David Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, can make running a big city sound easy -- if it's the right kind of city.
The ones that get to annex the suburbs around them almost always do well. But "inelastic" cities like Pittsburgh and McKeesport are in perpetual trouble.
"Mayors of what I've termed 'elastic,' annexationist city-states like San Jose, Austin, Indianapolis or my own Albuquerque are like poker players who are always dealt two wild cards," Rusk wrote. "Mayors of 'inelastic' cities like Santa Ana, Trenton, Detroit or Newark must always fill an inside straight to win a hand."
This is why cities in Pennsylvania are in such trouble, he says. No city can expand -- as, for instance, Louisville, Ky., will next month by merging with the surrounding county -- because "there is not one inch of unincorporated land in the entire state of Pennsylvania."
Pittsburgh can't merge with Allegheny County, he told me in a recent phone conversation, because "the other 129 municipalities aren't going to go along." So he isn't suggesting that Pennsylvania cities waste time wishing for what they can't have. He is saying:
"The state has got to recognize it has a bunch of rules that don't work for cities."
In his 1993 book, "Cities Without Suburbs," Rusk said cities that have passed The Point of No Return have three traits:
They have lost more than 20 percent of their population.
They have a disproportionate share of the region's minority residents.
The city's per capita income is less than 70 percent of suburban incomes.
Pittsburgh had crossed two of these despair thresholds when Rusk took the city's measure a decade ago. Its saving grace was its per capita income -- and still is. As the 1990s began, it was 87 percent of suburban income, and when last measured in 1999, it had edged up to 88.4 percent.
But a look behind the numbers shows that the Mon Valley is pulling down suburban numbers to the city's relative advantage. Or as Rusk put it, "It's not that Pittsburgh was doing so great, but the suburbs had gone to hell."
Mayor Tom Murphy, looking at a potential $60 million budget deficit, "has got hard realities to face -- but this isn't the mayor's dilemma uniquely," Rusk said. "This is the state of Pennsylvania's dilemma."
Six of the 39 cities on Rusk's despair list are Pennsylvania municipalities. Philadelphia had already passed the Point of No Return a decade ago, and Harrisburg, York, McKeesport, Norristown borough and Reading have joined it in time for the 2003 printing of "Cities Without Suburbs."
Here's why suburbanites should care: The smaller the income gap between city and suburb, the greater the economic progress of the whole metropolitan community. The patchwork quilt of governments that is the Pittsburgh metropolitan area is another competitive disadvantage.
"It's hard for folks in these little box communities to imagine the competitive edge an Austin, Charlotte, Raleigh or Albuquerque has. And not because they're Sun Belt cities. Because they can make the most of the resources they have."
When I told him that some have suggested Indianapolis's success was due largely to privatization of government services in the 1990s, Rusk answered, "Oh, baloney."
Indianapolis consolidated with its surrounding county in 1970. A 55-square-mile city became a 362-square-mile city. Privatization merely fine-tuned a cure already in place.
There is some hope for inelastic cities. Under its second Mayor Daley, Chicago came back after four decades of decline. Through large Hispanic immigration and yuppie condo-buying, its population grew by 100,000 and the income gap with the suburbs closed significantly. Holyoke, Mass., also came back from what Rusk now must call the Point of (almost) No Return.
His list nonetheless grows.
"Pennsylvania is not going to turn itself into North Carolina," Rusk said. "Their rules compel cities to annex.[Carolina cities] are just all powerhouses."
But we must find more ways to cooperate, to control sprawl, to cut redundant government services, to provide more state aid for education, to make the most of what we have. Governor-elect Ed Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor so popular in that city's suburbs, will have to lead the way.
"In an age of sprawl," Rusk said, "Pennsylvania's rules don't work for central cities, older suburbs and -- not so far off -- they won't be working for Allegheny County as a whole."
Brian O'Neill can be reached at boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947.
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