NewGeography.com blogs

The Windy Citizen pointed me at coverage of metro area job losses in the recession. Here is how the 12 cities I principally cover in this blog stacked up, sorted in descending order of percentage losses:

1. Detroit; 139,600 jobs; -7.5%
2. Milwaukee; 44,800; -5.2%
3. Cleveland; 54,100; -5.1%
4. Chicago; 206,200; -4.5%
5. Indianapolis; 40,200; -4.4%
6. Cincinnati; 42,200; -4.0%
7. Louisville; 22,900; -3.7%
8. Minneapolis-St. Paul; 63,100; -3.5%
9. St. Louis; 43,900; -3.3%
10. Pittsburgh; 32,800 - 2.8%
    
11. Kansas City; 21,900; -2.1%
12. Columbus, Ohio; 19,600; -2.1%
    

A couple things that jump out of me from this are that Chicago and Indianapolis are doing far worse than conventional wisdom views of their overall economic health. Both regions are getting clobbered. The Pittsburgh story gets some additional ammunition, as does my view that Columbus is the next Midwestern star.

Recession Job Recovery

So when will the jobs come back? Nobody knows for sure, but an organization called IHS Global Insight has predicted the year in which employment will match its pre-recession peak in various major US cities (via IBJ News Talk):

• Kansas City: 2011
• Columbus: 2012
  
• Indianapolis: 2012
  
• Louisville: 2013
• Minneapolis-St. Paul: 2013
• Pittsburgh: 2013
  
• Chicago: 2014
• Cincinnati: 2014
• St. Louis: 2014
  
• Cleveland: After 2015
  
• Detroit: After 2015
• Milwaukee: After 2015
  

Visit Aaron's blog at The Urbanophile.

Soon after President Obama took office, a proposed plan to “develop federal policies to induce states and local communities to embrace ‘smart growth’ land use strategies” was announced.

This “Livable Communities Program” is intended to save land and clean up the environment. It is seen as encouraging denser housing arrangements to deter automobile use and accommodate the transit industry, according to goals set by the Secretaries of HUD, EPA and Transportation.

One potential downside to this plan comes from the transit industry’s Moving Cooler study, which argues that the Administration’s greenhouse gas reduction proposals “may result in higher housing prices, and some people might need to live in smaller homes or smaller lots than they would prefer.”

If you want to see how this might work, look at the U.K., which imposed strict land regulations in the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947. This effectively froze the supply of land for a growing population, leading to soaring house prices, particularly in the area around London.

With the land available for development frozen, house size decreased as well, leading to new British homes garnering the nickname of “Hobbit houses.” New British homes are a little more than a third as big as new U.S. homes (818 sq. feet compared the U.S.’s 2,303 sq. feet).

The question is whether or not the Federal government should be granted the ability to limit housing standards. Currently, this responsibility lands in the lap of state and local governments.

Can President Obama afford to add the President of the (Hobbit) Homeowner’s Association of the United States to his title?

The current economic recession has tarnished the Golden State’s employment opportunities in a major way.

A report released on Sunday by the California Budget Project says that two of five working-age Californians do not have a job.

The level of unemployment has not been this high since February 1977. In fact, the study found that “California now has the same amount of jobs as it did nine years ago.” The only difference? In 2000, the state was home to 3.3 million fewer working age people than today.

The nation is not faring much better, as the U.S. Labor Department reported last Friday that the nation’s jobless rate had climbed to 9.7 percent, the highest since 1983. California’s unemployment stands at over 11 percent.

Mark Hovind over at Jobbait.com released his monthly job market report, and this month he's expanded it significantly with sector-level data by state and metropolitan area.

Mark offers the numbers in an easily digestible format organized by state in color coded tables. It's a great way to get a feel for what's happening in your region or nationally.

Mark hopes this will help identify sectors with job prospects, even in regions where overall employment is declining.

Looking at total job growth, North Dakota is still the only state showing year-over-year employment growth, followed by Washington, DC.

Fastest declining states by growth rate are Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Oregon.

Fastest declining states by sheer numbers are California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Texas.

See Jobbait.com for the full report.

Dwell Magazine and inhabitat.com have combined forces to sponsor the first ever “Reburbia Design Competition,” a design competition dedicated to re-envisioning the suburbs.

Citing the current housing crisis, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and rising energy cost, as well as limited natural resources available to increased exurban growth, the two companies have called upon “future-forward architects” and “renegade planners” to reinvent the suburbs.

Finalists range from a “suburban airship” that facilitates eco-friendly and efficient transportation between the suburbs and the city center to mansions turned into wetlands and natural water filtration systems to freeway wind turbines. All intriguing ideas for the suburban future.

However, Sean Paige, of The American Contrarian, takes issue with the contest’s “darker side.”

“Strolling the streets of Reburbia isn't just an imaginative adventure. It also offers a revealing glimpse into the mind of the modern eco-Utopian, which melds dark apocalyptic forebodings with naive flights of fancy,” writes Paige.

He feels the contest might propel green zealots to use “levers of power” and the “force of government” to impose an “environmentally- and socially-correct vision of suburbia.”

How might this happen? Paige argues “that opportunity is there, thanks to the power granted government planners through the mania for "smart growth," new urbanism and other social engineering fads, combined with the totalitarian tendencies of those trying to "save the planet" from climate change.”

This is, of course, may be an exaggerated view. No doubt, the Gristers may say this contest would serve merely as a catalyst for developing more probable, and immediate, eco-friendly ideas but a sense of balance would not be inappropriate.