NewGeography.com blogs

When looking for a place to settle down, one might consider cities with active cultural scenes or intellectual communities. However, young people today are looking beyond those factors and moving to where the jobs are. Portland, for example, has a thriving social scene and is one of the nation’s leaders in attracting college graduates, but it ranks 40 as the best place for young adults. A high cost of living, stagnant job growth, and a 9.6 percent jobless rate among 18 to 34 year-olds have tarnished Portland’s reputation as the dream city for life after graduation.

You can see the economic shift in this country by looking at the best cities for young people. The Southwest is now the haven for those in their 20s and 30s looking to establish their lives and careers. Austin, which ranks number one on the list, has the highest annual employment-growth rate in America at 2.8 percent. This has increased the concentration of 18 to 34 year-olds in its metro area to 28 percent, the most of all cities in the study and well above the average of 23.1 percent. Washington, D.C., Raleigh, Boston, Houston, Oklahoma City, Dallas-Fort Worth and Tulsa round out the top eight.

However, economics do not dictate everything. North Dakota, which has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, is still not a major draw for those right out of college. The cities that have attracted young people in droves not only offer employment and lower costs of living, but also provide some sort of cultural scene. However, if the recession continues to limit job growth on the coasts, North Dakota may build its metro areas to cater to younger crowds, and thus provide them with more than just a steady, good-paying job. Fargo has seen positive net migration every year since 2003, and the state of North Dakota was positive for the first time this decade in 2009. The middle of the country is slowly becoming hot place to be.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly two years since we first wrote about the game of “hide the ball” that Junkmeister Ben Bernanke is playing. Finally, Congress is getting some admissions out of the Federal Reserve about the gusher of cash that was opened up when the insides fell out of Wall Street’s Ponzi scheme. Remember, you read it here first! Trillions of dollars were funneled to private, non-regulated companies. According to the New York Times article, the release of documents on 21,000 transactions came about as a result of a provision inserted by Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT) into the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010. I covered the hearing in March 2009 when Bernanke told Senator Sanders he would not reveal who got the money – but I wrote three months earlier about the deal brokered between the Treasury and the Federal Reserve to circumvent a Congressional prohibition on lending to non-regulated companies. Sanders called it a Jaw Dropper by the time he saw the actual documents.

Lest you think that all is hunky-dory because the money is being paid back, don’t forget the old adage: “It takes money to make money.” Everyone that borrowed had the opportunity to make money on the money they got at (virtually) no cost. In the interim, small businesses, homeowners, student borrowers, etc. are paying enormously high interest rates for the little credit they can get. The profits go to Brother Banker.

The Federal Reserve released papers on $12 trillion, about half of the $23 trillion distribution estimated by Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky. Despite admitting to pumping an amount equal to about the entire annual national output into the economy in the form of cash – belying the real decline in the output of goods and services – Ben Bernanke told 60 Minutes recently that he was “100% certain” that inflation is not going to be a problem. Makes you wonder what else they’re hiding.

Inform Yourself:
Click here for the Federal Reserve Press release.

Click here for Regulatory Reform Transaction Data from the Federal Reserve website.

Click here for an internet article with additional links to original sources and media coverage (thanks to Dennis Smith for providing the original article).

Gross Domestic Product is the basic measure of economic output. The government released 2009 GDP data for US states recently, so it’s worth taking a look. Here’s a map of percent change in total real GDP from 2000 to 2009, with increases in blue, decreases in red:

As you can see, Michigan actually experienced a decline in its total real output over the last decade. Given the restructuring of the auto industry, that’s not surprising.

Here’s another view, this one a similar percent change view of real per capita GDP:

Here you can see that Michigan is not alone. Some of the fast growing Sun Belt states added people at a faster rate than they grew economic output. Georgia in particular is worth noting, because even metro Atlanta has been showing declining real per capita GDP. In fact, Georgia actually declined by more than Michigan did on this metric, so obviously all is not well down there. Texas, despite its vaunted jobs engine, is expanding almost totally horizontally. It is 9th lowest in the US on real per capita GDP growth, with a nearly flat 2% performance over the last decade.

North Dakota is also interesting. They are leading the charts, I presume driven by energy and high tech. (Thanks to Great Plains software, I believe Fargo is now Microsoft’s biggest software development center in the US outside Redmond).

This post originally appeared at The Ubanophile.

In the old days a "blurb" was a positive promotional recommendation statement on a book jacket. I have done a few myself. Now we are informed by the developer of Civita, an urban infill project in San Diego, that "blurb" really means a cross between suburban and urban.

Are they going to put a picture of it on a book jacket?

As for villages, I live in one myself. Fine and dandy, Very nice to have shops, bars, and restaurants you can walk to. But most people are not going to want to be limited to the retail and recreational opportunities of their "village," nor even to those one can reach by good public transport from said "village." Most particularly, most people are not going to be able to be limited to the job opportunities reachable on foot or by public transit from one's "village."

Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle has released an independent analysis of the proposed Honolulu rail program to the public and to elected officials. The report was commissioned by the state Department of Transportation. Infrastructure Management Group, CBRE Richard Ellis and Thomas A Rubin performed the equivalent of a "due diligence" report on the project, and according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, indicated that the project would rise in cost by $1.7 billion to $7.0 billion for the 20 mile long line.

In addition, the consultants indicated that operating subsidies could be substantially higher than forecast, and that the city of Honolulu could become saddled with heavy debt by the project. Further, the consultants noted the likelihood that ridership projections might not be met.

Post-rail transit system usage and fare revenue are likely to be substantially lower than that projected in the current Financial Plan, since the Plan’s projection would require an unprecedented and unrealistic growth in transit utilization for a city that already has one of the highest transit utilization rates in the country.

The findings of cost escalation and over-projection of ridership have been noted as a fairly routine occurrence in international infrastructure research.

-----

Note: Honolulu rail project planning documents indicated greenhouse gas emission reductions as a benefit of the project. Demographia published an analysis indicating that the impact on greenhouse gas emissions either a marginal increase or a marginal decrease depending upon performance. It was projected that any reduction would have been at costs per ton many times above international standards.