New Geography

Author: Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

  • Suburbs will decide the election

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    Suburbs may not have cooked up the mortgage crisis, but they absorbed much of initial damage. Now that Wall Street and the big cities are also taking the fall, suburbanites might feel a bit better — but there’s still lots of room for anger out in the land of picket fences, decent schools and shopping malls.

    Widely demeaned in the media and academe, suburbs still exercise their power at election time. Home to roughly half the country’s population, and likely a greater share of its voters, suburbs seem destined to remain — to borrow from that great wordsmith George W. Bush — “the decider” in this election.

    Indeed, as the campaign has evolved, the critical position of suburbs seems to have grown. Barack Obama’s stranglehold on the urban vote seems unshakeable — even against a maverick “moderate” such as John McCain.

    At the same time, after seeming unsettled, the rural and small-town electorate appears to be returning to the GOP fold. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s place on the Republican ticket and, perhaps even more, the mainstream media’s snooty reaction to her, may have sealed the GOP deal in the countryside, at least at the presidential level. One sure sign: The small Obama strike team sent to reliably red North Dakota this summer has departed for more competitive terrain in nearby Minnesota and Wisconsin.

    So now it’s really up to the suburbanites, who come from the only geography that has grown faster than the national average over the past 30 years. But it’s critical to recognize that suburbs themselves have changed, becoming more reflective of America’s diversity, just as cities have grown more bifurcated between rich and poor. Once lily white, suburban America is now roughly 21 percent minority.

    Voting behavior among suburbs overall also has changed over the years. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan carried the suburbs in the key swing states by between 20 points and 40 points. Bill Clinton ended this dominance, essentially battling the GOP to a suburban standoff. He even beat the Republicans in the peripheral communities of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri and Florida.

    In 2000 and again in 2004, President Bush recovered some of the Republican edge, running as much as 10 percent better than Sen. Bob Dole’s weak 1996 effort. But in the 2006 congressional elections, Democrats regained much of the ground Clinton had carried.

    As of now, polls suggest McCain, who lagged in the suburbs into the summer, has pushed back some of the Democratic momentum. He now enjoys, according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, a 10-point edge among suburban voters, not far from what Bush garnered in those parts of the swing states. If McCain can combine this suburban group with his rural and small-town base, he could be in striking distance of staging an upset.

    But this may not be so easy. Democrats’ recent gains seem to be solidifying, particularly in older, metropolitan suburbs. Fairfax County, home to one out of seven Virginians, has been trending strongly Democratic in recent years, even supporting John F. Kerry in 2004.

    McCain, who appeals more to independents than Bush did, should be able to erode some of this advantage in such communities. But Palin’s social conservatism could turn off many generally well-educated, middle-of-the-road voters who are so prominent in many of the most upscale suburban communities.

    At the same time, Palin — herself a former mayor of an Anchorage exurb — could help McCain consolidate Bush’s gains in the fast-growing exurbs, which tend to be more heavily composed of traditional families and generally less ethnically diverse. In his 2004 victory, Bush won 97 of the nation’s 100 fastest-growing counties with roughly 63 percent of the vote. If McCain can duplicate that feat, he will be well-positioned.

    Several factors, notably the financial crisis, could work against these efforts. Foreclosure rates in many of these exurban suburban counties are well above the national average, particularly in Florida and the Virginia suburbs of Washington and also outside Denver, Detroit and Cleveland.

    The mortgage crisis affects not only foreclosed homeowners, but also homeowners who are still above water. First, foreclosures lower everybody’s home values and bring on the possibility of renters replacing owners — not a good development in a suburban context. Second, particularly in exurban counties, construction has often been the basis for a lot of job growth in this decade, because construction jobs and other employment related to the real estate industry has been centered there.

    All of this makes suburbs a theoretically good target for Obama. In places like Pennsylvania, as longtime Republican activist Dennis Powell suggests, Obama should try to duplicate Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell’s wildly successful performance in 2002 in the so-called collar counties around Philadelphia. By winning those counties, in addition to building up a huge margin in his native Philadelphia, Rendell built a margin of more than a half-million votes that helped him win, even while he was getting thrashed throughout most of the rest of the state.

    In 2004, Kerry also won Pennsylvania’s collar counties, not by a large margin but by enough to secure his victory in the state. If Obama does as well as Kerry in the collar counties, he will win the state — perhaps not at a Rendellian scale, but comfortably enough.

    For his part, McCain needs to emulate the success of maverick Republicans, such as Sen. Arlen Specter, who have won by winning the Philadelphia suburbs. If McCain can replicate Specter’s performance and add some of the disgruntled Clinton Democrats in the rural south and west of the state, he could pull off a game-changing upset.

    McCain also has an opportunity to win in the Detroit suburbs, where Obama’s ties to disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick could hurt him. Bush won those areas in 2000 and 2004, but not by enough to capture the state’s electoral votes. As in Pennsylvania, McCain needs to forge a rural-suburban coalition to capture this traditionally blue-tinged state.

    For Obama, suburbs in wobbly red states such as Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Virginia and Missouri offer similarly critical opportunities. Even traditionally conservative exurban voters may feel that under Bush they have been led down the bubble path only to have it pop painfully in their faces.

