New Geography

Author: Wendell Cox

  • America is More Small Town than We Think

    America has become an overwhelmingly metropolitan nation. According to the 2000 census, more than 80 percent of the nation’s population resided in one of the 350 combined metropolitan statistical areas. It is not surprising, therefore, that “small town” America may be considered as becoming a burdensome anachronism.

    Nothing could be further from the truth. America is more “small town” than we often think, particularly in how we govern ourselves. In 2000, slightly more than one-half of the nation’s population lived in jurisdictions — cities, towns, boroughs, villages and townships — with fewer than 25,000 people or in rural areas. Planners and geographers might see regions as mega-units, but in fact, they are usually composed of many small towns and a far smaller number of larger cities. Indeed, among the metropolitan areas with more than one million residents in 2000, the average sized city, town, borough, village or township had a population of little more than 20,000.

    Although local government consolidation and regional governance is all the rage in policy circles, most Americans seem content with a diverse, even fractured governmental structure. According to the 2002 U.S. Census of Governments, there were more than 34,000 local general-purpose governments with less than 25,000 residents and 31,000 local general-purpose governments with less than 10,000 residents (accounting, with rural areas, for 38 percent of the nation’s 2000 population). With so many “small towns,” the average local jurisdiction population in the United States is 6,200.

    Even in big metropolitan areas, citizens are often governed by small local institutions. People in Brecksville, Ohio (population 13,000), may tell their friends from far away that they live in Cleveland and residents of Woodway, Wash. (population 1,000), may claim to live in Seattle. But in reality their local governments are located not in the great City Hall downtown but in a usually quite modest nearby building.

    This large number of governments horrifies some organizations and people. Planners, the media and many often well-meaning local activists argue that local governments should be consolidated to eliminate waste and duplication. And so, in recent years there have been strong initiatives to force local government consolidations. Bigger, the argument goes, is usually better and more efficient — and certainly easier to cover if you are a journalist and influence if you are a big business interest.

    Yet the reality is that the claims of greater efficiency rarely confirm the theory. Both
    Pennsylvania and New York recently started initiatives to consolidate their governmental structure. They took to heart the usual mantra that there are thousands of governments in the state and that they must be consolidated to save money. In both states, the efforts were clothed in promises that local government consolidation would improve competitiveness relative to other states.

    However, the proponents never bothered to look at the data.

    We did and the results were stunning. In both states, an equivalent “market basket” of spending was compared. In Pennsylvania, the largest local jurisdictions spent (including a per capita allocation of county expenditures, so that Philadelphia could be included. Social service spending was excluded) 150 percent more per capita than jurisdictions with between 5,000 and 10,000 population. The largest jurisdictions — those over 250,000 people — spent 200 percent more than jurisdictions with under 2,500 residents.

    Moreover, it is not a matter of urban versus rural. In both the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas, there are literally hundreds of suburban jurisdictions that spent at less than one-half the per capita rate of the central cities.

    The story was little different in New York. The largest jurisdictions (those over 100,000) spent nearly double per capita as jurisdictions with between 5,000 and 10,000 population (this would have been even greater if it had been possible to include New York City). The big governments spent even more (more than 150 percent) compared to jurisdictions with between 1,000 and 2,500 population. The differences were even greater within metropolitan areas, where smaller jurisdictions were even more efficient relative to the largest jurisdictions.

    Why should this be? Perhaps it’s the old, all too often neglected Jeffersonian principle of downscaling government closer to the people. Elected officials who know more of their constituents are likely to be more responsive to their needs. Too often the principal economies of scale that occur from municipal consolidations are economies of scale for lobbyists and special interests.

    Further, this small town governance structure is not limited to the United States. Metropolitan Paris has approximately 1,300 general-purpose local jurisdictions, more than any U.S. metropolitan area. Milan has more than 600. By comparison, Tokyo-Yokohama, the world’s largest metropolitan area, is a model of government consolidation, with more than 200 general-purpose governments.

    America’s small town government structure engenders a sense of community, even as a part of larger metropolitan areas. They also save a lot of money, principally because democracy tends to work better when government is closer to home. It is not surprising that so many consolidation proposals fail and that when given the chance, voters usually reject consolidation proposals.

    America needs both its small towns and its bigger cities. But make no mistake about it, even much of what we call a “metropolis” functions more effectively as a network of small towns.

    The view of Main Street, Bramwell, West Virginia was photographed by Sandy Sorlien as part of her twenty-year project, The Heart of Town: Main Streets in America.

    New Geography apologizes for having initially published the image without permission or attribution.

    Resources:

    Report for the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors

    Report for the Association of Towns of the State of New York

    General-purpose governments by metropolitan area (2002)

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • Understanding Phoenix: Not as Sprawled as You Think

    Phoenix may be one of the nation’s most misunderstood urban areas. The conventional wisdom is that Phoenix is one of the most suburbanized (or if the pejorative is preferred, “sprawling”) urban areas in the United States. Not so. According to 2000 U.S. Census data, Phoenix ranked number 10 in population density out of the 36 urban areas with more than one million in population.

    At this point it is appropriate to define terms. An urban area is an urban footprint, the area that would be outlined in lights from an airplane at night. Urban areas are also called urbanized areas or urban agglomerations. Urban areas do not include any rural territory — they are the continuously built up or developed territory. Urban areas are considerably different from metropolitan areas, a difference often missed by journalists and others. Metropolitan areas are labor markets, are defined using county or town (in the six New England states) boundaries and always include rural areas and more distant exurbs.

    The Phoenix urban area had a population density of 3,683 per square mile, with 2,907,000 residents living in 799 square miles. What may be even more surprising is that only one Eastern urban area — New York — was more dense and only one Midwestern urban area was more dense — Chicago. In the South, only the Miami urban was more dense than the Phoenix urban area. On the other hand, in the highly automobile-oriented newer West, six urban areas were more dense than Phoenix. Portland, despite local and international marketing efforts to portray that area as the ultimate example of urbanization, was not one of them. In 2000, Phoenix was nearly 10 percent more dense than Portland. As is shown below, this gap may have widened since 2000.

    All of that does not change the fact that Phoenix and its suburbs seem to stretch on forever. That is the nature of large urban areas. What makes Phoenix one of the nation’s most compact urban areas is that its population density declines from the center to the urban fringes at a much lower rate; the outer rings tend to be not much less dense than the inner city.

    This contrast can be best seen in comparison to the Boston urban area, widely perceived as one of the nation’s most dense urban areas. Nothing could be further from the truth. Central Boston, including such municipalities as Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville clearly fit this description and rank among the highest density areas in the United States outside the four highly urbanized boroughs of New York City. The densest part of the Boston urban area (in land area) has a population density of 28,000 — more than double that of Phoenix (nearly 14,000) and even more in comparison to Portland (12,000).

    But there is much more to an urban area than the urban core. The big difference is in the suburbs. Most Boston suburbs developed as low-density communities. Land restrictions, often imposed at the town and village level, are far tighter than in similarly sprawled part of the greater Boston area. Indeed, beyond the dense core and the inner suburbs, the sprawl is so extensive that the Boston urban area covers more land area than the Los Angeles urban area, which has nearly three times as much population. The outer suburbs of Boston also are slightly less compact than the outer suburbs of Atlanta — the world’s lowest density large urban area.

    Overall, the Phoenix urban area has a density that is more than 50 percent higher than that of Boston’s. A comparison of the population density profiles of the Phoenix, Portland and Boston urban areas illustrates these differences, with higher densities in Phoenix and Portland than in earlier developing, but much more suburban Boston.

    The key to the higher density of the Phoenix urban area (and other higher density urban areas of the West, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Riverside-San Bernardino, Las Vegas and Denver) has to do with the greater power of the market in newer cities. In Boston, Washington, Philadelphia and a number of other Eastern and Midwestern urban areas, suburban land use regulations required large lot zoning creating far larger urban footprints than would have occurred otherwise.

    In the Phoenix urban area, comparatively dense development continues all the way to the urban fringe — and that densification seems to be accelerating. The U.S. Bureau of the Census American Community Survey indicates that the density of the Phoenix urban area (within its 2000 definition) rose 11 percent between 2000 and 2006. This is more than double the rate of densification nationwide. Only Riverside-San Bernardino, Atlanta, Houston and Las Vegas densified at a greater rate. Further, based upon the new data, the Phoenix urban area — John McCain’s political base — is now more dense than Senator Barack Obama’s Chicago region.

    Resources:

    2000 Urban Area Data

    Comparison of Atlanta and Boston urban areas

    Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris since 2002. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

  • Are Housing Declines Evenly Spread? – An Examination of California

    To read the popular press, one gets the impression that the collapse of the housing market is concentrated largely in the suburbs and exurbs, as people flock back to the cities in response to the mortgage crisis and high gas prices. A review of mortgage meltdown “ground zero” California indicates the picture is far more nuanced.

    California’s metropolitan areas have seen the greatest median house price decreases in the nation. Each of the four largest metropolitan regions, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego and Sacramento have experienced median house price decreases of more than 25 percent over the past year (see Methodology Notes below). These decreases have not been distributed in a way that belies much of the ‘Back to the City’ hype.

    Los Angeles: In the broader Los Angeles metropolitan region, the smallest house price declines have been in the inner suburbs — generally those jurisdictions between 10 and 20 miles from downtown. The inner suburbs have seen a median house price decline of 20 percent. These include wide swaths of employment-rich areas like West Los Angeles, the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

    Somewhat surprisingly — particularly given the hype — the central areas of LA have suffered a somewhat higher rate of decline, at 22 percent. This includes areas close and around downtown Los Angeles, which has been among the ballyhooed “renaissance areas.” These numbers, significantly, do not include the many new units that were supposed to become condos but, due to lack of qualified buyers, have been thrown onto the rental market.

    It is true, however, that, if the condo-to-rental trend is left out, an even higher decline has taken place in the outer suburbs, at 30 percent. The outer suburbs include eastern Los Angeles County, eastern Ventura County, much of Orange County and the Riverside-San Bernardino area. The largest declines of 34 percent were in the “exurbs” — areas generally far from LA’s archipelago of employment centers and often over mountain ranges. The exurbs include the Antelope Valley, southwestern Riverside County, and the desert areas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

    San Francisco Bay Area: The situation is somewhat different in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to one of the nation’s most vibrant urban cores, the city of San Francisco. House prices declined less than five percent in the city, a remarkable affirmation of the place’s continued appeal for affluent people.

    Overall, the central area — generally within 10 miles of San Francisco City Hall — experienced a median house price decline of 15 percent. However, central areas outside San Francisco experienced a price decline of 24 percent, which is only marginally less than in either the inner or outer suburbs. The inner suburbs, which include much of the East Bay, including Oakland and most of the peninsula, experienced a decline of 28 percent.

    Outer suburbs — those beyond 20 miles from city hall, including eastern Contra Costa and Alameda counties and Santa Clara County — experienced the second lowest decline, at 26 percent. Overall, the largest decline was in the exurbs — the counties in the San Joaquin Valley to which so many households had fled seeking affordable housing. There, the decline was 44 percent.

    San Diego: The San Diego area indicates a fairly constant rate of decline, regardless of distance from downtown. The lowest decline was in the inner and outer suburbs, at 26 percent, while the central area experienced a median house price decline of 27 percent.

    Sacramento: Sacramento indicates the most unexpected results, with the central area experiencing by far the largest house price declines, at 42 percent. The lowest house price declines were one-half that rate, in the outer suburbs (generally more than 10 miles from downtown), at 21 percent, while the inner suburbs experienced a decline of 29 percent.

    Overall, within the central areas, inner suburbs and outer suburbs of the major metropolitan regions, price declines have been consistent, all at minus 26 percent. The major exception has been the city of San Francisco. However, it is well to keep in mind that the city represents barely 10 percent of its metropolitan region population and is a unique case.

    What does all this indicate? Perhaps most of all, it is a further demonstration of the growing irrelevance of what economist William T. Bogart calls the pre-Copernican view of the cities. Most people no longer work in the urban core and living in the suburbs does not necessarily mean longer commutes. This was evident in our previous analysis of metropolitan New York, where the greatest jobs-housing balances are in the suburbs. In fact, the price declines throughout the principal urban areas making up California’s largest metropolitan regions have not been materially different.

    Things have been tougher n the far flung exurbs, where the greatest price declines have occurred. This was to be expected. These are places that people fled to find lower-cost housing that had often been precluded in the over-regulated jurisdictions in the principal urban areas. Many such households bought their houses in the most recent cycle, largely because of the unprecedented relaxation of credit standards. The difficulties in the exurbs been exacerbated by the fact that employment bases there have not yet had a chance to catch up with their residential gains.

    Notes on Methodology: The data is calculated based upon the change in median house prices from July 2007 to July 2008, based upon data published by DQNews.com. Sector medians are is weighted by the number of house sales. All jurisdictions or geographies are included that had 25 or more house sales in July 2008. Generally, the data is based upon municipal jurisdiction, except in the city of Los Angeles, where geographical data is available and in the case of counties wholly within a zone (central, inner suburbs, outer suburbs or exurban).

    The central areas of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area are considered generally to be located within a radius of 10 miles from downtown, the inner suburbs are between 10 and 20 miles from downtown and the outer suburbs are more than 20 miles from downtown. The exurban areas are described in the sections on the particular areas above. In San Diego and Sacramento, which are considerably smaller, smaller geographic radii are used. The central areas are up to 5 miles from downtown, the inner suburbs from 5 to 10 miles from downtown and the outer suburbs are more than 10 miles from downtown. Because of their smaller geographic sizes, exurbs are not considered in this analysis for San Diego and Sacramento. The city of San Diego is excluded from this analysis because major parts of it are in each zone.

    Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris since 2002. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

    Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002).

  • Sprawl Beyond Sprawl: America Moves to Smaller Metropolitan Areas

    For those interested in demographics or economic trends, domestic migration — people moving from one county to another in the United States — offers a critical window to the future. Domestic migration, which excludes international migration and the natural increase of births in excess of deaths, tells us much about how people are voting — with their feet. Domestic migrants are also important because they generally arrive at their new residences with more resources than the average immigrant or newborn.

    For decades, for example, people have been moving from the state of New York to just about everywhere else. In fact, since 2000, New York has bled more domestic migrants per capita than Louisiana after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. While 7.8 percent of the Empire State’s 2000 population was packing, the nation’s worst disaster (natural and man-made) drove only 7.5 percent of Louisiana’s population away.

    But New York’s story is an old one. The big surprise is how smaller sized metropolitan areas are now attracting a large share of movers. For generations Americans have crowded into ever larger metropolitan areas — including suburbs and exurbs — but more recently they have been heading to smaller regions. You could call it “sprawl beyond sprawl.”

    Overall, between 2000 and 2007, U.S. Bureau of the Census data indicates that the metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population in 2000 have lost two million domestic migrants, or 1.3 percent of their population. In contrast, smaller metropolitan areas — those with populations between 50,000 to 1,000,000 — gained 2.2 million domestic migrants, or 2.2 percent of their population. Smaller areas (under 50,000, including rural areas) also gained, attracting 700,000 domestic migrants, or 1.6 percent of their population.

    But the real the growth is concentrated not in small towns but among the metropolitan areas between 100,000 and 500,000 population. Overall, these medium sized metropolitan areas added 1.6 million domestic migrants — a very healthy 7.6 percent of their population.

    Among the nearly 500 metropolitan areas in this category, 120 have added more five percent or more to their population through domestic migration. Seven metropolitan areas have added more than 25 percent to their population through domestic migration, including Palm Coast, FL, The Villages, FL, St. George, UT, Cape Coral, FL, Bend, OR, Ocala, FL and Prescott, AZ.

    Some of these patterns may change in the short run. For example, nearly one-third of the national increase in smaller regions has been in 16 Florida metropolitan areas, which have added 700,000 domestic migrants. These areas, with only one-quarter of the Florida’s 2000 population, accounted for almost 55 percent of the state’s domestic migration gain. The latest year’s domestic migration data indicates a declining rate of increase in Florida, probably due to its over priced housing and newly higher insurance costs.

    On the other side, expect more from North Carolina, which enjoys a relatively strong economy and stable housing prices. Over the past seven years, North Carolina’s medium sized metropolitan areas gained the second largest number of domestic migrants, at 150,000. These eight areas accounted for 15 percent of the state’s population in 2000, yet captured 30 percent of the domestic migration gain.

    Idaho placed third, gaining 107,000 domestic migrants, as people continued moving from coastal states inland. There’s no reason to expect this trend to slow significantly. Other states rounding out the top ten were South Carolina, Arizona, Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Alabama.

    Pennsylvania and Arkansas are the big surprises. Pennsylvania is the big domestic migration success story of the 2000s. The state has lost only 44,000 domestic migrants at the same time that its neighbors have lost more than 2,000,000. Pennsylvania’s mid-sized metropolitan areas have gained 65,000 domestic migrants, many of whom were fleeing the over-heated housing markets in the adjacent New York City and Washington-Baltimore areas. Arkansas reflects, at least partially, the Wal-Mart effect, with more than 50,000 domestic migrants moving to Fayetteville, which includes Bentonville and the headquarters of the world’s largest retailer.

    The same trend towards smaller metropolitan areas can be seen in other states. In Utah, the medium sized metropolitan areas (Provo and St. George) have accounted for more than 160 percent of the state’s net domestic migration. In Oregon, nearly one-half of the domestic migration has been in five medium sized metropolitan areas with less than 15 percent of the state’s population in 2000. In Missouri, more than 125 percent of the domestic migration has been to three medium sized metropolitan areas, with the largest gain in Springfield.

    The same pattern can be seen even in highly urbanized states. Maryland is losing domestic migrants overall, but the exurban metropolitan areas of Hagerstown, Salisbury and Lexington park managed to add more than 50,000. Another exurban success has been Colorado, where four metropolitan areas with 16 percent of the 2000 population accounted for more than 60 percent of the states domestic migration, led by Fort Collins and Greeley.

    Finally, it is notable that Sioux Falls, SD and Bismarck, ND are among the medium sized metropolitan areas that are attracting so many domestic migrants. It is obvious that things are changing when more people are moving to Bismarck or Sioux Falls than to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston or Washington.

    What does all this say? Clearly, the shape of America’s demography has been shifting, with a strong movement toward smaller metropolitan areas. Generally, these areas are newer, with little in the way of a traditional urban core. Many are wholly suburban. Indeed, the decentralization of the United States appears to be accelerating — from moving to the suburbs of large metropolitan areas to moving away from large metropolitan areas altogether.

    There are good reasons for this to be so, from overly costly housing, to overly stressful traffic congestion to telecommunications advances. Some argue that high gas prices and the mortgage melt-down will now reverse this trend. Although the housing slowdown likely will slow out-migration down, it is unlikely to reverse the longer-term pattern. And as for high gas prices, the 1970s energy crisis did not result in a ‘back to the city’ movement, but actually quite the opposite. And in the 1970s, we did not have the Internet, which now allows people in smaller communities access to information once limited to those living in large metropolitan areas.

    References:
    Demographia Metropolitan Population & Migration 2000-2007

    Demographia State Population & Migration: 2000-2007:

  • Louvre Café Syndrome: Misunderstanding Amsterdam and America

    Tourists, journalists and urban planners are often smitten with what might be called the “Louvre Café Syndrome.” This occurs when Americans sit at Paris cafes in view of the Louvre and imagine why it is that the United States does not look like this. In fact, most of Paris doesn’t even look like this, nor do other European urban areas. Like their US counterparts, European urban areas rely principally on cars for mobility (though to a somewhat lesser degree) and their residents live in suburbs that have been built since World War II.

    The last example of Louvre Café Syndrome comes from Washington Post Writer’s Group columnist Neal Peirce, who suggests that Amsterdam, with its bicycles, is the model for America to follow in a time of high energy prices.

    Not only is this view incorrect, but Amsterdam is not even a model for the Netherlands. The largest urban areas of the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, have been “stuck in neutral” with respect to growth for at least 45 years. United Nations data indicates that since 1960, 97 percent of urban growth in the Netherlands has occurred outside these two large urban areas. While the population of the two largest urban areas has increased approximately 10 percent, the urban population outside these areas has increased by 120 percent.

    And how do these urbanites that have chosen not to live in Amsterdam or Rotterdam travel? Try by car. Overall, in the Netherlands, approximately 85 percent of travel is by car — a figure that is nearly identical to the United States. All of the subway and light rail ridership in the Netherlands is less than the annual increase in car use. Some model.

    America is a growing nation. Between now and 2030, approximately two-thirds of the urban growth in the developed world is projected to occur in the United States — that is a considerable number given the fact that the US accounts for less than one-third of the developed world’s urban population today. The strategies that work in urban areas with stagnant growth — such as Amsterdam — will not work here.

    As for the bicycles, one could also point to walking and the large share of travel that it represents in Manhattan or the Chicago Loop. A European felled by Louvre Café Syndrome might visit these places and imagine that the urban area looks the same all the way to the urban fringe — that the citizens of New Brunswick, Westfield or Aurora live in residential skyscrapers and that they walk everywhere. Such a view would be as faulty as Peirce’s vision of Amsterdam.

    It helps to think of things in context. Amsterdam would barely rank in the top 50 metropolitan areas of the United States. The Netherlands has a population less than that of two American metropolitan areas (combined statistical areas), New York and Los Angeles. Finally, all of the Netherlands — urban and rural areas — would fit into an area approximately 1.5 times that of the New York metropolitan area.

    You can’t see everything from the Louve.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”

  • Long Island Express: The Surprisingly Short Commutes of Suburban New Yorkers

    One of the most enduring urban myths suggests that most jobs are in the core of metropolitan areas, making commuting from the far suburbs more difficult. Thus, as fuel prices have increased, many have expected that people will begin moving from farther out in the suburbs to locations closer to the cores. Indeed, in some countries, such as Australia, much of the urban planning regime of the last decade has been based upon the assumption that urban areas must not be constrained because the residents on the fringe won’t be able to get to work.

    Like many myths, this one has limited conformity with the truth. This can be seen even in New York, the New York metropolitan area (the combined statistical area), which is home to the second largest central business district in the country and by far the most well-developed transit system in North America. Yet, despite this, a close examination of work trip data from the 2006 U.S. Census American Community Survey shows a pattern of shorter work travel times for many of the most far-flung areas while those located closer to the core often experience longer commutes.

    These findings parallel earlier Newgeography.com reports about Chicago and Los Angeles, which indicated a somewhat similar pattern. Although white-collar workers close to key job centers – such as downtown Chicago or west Los Angeles – enjoy relatively short commutes, those living in the close in, but less high-end districts tend to suffer the longest commutes.

    So, somewhat surprisingly, workers who live in the outer suburbs of New York have the shorter work trip travel times, at 29.8 minutes than the New York metropolitan average of 32.9 minutes. Workers living in the inner suburbs spend 30.7 minutes getting to work. Those living in the outer boroughs of New York City have the worst commute times at 41.5 minutes. This contrasts sharply with the 30.1 minute average for workers living in the core borough – Manhattan, home of more than 2.2 million jobs.

    One possible conclusion here is that the best way to balance jobs and housing is not to concentrate employment or residences in any one place. High levels of centralization are extremely convenient for those who can afford to live near the Manhattan core – where there are nearly 275 jobs for every 100 resident workers. But it is far less a good deal for those who live in the outer boroughs with only 68 jobs for every 100 resident workers. Richmond (Staten Island) has the largest deficit of jobs, with 56 per 100 resident workers, while Kings County (Brooklyn) has the lowest deficit, with 73 jobs per 100 resident workers.

    In contrast, and somewhat contradictory to conventional assumption, jobs and housing are mostly in balance in New York’s suburbs. Among the inner suburban counties, there are 97 jobs for every 100 resident workers. The inner suburban counties also demonstrate a balance among themselves. The largest deficit is in Hudson County, with 89 jobs per 100 resident workers – a figure well above any of the four outer New York City boroughs. Bergen County has the highest surplus, with 102 jobs for every resident worker. Virtually all other outer suburban counties for which there is data have jobs-housing balances superior to all of the New York City outer boroughs.

    A similar pattern persists in the outer suburbs where there are 93 jobs for every 100 resident worker in the outer suburban counties. Mercer County, which contains three large employment draws, the New Jersey state capital (at Trenton), Princeton University and the Route 1 information technology corridor, has 126 jobs for every resident worker (only Manhattan is higher).

    The extent to which jobs have become dispersed around the metropolitan area is illustrated by the work trip travel times to job locations, rather than by residence location. The average worker commuting to Manhattan, the ultimate American business district, travels 48.5 minutes one-way to work. This is approximately double the national average. Workers commuting to the outer boroughs of New York City spend 36.9 minutes. The situation is much better in the suburbs. For jobs in the inner suburban counties, the average one-way work trip travel time is 29.3 minutes. Perhaps surprisingly, people working in the outer suburban counties spend the least amount of time getting to work, at 24.8 minutes, roughly the national average.

    These findings suggest that much of the conversation about convenience and location between suburbs and cities has been distorted. The notion of suburbanites, particularly in the outer ring, enduring long commutes needs to be re-examined as should the efficiency of high dense employment centers. The greatest advantages to concentrated employment in New York, it seems, devolves to those who can afford to live closest to the central core, something increasingly out of reach for most New Yorkers. For those who can’t afford a nice apartment in Manhattan, it’s not necessarily the best of all bargains.

    For details see Demographia New York Employment & Commuting: 2006.

  • Moving from the Cities to the Suburbs… and Beyond

    The current concern over soaring gas prices has raised serious questions about the sustainability of what we commonly consider “the American dream”. Some urban boosters and environmentalists seem positively giddy about the prospects that suburbanites, reeling under the impact of high-energy prices, will soon be forced to give up their cars, backyards and highly regarded privacy for the pleasures of crowded multi-family homes and commutes on packed public transit to jobs downtown.

    This is part of a profoundly nostalgic notion that we can return to the 19th Century idyll .It is a kind of dream world where everyone walks on bustling streets, greeting their neighbors who sit on the front porch or hang out on a brownstone stoop. Of course, any serious student of history knows that life in urban America was hardly so idyllic — with families of five or more packed into tiny three-room apartments in neighborhoods often characterized by gangs, unsanitary conditions and limited economic opportunities.

    One generally does not expect newspaper reporters to know, much less understand history. However, it would be nice if they bothered to look even at the recent facts. Yet to read The New York Times, the Washington Post and even The Wall Street Journal, you would think there is a mass movement out of automobiles into mass transit. Yet, in reality, they rarely note that the decline in driving is more than 30 times the increase in transit ridership.

    This is not to deny that transit ridership, after decades of relative decline, is rising, but statistically it remains relatively insignificant. That is because transit’s market share, outside New York, is barely one percent. However, why shouldn’t people take transit if it is a viable alternative to the car? The problem is that how we live, work and shop in most places simply does not work with transit; other trends, like a shift to cars that are more efficient, telecommuting and working closer to home all seem far more likely to shape our future transportation pattern.

    But where the really far off is with respect to demographic trends — where people are moving. Readers are continuously misled about the imagined return of people from the suburbs to the city. The claim is that this has being going on since before energy prices really spiked but has become even more pronounced now.

    The demographic reality is quite at odds with these assertions, even now. For one thing suburbanization never was principally about moving from cities to suburbs, it was more about moving from small town and rural areas to the suburbs. Even in St. Louis, which has lost more of its population than any city since the Romans sacked Carthage, most new suburban residents were not from the city.

    More critically, an examination of metropolitan county domestic migration data from 2000 to 2007 simply fails to show any demonstrable back-to-the-city movement. We examined domestic migration in 47 metropolitan areas of the nation with more than 1,000,000 population (four metropolitan areas were excluded, see file). Here is what the data show:

    • Core counties of metropolitan areas continue to lose domestic migrants and have done so every year of this decade. There have been ups and downs, but in 2006-2007, more than 500,000 people moved out of core counties. Every year in the decade, from 34 to 39 of the 47 core counties have lost domestic migrants. In 2006-2007, 37 core counties lost domestic migrants.
    • Suburban counties of metropolitan areas continue to gain domestic migrants and have done so every year of this decade. The trend has been generally downward, with more than a net 400,000 migration gain in 2000-2001, falling to a gain of 180,000 in 2006-2007. Every year in the decade, from suburban counties in 33 to 40 of the 47 metropolitan areas have gained domestic migrants. In 2006-2007, suburban domestic migration gains occurred in 33 metropolitan areas.
    • Domestic migration was greater (or losses were lower) in the suburban counties of 39 of the 47 metropolitan areas in 2006-2007. During the decade, this figure has ranged from 38 to 42.

    The decline in domestic migration to the suburbs, however, does not suggest that people are moving back to the city. On the contrary, it may suggest even greater decentralization as people move from the suburbs, as well as core cities, of major metropolitan areas to smaller urban areas and perhaps even rural areas. Perhaps it is being made possible by advances in information technology and telecommuting. To some degree, it is people “voting with their feet” often due to high housing prices, failing schools and congested conditions even in suburbs of large metropolitan centers.

    Basically, from a statistical point of view, there is simply no hard evidence of any material movement of people from suburbs to cities. Between 2000 and 2007, millions of people moved from the most expensive housing markets to more affordable markets — in many times prices made worse by land use policies commonly imposed in some areas.

    The reality is that people are adaptable to changing conditions. They will work to preserve the lifestyles they prefer. They will buy more fuel efficient cars; they will work and recreate closer to home. A decade from now, we will likely find that the reports of suburban demise will be greatly exaggerated once again.

  • Greenhouse Gas Reduction Policy: From Rhetoric to Reason

    Greenhouse (GHG) gas emission reduction has moved to the top of the public agenda. Virtually no field of public policy will escape being examined through the prism of this issue. With this comes one of the greatest public policy challenges in memory — barring hawkers of various ideological and commercial interests from hijacking the agenda for their own purposes.

    There are at least two ways to comprehensively reduce GHG emissions — not surprisingly, a right way and a wrong way.

    The wrong way is typified by the conventional wisdom among many puritanical urban planners, These social engineers have been frustrated for decades, failing to herd automobile drivers into transit and new residents into pre-War densities. All the while, their demons — the expansion of home ownership that could only have occurred by building on cheap land on the urban fringe and the greater mobility provided by the automobile — have been major contributors to the democratization of prosperity. Throughout the first world, from the United States to Western Europe and Japan, poverty levels have fallen markedly as more households take part in the quality of life mainstream. Women have been liberated to become near-equal economic players and low income households, including many that are African-American or Hispanic, have entered the middle class and beyond.

    Yet, for years, much of the planning community has exhibited an inestimable contempt for the lifestyles that have been chosen by most households. The Puritan planners have identified this once-in-a-lifetime chance to force their confession of faith on everyone else.

    This is evident, for example in a new Brookings Institution report (Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America purporting to demonstrate that GHG emissions are higher in the suburbs than in more dense cores. Using this debatable conclusion — directly at odds with the findings of the Australian Conservation Foundation’s far more extensive study (Australian Conservation Atlas) (Note 1) — they jump from rhetoric to their time honored litany of anti-mobility, anti-home ownership and pro-poverty commandments, skipping right over the economic analysis that any disciplined analysis of trades-off would require.

    The planning Puritans fall into the trap outlined by Lord David King, the British government climate advisor who has suggested that much that is proposed on GHG emissions reductions would take us back to the 18th century.

    It is not enough that one strategy is less GHG intensive than another. All candidate strategies must be weighed based upon their economic cost and their social implications. Some policies will be inexpensive, others will be horrendously expensive. Be assured that the Puritanical commandments will congregate strongly toward the more expensive and socially destructive side of the scale.

    There is a better way. It involves careful examination of the potential, costs and benefits of competing strategies to reduce GHG emissions. This is the right way, because it allows using the least expensive strategies, while minimizing economic harm (read minimizing the expansion of poverty).

    The consulting firm, McKinsey and Company has set out an impressive blueprint that accomplishes just that (Reducing US Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much and at What Cost? (Note 2). Taking the International Panel on Climate Change maximum standard of $50 per metric ton of carbon dioxide removed, McKinsey shows that the United States could reduce its GHG emissions by 28 percent by 2030, using strategies with marginal costs of less than $50 per ton. McKinsey notes that this can be accomplished while “maintaining comparable levels of consumer utility.” This means, according to McKinsey, “no change in thermostat settings or appliance use, no downsizing of vehicles, home or commercial space and traveling the same mileage” (though they do envision car mileage improvements more substantial than called for in the recent federal energy bill). In other words, no “social engineering.” Again, read no expansion of poverty and no need to set course toward an 18th century future.

    None of this, of course, is sufficient for the planning Puritans, whose ideology gains greater satisfaction from telling people how to live than to reducing GHG emissions.

    The “bottom line” is this. Sustainability is not one-dimensional, it is multi-dimensional. Environmental sustainability (including GHG emissions reductions) cannot be achieved without economic sustainability. Already there are indications that public interest in GHG emissions reductions is waning with the mild economic downturn (Note 3), which is nothing compared to what would be in store if the planning Puritans had their way. Thus, sustainability is at least about both the environment and economics.

    To be effective and to avoid reducing the standard of living, efforts to reduce GHG emissions must be based upon sound economic analysis. The starting point is an evaluation of strategies to determine which are the least expensive in terms of cost per ton removed, and the least invasive as regards how people live and work. In the final analysis, as my Paris colleague Professor Jean-Claude Ziv frequently puts it, sustainability requires acceptability.

    Notes

    (1) A synthesis of the Australian Conservation Atlas findings is in our Housing Form in Australia and its Impacts on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, prepared for the Residential Development Council of Australia.

    (2) The report was co-published with The Conference Board and produced in association with DTE Energy, Environmental Defense, Honeywell, National Grid, NRDC, PG & E and Shell.

    (3) See for example, Wilting Agenda.

  • Wendell Cox