New Geography

Author: Joel Kotkin

  • Our Euro President

    Barack Obama’s seemingly inexplicable winning of the Nobel Peace Prize says less about him than about the current mentality of Europe’s leadership class. Lacking any strong, compelling voices of their own, the Europeans are now trying to hijack our president as their spokesman.

    There’s a catch, of course. In their mind, Obama deserves the award because he seems to think, and sound, like a European. In everything from global warming to anti-suburbanism to pacifism, Obama reflects the basic agenda of the continent’s leading citizens–in sharp contrast to former President George W. Bush.

    Indeed it’s likely that if Obama wanted to run for presidency of the E.U., he could mail it in. Unfortunately for him, he presides over a country that faces a very different future from that of Europe.

    This is not to say we cannot learn from Europe in certain areas–namely fuel economy and health care. Republicans dropped the ball on both of these issues, and as a result both our health care system and automobile efficiency pale next to those of the continent.

    Still, the reality is that America and Europe are very different, which would necessitate disparate policy approaches. Our growing divergence with Europe spans everything from demographics to economic needs and basic values. In all these areas, the gap is likely to increase over time.

    This is why the Obama Administration’s Europhilia, now likely to become more pronounced, represents a dangerous temptation. For one thing, Europe’s generally ultra low birth rates–compared with those in the U.S.–imposes structural limits on how their economies can grow and even if they even need growth.

    If our core problems come from over-consumption and irrational financial-sector exuberance, Europe’s sluggishness stems from the lack of an expanding workforce and consumer base. This means Germany–by far the most important E.U. country in terms of population and gross domestic product–must rely on exports to maintain its generally slow growth rate. More important, as the current generation in their 50s retire, the workforce is likely to shrink dramatically in almost all European countries, making even modest growth difficult.

    In a rapidly aging society like Germany’s and those of other E.U. countries you can make a case for slow growth, limited work hours, early retirement and a strict regulatory regime. But for America, with its growing workforce and population, slow economic growth simply is not socially sustainable.

    More broadly, we are talking about two different mindsets. As one writer puts it, Europeans “emphasize quality of life over accumulation” and “play over unrelenting toil.” In contrast, most Americans seem ill-disposed to relax their work ethic, which has been central to the national character from its earliest days.

    Of course, the European approach is celebrated by some Americans, particularly those who already have achieved a high level of affluence. It plays very well in “little Europes” of America, cities like San Francisco, Portland and Boston, places with relatively few children and generally slow-growing populations.

    But most Americans do not seem ready for a lifestyle buffeted by regulations and limitations. Still attached to their aspirations, they seem no less satisfied with their way of life than do Europeans. Even amid the recession, 70% of Americans still embrace the idea that they can get ahead through hard work.

    There are other critical differences. Americans remain more religiously minded. One analyst, David Hart, has spoken of Europe’s “metaphysical boredom.” Half or more of Europeans never attend church, compared with barely 20% in the U.S.

    Among younger Europeans, the loss of traditional Christian identity–with its focus on long-term commitments, sacrifice and responsibility–is virtually complete: According to one Belgian demographer, barely one in 10 young adults in the E.U. maintains any link to an organized religion. In contrast roughly 60% of Americans, according to a Pew Global Attitudes survey, believe religion is “very important,” twice the rate of Canadians, Britons, Koreans or Italians and six times the rate of French or Japanese.

    Some observers, both in America and abroad, see this spiritualism, particularly among evangelical Christians, as reflecting a kind of social retardation. Yet belief in America is remarkably varied, extending beyond groups that are easily classified as liberal or conservative. In America, a broad “spiritual” focus–dating from the earliest founders and continuing through the transcendentalists and Walt Whitman–persists as a vital force. Even President Obama, whose base tends to be secular, has made much of his religious ties.

    In Europe, the only truly rising faith appears to be the secular religion of the environmental zealots. Often almost theocratic in its passion, the green movement tends to be hostile to even modest population growth and economic progress. It’s no coincidence that the last American to win the Nobel Prize was the climate change high priest himself, former Vice President Al Gore.

    To be sure, Americans also care about the planet, but they seem more disposed to see technological innovation, not abstinence, as the best way to confront ecological problems. The kind of highly restrictive regulatory environment common in Europe–and sadly in such places as California—simply is not well-suited for a country that must produce much more wealth and millions more jobs in order to sustain itself.

    Even though they may espouse secular ideals, this more growth oriented mentality also attracts a sizable number of talented and ambitious young Europeans to the U.S., as well as Australia and Canada. Although influential social commentator Richard Florida has claimed that the bright lights and “tolerance” of Europe are luring large numbers of skilled Americans, actual migration trends tell quite the opposite story. By 2004 some 400,000 E.U. science and technology graduates were residing in the U.S. Barely one in seven, according to a recent European Commission poll, intends to return.

    Perhaps the president should speak to these young Europeans. They still buy the notion of America as a country open to innovation and striving for upward mobility. Europe, in contrast, perhaps as the result of two debilitating wars in the last century, understandably craves peacefulness and social stability over all else.

    When he goes to Oslo next month, Obama should remember that America’s future is not to become a bigger version of Norway, a tiny country fat with fossil fuels that can afford its air of moral superiority. We are also not latter day versions of Britain, France, Germany or Russia–all of them worn empires exhausted by history.

    Ultimately America is about hope and aspiration. It is, if you will, a country based on an ideal, not a race or cultural legacy. As the British writer G. K. Chesterton once put it, the U.S. is “the only nation…that is founded on a creed.” That creed is not so much religious as aspirational, and it will become more important as we attempt to cope with our own growing diversity as well as the rising powers from the developing world.

    So even as he enjoys his popularity on the continent, Obama must be careful not to succumb to those who urge him to reshape America in Europe ‘s image. Take this prize, Mr. President, and then shelve it.

    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.

    Official White House photo by Pete Souza

  • There’s No Place Like Home, Americans are Returning to Localism

    On almost any night of the week, Churchill’s Restaurant is hopping. The 10-year-old hot spot in Rockville Centre, Long Island, is packed with locals drinking beer and eating burgers, with some customers spilling over onto the street. “We have lots of regulars—people who are recognized when they come in,” says co-owner Kevin Culhane. In fact, regulars make up more than 80 percent of the restaurant’s customers. “People feel comfortable and safe here,” Culhane says. “This is their place.”

    Thriving neighborhood restaurants are one small data point in a larger trend I call the new localism. The basic premise: the longer people stay in their homes and communities, the more they identify with those places, and the greater their commitment to helping local businesses and institutions thrive, even in a downturn. Several factors are driving this process, including an aging population, suburbanization, the Internet, and an increased focus on family life. And even as the recession has begun to yield to recovery, our commitment to our local roots is only going to grow more profound. Evident before the recession, the new localism will shape how we live and work in the coming decades, and may even influence the course of our future politics.

    Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st-century America as its settledness. For more than a generation Americans have believed that “spatial mobility” would increase, and, as it did, feed an inexorable trend toward rootlessness and anomie. This vision of social disintegration was perhaps best epitomized in Vance Packard’s 1972 bestseller A Nation of Strangers, with its vision of America becoming “a society coming apart at the seams.” In 2000, Harvard’s Robert Putnam made a similar point, albeit less hyperbolically, in Bowling Alone, in which he wrote about the “civic malaise” he saw gripping the country. In Putnam’s view, society was being undermined, largely due to suburbanization and what he called “the growth of mobility.”

    Yet in reality Americans actually are becoming less nomadic. As recently as the 1970s as many as one in five people moved annually; by 2006, long before the current recession took hold, that number was 14 percent, the lowest rate since the census starting following movement in 1940. Since then tougher times have accelerated these trends, in large part because opportunities to sell houses and find new employment have dried up. In 2008, the total number of people changing residences was less than those who did so in 1962, when the country had 120 million fewer people. The stay-at-home trend appears particularly strong among aging boomers, who are largely eschewing Sunbelt retirement condos to stay tethered to their suburban homes—close to family, friends, clubs, churches, and familiar surroundings.

