We here at TPOL were able to generate some discussion a few weeks ago about the current state and decline of San Francisco. Including a discussion on whose and what data do we believe when it comes to understanding conditions in a place like the Jewel of the Pacific Coast. The saga continues, but San Francisco is not alone by any means.

It appears that same discussion is taking place in many venues. Here are a few examples.

Zero Hedge recently republished an article stating that all Americans should be concerned about the trauma, the fight for survival, and impending demise of San Francisco.

In June, Newsweek bemoaned the homelessness, drug calamity, exploding crime, and business closures that are dragging San Francisco down. The leftist mag proclaimed that the city’s decline is not just a matter of concern but a warning to other American cities. The business collapse and exodus has just continued more in the past two months.

Even The Atlantic tells us how San Francisco became a “failed city” because of the pandemic. The Washington Examiner tells us that downtown San Francisco’s collapse reflects the city’s decay, although the WaPo claims that the city “isn’t destined to be the next Detroit.” But back in April even the SF Chronicle itself stated that the city could be on the verge of collapse. (But they wanted to know what California should do about it, and noted that the city’s population loss was slowing!)

But the exodus from California continues, to the great concern and detriment of people in States where Californians have voted with their feet – especially when there are people from San Francisco (and other Bay cities) in the fleeing hordes. (Too many of us have already seen the results of early-leavers fleeing from California: few were like Mama Liberty – they might be “conservative” in California but “flaming liberal” regressives compared to the the States to which they fled.)

But the “problem” (potential collapse) isn’t limited to Babylon-by-the-Bay, or even to California. Supposedly Manhattan has solved its post-911 and post-pandemic-panic decline and is now once more the glorious, to-be-worshipped capital of the New World Order it supposedly has been since 1945.

It isn’t even limited to Ecotopia (California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia). And we are not talking about the collapsing population and multiple mega-cities of China or Japan.

Indeed, one online publication offered this prediction a couple of months ago.

Many reasons are given, but perhaps some of the most important are overlooked. Cities are, to quote Obi-Wan, hives of villainy and scum. Whether we are looking at Jerusalem for three millennia, or 21st Century Detroit, or Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong, Edo/Tokyo, or others. Cities are crowded, dirty (however pristine they may appear), make people callused socially and spiritually. (A woman recently testified about how she was spit on and threatened with rape in downtown San Francisco in sight and sound of dozens of people – none willing to help.) The vast urban anthills breed contempt and criminality. And not just among the “private” mobsters and government officials and workers. (Apparently most of the actual workforce (i.e. nonbureaucrats like cops and firemen and medical workers) of the City of Los Angeles have just gone on strike to punish the city for “unfair labor practices” as I write this.) Other problems include the spread of disease (not just the Black Plague) and chaotic “anarchists” of the black flag variety, and the plethora of predators and victims: pedophiles and rapists and johns and “soiled doves.” Partly because their “pleasures” (including victims) are so readily available.

Take your pick: London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Cairo. Or go back in ancient history, and find your fill of why cities are bad for people, for liberty, and for freedom.

But also look at what has happened for so many cities. For every modern Rome and Istambul and Athens and Jerusalem, there is Babylon, Nineveh, Carthage, Mohenjo-daro, Machu Picchu and Petra. Close to home? Visit Mesa Verde or even Chaco Canyon. Look at Williamsburg or Nauvoo. Cities are bad places, and they die. Sometimes (Jerusalem and Roma are two examples) they are revived.

Cities can produce good things – and did so a lot when transportation and communications were slow, difficult, and often a disaster in themselves. Today, those advantages are relatively small, when you look at the downside of massive urban messes.

Can liberty exist and people prosper and enjoy peace in a city? I’d like to think so, and no doubt there have been times in the past when that happened. But it is clearly not happening much here in the Fifty States, or the entire planet, in 2023.