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America's Great Migration

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 19:18:28 -0500

‘For many states that were once great have now become small; and those that were great in my time were small formerly. Knowing therefore that human prosperity never continues in one stay.’ So wrote Herodotus in his Histories, in the fifth century BC. He reminds us that world history is not a morality tale between the ‘powerful’ and their victims. Rather, societies evolve, grow stronger and overcome weaker ones. People – and, more recently, capital – migrate to places that offer greater opportunities.

This was certainly true in the time of Herodotus. He was born in Greek colonies in what is now Turkey and died in another Greek colony in Italy. The search for better conditions – whether for grazing, farming or, more recently, manufacturing and technology – unravels older orders and paves the way for new ones. As a result, centres of power move. As French historian Fernand Braudel noted, between the 16th and 18th centuries, capitalism shifted from one hub to another – Venice to Antwerp to Amsterdam, and then to London.

With these shifts in power often come shifts in migration patterns. Where droves once headed to Western Europe from the former Soviet bloc, as the old centres stagnate, many may consider returning to the Eastern bloc, and even parts of the once-cursed ‘Club Med’, including Herodotus’s Greece.

Nowhere is this pattern more dynamic than in the United States. Most settlers who flocked there from the old world were motivated by hopes for a better life, not as a quest to impose racial supremacy, as is so often claimed today. Whereas Europe’s density tends to anchor power in London, Paris or Berlin, all of them capitals, the balance of power is constantly shifting in the US, from New England, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, to the mid-Atlantic states, followed by the rapid rise of the upper Midwest, which was then supplanted first by California and the West Coast, and more recently by Texas and the South.

Travel across America and the differences between regions can seem almost like those between nation states. The elite classes – and their chattering-class interlocutors – remain concentrated in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, places that retain much of the world’s ultra-rich. Yet the supremacy of these cities is being undermined by their growing failure to offer working- and middle-class citizens, particularly the young, the prospect of a better life.

Over the past decade, economic and demographic momentum has accelerated towards Texas, Arizona, the Carolinas and Florida – places once dismissed as economically and culturally backward. None of America’s major growth hubs is now located in the north-east or California. The rising cities of today include Dallas-Fort Worth, Raleigh, Houston, Austin, Phoenix, Nashville and Salt Lake City.

This shift has been fuelled by stronger job growth in states such as Idaho, Utah, Texas, the Carolinas and Montana. By contrast, large urban states like New York, California, Illinois and Massachusetts sit near the bottom of the rankings. The same pattern applies to smaller metropolitan areas where job growth has surged, such as Fayetteville, Arkansas; Greenville, North Carolina; Grand Forks, North Dakota; and Ogden, Utah.

Read the rest of this piece at Spiked.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Aerial view of Austin, via Goodfon under CC 4.0 License.

The Lone Star State is Soaring: America's Future Will Be Made in Texas

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 20:28:38 -0500

The United States is a misnomer. Despite its title, our republic has rarely been united, instead hosting an endless gladiatorial contest between different states and regions. In the early 19th century, New York and New England struggled for supremacy against the Virginians and their empire of cotton. Gotham then took the field against the Chicago stockyards, before losing out to those upstarts in California. And now, the West Coasters are themselves under attack: from the Lone Star State.

Texas today is irrepressible. If the numbers are right, it could soon pass California and become America’s most populous state. Texas is also the nation’s second youngest state, even as it enjoys higher net migration than any of its peers. Tellingly, many new arrivals are exiles from the Golden State. This buoyancy isn’t hard to understand. Shaking off its reactionary heritage, Texans now wallow in progress, building more and making more than anyone else, with some boozing and dancing as they go. At its best, in fact, this blend of high-tech growth and gentle multiculturalism could yet rebuild America — if, that is, its worst conservative instincts can be repressed.

In a sense, Texan success within the United States is ironic. After declaring independence from Mexico, in 1836, it enjoyed a reputation as a place to “flee” the tyranny of Washington. By the time it joined the union, nine years later, the 28th state was dominated by planters and ranchers, groups that eagerly embraced both slavery and the Confederacy. After losing the Civil War, Texans were left bitter and impoverished, their natural bounty in hock to far-off Northern bankers. To quote Wilbert “Pappy” O’Daniel, governor and then senator in the Forties, Texas had become “New York’s most valuable foreign possession”.