    The trend will not bring back the corner grocery stores and the declining organizations—bowling leagues, Boy Scouts, and such—cited by Putnam and others as the traditional glue of American communities. Nor will our car-oriented suburbs replicate the close neighborhood feel so celebrated by romantic urbanists like the late Jane Jacobs. Instead, we’re evolving in ways congruent with a postindustrial society. It will not spell the demise of Wal-Mart or Costco, but will express itself in scores of alternative institutions, such as thriving local weekly newspapers, a niche that has withstood the shift to the Internet far better than big-city dailies.

    Our less mobile nature is already reshaping the corporate world. The kind of corporate nomadism described in Peter Kilborn’s recent book, Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America’s Rootless Professional Class, in which families relocate every couple of years so the breadwinner can reach the next rung on the managerial ladder, will become less common in years ahead. A smaller cadre of corporate executives may still move from place to place, but surveys reveal many executives are now unwilling to move even for a good promotion. Why? Family and technology are two key factors working against nomadism, in the workplace and elsewhere.

    Family, as one Pew researcher notes, “trumps money when people make decisions about where to live.” Interdependence is replacing independence. More parents are helping their children financially well into their 30s and 40s; the numbers of “boomerang kids” moving back home with their parents, has also been growing as job options and the ability to buy houses has decreased for the young. Recent surveys of the emerging millennial generation suggest this family-centric focus will last well into the coming decades.

    Nothing allows for geographic choice more than the ability to work at home. By 2015, suggests demographer Wendell Cox, there will be more people working electronically at home full time than taking mass transit, making it the largest potential source of energy savings on transportation. In the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, almost one in 10 workers is a part-time telecommuter. Some studies indicate that more than one quarter of the U.S. workforce could eventually participate in this new work pattern. Even IBM, whose initials were once jokingly said to stand for “I’ve Been Moved,” has changed its approach. Roughly 40 percent of the company’s workers now labor at home or remotely from a client’s location.

    These home-based workers become critical to the localist economy. They will eat in local restaurants, attend fairs and festivals, take their kids to soccer practices, ballet lessons, or religious youth-group meetings. This is not merely a suburban phenomenon; localism also means a stronger sense of identity for urban neighborhoods as well as smaller towns.

    Could the new localism also affect our future politics? Ever greater concentration of power in Washington may now be all the rage as the federal government intervenes, albeit often ineffectively, to revive the economy. But throughout our history, we have always preferred our politics more on the home-cooked side. On his visit to America in the early 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville was struck by the de-centralized nature of the country. “The intelligence and the power are dispersed abroad,” he wrote, “and instead of radiating from a point, they cross each other in every direction.”

    This is much the same today. The majority of Americans still live in a patchwork of smaller towns and cities, including many suburban towns within large metropolitan regions. There are well over 65,000 general-purpose governments, and with so many “small towns,” the average local jurisdiction population in the United States is 6,200, small enough to allow nonprofessional politicians to have a serious impact.

    After decades of frantic mobility and homogenization, we are seeing a return to placeness, along with more choices for individuals, families, and communities. For entrepreneurs like Kevin Culhane and his workers at Churchill’s, it’s a phenomenon that may also offer a lease on years of new profits. “We’re holding our own in these times because we appeal to the people around here,” Culhane says. And as places like Long Island become less bedroom community and more round-the-clock locale for work and play, he’s likely to have plenty of hungry customers.

    This article originally appeared in 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.

  • Mexico’s Real War: It’s Not Drugs

    Balding, affable and passionate, Uranio Adolfo Arrendondo may not be a general or political leader, but he stands on the front lines of a critical battle facing Mexico in the coming decade. This struggle is not primarily about the drug wars, which dominate the media coverage–and thus our perceptions–of our southern neighbor. It concerns the economic and political forces stunting the aspirations of its people.

    For the past 36 years, Arrendondo’s small family-owned school, Liceo Reforma Educativa, where he is principal, has served as an incubator for Mexico City’s aspiring middle class. Modest and reasonably priced, the school has offered small-business owners, professionals and mid-level managers a way to propel their children up the economic ladder.

    Yet today Arrendondo finds many parents lacking the resources for even a modest alternative to Mexico’s troubled state-run schools. “The middle class in Mexico is going down,” Arendondo told me in his office by the courtyard of the brightly painted school in the largely lower-middle-class Iztacalco, one of Mexico City’s 16 diverse delegaciones, or boroughs. “The middle class is predated by both the super-rich and the criminal poor. We are squeezed in the middle of the sandwich.”

    This predicament is not unique to Liceo Reforma, which has some 245 students. Data from the Asociacion Nacional de Escuelas Particulares estimate that as many as 400,000 people have pulled their children out of small private schools over the last few years, placing them instead in the generally much inferior public ones.

    This is just one sign of a worrisome trend toward downward mobility, greatly exacerbated by the economic crisis. And it is all the more painful, as it represents a reversal of progress toward an expanding middle class in the 1970s and 1980s. In those decades, Mexico–spurred by its energy wealth and an expanding industrial base–was finally beginning to break away from its age-old pattern of being a society dominated by a few rich and many very poor.

    To be sure, Mexico City’s sprawling expanse still exhibits this legacy of upward mobility. A good number of the capital’s 20 million people can be seen crowding elegant shopping centers, driving late model cars and eating in crowded restaurants. With the elegant Polanco, not far from the central district, lovely Lomas de Chapultepec, or sprawling, ultra-modern Santa Fe, Mexico City can seem very much a first-world city.

    At the same time, however, much of it–including lower-middle class Iztacalco–needs considerable repair. The root of the problem lies in demographics. Although Mexico’s population growth has slowed, labor-force growth still outpaces economic fecundity. Victor Manuel, director general of a leading high-tech institute in Mexico City, estimates the country’s gross domestic product needs to grow at 7% annually to produce the 2 million new jobs needed each year to keep up with labor-force growth. Over the past decade, that growth has been roughly 3%, and last year declined by as much as 7%.

    In the immediate future, many economists expect Mexico’s recovery to lag that of both the U.S. and its Latin neighbors, particularly Brazil and Peru. The most recent survey of expectations among industrialists conducted by Canacintra, a leading national business chamber of manufacturers, found more than half expected conditions to get worse, 10 times as many who expressed optimism.

    The sluggish economy has had its most dramatic impact on the poor, who constitute upward of 25% to 30% of the population. In contrast to earlier decades, their ranks may now be growing, suggests Alfonso Celestino, a social scientist who works for the government of the sprawling Districto Federal, which includes Mexico City. “Mexico is a first-world city, but large parts are like third-world African cities,” he asserts

    Particularly notable has been the growth of the so called “misery suburbs” or pueblos nuevos, sprouting in the outer periphery of the city. In these areas, as well as poor inner city neighborhoods, unemployed young people are being “absorbed,” as Celestino puts it, into the illicit economy. This burgeoning criminal infrastructure preys directly on the super-rich through kidnappings and their bloody feuds that discourage both investors and tourists.

    Yet it is perhaps more dangerous, as violence has grown and poverty increased, that the middle class has begun to recede. Unlike the very poor and the elderly, such families receive little public assistance and often make do by working in the massive “informal economy” that, by some estimates, constitutes as much as 40% of the entire country’s gross product.

    Even before the economic crash in 2007, large percentages of educated Mexican workers were finding it difficult to get placed in high-skilled jobs. Miguel Angel Juarez Noguez, a junior-high math instructor, graduated with a degree in computer science in 2006, but says few of his friends have found employment inside the information sector.

    He believes his parents, both mathematics instructors, enjoyed far better prospects than he and his family–including two children–now face due to a weak job market and rising cost of living. “Today” he suggests, “you need more education to get less.”

    These problems have been exacerbated by the deep recession in the U.S., whose market created many relatively high-paying industrial and technical jobs. Meanwhile, workers remittances from Mexicans in the U.S., the second-largest source of income for the country after oil, have begun to dry up.

    Many discouraged Mexican immigrants have returned home, notes Celestino, but they find few employment opportunities. And Mexico’s border boomtowns, which once offered considerable opportunity, are now suffering not only from the American recession but from the shift of production to China. Coastal communities have been decimated by a decline in tourism, a result not only of the recession but also of concerns over violence and swine flu epidemic.

