Eight years after IBM trademarked the term "smart cities," we don't seem to be much closer to the vision of sparkling U.S. urban centers with futuristic conveniences galore.
- And even if the promised smart technologies were ready, these cities would likely be out of reach for most Americans.
The big picture: Around the world, people are streaming into big cities. But in the U.S. at least, they are doing so at a slower rate and turning back to the suburbs. One reason is that few can afford a home of any size.
- The rate of population growth in the largest U.S. cities fell to 0.69% in 2017–18, down 40% from 2010–11, according to William Frey, a demographer at Brookings.
- At the same time, growth in exurban America has quadrupled.
- A foremost cause: a variety of planning practices and other conditions that have made housing either barely or not affordable except for the country's wealthiest residents.
Housing costs have gotten so out of hand that they have boomeranged against the concept of the "smart city." That's because the epicenter of the housing crisis is the coastal and largest cities — the same metropolitan areas that have been the most hospitable to smart city discussions.
The smart-city concept has evolved: Alain Bertaud, author of "Order without Design" and a professor at New York University, tells Axios that the term "smart cities" began mostly as a slogan. But over time, its definition has been fungible.
- Joel Kotkin, a professor at Chapman University, said the expression currently connotes killing single-family homes in favor of dense living arrangements and public transportation.
- It also means "no kids, because unless you are rich, there are no families," Kotkin told me. "Most people over the age of 30 want a single-family home with a backyard. But people live in a crate and take a bus for an hour to work."
- "The whole paradigm is off."
This is a global issue. A recent survey by Demographia, a firm that researches cities, looked at 309 metros in 8 countries.
- Of these, just 9 major housing markets (all in the U.S.) were judged to be "affordable" — meaning that the ratio of median house price to income was 3-to-1 or less. The most affordable were Pittsburgh; Rochester, New York; and Oklahoma City.
- But 29 cities were severely unaffordable, including 13 in the U.S., 7 in the U.K. and 5 in Australia. The worst was Hong Kong, with a ratio of 20-to-1. Vancouver was next at 12.6, and Sydney at 11.7.
Some urban experts blame "urban containment" policies that seek to build up density by limiting the contours of a metropolitan area. "All cities with severe unaffordability have adopted one form or another of urban containment," said Wendell Cox, a St. Louis-based urban policy expert.
The resulting out-migration has affected cities like Chicago and New York. California is a key symbol of high housing costs and population outflow, specifically the Bay Area.
The bottom line: "We ought to redefine what smart is," says Kotkin. "To me, smart is upward mobility, maintaining the middle class and helping the working class."
Go deeper: American suburbs swell again