For all its bloody-minded independence — Steinbeck was surely right when he called Texas “a nation in every sense of the word” — it would ultimately be the federal government that dragged the state’s marshes and prairies into the 20th century. The New Deal brought electricity to remote rural areas, and massively expanded the all-important Houston Ship Channel. The boom in a quintessentially Texan product surely helped too. “Oil is money,” the historian Robert Bryce has written. “Money is power.”

Dovetailed with a degree of racial pragmatism, with Houston desegregating far more easily than Atlanta, Texas also began to move beyond its dependence on oil and gas. Prodded along by LBJ and other native sons, for instance, Houston emerged as the centre of a gigantic new space centre. And if that banished memories of the city’s parochial past — as recently as 1946, the writer John Gunther grumbled about hotels filled with cockroaches — other towns rose too. Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin, together known as the Texas Triangle, are now home to two-thirds of the state’s population and 70% of its GDP.

Not, of course, that this is simply a historical tale. For if 20th-century Texas flourished on a mix of social peace, low taxes and light-touch regulation, their successors are sipping much the same brew. The numbers here are clear. Texas’s overall tax burden, according to one recent study, ranked 37th out of 50: hardly the best, but much better than California (5th) or New York (1st).

Read the rest of this piece at Unherd.

Photo: Circa 1938 postcard, via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

How Texas Can Defy the Demographic Odds

Justin Coppedge — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 20:28:58 -0500

In the center of the American Sun Belt lies the eighth-largest economy in the world, home to nearly one out of 10 Americans. After decades of sustained economic and population growth, Texas is in the early days of a demographic shift that will profoundly shape its future. As states and countries around the globe grapple with declining populations, Texas is defying the trend by continuing to expand. Such growth is likely to continue. While it will bring many benefits, however, a more populous Texas will also present challenges – challenges that must be addressed if the state hopes to secure the future of its residents and avoid the fate of other regions that were unprepared for the growth they experienced.

Bigger and better?

By the time Texas, home to 30 million people, celebrates its bicentennial in 2036, projections developed by the Texas Demographic Center indicate that the state will have between 3 million and 5 million more residents than it does today. By 2060, Texas will have 6 million to 14 million more inhabitants. This growth – and the declines facing many other states – mean Texas is on track to become the most populous state in the country by the turn of the next century, if not sooner.

Texas also has a young population. With a median age of 35, Texas was the second-youngest state in the nation in 2023, trailing only Utah, which has a median age of almost 32 years old. This puts it in stark contrast to, say, Maine – the oldest state in the nation, which has a median age just shy of 45 years old.

In the past, population growth in Texas was driven by a high fertility rate, which also kept the median age low relative to other states. Fertility in Texas has declined over the last two decades, however, and is now below the rate needed to maintain population size. And yet Texas has continued growing thanks to domestic migration from other states. A large percentage of these migrants have been younger adults attracted by an affordable cost of living and abundant employment opportunities. These people have not only helped the state grow; they have also kept it relatively young.

As Texas’ population continues to expand, however, an interesting dichotomy will form as the median age shifts older. Texas is relatively young compared with other states because of historically higher fertility and current in-migration by young adults. But like all states and the rest of the developed world, Texas is on a trajectory to grow older over time because of the large cohort of aging baby boomers and because of medical and health advances contributing to greater longevity, coupled with lower fertility rates. According to projections by the Texas Demographic Center, between 2023 and 2050, the number of Texans 65 and older will increase by more than 88%, while the number of Texans 45 to 64 is expected to increase by 57%. Although some regions of the state, particularly rural areas, have already begun experiencing this shift in significant ways, many have not. But that will soon change.

Texas, as the second-largest state by land mass, offers new residents substantial space to settle. The state’s population growth has been far from evenly distributed, however. The “Texas Triangle,” as the urban and suburban areas of metro Austin-San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston are known, account for 87% of the state population today, and the exurbs surrounding these metro areas have enjoyed most of the recent growth. Between 2010 and 2020, 37 of Texas’ 254 counties grew faster than the statewide rate, and 14 of those counties saw their population increase by between 30% and 55%. Another 74 counties, largely ringing the highest-growth counties around metro areas, grew but at a rate slower than the state’s overall population growth rate. And 143 counties, many of them rural, lost population during that same time period.

Read the rest of this piece at The Bush Center.

Justin Coppedge is Senior Vice President, Strategy and Operations at Texas 2036, a nonpartisan policy organization focused on the future of Texas. He is also a 2024 Presidential Leadership Scholar.

Photo: Diego Ramirez via Pexels in Public Domain.

