Why Cities Matter: or How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Municipal Policy
What we do at the local level solves problems in big and small ways, from potholes to climate change, parks to income inequality. It deserves more focus than it gets.
So here we are, less than 100 days from another presidential election. It’s going to be months of non-stop television ads, text messages, doom scrolling, and talking heads. The stakes of the election will be on repeat from now until November 5th - abortion, inflation, democracy, economy.
Make no mistake, the outcome of this election is really important, we have to elect Kamala Harris and we can’t do four more years of Donald Trump.
But how that turns out is largely out of our hands. Most people have made up their minds and billions of dollars will be spent on the outcome, mostly in states outside of Florida where the votes will actually make a difference.
And that’s fine.
Because at the end of the day what happens at the local level impacts our lives way more than anything the president does. Cities are on the front lines of issues big and small, solving everything from potholes to climate change to income inequality. And unlike the federal government, your voice actually matters at the local level.
How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Municipal Policy
Like most people, I didn’t wake up one morning and suddenly find city government interesting. The issues that drove me into politics were national: economic growth, income inequality, climate change, healthcare, etc.
My era was the Obama era. In what seems like a lifetime ago I was 19, deeply disappointed in everything that happened under Bush, and completely mesmerized by a “skinny kid with a funny name” who was running a long-shot bid for President of the United States.
Barack Obama felt like the antidote to the endless failures of the Bush era. I was midway through college when the economy came crashing down around us, my LGBTQ friends couldn’t get married, healthcare costs were skyrocketing, climate change was unaddressed, and the war in Iraq had become a boondoggle.
The totality of Bush’s failure as President seemed overwhelming, and seeing the country elect Barack Hussein Obama to the highest office gave me faith and hope in America. We were fired up and ready to go.
That optimism came crashing back to reality pretty quickly. The Affordable Care Act was an endless battle against false claims of “death panels”. Basic economic stimulus, the kind Republicans gladly passed under Bush, became partisan and fought tooth and nail. Any hope of cap-and-trade policy, or really anything related to climate change, was dead on arrival. The Tea Party had taken over the Republican Party, and they were opposed to everything simply because Obama was for it.
In Florida that reality crashed faster than most places. Obama won Florida in 2008, then two years later the state elected a man who had committed the largest medicare fraud in the history of the United States. Gov. Rick Scott immediately came in and slashed environmental protections, turned away federal funds for transportation, and gutted welfare and food stamps.
We were angry. My last few years in college were a time of protesting, “occupying”, and registering voters between classes. We weren’t going to go down without a fight, and we were optimistic we would win.
Back in 2010 there was a genuine feeling that Rick Scott was an aberration, that Florida was a state destined for a more progressive future. Our Hispanic community was growing rapidly, and young people were flocking to Florida. It felt like, as young people on the front lines of progressive change, our generation was in the drivers seat for a better future for our state.
Obviously, that isn’t what happened.
Bringing It Back Local
Sometime around 2013 I realized I had spent a lot of time working on statewide and federal issues with little to show for it.
I was tired, I was drained, so I left politics behind to do something I thought could actually make a difference. I took a job at CareerSource North Central Florida, helping unemployed people to create businesses and be trained for jobs in growing industries. It was the “bottom-up” approach to economic development I had been in favor of for a long time, but now I got to do it at the ground level.
I was soon promoted to running a $12 million statewide program called “Startup Quest” that trained unemployed Floridians how to start their own businesses. It was a program across nine cities in Florida that trained over 3,000 Floridians on how to create their own startups by working closely with local entrepreneurs and universities. It was fulfilling work, and I got to work with cities all across the state as they worked to grow their economy and solve unemployment on a local level. All of that gave me a lot of appreciation for local action.