    Ultimately, many concede that the basic problem lies not in the outside world but in Mexico itself. Although much can be said for greater transparency and economic liberalism under the current PAN government, most believe the entrenched system of crony capitalism has been barely affected by the political change.

    This system–where bribery is commonplace and connections are necessary to build even a small business–stymies growth by undermining innovation, notes technology entrepreneur Victor Manuel. “People come back from schools, or from the United States, with all sorts of skills and money,” he notes, “but there’s no system here to create an economy they can contribute to.”

    Such frustrations are heightened by a sense that other countries–notably the BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China–are rushing ahead while the once-promising Mexico falls behind. These countries appear to be tapping their human and material resources more efficiently and strategically than Mexico. “There is no vision from the state,” Manuel says, echoing a common refrain.

    Edgar Moreno, a 37-year-old M.B.A. who currently works for Hewlett-Packard at the ultra-modern Santa Fe district southeast of the city, agrees that political dysfunction is the main impediment to progress. Corruption and inefficiency hamper the development of the nation’s potentially huge energy resource, and that’s one reason why Mexico lacks the capital to develop new enterprises. Real interest rates for entrepreneurial ventures start at 12%.

    Moreno’s own ambition, to develop renewable fuels based on sugar, corn and other crops, is also held back by bureaucratic obstacles that discourage such ventures. “It’s not the location of the country that keeps us from developing the way we should,” he points out. “It’s the laws, the framework, how the government does things. Mexicans have lots of ideas and a lot of interests, but the system is stacked against us.”

    The surge in drug violence–over 7,000 died just last year–adds to the perception that Mexico may be on the verge of becoming a “failed state.” Mexican author Enrique Krauze believes the crime wave constitutes Mexico’s “most serious crisis” since the bloody 1910 Revolution, an upheaval that cost more than 2 million deaths.

    Yet, however terrible the violence, Arrendondo believes the decline of the middle class and upward mobility presents Mexico with a more lethal, long-term threat. The parents of the Liceo’s students, he argues, may not “take up a pistol” like their forebears a century ago but might embrace a return to the anti-American authoritarianism and protectionism of the past.

    This would not be good news for America. Mexico stands as our second export market, well ahead of China. Mexicans are also our closest cousins in terms of blood–four in 10 claim to have relatives in the U.S.–and our tastes in food, music and culture increasingly converge.

    This suggests that what happens to the kids and their parents at Liceo Reforma Educativa matters to us as well. A thriving Mexico would need to send us less of their poor and could buy more of what we produce. Mexico’s fate has at least as much relevance to our future as developments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe or even China, where our media and politics focus most of their attention.

    “These kids’ parents are struggling with opportunities lost and destroyed,” Arrendondo told me. “We have to change that. Mexico has to become a place where opportunities are created for kids like these. That’s the most important thing to determine the future.”

    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.

  • Purple Politics: Is California Moving to the Center?

    You don’t have to be a genius, or a conservative, to recognize that California’s experiment with ultra-progressive politics has gone terribly wrong. Although much of the country has suffered during the recession, California’s decline has been particularly precipitous–and may have important political consequences.

    Outside Michigan, California now suffers the highest rate of unemployment of all the major states, with a post-World War II record of 12.2%. This statistic does not really touch the depth of the pain being felt, particularly among the middle and working classes, many of whom have become discouraged and are no longer counted in the job market.

    Even worse, there seems little prospect of an immediate recovery. The most recent projections by California Lutheran University suggest that next year the state’s economy will lag well behind the nation’s. Unemployment may peak at close to 14% by late 2010. Retail sales, housing and commercial building permits are not expected to rise until the following year.

    This decline seems likely to slow–or even reverse–the state’s decade-long leftward lurch. Let’s be clear: This is not a red resurgence, just a shift toward a more purplish stance, a hue that is all the more appropriate given the economy’s profound lack of oxygen.

    There is growing disenchantment with the status quo. The percentage of Californians who consider the state “one of the best places” to live, according to a recent Field poll, has plummeted to 40%, from 76% two decades ago. Pessimism about the state’s economy has risen to the highest levels since Field started polling back in 1961.

    Inevitably, this angst has affected political attitudes. Though still lionized by the national media, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s approval ratings have fallen from the mid-50s two years ago into the low 30s. The 12% approval rate for the state legislature, according to a Public Policy Institute of California survey in May, stands at half the pathetic levels recorded by Congress.

    Moreover, voters now favor lower taxes and fewer services by a 49-to-42 margin–as opposed to higher taxes and more services. Support for ultra-green policies aimed to combat global warming has also begun to ebb. For the first time in years, a majority of Californians favors drilling off the coast. Californians might largely support aggressive environmental protections, but not to the extreme of losing their jobs in the process.

    Remarkably, state government seems largely oblivious to these growing grassroots concerns. The legislature continues to pile on ever more intrusive regulations and higher taxes on a beleaguered business sector. Agriculture, industry and small business–the traditional linchpins of the economy–continue to be hammered from Sacramento.

    Agriculture now suffers from massive cutbacks in water supplies, brought about in part by drought, but seriously worsened by the yammerings of powerful environmental interests. Large swaths of the fertile central valley are turning into a set for a 21st-century version of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

    At the same time, the state’s industrial base is rapidly losing its foundation. Toyota recently announced it was closing its joint venture plant in Fremont, the last auto assembly operation in the state, shifting production to Canada and Texas. Even the film business has been experiencing a secular decline; feature film production days have fallen by half over the decade, as movie-making exits for other states and Canada.

    Most important, California may be undermining its greatest asset: its diverse, highly creative and adaptive small-business sector. A recent survey by the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council ranked California’s small-business climate 49th in the nation, behind even New York. Only New Jersey performed worse.

    Regulation plays a critical role in discouraging small-business expansion, a new report from the Governor’s Office of Small Business Advocate suggests. Prepared by researchers from California State University at Sacramento, the report estimates that regulations may be costing the state upward of 3.8 million jobs. California currently has about 14 million jobs, down 1 million since July 2007.

    Ironically, the regulatory noose is now slated to tighten even further as a result of radical measures–from energy to land use–tied to reducing greenhouse gases. Another study, authored by California State University researchers, estimates these new laws could cost an additional million jobs.

    Many in the state’s top policy circles, as well as academics and much of the media, dismiss the notion that regulations could be deepening the recessionary pain. Some of this stems from the delusion–always an important factor in this amazing state–that ultra-green policies will actually solidify California’s 21st-century leadership. Few seem to realize that other states, witnessing the Golden State’s economic meltdown, might not rush to emulate California’s policy agenda.

    Internally, discontent with the current agenda seems particularly strong in the blue-collar, interior regions of the state. Brookings demographer Bill Frey and I have described this area as the “Third California.” In the first part of the decade, this region expanded roughly three times as rapidly as Southern California, while the Bay Area’s population remained stagnant.

    Today the Third California represents roughly 30% of the state’s population, compared with barely 18% for the ultra-blue Bay Area. The most conservative part of the state has skewed somewhat more Democratic in recent elections, largely due to migration from coastal California and an expanding Latino population.

    But the intense economic distress now afflicting the interior counties–where unemployment rates are approaching 20%–may now reverse this process. The ultra-green politics embraced by the Democrats’ two prospective gubernatorial nominees-Attorney General Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom–may not appeal much to a workforce heavily dependent on greenhouse-gas-emitting industries like farming, manufacturing and construction.

    Eventually, the Democrats may rue their failure to run a pro-business, pro-growth candidate, particularly one with roots in the interior region. This oversight could cost them votes among, say, Latinos, who have been far harder hit by the recession than the more affluent (and overwhelmingly white) coastal progressives epitomized by Brown and Newsom. Along with independents, roughly one-fifth of the electorate, Latinos could prove the critical element in the state’s purplization.

    This, of course, depends on the Republicans developing an attractive pro-growth alternative. In recent years, the party’s emphasis on conservative cultural issues and xenophobic anti-immigrant agitation has hurt the GOP in the increasingly socially liberal and ethnically diverse California.

    Although he has proved a poor chief executive, Gov. Schwarzenegger did at least show such a political approach could work. The recent emergence of three attractive Silicon Valley-based candidates, including former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, as well as the likable libertarian-leaning former congressman Tom Campbell, could score well at the polls.

