From Cuba, to Los Angeles, to Minneapolis, decline is a choice

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At least there are no lines at the checkout counters

PowerLine

How to Destroy a City

American cities, like states, are moving in two very different directions. Some, like Miami, Nashville, Austin, Charleston and Salt Lake City, are thriving and growing. Others, like Chicago, Portland, Minneapolis, and–soon, anyway–New York, are caught in a downward spiral. It all depends on governance, at the local level but also on the state level, as it is much easier to thrive in Tennessee, for example, than in Oregon.

Minneapolis is a case in point. Its leadership in recent years has been terrible. The Minneapolis City Council is one of the most absurdly left-wing bodies in the U.S. And it suffers further from bad policies at the state level–high taxes, overregulation, rampant fraud and corruption, and so on.

As a consequence, commercial real estate values in Minneapolis have cratered:

Vacancy rates don’t tell the whole story, because they only measure space on which rent is not being paid. There is a vast quantity of office space in Minneapolis (St. Paul, too) that is in fact vacant, on which the tenant will stop paying rent as soon as its lease expires. So the worst is yet to come.

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Minneapolis’s collapse has nothing to do with covid, as many cities around the country are thriving. And it has nothing to do with climate; Minneapolis could only dream of growing at the rate of Sioux Falls. It is 100% due to lousy liberal policies at both the local and state levels.