At the same time, a slew of great books were coming out about the impact cities have on our day-to-day lives, which translates to big impacts on the national level. The book “Happy City” (2013) is a great primer on how urban design impacts our lives in ways we don’t see. “The Rent is To Damn High” (2012) was an early zoning reform advocacy book by Matthew Yglesias that foreshadowed a lot of the zoning discussions we have today. “Walkable City” by Jeff Speck (2013) is a now classic book on the benefits and tactics of creating cities that are easy to walk. The 99% Invisible podcast came out in 2010 and had new urban design stories every week.
My dog had a lot of energy, so I would go on long walks with him around Downtown, Duckpond, Pleasant Street, Grove Street, and Fifth Ave, listening to these books/podcasts on audio, thinking about the city and how it’s designed.
What I realized during this time is I spent way too much time worrying about what Barack Obama, Ted Yoho, or Mitch McConnel did. What they were doing mattered, but not nearly as much as what my City Commission did. We had the tools at the local level to solve problems, to fix the issues that first got me fired up about Obama and politics in the first place.
Best of all: at the local level you can actually make change.
The Impact of Cities on Our Lives
A lot has happened since 2008. The Affordable Care Act was passed, Trump passed massive tax cuts, and the American Rescue Plan Act went into effect. Obama was elected, then Trump, then Joe Biden. There have been massive swings and drastic changes to the parties and politics of this country over that time.
But none had more of an impact on me than a single vote of the Gainesville City Commission in 2019. Down the street from our house in what was once a dilapidated field, the city created a little playground and a trail.
Oakview Park is just a few blocks from our house, and I can’t imagine life without it. More importantly, my three-year-old couldn’t imagine life without it. It’s where she can get out her energy, where our neighborhood comes together.
For all of the anxiety and energy that national politics brings out in us, there’s nothing that beats a good neighborhood park.
That’s because what the federal government has is money and some broad regulatory powers. But what local cities have is much more powerful: land and land regulations. Land is where we live, where we shop, where we work and how we get between those places.
Designing that better means creating a better community.
Cities Address the Major Issues
What cities do impacts our day-to-day lives in huge ways, but I mostly hear it talked about in a sort of boring, operational way. As though the federal government deals with the big, meaty issues and local governments just fill potholes and build nice parks.
And it’s true, we do fill potholes, but cities deal with the meaty issues just as much, if not more, than the Federal government does. For a lot of the big issues you’ll be voting on in November there’s simply no way to solve them without change at the local level.
Climate Change
Joe Biden has called climate change “the number one issue facing humanity.” A lot has been done under his administration to reduce climate emissions in the United States, and it’s sorely needed:
America is far and away the largest per capita emitter of CO2 for a large nation. Even more so than industrial powers like Russia, or rapidly modernizing countries like South Korea.
What is going on here? Why do Americans consume so much more carbon than the other major countries in the world? It isn’t because of our electric grid: America has a below-average “carbon intensity” per kWh. It isn’t because we’re richer than everyone else: Europeans use half the CO2 we do despite being wealthy countries.
The answer is in our urban design, specifically our transportation system.
Americans have bigger houses, wider lots, and more roads. We have longer commutes, with less public transportation, in less efficient cars. We drive longer to work, to school, to the grocery store, and back.
Unfortunately, technology won’t save us here. The conversion to electric vehicles is helpful, but only helps at the margins. Here is some of the data about carbon emissions of the different car types from MIT’s Insights Into Future Mobility from 2019:
The researchers found that, on average, gasoline cars emit more than 350 grams of CO2 per mile driven over their lifetimes. The hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions, meanwhile, scored at around 260 grams per mile of carbon dioxide, while the fully battery-electric vehicle created just 200 grams.
The only answer is to design cities in a way that allows people to drive less, or not drive at all if they choose. Cities need to be designed to allow people to get around on public transportation, walking, or bicycles. Grocery stores, retail, daycares, and schools needs to be closer to where people actually live, to let people drive less.
Income Inequality & Upward Mobility
If there’s one unifying idea that ties Americans together it’s the “American dream”. The idea that by living or coming to America your child will have a chance at a better life than you had.
