Charlotte

Rust Belt Cities: Invest in Odysseus, Not Barney Fife

Richey Piiparinen — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 00:38:31 -0500

Given its legacy of shrinking, the Rust Belt has issues. The issues arose naturally, and relate to the fact things leave, or that so much has left. Particularly, when things leave, the mind—both the individual and the collective city mind—can get protective and restrictive. Neediness arises. The smell of desperation ensues like a pall that can tend to hang over cities, influencing decision making on all levels.

Enter “brain drain”, or that term coined to refer to the outmigration of an area’s educated citizens, particularly it’s young. You know the drill: Johnny goes to State college, comes back home for a spell, but then leaves Cleveland, Ohio for Chicago or New York. That is brain drain. And city leaders hate it, spending billions of dollars to stop it—often at the cost of coming off ridiculous, lame.

For instance, in Pittsburgh, there was a civic booster campaign thought up to keep educated folks from going. It was called “Boarder Guard Bob”. According to researcher Chris Briem, “Bob” was a Smokey-the-Bear-type of public service announcement made into a Barney Fife character, with the billboard-size messaging of “Bob” intended to “stop young people at Western Pennsylvania’s borders before they had a chance to leave for other cities”. And while this particular retention strategy (luckily) never went to print, various “plug the brain drain” strategies persist in one form or another at exorbitant cost to taxpayers.

But beyond the near-pitiful messaging, there are major problems with the brain drain approach, especially from an economic development perspective. For example, when, as a community, you are intentionally telling your citizen’s not to go, you are asking them to sacrifice personal development for the benefit of a place. To this point, my colleague, Jim Russell—a leading thinker in brain drain boondoggles and blogger at Burgh Diaspora—says it best, stating: “Discouraging geographic mobility is the same as restricting access to higher education”. In other words, it’s like telling Johnny to stick with his high school diploma so as to forego leaving the community for a 4-year degree.

What’s more, getting people to stay put does little to grow a local economy. In fact it hurts it. Because leaving home is often a rite of passage. It develops a person. I mean, can you imagine if there was no odyssey in the epic Odyssey? If so, Odysseus wouldn’t be the changed man with perspective and experience as he was when he returned back to his homeland, and so there’d be no “there” there. In this sense, the Rust Belt needs to engage their young to embark on their own “Hero Journey” if only to gain skills and broaden geographic connections. This is international economics 101 (see China, India, Brazil, etc.). It should be a domestic economic priority for the Rust Belt, and it would be if only the Cleveland’s of the world could let go of the protectionism that defines their longstanding existential fears of shrinking into one big pile of ruin porn.

Of course confidently encouraging outmigration is part and parcel with an understanding that many expats will “boomerang” back. But many are, and at a faster rate. To wit: as the alpha cities of the America like NYC get too expensive or creatively-class cute, many Rust Belt refugees are pivoting back from a certain left-wanting lifestyle if only for the opportunity, tradition, and honest-to-god reality that is “Rust Belt Chic”. And when they do, they often become “economic ass kickers”, which is term Russell uses to exemplify the fruits of the Hero Journey that is not only individually experienced, but felt in the local economy as well.

Take Sean Watterson, the co-proprietor of the wildly successful restaurant the Happy Dog on Cleveland’s Near West Side. He moved back from D.C. because, according to a recent Plain Dealer article, “Cleveland-ness is like Polish-ness or Irish-ness. It’s an ethnicity”. Here, Watterson not only runs a great hot dog business, but uses his establishment to advance a circulation of ideas by hosting a variety of events like “Life, the Universe, and Hot Dogs”, which is a series hosted by researchers from the Institute for the Society of Origins. Another big hit is the live performances by members of the Cleveland Orchestra called Classical Revolutions.

Cool sounding events, sure. But there is more to it than that, as such happenings spark cross-fertilization between parts of Cleveland—the blue collar West Side and the intelligentsia of the East Side—that have long been divided, often at the cost of Cleveland as a place of cultural and economic innovation. And how exactly does Watterson’s own “Hero Journey” come into play in his self-stated goal to break down barriers “between east and west and between high culture and low culture”? It likely relates to the fact he experienced experience outside of a legacy city bubble that enabled him to see and cross bridges that others have difficulty envisioning.

Now, does this mean that cities simply need to let people leave to prosper? Obviously not. If the place expats are boomeranging back to is stagnant and disparate, with openness and connection disabled by a collective insular mentality that: “that’s just the way things are done around here”, well, the boomeranging effect won’t hold. And the economic ass-kickers won’t ass-kick.

The goal, then, of cities should be on fostering return migrant connections, or to know who they are, why they are there, and to help get them together so that their collective unchained perspective can pop bubbles of inert status quo. This need is real. For instance, take this first-hand return migrant account published in Rust Belt Chic by Dana Marie Textoris:

Funny how your location-based identity, your physical and mental place in the world, can flip like a switch: Before I was a Clevelander managing to make it in San Francisco….right now I feel a lot like a San Franciscan stuck in Cleveland. In either place, I felt just a little bit Other. A bit of a novelty. Just a tad on the outside looking in. Where does that leave me? Where is home? As I type this, I realize, with sort of an internal groan, that the place I’m left in, the guide to what I’m searching for, is probably just right here, inside me, where my two lives — West Coast and Midwest — are now combined. I’m not really a true Clevelander anymore…I’ve picked up way too much San Francisco for that. The balance I’ve become, a little of this and that, is just what I’m hoping I’ll find, one day.

So, to all Rust Belt cities—this is where your attention must be turned: not on the ones who are leaving for good reason, but on those returning who have not left for good. They have brought the path of their self-discovery back to your doorstep.

Don’t close the door by screaming at the backs of others.

Richey Piiparinen is a writer and policy researcher based in Cleveland. He is co-editor of Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology. Read more from him at his blog and at Rust Belt Chic.

The Shifting Geography of Black America

Aaron M. Renn — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 20:38:32 -0400

Black population changes in various cities have been one of the few pieces of the latest Census to receive significant media coverage. The New York Times, for example, noted that many blacks have returned to the South nationally and particularly from New York City. The overall narrative has been one of a “reverse Great Migration.” But while many northern cities did see anemic growth or even losses in black population, and many southern cities saw their black population surge, the real story actually extends well beyond the notion of a monolithic return to the South.

The map below, showing total growth in Black Only population from 2000 to 2010, indeed shows that northern and west coast cities had low or even negative growth while various southern cities boomed.

Here is a list of the top ten metro areas (among those with more than a million total people) for black population growth:

And here are the bottom ten (among those with more than one million people):

Of course, looking at total population numbers can mislead. Some cities grew slowly or lost people as a whole while others boomed. With Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta all adding over a million people each, it's no surprise these regions added lots of blacks. Working and middle class African-Americans likely shared many of the same motivations to move to these cities – such as lower housing prices – as Americans of other ethnicities. In that light, a look at change in black population share (the percentage of the population that is black) provides additional perspective:

Here we see not a single-minded return to the South, but a complex mixture of shrinking and growing regions in various parts of the country. This includes some surprising places, like Minneapolis-St. Paul, which was one of the top ten metros in the country for total black population growth, and also saw its black population share grow strongly. Now the Twin Cities, along with Columbus, Ohio, another strong performer, are two of the top destination for African immigrants from Somalia and elsewhere, which doubtless accounts for part of that strong growth. But anecdotal reports indicate that they are also benefitting from Chicago's expanding black diaspora, along with places like Indianapolis and various Downstate metros.