Dallas-Fort Worth to Top Los Angeles? Official State Population Projections

Wendell Cox — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 20:28:58 -0400

Recently we reported that current, official population projections by state agencies indicate that Texas will become the most populous state by 2050. Over the following 10 years, the gap is projected to increase to nearly 5,000,000, with Texas at 44.4 million and California at 39.5 million (Figure 1).

If these projections turn out to be correct (and projections are often not accurate, as conditions change), Texas will add 13.9 million residents, more residents than live in Pennsylvania, while California would add 500,000, about the population of the city of Fresno (Figure 2).

There would be substantial changes in the comparative populations at the local level. This is evident in an analysis of the three largest metropolitan areas in the two states, Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.

Currently Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston are the second, fourth, and fifth largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Currently, metro Los Angeles is by far the most populous of the three, with a population of 12.8 million (2023). This is 4.7 million larger than Dallas-Fort Worth (8.1 million) and 5.1 million larger than Houston (7.7 million).

Metropolitan areas, (also called functional cities or city-regions by demographers) are composed of complete counties. Metro areas are defined by the Office of Management and Budget based on commuting data. This article estimates metropolitan area populations in 2060 based on the present county components and the official county projections.

This analysis uses the counties currently comprising the three metropolitan areas and their respective projections to estimate the overall population.

The data suggests that Dallas-Fort Worth would pass Los Angeles, to become the largest of the three metropolitan areas. With a projected population of 12.4 million, it seems likely that Dallas-Fort Worth would become the second most populous metropolitan area in the nation, following New York (Note). This would be an increase of more than 50% from its 2023 population.

Houston would nearly match the population of metro Los Angeles, at 11.4 million in 2060, just 200,000 less than Los Angeles. With Houston still growing and Los Angeles losing, it would not be long before Houston would pass Los Angeles (Figure 3 and Figure 4).

Among smaller Texas metros, there is constant speculation that Austin and San Antonio will be merged into a single metropolitan area. It seems more likely that the two will be converted into a combined statistical area (CSA), rather than an MSA, because CSAs have less stringent commuting requirements. Metro Austin’s 2060 population is projected to be 5.2 million, up from 2.5 million in 2023. San Antonio would reach 4.4 million in 2060, up from 2.8 million in 2023.

Among the smaller California metros, Riverside-San Bernardino would move from 4.7 million to 4.9 million. Metro San Francisco is projected to increase from 4.6 million to 5.2 million, San Diego would remain at 3.3 million and Sacramento would increase from 2.4 million to 2.8 million.

The limitations of this data should be recognized. The areas covered by population projections can change metropolitan area definitions as commuting patterns change. So that if counties are not currently meeting the metropolitan area, criteria should qualify later, it would be added to a metropolitan areas.

Metropolitan areas change over time. In the case of Los Angeles, for most of the 20th century, metro Los Angeles added more new residents than any other metropolitan area in the nation but now is expected to decline in the next few decades. The situation is not much better statewide. As late as 2007, the California Department of Finance was projecting growth to 60 million by 2050. Over the period, California’s cost of living, driven by its overly regulated (and distorted) residential land market drove people to move elsewhere, with net 3.8 million (ins versus outs) moving elsewhere the nation.

The stagnation and even losses of California have to be among the most important demographic shifts in the history of the United States. From its 1850 admission to the Union, California has tended to grow well above the national average, at least before 2000. As for Texas, its advance has been, at least to some degree, propelled by the rising migration of both people and companies from California. The American future seems to be more Lone Star State than a Golden one.

Note: Population projections were not researched for the New York metropolitan area, however I expect that New York would remain the largest in the nation through at least 2060.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is 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.

Photo: Southern Methodist University, University Park, Dallas-Fort Worth via
Wikimedia in Public Domain.

Top Zip Codes for New Apartments: 2018 - 2022

Wendell Cox — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 20:28:38 -0400

Rentcafe.com has just published a list of the 51 ZIP Codes in the United States that have had the most apartment construction over the last five years (2018-2022). These neighborhoods are located in 20 metropolitan areas (which are housing and labor markets). This article provides data from Rentcafe.com for each of these metropolitan areas, the urban core versus suburban distribution of the new apartment zip codes, as well as recent building permit data for multi-family and single-family housing for the first 8 months of 2023 annualized.

