If there was any doubt things are looking up for the District of Columbia, Thursday’s census numbers should slay any fears. Late-breaking figures show the District breaking 600,000 residents for the first time in two decades. This is no small matter for a city that had been shedding people since the 1960s. The District lost residents to the suburbs; now the cycle is reversed.
“It’s a mind-set nationwide, not only in Washington,” says Councilman Jack Evans, whose Ward 2 showed the most growth. “People are moving back to cities. Young people — white and black — and empty-nesters want to live where the action is, and they don’t want to commute.”
But D.C.’s urban resurrection goes deeper than general demographic shifts. People with vision saw a city that could be a vibrant core, and they led change that remade the capital city.
In 1960 John F. Kennedy strode down Pennsylvania Avenue in his inauguration and saw a seedy street that didn’t befit a world capital; he sparked a regeneration.
New York Sen. Patrick Moynihan, then working for President Richard Nixon, helped create the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corp. in the early 1970s that gradually renovated America’s Main Street.
Props to Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations. He started crusading for a “living downtown” back in the 1980s and never gave up. How can we forget Art Schultz, who turned Franklin Square from a seedy nexus for prostitution to a prosperous and safe neighborhood?
Mayors help — or hurt. No one was drawn to Marion Barry’s city. Anthony Williams began to turn the tide. He set a goal of adding 100,000 new residents. Adrian Fenty continued to remake D.C. into a hot town for young professionals, in his image.
Now people are living in that downtown. Break down the census numbers and you will see that people are moving to five neighborhoods, all in Evans’ downtown ward: Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Penn Quarter, Gallery Place and Foggy Bottom. Condominiums that were in the planning and construction stages for a decade are now topped out and filling up.
More people means more tax revenues, the lifeblood of a city’s fiscal health.
But there’s no guarantee that this renaissance we can trace back to JFK will continue. Nothing is inevitable. Which brings me to the two C’s: crime and corruption. The bloom will quickly come off of the flowering of D.C. if crime goes up, and if word gets out that District politicians are either corrupt or inept.
On the upside, school reform is an inducement. If you don’t think Michelle Rhee’s reforms didn’t draw young couples, stop a few pushing baby carriages in Shaw and ask why they settled here. I have, and Rhee’s name often comes up.
So — memo to the city’s leaders: keep crime down, manage the city well, reform the schools — and they will keep coming. Dither in these goals and watch the numbers dive. It’s that simple.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
