Though the problems mentioned above are materialistic in nature - social, economic, demographic - they are all firmly rooted in the West's spiritual malaise; hence, these problems cannot and will not be solved unless the root of the problem is acknowledged first. Of course it goes without saying that there is zero motivation to acknowledge the spiritual underpinnings of the many quandaries infecting Western cities. On the contrary, Western cities have been purposefully engineered to become massive spirit-denying and soul-crushing mechanisms whose primary aims include inciting hedonism, inducing despair, and, consequently, damning souls. In my more cheerful moments, I tend to think of cities like New York and London as enormous open-air concentration camps that slowly, but surely, suck the life and sanity (and soul) out of each and every one of its inhabitants.
I understand that living in cities is a necessity (or a conscious choice) for many. Unfortunately, I can offer no advice about how to go about making life in a Western city more tenable and palatable. I tried to make urban living more tenable and palatable myself for over two decades. In the end, I threw in the towel, abandoned cities, and moved to a small rural village instead. Naturally, this option is not open to all, nor would it be a good or viable choice for all. Living in the countryside provides some distance from the epicenters of despair, but it offers no immunity to the spiritual death spiral the West is currently locked into.
In the end, people will have to figure out how they can confront and survive the many challenges modern Western cities thrust upon them. Solutions and coping mechanisms will vary from individual to individual, especially among the religious. The first step in dealing effectively with anything is to understand it for what it truly is. Christians living in Western cities must abandon any delusions they may harbor about living in them and begin to see them for what they have become. A big part of this delusion-abandonment is the understanding that life in Western cities will not improve in any meaningful way in the foreseeable future. The cause of our cities' ills, which is the same cause behind the suicide of our entire civilization, has not and will likely never be acknowledged or addressed. Becoming aware of and discussing the problems found in Western cities is prudent, but holding out hope for improvement when the people running our cities (and countries) actively work against the spiritual seems misguided.