Chicago

Why the 'Old North' States Have Been Economic Laggards

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 20:28:58 -0500

My latest column is now online at Governing. It is a recapitulation of my analysis in my American Affairs piece on Indiana about how basically all the states and regions of the Old North - a 23 state area encompassing the Great Plains, Midwest, and Northeast - are demographic and economic laggards. Here’s an excerpt:

Since Kevin Phillips coined the term “Sun Belt” in the late 1960s, it’s been widely known that population and job growth have largely flowed to the South and West. The rest of the country has not fared nearly as well. The area we might label the “Old North,” a 23-state region spanning the Great Plains, Midwest and Northeast, as well as some border states like Kentucky, has consistently lagged the rest of the country. In essence, half of our states have prospered, the other half have struggled. Statistically, only one Old North state, North Dakota, has done especially well. And North Dakota’s success has been driven by an oil boom. Aside from this likely temporary exception, most of the Old North is a middling performer at best.

…

The consistent struggles of Old North states to find a fully successful 21st-century model seems to belie differences in demographic makeup, urban vs. rural dominance, or political party control. Vermont may lean more socialist and New Hampshire more libertarian, but they suffer similar challenges in luring new residents. Deep blue Illinois and deep red Indiana are a lot more alike than leaders in either state would like to admit.

Click through to read the whole thing.

This piece previously appeared on Heartland Intelligence.

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker and writer on a mission to help America’s cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century. He focuses on urban, economic development and infrastructure policy in the greater American Midwest. He also regularly contributes to and is cited by national and global media outlets, and his work has appeared in many publications, including the The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Photo: GPA Photo Archive via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Quinn Chapel Story

Pete Saunders — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 20:28:58 -0400

Anyone who’s watched the changes in Chicago’s Near South Side community over the last 30 years can tell you, it’s undergone a complete transformation in a generation’s time. Many observers might look at the Near South Side and think it went from nothing to something over that period. Not true. It was always a community of constant change. My father was one person who anticipated the next transformation and fought valiantly for it to be more inclusive.

In 1987 my father accepted the position as pastor of Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Chicago. It’s known as the oldest Black church in Chicago, founded in 1847. He lasted there for ten years, presiding over the church’s celebrated 150th anniversary before moving on to Bethel AME Church in Saginaw, MI. He would pastor there for twenty years before retiring.

When we moved here I had just graduated from Indiana University. We lived in Muncie, IN for seven years as my father pastored his first church there. I looked forward to moving to a city with wider job opportunities. Not much opportunity, however, was apparent in the Near South Side at the time. It was clear the community was a shadow of its former self; the second half of the twentieth century had not been kind to the Near South Side.

Of course, that wasn’t always so. Following the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 the area rapidly grew. By the 1880s the area had become the residence of many of the city’s business and social elite, with beautiful mansions served by wide boulevards leading to the Loop. By the time of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, the Near South Side became known as a popular entertainment stop for trains between downtown and the Jackson Park location of the fair. That later grew into Chicago’s red-light district, known as the Levee District, prompting many of the wealthy to move on. Quinn Chapel’s members took a chance on the community, purchasing land at 24th and Wabash and constructing the church in 1891. The 130-year-old building still serves the congregation today.

I don’t know the specifics of why that site was selected, but I can surmise that Quinn’s members saw the site as an affordable option in a constantly changing, somewhat transient community that was adjacent to the growing “Black Belt” or Bronzeville neighborhood further south. They were able to choose this site because of the constant change in the area. Change that continued for decades.

What kind of change? The growth and expansion of warehouses and light manufacturing structures. The development of Chicago’s Motor Row. The construction of the Chicago Park District’s stadium in 1924, later known as Soldier Field. Actually hosting another World’s Fair, the Century of Progress in 1933. Post World War II the change continued – urban renewal land acquisitions for slum clearance, the construction of nearby interstate highways and public housing, and the development of the McCormick Place convention center by 1960.

Change had been the one constant of the Near South Side, until it wasn’t. From its beginnings the community had been the home of working class white ethnics who worked on the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and then in the warehouses and industrial buildings that followed. There was also a significant Black presence in the community, which many Blacks regarded as the gateway to Bronzeville.

The Near South Side never had a very strong residential presence in its first 100 years; the concentration of warehousing and industry probably made sure of that. That also likely made it a target for the development of public housing. The Harold Ickes Homes and Dearborn Homes were constructed by 1955, and were the northern edge of the virtual wall of public housing towers that would stretch southward for almost five miles. The Near South Side reached a population peak of 11,300 in 1950. But population steadily dropped in the ensuing years, bottoming out at 6,800 in 1990.

Read the rest of this piece at Corner Side Yard Blog.

Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. Pete has been the editor/publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. Pete is also an urban affairs contributor to Forbes Magazine’s online platform. Pete’s writings have been published widely in traditional and internet media outlets, including the feature article in the December 2018 issue of Planning Magazine. Pete has more than twenty years’ experience in planning, economic development, and community development, with stops in the public, private and non-profit sectors. He lives in Chicago.