    This political course-correction should be welcomed not only by Republicans but by California’s moderate Democrats and Independents. However blessed by nature and its entrepreneurial legacy, California needs to move back to the pro-growth center if it hopes to revive both its economy and the aspirations of its people.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    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.

  • Play It Cool at the G-20, Mr. President

    Barack Obama goes to this week’s Pittsburgh G-20 with what seems the weakest hand of any American president since Gerald Ford. In reality, he has a far stronger set of cards to play — he just needs to recognize it.

    Our adversaries may like our new president, but they don’t fear him. And, on the surface, why should they? The national debt is rising faster than the vig for a compulsive, debt-ridden gambler. And our primary rivals, the Chinese, continue to put the squeeze on American producers by devaluing their currency, subsidizing exports and penalizing imports.

    When the Chinese threaten to call in their debts, they can count on Timmy Geithner to kowtow like an obedient vassal. Some of Obama’s most important supporters — like Warren Buffett and The New York Times‘ Thomas Friedman — have discovered what Friedman calls “the great advantages” of autocracy over our cockamamie, boisterous democracy.

    From Virgil, Maecenas and the court of August to Hitler-admirers Henry Ford and George Bernard Shaw, as well as Stalin-fan Max Eastman, imperial scribes and money lenders have long demonstrated a weakness for even the worst autocrats. But our bedraggled democracy may have a lot more aces to play than many recognize.

    Just look at the other players around the table. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, when not worrying about his (lack of) height, tells his countrymen to stop worrying about gross domestic product. Productivity, one presumes, doesn’t mean as much as a good baguette, long vacation or wet kiss from a former model.

    Across the channel, Prime Minister Gordon Brown seems determined to take the Good Ship Brittania further underwater. According to Tony Travers of the London School of Economics, Britain, with the exception of London, is already well on its way to becoming “a second- or third-tier country.” And as my colleague Ryan Streeter points out, New Labour’s response to the economic crisis — basically raising taxes and doubling down on regulation — doesn’t seem a formula for a vibrant economy.

    Germany, Italy, Spain and the rest of E.U. face equally daunting problems. These “progressive” role models suffer from unsustainably low birthrates, and many face a future more Islamic than European. Their “green” rhetoric may thrill some fans in the U.S., but these economies still run largely on oil and natural gas, which makes them ever more dependent on the autocrat of all — Russia.

    And Japan, once considered the mega-tiger of the future by American policy wonks, is transforming itself into something of a post-modern pussycat. It won’t take immigrants even as its population begins to shrink. Largely dependent on exports, its new government does not like globalization and wants to expand its welfare state. Moreover, Japan seems to be wobbling toward a future as a quiescent vassal for the Greater Chinese East Asian sphere.

    So how does America compare? Let’s start with the basics. The U.S. is the only major advanced country that enjoys a steady population increase. Yes, immigrants are driving much of that growth, but our newcomers are generally very different from the largely alienated and isolated Muslim communities now nesting in Europe. America’s Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, Armenians, Caribbeans and Africans — and more pointedly Arabs and Iranians — do not constitute a hostile “them.” Instead they are the ones redefining us by adding new dimensions to what Nathan Glazer once described as “a permanently unfinished country.”

    Of course, it helps to be the only serious global military presence in the world. A strong military represents an invaluable asset in a world dominated by autocrats and lunatics. That doesn’t mean Obama should swagger like a Viagra-enhanced neo-con. He just needs to follow Teddy Roosevelt’s dictum: Speak softly, but keep a hold on that big stick.

    A powerful military and better demographics represent just part of America’s strong hand. Compared with the E.U., Japan, China or even India, the U.S. remains phenomenally rich in resources.

    Take our most basic need: food. The U.S. has the most arable land in the world and is its largest food exporter. Our $1.4 trillion food sector accounts for 12% of our economy, and prospects for expansion are enormous. By 2050, the population of the planet will be around 9 billion people — up from 6 billion today. More than 85% of the world’s population will reside in developing countries, most in cities, and they will constitute a gigantic future market.

    Equally important, the U.S. is sitting on huge energy resources. Of course, renewable fuels should become a major, even dominant, factor, but in the short- and maybe mid-term, oil, gas and even coal will continue driving the economy. The Great Plains and even the Northeast, particularly Pennsylvania, have enough natural gas to become a junior Abu Dhabi.

    Furthermore, despite its many weak links, our industrial base remains the most advanced in the world. If mindless “green” policies don’t force us to dismantle it, we could produce, through the use of new technology and a better-trained workforce, virtually everything we buy from the Chinese and the Europeans.

    This is not to argue for strict protectionism. But right now we buy almost $4.50 from the China for every $1 we sell there. China’s trade with us is worth 13 times to its economy what our trade with them is worth to us.

    Fundamentally, this means that the Chinese are more exposed to a potential trade war than we are. Without rising exports to the U.S., China’s leaders could face massive unemployment and internal unrest. For us, reducing Chinese imports means somewhat higher prices at Wal-Mart — and perhaps more vigorous business with better partners such as Mexico, whose future prosperity is directly tied to ours.

    All this suggests that Obama has more leverage to demand better trade terms than some might think. There’s nothing in the Constitution that mandates that Americans be the world’s trade chumps. So you want trade war, President Hu? Give him a little Clint Eastwood. Make. My. Day. Then give them a wink or a chance to think about it.

    How about the $1.5 trillion that the Chinese are holding? Well, they could call in their $1.5 trillion for yen or euros, ruining those economies by inflating their currencies. Polish zlotys? Iranian rials?

    Of course, losing Chinese investors and cheap products would hurt in the short term, but it could prove beneficial in the long run. After all, during World War II, we learned to thrive without German machinery or Southeast Asian rubber. Best of all, a Chinese withdrawal could force Washington to live on a budget, just like the rest of us.

    None of this suggests that Obama should discard his charm and morph into a svelte Dick Cheney. America’s preeminence rests on far more than missiles, resources, land or machines. The U.S. is more than a geographic place, or the home of a race, but, as Lincoln noted, the great human experiment about self-government and individual aspirations.

    Whatever his faults — and there are plenty — Obama epitomizes this ideal with his very being. When he arrives in Pittsburgh, our president should play the American hand like the guy who knows he holds aces in the hole.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    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.

    Photo: White House Photo/Pete Souza

  • California Golden Dreams

    California may yet be a civilization that is too young to have produced its Thucydides or Edward Gibbon, but if it has, the leading candidate would be Kevin Starr. His eight-part “Dream” series on the evolution of the Golden State stands alone as the basic comprehensive work on California. Nothing else comes remotely close.

    His most recent volume, “Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963,” covers what might be seen as the state’s true Golden Age. To be sure, there is some intriguing history before—the evolution of Hollywood in the 1920s, the reaction to the Depression and the fevered buildup during the Second World War—but this was California’s great moment, its Periclean peak or Augustan age.

    “It was a time of growth and abundance,” Starr writes in his preface, and provides the numbers to prove it. In 1950, California was home to 10.7 million, making it a large state to be sure, but hardly a dominant one. By the early 1960s, the population passed 16 million, slipping by New York state in population.

    Yet it was not a mere matter of numbers that made California so appealing or important. It was the idea of California as not only a part of America, but also something more. To millions in America and around the world, California grew to mean opportunity, sunshine and innovation.

    The state’s business elite, for example, did not identify with the button-down hierarchy that sat atop teeming New York, and its second-tier competitors like Chicago. The leaders of Los Angeles would never consider it a second city, but simply a different, and generally, better one. There was no need for the excessive Manhattan penis envy that led Chicago to keep trying to build higher buildings than Gotham.

    In a different way, San Francisco’s top executives also did not crave that their city be New York—it was always more beautiful, nuttier, freer and more creative than Gotham. What they shared with their downstate rivals was a sense of superiority over the old part of the country. If anything, they felt a mixture of contempt—particularly the conservatives—and condescension about an older, decaying society that fixated on tradition, order and breeding.

    “California,” Cyril Magnin, scion of one of San Francisco’s great families, told me back in the late 1970s, “has recaptured what America once had—the spirit of pioneering. People in business out here are creative; they’re willing to take risks.”

