Balderdash; modern societies have no need for cities in fact cities have become nothing more than holding pens for the unproductive. Even now, businesses see the benefits of fleeing the cities; they can communicate via modern technoligies such as the internet and the internet and the servers are being relocated to secure bunker like facilities outside the cities. As the evil concentrates in the urban jungles of festering depravity and false intellectualism, the productive, the civilized are relocating to the exurbs and beyond.
Cities are still the economic powerhouses in a society. Without cities farmers could not make a living. Ideas come out of cities. They are the creative elements within a society. The rest of the society just follows the leads of cities. The fact is that the big blue states (their cities actually) provide the majority of federal taxes and subsidize the majority of red states.
Check the Tax Foundation’s site for confirmation of this and it will show you that NJ gets $0.61 back for every dollar sent to Washington, Il. gets $0.75, NY $0.79, MASS $0.81, Calif $0.78, Mich $0.91, Conn $0.69. Ala $1.66, Miss $2.02, Louisiana $1.78, Ark $1.41, Virginia $1.51, S. Carolina $1.35.
Should Chicago disappear all its suburbs would either disappear as well or turn into near ghost towns. Cities provide the places where new ideas can be tried and developed. The choices provided in one like Chicago are so vast that no one person can even take advantage of them.
If I want to hire someone to do highly skilled or technical work there are literally thousands of people to choose from. In small towns there are very few. Having a huge market allows production to achieve the lowest marginal cost (Adam Smith explains this in the Wealth of Nations). Jane Jacobs explains the critical importance of cities in “The Economy of Cities” and the “Wealth of Cities”.