Photo: Chicago's Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church at 24th and Wabash on the Near South Side. The oldest Black church in the city, established in 1847. The current structure was completed in 1891. Source: Flickr, under CC 2.0 License

The Poor Places That Made Our Cities Richer

Aaron M. Renn — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 20:28:58 -0400

My latest column is now online at Governing magazine. It’s a further discussion of Howard Husock’s book The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It. For those of you who weren’t able to check out the recording of our AEI book event, this piece discusses some of the key points.

Below is an excerpt from the column:

This was cheap housing, but that didn’t just mean cheaper rents. It meant the opportunity for ownership. A key characteristic of many of these neighborhoods was what Husock labels “owner presence.” Even in crowded neighborhoods, apartment buildings like the Boston triple-decker or Chicago two-flats allowed residents to buy the building and live in one unit, while renting out the other to earn income. A surprisingly high share of people who rented in these places lived in buildings where the owner was also living. The owners accumulated wealth in the form of equity in their real estate that was a key to their ability to move up economically.

One common factor in these places was a tolerance for housing that reformers judged substandard. Tenements on the Lower East Side, for example, often lacked baths. Levittown houses were tiny, identical boxes on concrete slabs. But the policy response to the legitimate problems of some of these neighborhoods was a cure often worse than the disease. Mass slum clearance and the construction of huge high-rise public housing projects are the most infamous examples.

The replacement of “slum” housing with public housing was not only a quality-of-life disaster, it also locked its residents into permanent rentership. Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood may have been segregated, but it gave Black residents the opportunity to own real estate and own and operate businesses. In public housing, Black residents could do neither, cutting off critical avenues of wealth creation.

This piece first appeared on Heartland Intelligence.

Photo credit: John Phelan via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.

The Weakness of the Executive Headquarters

Aaron M. Renn — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 20:28:58 -0400

Back in 2008 was I one of the first people to start talking about how corporate headquarters were moving back to the global city in the form of the “executive headquarters.” An executive headquarters is one with just the top executives in the firm - from a handful of people up through 500 or so.

Chicago has been a big center and beneficiary of this. Caterpillar, ADM, Miller-Coors, and Mead Johnson Nutrionals all opened executive HQs in Chicago. One of the biggest prizes for the Windy City was Boeing, which moved its HQ from Seattle to Chicago in 2001, with plans to employ 500 people.

Boeing had acquired St. Louis-based McDonnell-Douglas and wanted a location independent of its business units where executives could fly regularly to their facilities and also their main defense customer in Washington, DC. Chicago beat out Dallas because of its superior downtown and cultural amenities. When I lived in Chicago, the story from Boeing people was that their move their was actually more of a plus than they had envisioned. They felt there were big benefits to being embedded in a large corporate community like Chicago’s that was not dominated by the tech industry.

Fast forward to today, and the HQ decision looks questionable. First came the move to outsource core components of the new 787 Dreamliner. In 2005 Eamonn Fingleton, in a very prescient article in the American Conservative called “Boeing, Boeing … Gone” predicted this amounted to the hollowing out of the company. The 787 was a troubled project, but it was extremely technically ambitious as well, so it was hard to pin this directly on the outsourcing decision.

Then came Boeing’s disastrous 737 Max debacle, in which faulty software caused two planes to crash. It turned out some of this software had been outsourced to $9/hour programmers in India. A thorough review of the program by the FAA appears to have uncovered a number of other issues. At the same time, manufacturing problems also cropped up in the 787. And Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule for NASA has been problem plagued. The first test launch failed to reach the International Space Station due to software errors, and the second attempt had to be scrubbed after valve issues arose.

These problems are suggestive of a company that took its eye off the production ball. Some writers have suggested the root of Boeing’s problems are in the McDonnell Douglas merger, saying that MD executives ended up taking over the company, replacing Boeing’s engineering culture with a more financially oriented one. I don’t know for sure.

But I can’t help but think the executive headquarters construct played a role in Boeing’s problems. Had the company’s top executives remained in Seattle, directly on top of the production lines, they might well have gotten ahead of some of these problems.

Now Reuters is reporting that Boeing’s Chicago HQ is a ghost town and potentially in jeopardy. The recovery efforts are being run out of the coasts. The CEO spent the beginning of the year in South Carolina fixing production problems there. The new CFO and other executives are based on the East Coast. Other major aerospace and defense contractors like Northrup Grumman and General Dynamics, moved their HQ to Washington, close to the Pentagon. Boeing has a major commercial business, but even so their regulator is in DC. Their incentives in Illinois are also about to expire. Per Reuters:

Several people close to the company say cost cuts and a more hands-on corporate culture have raised questions about Boeing's long-term future in the city, and in turn the broad direction Boeing intends to take as it tries to regain its stride. ...

Boeing was seeking a post-merger headquarters in a neutral location separate from those existing divisional power centers.

But some critics viewed Boeing's Chicago move as a symbol of a company that prized near-term profits and shareholder returns over long-term engineering dominance - a charge repeated after crashes of 737 MAX jets that killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019.

