2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The Democratic Party has proven what a gutless mess it has become [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)envisaged. Keeping the direction from being corrupted by theocrats, racial and ethnic supremacists varying by majority, corrupt and twisted local politicians, hard conservatives who do not agree with equality under the law, rapacious local business, etc., etc., etc. would be a first priority.
The next few Supreme Court justices MUST not be appointed by any of the hard-right GOP candidates or it would not work. Strong protection of the residents' civil and property rights from outside, and some principled limitations on what locals could do to each other, would be critical.
I do think we're headed that way anyway. The city versus suburb versus rural isn't working well. With urban amenities, land values are skyrocketing. Suburban dwellers have to drive too far for work and services and often lack amenities. Low-income urban dwellers are being pushed farther from jobs out to the suburbs, resulting in the spread of suburban slums; it takes money to keep up all those detached homes and yards. And rural dwellers are increasingly having sustainable living problems relative to the others, but we'll always have rural dwellers, whether they can afford to drive to the city just to watch a football game or not.
Plus, how to keep highly dense centers safe from terrorism? It's going to be with us for some while. Are more and more millions clustering in one spot really a great idea?
This all may well result in, not everyone moving "to the city" as some doomsayers imagine, but in development of more traditional town centers that will change the entire character of what once were just vast areas of subdivisions off ugly throughways lined with strip malls. Places where people live will no longer start behind the front doors of their houses but in communities with their own identities that provide reasons for wanting to live there. IF they develop well.