New Geography

Author: Joel Kotkin

  • The Kids Will Be Alright

    America’s population growth makes it a notable outlier among the advanced industrialized countries. The country boasts a fertility rate 50% higher than that of Russia, Germany or Japan and well above that of China, Italy, Singapore, North Korea and virtually all of eastern Europe. Add to that the even greater impact of continued large-scale immigration to America from around the world. By the year 2050, the U.S. population will swell by roughly 100 million, and the country’s demographic vitality will drive its economic resilience in the coming decades.

    This places the U.S. in a radically different position from that of its historic competitors, particularly Europe and Japan, whose populations are stagnant. The contrast between the U.S. and Russia, America’s onetime primary rival for world power, is particularly dramatic. Some 30 years ago, Russia constituted the core of a vast Soviet empire that was considerably more populous than the U.S. Today, even with its energy riches, Russia’s low birth and high mortality rates suggest that its population will drop to less than one-third that of the U.S. by 2050. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has spoken of “the serious threat of turning into a decaying nation.”

    An equally dramatic and perhaps more critical demographic shift is taking place in East Asia. Over the past few decades a rapid expansion of their work force fueled the rise of the “East Asian tigers,” the great economic success stories of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Yet that epoch is coming to an end, not only in Japan and Korea but also in China, where the one-child policy has set the stage for a rapidly aging population by mid-century.

    Within the next four decades, most of the developed countries in both Europe and East Asia will become veritable old-age homes: A third or more of their populations will be over 65, compared with only a fifth in America. Like the rest of the developed world, the U.S. will certainly have to cope with an aging population and lower population growth, but in relative terms the county will boast a youthful, dynamic demographic.

    As many other advanced countries become dominated by the elderly, the U.S. will have the benefit of a millennial baby boom as the “echo boomers” start having offspring in large numbers later in this decade. This next surge in growth may be delayed if tough economic times continue, but over time the rise in births will add to the work force, boost consumer spending and allow for new creative inputs.

    The differing demographic trajectories create a diverse set of issues for 21st-century America than those facing its rivals. The key challenges the European Union, Japan and Korea will contend with in the coming decades involve coping with a rapidly aging population, filling labor shortages and finding ways to invest in growing economies. In contrast, the U.S.’s greatest priority will be to create opportunities for its ever-expanding population. The New America Foundation estimates the country needs to add more than 125,000 jobs a month simply to keep pace with population growth in 2010. What the U.S. does with its “demographic dividend”—that is, its relatively young working-age population—will largely depend on whether the private sector can generate the incomes among the young to meet the needs of a larger aging population.

    Entrepreneurialism and America’s flexible business culture—including the harnessing of entrepreneurial skills of aging boomers—will prove critical to meeting this challenge. Many of the individuals starting new firms will be those who have recently left or been laid off by bigger companies, particularly during a severe economic downturn. Whether they form a new bank, energy company or design firm, they will do it more efficiently—with less overhead, more efficient use of the Internet and less emphasis on pretentious office settings.

    “People are watching their companies go under. Therefore you get three vice presidents who get laid off but know their business,” says Texas entrepreneur Charlie Wilson. “They start a new company somewhere cheap that is more efficient and streamlined. These are the new companies that will survive and grow the next economy.”

    It is here—at the grassroots level—that you can best glimpse the essential sources of American resiliency. American society draws most of its adaptive power not from its elite precincts but through the efforts of communities, churches, entrepreneurs and families.

    You can see this in the resurgence of once-declining Great Plains cities like Fargo, N.D., where high-tech now joins agriculture and manufacturing to form one of the country’s strongest local economies. Or you can visit the emerging immigrant hotbeds, such as the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles or the Sugarland area, just west of Houston, with their plethora of new churches, temples, companies and ethnic shopping malls.

    Immigrants represent a critical component of our next wave of new dynamism. Between 1990 and 2005, immigrants started one quarter of all venture-backed public companies. Large American firms are also increasingly led by people with roots in foreign countries, including 14 of the CEOs of the 2007 Fortune 100.

    But much of the energy will come from more obscure enterprises. Recent newcomers have already distinguished themselves as entrepreneurs, forming businesses from street-level bodegas to the most sophisticated technology start-ups.

    What drives immigrants is their optimism in America’s future. California developer Dr. Alethea Hsu, in explaining why she opened a new Asian-oriented shopping center in Orange County, cited the entrepreneurial energy of both affluent and working class immigrants which, she said, will allow them to thrive through the recession and beyond. “We are leased up, and we think the supply of shopping still is not enough,” Ms. Hsu said in early 2009. “We feel great trust in the future.”

    This entrepreneurial urge also extends beyond the immigrant community. In 2008, 28% of Americans said they had considered starting a business, more than twice the rate for French or Germans. Self-employment, particularly among younger workers, has been growing at twice the rate as in the mid-1990s. In the most recent Legatum Prosperity Index, the U.S. ranked at the top among all countries in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation.

    Most important of all will likely be the rise of the millennial generation—a group of Americans who will start reaching their prime earning years late in the next decade. Surveys identify them as strongly family- and community-oriented. The millennials will be America’s new entrepreneurs, workers and consumers in the coming decades. They will provide the kind of resource our major competitors are destined to run short on.

    The millennials also will help shape an increasingly culturally diverse America which by 2050 will be roughly half made up of ethnic minorities. This emerging post-ethnic future contrasts dramatically with the ethnic politics common among the nation’s chief global rivals. Even famously politically correct nations as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands have turned against immigration. Switzerland just banned the construction of minarets, while France is considering banning some forms of Islamic garb.

    Our prime Asian rivals—China, Japan, and Korea—remain even more culturally resistant to diversity. Chinese xenophobia, in particular, is deeply entrenched, notes Martin Jacques, author of “When China Rules the World.” A Chinese world superpower would be both racially homogenous and far from tolerant of newcomers. Recently the appearance of a mixed-race Shanghai girl on a national talent show sparked a surge of racist invective.

    The very diversity of the emerging America makes many wonder what will hold the country together. Ultimately, this unique society will find its binding principle in the notions that have long differentiated it from the rest of world: a common belief system, a sense of a shared destiny and an aspirational culture.

    As the British writer G. K. Chesterton once put it, the U.S. is “the only nation…that is founded on a creed.” This faith is not, and was not initially meant to be, explicitly religious; rather, it is a fundamentally spiritual idea of a national raison d’être.

    Of course, this optimistic scenario depends on intelligent and energetic actions by central and local governments, as well as community organizations. But the road to the American future will be primarily laid not by the central state but by families, individuals and communities. During the industrial age Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, “The age has an engine, but no engineer.” Much the same may be said in the coming decades.

    This article first appeared at The Wall Street Journal.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press February 4th.

    Photo: jcolman

  • The War Against Suburbia

    A year into the Obama administration, America’s dominant geography, suburbia, is now in open revolt against an urban-centric regime that many perceive threatens their way of life, values, and economic future. Scott Brown’s huge upset victory by 5 percent in Massachusetts, which supported Obama by 26 percentage points in 2008, largely was propelled by a wave of support from middle-income suburbs all around Boston. The contrast with 2008 could not be plainer.

    Browns’s triumph followed similar wins by Republican gubernatorial contenders last November in Virginia and New Jersey. In those races suburban voters in places like Middlesex County, New Jersey and Loudoun County, Virginia—which had supported President Obama just a year earlier—deserted the Democats in droves. Also in November, voters in Nassau County, New York upset Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, an attractive Democrat who had carefully cultivated suburban voters.

    The lesson here is that political movements ignore suburbanites at their peril. For the better part of a century, Americans have been voting with their feet, moving inexorably away from the central cities and towards the suburban periphery. Today a solid majority of Americans live in suburbs and exurbs, more than countryside residents and urbanites combined.

    As a result, suburban voters have become the critical determinants of our national politics, culture, and economy. The rise of the Republican majority after 1966 was largely a suburban phenomenon. When Democrats have resurged—as they did under Bill Clinton and again in 2006 and 2008—it was when they came close to splitting the suburban vote.

    But now, once again, things have changed. For the first time in memory, the suburbs are under a conscious and sustained attack from Washington. Little that the administration has pushed—from the Wall Street bailouts to the proposed “cap and trade” policies—offers much to predominately middle-income oriented suburbanites and instead appears to have worked to alienate them.

    And then there are the policies that seem targeted against suburbs. In everything from land use and transportation to “green” energy policy, the Obama administration has been pushing an agenda that seeks to move Americans out of their preferred suburban locales and into the dense, transit-dependent locales they have eschewed for generations.

    As in so many areas, this stance reflects the surprising power of the party’s urban core and the “green” lobby associated with it. Yet, from a political point of view, the anti-suburban stance seems odd given that Democrats’ recent electoral ascendency stemmed in great part from gains among suburbanites. Certainly this is an overt stance that neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton would likely have countenanced.