"It began as a way of signaling that they would make future investments without regard to any legacy loyalties," Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia said. "To some, it has merely become a way of indicating that they will not make any future investments at all."

I don’t think any of this has to do with Chicago as a city. But I do think it raises questions about the executive HQ concept, particularly with engineering based companies. I think it’s notable that companies like CAT, ADM, and Mead-Johnson are still day trip distance from their main facilities in downstate Illinois or Indiana. They did not move their HQ too far from actual operations.

It will be interesting to see whether Boeing’s travails cause other companies that have adopted a similar HQ structure to make some changes. Boeing itself is a company that’s clearly lost its way and has a big hole to dig out of.

This piece first appeared at Heartland Intelligence.

Photo credit: Matthew Hughes via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Exposure Density, Overcrowding and COVID Death Rates: Update

Wendell Cox — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 20:28:58 -0400

In their new book, Harvard economists Edward Glaeser and David Cutler characterize COVID and related issues as an “existential threat to the urban world, because the human proximity that enables contagion is the defining characteristic of the city” (see our review, Survival of the City: The Need to Reopen the Metropolitan Frontier (Review).

Exposure Density

The problem for cities was stressed in an open letter from 239 scientists to the World Health Organization, “Studies by the signatories and other scientists have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that viruses are released during exhalation, talking, and coughing in microdroplets small enough to remain aloft in air and pose a risk of exposure at distances beyond 1 to 2 m from an infected individual.” They added: This problem is especially acute in indoor or enclosed environments, particularly those that are crowded and have inadequate ventilation relative to the number of occupants and extended exposure periods.

In the past , we have suggested the use of “exposure density” --- a radiological term used to assess the proximity and duration of exposure --- as appropriate of COVID analysis in an April 2020 article (see “Exposure density and the pandemic”).

Research published earlier this year estimates how the reduction in neighborhood level exposure densities in New York City reduced COVID infection and fatality rates. Comparing rates before and after the stay-at-home order that was effective March 22, 2020, Boyeong Hong, Bartosz J. Bonczak , Arpit Gupta, Lorna E. Thorpe , and Constantine E. Kontokosta of the Marron Institute of Urban Management, New York University associated a 1.00 percent reduction in exposure density with a 1.33 reduction in case rate and a larger 1.59 percent reduction in fatality rates in New York City (See: Exposure density and neighborhood disparities in COVID-19 infection risk)

Update on COVID Fatalities

Fatality rates data continue to show an association between higher county urban densities and their fatality rates. Urban density is used as a surrogate for the overcrowding that increases exposure density. The issue is not density per se, however, but consistent with crowding which is often found in dense urban areas.

The latest fatality rates as of August 31, 2021 from COVID-19 are shown in Figure 1. This is derived from data reported by usafacts.org. The data includes all the pandemic period, that began in the first quarter of 2020.

The counties with lower urban densities of 1,000 to 5,000 per square mile or below --- continue to do better in terms of death rates, at or below the national death rate in (Figure 2). These counties account for 81% of the nation’s population (267 million out of a total population of 328 million).

All categories of counties with urban densities exceeding 5,000 per square mile have more than their population proportionate share of COVID-19 deaths. Areas with urban densities below 1,000 per square mile (including rural areas) have higher than average death rates. The fully rural counties (without urban areas), death rate remains 16% above the national average, slightly above the end of 2020. Urban density categories above 10,000 per square mile have death rates more approximately one-half or more above the national average.

The death rates in counties with higher urban densities have improved materially since our first report (July 9, 2020), when they were a minimum of 350% higher than the national average --- seven times the current average. The earlier rates were far more influenced by the pre-lockdown fatality data, with improvements as the lockdown period has extended at least a year. But they remain considerably higher than less dense areas and rural ones at all.

Figure 3 illustrates the current fatality rates by urban population density category.

The Toll on the Largest Central Business Districts

As important as the measures have been in reducing exposure densities,much of this has come from the mass abandonment of the most crowded enclosed city environments have been substantial, especially on the hyper-dense central business districts (downtowns), which have been characterized as “ghost towns.” It is worth noting that employment densities in Manhattan (the largest US central business district) reach about four times the highest neighborhood (residential) densities (See here and here).

The largest downtowns are far more dependent on enclosures such as elevators and transit commuting than elsewhere in metropolitan areas, as social distancing requirements have decimated the extent of use by workers. Nearly half or more of workers to the largest downtowns (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington) had commuted by transit before the pandemic.

In August, only 23% of Manhattan workers were physically at work, with 44% of employers delaying returns because of the recent rise in COVID-19 cases due to the Delta variant.

In May, downtown San Francisco was reported to have only 15% of its workers at their jobs. The BART regional metro had ridership in August had ridership 78% below the same month in pre-pandemic 2019.

In July, Metra, the Chicago area’s principal commuter rail agency, reported ridership down 75% from pre-pandemic levels and has set a goal of ridership down 70% by the end of the year.

