Are core-cities worth saving?

Crime is not the reason cities are failing.

You don't have to read the link. It is from CNN and the "reasoning" is a convoluted re-puking of Leftist fantasy.

My real beef with the article is WHY should anybody be compelled to throw good money after bad?

Reading between the lines, I assume the author believes that cities are bastions of civilization and that cities are cool. He probably believes that people who invested (too much) in cities (real-estate, infrastructure) should be protected from losses because they were doing something noble.

Today, legacy cities represent huge sunk-costs. Many of them are deeply underwater with regard to pensions. Many of them have too much office space. Some of them have land-locked factories that are nightmare to supply with logistics. The housing has not aged well.

People who are pro-cities will point out that it is more efficient to "provide services" to people living in cities. If that is true, then why are public budgets three times higher on a per-capita basis. Shouldn't more efficiency translate to lower cost?

Others claim that cities use far less fuel on a per-capita basis...frequently comparing the per-capita energy use of very rural Louisiana (903 million BTU) and very urban New York (166 million BTU). The critics fail to pull out the energy Louisiana uses to make polyethylene, ibuprofen, gasoline, diesel that is consumed in New York. That is, New York's energy use is the tip-of-the-spear and does not comprehend the energy expended to synthesize and deliver the products (including energy) consumed in NY. That shows up as energy "consumed" in Texas, Louisiana, Alaska, North Dakota and other petroleum producing and refining states.

So explain to me: Why do old core-cities with bloated fixed costs need to be rescued? Why isn't "tough love" on the table? 

You cannot fix a problem if you refuse to admit you have it. The 1950s footprint of core-cities is over-developed in some ways and under-developed in others. The "planners" would have us subsidize the over-developed parts from outside the cities because cities represent some kind of monument.