Town Crier : The Decline of the World’s Large Cities Makes an Imagined Trip Back to Their Glory Days a Sad, Nostalgic Journey

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT Jere Stuart French of Claremont wants to know: “Are all cities getting worse? Is there a peak time for every city, after which it begins a long, irreversible decline?”

French suggests that all large cities are past their prime, and he wonders when he would most like to have visited London, Paris, Vienna, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Honolulu, if traveling back in time were possible.

He thinks that London would have been best in the early 1800s, before railroads and the Industrial Revolution; Paris in 1880, after the city’s reconstruction and when the Impressionist painters were in flower; Vienna in the early 1800s, when the great composers lived; New York in the ‘20s; San Francisco in the early ‘50s; Los Angeles in the ‘30s; Honolulu in 1940.

French’s choices are close to what mine would be. I might have preferred London in the early 18th Century, when that city was graced by the simultaneous presence of Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele.

I suspect that all European cities were at their peak in what the French call la belle epoque-- the 15 years or so before World War I. Their populations were in control. The automobile had arrived as an elegant extension of the carriage, but not yet in numbers enough to clog the streets and pollute the air. In Paris, artists painted on the sidewalks and music was in the air, unamplified; ladies were grandly costumed; the can-can was danced nightly at the Moulin Rouge; elegant carriages still rolled along the Champs Elysees, and the world was poised on the brink of history’s worst catastrophe.

Can cities have two peaks? Was Imperial Rome grander than the Rome of la belle epoque ? I doubt it. The massive presence of the Circus Maximus could not have surpassed in grace and beauty the fountains of Bernini, the works of Michelangelo and the other ornaments of the Renaissance. And the crumbled ruins of the Colosseum and the Forum were the more poignant for their remembrance of past glory. All this would have been combined in la belle epoque with fast trains, luxurious hotels, superb restaurants and modern plumbing to make Rome a city of dreams.

New York, I agree, had its prime later, in the dizzy 1920s, when Jimmy Walker was mayor, the stock market and the skyline kept rising, the speak-easies were wide open, flappers danced the Charleston on table-tops, and the Yankees and the Giants reigned almost supreme. It reached its peak in 1931 with completion of the Empire State Building.

San Francisco reached its peak during World War II, when it was the point of departure for the Pacific. Its modest skyline was dazzling; ferry boats plied its busy bay; Fisherman’s Wharf was a fisherman’s wharf, not a tourist trap, and Alcatraz was a prison.

Los Angeles reached its peak, ironically, in mid-Depression, as French guesses. It had experienced its golden age of architecture with the erection of City Hall, the Central Library, Bullocks Wilshire, UCLA and many other ornaments. The Big Red Cars connected the city with dozens of suburbs; the air was clean; the beaches and sidewalks were clean; trees flowered; traffic was uncongested. We were all poor, but rent was cheap and a ride on the yellow streetcars cost only 7 cents.

Los Angeles reached its peak with completion of the palatial Union Terminal across from Old Plaza in 1939--just in time to serve as a major terminal for soldiers going overseas and coming home. Then the jets came, and it collapsed into a black hole like an aged star.

French’s choice of 1940 for Honolulu couldn’t be wiser. We lived in Honolulu through 1941, and until December of that year it was paradise. A visitor’s first sight of the city, as he rounded Diamond Head, was tranquilizing. Palm trees lined the shore; the only large buildings visible were the Moana and the hibiscus-pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The city rose toward the purple mountains as green and colorful as a Gauguin painting. Today it is Miami Beach West.

“Are there any cities that are not declining?” French asks. “I have a few possible candidates: Tucson, Seattle, San Diego, Phoenix and San Antonio . . . .”

I don’t know about Tucson, Seattle and San Antonio, but I think that Phoenix and San Diego have had it. Phoenix has a decayed downtown and is hardly rising, like its namesake, from its ashes; its Scottsdale suburb has become a wilderness of walled and guarded condominiums. San Diego is experiencing sprawl, crowding, traffic congestion, crime and smog, and has uttered its fears of being Los Angelized.

“Is it inevitable,” French asks, “for cities to go the way of Cairo . . . ? Is the city, as a social institution, finished?”

I do not have the gift of foresight. But, given the human propensity for uncontrolled breeding and for flocking together in urban centers, and our dependence on powered locomotion, I can’t help believing that every large city has seen its best day.

The only big cities I have seen that haven’t been destroyed by the automobile are Moscow and Leningrad, and that’s because not every Russian can afford to own a car.

We had paradise, but we have eaten of the apple.