Economics

For much of its history, New York City has thrived as a place that both sustained a large middle class and elevated countless people from poorer backgrounds into the ranks of the middle class. The city was never cheap and parts of Manhattan always remained out of reach, but working people of modest means—from forklift operators and bus drivers to paralegals and museum guides—could enjoy realistic hopes of home ownership and a measure of economic security as they raised their families across the other four boroughs.  read more »

Over the past two years, I have had many opportunities to visit my ancestral home, New York, as part of a study out later this week by the Center for an Urban Future about the city's middle class. Often enough, when my co-author, Jonathan Bowles, and I asked about this dwindling species, the first response was "What middle class?"

Well, here is the good news. Despite Mayor Bloomberg's celebration of "the luxury city," there's still a middle class in New York, although not in the zip codes close to hizzoner's townhouse. These middle-class enclaves are as diverse as the city. Some are heavily ethnic, others packed with arty types, many of them more like suburbia than traditionally urban.  read more »

Yesterday, in Part I, I talked about how, despite the Cleveland region’s significant assets, the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s strategy is failing to transform its economy. Today I’ll focus on the strategy’s five weaknesses, and how to fix them.

First: The Wrong Approach To Achieving Scale  read more »

The Cleveland comeback has stalled. Once hailed as a shining example of rebirth in our industrial heartland, Cleveland now sits rudderless and drifting backward. Between 2000 and 2007, Cleveland suffered one of the largest proportional population losses in the country: the city shrank by 8%. Per capita income growth in Cleveland also lags behind cities like Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh. Since the early 1990s, the gap between Cleveland and these other cities has widened. As a regional economy deteriorates, the pressure for social services goes up.  read more »

These are unsettling times for almost all geographies. As the global recession deepens, there are signs of economic contraction that extend from the great financial centers of New York and London to the emerging market capitals of China, India and the Middle East. Within the United States as well, pain has been spreading from exurbs and suburbs to the heart of major cities, some of which just months ago saw themselves as immune to the economic contagion.

Without question, the damage to the economies of suburban regions such as the Inland Empire has been severe.  read more »

Personal experience made me a skeptic about racial progress. When I was 8, I was upset when our Japanese neighbors in Los Angeles were sent off to internment. In 1963, I traveled across the Deep South, awed by the totality of poverty, segregation and discrimination.

But the election of Barack Obama restored a degree of faith in the American experiment, and hope for an economic and social turnaround. I was inspired by the inauguration and am encouraged by initial and intended actions. I’m reasonably sure that significant reforms will occur.  read more »

Remember those innocent days last summer, when the biggest worry was high gas prices? Florida already felt the pinch as tourism dropped dramatically. Then, as the financial markets collapsed last fall, Florida’s leaders woke up and began talking about diversification. Like deer caught in the crosshairs of a rifle scope, economic boosters darted around looking for new safe places in the knowledge economy, ways to revitalize agriculture, and even exploring private space development to supplement the stuttering NASA program.  read more »

If you were paralyzed with shock at the October $700 billion dollar Congressional bailout, you may have missed the inclusion of a $478 million-fine-print allotment to Hollywood for tax incentives. A month later, in the midst of California’s on-going fiscal crisis, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed something called ‘the runaway production provision’, to utilize the bailout incentives to keep entertainment production in California and stimulate investment in motion pictures here.  read more »

These are not boom times for optimists. But I believe that – combined with knowledge of what has worked in the past – there are numerous signs that the economy may turn around faster than many think.  read more »

The 5th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey covers 265 metropolitan markets in six nations (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand), up from 88 in 4 nations in the first edition (see note below). This year’s edition includes a preface by Dr. Shlomo Angel of Princeton University and New York University, one of the world’s leading urban planning experts. Needless to say, there have been significant developments in housing affordability and house prices over the past year.  read more »