    Ultimately it may all come down to “body language.” In our estimation, Obama’s weakness stems not so much from his race — he may well run better in suburbia than did the very white Kerry — but with his close identification with Chicago and Mayor Richard Daley’s Democratic machine. Having spent his adulthood in college towns and big cities, Obama seems to lack the instinctive Clintonian understanding of the suburban mindset. You never got the sense that Clinton was too urbane to wolf down a Big Mac or get a Slurpee at the local strip mall — and he really seemed to “feel the pain” of an overstressed homeowner.

    In contrast, Obama and his team, including campaign manager David Axelrod, reflect the mentality of a totally urban political culture. Obama’s intellectual and media supporters also include elements — ensconced at publications such as The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly as well as within the leftist Netroots — that often regard suburbs and their denizens as a form of social and environmental pestilence.

    Obama is simply too smart, as a candidate and perhaps also as a president, to publicly give in to this mindset. He’s certainly trying to appeal to suburban voters who are too concerned with issues such as health care and foreclosures to worry about his lack of geographic empathy.

    If he can convey this message effectively, Obama could benefit from the suffering now taking place in suburban communities. There may well be enough disgruntled suburban voters, even in the more peripheral areas, to blunt McCain’s suburban lead down to manageable numbers.

    If so, McCain’s rural and small town base will not be enough to win the critical swing states and the election. If the Republicans can hold their 2004 suburban base, though, McCain could yet triumph. Whatever the result, one thing is clear: Suburban voters will be the deciders.

    Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of www.newgeography.com. Mark Schill is a principal at Praxis Strategy Group and the site’s managing editor.

  • Time to Reinvent College Towns?

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    For much of their history college towns have been seen primarily as “pass through” communities servicing a young population that cycles in and out of the community. But more recently, certain college communities have grown into “knowledge-based” hot spots — Raleigh-Durham, Madison, Cambridge and the area around Stanford University — which have been able to not only retain some graduates but attract knowledge workers and investors from the rest of the country.

    But a large proportion of college towns do not seem to be doing so well. For one thing, they often lack the historically high levels of aerospace and other technology investment — and simply the scale — that characterize the most successful university communities. Simply put, there are not enough large-scale high-tech opportunities to seed and sustain significant growth in most college towns.

    This does not mean there are not great opportunities for college communities to evolve in the next century. Many more possess the potential to become legitimate centers of technology, innovation, risk capital and cultural efflorescence. The key, we believe, is tapping the energies of the baby boomer generation. The baby boom generation far outnumbers its successor, Generation X, by roughly 76 million to 41 million. Due largely to boomers, by 2030 nearly one of five Americans will be over 65.

    The ultimate locations chosen by those whom demographer Bill Frey calls “downshifting boomers” will be critical in terms of new residential and commercial development. This will be particularly true for college towns once the current “echo” generation — currently 15 to 25 — grows into adulthood and leaves college for other destinations.

    To understand the opportunity, we have to see the real situation of boomers. Despite the hype about a massive “back to the city” movement by aging boomers, this is a very small phenomenon, restricted largely to a small, usually highly affluent sub-set. Generally speaking, the further over the age of 35, the greater the chance an individual has of living in the suburbs or exurbs. Far more seniors, in fact, migrate from city to suburb than the other way around. It appears that a handful of relatively wealthy older suburbanites do establish residences in some inner-city locations, but overall the prime destination for those who move is the suburbs.

    Recent research by Gary Engelhardt found that if central city dwelling boomers without kids moved, only 35 percent would remain in a central city region. Of those moving from a suburban home, just more than 11 percent decided to move into the central city.

    The most critical factor is the boomers’ tendency to “age in place,” at least until they become too old to care for themselves. Roughly three-quarters of retirees in the first block of boomers, according to Sandi Rosenbloom, a professor of urban planning and gerontology at the University of Arizona, appear to be sticking pretty close to the suburbs, where the vast majority reside. Those who do migrate, her studies suggests, tend to head farther out into the suburban periphery, not back towards the old downtown. Most continue to use single-occu¬pancy vehicles; few rely on public transit.

    The reasons vary, Rosenbloom suggests, and include job commitments or the desire, as they age, to live close to and spend more time with children or grandchildren. Perhaps most importantly, the majority of boomers have spent most of their lives in sub-urban settings. They are, for the most part, not acculturated to the density, congestion and noise of inner city life.

    Yet if they are not heading en masse to the inner city, Rosenbloom and other experts see a significant proportion heading to smaller towns. Many of the areas with the fastest growth in senior populations are already on the outward fringes of the metropolitan areas, but also in some of the more remote areas of country, including parts of the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and even Alaska. Indeed by 2030 Montana and Wyoming are expected to have among the highest percentage of seniors in the country.

    Compared to most metropolitan areas smaller towns — including college communities in places like the Great Plains, the South and interior California — have remained remarkably affordable, and should continue to be so. Many baby-boomers may eventually consider an “equity migration” from the coasts. These households can enjoy a significant capital gain, and achieve a large reduction in debt, while still engaging in economic activities made possible by the Internet. [see Figure 2]

    As a rule, small town residents pay less of their income for housing than those in metropolitan areas, even though their incomes tend to be less. In 2003, even before the peak of the current housing boom, roughly 15 percent of all metropolitan households spent over half their income on housing while only 10 percent of those in non-metro areas suffered this same level of burden.