Atlanta, well known as America's premier metro area for blacks, continued to dominate the charts. Not only far and away the leader in adding raw numbers of blacks, the African-American share also grew share strongly too. Charlotte is also clearly emerging as another key black population hub, ranking #6 in America for total black population growth, which is impressive for a smaller city, and adding nearly two percentage points in black population share. It grew its black population much faster than other fast growing small cities like Raleigh or Nashville, and added share at more than three times as fast.

By contrast, Houston, which grew total black population significantly, had a much lower share gain. Austin, one of America's fastest growing metros, added only 28,000 blacks and actually lost black population share. And Washington, DC, despite being a traditional black population and cultural hub, also lost black population share regionally as gentrification in the District resulted in its loss of its black majority for the first time in decades, according to the Brookings Institution.

So even among rapidly growing metro areas in the South, the appeal to black population is selective, favoring places like Atlanta, Charlotte, Florida cities, and even slower growing cities along the length of the Mississippi River like Memphis. Even some cities in the North are retaining their allure to blacks as well. Less favored or even out of favor are metros like DC, Dallas, and Houston as well as cities such as Charleston and Savannah along the southeast coast.

Slow or negative black population growth is particularly concentrated in traditional tier one “global cities”, as well as those facing economic or other hardship like Detroit, Cleveland, and immediate post-Katrina New Orleans.

The latter may be understandable – whites have been leaving these regions as well – but the former is quite troubling. The global city model, focused on high end and creative services, is supposedly the bright and shining savior of American urbanism. Indeed, it's hard to find a city that doesn't have some aspect of that as a core plank in its civic strategy. Yet the cities that have been most focused at promoting this notion – such as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago – are generally those disproportionately driving blacks away. The reasons for this aren't clear, but the high and increasing cost of living in those places seems like one logical explanation.

Here's a more detailed look at the percentage growth in Black Only population in some tier one global type metros:

New York barely broke even on black population, while Chicago, LA, and the Bay Area all actually lost black residents, a stunning reversal from their past as black magnets. However, Boston, not a traditional black population hub, grew its black population strongly on a percentage basis, as did Miami and DC, though as noted before, the share change in DC was negative. Here is that metric for the same metros:

With the notable exceptions of Boston and Miami – and Philadelphia, seldom ranked highly as a global city but still a traditional large northern metropolis – most global city regions appear to be increasingly inhospitable to Blacks. Thus their model of success, whatever its appeal to some, at a basic level simply lacks inclusiveness. This shows its clear limits as an overall model for America’s urban centers as a whole.

Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile. Data analysis, maps, and charts in this piece were prepared with Telestrian.

The Next Boom Towns In The U.S.

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:20:24 -0400

What cities are best positioned to grow and prosper in the coming decade?

To determine the next boom towns in the U.S., with the help of Mark Schill at the Praxis Strategy Group, we took the 52 largest metro areas in the country (those with populations exceeding 1 million) and ranked them based on various data indicating past, present and future vitality.

We started with job growth, not only looking at performance over the past decade but also focusing on growth in the past two years, to account for the possible long-term effects of the Great Recession. That accounted for roughly one-third of the score. The other two-thirds were made up of a a broad range of demographic factors, all weighted equally. These included rates of family formation (percentage growth in children 5-17), growth in educated migration, population growth and, finally, a broad measurement of attractiveness to immigrants — as places to settle, make money and start businesses.

We focused on these demographic factors because college-educated migrants (who also tend to be under 30), new families and immigrants will be critical in shaping the future. Areas that are rapidly losing young families and low rates of migration among educated migrants are the American equivalents of rapidly aging countries like Japan; those with more sprightly demographics are akin to up and coming countries such as Vietnam.

Many of our top performers are not surprising. No. 1 Austin, Texas, and No. 2 Raleigh, N.C., have it all demographically: high rates of immigration and migration of educated workers and healthy increases in population and number of children. They are also economic superstars, with job-creation records among the best in the nation.

Perhaps less expected is the No. 3 ranking for Nashville, Tenn. The country music capital, with its low housing prices and pro-business environment, has experienced rapid growth in educated migrants, where it ranks an impressive fourth in terms of percentage growth. New ethnic groups, such as Latinos and Asians, have doubled in size over the past decade.

Two advantages Nashville and other rising Southern cities like No. 8 Charlotte, N.C., possess are a mild climate and smaller scale. Even with population growth, they do not suffer the persistent transportation bottlenecks that strangle the older growth hubs. At the same time, these cities are building the infrastructure — roads, cultural institutions and airports — critical to future growth. Charlotte’s bustling airport may never be as big as Atlanta’s Hartsfield, but it serves both major national and international routes.

Of course, Texas metropolitan areas feature prominently on our list of future boom towns, including No. 4 San Antonio, No. 5 Houston and No. 7 Dallas, which over the past years boasted the biggest jump in new jobs, over 83,000. Aided by relatively low housing prices and buoyant economies, these Lone Star cities have become major hubs for jobs and families.

And there’s more growth to come. With its strategically located airport, Dallas is emerging as the ideal place for corporate relocations. And Houston, with its burgeoning port and dominance of the world energy business, seems destined to become ever more influential in the coming decade. Both cities have emerged as major immigrant hubs, attracting on newcomers at a rate far higher than old immigrant hubs like Chicago, Boston and Seattle.

The three other regions in our top 10 represent radically different kinds of places. The Washington, D.C., area (No. 6) sprawls from the District of Columbia through parts of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia. Its great competitive advantage lies in proximity to the federal government, which has helped it enjoy an almost shockingly ”good recession,” with continuing job growth, including in high-wage science- and technology-related fields, and an improving real estate market.

Our other two top ten, No. 9 Phoenix, Ariz., and No. 10 Orlando, Fla., have not done well in the recession, but both still have more jobs now than in 2000. Their demographics remain surprisingly robust. Despite some anti-immigrant agitation by local politicians, immigrants still seem to be flocking to both of these states. Known better s as retirement havens, their ranks of children and families have surged over the past decade. Warm weather, pro-business environments and, most critically, a large supply of affordable housing should allow these regions to grow, if not in the overheated fashion of the past, at rates both steadier and more sustainable.

Sadly, several of the nation’s premier economic regions sit toward the bottom of the list, notably former boom town Los Angeles (No. 47). Los Angeles’ once huge and vibrant industrial sector has shrunk rapidly, in large part the consequence of ever-tightening regulatory burdens. Its once magnetic appeal to educated migrants faded and families are fleeing from persistently high housing prices, poor educational choices and weak employment opportunities. Los Angeles lost over 180,000 children 5 to 17, the largest such drop in the nation.

Many of L.A.’s traditional rivals — such as Chicago (with which is tied at No. 47), New York City (No. 35) and San Francisco (No. 42) — also did poorly on our prospective list. To be sure, they will continue to reap the benefits of existing resources — financial institutions, universities and the presence of leading companies — but their future prospects will be limited by their generally sluggish job creation and aging demographics.

Of course, even the most exhaustive research cannot fully predict the future. A significant downsizing of the federal government, for example, would slow the D.C. region’s growth. A big fall in energy prices, or tough restrictions of carbon emissions, could hit the Texas cities, particularly Houston, hard. If housing prices stabilize in the Northeast or West Coast, less people will flock to places like Phoenix, Orlando or even Indianapolis (No.11) , Salt Lake City (No. 12) and Columbus (No. 13). One or more of our now lower ranked locales, like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, might also decide to reform in order to become more attractive to small businesses and middle class families.

