New Geography

Author: Aaron M. Renn

  • The OECD Reviews Chicago

    “Although still high in absolute terms, GDP and labor productivity growth rates are sluggish – both by US and international standards. The Chicago Tri-State metro-region’s contribution to national growth has slowed over the past decade and the region does not stand out as a top knowledge hub. Despite a dynamic and numerically large labor force, the region has experienced virtually no growth in the size of its prime working-age population and displays limited ability to attract and retain talent when compared to its US peers. More worrisome are the persistence of unemployment and the lack of sufficient job creation.” – OECD Territorial Review, The Chicago Tri-State Metropolitan Area

    The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an international organization that has its roots in the administration of Marshall Plan aid to rebuild Europe after World War II. The OECD was invited by the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce* to perform a “territorial review” of Chicago’s regional economy. I believe this is the first such review the OECD has ever undertaken in the United States. The results were released a couple months ago. Unfortunately, the OECD doesn’t make its reports available for free online, but the Chicagoland Chamber graciously sent me a copy. I did a read through of this inch-thick, 332-page report and wanted to share a few observations about it. As the quote at the top might indicate, this report, like Rahm Emanuel’s economic strategy, was fairly gloomy. My points will be topical and not an integrated narrative as I did not get to undertake as thorough a review as I might like.

    Performing the Study Demonstrates the Challenge

    The review focused on the Chicago metropolitan area, though frequently included the Milwaukee metro area as well. Wisconsin and Indiana were invited to participate in the project, which was notable given the city-centric nature of most civic development initiatives in Chicago and the fact that the lion’s share of the people and economic output are in Illinois. It’s a recognition of the need to think regionally. Wisconsin did participate, but Indiana declined. Explaining why, Indiana economic development chief Mitch Roob said, “We don’t do studies, we do deals.” Indiana also made it clear that it intended to differentiate itself from Illinois to attract jobs, and that luring jobs across the border from Illinois was a core plank in their economic development strategy. (Interestingly, as I’ve documented elsewhere, Indiana has rolled over and actually allowed Kentucky to financially exploit it on the other side of the state, so the behavior is not consistent).

    Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels loves to criticize Northwest Indiana for not getting its act together. Indeed, much of that criticism is fully warranted and Daniels has spent enough time up there to get an up close and personal look at regional dysfunction. Nevertheless, NWI functions as part of the metro Chicago economy. Its success is ultimately tied to Chicagoland’s overall success, not luring jobs from a stagnated region across the border. Indiana may have a few huge gas stations and liquor stores right on the border, but you can’t build an economy on that. (From 2004-2011, Mitch Daniels term in office, Indiana has actually lost a greater percentage of its jobs than Illinois and the migration of people from Illinois to Indiana also slowed, so the “Illinoyned” strategy obviously isn’t working). Indiana should clearly have come to the table for this review.

    The fact that Indiana wouldn’t even participate in a study just goes to show how difficult regional cooperation can be. In that regard, the undertaking of the OECD review itself shows the challenge facing the region. I should note that the report authors did a good job of trying to fairly include and represent Indiana despite the state government’s lack of participation.

    Interesting Statistics

    The OECD review amassed quite a bit of interesting statistical data on Chicago and puts them in the context of other major cities in the 34 countries that comprise in the OECD. I think that by itself made the review worth doing. I might suggest other cities take a look at this to determine if such a study would be relevant to them, particularly as international comparisons can be difficult to pull off.

    This report is a goldmine of stats and there’s way too much to list here, but a few things that jumped out at me:

    • The OECD report benchmarked labor productivity, which is less commonly looked at in economic studies. Chicago’s is above average but growing more slowly than average.
    • Chicago has trailed the nation in job growth. Had Chicago simply matched the national average in job growth since 1990, the region would have 600,000 more jobs than it does today.
    • There was quite a bit of sectoral analysis of Chicago’s economy. In fact, they actually normalize the sectoral composition of Chicago’s economy when looking at job growth to see if its under performance in job growth was due to concentration in slow growing sectors – but it was not.
    • Chicago is known for having America’s second largest business district, but it ranks only fifth out of the top ten regions in America for the percentage of its jobs in the core city. Between 1960 and 1990, over 96% of new regional jobs were created outside downtown.
    • There were many other interesting statistics around labor force participation, mobility of educated labor, elderly dependency ratios, educational attainment, poverty, patents, the structure of governments, taxation, etc.

    Excess High End Talent

    According to the OECD, Chicago suffers from a skills mismatch in its workforce. This is not just true at the bottom end of the economy as might be expected, but also at the top end, where there is a surplus of highly skilled labor:

    At the high end, there is a large pool of high-skilled, highly educated workers, in principle more than sufficient to fill the jobs available at that level … at the high-skill end, data for the tri-state region points to an apparent oversupply.

    To some extent this shouldn’t be a surprise. Chicago is a desirable city for people to live in, particularly for educated workers inside its heartland catchment area. As with other big city talent magnets, the economy doesn’t always supply the right employment for all the people who want to live there. The many articles about unemployment in Portland, for example, illustrates this, and Chicago is similar. In that regard, you might see the skills surplus as a sign of local strength.

    However, the skill concentration in Chicago isn’t producing the type of high end innovation economy seen elsewhere. As the OECD notes, “Indicators suggest that the Chicago Tri-State metro-region does not rank as highly among the US knowledge hubs as one might expect, given the size of its economy and population and its concentration of world-class research universities.”

    Also, Chicago may not be as attractive a talent hub as its aggregate numbers indicate. Again per the OECD:

    To be sure, the Chicago Tri-State metro-region remains an attractive place for many migrants, but it is less attractive than many of its US metro-region peers. Moreover, if the analysis is confined to highly educated people of prime working age (25+, with at least a bachelor’s degree), then the picture is even more problematic. During 2005-09, more such people moved into the area than left it, but the net gain was relatively small compared with other large US metro-regions. Los Angeles, for example, benefited from a net gain of nearly 80,000 highly educated people in 2009, compared with 3,500 for the Chicago Tri-State metro-region.

    When you under-perform as a talent magnet and still can’t put high skilled labor to good use, that’s a definite sign of trouble. This was one thing that was eye opening for me in the study as I’d previously assumed the high end of the market was in pretty good shape and that skill mismatch problems were the result of a large under-educated population vs. open jobs requiring mid-tier skills.

