We really don’t acknowledge often enough how much American cities have changed for the better over the last 40 to 50 years. The difference is visible in many ways, both metaphorical and literal, as skylines have thickened while parks and trails have flourished, and economies have boomed while downtown residency has become thoroughly mainstream.
■ The defining images of cities well through the 1980s and into the 1990s were crime, vice, and decay. Pop culture was chock-full of depictions of cities as cesspools, full of muggings and streetcorner drug deals. Some of those depictions were true to reality, while others played on tired old prejudices.
■ Now? Cities are nice, generally speaking. They’re often wealthy, full of amenities, and generally clean. Shopping and entertainment districts have expanded and keep late-night hours in well-illuminated safety. Urban living gets high marks for environmental efficiency and for human health: There’s even been a sharp divergence in life expectancy that actually favors urban dwellers. People used to leave the cities in order to get well.
■ A lot of people still fixate on the concept of cities that still look like they’re out of “The French Connection” or “Hill Street Blues”. And of course there are still plenty of urban places in decline, but the old stereotype of “city as terminal failure” is completely out of touch.
■ Lazy police procedural dramas don’t help with the image-making, but even some of those franchises have given up on making the city itself the fallen character. Society would be better off without those shows entirely, but at least now it’s almost laughable to blame the city for its depraved crooks.