What is clear is that well-established patterns of job creation and vital demographics will drive future regional growth, not only in the next year, but over the coming decade. People create economies and they tend to vote with their feet when they choose to locate their families as well as their businesses. This will prove more decisive in shaping future growth than the hip imagery and big city-oriented PR flackery that dominate media coverage of America’s changing regions.

Cities of the Future Rankings
Rank	Metropolitan Area
1	Austin, TX
2	Raleigh, NC
3	Nashville, TN
4	San Antonio, TX
5	Houston, TX
6	Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV
7	Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
8	Charlotte, NC-SC
8	Phoenix, AZ
10	Orlando, FL
11	Indianapolis, IN
12	Salt Lake City, UT
13	Columbus, OH
14	Jacksonville, FL
15	Atlanta, GA
16	Las Vegas, NV
16	Riverside, CA
18	Portland, OR-WA
19	Denver, CO
20	Oklahoma City, OK
21	Baltimore, MD
22	Louisville, KY-IN
22	Richmond, VA
24	Seattle, WA
25	Kansas City, MO-KS
26	San Diego, CA
27	Miami, FL
28	Tampa, FL
29	Sacramento, CA
30	Birmingham, AL
31	New Orleans, LA
32	Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD
33	Minneapolis, MN-WI
34	St. Louis, MO-IL
35	Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN
35	New York, NY-NJ-PA
37	Boston, MA-NH
38	Memphis, TN-MS-AR
39	Pittsburgh, PA
40	Virginia Beach, VA-NC
41	Rochester, NY
42	Buffalo, NY
42	San Francisco, CA
44	Hartford, CT
45	Milwaukee, WI
45	San Jose, CA
47	Chicago, IL-IN-WI
47	Los Angeles, CA
49	Providence, RI-MA
50	Detroit, MI
51	Cleveland, OH

This piece originally appeared at Forbes.com.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and an adjunct fellow of the Legatum Institute in London. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.

Photo by Exothermic Photography

Drones on the Prairie

Marcel LaFlamme — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 06:38:33 -0400

When the Base Realignment and Closure Commission was drawing up its list of military installations to close back in 2005, consultants assured the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota, that its Air Force base would be spared. Days before the list was made public, though, word leaked out that Grand Forks was on the chopping block, after all.

North Dakota’s Congressional delegation swung into action and managed to win the base a reprieve; its KC-135 Stratotankers would be reassigned, but they would be replaced by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Earlier this month, in a ceremony that drew local dignitaries, industry executives, and military brass, Grand Forks Air Force Base marked the arrival of its first Global Hawk aircraft.

Gunmetal gray, with long, white wings stretching out from the fuselage, the Global Hawk can stay aloft for 30 hours at a time, transmitting sensor data back to operators on the ground. The plane, manufactured by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, has become a staple of the Air Force’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Eleven Global Hawks will eventually be stationed at Grand Forks, along with 450 additional base personnel.

“The base is our second largest economic engine,” said Eric Icard, senior business development officer at the Grand Forks Region Economic Development Corporation. “To have a new mission with a new technology solidifies the Air Force’s commitment to the Grand Forks region.”

Sgt. Joseph Kapinos couched the plane’s arrival in more personal terms: “I think people are excited, because they feel like we have a mission again.”

Col. Don Shaffer, Commander of the 319th Air Base Wing at Grand Forks Air Force Base, told a crowd of dignitaries that the arrival of the Global Hawk marked a transition for the base to a "global vigilance mission." Photo by Marcel LaFlamme

The ceremony came on the eve of the fifth Unmanned Aircraft Systems Action Summit in Grand Forks, which was sponsored by the Red River Valley Research Corridor. With military procurement of unmanned aircraft projected to double over the next decade, North Dakota has worked to position itself as one of the nation’s hubs for UAV research and training. Last month, the University of North Dakota (UND) awarded degrees to the first five graduates of its unmanned aircraft operations program. At the Summit, Northrop Grumman presented Minnesota’s Northland Community and Technical College with a full-scale model of a Global Hawk for use in its UAV maintenance and repair shop.

It’s too soon to say whether the Upper Great Plains will emerge as a new powerhouse of the military-industrial complex, a new buckle on what regional planners have dubbed the Gunbelt. Participants at the Summit said that the real economic boom would come as UAV technologies begin to find commercial applications. One major impediment is the ban on flying UAVs in the National Airspace System; North Dakota Congressman Rick Berg has pushed for the creation of test sites where UAVs could fly (and it’s no secret that North Dakota is angling to be one of them), but the FAA reauthorization bill that would make that possible is currently mired in conference committee.

North Dakota has been riding a wave of media adoration as of late, buoyed by low unemployment numbers and a massive oil strike. But 42 of its 53 counties still posted population losses in the 2010 Census.

How, the question remains, do rural communities stand to benefit from the burgeoning UAV industry? Are all of these "knowledge economy" jobs bound to spring up in Grand Forks
and Fargo, even as the state’s struggling farm communities continue to wither away?

Not if Carol Goodman has anything to say about it. Goodman heads the Job Development Authority in Cavalier County, up by the Canadian border; the county lost 17% of its population between 2000 and 2010, dipping below 4,000 people for the first time in over a century. She’s working to redevelop an abandoned missile base from the Cold War era as a UAV testing site, which could create as many as 670 jobs in the county.

“Tell them to send some of those UAVs over here,” said Bob Wilhelmi, owner of the lone bar in the wind-blown town of Nekoma. A man from neighboring Walsh County said that, the year after next, his school district will not have a single child enrolled in kindergarten.

The Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex: once an antiballistic missile site with its eyes on Moscow, now a potential test bed for unmanned aircraft. Photo by Marcel LaFlamme

The unmanned aircraft industry in North Dakota is a sort of test case for what happens when a traditionally agrarian state decides to pursue high-tech growth. It’s still not clear whether the state will succeed. But to watch those airmen jostle for a picture with their base’s newest piece of hardware, or to hear a recent UND graduate pitch the start-up company that will keep him in Grand Forks, or even to look up for a while at the clear, empty Dakota sky, you start to think that the state’s drone charmers may just have a shot.

This piece originally appeared at Daily Yonder.

Marcel LaFlamme is a graduate student of the Department of Anthropology at Rice University in Houston.

Lead photo: Official U.S. Air Force

Listing the Best Places Lists: Perception Versus Reality

Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:50:00 -0400

Often best places lists reflect as much on what’s being measured, and who is being measured as on the inherent advantages of any locale. Some cities that have grown rapidly in jobs, for example, often do not do as well if the indicator has more to do with perceived “quality” of employment.

Take places like Denver and Seattle. Both do well on what may be considered high-tech measurements – bandwidth, educated migration, entrepreneurial start ups – but have trailed other places in terms of creating jobs. Others, such as Oklahoma City and Raleigh, do better in terms of overall job creation and cost competitiveness.

There are effectively few truly objective criteria, and the Area Development list does tend to weigh a bit heavy on the factors that help more expensive – although not necessarily the most costly – cities. If cost of doing business, or regulatory environments were given more weight, some of the high fliers would not do as well.

We prefer to focus less on atmospherics and more on how people, and businesses, are voting for their feet. San Francisco and New York have generally had slower job growth and greater outmigration, but do well on lists that focus on perceived qualitative factors.

