Flight From the Activist Cities

Partisan polarization has gotten considerable press, but there’s another kind of emerging division flying under the radar: cities and suburbs pulling apart as an urban flight to the burbs picked up steam in the wake of Covid-19. This is happening for many reasons, but looming large among them are skyrocketing crime and disorder, as well as increasingly extreme politics in urban centers that degrades the rule of law.

Covid-19 restrictions meant most white-collar workers who used to commute to downtowns have instead worked from home for over a year. They may not be in a hurry to return due to reports of soaring violence in cities. According to the New York Times, murders were up 30% on average among major cities last year, and are up 24% so far this year. While some cities like New York remain well below their early 90s murder peak, many others reached all-time record high murder levels last year, including Louisville and Milwaukee. There’s also been a stunning surge in crimes like carjacking, with rates up by 300% in Minneapolis and more than doubling in Chicago and Washington, DC. In some places, this isn’t just affecting select neighborhoods, but places in the heart of the city where crime had been seen as vanquished. Multiple people have been shot in Times Square recently, and Chicago has seen killings and carjackings in its downtown.

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