Dallas-Fort Worth, TX a metropolitan area known for its broad expanse of single-family housing, lead the list with 30,557 new apartments. Dallas-Fort Worth had the most zip codes among the top 51, with eight. Two of the zip codes were in or near the urban core, while six were in the suburbs (Farmers Branch, Richardson, McKinney, Frisco, Grand Prairie and The Colony). About 80% of the new apartments are in the suburbs. In 2023 (through August), Dallas-Fort Worth ranked 2nd nationally in multi-family permits and 2nd in single-family permits.

Second place was taken by the Washington, DC-VA-MD-WC metropolitan area with 17,613 new apartments. Washington included the two zip codes with the largest number of new apartments, which are located near the Capitol. A third zip code is in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2023 (through August), Washington ranked 9th nationally in multi-family permits and 15th in single-family permits.

Austin, Texas, the fastest growing metropolitan area in many recent years, added 17,479 new apartments, for third place. Five zip codes are ranked in the top 51. Three are located in or near Austin’s urban core, while two are in the suburbs (San Marcos and Pflugerville). In 2023 (through August), Austin ranked 3rd nationally in multi-family permits and 7th in single-family permits.

New York, NY-NJ-PA, which has by far the largest number of apartments in the nation, ranked fourth with 15,174. This included three zip codes, two in New York City (Brooklyn and Queens) and one in Exchange Place, which has become an across-the-Hudson extension of New York City’s Lower Manhattan and also includes downtown Jersey City. None of the zip codes was in the urban core of Manhattan. In 2023 (through August), New York ranked 1st nationally in multi-family permits and 11th in single-family permits.

Chicago, IL-IN-WI ranked fifth with 13,713 new apartments. This includes four zip codes, which virtually surround the Chicago’s Loop (the central business district), on the south, west and north sides. In 2023 (through August), Chicago ranked 25th nationally in multi-family permits and 22nd in single-family permits.

Seattle ranked sixth, adding 13,016 apartments in three zip codes. One is in suburban Redmond (headquarters of Microsoft), with two more in Belltown and Lake Union-Queen Ann near the urban core. In 2023 (through August), Seattle ranked 13th nationally in multi-family permits and 29th in single-family permits.

Atlanta ranked seventh with 12,174 new apartments in three zip codes in the city of Atlanta. In 2023 (through August), Atlanta ranked 7th nationally in multi-family permits and 4th in single-family permits.

Miami ranked eighth, adding 11,989 apartments, two in Miami zip codes and one in Fort Lauderdale. In 2023 (through August), Miami ranked 5th nationally in multi-family permits and 37th in single-family permits.

Houston ranked ninth and added 11,558 in three urban core zip codes. In 2023 (through August), Houston ranked 4th nationally in multi-family permits and 1st in single-family permits.

Phoenix ranked 10th, adding 9,254 apartments, one in a city of Phoenix zip code and the other in a suburban Tempe zip code. In 2023 (through August), Phoenix ranked 8th nationally in multi-family permits and 3rd in single-family permits.

The San Francisco metropolitan area ranked 11th, adding 8567 apartments, in one San Francisco and one Oakland zip code. In 2023 (through August), San Francisco ranked 36th nationally in multi-family permits and 65th in single-family permits.

Denver ranked 12th, adding 7038 new apartments, two in urban core zip codes. In 2023 (through August), Denver ranked 11th nationally in multi-family permits and 21st in single-family permits.

Nashville ranked 13th, adding 6806 new apartments in a single urban core zip code. In 2023 (through August), Nashville ranked 10th nationally in multi-family permits and 8th in single-family permits.

Columbus ranked 14th, adding 6605 new apartments in one urban core zip code and a zip code on the outskirts of the city of Columbus. In 2023 (through August), Columbus ranked 24th nationally in multi-family permits and 38th in single-family permits.

Charlotte, NC-SC ranked 15th, adding 6363 new apartments, one zip code in the central business district and one in a more distant zip code within the city of Charlotte. In 2023 (through August), Charlotte ranked 16th nationally in multi-family permits and 5th in single-family permits.

San Diego ranked 16th, adding 5346 apartments, all in a central business district zip code. In 2023 (through August), San Diego ranked 22nd nationally in multi-family permits and 77th in single-family permits.

Tampa – St. Petersburg ranked 17th, adding 3379 apartments in a central business district zip code. In 2023 (through August), Tampa-St. Petersburg ranked 14th nationally in multi-family permits and 9th in single-family permits.

Jacksonville ranked 18th and added 3243 new apartments in a zip code on the outskirts of the city of Jacksonville. In 2023 (through August), Jacksonville ranked 18th nationally in multi-family permits and 13th in single-family permits.