    Quality of life considerations also could play a critical role in attracting newcomers to college towns, both in terms of cultural institutions and providing walk-able communities. College towns can also offer “continuing education” opportunities for an economically active population, many of whom plan to remain engaged in the economy well into their 60s and 70s. They can become a source of useful expertise as well as capital for those recent graduates who seek to start or expand local companies.

    Colleges could maximize their real estate and financial position if they can bring in boomers as full or part-time residents. This is true not only in metropolitan areas but in broad parts of the country including the rural south, Midwest and places like Pennsylvania. Many boomers do not view retirement as a permanent vacation but as a place to start a “second life.” In many case they are turning to nontraditional and less expensive retirement spots.

    Successful college towns will connect with both the well educated, increasingly well connected younger workers already in town and the downshifting experienced professionals looking to balance livability with more urban amenities. Combined with well-educated boomers, this could create a powerful labor and knowledge base.


    Done correctly, in accordance with a sound economic strategy, many college communities could find a new way to prosper and thrive in the years until 2020 during which the number of potential students is likely to drop. It may also provide some protection against other forces that threaten college growth, notably the increase in on-line classes, private colleges with numerous satellite locations and the growing problems with student debt.

    Given these factors, college towns need to be reinvented in order to thrive in emerging environment. Most importantly, they must learn to take advantage of emerging demographic trends, particularly by taking advantage of the energies of an increasingly vital aging population.

    Joel Kotin is Executive Editor of NewGeography.com. Mark Schill is Managing Editor and a community strategy consultant with Praxis Strategy Group.

  • Rural America could bring boon to Dems

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    Perhaps no geography in America is as misunderstood as small towns and rural areas. Home to no more than one in five Americans, these areas barely register with the national media except for occasional reports about the towns’ general decrepitude, cultural backwardness and inexorable decline.

    Yet in reality this part of America is far more diverse, and in many areas infinitely more vital, than the big-city-dominated media suspects. In fact, there are many demographic and economic dynamics that make this part of America far more competitive this year than in the recent past.

    Both parties have acknowledged the importance of this battlefield through their choices for vice presidential nominees. Barack Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, is being touted not so much as a Washington foreign policy wonk but as the “scrappy kid from Scranton” — even though he has represented Delaware in the Senate for 35 years. Even more obvious is John McCain’s tapping of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former small-town mayor from a rustic state without anything close to a major metropolitan area.

    Even though many very small towns — with, say, fewer than 10,000 people — have continued to decline in population, there’s a significant demographic and economic rebound taking place in a host of somewhat larger communities. Places such as Sioux Falls and Fargo in the Dakotas as well as Asheville, N.C.; Wenatchee, Wash.; and Springfield, Mo., have been drawing a steady stream of people and businesses from both big cities and suburbs.

    This dynamic could provide some welcome surprises for Democrats and potential nightmares for Republicans. During the primaries, Obama startled observers with his ability to win over Democratic voters in places like the Dakotas, Montana, Kansas, Nebraska and Indiana. More importantly, according to recent polls, he is running between 10 points and 30 points ahead of John F. Kerry in 2004.

    Where are these new Democratic voters coming from? Most of Obama’s primary wins came in what may be seen as the new heartland, a widely dispersed group of fast-growing smaller towns and cities stretching from the Sierra Nevadas to the Appalachians. He did particularly well in college towns as well as those places where high-tech and cutting-edge manufacturing companies have set up shop over the past decade.

    This demographic and political dynamic has been building for years. In 2004, even Kerry came close to winning places such as Wisconsin Rapids, a small city of 17,500 in the central part of the state. Although the area has lost some high-paying blue-collar jobs in the paper industry, it has also attracted a growing number of sophisticated companies such as software firm Renaissance Learning, which employs more than 750 in the area.

    Some of these workers are originally from the area, but many others bring with them tastes and opinions forged in Silicon Valley, Raleigh-Durham or the Massachusetts tech corridor. Their politics may not be Chicago liberal, but people settling in such emerging “virtual suburbs” tend, like their tech-oriented counterparts, toward a pragmatic, mildly liberal politics.

    Other demographic groups are also changing the political complexion of some of these areas. Hispanics, for example, have been moving in large numbers to rural and manufacturing areas in the Great Plains and rural South which, until recently, were dominated by culturally conservative Anglos.

    At the same time, affluent baby boomers from the coasts and large Midwestern cities — some retired, some working via the Internet — are also flowing into some of these places. Surveys of older Americans find far more would prefer to resettle in small towns than in big cities. Some of the fastest growing towns for seniors include Missoula, Mont.; Eugene, Ore.; Moscow, Idaho; and Charlottesville, Va.

    As a result, these areas have become more cosmopolitan in their outlook. It is no longer unusual, for example, to see Indian, Chinese and other foreign-born professionals — or Asian restaurants or edgy coffeehouses. Fargo, once the very definition of staid, now boasts an excellent boutique hotel, a clothing store catering to metro­sexuals and several pricey restaurants.