    Geography also plays a role here. Leaders in California, starting at least by the turn of the last century, looked out across the Pacific and saw themselves as part of an emerging shift from Europe to Asia, a process that continues and will dominate the rest of this century. This connection, suggested Pete Hannaford, a public relations executive and partner of Ronald Reagan’s Svengali, Michael Deaver, took on an almost Spenglerian inevitability. “Out here there’s a sense of being where the action is,” Hannaford believed, “with Japan and the Pacific.”

    Starr captures these attitudes, which already had become deeply entrenched by the late 1950s and early 1960s. There was, as he writes, “a conviction that California was the best place to seek and attain a better American life.” However, it was more than money or power. It was about the quality of life. Success in California was not a matter of living by the rules, sheltered in a dark Manhattan apartment, but about the seduction of the physical world. In California, Starr writes, “Eros vanquished Thanatos.”

    Yet Starr’s book is not merely about the rich, the powerful, and even the culturally influential. He finds his primary muse not in the Bohemian realms of San Francisco or the mansions of Beverly Hills, but in that most democratic of everyman’s places, the San Fernando Valley, the place author Kevin Roderick aptly dubbed “America’s Suburb.”

    To see long excerpts from “Golden Dreams,” click here.

    “The Valley” lies over the Santa Monica Mountains from the Los Angeles Basin. As late as the 1930s, it was largely an arid district of ranches, citrus orchards and chicken farms. The area’s postwar expansion was rapid, even by California standards. Between 1945 and 1950 alone, the Valley’s population more than doubled to nearly 500,000. By 1960, it had doubled again.

    This growth was far more than the mindless bedroom sprawl often depicted by aesthetes and urban intellectuals. People in the Valley did not depend largely on the old part of Los Angeles the way, for example, Long Island lived off Manhattan. Most of the Valley’s growth was homegrown—driven by local industry such as aerospace, entertainment, electronics and until the 1960s automobiles.

    Even today, the Valley has very much its own economy and sense of separation from Los Angeles. However, more important, the Valley was, first, a middle-class phenomenon. A cosmopolitan of the first order, Starr manages to chronicle California’s artistic and literary elites, but does not see in them the essence of the state’s appeal. Instead, he explores the everyday wonders of the Valley’s families, single-family homes and swimming pools—6,000 permitted in one year, between 1959 and 1960!

    As a Valley resident myself, I can still see the basic imprint of that culture, what Starr calls its “way of life.” Compared to the tony Westside and hardscrabble east and southside of Los Angeles, the Valley has remained a relatively safe “child-oriented” society, with a big emphasis on restaurants, malls, ball fields, churches and synagogues.

    The single-family tracts, of course, have changed hands, and the majority of the owners have changed. The primarily WASP and second-generation Eastern European Jews are still there, but they have steadily been augmented, and sometimes outnumbered, by others—Armenians, Orthodox Jews, Israelis, Persians, Thais, Chinese, Mexicans, Salvadorans, African-Americans and at least 10 groups I somehow will neglect and no doubt offend.

    Yet the essential way of life forged in the 1950s and 1960s has remained a constant, and that remains the source of California’s attraction. Of course, it is no longer just a “Valley” phenomenon. As California has grown, there are many such places, outside San Diego, in Orange County, the Inland Empire, outside Sacramento, Fresno and scores of other towns. Almost all have the same imprint—an auto-dominated culture, dispersed workplaces, pools and a culture of aspiration.

    In the ensuing decades, perhaps to be covered in Starr’s next book, this archetype evolved mightily. The San Gabriel Valley, once a plain vanilla suburban appendage, has morphed into the country’s largest Asian suburbia, complete with a shopping center jokingly referred to as “the Great Mall of China.” The often-monotonous housing tracts between San Jose and Palo Alto, on the San Francisco Peninsula, also attracted hundreds of thousands of Asians but also produced something equally astounding—the Silicon Valley, the world’s leading center for technology.

    These suburban developments long ago surpassed in importance the urban roots of California metropolises. A serious corporate center during the time covered by Starr’s volume, San Francisco has devolved in a ultra-politically correct, hip and cool urban Disneyland for Silicon Valley, providing good restaurants and housing for those still too young to crave a house on the Peninsula. The San Gabriel Chinatown long ago replaced the older one in downtown Los Angeles as the center of Asian culture and cuisine.

    These places grew before the current malaise infected the state. As Starr points out, California based its ascendancy on two seemingly contradictory principles: entrepreneurship and activist government. Under Gov. Earl Warren, but also Goodwin Knight and finally Pat Brown, the state made a commitment both to basic infrastructure—energy, water, roads, schools, parks—and expanding its economy.

    By the early 1960s, this system was hitting on all cylinders. New roads, power plants and water systems opened lands for development for farms, subdivisions, factories. Ever expanding and improving schools produced a work force capable of performing higher-end tasks, and capable of earning higher wages. New parks preserved at least some of the landscape, and gave families a place to recreate.

    For Pat Brown, arguably the greatest governor in American history, this was all part of California’s “destiny.” Starr describes Brown’s California as “a modernist commonwealth, a triumph of engineering, a megastate committed to growth as its first premise.” Yet within this great modernist project was also stirring opposition, on both left and right, that would soon place this Golden Age at its end.

    Many of the objections were legitimate. The Sierra Club and its many spinoffs rightfully saw the Brown development machine as threatening California’s landscape, wildlife and, in important ways, the appeal of its way of life. More careful controls on growth clearly were needed. The battle over the nature of those controls continues to this day.

    Some more angry voices, then as now, targeted the very existence of suburbia, the dominant form of the state’s growth, and eventually sought its eradication. This struggle goes on to this day with a religious fervor, led, ironically, by the former and perhaps future governor, Jerry Brown, currently attorney general and leading Torquemada of the greens.

    Minorities also began to stir amid the celebrations of the 1950s and early 1960s. Woefully underrepresented in the halls of power and the corridors of business, Asians and Latinos remained largely passive politically. However, by the early 1960s acceptance of exclusion was giving way to more assertive attitudes. Ultimately the massive immigration that swelled both their numbers in the 1970s and beyond would ensure these groups far more influence both on the politics and in the economy of the state.

    Yet it was the African-American who would really upset the balance of the golden era. Never discriminated against as in the South, black Californians felt the lash of a thousand, often-informal exclusions. As the civil rights movement grew, with it less deferential attitudes, particularly toward the police, a powder keg was building. In 1964, the first year after the era chronicled in “Golden Dreams,” Watts blew up, shattering the comfortable assumptions of a progressive, post-racial state.

    Finally, as Starr reports, there was mounting thunder on the right. The business elite and the middle class were financing the ever-expanding California state. They saw their money go to the poor, to minorities and state employees. Particularly annoying were the university students, many of whom were in open revolt against the state, in the mind of much of the public that had nurtured them.

    By the early 1960s many of these latter Californians also were angry, but their rage would express itself not in riots, but at the ballot box, ushering in the age of Ronald Reagan. The period that follows “Golden Dreams” emerges as one of conflicting visions, between greens, students and minorities, on the one hand, and largely suburban middle-class workers and business owners on the other.

    These two groups would battle over the next generation, with the advantage oscillating over time. Today the heirs of the protesters—greens, minority activists and former ’60s radicals—hold the political advantage, although the state they dominate has fallen on parlous times.

    In retrospect, the golden era before these conflicts does indeed seem like a high point. The question now is whether California, down on its luck, will find a way to rebound, much as imperial Rome did after the demise of the Julian dynasty, or fall, like Athens, into ever more squalid decline. Does the state have a bright “destiny” ahead or only more ruin?

    This, of course, will be the basis for another historical epoch. Let us hope Kevin Starr be around to chronicle it for the rest of us.

    This piece originally appeared at Truthdig.com

    Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 at Amazon.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.

  • Hard Times In The High Desert

    The High Desert region north and east of Los Angeles sits 3,000 feet above sea level. A rough, often starkly beautiful region of scrubby trees, wide vistas and brooding brown mountains, the region seems like a perfect setting for an old Western shoot ’em up.

    Today, it’s the stage for a different kind of battle, one that involves a struggle over preserving the American dream. For years, the towns of the High Desert–places like Victorville, Adelanto, Hesperia, Barstow and Apple Valley–have lured thousands of working- and middle-class Californians looking for affordable homes.