Los Angeles ranked 19th, adding 3138 new apartments, in a Hollywood district zip code in the city of Los Angeles. In 2023 (through August), Los Angeles ranked 6th nationally in multi-family permits and 10th in single-family permits.

Orlando ranked 20th, adding 2806 new apartments in the central business district zip code. In 2023 (through August), Orlando ranked 15th nationally in multi-family permits and 6th in single-family permits.

State Analysis

Texas led the nation among the top 51 new apartment zip codes, capturing 3.7 times its share relative to the 2019 (used as the midpoint year, because there was no apartment stock data in 2020) national apartment stock, according to ACS data (Figure). Three other states exceeded a ratio of 2.0 (Washington, Arizona, Georgia and Tennessee) and four other states exceeded a ratio of 1.0 (Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio). Three states had ratios less than 1.00, New York and New Jersey, with all zip codes in the New York metropolitan area and California. California has fallen into population decline in the last few years, though state officials indicate that there is a 3.5 million deficit in housing units.

The District of Columbia, which is a single city as opposed to a metropolitan area, added apartments at a rate equal to more than 15 times its stock of apartments.

Among the 13 states with the top 51 new apartment Zip Codes reported by Rentcafe.com, Colorado had the largest number of apartment building permits as reported by the Census Bureau through in 2023 (through August), annualized, at 3.53 per 1,000 population. Florida was second at 3.27, followed by North Carolina at 2,83, Texas at 2.73, Georgia at 2.68, Tennessee at 2.60, Washington at 2.55 and New Jersey at 2.15. California had 1.39 apartment building permits per 1,000 population, followed by 1.01 in Ohio, 0.89 in New York and 0.55 in Ohio.

Among the three largest states (all with more than 20 million residents), Florida and Texas have had nearly double or more the apartment building permits per 1,000 population than California in 2023, despite the fact that public policy is heavily biased toward multi-family construction and against single-family housing construction, which the overwhelming majority of households prefer.

The District of Columbia had 4.53 apartment permits per 1,000 population through August of 2023.

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.

Photo: Downtown Dallas by Michael Barera via Wikimedia under CC 2.0 License.

America Keeps Moving to High Opportunity Cities

Cullum Clark — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 20:28:58 -0400

Americans migrated in massive numbers to large Sun Belt metro areas and fast-growing suburban cities between 2021 and 2022, according to newly released Census data. These patterns reflect the age-old inclination of Americans to seek out places offering good economic opportunities and affordable quality of life – and run counter to early press reports on the data.

Media reporting on the Census Bureau’s latest release suggests that pandemic-era demographic shifts started to reverse last year, with a return to core cities on the East Coast and elsewhere. The population of Manhattan island grew slightly between July 2021 and July 2022, for instance. But a closer look shows two key demographic trends remain intact: migration from large coastal and Midwest metros to the Sun Belt and movement from core urban areas to suburbs.

Some core counties – like Manhattan’s New York County – eked out modest growth over the past year, but the main reason wasn’t inbound migration from elsewhere in the United States. It was the fact that immigration rebounded from depressed pandemic levels, when emergency restrictions caused a large fall-off in immigrant arrivals.

Booming Sun Belt metros

The top 10 destinations for absolute population growth over the last year are all Sun Belt metros. Four are in Texas: Dallas-Fort Worth (#1), Houston (#2), Austin (#6), and San Antonio (#9). Three are in Florida: Orlando (#5), Tampa (#7), and Jacksonville (#10). Third-ranked Atlanta, Georgia; fourth-ranked Phoenix, Arizona; and eighth-ranked Charlotte, North Carolina, round out the list. All 10 ranked among America’s fastest-growing metros from 2010 to 2020. And all 10 score high in a George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative study of opportunity and economic mobility in U.S. cities.

Meanwhile, the 10 metros that lost the most people over the past year are all places where population stagnated between 2010 and 2020. These include five on the coasts: New York City, which saw by far the largest decline; Los Angeles; San Francisco; San Jose; and Philadelphia. This group also includes Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and New Orleans.

The same pattern holds for net inbound migration rates from elsewhere in the United States, measured as a percentage of 2021 population. Among America’s 100 largest metros, five of the top 10 for net domestic in-migration rates over the last year are in Florida (North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville); two are in Texas (Austin and San Antonio), two are in other Southeastern states (Knoxville, Tennessee, and Charleston, South Carolina), and one is in the Mountain states (Boise, Idaho). The 10 metros with highest net out-migration rates include New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose.