    These shifts have not escaped the notice of the Obama campaign, which has put 50 campaign workers and 100 volunteer teams in North Dakota, long considered a lock for Republicans in November. Similar deployments are taking place in other rural states.

    Yet it may still be a stretch to see some of these places voting for a big-city liberal like Obama. It’s one thing to support homegrown populist Democrats such as North Dakota’s Sen. Byron Dorgan or Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who have a fine sense of how to negotiate the sensibilities of their constituents on issues of farm subsidies, guns or gay marriage.

    McCain should hope Obama’s Hyde Park intellectualism and liberalism won’t play well beyond more affluent recent migrants and students. McCain may not win as big as President Bush did in 2000 and 2004, but he could hold on to enough rural and small-town voters to keep these states in the Republican column. McCain’s moderate image may hurt with some evangelical voters, but at least outside of the South, this may keep more moderate, younger and recently arrived voters in the fold.

    Finally, the fact that many small towns are doing relatively well may make voters somewhat less likely to bolt the GOP. Few places in the countryside are suffering anything like a Dust Bowl-level catastrophe, although some now worry about a looming decline in commodity prices. And on some issues, such as fossil fuel development, McCain can appeal to constituents of small towns that have been enjoying an energy-fed boom. Pushing American energy development will work well in these areas, although the Arizona senator’s opposition to ethanol subsidies could hurt in others.

    And even in rural places worst hit by the economy — such as traditional, manufacturing-dominated small towns in Indiana, Ohio, the Carolinas and Pennsylvania — Obama has yet to prove himself. In almost all these places, Hillary Rodham Clinton triumphed easily in the primary, usurping the grass-roots populist message. Obama has yet to show that knack.

    Rural and small-town areas have fewer very poor constituents and a greater concentration of middle-income voters than cities, and far fewer wealthy households than cities or suburbs. These mostly white, working-class voters — heavily concentrated in states like Wyoming, West Virginia, the Dakotas, Montana, Maine, Idaho and Kentucky — could be the key to winning the micropolitan and small-town electorate. And these places could prove a critical battleground.

    There are two regions where these voters might matter most. One is the sparsely populated Great Plains states that once represented a solid block of Republican strength. Obama not only has the chance to steal some electoral votes but also could divert McCain’s resources in more traditional battleground states.

    The other is a series of traditional battleground states: Ohio, Missouri and Indiana. If Obama can gain some of the traction Clinton achieved in these states’ small towns and cities, McCain’s chances fade to almost nil.

    Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of newgeography.com. Mark Schill is an Associate at Praxis Strategy Group in Grand Forks, N.D., and the site’s managing editor.

    Other articles in the Three Geographies Series:
    The Three Geographies
    Urban America: The New Solid South

  • Cities, Children and the Future

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    “Suburbs,” the great urbanist Jane Jacobs once wrote, “must be a difficult place to raise children.” Yet, as one historian notes, had Jacobs turned as much attention to suburbs as she did to her beloved Greenwich Village, she would have discovered that suburbs possessed their own considerable appeal, particularly for those with children.

    Although some still hold onto the idea that suburbs are bad places to raise children, in virtually every region of the country, families with children are far more likely to live in suburbs than in cities. Nearly all the leading locations in percentages of married couples are suburbs, from Midwestern towns like O’Fallon, Missouri to Sugarland, Texas, Naperville, Illinois and Highlands Ranch, Colorado.

    In contrast, many of the places with the lowest percentages of children are urban centers. This includes many of the most highly touted urban cores such as Manhattan, Boston, Portland, Seattle and San Francisco.

    This is particularly true among more affluent, middle class, educated family households. Despite the rise in the number of children in a few affluent locales, such as the upper east side of Manhattan, most middle class families tend to cluster outside the city core. Even in Manhattan the number of kids falls considerably below the national average after the age of five.

    So the question remains: are families important to the planners, developers and politicians who run our cities? Veteran geographer Dick Morrill wonders if they do. He sees many cities turning their backs on working and middle class families, long the ballast of urban society throughout the ages.

    Instead, many city planners, and urban developers have focused their attention on the growing ranks of the unattached: the “young and restless,” the “creative class,” and the so-called “yuspie” – the young urban single professional. These advocates suggest that companies and cities should capture this segment, described by one as “the dream demographic.”

    The other coveted urban demographic centers on the so-called “empty nester,” largely boomers who have already raised families. Developers, like luxury homebuilder Robert Toll, see a vast movement of such people from the suburbs to the inner city. “We are more hip-hop and happening than our parents,” he explains. “We want the sophistication and joy and music that comes with city dwelling, and doesn’t come with sitting in the burbs watching the day go by…”

    Yet although this strategy might work for a handful of cities, childless urbanism may have its limits. There is, for example, little evidence that many empty nesters — outside of the very rich — are moving en masse to center cities. The vast majority seem to be staying put in the suburbs while a considerable group heads further out into the periphery and beyond.

    This leaves the key demographic for cities to remain viable: the young and educated, one group that has shown a tendency to move into center cities. But there’s a problem with relying of ‘yuspies” in the long run — they get older and grow up. Right now, as Philadelphia’s Paul Levy suggests, most young couples leave once they start having children. If cities are to hold on to this population, he suggests, they must address the basics important to families, such as public safety, good schools and parks.