Overcrowded Housing

While the policy responses to COVID have reduced exposure densities in crowded employment and transit environments, such policies are not as easily applied in the overcrowded housing that includes so many in poverty. A Furman University study on New York City found: “Neighborhoods with higher rates of confirmed COVID-19 cases have lower median incomes, higher shares of residents who are Black or Hispanic, and higher shares of residents under the age of 18 relative to less affected neighborhoods. Residents of these neighborhoods are less likely to be able to work from home, disproportionately rely on public transit during the crisis, and are less likely to have internet access.”

An Uncertain Future

Polling cited in research by Jose Maria Barrero (Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico) Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University) and Steven J. Davis (University of Chicago) indicated that “once most of the population had been vaccinated ”nearly three quarters of the working age population would not completely return to pre-COVID work activities”.

Moreover, the continued emergence of COVID variants, combined with the reluctance of some to be vaccinated are strong indicators that the future of work and the most crowded parts of cities (whether residential or employment) may not return soon to “business as usual.”

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Photograph: Midtown Manhattan. Highest density employment in the United States (by author).

Changing Boundaries, Changing Perceptions

Pete Saunders — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 20:28:58 -0400

What if I told you that Chicago is a midsized, dense urban hub of 800,000 people, surrounded by more than 400 suburbs anchoring a large metro area of 9.5 million? Or that Indianapolis reached its peak population of 476,000 in 1960, and has slipped below 300,000 for the first time since 1930? Or that New York City reached its population peak of 3.4 million in 1950, lost nearly a million people to fall to 2.6 million by 1980, and once again crossed the 3 million person threshold just this past decade?

If each had kept their late 19th century boundaries, that would’ve been the case. Our views of each city would be quite different today. Chicago might be viewed as an urban core lending its name to a giant metro area, similar to Atlanta or D.C. Indianapolis would be less likely to be seen as a Midwestern success story, and more likely to be seen in the same vein as St. Louis. A New York City that didn’t include Brooklyn, Queens or Staten Island may have found itself fighting for supremacy (with Brooklyn) in the state, never mind the nation or the world as a global city, and never gained its full Big Apple allure.

I know it’s a stretch, even absurd to consider. But I raise this to say that impressions of cities depend greatly on the boundaries set by the cities themselves.

I often ask “what if” questions regarding cities. What if, for example, a city like St. Louis or Philadelphia had been able to spread beyond their current boundaries? Would the difference in population size lead to different thoughts of what each city had become? St. Louis and Philadelphia have had their current city boundaries for more than 140 years. The City of Philadelphia consolidated with Philadelphia County in 1854, and St. Louis city seceded from St. Louis County in 1877. They’ve both seen very urban-like suburbs develop at their edges; lands that could’ve been incorporated into their environs.

On the flip side, Chicago, via aggressive annexation 130 years ago, and Indianapolis, through city/county consolidation, sought to raise their profiles by capturing their suburbs. Chicago’s annexation was spurred by its attempts to become the U.S.’ largest city, surpassing New York (it almost did, but New York’s own consolidation that brought in three boroughs beyond Manhattan and the Bronx in 1898 put the title out of Chicago’s reach). Indianapolis was a relatively sleepy state capital of a midsized Midwestern state that saw consolidation as a way to improve its standing as a player among large cities – and solidify Republican control within local government. It was successful on both fronts.

Many of today’s biggest Sun Belt cities play the same game once played by far older cities. Surrounded by wide expanses of unincorporated land, cities in the South and West jump at the chance expand their physical footprint. In the case of annexation, it’s usually done to extend municipal services, like water, to places that lack them. The usual rationale for consolidation is to streamline and better coordinate municipal services for taxpayers. But let’s be real – annexations and consolidations are efforts by cities to redefine economic and media markets to improve their chances at appealing to business for relocations, Fortune 500 headquarters, expanded airports and sports teams.

Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, Houston and Phoenix each rank among the largest cities in the U.S. by land area, all over 600 square miles. It does not matter that each is larger than all of Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit and numerous suburbs. Only Houston (2.3 million) has more than all of Wayne County (1.7 million), but annexation or consolidation gives each a chance to stake larger claims. However, this isn’t simply a tactic of urban hubs. I’m reminded of Aurora and Joliet, IL, two small manufacturing cities roughly 40 miles outside of Chicago who witnessed suburban sprawl heading in their direction. Both cities gobbled up as much land as they could through annexation to build new subdivisions and commercial centers, changing the perceptions, and tax base, of their respective cities.

Read the rest of this piece at Corner Side Yard Blog.

International Traffic Congestion Extinguished by Pandemic and Remote Work

Wendell Cox — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The 2020 TomTom Traffic Index reflects a huge drop in worldwide urban traffic congestion levels. Congestion levels (rated by the percentage of additional time required for auto travel during “rush hour”) dropped in 387 urban areas while increasing in only 13. Overall, TomTom rates 416 urban areas in 57 international geographies. The TomTom Traffic Index is produced by TomTom International BV. TomTom is known for its satellite navigation services for drivers and maps.