But then there is Austin. Here is one region that has it all, the low costs and favorable regulatory climate of Texas along with the amenities associated with a high-tech region. The area creates a large number of jobs of varying types and is still inexpensive enough to attract young, upwardly mobile families. This gives it a critical advantage over places like Silicon Valley, Los Angeles or New York. Unlike those three centers, Austin performs extraordinarily well in quantitative measurements.

The region that most closely matches Austin in these respects is not Seattle and Denver, but Raleigh Durham. Recently a group of leaders from Raleigh made a visit to Denver to learn what makes that city successful. Speaking to the group, we pointed out that by objective measurement – job growth, educated migration, population growth – Raleigh beat Denver by a long shot, yet it was to Denver the group was looking for inspiration. In fact, over the past three years, Americans have moved to Raleigh at a rate more than three times that of Denver. Perception can be a funny thing which makes a winner feel inferior to a clear runner-up.

Another strange result is that New York and Houston had the same number of mentions. Yet looking at numbers --- from educated migration, job growth, population increase --- Houston slaughters New York. People, from the college educated on down are flocking to Houston while fleeing, in rather large numbers, from New York. One has to wonder where the rankers live and where they are coming from. Houston triumphs on performance, while New York, to a large extent, wins on perception.

Looking simply at job growth over the past ten years for the Leading Locations mentioned on at least five surveys, the 14 regions separate themselves into three groups. The top tier of places – Austin, Raleigh, San Antonio, and Houston – all have seen job growth of more than 12% and seem to be recovering from the recession faster than the others.

Salt Lake City and Charlotte were tracking with the top tier of places until 2007 but have since fallen to the second tier of cities. The remainder of the second tier includes steady growers Dallas and Lincoln, along with Oklahoma City, a region that has seen a boom in jobs since bottoming out in 2003.

The final job growth tier of places includes five regions that have fewer jobs than ten years ago. Seattle drops just below the zero line after being hit particularly hard by the 2001 and 2008 recessions, while New York and Denver finish near the national rate. Pittsburgh and Boston spent most of the decade below their 2000 employment levels, but each seem to be recovering from the recession faster than many of the other Leading Locations cities.

But perhaps the biggest problem with lists has to do with the size of regions. Much of the fastest growth in America, particularly in terms of jobs, has been in small metros, many with fewer than 1 million or 500,000 residents. Smaller dynamic areas such as Anchorage, Alaska; Bismarck, North Dakota; Dubuque, Iowa; or Elizabethtown, Kentucky – all in the top 25 of NewGeography’s Best Cities for Job Growth 2011 Rankings – are too small to show up on some lists yet may be a location of choice for expansion. This reflects not so much their relative desirability but the fact that, unlike larger regions, they simply are not included on many rankings.

Ultimately, a list of lists does tell us much, but perhaps only so much for a specific individual or business. For someone interested in the movie business, for example, Los Angeles – and increasingly places like New Orleans or Albuquerque – are great draws, but perhaps not so much for financial services. The lists of lists are useful to identify hotspots, but for most location decisions, it may be more imperative to drill down to more detailed industry sectors and workforce attributes. And most of all, take the perception factor into account and look instead at the real numbers to tell you where to go.

This piece first appeared at AreaDevelopment.com, as part of its Leading Locations series discussing best cities rankings.

Joel Kotkin is a Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in California, an adjunct fellow with the London-based Legatum Institute, and the author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. Mark Schill is Vice President of Research at Praxis Strategy Group, an economic research and community strategy firm. Both are editors at NewGeography.com, a provider of two surveys for Area Development’s Leading Locations list.

Photo by mclcbooks

America's Biggest Brain Magnets

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:28:59 -0500

For a decade now U.S. city planners have obsessively pursued college graduates, adopting policies to make their cities more like dense hot spots such as New York, to which the "brains" allegedly flock.

But in the past 10 years "hip and cool" places like New York have suffered high levels of domestic outmigration. Some boosters rationalize this by saying the U.S. is undergoing a "bipolar migration"--an argument recently laid out by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. On the one hand the smart "brains" head for cool, coastal cities like New York and Boston, while "families" and "feet"--a term that seems to apply to the less cognitively gifted--trudge to the the nation's southern tier--a.k.a. the Sun Belt--for cheap prices and warm weather. "College graduates with bachelor's degrees or higher," Thompson notes, "have been moving to the coasts, like salmon swimming against the southwesterly current."

However, this analysis--no matter how widely accepted in the media--is grossly oversimplified, perhaps even misleading. Indeed, college graduates, for the most part, are heading not to the big cities on the coasts, but to smaller, less dense and quite often Sun Belt cities.

To come up with our list of the country's biggest brain magnets, we took the 52 largest metropolitan areas (all those over 1 million population) and ranked them by gains in people with college educations compared to the population over 25 years of age between 2007 and 2009, using the latest data from the American Community Survey provided by demographer Wendell Cox. It turns out that none of the top 10 gainers were large Northeastern cities, but largely Southern or Midwestern. New Orleans; Raleigh, N.C.; Austin, Texas; Nashville; Birmingham, Ala.; Kansas City, Mo.-Kan.; and Columbus, Ohio, all scored high marks. Only one California city, San Diego, made the top 10. Perennial "brain gainers" Denver, Colo., and Seattle round out the top 10.

Among those metropolitan statistical areas with populations over 5 million, the best ranking went to the Philadelphia region (No. 12 overall), arguably the least glitzy and most affordable of the large northeast cities. The San Francisco metropolitan area, long a leader in its percentage of college-educated adults, held the next spot at No. 13. On the other hand, supposed "brain" magnets Boston and Chicago managed middling rankings, right behind Charlotte, N.C., and just ahead of San Antonio, Texas. Both fell well behind such overlooked "brain gain" areas as Jacksonville, Fla.; St. Louis, Mo.-Ill.; and Indianapolis. New York, the nation's intellectual capital, ranked a mediocre 29th and Los Angeles an even worse 37th. To put in perspective, Nashville's rate of college educated migration growth was 3.7%, compared with 1.4% for New York and a measly 0.7% for Los Angeles.

Rather than following a clear path to the world of the "hip and cool," college graduates appear influenced by a more nuanced and complex series of factors in terms of their location. New Orleans' No. 1 ranking, for example, is likely product of the continuing recovery of its shrunken population, where the central city appears to be somewhat more attractive to professionals than before Katrina while the suburban populations have recovered more quickly from the disaster. The strong showing of Birmingham may likely be traced not to changes in the core city itself, but to the rapid growth in its surrounding suburban counties and the rapid expansion of the region's medical complex.

This reflects something not often mentioned: the spreading out of intelligence. Conventional theory suggests that the new generation of college graduates will go to the largest, densest places, eschewing, as The Wall Street Journal put it snidely, their parent's McMansions for small abodes in the inner city. Yet the ACS numbers indicate that, overall, college migrants tend to choose less dense places. In the two years we covered, the growth rate in urban areas with lower urban area densities (2,500 per square mile) boasted a 5% increase in college-educated residents, compared with roughly 3.5% for areas twice as dense.

This can be seen in the pattern of migration toward relatively low-density metropolitan areas like Nashville, Columbus, Raleigh or Kansas City as opposed to more packed regions like New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. And wherever these college graduates migrate, they are at least as likely to settle outside the urban core. Another overlooked fact: Most places with the highest percentages of college-educated people are in suburbs. Only two of the 20 most-educated counties in the country are located in the urban core: New York (Manhattan) and San Francisco. Virtually all the rest are suburban.