    This issue will become even more pressing in the next few years. As the current and very large millennial generation ages, they will begin to dominate the housing market. From all accounts, they tend to be family oriented. More than 80 percent thought getting married would make them happy, and some 77 percent said they definitely or probably would want children, while less than twelve percent said they likely would not.

    If cities cannot change to appeal to these young people once they enter their 30s and 40s, they will be hard-pressed to maintain, much less expand, the population gains made over the past decade. Once the Millennials are gone, the next generation of young people seems certain to be considerably smaller.

    In this sense, the Millennials represent the future hope for cities. The need to shift the focus beyond the denser downtowns and towards many outlying neighborhoods will become a necessity. These places — think of Queens in New York, South St. Louis or parts of the northwest Philadelphia — may see less glamorous and more “plain vanilla” than city centers but they already possess some of the basic prerequisites needed by family: relatively low density, work areas nearby, neighborhood shopping streets, churches, schools and parks.

    What will happen to the least child-friendly cities over the next generation? Imagine a city with fewer total residences, inhabited by fewer people, although with a significant increase in “luxury” dwellings. In the new urban landscape, high-rise towers for the rich predominate, some of them in refurbished office buildings that formerly employed the middle class. These now become the homes of the “creative class” and the nomadic rich.

    This is a city whose funds come largely from the global economy, but whose needs are cared for largely by low-wage workers who eke out their existence in the city, and reside in outlying areas. Ultimately, such a bifurcated society may limit the economic functions that can be carried out in these places. A small cadre of operatives, including the CEO and some senior staff, may remain ensconced in the glamour zone but companies dependent on a broader array of talent will continue to relocate to less exclusive places, either to the suburbs or to different regions.

    Such pressures have already helped Houston to replace New York and Los Angeles as the nation’s energy capital. In the future a place like Charlotte will continue its emergence and its drive for financial dominance. Charlotte, suggests local real estate developer, John Harris, can compete against an expensive metropolitan region not only at the top levels of management, but across the board. “It’s hard to be a mass employer in San Francisco,” he notes.

    In the end, the elite childless city can be seen as both the culmination of urban development and as a demographic dead end. Unable to lift up outsiders and absorb newcomers, these cities may be able to thrive as high end business hubs and elite playgrounds. But they seem unlikely to absorb more than a trickle of those Americans who may want to move into dense urban places over the coming decades. Instead, this cohort may look to those towns ready and still willing to accommodate families.

    Joel Kotkin is the executive editor of Newgeography.com.

  • Bye, Bye Boomers, Not quite

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    They may be losing out politically to oldsters and youngins, as Morley Winograd and Michael Hais suggest, but Boomers will have a profound impact on our country’s demography and economics for decades to come.

    In some ways this is as much a matter of numbers as anything. There are lots of Boomers and until the Millennials start entering their 30s in the middle of the next decade, they will retain a massive say in what kind of places and regions will thrive.

    One thing Boomers can be counted on: to disappoint many expectations cast on them. In the 1960s the punditry was full of expectations that Boomers would reject the suburbia settled en masse by their parents. They would be different, returning to the land or resettling the urban frontier. Instead the Boomers ended up turning suburbia into the nation’s dominant geography.

    Now that the Boomers are aging, once again the punditry predicts they will once again reshape the landscape. Maybe so, but not as quickly and not in ways widely bandied in the media and some developers.

    One predominant myth is that Boomers, as they age, will desert the boring burbs and rediscover the allure of a fast-paced, defiantly “youthful” lifestyle. Suggests luxury homebuilder Robert Toll:

    We are more hip-hop and happening than our parents.
    We want the sophistication and joy and music that
    comes with city dwelling, and doesn’t come with
    sitting in the burbs watching the day go by while
    puttering, painting, reading, writing, making flies
    for fishing, customizing your own golf clubs,
    stringing your own tennis racket, tending your tropical
    fish.


    It makes good copy for journalists, and spurs wishful much thinking among urban developers. The reality is a different matter. Overall, downshifting Boomers seem to prefer what one critic calls “the bland American dream”; barely two percent want to move to experience the “excitement” of a dense urban area. And, like their younger counterparts, aging Americans have remained tethered to their cars; less than ten percent of seniors over 65 walk, bike or take public transport as their primary means of getting around. “Suburbanites,” summarizes Syracuse University economist Gary Engelhardt, “like the suburbs.”

    Indeed instead of heading to dense cities, our analysis of data — -and the findings of the homebuilding industry — is that most Boomers, as University of Arizona gerontologist Sandra Rosenbloom suggests, are “aging in place.” Rather than head off anywhere far away, most will want to stay close to their personal networks, offspring, churches or clubs.

    Family ties are perhaps the biggest factor. One quarter of Generation Xers, for example, still receive help from their parents, as do nearly a third of Millennials. As many as forty percent of Americans between 20 and 34 now live at least part-time with their parents, an option that is likely to become more commonplace in areas where home prices are particularly high.

    As a result, older Americans will remain a far more active force in the economy — and in their children’s lives — than might have been the case a generation ago. Most plan to stay near where they currently live, and rate being close to family members as a major factor in their decision. Contrary to the celebration of “independence” created by marketers and advocates of the “slimmer” family, most consider themselves to be about as concerned with passing on an inheritance to their children as their parents were.