    Whenever possible, the Clintons expressed empathy with suburban and small-town voters. In contrast, the Obama administration seems almost willfully city-centric. Few top appointees have come from either red states or suburbs; the top echelons of the administration draw almost completely on big city urbanites—most notably from Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. They sometimes don’t even seem to understand why people move to suburbs.

    Many Obama appointees—such as at the Departments of Transportation and of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—favor a policy agenda that would drive more Americans to live in central cities. And the president himself seems to embrace this approach, declaring in February that “the days of building sprawl” were, in his words, “over.”

    Not surprisingly, belief in “smart growth,” a policy that seeks to force densification of communities and returning people to core cities, animates many top administration officials. This includes both HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and Undersecretary Ron Sims, Transportation undersecretary for policy Roy Kienitz, and the EPA’s John Frece.

    Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood revealed the new ideology when he famously declared the administration’s intention to “coerce” Americans out of their cars and into transit. In Congress, the president’s allies, including Minnesota Congressman James Oberstar, have advocated shifting a larger chunk of gas tax funds collected from drivers to rail and other transit.

    In addition, the president’s stimulus—with its $8 billion allocation for high-speed rail and proposed giant increases in mass transit—offers little to anyone who lives outside a handful of large metropolitan cores. Economics writer Robert Samuelson, among others, has denounced the high-speed rail idea as “a boondoggle” not well-suited to a huge, multi-centered country like the United States. Green job schemes also seem more suited to boost employment for university researchers and inner-city residents than middle-income suburbanites.

    Suburbanites may not yet be conscious of the anti-suburban stance of the Obama team, but perhaps they can read the body language. Administration officials have also started handing out $300 million stimulus-funded grants to cities that follow “smart growth principles.” Grants for cities to adopt “sustainability” oriented development will reward those communities with the proper planning orientation. There is precious little that will benefit suburbanites, such as improved roads or investment in other basic infrastructure.

    But ultimately it will be sticks and not carrots that planners hope to use to drive de-suburbanization. Perhaps the most significant will be new draconian controls over land use. Administration officials, particularly from the EPA, participated in the drafting of the recent “Moving Cooler” report, which suggested such policies as charging tolls on the Interstate Highway System, charging people to park in front of their homes, and steering some 90 percent of all future development into the most dense portions of already existing urban development.

    Of course, such policies have little or no chance of being passed by Congress. Too many representatives come from suburban or rural districts to back policies that would penalize a population that uses automobiles for upwards of 98 percent of their transportation and account for 95 percent of all work trips.

    But the president’s cadres may find other ways to impose their agenda. New controls, for example, may be enacted through the courts and regulatory action. There is already precedence for this: As EPA director under Clinton, current climate czar Carole Browner threatened to block federal funds for the Atlanta region due to their lack of compliance with clear air rules.

    Such threats will become more commonplace as regulating greenhouse gases fall under administrative scrutiny. As can already be seen in California, regulators can use the threat of climate change as a rationale to stop funding—and permitting—for even well-conceived residential, commercial, or industrial projects construed as likely to generate excess greenhouse gases.

    These efforts will be supported by an elaborate coalition of new urbanist and environmental groups. At the same time, a powerful urban land interest, including many close to the Democratic Party, would also support steps that thwart suburban growth and give them a near monopoly on future development over the coming decades.

    Glimpse the Future

    One can glimpse this future by observing what takes place in most European countries, including the United Kingdom, where land use is controlled from the center. For decades options for new development have been sharply circumscribed, with mandates for ever-smaller lots and smaller homes more the norm for single-family residences.

    In Britain the dominant planning model is widely known as “cramming,” meaning forced densification into smaller geographic areas. Over the past generation, this has spurred a rapid shrinking of house sizes. Today the average new British “hobbit” house, although quite expensive, covers barely 800 square feet, roughly one-third that of the average American residence. Even in quite distant suburbia many of the features widely enjoyed here—sizable backyards, spare bedrooms, home office space—are disappearing.

    But these suburban hobbits will be living large compared to the sardines who would be forced to move into inner cities. In London, already a densely packed city, planners are calling for denser apartment blocks and congested neighborhoods.

    This top-driven scenario may be playing soon in America. Following the proposed edicts of “Moving Cooler,” the urban option increasingly would become almost the only choice other than the countryside. Unlike their baby boomer parents, the next generation would have few affordable choices in comfortable, low- and medium-density suburbs and single-family homes.

    Ownership of a single-family home would become increasingly the province only of the highly affluent or those living on the fringes of second-tier American cities. Due to the very high costs of construction for multi-family apartments in inner cities, most prospective homeowners would also be forced to remain renters. Although widely hailed as “progressive,” these policies would herald a return to the kind of crowded renter-dominated metropolis that existed prior to the Second World War.

    Are Suburbs Doomed?

    The anti-suburban impulse is nothing new. Suburbs have rarely been popular among academics, planners, and the punditry. The suburbanite displeased “the professional planner and the intellectual defender of cosmopolitan culture,” noted sociologist Herbert Gans. The 1960s counterculture expanded this critique, viewing suburbia as one of many “tasteless travesties of mass society,” along with fast and processed food, plastics, and large cars. Suburban life represented the opposite of the cosmopolitan urban scene; one critic termed it “vulgaria.”

    Liberals also castigated suburbs as the racist spawn of “white flight.” But more recently, environmental causes—particularly greenhouse gas emissions as well as dire warning about the prospects for “peak oil”—now drive much of the argument against suburbanization.

    The housing crash that began in 2007 added grist to the contention that the age of suburban growth has come to an end. To be sure, the early phases of the subprime mortgage bust were heavily concentrated in newer developments in the outer fringes. In part due to rising home prices, a disproportionate number of new buyers were forced to resort to sub-prime and other unconventional mortgages.

    The outer suburban distress attracted much media attention and delighted many who had long detested suburbs. One leading new urbanist, Chris Leinberger, actually described suburban sprawl as “the root cause of the financial crisis.” Leinberger and other critics have described suburbia as the home of the nation’s future “slums.” The favorite images have included McMansions being taken over by impoverished gang-bangers and other undesirables once associated with the now pristine inner city.

    Others portray future suburbs as serving at best as backwaters in a society dominated by urbanites. In contrast to a brave new era for “the gospel of urbanism,” the suburbs are expected to contract and even wither away. According to planner Arthur C. Nelson’s estimate, by 2025 the United States will have a “likely surplus of 22 million large lot homes”—that is, residences on more than one sixth of an acre.

    City boosters, however, largely ignore the real-estate crisis impact on urban condo markets throughout the country. Like the new developments on the fringe, the much hyped apartment complexes in central cities such as New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Denver came on line precisely as the housing market crashed, with similar devastating effects. Many remain unoccupied and others have been converted from high-end condos to more modest rentals.

    Yet fundamentally the attack on suburbia has less to do with market trends or the environment than with a deep-seated desire to change the way Americans live. For years urban boosters have proposed that more Americans should reside in what they deemed “more livable,” denser, transit-oriented communities for their own good. One recent example, David Owens’ Green Metropolis, supports the notion that Americans should be encouraged to embrace “extreme compactness”—using Manhattan as the model.

    Convinced Manhattanization is our future, some “progressives” are already postulating what to do with the remnants of our future abandoned. Grist, for example, recently held a competition about what to do with dying suburbs that included ideas such as turning them into farms, bio-fuel generators, and water treatment plants.

    What Do the Suburbanites Want?

    In their assessments, few density advocates bother to consider whether most suburbanites would like to give up their leafy backyards for dense apartment blocks. Many urban boosters simply could not believe that, once given an urban option, anyone would choose to live in suburbia.

    Jane Jacobs, for example, believed that “suburbs must be a difficult place to raise children.” Yet had Jacobs paid as much attention to suburbs as she did to her beloved Greenwich Village, she would have discovered that they possess their own considerable appeal, most particularly for people with children. “If suburban life is undesirable,” noted Gans in 1969, “the suburbanites themselves seem blissfully unaware of it.”

    Contrary to much of the current media hype, most Americans continue to prefer suburban living. Indeed for four decades, according to numerous surveys, the portion of the population that prefers to live in a big city has consistently been in the 10 to 20 percent range, while roughly 50 percent or more opt for suburbs or exurbs. The reasons? The simple desire for privacy, quiet, safety, good schools, and closer-knit communities. The single-family house, detested by many urbanists, also exercises a considerable pull. Surveys by the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Home Builders find that some 83 percent of potential buyers prefer this kind of dwelling over a townhouse or apartment.

    In other words, suburbs have expanded because people like them. A 2008 Pew study revealed that suburbanites displayed the highest degree of satisfaction with where they lived compared to those who lived in cities, small towns, and the countryside. This contradicts another of the great urban legends of the 20th century—espoused by urbanists, planning professors, and pundits and portrayed in Hollywood movies—that suburbanites are alienated, autonomous individuals, while city dwellers have a deep sense of belonging and connection to their neighborhoods.