    Policy Prescriptions

    The OECD’s recommendations were not nearly as strong as its assessment of the region’s conditions. This shouldn’t be surprising as it is easy to look at data and see what may be wrong, but it is not always obvious what to do about it. The recommendations fall into five broad categories:

    • Better Skills Matching
    • Improving Innovation and Entrepreneurship
    • Investments in Transportation and Logistics
    • More Green Industry Growth
    • More Effective Institutional Arrangements

    First off, including “green growth” as one of only five major chapter headings is a joke. The aggregate number of jobs identified as specifically green is small. And as I’ve noted many times, there’s no such thing as green industry. Pretty soon there will just be industry again – it will all be green. So if Chicago and the US aren’t doing well at today’s industries, why would we think they would do any better at tomorrow’s? “Green” isn’t some sort of fairy dust you can sprinkle on and work wonders with. If anything, the acceleration of transition to more green practices will only drive more manufacturing offshore, exactly as it did with light bulbs. The track record of trying to create “green jobs” almost everywhere has been poor and has failed to live up to the hype, so I can’t believe the OECD is doubling down on this snake oil.

    For the other areas, the OECD doesn’t break much new ground, though does highlight some interesting international case studies of regions getting it right. The sections more or less regurgitate the laundry list of organizations and initiatives already in place, then tag on “do more and coordinate better.” Examples include, “create region-wide capacity to match skills supply with demand” and “broaden the innovation focus [to include] non-science-and-technology-based innovation.”

    By contrast, there was little focus on what counterproductive initiatives might be trimmed. While, for example, the report notes that many of the excessive numbers of local governmental units probably should be eliminated or merged, it doesn’t really look at how many of the alphabet soup of various non-governmental civic development groups might likewise be better off euthanized. Given the unified civic leadership nexus of Chicago, this should in theory be much easier than killing off governments, which are famously resistant to elimination. It’s hard for civic sector leadership to scold state legislatures about the need to consolidate when they can’t even do it themselves. This shows that the OECD had to deal with local political reality, so it probably pulled a lot punches in the recommendations. Statements of raw flattery such as “All key public and private stakeholders are keenly aware of what needs to be done to address these issues effectively” show the extent to which the OECD wanted to avoid ruffling feathers and challenging the Chicagoland status quo, which is disappointing.

    I might also take issue with the way the problems were attributed to these structural factors without addressing at any great length many of the clear drivers of Chicago’s under-performance. For example, Chicago is the regional capital of a greater Midwest that has been struggling as a whole. It’s tough to swim upstream against that. (I’ll have more to say on other underlying factors in a subsequent analysis of my own).

    In short, this report got it half right in giving us a very good look at the current conditions, strengths, challenges, and international comparisons. Where it lagged was in fully articulating the structural landscape driving the under-performance and developing compelling strategies for turning the ship around. Still, if I were a region out there looking for a good snapshot of where I stood in the marketplace, the OECD would be on my list of people to call.

    * Disclosure: I won a competition sponsored by the Chicagoland Chamber in 2009.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs and the founder of Telestrian, a data analysis and mapping tool. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.

    Chicago skyline photo by Bigstockphoto.com.

  • Goodbye, Chicago

    Odd as it may seem for someone known as The Urbanophile, I actually grew up in the countryside. I spent most of my childhood on a country road about four miles outside the town of Laconia, Indiana, population 50.  I always used to get confused when John Cougar sang about living in a small town, because I knew he was from Seymour, and with over 15,000 people that seemed a big town in my book.

    Today I still laugh at these urbanites who brag about their green ways like having “rain barrels” to catch reclaimed rainwater from the roof for watering their yard.  For many years that’s what I drank growing up, as we didn’t have city water supplies and had to rely on our cistern.

    After graduating high school I went to Indiana University. Then armed with my bachelors it was on to Chicago, the result of an accident: that’s where my job offer came from.  I had no strong feelings on where to live other than that I didn’t want to go back to my home town. In Chicago I ended up, like many young professionals, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood on the North Side. Though this too was pretty much an accident. I had relatives who lived there and invited me to stay with them when looking for an apartment.

    For many people from small town or suburban environments, going to college is a time of tremendous personal transformation and growth. I didn’t have that experience. For me, the great transformation came from moving to Chicago. Exiting the L in the Loop on my first day going to work, wearing a suit, surrounded by tall buildings and crowds of people, I felt like I was on the set of a movie. It was an almost surreal experience.

    Though urban life was new to me, I fell in love with it. And I was transformed by the experience. I knew nothing about culture, food, fashion, architecture, actually relating to people with different backgrounds from me, traveling, or how to get around in anything other than a car.  Beyond merely learning how to go to work every day, living in Chicago provided a non-stop stream of stimulating and educational experiences that helped me grow as a person.

    But it wasn’t just me who was being  transformed. The urban renaissance of Chicago was underway by the time I arrived in 1992, but it was very early in the process. I recall recruiters for the company I worked for bragging about how Chicago was now an outpost of that uber-hip coffee chain Starbucks. The gentrified areas were still largely confined to a narrow strip along the north Lakefront. Many of the places that later became yuppie playgrounds were then ethnic enclaves or undeveloped. Some were still close to slums.  On the outer reaches of Lincoln Park itself, streetwalkers openly plied their trade along North Ave.

    The 90s were heady a heady decade for  Chicago. The city, like select other major urban metros around the country, exploded with new growth and attracted many new migrants. Chicago experienced perhaps the largest urban condo building boom in America, transforming huge tracts of the city.  The quality on offer improved radically.  The population increased, and the city even added more jobs than Houston. It was a great time to be a Chicagoan, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

    But come the 2000s, the condo boom continued but an economic and political malaise  had clearly set in. Even new mayor Rahm Emanuel has labeled it a lost decade. As the decade ended, I had increasingly made up my mind to leave the city, now the place where I’d spend nearly as many years as my native Indiana. Early this year, I left Chicago behind.

    What made me decide to leave?  There are a few factors, some more personal than others.

    The first is that I simply had done Chicago. The Chicago experience had been transformational when I got there, but after nearly 20 years it was getting stale. It was just more of the same. It was time for new challenges.

    I was also motivated by the bleak economy. I owned a condo, an  anchor that left me at great risk of getting marooned in the city, a phenomenon recently written about by Crain’s Chicago Business. I was willing to sell near the bottom of the market to avoid the risk of getting stranded. There is no clear sense of an imminent major turnaround. There are huge unfunded liabilities at all levels of government in the region and state. The city’s economy seems to have lost a clear raison d’etre. No longer the “city of big shoulders”, it is losing out to urban areas with stronger economic identities — New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington and, even emerging cities like Houston.  So in the end I decided it was worth paying a “breakup penalty” to get out. Interestingly, no one, not even my alderman, suggested I was wrong in this.