    This does not mean that eventually some aging Boomers will not choose to move into smaller residences. But to lure them, successful communities need to develop cultural amenities and diverse stores and restaurants, while offering a secure environment. Nine of the top ten active-adult communities put up recently were located in the suburbs. “They don’t want to move to Florida and they want to stay close to the kids,” notes Washington area developer Jeff Lee. “What they are looking for is a funky suburban development — funky but safe.”

    It turns out the most attractive options for aging populations are quieter ones. Only a small slice of the aging population seeks electric excitement; at older ages, most people seek repose, familiarity and general As Canadian demographer David Foot has pointed out, as people age, they tend to favor quieter activities, such as bird watching or gardening; “eco-tourism” jaunts nearby seems more attractive than bar-hopping in the fast-paced city. This tendency will extend increasingly to non-traditional populations, including childless couples and the gay community, many of whose members also apparently share the general desire for a quieter life as they age.

    Indeed, if you are looking for a big movement among aging Boomers — now roughly 55 to 64 — the best place to look will be amenity-rich smaller towns and cities such as Douglas County, Colorado and certain counties in Idaho, in the Berkshires of New England, and even in parts of Alaska. Such counties, according to the US Department of Agriculture, grew ten times faster than other rural counties.

    In many of these counties’ central towns, old Main Streets are already being restored; as downshifting seniors move in, this process should accelerate rapidly. College towns in particular could win out — something they will need to do as the number of teenagers begins to drop dramatically in the next decade.

    Although not in ways foreseen by urban boosters, the Boomers still could have a major impact on our future communities. In many places, they could become a bulwark of community organizations and churches. They certainly will have more time to devote themselves to quality of life issues, including environmental activism, education and historic preservation.

    And as many may still be working, they could contribute to economic growth, through their greater financial resources and accumulated skills. Expect many Boomers to work well into the 60s and 70s — using their spare bedrooms to accommodate home offices and assisting younger entrepreneurs develop their businesses. Many will keep working because they need the money; others may still in the game for the love of it.

    In the end the Boomers could play a less heroic, but still very positive role in the evolution of American communities. Even as the Millennials mature into dominance — and the Xers assert their shot at political leadership — the Boomers could offer the financial wherewithal, the skill and, perhaps, most surprising of all, the wisdom required by a rapidly evolving, and expanding, society.

  • Urban America: The New Solid South

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    Ever since the 1930s, most urban areas have leaned Democratic. But in presidential elections, many remained stubbornly competitive between the two parties. As late as 1988, for example, Republican nominees won Dallas County and made strong showings in the core urban counties of Cook (Chicago), Los Angeles and King (Seattle).

    Today, America’s urban areas have evolved into a political monoculture that increasingly resembles the “solid South” that provided a base for Democrats from the late 19th century to the 1960s. Since 1972, the year of the Nixon landslide, the Democratic share has grown 20 percent or more in most of the largest urban counties.

    As a result, places where Republicans such as Ronald Reagan could once win a respectable share of the vote — including San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York City — by 2004 were delivering 80 percent or more to the Democrats. Even in the losing year of 2004, Democratic nominee John F. Kerry won almost every city of more than 500,000 people.

    This fall, Barack Obama, a resident of Chicago, can comfortably expect to triumph in virtually every major urban county, often by ratios of 2-to-1 or more. He can count just as much on cities in decline as he can on those that have been gentrified; he will rack up big margins both in heavily white core counties such as those around Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., as well as overwhelmingly minority Baltimore, Philadelphia and the Bronx, N.Y.

    Race and income levels do not explain the emerging urban mono­culture, because the cause lies elsewhere: in the evolution of cities over the past four decades. The shift began in the late 1960s, when urban regions, from financial centers such as New York and Chicago to old industrial cities such as Detroit and Cleveland, began to suffer a massive exodus of predominantly white, middle-class residents.

    This left behind an increasingly impoverished, highly minority population with very little proclivity to support conservative or even moderate Republicans. Today in some cities — mostly old industrial centers in the East and Midwest — this population remains dominant and is likely to vote in huge numbers for Obama. Most of these cities suffer poverty rates at least 50 percent higher than the national average.

    At the same time, some other cities — such as New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland — have done far better. They have done so by attracting a population of well-educated, white professionals. Pockets of this demographic, to be sure, also exist in some hard-hit industrial cities, but the new urban affluents tend to concentrate in cities with industries, such as financial services and media, that provide excitement and the prospect of high-wage employment in a glamorous setting.

    Many new urbanites tend to be students or professionals enjoying city life during their first, highly experimental years of adulthood. At this point, they are most open to liberal ideas and causes; they have yet to worry much about taxes and crime, issues that drive people to the center. As they grow older, marry and raise families, many in this cohort — particularly those who do not ascend into the upper classes — leave the urban core for the suburbs or other more affordable regions.

    Yet if the urban base — roughly 30 percent of the population — offers Obama a huge edge in the election, he must not identify too much as an urban candidate. In the past, the danger for Democrats lay in being perceived as paying too much heed to poor, minority voters. Fortunately, Obama, as an African-American, has little need to compete for their affections.