According to TomTom, “The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the way we live, work and move. Lockdowns, remote working and other restrictions on movement have transformed patterns of movement and reduced traffic congestion in most cities.” Similar results were just reported for many more US urban areas in Record Low Congestion Levels in Seattle, LA & San Francisco: The 2020 Urban Mobility Report, with congestion down by about 50% and greenhouse gas emissions from commuting also down 50%.

TomTom reports that: “This year we witnessed a mass exodus of people from capital cities across Europe. The day before new lockdowns went into force was the most congested day in Athens and London in 2020. Meanwhile in Paris, traffic jams reached record lengths,” where a congestion level of 142% was recorded. This an incredibly high traffic congestion index --- 2.6 times the highest annual congestion level recorded in the most congested urban area (Moscow, at 54%, below) and 4.4 times the Paris 2020 congestion level (Paris had the 42nd highest congestion index out of the 416 urban areas).

Congestion Levels by Nation

The TomTom Traffic Index provides congestion levels for 10 or more urban areas in eight nations (including the European Union).

The United States has the lowest congestion level, at an average of 13.8% (Figure 1). This is not surprising, given the comparatively low densities of US urban areas (Demographia World Urban Areas, Schedule 1, Page 19) and the unparalleled dispersion of employment and the fairly comprehensive limited access expressway system. Canada ranks second, at 17.3%, despite having urban population densities double that of the US, and more limited expressways. Australia has the third best congestion level at 20.2%. The United Kingdom, the European Union and China are bunched from fourth to sixth, within 0.7% of one another. Turkey’s congestion level is at 26.7% while Russia has by far the highest congestion level, at 36.6%.

Congestion Levels by Urban Area Population

As would be expected, the worst congestion levels are in the largest urban areas (over 5,000,000), at 28.9% (Figure 2). The 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 category has a congestion level of 22.5%, The smallest category (under 1,000,000) has a congestion level of 18.5%. Overall, the average congestion level is 21.2% (urban area population categories are based on data from Demographia World Urban Areas).

The highest and lowest congestion levels are reviewed below, by population category.

Urban Areas Over 5,000,000 Population

Because of ties (urban areas with the same congestion level), 13 urban areas have top ten congestion levels in the largest population category (5,000,000+ population), seven of which are in the United States and four are in China.

The lowest congestion levels were in Dallas-Fort Worth (USA) and Dongguan, China, both at 13% (Figure 3). Dallas-Fort Worth had the lowest congestion level in this population category at least twice before (2017 and 2015). Dongguan is a Pearl River Delta urban area of about 8 million residents, located between two much larger urban areas, Guangzhou-Foshan and Shenzhen.

Rio de Janeiro had the third least congestion, while Madrid and Boston tied for the fourth position. There was a three way tie for 6th place between Suzhou (Jiangsu, China), Houston and Wuhan. Quanzhou (Fuzhou, China), Atlanta, Washington, Chicago and Philadelphia made a five way tie for 10th best congestion level. Quanzhou may be China’s most decentralized urban area, with its “in situ” urbanization (urbanization in place, rather than by expansion from a core) that involves conversion of rural areas in place to urban areas, with agricultural employment being replaced by non-agricultural employment).

The highest congestion levels in the 5,000,000+ population category included six of the highest density urban areas in the world: Bogota, Manila, Bangalore, Delhi, Lima and Pune (all with more than 25,000 per square mile or 10,000 per square kilometer). By comparison, the average world urban area with more than 500,000 population is 10,800 per square mile or 4,200 per square kilometer.

The highest congestion level was in Moscow, at 54% (Figure 4). The next three, Mumbai, Bogota and Manila were in a three way tie for third worst congestion. Each of these three urban areas is very high density, at over 30,000 per square mile (over 12,000 per square kilometer). Istanbul and Bengaluru (Bangalore), India shared the 6th highest congestion levels. Delhi, the world’s third largest urban area had the seventh highest congestion level. Bangkok and St. Petersburg shared 8th position. There was a three way tie for 9th, which included Lima, Pune (India) and Chongqing (China).

Urban Areas 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 Population

There are 12 urban areas with top ten congestion levels in the 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 population category), 11 of which are in the United States and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

There was a seven way tie between US urban areas for the lowest traffic congestion level (9%) — St. Louis, Cleveland, Richmond, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Kansas City. Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) took 8th place. There was a four way tie at 9th place between Louisville, Memphis, Columbus and Detroit (Figure 5).

There are 11 urban areas with the highest congestion levels in the 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 population category. Four are in Ukraine and two are in Russia.

The worst congestion was in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, at 51%, a higher congestion level than all but six other urban areas of any size (Figure 6), despite a population of less than 3,000,000. Number two Novosibersk (Russia) has an even smaller population, below 2,000,000, but has a congestion level that ranks 9th highest out of the 416 urban areas. Ukraine’s Odessa and Kharkiv rank third and fourth, while Bucharest (Romania) ranks fifth, just ahead of Samara, Russia. Dublin and Dnipro (Ukraine) tied for seventh, followed by a three-way tie for 9th, consisting of Recife (Brazil), Tel Aviv and Changchun (Jilin, China).