    Lastly, I no longer saw Chicago as a good platform for my personal ambitions. The city likes to see itself as occupying a “sweet spot” as a legitimate urban oriented big city with a lower price tag and higher quality of life. Yet for me Chicago was a “sour spot” that offered neither the opportunities of say a New York, Washington, or San Francisco, but still came with a high price tag. I would rather live in a small city that’s dirt cheap where I can have more impact, or in a place like New York where the cost of living might be greater, but the opportunities are matchless.

    That is ultimately where the city will stand or fall. I’m but one example, but it’s a decision repeated with various results day after day: is this where I’ll plant my flag, seek my fortune and dreams, raise my family, or build my business?  Chicago has to be seen as a success platform for both people and businesses. The demographic and economic results of the 2000s suggest it is losing that battle for the moment, though given the 90s results, it is certainly possible to think that might change again tomorrow.

    As for me, Chicago will always hold a special place in my heart and I’ll treasure my experiences there.   But for now it’s on to new adventures.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs and the founder of Telestrian, a data analysis and mapping tool. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.

    Chicago skyline photo by Bigstockphoto.com.

  • Census Estimates: Slowing Metropolitan Growth and the Future of the Exurbs

    Recently the Census Bureau released 2011 county and metro area population estimates that showed overall slowing population growth and particularly showing slow to halting growth in exurban counties.

    Someone once said to me about Chicago’s Mayor Daley that if he did something you liked, he was a visionary genius leader, but if he did something you hated, he was a corrupt machine dictator.

    That seems to be how too many urbanists view the Census Bureau.

    I’ll come back to the exurbs in a minute, but first a look at a map of metro area growth last year:



    Metro area percent change in population, July 1, 2010 to July 1, 2011. Source: Census Estimates via Telestrian

    Here’s the county map:



    County percent change in population, July 1, 2010 to July 1, 2011. Source: Census Estimates via Telestrian

    Someone once said to me about Chicago’s Mayor Daley that if he did something you liked, he was a visionary genius leader, but if he did something you hated, he was a corrupt machine dictator.

    That seems to be how too many urbanists view the Census Bureau.

    Back in the 90s when the Census estimates showed cities growing more slowly than boosters believed, they pressured the Census Bureau into adjusting the estimates to provide higher values. As it turned out, in most cases even the original estimates for cities proved inflated. In fact, the 90s were actually better for a lot of major cities than the 2000s were (e.g, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago). This led to a new narrative that the Census had undercounted cities somehow.

    Now this new data shows slowing exurban growth. All of a sudden, the Census Bureau has become once more a source of Gospel Truth, and I’ve seen many articles suggesting that the exurbs are dead, killed by rising gas prices and new Millennial preferences.

    Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

    Yes, exurban growth slowed recently. While cities on the whole fared more poorly than expected in the last census, we did see strong growth in downtowns and adjacent areas. I myself wrote about improving migration trends for core cities. That’s good news worth celebrating for cities. But don’t overstate the case.

    I have a different though admittedly speculative take on the exurbs. I think a chunk of the fringe migration was from very low end home builders skipping out beyond established jurisdictions into unincorporated territory with few buildings restrictions. They threw up dirt cheap homes there and often sold them to people with marginal credit and income who had no business buying homes, using a variety of gimmicks to do so. (I know someone who sold homes for one of these builders, so I heard about some of these). Loose credit policies and government guarantees fueled this. The housing crash killed this market. Now that subsidies for this type of growth aren’t available, so that market is probably never coming back.

    But when the economy improves and the market normalizes, I’d expect some level of suburbanization to resume. Part of the logic is simple math. If you add up the population of the municipalities of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Washington, Portland, and Miami you only get 20 million people. That’s only about 20% of what the Census Bureau is projecting for just population growth by 2050. With the difficulties of building in urban areas, there’s no way to accommodate just the new growth even if everybody wanted into the city. In other words, there’s just no way there is going to be some massive back to the city movement. I hate to break it to you, but that’s reality.

    Here’s the full list of large metros, sorted by population growth percentage:

    Row Metro Area 2010 2011 Total Change Pct Change
    1 Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX
    1,728,247
    1,783,519
    55,272
    3.20%
    2 Raleigh-Cary, NC
    1,137,297
    1,163,515
    26,218
    2.31%
    3 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
    6,400,511
    6,526,548
    126,037
    1.97%
    4 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX
    2,153,891
    2,194,927
    41,036
    1.91%
    5 Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
    5,976,470
    6,086,538
    110,068
    1.84%
    6 Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC
    1,763,969
    1,795,472
    31,503
    1.79%
    7 Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO
    2,554,569
    2,599,504
    44,935
    1.76%
    8 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
    5,609,150
    5,703,948
    94,798
    1.69%
    9 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL
    5,578,080
    5,670,125
    92,045
    1.65%
    10 Oklahoma City, OK
    1,258,111
    1,278,053
    19,942
    1.59%
    11 Salt Lake City, UT
    1,128,269
    1,145,905
    17,636
    1.56%
    12 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
    3,447,886
    3,500,026
    52,140
    1.51%
    13 New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
    1,173,572
    1,191,089
    17,517
    1.49%
    14 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL
    2,139,615
    2,171,360
    31,745
    1.48%
    15 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA
    4,245,005
    4,304,997
    59,992
    1.41%
    16 Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN
    1,594,885
    1,617,142
    22,257
    1.40%
    17 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA
    5,286,296
    5,359,205
    72,909
    1.38%
    18 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA
    2,232,896
    2,262,605
    29,709
    1.33%
    19 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL
    2,788,151
    2,824,724
    36,573
    1.31%
    20 Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ
    4,209,070
    4,263,236
    54,166
    1.29%
    21 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
    1,841,787
    1,865,450
    23,663
    1.28%
    22 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
    3,105,115
    3,140,069
    34,954
    1.13%
    23 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
    4,343,381
    4,391,037
    47,656
    1.10%
    24 Indianapolis-Carmel, IN
    1,760,826
    1,778,568
    17,742
    1.01%
    25 Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA
    2,154,583
    2,176,235
    21,652
    1.00%
    26 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI
    3,285,913
    3,318,486
    32,573
    0.99%
    27 Columbus, OH
    1,840,584
    1,858,464
    17,880
    0.97%
    28 Jacksonville, FL
    1,348,702
    1,360,251
    11,549
    0.86%
    29 Las Vegas-Paradise, NV
    1,953,927
    1,969,975
    16,048
    0.82%
    30 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
    12,844,371
    12,944,801
    100,430
    0.78%
    31 Richmond, VA
    1,260,396
    1,269,380
    8,984
    0.71%
    32 Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN
    1,285,891
    1,294,849
    8,958
    0.70%
    33 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
    4,559,372
    4,591,112
    31,740
    0.70%
    34 Kansas City, MO-KS
    2,039,766
    2,052,676
    12,910
    0.63%
    35 Memphis, TN-MS-AR
    1,318,089
    1,325,605
    7,516
    0.57%
    36 Baltimore-Towson, MD
    2,714,546
    2,729,110
    14,564
    0.54%
    37 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
    18,919,649
    19,015,900
    96,251
    0.51%
    38 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD
    5,971,589
    5,992,414
    20,825
    0.35%
    39 Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI
    9,472,584
    9,504,753
    32,169
    0.34%
    40 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI
    1,556,953
    1,562,216
    5,263
    0.34%
    41 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC
    1,674,502
    1,679,894
    5,392
    0.32%
    42 Birmingham-Hoover, AL
    1,129,068
    1,132,264
    3,196
    0.28%
    43 Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN
    2,132,415
    2,138,038
    5,623
    0.26%
    44 St. Louis, MO-IL
    2,814,722
    2,817,355
    2,633
    0.09%
    45 Pittsburgh, PA
    2,357,951
    2,359,746
    1,795
    0.08%
    46 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT
    1,212,491
    1,213,255
    764
    0.06%
    47 Rochester, NY
    1,054,723
    1,055,278
    555
    0.05%
    48 Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA
    1,601,065
    1,600,224
    -841
    -0.05%
    49 Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY
    1,135,293
    1,134,039
    -1,254
    -0.11%
    50 Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI
    4,290,722
    4,285,832
    -4,890
    -0.11%
    51 Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH
    2,075,540
    2,068,283
    -7,257
    -0.35%