    More tempting, however, might be to embrace the emerging agenda of the benefactors of gentrification: powerful real estate interests and other groups. Among them are vocal constituencies who are openly hostile to people in suburbs and small cities. This ideology first emerged in 2004 in John Sperling’s “Retro vs. Metro” thesis, which envisioned the eventual triumph of a sophisticated urban population over backward-seeming rural, small town and suburban constituencies.

    An even clearer example of this urbanist ideology came in the wake of Kerry’s 2004 defeat, largely at the hands of rural, small-town and exurban “retro” voters. Editors of The Stranger, a Seattle alternative weekly, pointed out in an article that “if the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide.” Their solution was not to reach out to the other geographies, but to build an “urban identity politics” to counter Republicans’ hold over suburban and rural voters.

    “From here on out, we’re glad red-state rubes live in areas where guns are more powerful and more plentiful, cars are larger and faster, and people are fatter and slower and dumber,” The Stranger proclaimed. Given the editors’ uninhibited sense of superiority, they felt confident that in the emerging Darwinian struggle, the suburban and exurban Neanderthals would be forced to give way to the clear superiority of the urban Cro-Magnons.

    Since 2004, this ideology has become stronger, ironically bolstered by two bubbles fostered by President Bush’s fiscal policy: the boom in city condominium development and the rapid expansion of the financial services industry. Even as 80 percent to 90 percent of metropolitan growth redounded to the suburbs, the rising affluence of the urban cores persuaded the media that cities were not only back but were also reasserting their historic ascendance over the periphery.

    In recent months, the city-centered media such as CNN, The New York Times and National Public Radio have jumped on the urbanist bandwagon. They have promoted urban chauvinists’ contention that high gas prices and legislation to limit global warming would end the era of dispersion. This return to a more urbanized demography, some Democratic bloggers suggest, would assure a new liberal ascendancy.

    Whatever Obama may believe personally, he would be well-advised to distance himself from such sentiments. For one thing, identifying with people who celebrate the demise of other geographies may offend the majority of Americans who prefer to live in “retro,” lower-density environments. Suburb- and countryside-bashing may turn on editors and readers of The New York Times, but it hardly constitutes good politics.

    In terms of political strategy, Obama would be far better off stressing the commonalities between people in differing geographies. His time on the campaign trail should tell him that laid-off paper industry workers in central Wisconsin, hard-pressed suburban homeowners in San Bernardino, Calif., and struggling inner city residents in Brooklyn have ample cause to reject an extension of Republican rule. Why repeat the Bush tactic of dividing people from each other, this time based on where they choose to live, when the economic misery is so well-distributed?

    By displaying genuine empathy for Americans living in suburbs and small towns as well as in cities, Obama could achieve more than a small tactical victory, à la Karl Rove. With a strong showing in the other geographies as well as his inevitable landslide in cities, he could instead realize a historic triumph closer to Rooseveltian proportions.

    Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of www.newgeography.com. Mark Schill is the website’s managing editor and a community strategy consultant with Praxis Strategy Group.

    This article originally appeared at Politico.

    Other articles in the Three Geographies Series:
    The Three Geographies
    Rural America could bring boon to Dems
    Suburbs will decide the election

  • The Three Geographies

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    Officials in both Presidential campaigns, as well as analysts like Michael Barone, tell us that it is time to “throw out the map”. Yet if we are about the jettison the broad “red” and “blue” markers, perhaps we should explore a very different geographic matrix for this election.

    We believe Americans’ political perspective — if not the final voting behavior — is largely shaped not so much by their state but by the type of place, they reside in. These define much about an area, such as how many people are homeowners, take transit, have children living at home, the preponderance of middle class households, and the extent economic and racial diversity.

    Although not uniform across the country, we believe the most effective breakdown of how Americans live can be seen in three basic geographic forms — the urban, suburban and what we call “small town/rural”. These geographies show significant differences in almost all major characteristics, including in voting behavior. And even when voting for the same party, they often do so with different motivations.

    Democrats in the small cities and towns of the Great Plains, for example, closely follow issues related to agricultural and infrastructure policies that help expand economic opportunities, including energy development. In contrast, urban politics in places like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco tend to have a far greener tinge and concern with social issues such as gay marriage.

    Over the next three months, we plan to break down the country by these three geographies and posit how they live may affect their vote. First thing to do is estimate the size of these three geographies. Examining the census, we believe that urban centers — that is core cities of our nation’s large metropolitan areas — represent roughly 32% percent of the total population. The rural/small town component, in many ways the opposite of the urban core, represents roughly 17 percent.

    By far the largest percentage of Americans lives in the third geography, the suburbs. Located between the rural edges and the urban cores, this is where Americans have been migrating with remarkable consistency for over a half century. Despite varied attempts to proclaim a “back to the land” or “back to the city” movements, through oil price rises and declines, suburbs have shown no long-term sign of secular shrinking. In fact, during the last six years, roughly 90% of all growth in metropolitan areas has taken place there

    If suburbs, with roughly 51% percent of the population, represent the largest geography, they also, not surprisingly, are most representative of the nation as a whole. Once overwhelmingly white, they now have a racial breakdown far closer to the national norm than either cities, which are much more heavily minority, or rural/small towns, which are considerably less so.