Urban Areas Under 1,000,000 Population

There are 14 urban areas with top ten congestion levels in the under 1,000,000 population category, 12 of which are in the United States, along with Cadiz, Spain and Amere in the Netherlands.

Greensboro-High Point (US) had the lowest congestion level, at 7%. A six way tie for second place included Cadiz, Dayton, Little Rock, Akron, Syracuse and Winston-Salem. Worcester (MA) took 8thplace. There was an 8 way tie for 9th place including Buffalo, Albany, Columbia (SC), Omaha, Knoxville, Grand Rapids and Rochester, and Amere (Figure 7).

Among the 13 urban areas with the highest congestion levels in the under 1,000,000 category, five are in Poland. All of the others are in European nations.

The highest congestion level was in Lodz, Poland, at 42%, which was followed by two other Polish urban areas, Krakow and Wroclaw. Edinburgh was fourth, followed by another Polish urban area, Poznan. Sofia, Bulgaria had the sixth worst congestion level, while Palermo (Italy), Gdansk (Poland) and Geneva shared 7th place. Tomsk (Russia), Brighton and Hove, and Hull (United Kingdom) and Limerick (Ireland) were in a four way tie for 9th place (Figure 8).

Changing Traffic Forever?

As has been evident in international traffic congestion indexes before, the United States has dominated low congestion levels. Thirty of the 39 urban areas with top 10 congestion levels were in the United States. China had six of the top 39 urban areas with the lowest congestion levels.

TomTom suggests that “COVID-19 could change traffic forever” and imagines a future more based on remote work, in which “We'll no longer waste hours stuck in traffic as working from home will became the norm for most jobs. Rush hour traffic will all but disappear, making journeys faster and less stressful.” This more environmentally friendly future, with its more enriching lives could well be achievable.

Photograph: Downtown Dallas, Dallas-Fort Worth urban area: Tied with Dongguan (China) for lowest congestion level in 2020 TomTom Traffic Index (by author).

The Next Entrepreneurial Revolution

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The coronavirus pandemic has altered the future of American business. The virus-driven disruption has proved more profound than anything imagined by Silicon Valley, costing more jobs than in any year since the Great Depression. But there’s also good news, as Americans’ instinctive entrepreneurial spirit is driving growth and innovation: 4.4 million new business applications were recorded by census data in 2020, compared with roughly 3.5 million in 2019. Self-employment, pummeled at first, has recovered more rapidly than conventional salaried jobs, as more Americans reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs.

To be sure, the initial impact of the pandemic favored big chains and accelerated the already dangerous corporate concentration in technology—Amazon tripled its profits in the third quarter of 2020 and the top seven tech firms added $3.4 trillion in value last year. This in turn has made all business, as well as ordinary Americans, subject to manipulation by the handful of “platforms” that control the primary means of communication. Meanwhile, lockdowns drove an estimated 160,000 small businesses out of existence and left those that survived to face “an existential threat,” according to the Harvard Business Review.

Like pandemics of the past, the current one, according to Berkeley economists Laura Tyson and Jan Mischke, has already driven new investments in technology that could reverse the long-term decline in U.S. productivity. Low real estate prices could spark a return to street-level enterprise, even in places like Manhattan that have long been ultra-costly.

But the focus of opportunity is more likely to be found in the suburbs and exurbs, as well as in the middle of the country. The movement of populations away from the big urban centers started before COVID, but a recent study in CityLab notes that it has since accelerated in places like California’s Inland Empire, the Hudson Valley, and the New Jersey suburbs. Overall, according to demographer Wendell Cox, offices on the fringe have recovered far faster than those in the largest urban cores like Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston.

The geography of work has changed as well. Upward of 30% of those who plan to work remotely after the pandemic, notes a recent Upwork survey, plan to do so outside the house: in coffee houses, coworking spaces, or other office environments closer to home. This has created a new market for suburban office spaces, real estate investor Andrew Segal told me. He sees remote offices filling with workers who may be tired of working at home but do not want to go back to their long commutes. Segal has recently purchased properties in the suburban commuter sheds around Chicago, New York, Phoenix, and Colorado Springs. “The problem is called COVID, but it’s really about commuting,” suggested Segal, who is based in Houston. “People now know they can get their work done from somewhere else that’s easier to get to than Manhattan, downtown Houston, Chicago, or Los Angeles.”

Businesses are following the trend. Between September 2019 and September 2020, according to the firm American Communities and based on federal data, inner cities experienced nearly a 10% loss in jobs, while outer suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas fared far better. According to Jay Garner, president of Site Selectors Guild, companies are looking increasingly at smaller cities and even rural locations rather than in the big core cities. Indeed, seven of the top 10 midsize cities preferred for new investments include not just sunbelt boomtowns but heartland cities like Columbus, Des Moines, Indianapolis, and Kansas City.