It’s an important goal to strive to, even if we come up short on it a lot. But the American dream is less about America as a whole than the decisions we make on the local level.
Raj Chetty and Nathan Hendren of Harvard have spent years mapping this “opportunity” to the local level, places where low-income children are able to move into the middle class and where they aren’t.
There are huge discrepancies between cities. A child born in the lowest 20% income bracket in the Gainesville metro area has a 7.4% of moving to the top 20% of income later in life, which is about half compared to children in New York City (15%), Seattle (13%), or San Jose (15%).
But even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Here is Gainesville on the neighborhood level:
For almost every statistic and subgroup, a child born in West Gainesville is significantly more likely to have positive outcomes than those born in East Gainesville1. A low-income child born east of 13th stands to make about half the income as one born west of 13th. They are almost twice as likely to be incarcerated. (Check out the map to see more, it’s really well done.)
What accounts for these differences? According to Chetty and Hendren the factors are, in order of importance:
1. Segregation
2. Income inequality
3. Quality of K-12 Schools
4. Social capital indices (strength of local connections)
5. Weaker family structures (percentage of families with single parents)
Gainesville didn’t get here overnight, it was decades of decisions related to land regulations and investments. The Gainesville City Commission made explicit decisions in the 1950’s-60’s to use public housing investments and land use regulations to push minorities, public housing, and polluting industries to the southeast side of town. School integration in 1971 sped the process up, as white flight moved people west, and with it school quality and economic development moved with them.2
Reversing that trend is really, really hard, and the City leaders have been trying for decades to make that happen. But the stakes are high: can we protect the American dream for future generations?
Making a Living Wage
Economic development has been a fascination of mine for a long time, hence my career path into CareerSource. But creating jobs and raising wages in the private sector is easier said than done, and relies on a lot of things outside of the City’s control to go right.
What the city does have is the ability to save people money on their largest expenses. A dollar in your pocket is just as good saved as earned.
According to the most recent Consumer Expenditure Survey by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, these are the top things Americans spend:
Housing costs are far and away the biggest expense the average American has. The federal government plays a role, but the main issue in housing affordability is how constrained the housing market is to build new homes to meet demand of a growing population.
The Biden Administration ran into this headfirst as they have tried to reduce inflation and costs for the average American. By far the biggest price increase has been in housing costs during his time in office, but the solution lies in local land use, which the federal government has no control over. The administration has released dozens of papers and grants to try to push local governments to reform these policies, with mixed results.
That’s why I brought forward a minimum lot size reform policy, a policy highlighted by the Biden Administration to reduce housing costs. This will allow more, smaller starter homes to be built. That reform was passed on first reading last month and will come back to us for second reading next month.
But there are tons of other expenses that the City also controls. Taxes, fees, and utility rates also eat away at people's incomes. Government can also help people save money by getting directly involved in providing services.
A quality bus system saves people the money they would need to own and operate a car. Quality parks, concerts, and public spaces give people recreation without a big fee.
For years City residents have paid the highest prices in the state for broadband internet, according to a study by Magellan Consultants. Right now to get basic broadband internet you will be paying $50 per month to Cox Communications, compared to $30 to Xfinity, the main internet provider in Florida. That is $240 per year.
That’s why in 2017 myself and other community members launched “Connected Gainesville” to expand high-speed, broadband internet across the City. A consultant found that Gainesville would likely profit around $73 million after 20-years while keeping prices low for residents if we expanded GRU’s GRUComm system out to residential households.
That didn’t happen, thanks to the GRU General Manager at the time refusing for “business” reasons. Now two businesses are coming in and investing in a robust internet system after they concluded there was plenty of money to be made. That was a huge missed opportunity, but at least there is some solution through the private sector today.
Preserving Democracy
Joe Biden has called the preservation of Democracy a “sacred cause” that is “the most urgent question of our time, and it’s what the 2024 election is all about.”