    Indeed on virtually every measurement—from jobs and environment to families—suburban residents express a stronger sense of identity and civic involvement with their communities than those living in cities. One recent University of California at Irvine study found that density does not, as is often assumed, increase social contact between neighbors or raise overall social involvement. For every 10 percent reduction in density, the chances of people talking to their neighbors increases by 10 percent, and their likelihood of belonging to a local club by 15 percent.

    These preferences have helped make suburbanization the predominant trend in virtually every region of the country. Even in Portland, Oregon, a city renowned for its urban-oriented policy, barely 10 percent of all population growth this decade has occurred within the city limits, while more than 90 percent has taken place in the suburbs over the past decade. Ironically, one contributing factor has been the demands of urbanites themselves, who want to preserve historic structures and maintain relatively modest densities in their neighborhoods.

    Multicultural Flight

    Perhaps nothing reflects the universal appeal of suburban lifestyles more than its growing ethnic diversity. In 1970 nearly 95 percent of suburbanites were white. Today many of these same communities have emerged as the new melting pots of American society. Along with immigrants, African-Americans have moved to the suburbs in huge numbers: between 1970 and 2009, the proportion of African-Americans living in the periphery grew from less than one-sixth to 40 percent.

    Today minorities constitute over 27 percent of the nation’s suburbanites. In fast-growing Gwinett County outside Atlanta, minorities made up less than 10 percent of the population in 1980; by 2006 the county was on the verge of becoming “majority minority.” In greater Washington, D.C., the Northeast’s most dynamic region in economic and demographic terms, 87 percent of foreign migrants live in the suburbs, while less than 13 percent live in the district, according to a 2001 Brookings Institution study.

    Perhaps most intriguingly, this diversity is itself diverse, including not only African-Americans but also Latinos and Asians. Suburban areas such as Fort Bend county, Texas, and the city of Walnut, in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles, already have among the most diverse populations in the nation. And this is not merely a California phenomenon: Aurora (outside Denver), Bellevue (the Seattle suburb), and Blaine (outside Minneapolis) are becoming ever-more diverse even as the nearby city centers become less so. By 2000 well over half of mixed-race households were in the suburbs, a percentage that continues to grow.

    Today the most likely locale for America’s new ethnic shopping centers, Hindu temples, and new mosques are not in the teeming cities but in the outer suburbs of Los Angeles, New York, and Houston. “If a multiethnic society is working out in America,” suggests California demographer James Allen, “it will be worked out in [these] places  . . . The future of America is in the suburbs.”

    A War Not Worth Fighting

    If most Americans clearly prefer suburbs then why would our elected representatives choose to pick a fight with them? Perhaps the most widely used explanation lies with densification as a means of reducing greenhouse gases. But this rationale itself seems flawed, and could reflect more long-standing prejudice than proven science.

    For example, a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences found that a nationally imposed densification policy would at best cut greenhouse gas emissions between less than 1 and 11 percent by 2050. Other research suggests that, by some measurements, low-density development can use less energy than denser urban forms.

    Although automobile commuting now consumes more energy resources than well-traveled traditional urban rail systems, the future generation of low-mileage cars may prove more efficient than often underutilized rail systems that are now seen as critical elements of fighting climate change. A public system running at low capacity—commonplace in many regions—may actually produce more emissions than the coming generation of personal vehicles.

    Moreover, tall buildings may not be as green as some advocates suggest. Recent studies out of Australia show that townhouses, small condos, and even single-family homes generate far less heat per capita than the supposedly environmentally superior residential towers, particularly when one takes into account the cost of heating common areas and the highly consumptive lifestyle of affluent urbanites (with their country homes, vacations, and frequent flying). In terms of energy conservation, the easiest and least expensive option may be to retrofit single-family houses and wood-shaded townhouses.

    Two- or three-story homes or townhouses often require only double-paned windows and natural shading to reduce their energy consumption; one Los Angeles study found that white roofs and shade trees can reduce suburban air conditioning by 18 percent. Such structures are particularly ideal for using the heat- and water-saving elements of landscaping: after all, a nice maple can cool a two-story house more efficiently than it can a ten-story apartment.

    Of course, density advocates can and do produce their own studies to justify their agenda. But there seems enough reasonable doubt to focus on more efficient, and less intrusive, ways to create greener communities by improving energy efficiency of automobiles and changing the way suburbs fit into metropolitan systems.

    Turning Deadwood into Greenurbia

    The “green” assault on suburbia also largely ignores changes already taking place across the suburban landscape. In a historical context, the latest suburban “sprawl” may be compared to Deadwood. That rough-and-ready mining town on the Dakota frontier was developed quickly for the narrow purpose of being close to a vein of gold. But over time these towns developed respectable shopping streets, theaters, and other community institutions.

    One change already evident can be seen in commuting patterns. Density advocates and the media often characterize suburbanites as people who generally take long commutes to work compared to the shorter rides enjoyed by city-dwellers. But with the continuing dispersion of work to the suburbs over the past two decades, suburban work locations actually enjoyed shorter commutes than their inner city counterparts in virtually all the largest metropolitan areas.

    This is true even in New York. Although Manhattanites enjoy short commutes and can even walk to work, most people who live in New York City and work in Manhattan suffer among the longest commutes in the nation. In fact, residents of Queens and Staten Island spend the most time getting to work of all metropolitan counties. Residents in suburbs and particularly exurbs actually endure generally shorter commutes, in large part because of less congestion and closer proximity to employment.

    Such pairing of jobs and housing will shape the suburban future and represents among the easiest ways to cut transportation-related emissions. Even more promising has been the continuing rise in home-based employment. According to Forrester Research, roughly 34 million Americans now commute at least part time from home; by 2016 these numbers are predicted to swell upwards to 63 million.

    Oddly, despite these tremendous potential environmental benefits, the shift toward cyberspace has elicited little support from smart-growth advocates. Indeed most reports on density and greenhouse gases virtually ignore the consideration of telecommuting and dispersed work.

    One reason may be that telecommuting breaks with the prevailing planning and green narratives by making dispersion more feasible. The ability to work full time or part time from home, notes one planning expert, expands metropolitan “commuter sheds” to areas well outside their traditional limits. In exchange for a rural or exurban lifestyle, this new commuter—who may go in to “work” only one or two days a week—will endure the periodic extra long trip to the office.

    Yet although it may offend planning sensibilities, the potential energy savings—particularly in vehicle miles traveled—could be enormous. Telecommuters drive less, naturally; on telecommuting days, average vehicle miles are between 53 percent and 77 percent lower. Overall a 10 percent increase in telecommuting over the next decade will reduce 45 million tons of greenhouse gases, while also dramatically cutting office construction and energy use. Only an almost impossibly large shift to mass transit could produce comparable savings.

    Ultimately, technology will undermine much of the green case against suburbia. If we really want to bring about a greener era, focusing attention on low-density enclaves would bring change that conforms to the preferences of the vast majority of people.

    Think Twice Before You Act

    Ultimately, the war against suburbia reflects a radical new vision of American life which, in the name of community and green values, would reverse the democratizing of the landscape that has characterized much of the past 50 years. It would replace a political economy based on individual aspiration and association in small communities, with a more highly organized, bureaucratic, and hierarchical form of social organization.

    In some ways we could say forced densification could augur in a kind of new feudalism, where questions of land ownership and decision making would be shifted away from citizens, neighbors, or markets, and left in the hands of self-appointed “betters.” This seems strange for an administration—and a party—whose raison d’être ostensibly has been to widen opportunities rather than constrict them.

    Indeed it is one of the oddest aspects of contemporary “progressive” thought that it seeks to undermine even modest middle class aspirations such as living in a quiet neighborhood or a single-family house. This does not seem a winning way to build political support across a broad spectrum of the populace.

    Of course suburbia is not and will not be the option for everyone. There will continue to be a significant, perhaps even growing, segment of the population which opts for a dense urban lifestyle or, for that matter, to live further in the countryside. But unless we see a radical change in human behavior and social organization, the majority will likely settle for a suburban or exurban existence.

    Given these realities, it seems more practical not to work against such aspirations but instead to evolve intelligent policies that would reconcile them with our long-term environmental needs. Suburbanites like their suburbs but would also like to find a way to make them greener as well as more economically and socially viable. Right now neither party has developed such an agenda, and so the suburbs, now clearly leaning right, remain up for grabs. To win suburbanites over, politicians first have to respect the basic preferences while offering a realistic program for improvement. This remains a key to building a sustainable electoral majority, not just for the next election, but for the decades to come.

    This article first appeared at The American.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in Febuary, 2010.

  • America’s Agricultural Angst

    In this high-tech information age few look to the most basic industries as sources of national economic power. Yet no sector in America is better positioned for the future than agriculture–if we allow it to reach its potential.