Another somewhat surprising statistic revolves around affordability and job growth. The college-educated, particularly in this tepid economy, are not immune to reality. They may want to go one place--for example, ever-alluring New York or sunny Los Angeles--but may soon find they can find neither a good job there nor an affordable place to live in order to stay there. Overall our analysis shows that many end up in places with lower housing prices. Areas with the highest price housing experienced college-educated growth at a rate only 60% of those with more affordable real estate. This is one thing that makes an Austin or Raleigh, even a Columbus or Kansas City, more attractive than a Boston, New York or Los Angeles

Finally we have to consider employment trends. For the most part college graduates, like most folks, preferred cities with lower unemployment and more job growth. Some top gainers, such as Raleigh, Columbus and Kansas City, all boast lower than average unemployment and appear to be recovering from the recession. But this is not always the case: Some relatively poor performers on the job front, like Portland, Ore., and San Diego, have managed to maintain their appeal--for now.

As the economy recovers these patterns are likely to accelerate, although they could also shift a bit as regions gain or lose employment momentum. Meanwhile, the best strategy for attracting graduates lies in creating jobs, as well as in offering both affordable housing and a range of housing options, including both reasonably priced urban and lower-density living. Generally speaking an area that is economically vital as well as physically or culturally appealing will do best. In the next decade advantages will also fall to family-friendly regions, particularly as the current crop of millennial-generation graduates starts entering en masse their family-forming years. These factors, more than hipness or dense urbanity, may well be more influential in determining which regions do best in the ongoing war for talent.

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No. 1: New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, La.

Grad Gain: 36,666

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 5.42%

New Orleans' No. 1 ranking is likely due to former exiles returning after Hurricane Katrina. A recent report from the Census Bureau estimates that area's population in the past decade has shrunk 29%. Recovery in the urban core has remained patchy, but suburban populations have recovered more quickly from the disaster.

No. 2: Raleigh-Cary, N.C.

Grad gain: 28,748

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 4.27%

Even in hard times Raleigh-Durham--the fastest-growing metro area in the country--has repeatedly performed well on Forbes' list of the best cities for jobs. The area is a magnet for technology companies fleeing the more expensive, congested and highly regulated northeast corridor. Affordable housing and short commute times are no doubt highly attractive to millennials seeking to start a family. Indeed, a 2010 Portfolio.com/bizjournals survey ranked the city the third-best for young adults.

No. 3: Austin-Round Rock, Texas

Grad gain: 42,117

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 4.23%

Brains are flocking to Austin for good reason. Forbes ranked it the best large urban area for jobs in 2010. Along with Raleigh-Durham, Austin is emerging as the next Silicon Valley, luring lots of brains who would have previously headed toward the West Coast. Austin owes much both to its public-sector institutions (the state government and the main campus of the University of Texas) and its expanding ranks of private companies--including foreign ones--swarming into the city's surrounding suburban belt. Its vibrant cultural scene certainly helps in attracting college-educated millennials.

No. 4: Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tenn.

Grad gain: 36,975

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 3.68%

A high quality of life, a vibrant cultural and music scene and a diverse population make Nashville a desirable place to live. Low housing costs drive down the cost of living, which is even lower than in other affordable cities like Raleigh, Austin or Indianapolis. Nashville is also home to a growing health care industry: More than 250 health care companies have operations in Nashville, and 56 are headquartered there.

No. 5: Kansas City, Mo./Kan.

Grad gain: 38,398

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.96%

The two-state Kansas City region boasts strong population growth and net in-migration-- and for good reason. The city has one of the lowest costs of living, one of the highest personal-income growth rates and one of the healthiest real estate markets in the country. Short commute times also add to the attractiveness of the city for families. The city is the second-largest rail hub in the U.S. and is actively growing its life science and technology sectors.

No. 6: Birmingham-Hoover, Ala.

Grad gain: 21,111

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.86%

Birmingham's strong showing on this list is likely due to the rapid growth in its surrounding suburban counties. One big development sure to lure brains: the rapid expansion of the University of Alabama's medical center and surrounding private medical industry.

No. 7: San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif.

Grad gain: 51,151

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.71%

The only MSA from the "hip and cool" state of California to make the top 10, despite high levels of out-migration and a relatively poor performance in the job front. For now, at least, the area's beautiful beaches and idyllic weather manage to attract plenty of college graduates, but it will need to get out of its slump in order to retain them.

No. 8: Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, Colo.

Grad gain: 43,853

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.69%

A perennial magnet for college graduates, and one of the "hip and cool" cities to make the top of our list, Denver was one of the darlings of the information age, and its suburbs have long incubated tech companies. Its technology sector is still strong, but higher prices and greater regulation have driven companies to regions like Austin and Raleigh, which are more business-friendly and cheaper.

No. 9: Columbus, Ohio

Grad gain: 29,515

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.6%

While the recession has taken a huge toll on the rest of Ohio, Columbus has been thriving, thanks to being home of the state capital, a booming startup culture and the largest college campus in the country--Ohio State University, a major employer and information center. Forbes named the Columbus metropolitan area--home to 1.8 million residents-- one of America's best housing markets, as well as one of the best places for businesses and careers. The city enjoys below-average unemployment and a strong tech presence that includes Battelle Memorial Institute, which oversees laboratories for several federal agencies.

No. 10: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.

Grad gain: 53,869

Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.39%

Seattle has long been one of the big winners in the brain battle as well. It has some of the country's most important cutting-edge firms--Microsoft, Costco, Amazon, Starbucks--one of the country's best arrays of urban and suburban neighborhoods. Housing is no longer cheap, but remains far less expensive than its main rival, the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Photo by Jeanette Runyon

This piece originally appeared in Forbes.

How Obama Lost Small Business

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:12:10 -0400

Financial reform might irk Wall Street, but the president’s real problem is with small businesses—the engine of any serious recovery. Joel Kotkin on what he could have done differently.

The stock market, with some fits and starts, has surged since he’s taken office. Wall Street grandees and the big banks have enjoyed record profits. He’s pushed through a namby-pamby reform bill—which even it’s authors acknowledge is “not perfect”—that is more a threat to Main Street than the mega-banks. And yet why is Barack Obama losing the business community, even among those who bankrolled his campaign?

Obama’s big problems with business did not start, and are not deepest, among the corporate elite. Instead, the driver here has been what you might call a bottom-up opposition. The business move against Obama started not in the corporate suites, but among smaller businesses. In the media, this opposition has been linked to Tea Parties, led by people who in any case would have opposed any Democratic administration. But the phenomenon is much broader than that.

The one group that has fared badly in the last two years has been the private-sector middle class, particularly the roughly 25 million small firms spread across the country. Their discontent—not that of the loud-mouthed professional right or the spoiled sports on Wall Street—is what should be keeping Obama and the Democrats awake at night.

Small business should be leading us out of the recession. In the last two deep recessions during the early 1980s and the early 1990s, small firms, particularly the mom and pop shops, helped drive the recovery, adding jobs and starting companies. In contrast, this time the formation rate for new firms has been dropping for months—one reason why unemployment remains so high and new hiring remains insipid at best.

Here’s one heat-check. A poll of small businesses by Citibank, released in May, found that over three quarters of respondents described current business conditions as “fair or poor.” More than two in five said their own business conditions had deteriorated over the past year. Only 17 percent said they expect to be hiring over the next year.