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile, where this piece originally appeared. Renn is the founder of Telestrian, a data analysis and mapping tool used to create the maps seen here.

  • Census Bureau Releases Latest Take on America’s Urban Areas

    We are used to dealing with jurisdictional boundaries when assessing and comparing cities. These are often either municipal areas or metropolitan statistical areas (which are based on entire counties). But these can have little relevance to the amount of area in a given city-region that is actually urban in nature. This makes apples to apples across regions difficult.

    Once a decade though the Census Bureau gives us a more detailed look. They release definitions of so-called “urbanized areas” that attempt to look at just the amount of land that is actually urban in form. In theory this would allow for better apples to apples comparisons between regions. Unfortunately, most data is not sliced this way, so we only get this glimpse. Here’s the map of the new 2010 urbanized area definitions:

    Wendell Cox has a breakdown of the largest urbanized areas that includes density. He also published a historical review that tracks urbanized area population and density since 1950 for the largest city regions. For more thoughts on urbanized areas, see Nate Berg’s take over at Atlantic Cities.

    I don’t want to try to offer a complete analysis of this right now, but one thing that really jumped out at me was the very low densities of some southern boomtowns like Atlanta (1,707/sq. mi) and Charlotte (1,685/sq. mi.). Contrast with even Houston (2,979/sq. mi.) and Dallas (2,879/sq. mi) and see the difference. Atlanta is already showing serious signs of weakness vs. the Texas mega-metros and I wonder if this is part of the reason why. It also makes me wonder if Charlotte might someday suffer in a similar manner if its growth ever flames out.

  • Buffalo, You Are Not Alone

    It hurts. When a bigtime Harvard economist writes off your city as a loss, and says America should turn its back on you, it hurts. But Ed Glaeser’s dart tossing is but the smallest taste of what it’s like to live in place like Buffalo. To choose to live in the Rust Belt is to commit to enduring a continuous stream of bad press and mockery.

    I write mostly about the Midwest, but whether we think Midwest or Rust Belt or something else altogether, the story is the same. From Detroit to Cleveland, Buffalo to Birmingham, there are cities across this country that are struggling for a host of historic and contemporary reasons. We’ve moved from the industrial to the global age, and many cities truly have lost their original economic raison d’etre. Reviving them requires the hard work of rebuilding and repositioning them for a new era, a daunting task to be sure.

    But beyond their legitimate challenges, these cities also face the double burden that they are unloved by much of America, and all too often by their own residents. They are forlorn and largely forgotten, except as cautionary tales or as the butt of jokes.

    These cities aren’t sexy. They aren’t hip. They don’t have the cachet of a Portland or Seattle. The creative class isn’t flocking. They are behind in the new economy, in the green economy. Look at any survey of the “best” cities and find the usual suspects of New York, Austin, San Francisco. Look at yet another Forbes “ten worst” list and see Cleveland and Toledo kicked again when they are down. They are portrayed as hopeless basket cases with no hope and no future.

    But I reject that notion. I do not believe in the idea that these cities are beyond repair and unworthy of attention—or affection.

    Someone asked me once why I bother. Why does it matter that these cities come back? Why not just let nature take its course? Why not let Buffalo die, and its people scatter to the winds?

    It’s because it doesn’t just matter to a few proud people in Buffalo, it matters to America. The idea of disposable cities is one that is incompatible with a prosperous and sustainable future for our country. Fleeing Rust Belt cities for neo-Southern boomtowns is nothing more than sprawl writ large. Rather than just abandoning our cores, we’ll now abandon entire regions in the quest for new greenfields to despoil. We can’t have a truly prosperous and sustainable America with only a dozen or so superstar cities that renew themselves from age to age while others bloom like a flower for a season, then wither away. An America littered with an ever increasing number of carcasses of once great cities is not one most of us want to contemplate.

    But beyond that, it’s because I believe we can make it happen. Look closely and the change is already in the air. Globalization taketh away—but it also giveth. Cities like Buffalo or St. Louis now have access to things that even people in Chicago didn’t not that long ago. Amazon, iTunes, and a host of specialty online retailers put the best of the world within reach. Where once you couldn’t get a good cup of coffee, there are now micro-roasters aplenty. Where once your choices were Bud, Miller, or Coors, an array of specialty brews are on tap, often brewed locally. Restaurants are better, with food grown locally and responsibly. Slowly but surely the ship is turning on sustainability, with nascent bike cultures in almost every city, LEED certified buildings, recycling programs, and more. House by house, rehab by rehab, neighborhoods in these cities are starting to come to life.

    Where once moving to one of these cities would have been likened to getting exiled to Siberia, it’s now shocking how little you actually give up. And for every high-end boutique or black tie gala you miss, you get something back in low-cost and easy living. The talent pool may be shallower, but it’s a lot more connected.

    Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s still a long and hard journey ahead. And not every place is going to make it, particularly among cities without the minimum scale. We have to face that reality. But more of them will revive than people think.

    That’s because a new generation of urbanists believes in these cities again. These people aren’t bitter, burdened by the memories of yesteryear and all the goodness that was lost. The city to them isn’t the place with the downtown department store their mother used to take them to in white gloves for tea. It isn’t the place full of good manufacturing jobs with lifetime middle class employment for those without college degrees. The city isn’t a faded nostalgia or a longing for an imagined past. Most of them are young and never knew that world.

    No, this new generation of urbanists sees these cities with fresh eyes. They see the decay, yes, but also the opportunity—and the possibilities for the present and future. To them this is Rust Belt Chic. It’s the place artists can dream of owning a house. Where they can live in a place with a bit of an authentic edge and real character. Where people can indulge their passion for renovating old architecture without a seven-figure budget. Where they have a chance to make a difference—to be a producer, not just a consumer of urban life, and a new urban future. Above all, these people, natives or newcomers, have a deep and abiding passion and love for the place they’ve chosen—yes, chosen—to live.

    Still, it can get lonely, and often depressing. It so often seems like one step forward, two steps back. Making change happen can seem like pushing a rock uphill, like you are up there on some far frontier of the country alone, fighting a quixotic battle. Every historic building demolished, every quality infill project sabotaged by NIMBY’s, every massively subsidized business-as-usual boondoggle, every DOT-scarred transport project is a discouragement.

    But Buffalo, you are not alone. It’s not just you, it’s cities and people across across this country, from St. Louis to Pittsburgh to Milwaukee to Cincinnati to New Orleans to Birmingham, fighting to build a better future. There’s a new movement in all these cities, made up of passionate urbanists committed to a different and better path. Sometimes they are few in number, but they are mighty in spirit— and they are making a difference. Together, they and you can win the battle and make the change happen.

    It won’t be easy. The road will be long. Some, like the great cathedral builders of Europe, may never see completely the fruit of their labors. But the long-ago pioneers who founded these great cities never got to see them in their first glory either. We’ve come full circle. We are present again at the re-founding of our cities. This is the task, the duty, the calling that a new generation has chosen as its own, to write the history of their city anew.

    Go make history again, Buffalo.

    This article originally appeared in Buffalo Rising on June 14, 2010.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.

    Taste of Buffalo photo by Bigstockphoto.com.

  • The Great Reordering of the Urban Hierarchy

    A delegation from Chicago is in Brussels this week to sell the city as a tourist destination in advance of the forthcoming NATO Summit. A Phil Rosenthal column explains that the city has a long way to go:

    "I don’t think most people in the U.K.have any idea where Chicago is," said Rowan Bridge, a BBC Radio producer who last year spent six months based in Washington D.C. "Most people in England think the United States consists of three cities — New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles — because they’re the ones that run the media, they’re the ones where the celebrities hang out, they’re the ones where the politicians are."

    Rosenthal notes that Chicago has long worried about its image, and it has never been a top global tourist destination, but a recent drop in international visitors highlights the challenge even a colossus like Chicago faces in getting its word out in a competitive global economy.

    Reading this, it once again strikes me that the old urban hierarchy is being reordered by globalization and the dramatic expansion of the US federal government, to the disadvantage of Chicago and other cities. This, I believe, helps account for its recent struggle.

    Joel Kotkin has tirelessly documented the remorseless rise of Washington, DC, rain or shine, in a manner defiant of business cycles. Washington, once a sort of commercial backwater, is now becoming much more a national capital of the type other countries have had.

    Meanwhile, back in the "spiky world," the peaks thrive while the valleys suffer. But it is the highest peaks that thrive most of all. Hence we’ve seen the emergence of a robust NYC post-9/11. It seems to have become if anything more the center of the universe, a huge financial center, media center, fashion center, cultural center, etc. – and adding to it new strength such as its emergence as America’s #2 tech startup location after Silicon Valley. New York is at an all time population high and even withing about 60,000 jobs of its all time peak employment.

    So we have New York entrenched as America’s first city, and Washington, DC increasingly its new "Second City." Los Angeles, which seems to have never quite recovered from the early 90s defense draw down, and Chicago with its 2000s malaise, seem to be the victims of DC’s rise. Another loser is Boston, which has seen its status as a financial hub decline and whose Route 128 corridor of tech, having first lost out to Silicon Valley, now appears to be losing out to NYC.

    Second tier cities in developed countries may indeed suffer as globalization proceeds. Zipf’s Law has historically governed the hierarchy of urban population (and thus proxied for overall urban importance) within particular geographies. Richard Florida and his colleagues showed that Zipf’s Law does not apply on a global basis, possibly because of the difficulty of migration between countries.

    But many other migration type barriers have declined over time, and it’s easy to conceptualize that many types of activities that once operated largely in purely domestic hierarchies now complete in global ones. If true, this would suggest that some cities, like LA, Chicago, and Boston, which ranked high in a national hierarchy might be pretty far down the list in a global one. Those cities with the greatest advantages of talent, high end specializations, and the greatest global connections would be best positioned to succeed in making the transition. We can also note the rise of new cities of importance in the BRIC counties, the Middle East, and other parts of the "developing world" that would bring new competition to traditional developed world power players, particularly for those that were already secondary centers in their own country.

    To see this playing out, contrast the differing life histories of Chicago and Hong Kong, which were effectively founded at the same time.

    I would describe this as a mix of observation and hypothesis at this point, but would love to see more formal analysis. And of course we’ll see how the trends play out. Even if true, we may not be at the end of this Great Reordering. With Washington continuing to soar, we are seeing shifts in the balance of power even with New York, such as the increasing importance of Washington as a media center. Though the inexorable mathematical logic of the budget may crimp Washington at some point, it’s certainly not impossible that some time in the future it may take its place as a London-like truly dominant national capital.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.

    Photo by Doug Siefken

  • The Sorry State of American Transport

    We constantly read about the infrastructure crisis in America. I’ll have more to say on this at a future date, but it is pretty clear that we need to spend more money in a whole lot of areas: airports, roads and bridges, public transportation, and more.

    Yet it’s very easy to see that so much of what ails transport has nothing to do with a lack of funds and everything to do with a lack of will. I took a train ride on the Northeast corridor last week that really drove it home to me.