He’s right. What’s happening at the national level around democracy is pretty scary. Donald Trump has already openly tried to overthrow an election, and is doubling down by telling supporters they “won’t have to vote again” if he’s elected.
But in Gainesville democracy has already taken a fatal blow.
The basic tenet of democracy is that the people elect representatives who are responsible to them through their government. If you don’t like the decisions we make you can throw us out. There are multiple levels of government who sometimes pre-empt one another, but the idea that the voters decide who represents them is fundamental.
Not in Gainesville.
This basic tenet of our democracy is embedded in the second sentence of the “Declaration of Independence”.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Consent of the governed. In the past there have been temporary takeovers of governments: like in the case of Flint, Michigan or what is happening with Houston area schools right now. During Reconstruction, the federal government temporarily took over state and local governments in order to protect formerly enslaved Americans from violence.
But all of those were/are temporary. The takeover of GRU by Gov DeSantis is a completely unprecedented, dramatic escalation in the stealing of democracy from an electorate, and we’re on the front lines of that.
That question of whether Gainesville will be a democracy is on your ballot November 5th. The stakes are larger than Gainesville. As Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson told the Main Street Daily News.
“If this is the way the state’s going, I’m glad it started here in Gainesville because at least we have the political wherewithal to know what’s happening to us, and we have enough people willing to fight back and be part of the loyal resistance,” Hutchinson said in an interview Monday.
Well said Hutch.
Local Government in the Drivers Seat
Former House Speaker Tip O’Neil once famously said that, “all politics is local.” That was true in the 1980’s when he said it, but it hasn’t been true for a while now.
Local news is a shadow of its former self, and nearly everything we read is about what is happening at the federal level. That’s a shame, because most policy is still local, even if politics isn’t.
And while the federal government is mostly a spectator sport, you still have a voice in your local government. I’ve seen committed local advocates change the direction of our local city government more times than I can count. Your City Commissioners and mayor are always happy to meet with residents and constituents, and we do it all throughout the day.
So just take a breath. Whatever happens in November at the federal level we still have committed people at the local level that care about the issues that matter to you. You still have a voice in your local government. And there are plenty of opportunities to make our community a better place.
This finding is true regardless of whether you’re talking about black children or white children. Low-income white children raised in East Gainesville also have significantly lower wages in adulthood than white children in West Gainesville. The same is true of African-American kids.
The book “We Can Do It” is a great local history of school integration in 1971 that should be required reading in Gainesville. It’s about schools, but touches on the urban planning aspects of this too: https://catalog.aclib.us/search/title.aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.6&pos=1&cn=1051491
Great essay, Bryan. I enjoyed getting to know more about your background and political evolution. I agree strongly with you about the importance of taking local action, and that's where most of my energy has been focused for the years that I've been in Gville. Unfortunately, as you alluded to, the "free state of FL," run largely by a single party that alleges to be against big government, has gone to great lengths to undermine the rights of communities to determine their own future. As I stated at a legislative hearing in Tallahassee earlier this year (to a dais full of mostly blank stares), what's right for Miami is not necessarily what's right for Chipley. I wish that our legislators would stop passing one-sized-fits-all legislation and offer more leeway for our communities to figure things out. We could probably learn a lot from each other!
The essay's thesis "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," to use Bryan's quote from the Declaration of Independence, is exactly what we saw NOT happen at the level of national politics. The current candidate of one political party was nominated, not by the governed, but rather a self-serving bunch of high-dollar Democrat donors and behind-the-scenes politicos. Just notice what happened: 14 million Democratic votes nullified because of a whim by a few power brokers. Power is what they seek, not the consent of the governed. I fear we might be on an irreversible course where the consent of the governed is just a hollow phrase. The prospect of never having a say in how our government is run scares me more than climate change, abortion rights, inflation, immigration, or anything else used as a smoke screen for what's really at stake.