It’s not hard to see the reasons for pessimism. Entrepreneurs see bailed-out Wall Street firms and big banks recovering, while getting credit remains very difficult for the little guy. In addition, many small businesses are terrified of new mandates, in energy or health, which makes them reluctant to hire new people. Small banks—not considered “too big to fail”—fear that they will prove far less capable of meeting new regulatory guidelines than their leviathan competitors.

The small business owners I’ve spoken to—like most of the public—generally don’t seem convinced about the effectiveness of the stimulus, even if the administration claims it helped us avert an economic “catastrophe.” Barely one fourth of voters, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, think it helped the economy.

Obama’s troubles with the bigger firms are more recent. Initially, President Obama wowed the big rich, leading The New York Times to dub him “the hedge fund candidate.” By the time he won the election, he enjoyed wide support from the Business Roundtable, the Silicon Valley venture community and other titans.

Initially, big business was happy with Obama’s stimulus plan, and more or less was ready to acquiesce to both his health-care reforms and cap and trade. After all, most large companies generally provide some health coverage to their employees. For Wall Street, cap and trade represents just one more wonderful way to arbitrage their way to more profits.

Of course, some corporate titans will remain loyal to the White House. Take the lucky folks from Spanish- based Abengoa Solar, who are now getting $1.45 billion in federal loan guarantees for an Arizona solar plant that will create under 100 permanent jobs while providing expensive, subsidized energy to perhaps 70,00 homes. If this is stimulus, it’s less jarring than a decaf from Starbucks. Also let’s dismiss those on Wall Street who whine about the administration’s occasionally tough anti-business rhetoric. Wolves should have thicker skins. The Obama administration and Congress have delivered softball financial reform dressed up as major progressive change. They should be grateful, not petulant.

But there’s clearly something more serious than hurt feelings at play here. The pain felt by small businesses is hitting the big boys, too. After three straight bad years, small businesses buy a lot less stock, business services, and equipment. Big companies can hoard their money and sport big profits, but ultimately they have to sell to consumers and small firms. Maybe that’s something that the media moguls—who after all have to sell to the hoi polloi—have been picking up on, too.

This has led some Obama allies, like GE’s Jeffrey Immelt, to grouse that Obama does not like business, and vice versa. “Government and entrepreneurs are not in sync,” he explained to reporters in Europe. So, too, has Ivan Seidenberg, the head of the once Obama-friendly Business Roundtable, who denounced the administration recently for creating “an increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation here in this country.”

Among businesses of all sizes, there is now a pervasive sense that the administration does not understand basic economics. This is not to say they believe Obama’s a closet socialist, as some more unhinged conservatives claim. That would be an insult to socialism. Obama’s real problem is that he’s a product, basically, of the fantastical faculty lounge.

For the most part, university professors do not much value economic growth, since they consider themselves, like government workers, a protected class. Many, particularly in planning and environmental study departments, also embrace the views of the president’s academic science adviser, John Holdren, who suggests Western countries undergo “de-development,” which is the opposite of economic growth.

Of course, such ideas, if taken seriously, have economic consequences. You want to see the future? Come to California, where the regulatory stranglehold is killing our economy. Subsidizing favored interests also is not a winning strategy. There’s simply not enough money to maintain a federal version of Chicago-style baksheesh. The parlous state of Obama’s home state of Illinois—which manages to make even California or New York appear models of prudent management—demonstrates the futility of the subsidize-the-base game.

The worst part is that none of this was necessary. A stimulus plan that helped workers and communities by recreating a WPA for the unemployed youths might have gained wide support on Main Street. Credits for hiring, reductions in payroll taxes or a regulatory holiday for small firms also might have bolstered business confidence. Business people, particularly at the grassroots level, would also like to see a return for the detested TARP in a freer flow of credit for their firms. They are not so much hostile to Obama as puzzled by his inability to address their needs.

But for now, the stimulus is widely seen as a wasted opportunity and proof of Washington’s enduring incompetence. As a result, roughly 80 percent of Americans, according to Pew, say they don’t trust the federal government to do the right thing, which does not bode well for a second round of pump-priming.

This leaves business turning back to the Republicans. Not because most see them as competent or even intelligent; GOP rankings are also at a low ebb. Business owners across the spectrum are forced to embrace the “party of no” because Obama and the Democrats have given them so little to say “yes” to.

This article originally appeared in The Daily Beast.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.

Official White House Photo

Time to Dismantle the American Dream?

Wendell Cox — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:09:23 -0400

For some time, theorists have been suggesting that it is time to redefine the American Dream of home ownership. Households, we are told, should live in smaller houses, in more crowded neighborhoods and more should rent. This thinking has been heightened by the mortgage crisis in some parts of the country, particularly in areas where prices rose most extravagantly in the past decade. And to be sure, many of the irrational attempts – many of them government sponsored – to expand ownership to those not financially prepared to bear the costs need to curbed.

But now the anti-homeowner interests have expanded beyond reigning in dodgy practices and expanded into an argument essentially against the very idea of widespread dispersion of property ownership. Social theorist Richard Florida recently took on this argument, in a Wall Street Journal article entitled "Home Ownership is Overvalued."

In particular, he notes that:

The cities and regions with the lowest levels of homeownership—in the range of 55% to 60% like L.A., N.Y., San Francisco and Boulder—had healthier economies and higher incomes. They also had more highly skilled and professional work forces, more high-tech industry, and according to Gallup surveys, higher levels of happiness and well-being. (Note)

Florida expresses concern that today's economy requires a more mobile work force and is worried that people may be unable to sell their houses to move to where jobs can be found. Those who would reduce home ownership to ensure mobility need lose little sleep.

The Relationship Between Household Incomes and House Prices

It is true, as Florida indicates, that house prices are generally higher where household incomes are higher. But, all things being equal, there are limits to that relationship, as a comparison of median house prices to median house prices (the Median Multiple) indicates. From 1950 to 1970 the Median Multiple averaged three times median household incomes in the nation's largest metropolitan areas. In the 1950, 1960 and 1970 censuses, the most unaffordable major metropolitan areas reached no higher than a multiple of 3.6 (Figure).

This changed, however, in some areas after 1970, spurred by higher Median Multiples occuring in California.

William Fischel of Dartmouth has shown how the implementation of land use controls in California metropolitan areas coincided with the rise of house prices beyond historic national levels. The more restrictive land use regulations rationed land for development, placed substantial fees on new housing, lengthened the time required for project approval and made the approval process more expensive. At the same time, smaller developers and house builders were forced out of the market. All of these factors (generally associated with "smart growth") propelled housing costs higher in California and in the areas that subsequently adopted more restrictive regulations (see summary of economic research).

During the bubble years, house prices rose far more strongly in the more highly regulated metropolitan areas than in those with more traditional land use regulation. Ironically many of the more regulated regions experienced both slower job and income growth compared to more liberally regulated areas, notably in the Midwest, the southeast, and Texas.

Home Ownership and Metropolitan Economies

The major metropolitan areas Florida uses to demonstrate a relationship between higher house prices and "healthier economies" are, in fact, reflective of the opposite. Between August 2001 and August 2008 (chosen as the last month before 911 and the last month before the Lehman Brothers collapse), Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates that in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, the net job creation rate trailed the national average by one percent. The San Francisco area did even worse, trailing the national net job creation rate by 6 percent, and losing jobs faster than Rust Belt Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Milwaukee.

