Despite the relative paucity of socialist municipal-level elected officials, large cities tend to adopt policies that can reasonably be called socialist.
A number of other cities have socialist members on their governing councils.
Wikipedia says there are only 100 socialists currently on city councils and county commissions combined.
Read Jeremy Lott's Free Cities Center review of "Centers for Progress: 40 Cities That Changed the World." Yet, the most "Meaningful improvements in the quality of life for people in their communities" come not from central planners intent on forcing their will on people but markets.
" Brian Anderson, editor of City Journal, nods to Hayek's thinking by writing that the city is the source "Of the West's dynamic, world-transforming science, culture and prosperity." His article is aptly named, "Freedom and the city." Socialist and progressive frameworks make dynamism difficult.
Ugo Okere, a socialist candidate for the Chicago City Council in 2019, said publicly what many will say only in private when he confessed that he believes that "Democratic socialism, to me, is about democratic control of every single facet of our life." We'd say Chicago was fortunate that Okere wasn't elected.
We can't because the race in the city's 40th Ward was won by Andre Vasquez, a Democratic Socialist who was reelected last year.
How can a city flourish if its inhabitants are disconnected through a cold, soulless system that has no room for spontaneity? Every bustling city was built on the backs of entrepreneurs, who are key to economic prosperity but also bring together people of different "Tribes." Yet socialism and collectivism not only sever human connections, they dampen and often kill the entrepreneurial spirit.
While most big-city mayors and council members would eschew the socialist label, they unfortunately promote policies that are socialist in nature, as they promote government-funded affordable housing and a variety of other programs hatched in City Hall and paid for by taxpayers.
The answers are not in city halls but in the industriousness and creativity of people who are not tied down by public policy and make our urban centers not merely habitable but vibrant places to live.
If we want to revive America's cities, we need to combat failed socialist ideas and re-energize the role of private enterprise.
https://www.pacificresearch.org/socialism-by-any-name-is-impeding-americas-cities/
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