Contrary to stories emphasizing slowdowns in the Sun Belt, geographic mobility retreated modestly across the country from the extraordinary pace of the first full pandemic year, 2020 to 2021. Existing U.S. home sales, for instance, were down 18% in 2022 compared with 2021, reflecting the surge in mortgage interest rates. It was also inevitable that long-distance moves would diminish somewhat as Americans partly returned to offices from the COVID-19 work-from-home experiment, which untethered millions of workers from traditional workplaces.

Read the rest of this piece at BushCenter.org.

J.H. Cullum Clark is Director, Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at SMU. Within the Economic Growth Initiative, he leads the Bush Institute's work on domestic economic policy and economic growth. Before joining the Bush Institute and SMU, Clark worked in the investment industry for 25 years.

Photo: Yinan Chen via Wikimedia under Public Domain.

A New Rideshare Model

Randal OToole — Sun, 14 May 2023 20:28:58 -0400

Alto is a rideshare company that was founded in Dallas and so far is also operating in Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, and Washington. The company differs from traditional rideshare operations like Uber and Lyft in that it owns all of its automobiles and all of its drivers are employees, not contractors. This is supposed to make it more attractive to passengers, especially women, who may be squeamish about riding in a stranger’s car.

Alto claims that its rides are “elevated” above other ridesharers. Its fleet currently seems to consist of Buick Enclaves, a cross-over with three rows of seating. It has replaced the Buick logo on the grill with its own and added its logo to other parts of the vehicles as well. However, it plans to transition soon to all-electric vehicles.

While I’m always intrigued by new business models, I can’t help but feel this one is going in the wrong direction. The intercity bus market went from Greyhound, which owned its own buses, stations, and maintenance facilities, to Megabus, which owned buses and maintenance facilities but no stations, to Flx, which didn’t even own its own buses and maintenance facilities. In other words, the newer models shed costs and spread the risk to more operators.

Uber and Lyft disrupted the taxi market because they replace call centers and human taxi dispatchers with smart phones and automated dispatch. In 2019, some predicted that Uber would never be profitable, but it had its first profitable quarter in 2021 and today both Uber and Lyft claim to be making a profit.

Uber and Lyft have been criticized for treating drivers as contractors and not employees, yet most taxi companies do the same. Uber and Lyft may make less effort than taxi companies to ensure uniformity of service, as not all drivers own the same make and model of vehicles, but it has been my experience, at least, that vehicles are clean, in good condition, and relatively new. The drivers, not Uber or Lyft, take the risk that the vehicles they own won’t earn enough to pay for themselves, but from the customer’s viewpoint that leads to more competition and faster service.

Alto’s model absorbs all of the risk that Uber and Lyft spread among their drivers. That could be quite expensive. Buick Enclaves list for about $45,000, and while I’m sure Alto gets quantity discounts, the $60 million it had raised by mid-2021 is hardly enough to buy 3,000 Enclaves, much less replace them all with electric vehicles by the end of this year, which was Alto’s goal.

Given the limited number of vehicles in its fleet, Alto won’t promise 5-minute wait times like Uber and Lyft can often do. While people can pre-schedule a car, spontaneous Alto customers can expect to wait 10 to 15 minutes. Also, Alto doesn’t operate 24 hours a day; instead, depending on the city, it is shut down for three to five hours each night. Furthermore, while Uber and Lyft are available in hundreds of U.S. cities, Alto is currently limited to just six, which means frequent travelers will keep the Uber and/or Lyft apps even after they’ve tried Alto. Another disadvantage is that all of Alto’s fleet of cars have to be big enough to carry the largest party that might want to use them (i.e., six passengers), while Uber and Lyft can tailor the size of the vehicles they send to the number of people in each party.

Read the rest of this piece at The Antiplanner.

Randal O'Toole, the Antiplanner, is a policy analyst with nearly 50 years of experience reviewing transportation and land-use plans and the author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future.

Photo: courtesy Alto.

The Future of Cities: The Texas Triangle

Cullum Clark — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 20:28:58 -0500

The metropolitan areas that form the “Texas Triangle” —Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio— are emerging as distinctive models of 21st century urbanism. The four Texas metros are all more growth oriented, horizontally expansive, polycentric, and diverse in their populations and industries than most peers. This Texas model has sparked inbound migration and economic vitality largely unmatched in today’s America.