    Perhaps more importantly, suburbs tend to have higher concentration of middle class voters than the other geographies. This may explain in part why the suburbs, particularly the outer ring, bore the initial brunt of the mortgage crisis — suburban households are fifty percent more likely to be owner-occupied but also generally endure higher prices than rural/small town residents. Although their commutes, particularly on the fringes, are not markedly longer than those of urbanities are, they are more dependent on their cars than those who live in such transit oriented cities as New York, Chicago and Boston.

    Higher gas prices and the problems with suburban mortgages have some representatives of urban America convinced that their return to national preeminence is imminent. In the last energy crisis during the 1970s, pundits also predicted a similar “back to the city” parade but this did not occur. Actually, over time companies moved their facilities to the suburbs where their workers already had migrated. People also changed their driving habits, most conspicuously by tossing out their gas-guzzlers for more economic models, largely produced by Japanese firms.

    Other factors should temper urban enthusiasm as well. For one thing, despite the much-ballyhooed revival of central cities, urban areas remain home to most of the highest concentrations of poverty in the nation. What characterizes urban areas, even relatively successful ones such as Chicago, New York and San Francisco, has been their growing bifurcation between extremes of rich and poor. Some , less fabled cities, such as Pittsburgh, even are suffering the ultimate demographic indignity: more people are dying than being born.

    However, in one way urban areas are clearly ascendant: politics. Cities by their nature tend to create coherent, high articulate political, media and economic voices. In contrast, suburban governance generally rests with highly decentralized legislative bodies or in the hands of bland professional managers. Urban America boasts very effective lobbyists and cheerleaders, through both media-savvy Mayors like Michael Bloomberg in New York; well-endowed think tanks, tapping old money sources and developers, serve to promote urban interests. Suburbs, in contrast, generally lack any sense of self-awareness and lack the institutional support to promote their cause.

    A Barack Obama presidency could provide a shot of adrenalin to the urban lobby. Senator Obama illustrates some of the most attractive parts of urbanism such as ethnic diversity, sophistication and a well-articulated commitment to social justice. He also epitomizes some the most turpitudinous, reflected by his ties to the sleazy Chicago machine and links to rent-seeking real estate interests who increasingly, along with public employee unions, dominate urban politics.

    Senator Obama’s dominance of the urban geography was complete throughout the primaries and is likely to consolidate even further during the general election. More than any time in the last half-century, Republicans, and even moderate Democrats, are becoming a rare, even endangered species in the big city.

    This is bad news for John McCain. He’s the kind of Republican who might have once been thought at least mildly saleable in urban areas. In many ways he suggests the pragmatism of past Republican Mayors such as New York’s Rudy Giuliani, Brent Schundler in Jersey City, Indianapolis’ Stephen Goldsmith and Richard Riordan in Los Angeles. However, in today’s urban political climate, defined by ultra-green and leftist cultural politics, the niche for even these kinds of Republicans seems to have all but evaporated.

    Perhaps the most intriguing, and least understood geography can found among the small towns and rural areas. Although they too have become more diverse, overall such communities tend to be poorer, less educated and more homogeneous (in most of the country white) than suburban areas. Yet there are now growing pockets of affluence in parts of this geography, aided by the boom in energy, food, manufacturing and, to some extent, technology related industries.

    In the recent past, the Republicans have owned this demographic. Senator Obama, after initial successes in Iowa and Wisconsin, generally did not do well in less prosperous rural/ small town areas in non-caucus states. In contrast, Hillary Clinton, who morphed into more of a populist late in the campaign, clearly touched a nerve in struggling small towns from Nevada to Pennsylvania. Any candidate who speaks about stimulating economic growth and opportunity could appeal to such areas.

    There is perhaps a greater opportunity for Senator Obama in those many parts of rural/small town America that are doing well. Although all rural and small town Americans may seem “bitter” — to use Obama’s unfortunate phrase — to the urban elites, considerable numbers of small towns are doing better than any time in decades. Plugged into the global economy, internet and their satellites, they are no longer the isolated, bigoted rubes of city imaginings. A forward-looking pro-growth agenda could be surprisingly successful in such places.

    Yet in the end, we believe the election will be decided largely in the suburbs, the largest if least self-defined of the geographies. Throughout the primaries, Senator Obama battled Ms. Clinton to a rough draw in the suburbs. He generally did best in the higher end, closer in suburban communities as well as those with large minority population, much as John Kerry did against George Bush in 2002. Now the question is whether he can expand that suburban base to the often less affluent, newer and somewhat more exurban counties.

    Senator McCain, from sprawling Phoenix, needs to rally the hard-pressed homeowners and commuters of the suburbs. Recent polls suggest he now holds as much as a ten point lead among suburban voters. To consolidate that advantage, and even expand it, he must offer a vision that promises a future under the next Republican President better than the present one. In contrast, given his lock on the cities, Obama simply needs to split the suburban geography and make a respectable showing in the rural/small towns’ constituency to reach the top of the greasy pole.

    Mark Schill contributed to this report, also appearing at Politico.com.

    Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive editor of NewGeography.com. Mark Schill, an associate at Praxis Strategy Group, is the site’s managing editor.