Analysis by Zen Business this year found that the best places for small businesses in terms of taxes, survivability, and regulation were overwhelmingly in the South, parts of the Great Plains, Utah, and across the Midwest. Places like the Bay Area, New York, and Southern California crowded the bottom of the list. In some cities like San Francisco, even opening an ice cream shop has become subject to unendurable, endless regulatory reviews. Many heartland cities are exploiting this opportunity, with some offering generous bonuses to telecommuters from the coasts.

Read the rest of this piece on Tablet Magazine.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: G. Keith Hall via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.

Census Bureau Releases 2020 City Population Estimates

Wendell Cox — Fri, 28 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The US Census Bureau has just released its July 1, 2020 population estimates for the approximately 19,500 incorporated municipalities (principally called cities, towns, villages). This article provides information on the 50 largest municipalities in the nation (Table below).

All of the three largest municipalities, the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, lost population from 2019 to 2020.

Observations on Individual Municipalities

With 8,253,000 residents in 2020, the city of New York had its lowest annual reported population since 2010. Its 90,000 loss in 2019-2020 was the greatest sustained during the decade, while its gain over the entire decade was only 61,000. According to the Census Bureau estimates, New York’s population had peaked at 8,469,000 in 2016 and fallen by more than 200,000 over the past four years.

New York is not the only big city with a declining population. A decade ago, the California Department of Finance announced that second ranked LA city’s population had exceeded that number. But according to the Census Bureau, it never got there. In 2020 the city of Los Angeles population was 3,970,000, down 13,000 from 2019. At no point do Census Bureau estimates show that the 4,000,000 mark was ever met, despite stronger growth earlier in the decade propelled the city’s population upward by 175,000. Meanwhile, Los Angeles County, the most populous in the United States, lost 68,000 since 2010 and fell below 10 million, having lost population four years in a row.

Third ranked Chicago is the largest city to have lost population over the decade (20,000) The city lost most of those residents in the past year, with a 2019-20 loss of 14,000. Chicago lost population in each of the last six years.

Houston ranked fourth and had only a modest gain in the last year. Over the decade, the city gained 10%, to 2,316,000, but grew more slowly with the downturn in energy prices. Houston is one of five Texas municipalities among the nation’s 13 most populous. San Antonio ranked 7th and grew a strong 1.3% over the past year and 17.9% over the decade with a 2020 population of 1,567,000. The city of Dallas ranked ninth, growing little over the past year despite far more rapid growth elsewhere in the metropolitan area, and 12% over the decade to 1,343,000. Austin, will soon be the 11th city in the nation to reach a population of one million had 995,000 residents. Austin grew at a very fast 1.7% rate in the last year and added 23.5% over the past decade. Fort Worth, with 928,000 is the largest “second city” in any US metropolitan area (Dallas-Fort Worth) ranking 12th and posted a nearly 18% growth rate over the decade and 2.1% in the last year.

Phoenix passed Philadelphia during the decade, to become the fifth largest municipality. Phoenix has reached 1,708,000, growing 1.5% in the last year and nearly 18% over the decade.

Sixth ranked Philadelphia has seen its population stabilize, after earlier losses. Philadelphia’s 2020 population was 1,578,000, up 3.3% from 2010, but down 0.3% from 2019.

Eighth ranked San Diego grew about nine percent during the decade, reaching 1,422,000. However, growth stalled, at only 0.2% in the past year.

Tenth ranked San Jose fell 1.3% to 1,027,000 from 2019. Over the decade San Jose grew 6.2%.

Nearby San Francisco, ranked 17th, had 867,000 residents in 2020. This is up 7.6% over the decade, but with a loss of 1,4% over the last year.

Particularly strong population growth over the decade occurred in 14th ranked Columbus (113,000), 15th ranked Charlotte (162,000), 18th ranked Seattle (159,000), 19th ranked Denver (133,000) and 20th Washington (108,000).

Detroit continued to lose population, with 665,000 residents in 2020. This is down 5.6% in the decade and minus 0.75% in the last year.

Top and Bottom Percentage Gains

The largest percentage gain among the top 50 was in Seattle, at 26.0%, followed by Fort Worth (24,0%), Austin (23.0%), Denver (22.0%) and Charlotte (21.9%).

Despite much hopeful reporting of a renaissance, Detroit had the largest percentage loss over the decade among the top 50, at minus 6.4%. Following Detroit were Baltimore, down 5.6%, Long Beach (in the Los Angeles metropolitan area) at minus 1.7%, Milwaukee minus 1.0% while Chicago minus 1.7%.

Over the past year, the largest percentage gains have been in Seattle (2.18%), Fort Worth (2.12%), Mesa, in the Phoenix metropolitan area (1.86%), Austin (1.71%) and Tampa (1.65%).

The largest one-year percentage losses were in Baltimore (minus 1.42%), San Francisco (minus 1.39%), San Jose (minus 1.26%), New York (minus 1.08%) and Long Beach (minus 0.83%).

U.S. Population Growing Less and Dispersing

These data are estimates and are not from the 2020 Census, which has not yet published data below the state level.