This book is being published as a series, with permission of the American Enterprise Institute. Each week a new chapter will be published, with links to each chapter.

Click or tap a link below to read or download each chapter. (PDFs open in new tab or window)

The Texas Triangle: An Emerging Metropolitan Model in the Lone Star State – J. H. Cullum Clark (new this week)

J. H. Cullum Clark is director of the George W. Bush Institute–Southern Methodist University Economic Growth Initiative and an adjunct profes-sor of economics at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is coauthor of The Texas Triangle: An Emerging Power in the Global Economy (Texas A&M University Press, 2021).

Read the Series:

Introduction: Welcome to the Urban Future – Joel Kotkin

I. The Big Picture for Global Geography

American Aspiration is Metropolitan – Ryan Streeter

The Urban Future: The Great Dispersion – Wendell Cox

The Future of the Big American City is Not Bright – Samuel J. Abrams

II. The Variety of Urban Experiences

The Future of Chinese Cities – Li Sun

Africa's Urban Future – Hügo Krüger and Bheki Mahlobo

Recalibrating Expectations: Lessons from Youngstown, Ohio – Sherry Lee Linkon and John Russo

Indianapolis – Aaron M. Renn

CSY Repost – Houston: "Rust Belt, You Have a Problem"

Pete Saunders — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 20:28:58 -0500

(I know, I know. I haven't been around much lately. My last post was almost six weeks ago. The reasons for my disappearance? A lot of it is life- and work-related, the way things happen with most everyone. However a huge contributor to this is how recent changes in urbanism discourse have played out, and I wonder if there's room for me anymore. Some of my more recent posts can seem like old-guy rants: (What Happened To Addressing Inequality? The Hijacking of Urbanism). I wonder if I'm out of step with today's urbanism, or today's urbanism has moved away from the issues I care about. Whatever it is, I do want to explore that some more. And that will require more regular pieces. I'll start with a repost from April 10, 2022. Later.)

Last weekend, I made my first visit to Houston, Texas to attend a small conference. The event was a gathering of people from around the nation to talk about American cities, with a specific goal of developing ideas to restore the disappearing urban middle class. We had great discussions, lively and informative debates on a wide range of urbanism topics.

Sadly, however, I left the event feeling more irrelevant than in any urbanist discussion before in my life.

I’m from our nation’s middle ground, living within close proximity of two of the five Great Lakes for the vast majority of my life. Yet at this conference, nearly all discussion was shaped by coastal perspectives of American cities, with a healthy dash of how Sun Belt cities, especially Texas ones, offer an affordable alternative. If there was ever any question of whether there’s a strong coastal bias in urbanist discussions, with coastal thinkers and coastal issues controlling the narrative, that notion was quashed.

The gathering was hosted by the Urban Reform Institute, based in Houston. The theme was “Restoring the Middle Class” and included panels discussing a broad range of topics. The first half of the one-day event was devoted to the state of housing in American cities, climate change, energy, transportation and technology impacts on cities. The second half was spent on race and class, the future of urban politics, and the future of community and religion.

The sense of irrelevance arose because of the makeup of the participants, which framed the discussion. A large contingent of current and former Californians were there. The current Californians seemed laser-focused on the impact of stratospheric housing costs on the future of coastal cities, and the homelessness and rising crime that are outcomes of the housing crisis. The former Californians, most of whom had recently relocated to Texas, touted the Texas model of growth as superior to the Golden State’s. There were a number of East Coast representatives, sharing the New York City and Washington, D.C. perspectives of the California issues. And I was the lone voice from the nation’s middle.

On occasion I’d interject and offer a perspective from Chicago, where I live. The Midwest, or Rust Belt, or Heartland, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t have the high housing price tags of the coasts. We don’t have the warm weather that can factor into the corporate decisions that bring new businesses, and therefore new residents, to the Sun Belt. Our region is known for its relative economic stagnation as a result of the loss of manufacturing jobs for the last half century, lagging educational attainment and business formation, and segregation that exacts a tangible cost on economic growth.

I wanted there to be a discussion on policies that could improve all cities – cities that might have an entirely different set of challenges than the coasts or the Sun Belt. I mentioned that from my perspective, what we were discussing were problems related to the success of post-industrial coastal cities over the last 40 years. There’s success in Rust Belt cities, but plenty of failure that prevents the region from fulfilling its economic potential.

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: abandoned house in midwestern rust belt. Source: businessinsider.com

Texas High Speed Rail: The End or Not?