    Start with the sorry state of Penn Station in New York City, America’s busiest train station. (In fact, it’s the busiest transportation facility of any type in the United States, if Wikipedia can be believed). Yes, the place is a depressing underground dump. Yes, there used to be a glorious train station there that was demolished in the 1960s. Yes, we probably need to invest many billions in upgrades.

    Yet is it a lack of funds that make the three agencies that call it home – Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, and the Long Island Railroad – act as though the others don’t exist? The three railroads have completely separate ticketing areas, signage systems, etc. This is hardly the only case in America. For some reason, Amtrak seems to despise sharing ticket agents with other carriers. There are separate windows for Amtrak and commuter lines everywhere I’ve been. Given that many journeys include both commuter and inter-city segments, this seems crazy. If you can’t have integrated ticketing (and actually, I don’t see why you can’t), at least you should be able to have a single agent help you.

    The worst example of this I know is in Providence, where Amtrak monopolizes the four ticket windows. If you want to buy an MBTA T ticket, you have to go to a cafe next door. This tiny little coffee shop found a way to sell both pastries and train tickets (albeit from separate registers), so why can’t Amtrak figure out how to sell two kinds of tickets?

    Also, as near as I can tell, there’s no way to actually get your Amtrak ticket online. You can book a reservation, but then you need to get a physical ticket printed at the station, either from a kiosk or an agent. (If there’s a way to avoid this, please let me know).

    I decided to get my ticket at the window. The line was very short and I was early in any case. When I got there, some guy with his kids was at the window screaming at the agent about a problem with their tickets. I chalked this up to one of those cases where the frustrations of travel just cause somebody to snap. But then as I walked up to the window, the person next to me was also having a similar problem with their ticket and was having an animated discussion with an agent who didn’t seem to care. Fortunately, I had no such issues, but the agent I had to talk to was extremely surly and kept asking me to repeat myself over and over. Who would want to put themselves through such an experience? Customer service is clearly something that should also be within Amtrak’s control.

    Amtrak markets themselves as having wi-fi. But on the train itself, as anyone who has ridden the NEC knows, the wi-fi is basically unusable. How much capital investment would it take to get working wi-fi?

    In short, though the facilities can somewhat be excused as resulting from insufficient capital funding and bad decisions decades ago, there’s so much that could be done right now to upgrade the passenger experience it’s not even funny.

    It’s the same with airports. While a few American cities like Indianapolis and Detroit have upgraded their terminals, too many key gateways remain depressingly dreary and non-functional. While some overseas places like Heathrow certainly would give any American airport a run for its money in the Hall of Shame, the general experience of flying to someplace like Madrid, Singapore, or Tokyo is like night and day versus the US.

    Key among the worst offenders again is New York City, especially LaGuardia. Matt Chaban at the New York Observer recently wrote a piece that is a good overview of the depressing state: “Terminal Condition – How New York’s Airports Crashed and Burned.”

    This is certainly not news to anyone who has flown to New York. But again, the vast billions it would take to replace these decrepit facilities is only part of the problem. Nobody forces America to put its passengers through the “TSA experience.” Last time I flew I was delayed at security while agents patted down some guy that looked like he was around 85 years old who apparently hadn’t stripped down quite far enough to go through the full body scanner. Somehow other advanced nations manage to run safe air travel systems without resorting to this.

    While we are waiting around for funding issues to be resolved, wouldn’t it be nice if our governments and various travel companies actually focused on fixing some of these straightforward problems with coordination, ticketing, and customer service? It’s hard to take their capital requests seriously if they aren’t going to do what they can now.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.

    Photo By Kyle Gradinger, Amtrak Keystone Snowstorm I. Amtrak AEM-7 locomotive 904 leads a Keystone Corridor train through the snow in Rebel Hill, King of Prussia, PA.

  • Metro Job Recovery in 2011

    The latest BLS release for metro area unemployment has full year averages for 2011 available, so we can see which cities added the most jobs last year. On the whole, it was a much better year for metros than we’ve seen in the recent past. The national economy added jobs, and all but two large metros did as well. New York City added the most jobs of any region, but given that it is far and away the biggest city in America, it should do so. NYC ranked only the middle of the pack on a percentage growth basis. On that measure, Austin, Texas was number one.

    The top percentage gainer in the Midwest region? Detroit, Michigan. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising either, as manufacturing is pro-cyclical.

    Here is the performance of the metro areas in the United States with more than one million people, ranked by percentage change. The data is also available in spreadsheet form.

    Rank Metro Area 2010 2011 Total Change Pct Change
    1 Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 769.5 791.4 21.9 2.85%
    2 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 855.2 878.2 23.0 2.69%
    3 Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 2528.1 2593.1 65.0 2.57%
    4 Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC 807.5 826.7 19.2 2.38%
    5 Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 734.3 751.7 17.4 2.37%
    6 Salt Lake City, UT 608.1 622.0 13.9 2.29%
    7 Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI 1737.1 1775.3 38.2 2.20%
    8 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 2860.9 2921.7 60.8 2.13%
    9 Raleigh-Cary, NC 498.1 508.6 10.5 2.11%
    10 Pittsburgh, PA 1125.3 1148.6 23.3 2.07%
    11 Oklahoma City, OK 558.5 569.6 11.1 1.99%
    12 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 1112.0 1132.3 20.3 1.83%
    13 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 968.8 986.1 17.3 1.79%
    14 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 1697.1 1727.1 30.0 1.77%
    15 Baltimore-Towson, MD 1274.0 1293.5 19.5 1.53%
    16 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 1641.2 1666.1 24.9 1.52%
    17 Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO 1193.5 1211.6 18.1 1.52%
    18 Columbus, OH 903.3 916.9 13.6 1.51%
    19 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 2185.6 2218.3 32.7 1.50%
    20 Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ 1688.9 1712.8 23.9 1.42%
    21 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 2272.6 2302.9 30.3 1.33%
    22 New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 519.1 526.0 6.9 1.33%
    23 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 843.0 853.2 10.2 1.21%
    24 Richmond, VA 602.4 609.5 7.1 1.18%
    25 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 8306.8 8403.9 97.1 1.17%
    26 Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 871.1 881.2 10.1 1.16%
    27 Jacksonville, FL 583.1 589.6 6.5 1.11%
    28 Rochester, NY 503.1 508.7 5.6 1.11%
    29 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 2962.9 2995.5 32.6 1.10%
    30 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT – Metro 533.2 538.9 5.7 1.07%
    31 Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI 4246.6 4291.4 44.8 1.05%
    32 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI 805.8 814.1 8.3 1.03%
    33 Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 592.9 599.0 6.1 1.03%
    34 Kansas City, MO-KS 971.6 981.4 9.8 1.01%
    35 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL 1001.1 1011.0 9.9 0.99%
    36 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 589.8 595.4 5.6 0.95%
    37 Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 980.8 989.4 8.6 0.88%
    38 Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 538.2 542.7 4.5 0.84%
    39 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 1880.2 1894.3 14.1 0.75%
    40 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH – Metro 2426.5 2443.3 16.8 0.69%
    41 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 5126.8 5162.2 35.4 0.69%
    42 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 1222.8 1231.2 8.4 0.69%
    43 St. Louis, MO-IL 1286.9 1295.4 8.5 0.66%
    44 Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 803.6 808.3 4.7 0.58%
    45 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 1125.9 1129.7 3.8 0.34%
    46 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 2697.0 2705.9 8.9 0.33%
    47 Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA – Metro 541.3 542.8 1.5 0.28%
    48 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 735.2 736.8 1.6 0.22%
    49 Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH 991.1 992.7 1.6 0.16%
    50 Birmingham-Hoover, AL 489.5 488.6 -0.9 -0.18%
    51 Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 809.9 802.0 -7.9 -0.98%

