From a New York Times guest essay by Thomas B. Edsall headlined “A Hidden Reason Cities Fall Apart”:

Once-vibrant cities like St. Louis, Baltimore and Cleveland have suffered from poverty, crime, depopulation, social dysfunction and homelessness for decades — setbacks compounded by the decline of manufacturing, the nationalization of local banks and waves of corporate acquisitions.

But there is something else hurting cities besides those well-known phenomena that we don’t talk about enough: the erosion of the local establishment and the loss of civic and corporate elites.