    Like manufacturers and homebuilders before them, farmers have found themselves in the crosshairs of urban aesthetes and green activists who hope to impose their own Utopian vision of agriculture. This vision includes shutting down large-scale scientifically run farms and replacing them with small organic homesteads and urban gardens.

    Troublingly, the assault on mainstream farmers is moving into the policy arena. It extends to cut-offs on water, stricter rules on the use of pesticides, prohibitions on the caging of chickens and a growing movement to ban the use of genetic engineering in crops. And it could undermine a sector that has performed well over the past decade and has excellent long-term prospects.

    Over the next 40 years the world will be adding some 3 billion people. These people will not only want to eat, they will want to improve their intake of proteins, grains, fresh vegetables and fruits. The U.S., with the most arable land and developed agricultural production, stands to gain from these growing markets. Last year the U.S.’ export surplus in agriculture grew to nearly $35 billion, compared with roughly $5 billion in 2005.

    The overall impact of agriculture on the economy is much greater than generally assumed, notes my colleague Delore Zimmerman, of Praxis Strategy Group. Roughly 4.1 million people are directly employed in production agriculture as farmers, ranchers and laborers, but the industry directly or indirectly employs approximately one out of six American workers, including those working in food processing, marketing, shipping and supermarkets.

    Yet none of this seems to be slowing the mounting criticisms of “corporate agriculture.” A typical article in Time, called “Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food,” assailed the “U.S. agricultural industry” for precipitating an ecological disaster. “With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil–which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills–our industrial style of food production,” the article predicts, “will end sooner or later.”

    The romantic model being promoted by Time and agri-intellectuals like Michael Pollan hearkens back to European and Tolstoyan notions of small family farms run by generations of happy peasants. But this really has little to do with the essential ethos of American agriculture.

    Back in the early 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville noted that American farmers viewed their holdings more like capitalists than peasants. They would sell their farms and move on to other businesses or other lands–a practice unheard of in Europe. “Almost all the farmers of the United States,” he wrote, “combine some trade with agriculture; most of them make agriculture itself a trade.”

    Despite the perceptions of a corporatized farm sector, this entrepreneurial spirit remains. Families own almost 96% of the nation’s 2.2 million farms, including the vast majority of the largest spreads. And small-scale agriculture, after decreasing for years, is on the upswing; between 2002 and 2009 the number of farms increased by 4%.

    This trend toward smaller-scale specialized production represents a positive trend, but large-scale, scientifically advanced farming still produces the majority of the average family’s foodstuffs, as well as the bulk of our exports. Overall, organic foods and beverages account for less than 3% of all food sales in the U.S.–hardly enough to feed a nation, much less a growing, hungry planet.

    Then there’s the even more fanciful notion–promoted by Columbia University’s Dickson D. Despommier–of moving food production into massive urban hothouses. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times he argues we are running out of land and need to take agriculture off the farm. According to Despommier, “The traditional soil-based farming model developed over the last 12,000 years will no longer be a sustainable option.”

    Yet Praxis Strategy’s Matthew Lephion, who grew up on a family farm, points out that such projects hardly represent a credible alternative in terms of food production. Urban land is far more expensive–often at least 10 times as much as rural. Energy and other costs of maintaining farms in big cities also are likely to be higher.

    Furthermore the notion that America is running out of land–one justification for subsidizing urban farming–seems fanciful at best. The past 30 years have seen some loss of farmland, but the amount of land that actually grows harvested crops has remained stable. Though some prime farmland close to metropolitan centers should be protected, agriculture has over the past decades returned to nature–forests, wetlands, prairie–millions of acres, far more than the land that has been devoted to housing and other urban needs.

    However ludicrous the arguments, the Obama administration remains influenced by green groups and is the cultural prisoner of the lifestyle left, with its powerful organic foodie contingent. That leaves farmers and the small towns dependent on them with little voice.

    The ability of greens and others to wreak havoc on agriculture can be seen in the disaster now unfolding in California’s fertile Central Valley. Large swaths of this area are being de-developed back to desert–due less to a mild drought than to regulations designed to save obscure fish species in the state’s delta. Over 450,000 acres have already been allowed to go fallow. Nearly 30,000 agriculture jobs–held mostly by Latinos–have been lost, and many farm towns suffer conditions that recall The Grapes of Wrath.

    Not satisfied with these results, the green lobby has prompted the National Marine Fisheries Service to further cut water supplies, in part to improve the conditions for whales and other species out in the ocean. Given these attitudes, farmers, including those I have worked with in Salinas, are fretting about what steps federal and state regulators may take next.

    One particular concern revolves around the movement against genetically modified food. Already there are calls for banning GMOs in Monterey County. Local officials worry this would cripple the area’s nascent agricultural biotech industry as well as the long-term ability of existing farmers to compete with less regulated competitors elsewhere. The fact that a less advanced form of genetic engineering also sparked the “green revolution” that greatly reduced world hunger after 1965 seems, to them at least, irrelevant.

    When viewed globally, the anti-big farm movement seems even more misguided. As Chapman University’s professor of food science Anuradha Prakash observes, India’s own organic farms serve a small portion of the market and cannot possibly meet the nutritional needs of the country’s expanding population. “You just don’t get the yields you need for Africa and Asia from organic methods,” she explains.

    A formula that works for high-end foodies of the Bay Area or Manhattan can’t produce enough affordable food to feed the masses–whether in Minnesota or Mumbai. The emerging war on agriculture threatens not only the livelihoods of millions of American workers; it could undermine our ability to help feed the world.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press February 4th, 2010.

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  • Stop Coddling Wall Street!

    By all historical logic and tradition, Wall Street’s outrageous bonuses—almost $20 billion to Goldman Sachs alone—should be setting a populist wildfire across the precincts of the Democratic Party. Yet right now, the Democrats in both the White House and Congress seem content to confront such outrageous fortune with little more than hearings and mild legislative remedies—like a proposed new bank tax, which, over the next decade, seeks to collect $90 to $100 billion. This amounts, on an annual basis, to about half of this year’s bonus for Goldman’s gold diggers alone. It’s speaking loudly and carrying a stick made of paper mache.

    But this should come as no surprise, really. Postmodern Democrats are generally more concerned about the fate of the polar bears than real people on Main Street.

    One reason may be that Democrats increasingly collect the bulk of contributions from the very financial sector that they have bailed out and coddled since taking office. However, more substantially, the Democrats—including many “progressives”—seem more comfortable with big business and high finance than their erstwhile working- and middle-class constituencies. For this, we need the Democratic Party?

    Somewhere outside Nashville, the shade of Andrew Jackson, the founder of the modern Democratic Party, is stirring uncomfortably. So, too, are the remains of Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt, Jackson’s heirs to the leadership of the Party of the People.

    Faced with highway robbers like those at Goldman Sachs, Jackson would have threatened to seize their assets and, if they protested, hang them from the highest tree. Franklin Roosevelt would have made political mince meat out of these outrageous “economic royalists.” Harry Truman would have uttered an earthy expletive and sought to cut them down to size. Truman hated phonies and elitists; today’s Democrats Party is lousy with them.

    Now we see the very abandonment of the idea of the Democratic Party opposing concentrations of power. Historically, Democrats took on the largest and most powerful institutions of society. Jackson made his critical battle against the government-run Bank of the United States, which he considered a means “ to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful.”

    In his time, Franklin Roosevelt battled big business, which largely hated him, by seeking to create a more equal distribution of wealth. He tried to save homeowners and farmers from the banks; speculators wiped out in 1929 did not enjoy banner years for a long time to come. Truman fought not for big banks and major companies, but for programs that spread capital to the middle class, whether for college loans or mortgages.

    Now we have the postmodern Democratic Party of Barack Obama. The new party has little use for populism of any kind—it prefers to legislate from on high, whether on financial reform, climate change or land-use policy, from what it considers its superior knowledge. If your factory or business is shut down as a result, it’s you who better learn to evolve.

    We will see this same mind-set in action with the administration’s proposal for a cap-and-trade program. It may end up doing little for the environment, but a lot of traders, well-connected corporate CEOs, and academic consultants will be made even richer. Draconian “green” policies that boost subsidies and energy prices may not be what Americans want—climate change ranks near the bottom of popular concerns—but such an approach fits neatly the agendas of Harvard faculty, Wall Street, and the mainstream media. That is, those who matter.

    The rotten economy remains detestable but the stimulus program is working fine for their key constituencies. Stocks are up, many hedge funds are doing well, university research coffers are bulging. Meanwhile, taxpayers are employing ever-more unionized public employees, whose often-insane pensions are consuming many local government budgets.