These results do not reflect the total impact of the Covid pandemic, since only some three months of that period are included in these findings. Since then, there has been much evidence of population shifts from the largest and densest cities to more dispersed cities, suburbs exurbs and rural areas. For example, US Postal Service change of address data indicates the strongest out-migration in the cities of New York and San Francisco, according to The Wall Street Journal. These are the densest municipalities in the top 50.

The Covid epidemic principally affected the last quarter of the estimation periods --- one of the four 2019-2020 quarters and one of the 40 2010-2020 quarters. Over the decade, six of the top 50 municipalities lost population, while 14 lost population in 2019-2020. The deterioration in losses has multiple causes, such as the accelerating dispersion (domestic migration) from larger metropolitan areas and the generally slowing US population growth rate. At the same time, our previous research has shown that the urban cores have not even maintained their share of metropolitan populations (See: “Latest Data Shows Pre-pandemic suburban/exurban population gains”).

Click here to download a PDF document with the 2020 municipalities data
(document opens in new tab or window).

Photo: City Hall, Philadelphia (by author).

The Geography of COVID-19

Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox — Mon, 10 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The ongoing pandemic is reshaping the geography of our planet, helping some areas and hurting others. In the West, the clear winners have been the sprawling suburbs and exurbs, while dense cores have been dealt a powerful blow. The pandemic also has accelerated class differences and inequality, with poor and working class people around the world paying the dearest price. These conclusions are based on data we have repeatedly updated. Despite some variations, our earlier conclusions hold up: the virus wreaked the most havoc in areas of high urban density. This first became evident in the alarming pre-lockdown fatalities that occurred in New York City and the suburban commuting shed from which many of the employees in the huge Manhattan business district are drawn. Similar patterns have been seen in Europe and Asia as well.

The problem is not density per se but rather the severe overcrowding associated with poverty in high density areas. Overcrowded physical proximity often includes insufficiently ventilated spaces such as crowded public transit, elevators, and employment locations, especially high-rise buildings, which often have windows that cannot be opened. Overcrowded bars, restaurants, and other retail establishments are also a part of the problem. Professor Shlomo Angel head of the New York University Urban Expansion Project at the Marron Institute and the NYU Stern Urbanization Project and principal author of A Planet of Cities and the Atlas of Urban Expansion explains:

It is important to increase density literacy among politicians, professionals, and activists to make it clear that the density that contributed to the pandemic, overcrowded multigenerational housing, mass events, crowded transit cars, or crowded bars and restaurants, is not the kind of density we need to increase to make cities more affordable and to combat climate change. The densification we need involves making room in cities, adding floor space so that more people can occupy the same area without overcrowding.

Mixed evidence on lockdowns

Overcrowding intensifies exposure density. Recognizing this, governments imposed lockdowns and social distancing measures intended to reduce crowding and viral transmission. But lockdowns can be effective in some situations and not in others. Social distancing and remote work can readily reduce the exposure density of overcrowded trains, workplaces, elevators, and retail establishments, especially in the densest urban cores. Restaurants and bars were forced to close, and as many employers switched to remote working, fatality rates dropped substantially.

But this approach has exacted a steep cost. In New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Toronto, suburban rail ridership declined by between 75 and 90 percent compared to the previous year. There has been a precipitous decline in the economies of the central business districts (CBDs) of these metropolitan areas, which have suffered economically more than most of their smaller counterparts. City Journal has reported that, in 2020, “New York City lost 500,000 private-sector jobs. Its office buildings are only 15 percent occupied. Ninety percent of the city’s restaurants failed to pay their December 2020 rent, and 5,000 have shut down altogether. Employment in the city’s arts and entertainment sector has plummeted 66 percent. And, perhaps most alarming: 300,000 New Yorkers from high-income neighborhoods have filed change-of-address forms with the Postal Service.” Rents are now the lowest in a decade.

Much of the employment activity central to modern cities—finance, marketing, technology, media, consulting—has been transferred to the “cloud model” of employment. Even in places like Hong Kong and Tokyo that have avoided the worst of the pandemic, there has been a significant reduction in CBD on-site work as remote work has increased. An ominous sign for the future: considerable evidence that productivity has improved or at least remained the same.

Nevertheless, social distancing and dispersion have proven successful in containing the spread of the virus. Our analysis of county fatality rate data shows that, in April 2020, the fatality rate in the New York combined statistical area (31 economically connected counties) was seven times the national rate. By July 2020, the CSA rate had fallen below the national rate. But the price was empty streets, sidewalks, office buildings, as well as bars and restaurants all essential to maintaining a dynamic city.

The future of cities

How many workers will return to the CBDs remains an open question, but it seems likely to be many fewer than before the pandemic. Even as we write, new lockdown measures are being implemented in Ontario, and it seems fair to ask when lockdowns will be sufficiently relaxed for urban cores to begin operating at their new normal. Downtowns have recovered far less quickly than suburban, exurban, and small towns. City centers in London, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne, Sydney, Milan, and elsewhere have suffered huge physical employment losses and increases in remote work.

Read the rest of this piece at Quillette.

Photo: Prayitnophotography via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.