Further, pre-housing bubble Bureau of Economic Analysis data from the 1990s suggests little or no relationship between stronger economies and housing affordability as measured by net job creation. The bottom 10 out of the 50 largest metropolitan areas had slightly less than average home ownership (this bottom 10 included "healthy" New York and Los Angeles). The highest growth 10 had slightly above average home ownership (measured by net job creation). Incidentally, "healthy" San Francisco also experienced below average net job creation, ranking in the fourth 10.

Moreover, housing affordability varied little across the categories of economic growth (Table).

Net Job Creation, Housing Affordability & Home Ownership
Pre-Housing Bubble Decade: Top 50 Metropolitan Areas (2000)

	Net Job Creation: 1990-2000	Housing Affordability: Median Multiple (2000)	Home Ownership: Rate 2000
Lowest Growth 10	7.4%	2.8	62%
Lower Growth 10	14.9%	3.1	63%
Middle 10	22.8%	3.2	64%
Higher Growth 10	30.9%	2.6	61%
Highest Growth 10	46.9%	2.9	63%
Average	24.7%	2.9	62%

Calculated from Bureau of the Census, Bureau of Economic Analysis and Harvard Joint Housing Center data.
Metropolitan areas as defined in 2003
Home ownership from urbanized areas within the metropolitan areas.

Home Ownership and Happiness

If Gallup Polls on happiness were reliable, it would be expected that the metropolitan areas with happier people would be attracting people from elsewhere. In fact, people are fleeing with a vengeance. During this decade alone, approximately one in every 10 residents have left for other areas.

The New York metropolitan area lost nearly 2,000,000 domestic migrants (people who moved out of the metropolitan area to other parts of the nation). This is nearly as many people as live in the city of Paris.
The Los Angeles metropolitan area has lost a net 1.35 million domestic migrants. This is more people than live in the city of Dallas.
The San Francisco metropolitan area lost 350,000 domestic migrants. Overall, the Bay Area (including San Jose) lost 650,000, more people than live in the cities of Portland or Seattle.

Why have all of these happy people left these "healthy economies?" One reason may be that so many middle income people find home ownership unattainable is due to the house prices that rose so much during the bubble and still remain well above the historic Median Multiple. People have been moving away from the more costly metropolitan areas. Between 2000 and 2007:

2.6 million net domestic migrants left the major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) with higher housing costs (Median Multiple over 4.0).
1.1 net domestic migrants moved to the major metropolitan areas with lower house prices (Median Multiple of 4.0 or below).
1.6 million domestic migrants moved to small metropolitan areas and non-metropolitan areas (where house prices are generally lower).

An Immobile Society?

Florida's perceived immobility of metropolitan residents is curious. Home ownership was not a material barrier to moving when tens of millions of households moved from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt in the last half of the 20th century. During the 2000s, as shown above, millions of people moved to more affordable areas, at least in part to afford their own homes.

Under normal circumstances (which will return), virtually any well-kept house can be sold in a reasonable period of time. More than 750,000 realtors stand ready to assist in that regard.

Of course, one of the enduring legacies of the bubble is that many households owe more on their houses than they are worth ("under water"). This situation, fully the result of "drunken sailor" lending policies, is most severe in the overly regulated housing markets in which prices were driven up the most. Federal Reserve Bank of New York research indicates that the extent of home owners "under water" is far greater in the metropolitan markets that are more highly restricted (such as San Diego and Miami) and is generally modest where there is more traditional regulation, such as Charlotte and Dallas (the exception is Detroit, caught up in a virtual local recession, and where housing prices never rose above historic norms, even in the height of the housing bubble). Doubtless many of these home owners will find it difficult to move to other areas and buy homes, especially where excessive land use regulations drove prices to astronomical levels.

Restoring the Dream

There is no need to convince people that they should settle for less in the future, or that the American Dream should be redefined downward. Housing affordability has remained generally within historic norms in places that still welcome growth and foster aspiration, like Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Columbus and elsewhere for the last 60 years, including every year of the housing bubble. Rather than taking away the dream, it would be more appropriate to roll back the regulations that are diluting the purchasing power and which promise a less livable and less affluent future for altogether too many households.

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Note. Among these examples, New York is the largest metropolitan area in the nation. Los Angeles ranks number 2 and San Francisco ranks number 13. The inclusion of Boulder, ranked 151st in 2009 seems a bit curious, not only because of its small size, but also because its advantage of being home to the main campus of the University of Colorado. Smaller metropolitan areas that host their principal state university campuses (such as Boulder, Eugene, Madison or Champaign-Urbana) will generally do well economically.

Photograph: New house currently priced at $138,990 in suburban Indianapolis (4 bedroom, 2,760 square feet). From http://www.newhomesource.com/homedetail/market-112/planid-823343

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. He was born in Los Angeles and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley. He is the author of "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

Southern Piedmont: Where NASCAR Meets the NASDAQ

Patrick Ottenhoff — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:49:16 -0400

When Andrew Jackson roamed the hills of the Carolinas, northern Georgia and eastern Tennessee, it was still frontier, and for generations the southern Piedmont remained economically and culturally isolated. Today, however, Old Hickory might be surprised to learn what this area has become.

Atlanta, a railroad junction with a few thousand souls before the Civil War, is now home to the nation’s busiest airport. It’s also headquarters of several global companies, including UPS, Home Depot and Coca-Cola, which BusinessWeek recently ranked as the most valuable brand worldwide.

Within a couple of hours is Charlotte, the nation’s No. 2 banking hub; Raleigh-Durham, a booming biotech center; and the Piedmont Triad, home to a handful of Fortune 500 companies. Even Upstate South Carolina, still somewhat underdeveloped, has the highest foreign investment per capita in the nation.

The region following I-85 from Raleigh-Durham to the Piedmont Triad to Charlotte to Atlanta is quickly becoming a “megapolis.” To be sure, a lot of this area is still poor, and the region doesn’t have the accumulated wealth of its financial rivals in the Northeast Corridor. Nor is its economy as robust as its southern siblings in the Texas Triangle.

But the southern Piedmont is growing rapidly. Georgia is slated to gain two seats and North Carolina is projected to gain one after congressional reapportionment, and two of the top ten fastest-growing congressional districts are in the Atlanta and Charlotte suburbs. Both states rank in the top five for net domestic migration, and South Carolina is in the top ten.

Companies are drawn by the affordable cost of living, relatively cheap labor markets, and low corporate taxes. North Carolina also has some of the most liberal banking laws in the nation, which explains its flourishing finance industry. But bigger economic and cultural factors are at work.

“Do not underestimate the potency of the elimination of Jim Crow segregation laws,” says Ferrel Guillory of UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South. “Once that millstone was lifted, it liberated the South economically as well as socially. Corporations, which weren’t going to invest in a region of racial division and strife, did so once legal segregation was removed.”

At the same time, modernization was crucial. Interstates opened the region to the rest of the nation, and air conditioning made hot southern summers bearable.

The region’s universities also played an important role. “The Research Triangle, of course, was founded on the idea that big research universities would serve as catalysts, and they did,” says Guillory. “Atlanta, too, has a critical mass of universities that enrich both the public policy and the economic development of the region.”

Atlanta marketed itself as the “city too busy to hate,” but a more accurate description, according to UVA’s Larry Sabato, is that it is the hub of a “megapolis too busy making money to worry about history.”

Consider the case of Hugh McColl. McColl was born in the hills of Upstate South Carolina, not far from where Jackson himself was born. He graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and later joined North Carolina National Bank, which through a series of aggressive acquisitions became NationsBank.