    Now, like other exurbs in the U.S., the area suffers from sky-high foreclosure and unemployment rates. Rather than elicit sympathy, however, these hardships have delighted a growing chorus of planners, environmentalists and urbanists who believe that such far outer-ring communities are doomed to becoming America’s “next slums.”

    Such dismal future prospects have gained an air of plausibility with devastating speed. For much of the past century, the High Desert was a rough-hewn region of small farms and mines, its economy largely dependent on military bases.

    But since the 1980s, the area has flourished, adding over 120,000 people in the first seven years of the decade. Most people came because of housing costs–as much as a third less than those closer to the coast. Today the largely middle and working class population stands at over 350,000.

    You don’t hear much good about people in places like the High Desert. Like many exurbanites, they do not fit the hip categories of “knowledge workers” or “creative class.” They work with their hands–in construction, driving trucks, in factories and mines–or run small retail businesses. In the High Desert, 60% of residents have never attended college. Many commute over the 4,100-foot Cajon Pass to blue- and pink-collar jobs as far as Los Angeles, more than an hour and a half away.

    “This is one of those places where the women have more tattoos than the men,” joked one long-time resident over drinks at Chateau Chang, a well-appointed local hangout owned by Chinese immigrants.

    For many, the rapid decline of housing prices since 2007 has been devastating. Newcomers bought homes at the top of the market, when median prices scaled over $300,000. Some did so with adjustable-rate mortgages. Today, the median price is closer to $100,000, leaving a large percentage of homes underwater.

    The real estate collapse has also hurt employment. Construction, warehousing and manufacturing–linchpins of the local economy–all have been pummeled by the recession. Unemployment now stands over 16%.

    Similarly bleak conditions plague exurbs throughout the country–from central Florida to the outskirts of Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento and scores of other onetime boomtowns. Shuttered factories, empty stores and abandoned lots contribute to an often depressing landscape.

    These reverses have led some pundits to assert it’s time to let such places die–and the sooner the better. Greensheet Grist 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.

    Such post-apocalyptic views are popular with architects, planners and environmentalists, as well as in the mainstream media. But these people never liked conventional suburbs much; many considered exurbs atrocities whose residents indulged in unspeakable acts of overconsumption.

    Yet what about the residents of these places–and the many who likely would care to join them? The fact is exurbs are popular: Between 2000 and 2007, 3 million Americans moved to exurbs, and while the recession has slowed this growth, it has not stopped it. Indeed, now that housing prices have fallen, home sales have skyrocketed in some areas. In the High Desert, for example, existing-home sales more than tripled in the past year, to the highest level ever.

    Most demographic estimates suggest this exurban population growth will continue; the High Desert is expected to receive another 200,000 residents by 2025. The key driving force, notes Redlands, Calif.-based economist John Husing, remains the deep-seated desire to own a small piece of ground and enjoy some privacy and a middle-class way of life that is no longer affordable closer to the urban center.

    For most exurbanites, moving back to the city–the preferred option of planners and urban boosters–is not an attractive option. These people could never afford a charming townhouse in Portland’s Pearl District or a loft in New York’s SoHo. For them, the “urban option” means the prospect of a dreary blocky apartment complex in a noisy, crowded, less-than-genteel section of Los Angeles or another large city.

    This preference should not be confused with racism, as is sometimes alleged. Like many exurbs, the High Desert has become increasingly multi-racial. Over half of the 23,000 students at the sprawling Victor Valley College, for example, are minorities–nearly 30% are Hispanic. Cruise the shopping center, and you are as likely to find a family-owned Mexican, Vietnamese or Korean restaurant as you would a hamburger chain or pizza shop.

    To my mind, harboring ill will toward the aspirations of exurbanites is hardly “progressive,” at least from a social democratic point of view. Yet many on the so-called left feel that what is generally considered upward mobility needs to be curbed so that the hoi polloi can better live according to the prescriptions of their more enlightened, usually higher-educated and more affluent “betters.”

    In contrast, a more humane, and fundamentally democratic, approach would be to find ways to help these communities thrive. The first step: local job creation. Even without the excessive prices associated with “peak oil” theories, gas prices and car expenses do place a considerable burden on many exurbanites. Developing more economic opportunities closer to these communities would relieve this financial burden, while also cutting energy consumption.

    Experience shows that suburbs that develop their own economies have suffered far less from the recession than those that depend on long-distance commuters. Ontario, a suburb 40 miles east of Los Angeles where I have worked as a consultant, for example, has developed a strong airport, industrial and office economy and a thriving locally based retail sector. Average commutes there are roughly parallel to those in neighborhoods close to downtown Los Angeles.

    Although hit hard by the recession, Ontario suffers a foreclosure rate that is one-third of the High Desert’s. It continues to attract businesses from Los Angeles and the rest of the world by offering a more enterprise-friendly environment and a well-maintained infrastructure.

    Places like Ontario could provide something of a role model for places like the High Desert, notes local real estate investor Joe Brady. Like many other local leaders, he recognizes that basic job creation–not real estate speculation–holds the key to the region’s future.

    But it’s not all doom and gloom for the High Desert. Some prospective new industrial investment has come to the area. And Husing believes the High Desert will play an expanding role as a warehouse area for products shipped from the massive Los Angeles port complex. The converted former George Air Force Base, now the Southern California Logistics Airport, has created 2,500 jobs and could generate another 35,000 within the decade.

    Yet creating many more jobs in the High Desert will not be easy. Though most local cities are pro-business, business consultant Larry Kosmont notes they are still saddled with regulations imposed by the state of California. These could discourage business attraction and development.

    There’s a bit of an irony here. Local job growth would save energy and cut emissions by reducing commutes and making these communities more environmentally sustainable. But some coastal “progressives” may discourage new industrial or warehouse facilities for emitting too much greenhouse-gas.

    In the end, only fostering a strong locally based economy can make these places economically viable. Whatever their aesthetic and design problems, exurbs will continue to appeal to millions of Americans searching for what they define as a better way of life. That alone should make them intrinsically valuable, and definitively worth saving.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    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.

  • Smart Growth Must Not Ignore Drivers

    For the time being, battles over health care and energy seem likely to occupy the attention of both the Obama administration and its critics. Yet although now barely on the radar, there may be another, equally critical conflict developing over how Americans live and travel.

    Right now this potential flash point has been relegated to the back burner, as Congress is likely to put any major transportation spending initiative on hold for at least a year, and perhaps longer. This also may be a symptom of mounting concerns over the deficit. Financing major changes in transportation, for example, would probably require higher federal fuel taxes, which would not fly amid a weak economy.

    These delays could prove a blessing to the administration, providing a pause from indulging in yet another policy lurch that might thrill the “progressive” urban left but infuriate much of the country. Initial House proposals on transportation have sought to cut dramatically the share of federal gas taxes — paid by drivers — going to roads while sending more to already heavily subsidized transit. Another large chunk of transport spending would go to a very expensive, and geographically limited, high-speed-rail network.

    This kind of radical shift reflects the preferences of ideologues within the administration. President Barack Obama has clustered an impressive array of “smart growth” devotees around him, including Housing and Urban Development Undersecretary Ron Sims, an early climate change “evangelist,” Transportation Undersecretary for Policy Roy Kienitz and the Environmental Protection Agency’s John Frece. Their priority is not better roads for suburbanites but, as Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood put it, to “coerce” Americans out of their cars and into a denser, more transit-dominated future.

    This approach can expect strong support from the influential “green team” in the administration, including climate czar Carol Browner and science adviser John Holdren. Browner’s hand was shown during the Clinton years when as head of the Environmental Protection Agency she threatened to cut transportation funds for the Atlanta region unless it adopted a smart-growth policy. The threats became moot after the change of administration in 2001.

    It is not difficult to imagine such bureaucrats intruding on how communities and families function on the most basic levels. Traditions governing local land use that have existed since the beginning of the republic would be overturned. The preferred lifestyles of most Americans would come under siege.

    This agenda has been widely promoted for decades, first by the Carter administration and, more recently, by both environmentalists and new urbanists. The recent concerns over global warming have provided an additional raison d’être for a policy promoting both higher transit use and denser housing patterns. The president himself has embraced this agenda, declaring in February that “the days of building sprawl” were, in his words, “over.”

