Untangling the Urban Doom Loop

As pandemic-era migrations and behavioral shifts continue to play out, the precarious condition of America’s downtowns has emerged as an increasingly urgent refrain. Office attendance and transit ridership in many cities remain stalled at severely diminished levels, fueling much talk among urban scholars and pundits of an “urban doom loop” — a cycle of unstoppable collapse whereby tumbling property tax revenue forces cities to slash spending, speeding the flight of residents and businesses and triggering a rise in crime and disorder. As dynamism has shifted from unaffordable coastal “superstar cities” to inland insurgents in the Sun Belt, many have speculated that an entirely new geography of the American economy is taking shape.

But in urban consultant Bruce Schaller’s new report, “Boom Times or Doom Loop? America’s Urban Future, Post-Pandemic,” a detailed accounting of the era’s urban shifts and economic performance, the diagnosis is much simpler. The last few years have only underscored a fundamental truth: Cities with the housing and transportation to support density, job growth and accessibility will prosper. The ascent of cities such as Nashville, Orlando and Austin — the latter of which went from 20th to 9th most productive metro in the US between 2012 and 2022 — was built on lower taxes, cheaper costs of living and sprawling development. But increasing housing costs and the limits of geography have made those advantages much less pronounced, and in Schaller’s reading, highlight the need for these cities to grow inward.