    This first appeared at Aaron’s blog, Urbanophile.com.

  • On Jane Jacobs: “Generating and Preserving Diversity”

    “To understand cities, we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena.”

    “Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.” -Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

    One of Jane Jacobs’s great insights was the importance of diversity and a mixture of uses to urban success.  Cities seem to be natural generators of diversity, but not universally so. Some places are lively and bustling while others remain inert. Jacobs attempted to diagnose this by identifying four key items she believed needed to be in place to actively generate diversity in an urban district:

    1. The district must serve more than one primary use, and preferably more than two.
    2. Most blocks must be short.
    3. Buildings must be mingled in their age, condition, and required economic yield.
    4. A dense concentration of people.

    Some of these, such as block size, would appear to be relatively stable over time. Others respond dynamically, either bringing about or destroying diversity.  In the current “global city” era, we see two countervailing trends here, one tending to support diversity, the other to destroy it.

    On the plus side, we’ve seen many formerly monolithic central business districts such as Chicago’s Loop or Downtown Manhattan see additional primary uses come into being. For example, Downtown Manhattan has seen a residential population boom. Chicago’s Loop also has vastly more residents than in years past, as well as the emergence of the so-called “Loop U”, a collection of colleges that collectively have over 60,000 students. Tourism has also taken on a more important role.

    Similar trends have appeared in other cities. We see what were once 9-5 office districts or down at the heels industrial zones near the center take on several new primary uses, notably residential, educational, tourism, entertainment, and cultural hub activities.  These new primary uses bring different people, on different schedules, into the districts in question to help fuel a significant increase in liveliness and diversity.  This is exciting news for those of us who love cities.

    On the other hand, we’ve also witnessed what may be a longer term threat. Jacobs also noted that diversity tended to destroy itself, particularly as one use becomes dominant and bids up rents to the point where other uses flee.  This results in a single-use office district, restaurant strip, etc.

    The rise of the global city has seen outsized returns to those who participate in selected functions such as specialized finance or producer services. This has led to large cost increases in these cities which has displaced non-high end functions. Central cities are increasingly playgrounds for the rich, lacking in the diversity of people and uses that were once there.

    From a Jacobsian perspective, one troubling consequence has been the reduction in the supply of older, obsolete buildings with lower economic yield requirements. Large numbers of older buildings, such as Class C office space or warehouses, have been demolished and replaced, or else converted into high end uses such as luxury condos. This is reducing the supply of lower rent buildings, undermining one of the pillars of Jacobs foundations of diversity. She noted how the hot areas tended to move around in cities as uses were displaced. So perhaps it is unsurprising that various districts in Brooklyn, for example, have become hipster and artistic havens while Manhattan has become more uniformly upscale and placid.

    Whether or not these global city effects will ultimately lead to a self-undermining success is unknown. But the loss or upscale conversion of older and lower rent buildings in our central cities, while something to celebrate in many respects, should be a long term concern to those who care about truly sustainable urban diversity, especially if taken too far.

    This piece originally appeared as a part of the City Builder Book Club’s discussion of Jane Jacobs’s "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

  • The Return of the Monkish Virtues

    “[The author of Leviticus] posits the existence of one supreme God who contends neither with a higher realm nor with competing peers. The world of demons is abolished; there is no struggle with autonomous foes, because there are none. With the demise of the demons, only one creature remains with ‘demonic’ power – the human being. Endowed with free will, human power is greater than any attributed to humans by pagan society. Not only can one defy God but, in Priestly language, one can drive God out of his sanctuary. In this respect, humans have replaced demons…..[The author of Leviticus] also posits that the pollution of the sanctuary leads to YHWH’s abandonment of Israel and its ejection from the land….Israel pollutes the land; the land becomes infertile; Israel is forced to leave.” – Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus


    “Pollution ideas are the product of an ongoing political debate about the ideal society. All mysterious pollutions are dangerous, but to focus on the physical danger and to deride the reasoning that attaches it to particular transgressions is to miss the lesson for ourselves…. Pollution beliefs trace causal chains from from actions to disasters…Pollution beliefs uphold conceptual categories dividing the moral from the immoral and so sustain the vision of the good society.” – Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture


    “Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man’s fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore, transfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices.” – David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

    The era of the 100 watt incandescent light bulb came to an end in America on January 1st. Lower wattages will soon join them in a phaseout over time. As I noted previously, this will mean factory shutdowns in the United States and the migration of the light bulb manufacturing industry to China. The most common replacement type bulbs, compact fluorescents, are not “instant on,” generally fail to provide a proper light spectrum, contain poisonous mercury, and burn out sooner than advertised. CFL boosters claim none of these are real problems and that CFLs are a slam dunk for benefit/cost reasons, but the cold reality is that despite significant promotion, they never received widespread consumer adoption voluntarily. Given how eagerly consumers slurp up even bona fide more expensive products like Apple computers when they are perceived to be superior, I’m inclined to think the consumers are on to something. I’ve tried out CFLs myself and thought they basically sucked.

    The supposed rationale for imposing an inferior product that did not receive the desired traction in the the marketplace is to prevent climate change. I went searching to try to find exactly what the impact of light bulbs on greenhouse gas emissions was and have found it quite difficult to obtain. The various sites touting CFLs all note the high output of CO2 from electricity generation generally, how much CO2 changing this or that bulb will save, etc, but as for what a wholesale elimination of light bulbs would achieve, that’s harder to find.