Wendell Cox — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 20:28:58 -0400

In 2012, the new Texas Central Railway announced that it would, in collaboration with the Central Railway of Japan build a high speed rail line from Dallas to Houston. The project was to cost $10 billion, would be built without public subsidies, and be in operation by 2020.

Yet two years after service was supposed to be operating, the groundbreaking has yet to be announced.

Over the last decade Texas Central has encountered considerable opposition from landowners whose property would be required to build the rail line. The principal issue was whether or not Texas Central could use eminent domain to obtain the properties. Finally the Texas Supreme court authorized Texas Central to compel landowners to sell.

Yet three months after the Supreme Court decision, there is little, if any, indication of project activity.

As a result, the landowner plaintiffs, rebuffed at the Texas Supreme Court, now seek clarity on the status of the project. As reported in The Texan, Attorney Patrick McShan of the Beckham Portela (Dallas) law firm, representing the landowners wrote to Robert Neblett of Jackson Walker LLP (representing Texas Central) seeking answers to project related questions.

In the September 29 letter, McShan provides a recapitulation of the Texas Central project, pointing out that Carlos Aguillar resigned as Chief Executive Officer and that the entire Texas Central board of directors has been disbanded. He cites a report that the “project has entered a hibernation phase in search of financing.” At the same time, the railway is reportedly delinquent on property taxes in eight counties. Further, McShan reports that:

“… the toll-free hotline (1-844-TX-TRAIN) formerly reserved for landowner inquiries has been disconnected for months. Texas Central hasn’t answered its main office number for months either. Delinquency notices sent to the address listed for Texas Central in the Secretary of State records are being returned undeliverable. The Dallas office address listed on Texas Central’s website—1400 Botham Jean Blvd—is the address for the Dallas Police Department. Texas Central’s Houston office located at 1021 Main St, Suite 1570 is currently listed for lease. These are not signs of a company moving forward with plans to construct a $30+ billion, 240-mile-long, first-of-its-kind, high-speed rail line.”

McShan contends that: “Texas Central is no longer pursuing construction of the Project” and says that Texas Central will never be able to raise the $30+ billion it needs to construct the Project (emphasis in original).

The letter expresses this fundamental concern: “… our clients and other impacted landowners who might wish to sell or refinance their property must first disclose that their property will be impacted by the Project were it to be built. This stigmatizes and depresses the value of their property. It interferes with landowners’ rights to freely use and enjoy their property. It harms impacted landowners, plain and simple.”

McShan asserts that: To prevent further harm to impacted landowners, Texas Central must publicly state that the Project is over. (emphasis in original). Alternatively, should Texas Central not publicly admit the Project is over, he says that If Texas Central will not declare that it no longer intends to construct the Project, it must answer questions regarding its current plans and intentions.

McShan continued that “If Texas Central is unwilling to publicly state that it no longer intends to construct the Project or, alternatively, provide full and complete answers to the questions above, we intend to file a Rule 202 petition to investigate potential claims against Texas Central.”

According to The Texan a Rule 202 Petition would allow the landowners to depose (under oath) Texas Central to ”investigate a potential claim or suit.”

McShan’s letter also suggests that “Texas does not want to suffer through a repeat of the ongoing high speed rail disaster in California.”

The California’s high speed rail project has escalated in projected costs from $45 billion in 2008, on the eve of a statewide bond vote, to as much as $120 billion in 2022, an increase of nearly 170%. This is well above the 30% inflation over the period. Further, the current estimate does not include the promised extensions to Sacramento and San Diego, which were included in the 2008 projection (Note). A recent Hoover Institution analysis by economist Lee Ohanian found that the project costs are now about $200 million per mile.

Already, the Texas Central Railway also has experienced significant cost escalation, from the original $10 billion to $30 billion in 2020. This 200% cost increase considerably exceedsthe 13% inflation rate over the period.

There is, however, a big difference between California and Texas. In California, much of the escalated high speed rail costs will be the responsibility of state taxpayers. Not so in Texas, where in 2017 the legislature enacted a prohibition on state funding for high speed rail.

The question now, as posed by the landowner plaintiffs, is whether the high speed rail project is proceeding or ever can without some new source of funding outside Texas taxpayers.

Note: Joseph Vranich and I have co-authored public policy reports on the California high speed rail project, such as The California High Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report (2008) and California High Speed Rail: An Updated Due Diligence Report (2013).

Photo: Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas. Source: Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.