely registers in our collective, and then only in tales of frontier towns somewhere else, of boom and bust and gold rushes.  Ghost towns are ghostly – empty and abandoned – but they're also towns: small, out of the way, and easily forgotten.  Historically speaking, however, the idea that only small towns disappear, while cities are permanent, is an outlier – one that could only exist in a country that's only a few hundred years old. 

Hatra, once a major trading hub between Persia and the Mediterranean

In older nations, it's surprisingly common.  I remember flipping through a slide show on historical sites in Iraq, and realizing that I recognized one of the places on the map.  What was once a great capital of the Assyrian empire or something, was now barely a small village on a river.  Does anyone today remember the pain of de-settling that city, which probably housed great monuments that took years to build and of which the people were rather proud?  That's not likely.  Yet it happened.  There are likely scores of such cities in Iraq, not to mention similar ruins dotting the landscapes of the entire world, both Old and New.  Whether a once-bustling coastal city in the New World, or a great capital of trade between civilizations in the Old World, old cities, reclaimed by the jungles and desert, lie dormant beneath our feet. 

Altun Ha was a wealthy coastal city of the Mayan Empire

The idea of such a thing happening to Detroit, in our own civilization, is a difficult one to accept.  But, often, it's a simple economic calculation defining the line between urban and rural.  Up until recently, now-abandoned or nearly-abandoned sections of Detroit were worth much more to the free market, and in turn to the property tax-collecting city, as commercial and residential land.  The market had determined that more money could be made on an acre of land as a factory or a store or a subdivision, or even a parking lot, than could be made as an acre of corn.  And as the city grew, it picked up this land within its borders, to pave the streets and run the utilities and collect the taxes on it.  But now the city is shrinking, and, due to various changes both within and out of their control, can no longer support an economy large enough for the population necessary to make that land profitable.  It's nothing against Detroit – the times passed Altun Ha and Hatra by, as well.  Just as sorghum fields are making way for subdivisions on my bike route, so will that process be reversed, should those subdivisions cease to be supportable.  So, with a few strong years in the commodities markets and weak years in the auto markets, the cycle between urban growth and rural reclamation continues. 

I'd like to get deeper into the relative values of property, and how subsidies prop up the value or agricultural land, or grants prop up the value of urban land, and what role the expense of building and the expense of removing improvements play in the relative shifts between property roles.  But that's something well beyond the scope of this article, and indeed my experience with economic number crunching.  So it's left as something to ponder, and perhaps discuss.  If anyone could shed some light on that, or wants to study it further, I'm sure everyone would love to see what you come up with.