    According to the EPA, residential electricity accounted for 784.6 million metric tons of CO2 in 2009, or 11.8% of total US human greenhouse gas emissions. How much of that is from light bulbs? It’s not broken out in the EPA’s report (even the detailed version), but I’ll attempt an estimate of aggregate CO2 savings. (If someone has a direct link to this information, please let me know).

    The Guardian reported that an Australian incandescent ban would save that country 800K tons of CO2 emitted per year and a UK ban would save 2-3 million tons. It also reported that China could save 48 million tons per year by banning incandescents.

    The US is bigger than Australia and the UK, but similarly advanced developmentally. China is a bigger emitter than the US, has far more people, is less advanced developmentally, and is a bigger user of coal for electricity generation. However, all three countries project similar per capita emissions reductions from incandescent elimination. If the US savings were at the upper end of their range, it would have CO2 savings of around 15 million tons a year. That’s only 0.2% of total US greenhouse gas emissions. Even if the US saved the same 48 million tons as China, it’s only 0.7%. I’d be skeptical of anyone claiming the US would save a lot more CO2 per capita than these. Some maybe, a lot, no.

    In short, swapping out incandescent light bulbs is not going to be a major contributor to solving the problem of climate change. I’m not aware of anyone claiming it is. So why pass a law that is unpopular in many quarters and cram CFLs and other type of bulbs consumers haven’t chosen to buy on their own down their throats? It seems to be a purely provocative move of a mostly symbolic nature with little real substance that is sure to only harden opposition to the real changes we need to make to actually make material reductions in GHG emissions. (One might say the same of other items like mandatory recycling or banning plastic grocery bags).

    The answer is that the symbolism is the substance.

    The sad reality is that rather than make policy cases based on benefit/cost or other technical considerations, for political or personal reasons sustainability advocates have decided to model their cause on the template of religion. In it we have an Edenic state of nature in a fallen state because of man’s sin (pollution) for which we will experience a coming apocalyptic judgement (damage from climate change). Thus avoiding the consequences becomes fundamentally a problem of sin management. The proposed sin management solution is again taken from traditional Christianity: confession and repentance, followed by penance, restoration to right standing with God (nature), and committing to a holier life.

    There are two basic problems with this. The first is that while the religion template taps in to a deep psychological vein in the human spirit – some have suggested humanity may even carry a so-called “God gene” – most people already have a religion and aren’t likely to convert to a new one without a major outreach effort.

    But more importantly, the notion of penance, and perhaps of asceticism more generally, has never sold with the public, even in more religious eras. David Hume (a vigorous religious skeptic it should be noted) referred to the values resulting from this lifestyle as the “monkish virtues” and noted that they have “everywhere rejected by men of sense.” Or as Carol Coletta put it more recently, people don’t want to be told to “eat their spinach.”

    It strikes me that while perhaps environmentalists don’t really want to force a particular lifestyle on people, there is a fundamental desire to see people engage in some sort of public penance for our environmental sins. I believe this to be the root logic underlying a lot of feel-good (or perhaps more accurately, “feel-bad”) initiatives like getting rid of incandescent light bulbs. It is a form of penance and embrace of the monkish virtues.

    I can’t help but notice that even Christianity itself has moved away from promoting the monkish virtues. While things humility are of course still preached and expected to be modeled, modern Christianity mostly rejects the notion of an ascetic life. Most Evangelical churches actually preach that God wants humans to be happy. The idea is of a God who wants us to be unselfish, but not unhappy. A not insignificant number of churches actually preach the so-called “prosperity gospel” in which God will provide earthly blessings to His followers. In the Catholic tradition, monasticism itself has been in decline for some time. (I liken the reports of upticks in interest in joining monasteries as similar to the perennial “return of the suit” articles in fashion magazines).

    Whether these theological points are accurate or not is beside the point of this article. They appear to be attractional. For example, well-known prosperity gospel preacher Joel Osteen runs the largest church in the United States, with over 40,000 attending weekly.

    What might the environmental movement have looked like based on a different template? I’ll refer again to the work of Bruce Mau. If you’ve ever seen him present on this topic, he likes to start by noting that if we brought the entire world up to US standards of living, it would take four Earth’s worth of resources given our current technologies and approaches to make it happen. He thinks that’s a good thing, because the patent impossibility of that “takes that option off the table.” He then goes on to talk about all the super-cool new stuff we are going to have to invent and scale up to address the challenges of the future. If you haven’t, I might suggest getting his book Massive Change, which I reviewed a while back. It’s difficult to come away from one of Mau’s books or lectures without being excited about the possibilities of the future.

    I don’t think Mau has any different view of the fundamentals of climate change than your typical orthodox environmentalist. But his approaches to solutions (which are admittedly not always short term practical action plans) and the sales job on them is very different. As a designer, he knows he needs to create something that’s aspirational and attractional in order to get people to want it. It’s a shame too few people have followed that lead.

    The monkish virtues are just never going to sell. Perhaps you can get a room full of the sustainability in-crowd to buy into it, or even focus on top level political success as with the bulb ban. But ultimately I think this is self-defeating.

    In the short term I’d suggest ending any efforts to impose direct consumer mandates. I don’t think that’s where the money is, so to speak, in GHG reductions. Instead, let’s focus on the producer side of the equation in ways that are largely transparent to consumers and don’t involve significant costs. More fuel efficient vehicles might be one. Replacing coal with natural gas is another possibility. (The EPA report I linked earlier cited this as a big contributor the decline in GHG emissions in recent years). New technologies are clearly needed and should perhaps be invested in even though as we know this will lead to many failures along the way.

    As the financial crisis in Greece and elsewhere shows, people rarely confront structural problems, no matter how serious, until the crisis actually comes. At least if “austerity” (a monkish virtue if ever there was one) is the major part of the proposed solution.

    If an environmental equivalent of austerity is required to save the planet, then I’m afraid we should prepare for the deluge. I personally don’t think we’re at that point, given that we’ve had huge gains in energy efficiency for many decades now while our lifestyles have actually improved. More of that, not the promotion of monkish solutions like CFL lightbulbs, is what it will really take to drive further environmental improvements.

    PS: If you don’t think people are really promoting or embracing monkish lifestyles in support of environmentalism, read this article from the Guardian about people giving up on daily showers. Or think about the people trying to completely go “off the grid.” Even if CFLs don’t fit for you, clearly there are plenty of examples. I pick CFLs because they are an institutionalization of monkish virtues, not just the passion of the small minority, which has always been the case.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile, where this essay originally appeared.

    Photo by BigStockPhoto.com.