On average, I think many cities will rapidly revive and do well as they have in many of the cities of Asia. Some new cities will likely develop and there will likely be a general return to transit oriented development,including streetcar suburbs which have a long history of being cost effective.

As to how well, the city of Gary will do, it’s up in the air since the city has no history as a historic trading city and was built for a single purpose heavy industry that needs far fewer workers. It does however have a very good location close to Chicago and would strongly benefit from the revival of passenger rail.

Surburban development is on average not cost effective and cannot survive without continuous subsidies.

City unions, welfare advocates and Democratic party machines have been allowed to control urban areas, providing more and more tax dollars are spent to allow development further and further out.

The sum result, is a kind of constantly disposable city with it’s inner rings prgressively thrown away.

First the Red Giant, then the Black Hole.

Local governments are self-serving above all and they would have no incentive to merge with a place with as many financial liabilities as Gary.

On the other hand, the only entity that could force the county to merge with Gary is the state. But you notice, the governor is just making a recommendation, generally, without acknowledging he has to power to make it happen. Because that would be a political mess.

Easier to just let a bunch of poor, relatively powerless people in Gary languish, like they have been. If the governor really wants to see a merger, he could make that happen. He’s just absolving himself of responsibility with a flippant comment. He obviously doesn’t care about Gary at all.

The big problem with this argument is that free markets don’t exist and the government at the state and federal level has promoted “investments”, in roads and “free” (also known as commie) infrastructure that has promoted urban destruction.

Very little can be done until, people realise that the Federal and state road systems were a major, major, major mistake.

One would have thought Obama would have done this but his general policy is that the government can never admit to a mistake.

This has created the worst of all posible situations. The government is digging in deeper into passenger rail making private rail operations non viable, while at the same time putting more and more money in to support the “free” legacy road system. We don’t have the money for both.