    Many Americans who work for themselves are enraged, but they lack a credible channel for expressing it. The Republicans are largely discredited by their disgraceful performance over the last decade, up to and including the initial Bush-Paulson bailout. The Republicans presided as easily as the Democrats over the disastrous financialization of the economy; by the mid-2000s, finance accounted for some 41 percent of all American profits—three times the percentage in the 1970s.

    But for now, populists are in retreat in Washington. Last week, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota announced his retirement from the Senate. Dorgan, friends tell me, was disgusted with Obama’s focus on health care and climate change at a time when the economy was unraveling and Americans were losing their jobs. He also knew that the president’s mounting unpopularity in Middle America posed a profound threat to his own reelection prospects.

    Dorgan will be missed. His voice would have been set against the coddling of Wall Street. He supported reinstating the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which put a barrier between banks and investment houses. He also opposed “too big to fail” policies and was ready to attack the administration’s “cap-and-trade” scheme, which he considered a large giveaway to Wall Street traders.

    Dorgan’s departure leaves only a handful of genuine populists in Congress, including Jon Tester from Montana, James Webb of Virginia, as well as our resident socialist, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders. They may well be at last willing to take on the battles that Jackson, Roosevelt, and Truman would have fought against “interests.”

    Right now for every populist, there are several gentry Democrats—epitomized by the likes of New York Senator Charles Schumer and his sidekick, Kirsten Gillibrand—who will do Wall Street’s bidding on the Hill. Erstwhile populists may find some allies among independent-minded Republicans but, for the most part, the GOP is too blinded by ideology or too well bought to curb the big investment houses.

    So in the end, another crop of 35-year-old Wharton and Harvard MBAs gets to spend their multimillion-dollar windfalls. Maybe if you live in New York, perhaps a few shekels might fall your way. After all, these people have kids to nanny, dogs to walk, apartments to decorate, and toenails to be painted.

    These bonuses simply remind us of our outrage. Jackson, Roosevelt, and Truman would have understood the opportunity for the Democratic Party presented by this egregious, undeserved windfall. Truman in particular would have detested the academically oriented “progressives” who explain away excess and look for new ways to harry independent smaller businesses. As he once quipped, “There should be a real liberal party in this country, and I don’t mean a crackpot professional one.”

    Yet that’s exactly the kind of Democratic Party we have now: one that shames the legacy of Truman, Roosevelt, and Jackson and looks the other way while the Treasury is raided and the economy works mainly for the benefit of the least deserving.

    This article first appeared at TheDailyBeast.com

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press February 4th.

  • The Limits Of Politics

    Reversing the general course of history, economics or demography is never easy, despite even the most dogged efforts of the best-connected political operatives working today.

    Since the 2006 elections – and even more so after 2008 – blue-state politicians have enjoyed a monopoly of power unprecedented in recent history. Hardcore blue staters control virtually every major Congressional committee, as well as the House Speakership and the White House. Yet they still have proved incapable of reversing the demographic and economic decline in the nation’s most “progressive” cities and states.

    Obama and his congressional allies have worked overtime in favor of urban blue-state constituencies in everything from transportation funding and energy policies to the Wall Street bailouts and massive transfers of private wealth to powerful public-employee unions. Yet these areas continue suffering from net outmigration and stubbornly high job losses – as well as from some of the most severe fiscal imbalances in the nation.

    Nowhere is this more evident than in the president’s hometown of Chicago. The Windy City has suffered a very bad recession and may have fallen to its worst relative position since the Daley reconquista in 1989. As Chicago blogger Steve Bartin points out, even the presence of a Daley operative in the White House has failed to prevent the city from falling “in a funk.” He writes that even a reliable booster, columnist Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune, has lately described the city “as edgy, a little sullen and scared, verging on depressed.”

    There’s plenty reason for feeling low, well beyond the humiliating loss of the Obama-backed Olympics bid last year. For example, Oprah Winfrey, the city’s one bona fide A-list celebrity, is retiring her talk show in 2011. She is also reportedly shifting much of her media empire to Southern California, which, for all its admitted problems, has gads of celebrities and much better weather.

    Chicago’s most serious concern, however, revolves around the economy. In June, its unemployment rate peaked at 11.3%, far outpacing the national unemployment rate of 10%. Since 2007, the region has lost more jobs than Detroit, and more than twice as many as New York. Chicago’s total loss over the entire decade is greater than any region outside Detroit: about 250,000 positions, which is about the amount its emerging mid-American rival Houston has gained. In hard times businesses tend to look for places with a friendly environment for their enterprise. They avoid high taxes, political payoffs and inflated public employee salaries – all well-known Chicago specialties. These costs are undermining the city’s competitive position in, for example, the convention business, among others.

    Other key sectors are also flailing. Political influence in Washington will not stem the flow of high-wage trading jobs away from the Mercantile Exchange to decentralized electronic exchanges. Nor can it reverse the deteriorating state fiscal crisis caused by weak economies and exacerbated by insanely high pensions and out of control spending policies. Late last month Moody’s and S&P downgraded the debt ranking for the State of Illinois. Of course, such fiscal malaise is not limited to Chicago or Illinois. True blue California has an even worse debt rating. New York, another blue bastion, is also just about out of cash.

    To be sure, the recession has not hurt New York as much as Chicago, but the Big Apple has lost heavily , including 50,000 financial sector jobs since 2007. The outrageous bonuses to a few well-placed financial types will cushion but not deflect the influence of declining high-wage jobs. This can be seen in the striking weakness in the once seemingly unstoppable high-end condominium market. Particularly hard hit have been recent gentrified neighborhoods like Williamsburg in Brooklyn, N.Y., much like the hard-hit, newly developed areas along the Chicago lakefront.

    Other blue bastions have been shedding jobs as well, both during the recession and over the whole decade. Beyond Chicago and Detroit, the biggest losses among the mega-regions have taken place in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles-Long Beach and Boston. Big money can still be made in Silicon Valley, Hollywood or around the academic economy of Boston, but in terms of overall jobs, the past decade has been dismal for these regions. Meanwhile, the consistent big gainers have been – besides Houston – Dallas and Washington, D.C., the one place money really does seem to grow on trees. Even Miami, Phoenix and San Bernardino-Riverside, in California, boast more jobs today than in 2000, despite significant setbacks in the recent recession.

    These trends coincide with continuing shifts in demographics. The recession may have slowed the pace of net migration, but the essential pattern has remained in place. People continue to leave places like New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles for more affordable, economically viable regions like Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. Overall, the big winners in net migration have been predominately conservative states like Texas – with over 800,000 net new migrants – notes demographer Wendell Cox. In what Cox calls “the decade of the South,” 90% of all net migration went to southern states.

    Utah, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest have also experienced positive flows – but perhaps most striking have been the migration gains, albeit modest, in Great Plains states such as Oklahoma and South Dakota as well as Appalachian Kentucky and West Virginia. Historically these places shipped many of their people to cities of the industrial Midwest, the eastern seaboard and California; that is no longer the case.

    Ultimately these shifts could undermine the true blue political strategy, perhaps as early as the 2010 congressional and state elections, and certainly after reapportionment. By 2012, the census will likely take seats from New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, handing them over to Texas, North Carolina, Georgia and Utah. Perhaps nothing will epitomize the new reality more than the fact that California, now among the most extreme blue states in terms of governance, will not gain a Congressional seat for the first time since the 1860s.

    These trends suggest that the current administration and the majority party in Congress must adjust their strategy. Further attempts to push a radical “progressive” agenda – expansive public employee bailouts, higher taxes and radical measures to combat “climate change” and suburban development – might please their current core constituencies, but they have the perverse effect of driving even more people and jobs out of these regions.

    All these underlying trends appear a boon to Republicans. But Democrats could counter the emerging GOP edge by appealing to the needs of these ascendant regions. By their very nature, growth states have the most urgent need for government investments in basic infrastructure, something traditional Democrats long have espoused. Moreover, such areas tend to become more tolerant as they welcome outsiders, and could be turned off to excessive Republican social conservatism.

    For any of this to work, however, Democrats must first abandon their current narrow, urban-centric blue-state strategy. They must learn to adjust their appeal to regions on the upswing, or things could turn out very badly for them very soon.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press early next year.

  • Why New York City Needs a New Economic Strategy

    When Michael Bloomberg stood on the steps of City Hall last week to be sworn in for a third term as New York City’s mayor, he spoke in upbeat terms about the challenges ahead. The situation, however, is far more difficult than he portrays it. American financial power has shifted from New York to Washington, while global clout moves toward Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Even if the local economy rebounds, the traditional media industries that employ many of Bloomberg’s influential constituents likely will continue to decline. New Yorkers have long had an outsize view of their city; historically, its mayors have touted mottos that encouraged that view, from Rudy Giuliani’s “capital of the world” to Mike Bloomberg’s “luxury city.” But as Bloomberg begins his new term, New York needs to reexamine its core economic strategy.