    The administration can expect strong support for such policies in the mainstream media concentrated in New York and Washington. These areas boast both the highest proportion of transit riders and the largest percentages working in the central core. Many among the young, single and childless couples working in media in these communities see no reason why other Americans should not live similarly.

    Politically, such a remaking of America may prove difficult to pull off. Overall less than 6 percent of Americans ride public transit, a percentage that has barely changed for decades. In many states, the transit share is only 1 percent. It’s difficult to imagine a policy that disses roads, small towns and suburbs could pass Congress, 80 percent or so of whose constituents don’t live in the favored dense urban environments. And what about the 95 percent or so of Americans who get around by car? More likely, any spate of new transit and land-use regulations will be enforced through the apparat. In one scenario, administrators at the EPA could simply oppose any transport project — for example, new roads — on the basis of carbon emissions and potential pollution. States and cities with projects not deemed “smart” enough by administrators at the Department of Transportation or HUD might be threatened with loss of funding.

    Yet even this approach risks engendering a backlash. Once again, the administration could be seen as imposing a true-blue policy on a largely red, or at least purple, nation. To be successful, the administration needs to address the needs of suburban, small-city and rural residents as well as those of big-city denizens.

    This is not to say the administration should not address pollution and congestion concerns head-on. But this needs to be done in ways that make both political and practical sense. Mileage requirements on cars are an excellent first step that follows this playbook, getting results without trying to remake a car-driving electorate.

    In addition, the government could develop incentives for increased telecommuting and more flexible work schedules in order to reduce unnecessary driving to work. There is also room for expanded, more economical bus and jitney services that could work in some suburban and small-town locations. Instead of building light rail systems that will never get large ridership, mass transit funding should flow to successful existing systems or to a handful of dense corridors emerging in places like Houston.

    All this speaks to a kind of pragmatism that may not please either the road-building zealots or the smart-growth aficionados. Such an approach would be far preferable — and more politically sustainable — than the current attempt to drive a 21st-century country back to a transportation model more appropriate for the 19th.

    This article originally appeared at Politico.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 Kid Issue

    Japan’s recent election, which overthrew the decades-long hegemony of the Liberal Democratic Party, was remarkable in its own right. But perhaps its most intriguing aspect was not the dawning of a new era but the emergence of the country’s low birthrate as a major political concern.

    Many Japanese recognize that their birth dearth contributes to the country’s long-standing economic torpor. The kid issue was prominent in the campaign of newly elected Democratic Party Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who promised to increase the current $100 a month subsidy per child to $280 and make public high school free. The Liberal Democrats also proposed their own pro-natalist program with a scheme for free child day care.

    Japan’s predicament seems obvious. Its fertility rate has dropped by a third since 1975. By 2015 a full quarter of the population will be over 65. Generally inhospitable to immigrants, Japan could see its population drop from a current 127 million to 95 million by 2050, with as much as 40% of the population over 65 years of age. By then, no matter how innovative the workforce, Dai Nippon will simply be too old to compete.

    While Japan’s demographic crisis is an extreme case, many countries throughout East Asia and Europe share a similar predicament. Even with its energy riches, Russia’s low birth and high mortality rates suggest that its population will drop 30% by 2050 to less than one-third of that of the U.S. Even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has spoken of “the serious threat of turning into a decaying nation.”

    Russia’s de facto tsar has cause for concern. Throughout history low fertility and socioeconomic decline have been inextricably linked, creating a vicious cycle that affected once-vibrant civilizations such as as ancient Rome and 17th-century Venice.

    Persistently low birthrates and sagging population growth inevitably undermine the growth capacity of an economy. Children provide a large consumer market and push their parents to work harder. By having children, parents also make a commitment to the future for themselves, their communities and their country.

    In contrast, a largely childless society produces other attitudes. It tends to place greater emphasis on leisure activities over work. It also shifts political pressure away from future growth and toward paying pensions for the aging. An aging society is likely to resist risky innovation or infrastructure investments meant to serve future generations.

    Of course, on a global level, lower birthrates should be seen as a positive. Population growth projections made around the time of The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich’s widely acclaimed 1968 Malthusian tract, which predicted global mass starvation, have turned out to be well off the mark. Global population growth rates of 2% in the 1960s have dropped to less than half that rate, and projections of the number of earth’s human residents in 2000 overshot the mark by over 200 million.

    This pattern is likely to continue: growth rates will drop further largely due to an unanticipated drop in birthrates in developing countries such as Mexico and Iran. These declines are in part the result of increased urbanization, the education of women and higher property prices. The world’s population, according to some estimates, could peak as early as 2050 and begin to fall by the end of the century.

    Yet in some places, like Japan, declining birthrates may already be too much of a good thing. The same is true elsewhere in East Asia, particularly in China, where the one-child policy has set the stage for a rapidly aging population by mid-century. Fertility is particularly low in highly crowded Asian cities like Tokyo, Shanghai, Tainjin, Beijing and Seoul.

    Over the past few decades a rapid workforce expansion fueled the rise of the so-called East Asian tigers, the great economic success story of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. But within the next four decades most of the developed countries in East Asia, as well as Europe, will become veritable old-age homes: A third or more of their populations will be over 65, compared with one in five in the U.S.

    Not that the U.S. doesn’t also have to cope with an aging population and lower population growth. But comparatively speaking it maintains a relatively youthful, dynamic demographic. Its fertility rate is about 50% higher than Russia’s, Germany’s or Japan’s and well above those of China, Italy, Singapore, Korea and virtually every country in the former eastern Europe.

    The reasons for this divergence with other advanced countries likely includes such things as continuing immigration, more land, larger houses, a strong aspirational culture and a higher degree of religious affiliation. Whatever the cause, a younger demography could lead to a relatively brighter future for America than is now commonly assumed.

    Additionally, in the next decade the U.S. will benefit from a millennial baby boomlet, as the children of the original boomers start having offspring. This next surge in population may be delayed if tough economic times continue, but over time it will translate into a growing workforce, sustained consumer spending and will likely spur a rash of new creative inputs.

    On the surface, these trends should help America to maintain a growing economy while its main competitors fade. By 2050 Europe’s economy could be half that of the U.S. But this is not inevitable. As in Japan, some leaders in European countries understand they cannot sustain prosperity with a steadily declining workforce.

    Many European countries are boosting benefits for families. In some, a pro-natalist policy is also being driven by concerns about the preservation of national cultures. In contrast to America, a country defined by immigration, most European countries – as well as Japan, China and Korea – have been far more resistant to outside influences.

    The rise of immigration in recent decades has led to growing European nativist movements. Many Europeans, including liberal ones, are less than sanguine about the long-term consequences of Muslim birth rates now three times higher than those of indigenous Europeans. If current trends continue, according to the Brookings Institution, the Muslim population of Europe could double by 2015 while the non-Muslims shrink by 3.5%. Without a sustained boost in baby-making among native Europeans, much of the continent may soon confront the prospect of an essentially Islamic future.

    But even so, attempts to foster a revival in European birthrates will face strong opposition from environmental activists who have amassed enormous influence. Some consider procreation of carbon-belching E.U. citizens as something close to anathema. In Great Britain, Jonathan Porritt, chair of the U.K.’s Sustainable Development Commission has advocates cutting the island’s population in half as a way to reduce global greenhouse gases.

    For their part, some America greens have expressed concern over our country’s relative fecundity. The president’s science adviser, John Holdren, a longtime protégé of Malthusian prophet Ehrlich, has in the past spoken about the need to limit families to two children. On the right, nativists also fear that too much of our new population will be of Asian or Hispanic descent.

    These pressures could lead to curbs on immigration, which would slow population growth. Other steps being considered by administration planners, such as cramming Americans into smaller houses in urban centers, would clearly discourage family formation. A persistently weak economy would do the same.

    Yet those favoring strong steps to curb population here first should think of the consequences. As the Japanese increasingly recognize, it’s better to experience some population growth than to become a giant nursing home. A somewhat youthful, gradually growing population certainly may create considerable environmental and social challenges, but a scenario of persistent decline and rapid aging seems far worse.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    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.

  • World Capitals Of The Future

    For most of those which were great once are small today; And those that used to be small were great in my own time. Knowing, therefore, that human prosperity never abides long in the same place, I shall pay attention to both alike

    –Herodotus, Fifth Century B.C.

    If the great Greek chronicler and “father of history” Herodotus were alive today, he would have whiplash. In less than a lifetime, we have seen the rapid rise of a host of dynamic new global cities – and the relative decline of many others. With a majority of the world’s population now living in cities, what these places do with their new wealth ultimately will shape this first truly urban century.

    Just 25 years ago, when you walked down the Bund in Shanghai, there were few cars and no modern towers. The rough sidewalks expanded into the streets to accommodate a mass of poorly dressed pedestrians. A decade later, Moscow was in the midst of a particularly grungy interlude, filled with stolid people waiting in lines for shoddy consumer goods. You could hail a cab, and pay for it, with a pack of Kents.

    Today, these two cities have emerged from their socialist shackles with scores of high-rise projects either already up or on the drawing board. This, of course, has come with a price; Moscow hotel accommodations – cheap if dingy a quarter century ago – last year ranked as the world’s most expensive. Shanghai, meanwhile, has bustling traffic, a new subway and a 100-story office tower; it is about to begin construction on another that tops out at 121 stories.

    Also remarkable: the rise of other great cities – Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad in India; Beijing; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Dubai – that a quarter century ago were either obscure or better known for their destitution than their rapid construction.

    Of course, none of these cities’ wealth or economic power have passed leading global centers like Tokyo, London, Paris, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seoul, Singapore and Hong Kong. But our list of emerging global cities is clearly gaining on them – and with remarkable speed.

    The main reason lies in economic fundamentals. Over the past 25 years, per capita income, based on purchasing power parity, grew by over 400% in India and a remarkable 1,500% in China. The bulk of that wealth came from urban centers like Mumbai and Shanghai, while the largest concentrations of poverty remained in the countryside. In that same period, U.S. per capita income grew by 245%; growth in most Western European nations was less than that.

    The nascent recovery in the world economy will certainly amplify these trends. China, as opposed to the U.S., is leading the economic resurgence, drawing in commodities from its rising business partners in all continents.

    For the most part, basic industries lead the way. Manufacturing has propelled the rise of the great Chinese cities. In Brazil, Sao Paulo’s growth spans everything from shoes and aerospace to technology. The city also dominates Brazil’s growing energy sector, both renewable and traditional. Energy – overwhelmingly of the fossil fuel variety – has powered the rise of Moscow and Dubai. It’s not always pretty. As the old Yorkshire saying has it, where there’s muck, there’s brass.

    Of course, the past year’s drop in oil prices has set back things a bit. California real estate investor Bob Christiano notes that more than half of the construction projects in the United Arab Emirates – worth $582 billion total – were put on hold in 2008. But now that the price of oil seems back on the rise, you can expect things to perk up in places like Dubai, Moscow and Sao Paulo.

    Not all our emerging cities are in the developing or former Communist world. North America boasts at least three genuine emerging world cities: Calgary, in Canada, and Houston and Dallas. These regional economies have been built around energy and expanding industrial power. They also have enjoyed rapid population growth. Last year, Houston and Dallas grew more than any other metropolitan region in the country; over the past decade, their populations have increased six times more rapidly than New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or San Francisco.

    But it’s not all a demographic game; cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas have similarly enjoyed rapid growth but do not fit on the rising global cities list. The key difference lies in the Texan cities’ rising corporate power. Houston, with 27 Fortune 500 firms, has passed Chicago in the number of Fortune 500 companies, while Dallas, with 14, ranks third. Together, the two Texan cities account for about as many Fortune firms as New York, once home to almost a third of the nation’s largest companies.

    Similarly, Calgary has become Toronto’s main challenger for corporate headquarters in Canada, a move sparked not only by oil wealth but lower taxes and regulation. The region now easily boasts the highest per capita income in the country. Its long-term main rival in growth may prove to be provincial cousin Edmonton, which sits closer to Alberta’s massive oil sands deposits.

    In Australia, Perth, located on the Indian Ocean and close to critical commodities such as iron ore, has also emerged in a big way. Australia’s richest city has become a major urban threat to long-established Sydney and Melbourne, with growth driven both by domestic as well as foreign migration and development.

    These emerging world cities also have survived the housing crisis much better than their national competitors. The growth of India and China has created an ever-richer market for commodities, as well as expertise residing in places like Perth, Calgary, Dallas and Houston, much of it built around commodity and resource extraction. The evolving ties between burgeoning world cities also spill over into the growing tourism industry in Perth and the expanding medical service complex in Houston.

    Another group flocking to the developing world’s super-stars: architects and civil engineers, many of them from more established first-world cities like New York, London, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Over the past 25 years, most of the biggest rail, road, airport and sanitation systems have been built not in Europe or America, but in East and South Asia, the Middle East and Brazil. Even as the West tries to work through its housing crisis, residential real estate prices are on the rise in cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Beijing and Shanghai.

    The lure is irresistible, particularly for the young and ambitious. Just last month, Adam Mayer, a 20-something formerly employed architect from San Francisco, relocated to Beijing. He sees the chaos around him, but has plunged into the opportunity. “As I wait for our economy to recover,” he told me, “I am enjoying the ride as I witness perhaps one of the most compelling urban development stories of the 21st century.”

    High-rise office buildings have emerged as the biggest signs of the new order among global cities. Shanghai is already the fourth-tallest city in the world, with 21 buildings over 700 feet. Of the world’s 10 tallest buildings, only one – the former Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago – resides in the U.S. or Europe. There are now more tall buildings in Asia than in North America, and of the tallest 10 completed in 2006, four were in China and four in the Middle East. When completed, the Burj Dubai will stand as the world’s tallest.

    Although less awesome, the shift in skylines can also be seen in Russia. Until recently, Moscow had no buildings higher than the 787 feet of Moscow State University. Now, the Kremlin city has 14 towers complete or on the way, including one that will replace the current Naberezhnaya Tower; it will be Europe’s tallest building. Another project, a billion-dollar Chinatown, is being proposed with investors from China.

    Even with their rapid growth and increasingly modern gloss, these cities don’t tend to make the usual lifestyle-based “best cities” lists. Munich, Zürich, Copenhagen and Vancouver may be somnolent compared to Beijing or Bangalore, but they tend to be far wealthier, better organized, cleaner and safer – and they have far less poor people. Even our current global metropolises like Tokyo, London and New York have been able to hone the cultural amenities that make for a gracious urbanity.

    In contrast, by their very nature, boomtowns often give shorter shrift to the environment, the aesthetics of place and the more important aspects of community. Shaghai’s “tofu like” soil may not be ideal for massive high-rise buildings, just as some of Dubai’s buildings, some believe, may be helping to erode the Persian Gulf coastline.

    These upstarts are often too busy building and trying to impress the rest of the world to focus on architecture or plan niceties to make the heroic routine of everyday life more pleasant, notes London-based architect Eric Kuhne, who has worked on major projects in Moscow, Dubai and other Persian Gulf cities. Such places tend to be “abrupt and rude” in their development, but also “honest in every way” – they are the new kids on the block, with more money and power than seasoning.

    Like parvenus throughout history, Kuhne adds, these burgeoning power centers harbor “a desire to be seen as relevant, as ‘modern’, as shockingly new. In the stampede for a shining presence on the horizon, they both have been mesmerized…perhaps hypnotized…by their own profligacy of uncontrolled development.”

    Yet, Kuhne reminds us, you could have said the same thing about now-reigning world capitals like New York, London, Tokyo, Chicago or Los Angeles. These cities also “experienced a similar riot-panic in the post-war boom years of the ’50s. We destroyed the intricacy of centuries of urbanism [and] sacrificed community and family fabric for home ownership and autonomy.”

    Ultimately, the salvation for these cities may lie, Kuhne suggests, not in mimicry of Western ways but in drawing inspiration from their own ancient traditions. After all, Chinese, Arabs and Russians are not newcomers to city-building. But however they decide to build their new cities, these countries will be providing the blueprint for all of our urban futures.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a 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 early next year.