Why rural and suburban folks should pay attention to the city

The simple answer is what happen here today will happen there tomorrow. Minneapolis and Saint Paul make up a huge slice of the Minnesota population pie. Forever has there been a political tug of war going among the population centers and the suburban and rural areas, but the lines are blurring and the issues more muddled.
We at the Urban Renaissance Coalition, and the Minneapolis Shadow personally, are focused not on political bent, but on factors that improve life in the “big city”. Most of these ideals aren’t specific to the city, but what affects the largest population areas today filters out to the rest of the landscape tomorrow. Take crime for an example. As an area crime rate increases so does the rest of the area surrounding it sooner or later. The economic impact of an increase in crime mounds as the problem isn’t addressed. Take car jacking for example. As the rate of car jacking goes up, so does your insurance rates. The thieves start moving around the area more towards outside of the city, and now you have a car jacking increase in the suburbs as well. If a city policy wound have been put into place sooner to curb car jacking then the thieves would have been more likely to move on to another state altogether, instead of taking root locally. Most of the time criminals magnate towards the population centers and spread out of there no matter the type of crime you are talking about. Hence the need for all areas to focus on what happens in the cities. Does this mean that the cities should get all of the attention? NO! The biggest problem is that the “elected” who administer the funds in the city are irresponsible with the money they receive and can’t be trusted to take care of the serious problems that plague the citizens living in the cities. How can any suburban or rural citizen have any trust in the city officials to spend money wisely when the city officials go on spending sprees for things like garden rooftops, bike paths instead of roads and bridge repair, movie rental libraries, stadiums for multi-billionaires, and ‘little trains that think they can” fix traffic congestion problems. However you suburban folks should keep in mind, what happens here today will happen in your backyard tomorrow. So pay close attention!