    A good first step would be to recognize that the world owes New York nothing. The city cannot simply rely on inertia and the disbursements of Wall Street megabonuses to save its economy. Instead, it needs to rebuild its middle-class neighborhoods and diversify toward a wide range of industries that can capitalize on the city’s unique advantages—including its appeal to immigrants; the port; and its leadership in design, culture, and high-end professional services.

    It’s also time to get rid of the Sex and the City image and start making New York a city where people can have both sex and children. This will become more important as the millennial generation enters its late 20s and early 30s later this decade. This is when many young migrants to the city, including upwardly mobile immigrants, typically become ex–New Yorkers.

    Despite all the “back to the city” hype, New York over the past decade suffered one of the highest rates of out-migration of any region in the country. Young singles may come to New York, but many leave as they get older and have families. An analysis by the city controller’s office in 2005 found that people leaving the city were three times more likely to have children than those arriving.

    If New York is to thrive, it will need to keep more of these largely middle-class families. To do that, it needs to diversify its economy beyond Wall Street, which in 2007 provided roughly 35 percent of all income earned in the city. Since the recession, the city has lost 40,000 financial-service jobs, but the industry has been quietly downsizing for years: over the past two decades, more than 100,000 financial-services jobs have disappeared from New York. In good years, financial services provided an enormous cash engine, but it can no longer provide enough jobs. According to an analysis by the Praxis Strategy Group, finance now accounts for barely one in eight jobs in New York City. Most job growth has come instead in lower-paying professions like health care and tourism.

    To become economically sustainable, New York needs to create policies that help encourage development in areas where its less wealthy citizens live. Most outsiders identify New York almost exclusively with Manhattan, yet roughly three out of four New Yorkers actually live in the outer boroughs: Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Neighborhoods like Bay Ridge, Whitestone, Flatbush, Howard Beach, and Middle Village are really New York’s middle-class bastions.

    Over the past decade, these communities have provided a critical middle ground between the bifurcated Bloombergian “luxury city” with its high-end enclaves and the many distressed neighborhoods throughout the city. Although the mayor, some urbanists, and many developers would like to make these middle-class enclaves ever denser, their very appeal often lies in their moderate scale, proximity to work areas, decent schools, and parks. Those attributes hold sway, even in a recession. “Brand- new and expensive places have not held up as well as the established family neighborhoods,” says Jonathan Bowles, director of the New York–based Center for an Urban Future.

    Nurturing these neighborhoods will require a distinct shift in public policy. During the Bloomberg years the big subsidies have gone to luxury condo megadevelopments, sports stadiums, or huge office complexes. Consider the 22-acre Atlantic Yards project in downtown Brooklyn, which will include luxury housing and a new arena for the NBA’s Nets; one recent report by the city’s Independent Budget Office put the total subsidies provided by the city, New York state, and the transit authority at $726 million and estimated the project will hurt, not help, the city’s economy over time.

    More than anything, the plain-vanilla neighborhoods that represent New York’s real future will require policies that create a broad array of economic opportunities. Right now New York is so overregulated and highly taxed that only the most high-end business, such as big media and financial firms, can possibly thrive. The city has neglected its smaller firms, typically engaged in such activities as food processing, furniture making, and garment production. Traditionally these industries were run by Russian, German, Polish, and Italian immigrants; West Indians, Latinos, Koreans, Chinese, and South Asians do much of this work today. Over the past decade, the number of self-employed immigrants in New York has grown even as the number of self-employed among the native-born has dropped.

    Earlier generations of urban residents as well as many immigrants today stay in the city to be close to their communities and industries dominated by them. These days many others stay in the city largely because of its cultural attributes and quality of life. This doesn’t mean these workers remain unreconstructed bohemians forever. Their priorities often change as they age, start businesses, and raise families. Different, more mundane issues—stable employment, taxes, safety, schools, and housing affordability—often determine whether they stay in the city. “It’s easy to name the things that attracted us—the neighbors, the moderate density,” says Nelson Ryland, a film editor with two children who works in his sprawling home in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood. “More than anything it’s the sense of the community. That’s the great thing that keeps people like us here.”

    Technology will boost this sense of community. Online groups like the Flatbush Family Network can facilitate contact in different parts of a city among artists, families, and neighborhood groups, supplementing the traditional community adhesives of schools, churches, synagogues, and clubs. These new online institutions can perform some of the functions that urbanist Jane Jacobs’s “eyes on the street” did in the old, cohesive city neighborhood. Information about the arrival of a promising new store or restaurant, or the unwelcome appearance of a possible child molester, travels through these community networks much as it did when mothers spoke over the washing, men went to the pool hall, or kids hung out at the candy store.

    Bloomberg has built on many of the achievements of his predecessor during his eight years in City Hall. This, combined with huge campaign spending from his personal fortune, is why voters sent him back for a third term. To position the city for prosperity in an economy that’s no longer overly dominated by Wall Street, he’d be wise to spend his final term focused on making new opportunities for people who live far from his own Upper East Side neighborhood—the people who represent the real future of New York.

    This article originally appeared at Newsweek.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press early next year.

  • Obama’s Elite Power Base

    Looking back at President Obama’s first year in office, this much is clear: Obama first enraged the right wing by seeming to veer far left, then turned off the left by seeming to abandon them. Even as Fox News fundamentalists rail against “socialism,” self-styled progressives like Naomi Klein scream about a “blown” opportunity to lead the nation from the swamp of darkest capitalism.

    Both right- and left-wing critics fail to consider the fundamental nature of the Obama regime. This presidency represents not a traditional ideology but a new politics that mirrors the rise of a new, and potentially hegemonic class, one for which Obama is a near-perfect representative.

    Every president and political movement, of course, brings to power an often-hoary group of grasping interest groups. Under the conservatives and George W. Bush, the favored classes included standbys like the fossil-fuel energy companies, Big Agriculture, suburban homebuilders, and the defense industry.

    Rather than the “good old boys,” Obama’s core group hails from what may be best described as the “creative class” – the cognitive elite, or, to borrow from Daniel Bell’s The Coming of Postindustrial Society, the “hierophants of the new society.” They come not from traditional productive industry, but the self-conscious “knowledge” sectors – such as financial services, the software industry, and academia.

    From early on, Barack Obama attracted big-money people like George Soros, Warren Buffett, and JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon far more effectively than his opponents in either party. As The New York Times’ Andrew Sorkin put it back in April, “Mr. Obama might be struggling with the blue-collar vote in Pennsylvania, but he has nailed the hedge-fund vote.”

    Other bastions of support could be found in Silicon Valley, where Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and venture capitalist John Doerr were all early backers. Obama, the former law school professor, also did exceedingly well with academics, and many of his pivotal wins in the Midwest rested heavily on both votes and volunteers from college constituencies.

    Finally Obama gained the early support of public-sector unions, now arguably the dominant power within the Democratic Party. Together, these groups now enjoy the lion’s share of influence inside the administration.

    In contrast, the representatives of traditional Democratic sectors such as industrial labor unions, Latinos, or even many African Americans were slow to join the Obama bandwagon. Even after they joined his electoral coalition, they have received little in the way of succor from the president and the administration.

    Indeed, for most of these voters, the past year has been an awful one. Unemployment for Latinos, blacks, and blue-collar workers has skyrocketed, particularly among males. For them, Obama’s economic plan has done very little – unsurprising given its primary focus on sustaining public-sector employment and large financial institutions.

    In contrast, the core Obama constituencies appear to have ridden out the recession in fine shape. Mega-patron George Soros, for example, has boasted openly about how he was having “a very good crisis.” Much the same can be said of the largely pro-Obama hedge funds and investment bankers, for whom Paulson to Bernanke to Geithner has provided a double-play combination for the ages.

    Academia has also emerged as a big winner. This administration is crammed with professors from Science Adviser John Holdren and Energy Secretary Steven Chu to former Harvard President Larry Summers, the director of the National Economic Council. More broadly, academics have reaped massive windfalls from the stimulus, both in terms of direct support for universities and funding for research projects.

    One place where the priorities and class interests of the cognitive elite coalesce most has been on “climate change.” In contrast to manufacturers, farmers, or fossil-fuel firms, investment bankers, software companies, and university professors have little to fear from the rash of “green” policy initiatives.

    In fact, for these groups, “climate change” often means a once-in-a-lifetime bonanza. Wall Street sees the administration’s “cap and trade” proposals as opening a whole new frontier to enjoy yet more profit. University researchers – particularly those with the right spin on the climate issue – have been big winners in the tens of billions of dollars being handed out by the Chu-led Energy Department and other federal agencies.

    Overall, subsidized “alternative energy” – largely excluding both nuclear power and natural gas – also provides Silicon Valley with federal backing for ventures in everything from luxury electric cars and dodgy geothermal developments to “smart” energy grids. And, of course, all this increased federal spending also plays into the public-sector unions, for whom an ever-expanding government represents the ultimate growth industry.

    In the short term, Obama’s loyalties have gained him political credit even in hard times. Support from Wall Street and Silicon Valley assures access to big-money sources and influences the upper echelons of the establishment press, particularly in New York. Meanwhile, the academy and the public bureaucracy provide a cadre of political shock troops who may be needed to rouse an increasingly disaffected Democratic base in the 2010 elections.

    But Obama’s class strategy also poses considerable longer-term risks. The cognitive elites – clustered in places like Washington, New York, Boston, or Silicon Valley – tend to only talk to and listen to each other. This often makes them slow to recognize shifts in grassroots opinion on such issues as the health plan or global warming.

    That risks continued erosion of support from many hard-pressed middle-class voters around the country more concerned with economic growth and holding onto their home than saving the planet. These are precisely the voters, not the tea party activists or their leftist analogues, who likely will determine the political winners in 2010 and beyond.

    Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.

    This article originally appeared at The Daily Beast.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press early next year.

  • Don’t Give Up On The U.S.

    If the U.S. were a stock, it would be trading at historic lows. The budget deficit is out of control, the economy is anemic and the political system is controlled by academic ideologues and Chicago hacks. Opposing them is a force largely comprised of know-nothings–to call them Neanderthals would be too complimentary.

    Not surprisingly, many Americans have become pessimistic. Two in three adults now fear their children will be worse off than they are. Nearly 40% think China will become the world’s dominant power in the next 20 years, as indicated by a recent survey.

    Yet, in spite of everything, I would still place my long-term bets on the U.S. Here’s why:

    1. The U.S. is the only advanced country in the world with viable demographics. By 2030, all our major rivals, save India, will be declining, with ever-larger numbers of retirees and a shrinking labor force. By 2050 Germany, Japan and South Korea could approach having twice as many people over 65 per capita as the U.S. By then, the U.S. will have 400 million people, which may be more than the entire EU and three times the population of our former archrival Russia.

    2. In terms of energy resources, the U.S., combined with Canada, is the second richest region in the world after the Middle East. The country possesses vast resources of natural gas, about 90 years’ worth, as well as strong areas for wind power. Given America’s past profligacy, the country could derive considerable savings with even modest conservation efforts.

    3. America remains the world’s agricultural superpower, with the most arable land on the planet. With another 3 billion people expected on the planet by 2050, the U.S. should enjoy a continuing boom in food exports.

    4. Military power matters now and in the future. We are not living in a Star Trek future of earthly harmony. The U.S. leads in military technology and, yes, our martial spirit remains a positive factor, despite the portrayals from Hollywood. For all its missteps, the U.S. military has achieved its strictly war-fighting missions–in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a host of smaller conflicts–over the past 20 years. Meanwhile, Europe and Japan have taken themselves out of the military game, and it will be decades before China will be ready for a head-to-head challenge.

    5. There is no large country that comes close to the U.S. as an entrepreneurial hotbed (Taiwan, Israel and Hong Kong come close but are far smaller). The recent Legatum Prosperity Index showed the U.S. remains by far the largest generator of new ideas and companies on the planet.

    Of course, all these critical advantages could be squandered by fecklessness. The empowered American left–in sharp contrast to the tradition that runs from Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman all the way to Bill Clinton–often envisions the U.S. as a country headed into the dustbin of history, and deservedly so.

    Leftist historian Immanuel Wallerstein, for example, asserts that the U.S. has been “a fading global power” since the 1970s. The only question now, he suggests, is “whether the United States can devise a way to descend gradually, with minimum damage to the world, and to itself.” Another leading liberal analyst, Parag Khanna, envisions a “shrunken” America that is lucky to eke out a meager existence between a “triumphant China” and a “retooled Europe.”

    The traditionally pro-American right increasingly shares this pessimism, albeit for different reasons. With Obama and the Democrats in power, many conservatives, including such keen observers as Charles Krauthammer and Victor Davis Hanson, believe the country has hit the historical skids.

    Yet declinism is often overstated. Today, only someone delusional would suggest that once widely feared Japan, soon to fall to third place (behind China) as an economic power, constitutes a serious threat to American preeminence. However, the fantasy of a European resurgence remains deeply embedded among American policy wonks and academics. It is a firmly held belief despite the continent’s decades of slow growth, demilitarization, disastrous demographics and mounting budget woes, particularly on its southern and eastern fringes.

    On the other hand, China and India represent true ascendant economies of the next decade and beyond. China’s rise has led one writer, the Guardian’s Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the World, to suggest that America must “learn to bow” before the great power of the 21st century.

    Yet for all their impressive growth, neither China nor India possesses either the institutional strengths or natural resources of the U.S. China’s current boom has much to do with an orgy of money-printing that would make Barack Obama blush. Real estate in some places is turning bubblish. There are reports of vacancy rates as high as 50% in Shanghai’s commercial market.

    India, as anyone who has spent time there knows, remains a highly fragmented and largely impoverished country. It will be a great power of the future, but a very poor one, which will take many decades, even a century, to approach even a decent fraction of America’s current per capita income.

    Often overlooked as well is America’s unique advantage as an inclusive multiracial society. Over the past decade America has produced two African-American Secretaries of State and one President. America remains unique in its ability to absorb different races, religions and cultures, an increasingly critical factor in maintaining global preeminence.

    What Americans need most now is to develop policies that build on our essential strengths. Some tech enthusiasts and members of the Obama Administration claim that “the age of infrastructure is over.” However, in reality there is no way to assure a decent future for the next 100 million Americans without a major investment in everything from roads and broadband to transmission lines, water systems and basic skills training

    Some conservatives may oppose such a domestic surge, but the investment reflects a strong American tradition. The critical issue will be to make sure a commitment to infrastructure does not morph into a Washington-led industrial policy that would inevitably reward the well connected and stunt our innovative edge.

    In the end, Americans must remain true to our individualist traditions. Compared with Europeans, who instinctively look to government for guidance, the vast majority of Americans still believe that hard work is the key to self-improvement. Our primary economic asset continues to lie with entrepreneurial spirit and adaptability.

    In the coming decade, American success will require precisely this blend of public support and private initiative. If the U.S. stays true to its unique traditions, it will remain the world’s best investment for decades to come.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press early next year.

  • The Green Movement’s People Problem

    The once unstoppable green machine lost its mojo at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. After all its laboring and cajoling, the movement at the end resembled not a powerful juggernaut but a forlorn lover wondering why his date never showed up.

    One problem is that the people of earth and their representatives don’t much fancy the notion of a centrally dictated, slow-growth world. They proved unwilling to abandon either national interest or material aspirations for promises of a greener world.

    The other problem is that divisions are now developing within the green camp. There are members, like Michael Shellenger and Ted Nordhaus, who recognize the serious fall out from the “Climategate” scandal, while others, including large parts of the media claque, dismiss any such possibility. There are the corporatists aligned with big business–who will live with any agreement that allows them to exact monopoly profits–and the zealots–like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Bill McKibben–who see Copenhagen as an affront to themselves and to our endangered planet.

    But the main, fundamental problem facing the movement after Copenhagen–which none of the green factions have yet addressed–is its people problem. The movement needs to break with the deep-seated misanthropy that dominates green politics and has brought it to this woeful state. Its leaders have defined our species as everything from a “cancer” to the “AIDs of the earth.” They wail in horror at the thought that by the year 2050 there will likely be another 2 or 3 billion of these inconvenient bipeds. Leading green figures such as Britain’s Jonathan Porritt, Richard Attenborough and Lester Brown even consider baby-making a grievous carbon crime–especially, notes Australian activist Robert Short, in those “highly consumptive, greenhouse-producing nations.”

    Yet a slower population growth–while beneficial for poor, developing countries–can lead to a dismal, geriatric future in already low-birthrate nations like Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea and Russia. And although birth rates are dropping in most developing countries, particularly those experiencing rapid economic growth, it will likely be decades before population stops increasing in most of the developing world.

    Besides, people in developing countries have much more important things to worry about–such as earning a living and getting ahead. Fighting climate change ranks low on the list of Third World priorities. The sprawling slums of Mumbai need more energy, not less; they want better roads, not fewer. More economic development would produce the money to help clean the now foul water and air, but also provide access to better education, one of the best ways to assure more manageable birth rates.

    Instead of looking to make developing countries even more dependent on Western largesse, greens should focus on ways to help improve the day-to-day lives of their people. Rather than prattle on about the coming apocalypse, they could work to replace treeless, dense slums with shaded low-lying clean houses that are easier to heat or cool. Those interested in nature might purchase land and rebuild natural areas. The children of cities like Mumbai should have the opportunity to experience wildlife other than crows, pigeons and rats.

    The environmental movement also might as well forget fighting the aspirations of the burgeoning middle class in India, or other developing countries. No developing world politician, whether from democratic India or Brazil or authoritarian China will embrace an agenda that stifles such aspirations.

    Post-Copenhagen greens need to reassess their relations with people in the developed countries as well. The popular call to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from the so-called “rich” countries to combat the potential effects of climate change will not be very popular with the vast majority of the middle or working classes in these places.

    Much of the problem revolves around the loaded term “rich.” To be sure, many top climate-change scolds–Richard Branson, Al Gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bloomberg and, of course, his royal highness, Prince Charles–qualify easily. After all, no sweat off their well-massaged backs. The rock stars of the green millennium can buy their environmental indulgences so they can gorge good conscience on their carbon-rich world of private jets and lush estates.

    For them, going green means minimal sacrifice.

    Instead, the “rich” who will suffer the most will be the middle and working class of the developed countries. For them, carbon “sacrifice” may mean more than giving up needless luxuries like gas-guzzlers or monster plasma televisions. A green regime of enforced slow growth and ever greater regulation over carbon could threaten whole industries while environmental-planning policies will make purchasing a decent suburban house even more difficult.

    Such calls for sacrifice seem particularly ill-timed when 4 in 10 U.S. residents fear they could lose their jobs, with many rightly worried about holding onto their homes. With unemployment at 10%, few may be willing to wait around until the promised “green jobs” miraculously appear to save both them and the planet.

    But there’s an obvious way out of this dilemma: Start shifting away from fear-mongering and look to ways to achieve green goals without catastrophic economic losses. One clear way to start this process is through land-use policy. Right now many activists and their allies in the climate-industrial complex–which includes urban land interests–want to force suburban home dwellers into dense urban areas. They also want to coerce people to give up their individual mobility for trains, even if this means longer commutes and less convenience.

    Proposing a radical re-engineering of society does not constitute a winning political program. Environmentalists would do better to embrace a vision of “greenurbia,” allowing for dispersed living but in a environmentally responsible way. This could be done with practical steps–increased telecommuting, more tree-planting and flexible work arrangements–that would enhance not only the environment but also day-to-day life for hundreds of millions of people.

    Similarly, environmentalists should redouble their efforts to provide more access to open space for millions of people through expanded purchases of land throughout the country. America’s highly productive agricultural sector has jettisoned millions of acres of land from cultivation, providing an excellent opportunity for purchases for public use. In some areas, abandoned industrial or mining properties could be rehabilitated as natural areas.

    Such changes, however, require a re-evaluation of the values that now drive the green movement. Whether in California or Calcutta, it boils down to the existential question: Do humans matter?

    Frederick Law Olmsted explained his plan for New York’s Central as an attempt “to supply to the hundreds of thousands of tired workers … a specimen of God’s handiwork.” This represents the kind of sensibility that could transform the green movement from an obstacle to people’s aspiration to a force for greater human happiness.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press early next year.

  • Nurturing Employment Recovery

    President Obama’s quick exit from Oslo and late arrival in Copenhagen suggest he’s finally ready to shift focus from Nordic adulation and fighting climate change and diplomacy to fixing the American economy. About time. As former Clinton adviser Bill Galston observed recently, the president needs “to pivot and make 2010 the year of jobs.”

    White House operatives, as well as the Democrats in Congress, know high unemployment could bring big political trouble next year. But in their rush to create new jobs, policy makers would do well to focus on the quality of jobs created over the next year and beyond.

    On this score, the slight improvements in the job picture are far from sufficient. The most recent analysis of employment over the past year by the Web site JobBait shows that almost all the growth has occurred in three fields–government, education and health care.

    The problem: All these fields are financed by taxpayers or through transfer payments. They do little to expand our exports, and they employ few of the blue- collar male workers who have been hardest hit by the “hecession.”

    Unemployment for men is over 2.5% higher than for women, the largest gap in history. In all but a handful of states, male-dominated fields such as transportation, mining and logging, manufacturing and warehousing have declined rapidly over the past year. The only states to experience gains were North Dakota, Montana and West Virginia.

    This reflects the critical weakness in the stimulus package. The stimulus focused on government bailouts and transfers of research funds to universities, while less than 5% went to basic infrastructure. But a greater emphasis on infrastructure would not only have created large numbers of construction jobs, it would have boosted our industrial competitiveness by eliminating bottlenecks in our transportation system.

    The only big regional beneficiary of expanding government employment has been, unsurprisingly, the Washington Beltway. Indeed, the number of federal bureaucrats making $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% since the recession–and that’s $100,000 before overtime and bonuses.

    Elsewhere, the surge of government employment is petering out, particularly on the state and municipal levels. These jurisdictions are running out of money, since they are unable to print their own. Over the past year government jobs contracted in financially strapped states like California, Oregon, Michigan and Florida, as well as throughout the Northeast and New England. There’s little hope for much improvement in 2010.

    The other two sectors to enjoy significant growth have been education and health. Yet these fields do not seem to generate the broad-based economic growth needed to boost the overall economy. The region most often favorably linked with the “eds and meds” economy, Pittsburgh, has produced only modest, below-average job growth over the past generation. In fact, Pittsburgh has looked successful largely because the region has continued to hemorrhage its population to other regions, and it attracts few foreign immigrants.

    Yet the fiscal damage from dependence on public and nonprofit employment has been enormous. The city suffers a billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, among the highest in the nation on a per-capita basis. Due to the heavy local presence of institutions of higher education, nonprofits and hospitals, who keep about 40% of Pittsburgh’s property remains tax-exempt. In a sign of desperation Mayor Luke Ravenstahl recently proposed taxing tuition at local colleges and universities, eliciting outrage from the academic world.

    More important, the Pittsburgh “eds and meds” model can’t really be applied to a country whose workforce will expand by roughly 1 million annually over the next decade. The country now has fewer jobs than it had in March 2000, even though the labor force has grown by 12.1 million workers. There is no way we can produce enough growth depending on sectors that feed off taxpayers and private enterprise.

    This shortfall will be particularly tough on millenials as they enter their 20s and 30s. Already those 18 to 24 now have an unemployment rate over 18%. Not surprisingly, as Morley Winograd and Mike Hais observe, lack of jobs now stands as the No. 1 concern for those under 30.

    Another problem: We are now producing many more educated workers than we can gainfully employ. Information jobs may not be disappearing at the rate of industrial ones, but they have lost nearly 3 million positions since 1999. One likely result has been that returns to education–hyped by academics and “progressive” economists–have been dropping, particularly for younger workers. The unemployment rate for recent college grads is currently 10.6%, a record high.

    So, how to create opportunities that pay well? Some place their hopes in either the “green” or “creative” economies. But the green sector has been notably ineffective in sparking growth across other parts of the economy. A much-hyped report issued by California green-boosters bragged “green jobs”–which included everything from public relations representatives to marketing managers, accountants and brick-layers–account for something like 1% of employment. Even with heavy subsidies by taxpayers, the “green” sector seems unlikely to rescue an economy with 12.5% unemployment.

    Many politicians, particularly California’s increasingly delusional governor, also fail to recognize the cost that the “green agenda” exacts on a struggling economy. A draft report by a state advisory committee estimates California’s new draconian greenhouse gas laws could cost the state economy over $143 billion over the next decade. Efforts to spread this kind of regulation–either through federal legislation or EPA directives–would inflict similar pain to economies beyond the Sierra Nevada.

    As for the much ballyhooed “creative” sector, video producers, financial analysts, architects and other workers in the non-tangible economy are less susceptible to green pressures than factory workers, truckers or farmers. Yet as the JobBait report shows, information, business and professional services haven’t fared well over the past year. So far the only winners in professional and business services are in small states: New Mexico, Utah, South Carolina and, once again, West Virginia.

    Perhaps it’s time to abandon the notion that the U.S. can rely on preferred sectors–“green”, creative or “eds or meds”–to turn around our vast economy. Theorists often forget the essential ties that exist between tangible and intangible sectors. The strongest growth in high-end services are usually propelled by growth in tangible industries, such as energy, agriculture or manufacturing. When those industries tank, as in much of the upper Midwest, high-end services decline with them.

    Green jobs, too, require a strong economy. It is not by mistake that the big cities with the largest numbers of new “green” construction projects are not in Portland, San Francisco or other eco-capitals, but in more robust, if less organically obsessed places like Dallas and Houston. To create green jobs, you need to have growth, particularly in “hard” industries like construction and manufacturing.

    Instead of favoring certain sectors, the administration’s job “pivot” needs to focus across all economic sectors. This can be done in a pragmatic non-ideological manner. It could combine the increase in infrastructure and scientific research spending favored by many on the left with more market-friendly approaches–industrial tax credits and streamlining some regulatory standards–associated with conservatives.

    In the end the goal of policy should not be just to create more jobs, but to nurture employment that will make our economy stronger and more competitive over time. Until that happens, the recovery will create an economy fundamentally unable to sustain itself in an ever more competitive global environment.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His next book, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, will be published by Penguin Press early next year.