Can less populated cities on the outskirts of larger metropolitan areas be too small to succeed? Are urban municipalities with fewer than 100,000 people vestiges of a bygone era? Should small “inner-ring” cities even exist? These questions are being posed with greater frequency across the country.
“Merger with the central city is an option more physically contiguous inner-ring suburbs should consider,” writes Aaron Renn, a researcher at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Journalist Eduardo Porter, commenting on small cities’ struggles to adapt to economic shifts, writes, “As technology continues to make inroads into the economy … it bodes ill for the future of such areas.”
There seems to be a general consensus that large cities should become larger, subsuming smaller cities that would otherwise die on the vine. But small cities’ presumed inabilities to adapt don’t fully explain why some majority-black towns struggle. When CityLab’s Brentin Mock presented “the case for saving the small black city,” his spotlight on my hometown of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, underscored that black cities’ existence has always been in question.
[For more on this story by ANDRE PERRY, go to https://www.citylab.com/equity...black-cities/543447/]
Photo: People gather in the lobby of a new community empowerment center in Ferguson, Missouri, following a dedication ceremony for the building in July. The $3 million center was built on the property where a QuikTrip convenience store was burned during rioting after a white officer fatally shot Michael Brown in August 2014. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
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