Under McColl’s leadership, NationsBank later merged with Bank of America. He then took what the Wall Street Journal called “a scrappy Southern outsider” and built it into the nation’s second largest market capitalization.

McColl is the personification of both the old and new southern Piedmont. He had the same competitive, “scrappy” attitude that Jackson and many of the settlers in this region had. “So Hugh McColl does indeed have antecedents,” says Michael Barone.

But McColl also attended one of the best universities in America, and entered into banking at a time when North Carolina was liberalizing its laws and the region was modernizing. Later, he was one of the 49.9% of North Carolinians – a plurality – who voted for Barack Obama for president, a reflection of the new southern Piedmont.

As the region grows, expect it to take on more of an identity similar to McColl. This doesn’t mean that it’ll mirror his politics, but it does mean the region will be a more complex place, both politically and economically. The southern Piedmont will always have its roots in bootleggers racing stock cars through the muddy hills, but these days Charlotte is the kind of city where NASCAR meets the NASDAQ.

Patrick Ottenhoff, a project manager for New Media Strategies and a former staff writer for National Journal Group and The Hotline. Ottenhoff graduated from Kent School and Union College and is a native of McLean, Va. His writings have appeared in National Journal, Politico, and MSNBC.com. His political geography blog is The Electoral Map.

Eros Triumphs…At Least in Some Places, Mapping Natural Population Increases

Richard Morrill — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:02:35 -0400

As with other advanced capitalist societies, the US population is aging. About 30 percent of US counties experienced natural decrease – more deaths than births – in the 2000-2007 period.

Nevertheless, the most exceptional feature of the United States remains its unusually high level of natural increase, and significant degree of population growth. This is often attributed to the high level of immigration, especially from Mexico, illegal as well as legal, and their high fertility. This process is indeed critical, even though most of the migration is in fact legal, and the share from Mexico is not as high as commonly perceived. Also most of the Hispanic population in the United States is native, not immigrant.

Perhaps a more important feature of US society contributing to a smaller decline in fertility than in most other advanced countries is the extraordinary cultural traditionalism of perhaps half the American population. This is reflected in the so-called “culture wars”: a more educated modernism, pejoratively dubbed as “secular humanist,” versus a more traditional, religion-observing “moral majority.”

Conservatives campaign against abortion and even contraception, and maintain an amazingly high level of religiosity and skepticism of science, creating a climate favorable to a level of fertility above replacement levels (2.1 per female). The super pro-child Mormon Church alone claims millions of members, and evangelical groups boast even more. This creates a fascinating, future-influencing tension between a younger-growing, more educated population choosing lower fertility on average, and a more traditional population more successful at reproducing themselves!

Natural increase, then, can be expected in the following kinds of areas. One is heavily Hispanic areas. Those with more recent immigrant stock have higher fertility, but above replacement fertility seems to persist for several generations. Another lies in Native American Indian areas. The explanation here is controversial, but there is perhaps a sense of the need for more children as a reaction to a perceived threat of loss of identity.

For areas with more vibrant economic growth, attracting and maintaining young workers constitute another focal point for natural increase. These are overwhelmingly urban, even metropolitan. Note that these areas may not have above replacement fertility, but will have natural increase, simply because of the younger age structure of the population.

Other strong candidates for natural increase include military base areas, because of the prevalence of young families. Likewise Mormon areas, and fundamentalist religion areas, at least where there remain sufficiently young populations.

Seventy percent of counties had natural increase, differing from counties with natural decrease by higher immigration, much higher levels of urban population, a much younger population, and far higher levels of racial and ethnic minorities, especially Hispanics.

A little more than half (1193) of counties with natural increase had net domestic out-migration – more people leaving than moving into the county, and of these the majority (702) lost population, while in the other 492 natural increase was greater than the out-migration loss, resulting in population gains. Out migration counties differ from in-migration counties ONLY because of the markedly higher ethnic and racial minority shares, obviously reflecting much weaker economic performances. The population losing counties had especially high African American population shares and were more rural.

The net in-migration counties (1093) are usefully separated into those in which natural increase exceeded the net in-migration (only 272 counties) and those in which net in-migration was dominant (821). The former had slightly higher minority shares, and were somewhat more urban.

Geography of Natural Increase

Figure 1 maps natural increase by five levels, with cooler colors having a small natural increase (here in the simple sense of the excess of births over deaths as a share of the base population), and warm colors indicated high levels of natural increase. Rates of over 10 percent are really startlingly high.

Natural increase prevails over much of the country, with the exception of much of the Great Plains, from Texas to Canada, and northern Appalachia. High levels of natural increase, over 6 percent (orange and magenta on Map 1) occur in five kinds of areas that are really highly predictable.

First, areas of high Hispanic population, mainly from Texas to southern and central California, but also in parts of eastern Washington and southwestern Kansas.
Second, Native American Indian reservation areas, most obviously in Alaska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Arizona but also Montana and North Dakota.
Third, the Mormon “culture belt,” spreading from the “Zion” of Utah to Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming.
Fourth, rapidly growing suburban and exurban counties, most notably around Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Atlanta, Washington DC, Chicago, Minneapolis, Charlotte and Denver, and
fifth, in counties with military bases, for example, in North Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, Oklahoma and several other states.

Above average natural increase, from 4 to 6 percent, is typical of many modestly growing metropolitan areas, both central and suburban and exurban counties, and in a scattering of rural-small town counties, especially in the west (western Colorado is notable). Low natural increase, under 2 percent, is very widespread across both urban and rural areas, and is often indicative of slow-growing economies with out-migration (please see Map 2), and in areas moderately attractive to older migrants, thus depressing births, but not enough to cause natural decrease.

Map 2 sorts counties according to in or out migration, population gain or loss, and the role of natural increase versus net in-migration. Four basic types are mapped, but then divided into high or low natural increase. Rapidly growing counties with net in-migration even greater than high natural increase (dark pink) are especially typical of suburban and exurban counties of large metropolises, and of fast-growing smaller metropolitan areas. Lower natural increase is more common for rural and small town amenity areas, as well as far exurban counties. Natural increase greater than in-migration (yellow) is not very common, and tends to occur in rural-small town counties, including several counties with high Mormon shares. Counties with out-migration but enough natural increase to permit overall population growth (green) are common in three kinds of areas. First are large central metropolitan counties – such as those containing Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Miami – with high non-Hispanic white out-migration, but high Hispanic in-migration. The second type are border region counties with high Mexican in-migration, and the third are Native American Indian areas. Those counties experiencing population loss (purple) are much more like counties with natural decrease: dominantly rural or declining rust belt metropolitan areas.

Finally, what areas have the highest rates of natural increase? These see increases of 16 to 19 percent from the base population. They are Wade-Hampton, Alaska (west of Bethel); Webb, Texas (Laredo); Utah (Provo); Hidalgo, Texas (McAllen); Loudoun, Virginia (Leesburg, northwest of Washington DC); Starr, Texas (Rio Grande City); and Madison, Idaho (Rexburg). Three are Hispanic, two Mormon, one Alaska native, and one fast growing suburban.

Natural increase has remained higher than forecast 40 years ago due to far higher immigration, above replacement fertility even among the affluent and educated, and high teenage pregnancy in connection with constraints on abortion – i.e., America’s very high religious traditionalism. The unknowns ahead include the rate of future immigration, whether 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanics will reduce fertility markedly and whether education and modernism will reduce the power of tradition.

See Richard's similar piece on natural decreases in US population.

Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist)