New Geography

Category: Demographics

  • Mapping Urban Income Dispersion

    Here’s some cool maps from radicalcartography.net looking at income dispersion in the country’s 25 largest metropolitan areas by population. From the page:

    These maps show the distribution of income (per capita) around the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the US (all those with population greater than 2,000,000). The goal was to test the “donut” hypothesis — the idea that a city will create concentric rings of wealth and poverty, with the rich both in the suburbs and in the “revitalized” downtown, and the poor stuck in between.

    This does seem to have some validity in older cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Chicago, but in newer cities it is not the case. Instead of donuts, one finds “wedges” of wealth occupying a continuous pie-slice from the center to the periphery.

    Just from visual inspection, it also seems that poverty donuts all tend to have about a five-mile radius, regardless of the size of the city. Perhaps this is the practical limit for commuting without a car?

    All maps are at the same scale, and all use the same color values for income.

  • Lenny Mills to Urban America: Clock Is Ticking for Ranks of ‘New Homeless’

    I always do my best to make time for Lenny Mills because he’s earned that sort of consideration.

    Mills is the fellow who wrote several pieces under the banner of his trademark “7 Rules” outline, where he applies the tricks he learned as a telemarketer to analyses of real estate development, politics, and other matters.

    Mills did an especially fine job on the “7 Rules of Downtown Gentrification,” which appeared in the Garment & Citizen’s issue of April 21, 2006. He laid out a number of reasons – seven, to be exact –to consider the possibility that the residential real estate boom ringing through Downtown Los Angeles back then would eventually turn into a busted bubble.

    Events have certainly borne out Mills’ prediction, so he brought credibility with him on his latest visit to my office.

    Mills waved a recent copy of USA Today at me, saying that he’s worried about the sort of folks who were featured in a recent front-page story in the national publication, a piece that described the circumstances of some of “the new homeless.” These are individuals who worked steadily their whole lives before hitting the skids and losing their homes in the current economic downturn. It’s a trend that has become familiar these days, with homeless encampments cropping up in all sorts of places, including Los Angeles.

    Mills has some added credibility when he speaks about homelessness – he spent a number of years living on the streets. He knows what it means to go through life with a weather-beaten face, watching opportunities slip away for lack of a telephone number to leave behind when seeking work.

    Mills has a place to live now, but he remains determined to inject his warnings about the new homeless into the public debate. The clock it ticking, he says, and the deterioration that comes with life on the streets will make it harder and harder for folks to climb back into mainstream lives. Once the wardrobe starts to fray, he says, the odds against getting back on track grow longer. Once the teeth start to go, he adds, homeless individuals can just about write off any return to the life they once knew. Each bit of deterioration makes it tougher for the homeless individuals – and more likely that they will become permanent burdens to the rest of us in one way or the other.

    Mills is remarkable in a number of ways, including the ability he mustered to retain his social skills during his time on the streets – something that many individuals quickly lose. I disagree with him on some things, but I can’t fault his ability to make fine use of the language to get his points across.

    Mills used such skill during our recent talk, driving home a couple of points about the new homeless: Our society has a narrow window of opportunity to pay for programs to reverse the trend – and a failure to act soon will mean far greater costs in terms of human lives and the public purse.

    Mills can spout chapter and verse on what he sees as the causes of the increases in homelessness over the past 40 years. He can cite demographic trends, economic patterns, and public policies to make a compelling case that a lot of folks were swept into life on the streets by causes beyond their control. He firmly believes that we as a society could have prevented most of the homelessness we have seen over the years had we not lacked the will to do so.

    I wouldn’t describe Mills as a fun guy. He’s a valuable fellow, though, because he’s willing to tell you what you’d rather not hear – and he’s capable of doing so in reasoned tones.

    Give Mills his due for hitting upon something of vital importance now. It’s clear that all the talk we’ve heard about addressing the old homelessness has led to no great progress over the course of decades. What did that latest Blue-Ribbon Public-Private Committee to End Homelessness Forever accomplish besides a photo opportunity, anyway?

    Someone wake the Blue Ribbon brigade and fire all of them.

    We have a whole new homeless problem – and we’re in desperate need of new ideas.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Austin’s Secrets For Economic Success

    Few places have received more accolades in recent years than Austin, the city that ranked first on our list of the best big cities for jobs. Understanding what makes this attractive, fast-growing city tick can tell us much about what urban growth will look like in the coming decades.

    Austin’s success is not surprising since, in many ways, it starts on third base. Two of its greatest assets result from the luck of the draw; it’s both a state capital and home to a major research university.

    Our ranking of the best cities for job growth includes many college towns–from Fargo, N.D., (home to North Dakota State) to Athens, Ga., (University of Georgia), Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C., (Duke and University of North Carolina) and College Station, Texas (Texas A&M).

    Being a state capital also helps. Baton Rouge, La., home to both the state government and Louisiana State University, ranked seventh on our list of the best medium-sized cities for employment. This confluence of institutions also accounts in large part for the relatively decent rankings of two Midwestern cities, Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio, in spite of the generally sad situation in that region.

    That’s because colleges and state governments offer stable employment–since they cannot or will not outsource jobs to India or China. These places also tend to be inhabited by reasonably well-educated people whose stable incomes makes them less vulnerable to contractions in competitive industries like finance, manufacturing, construction or information.

    “We’re pretty close to recession-proof,” suggest Chris Bradford, a local attorney and blogger in Austin. “It’s almost anti-cyclical. In bad times, the students want to stay here.”

    There is a third factor, however, that adds to Austin’s special sauce: the fact that it is located in Texas, the one fast-growing mega-state. With low taxes and low regulation at the state level, Austin–no doubt to many locals’ consternation–is a great environment not only for public sector employment but also private sector growth.

    Its success contrasts dramatically with the relatively poor employment status of capitals in business-unfriendly states (such as Sacramento, Calif., which ranked 60th among large cities) as well as other college towns like Ann Arbor, Mich., home to one of the nation’s best public universities, the University of Michigan. (Among medium-sized cities, Ann Arbor came in 93rd.)

    Austin, essentially, reaps the benefits of being a deep blue, Democratic island in a red-state sea. The university and state government employ large numbers of people who might want higher taxes and greater regulation–but they can talk the redistributionist’s game without feeling any of the pain.

    This is not to say that Austin itself–that is, its urban core area–does not try to trot out its blue, and “green,” trimmings. Like every college town, Austin likes smart growth, mass transit and high density.

    But in reality, Austin is not a dense region. In fact, its metropolitan population per acre puts it in the middle of the nation’s largest areas, well behind not only Los Angeles and New York but also Houston and Dallas.

    Even central Austin seems rather spread out and suburban compared to traditional East Coast cities. Smaller, older homes–mainly cottages–dominate neighborhoods close to downtown. Recent attempts to go high-rise have not been notably successful, as the auction signs on the sides of some new towers suggest.

    Yet the urban center increasingly represents less and less of the area’s total employment and houses fewer and fewer of its residences. Today, the city itself is home to well under half the metropolitan population of 1.5 million.

    As in many regions, notes blogger Bradford, over the past decade the strongest growth has occurred in Austin’s periphery. Even as the city itself has enjoyed strong job and population growth, the biggest increases have taken place in suburban outposts outside city limits, like Williamson, Bastrop and Hays counties, as well as parts of Travis, the county that is home to Austin. In fact, Williamson was the nation’s sixth fastest-growing county last year, while Hays ranked 10th.

    Surprisingly, these suburban areas are the places most driving Austin’s economic success. Why? Two reasons: affordability and livability. By Texas standards, the city is not cheap. It costs between $350,000 and $400,000 for a nice three- or four-bedroom house in a good school district, say, 20 minutes from downtown. However, a similar place in the ‘burbs of Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Boston or Irvine would run at least twice as much.

    Local Realtor and blogger Shannan Gonyea-Reimer adds that, a bit further away from town, home prices can drop as low as $150,000. “People come from California, and they are shocked,” she says.

    This price structure, along with the human capital attracted to the University of Texas, has in turn propelled the rapid expansion of the non-governmental economy in places like Cedar Creek and Round Rock, home to Dell. A recent Brookings study estimates that central Austin employment grew by almost 13% between 1998 and 2006. The number of jobs more than 10 miles from the central business district increased by 77,523, or 62%, according to the study.

    Austin has seen remarkable overall employment growth–almost 34%–in the last decade. With that figure, it leaves its major hip tech rivals in the dust. Over the same period, for example, San Jose/Silicon Valley has lost 6% of its jobs; San Francisco, around 1.6%. Boston, Austin’s other big high-tech competitor, enjoyed only a 1.2% gain.

    Again, this growth stems in part from the unique combination of both an appealing city center and attractive suburbs. The city’s lively urban core remains a lure for affluent professionals, young singles and, of course, students. However, unlike places like New York, Boston and San Francisco, the sprawling ‘burbs provide an affordable place for people to move to when their hardcore clubbing days are over.

    “California might work well for the apartment-dwelling, single-guy lifestyle person, but when you get married, you can’t afford Los Gatos,” says former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike Shultz, the CEO of Infoglide, a software firm headquartered on Austin’s outer ring. “In Austin, the same person can grow up, move into a reasonable house and have a reasonable life.”

    This does much to explain why Austin has enjoyed a migration pattern unlike that of its primary competitors. Its residents may start off hip and cool, but the city also accommodates their often inevitable evolution to Ozzie and Harriet. This allows individuals and companies to plan to stick around. One doesn’t have to have the short-term mentality so common in the Bay Area, L.A., Boston or New York.

    Ultimately, it is this combination of a “cool” downtown culture–with excellent restaurants as well as great music–and a more sedate, affordable periphery that makes Austin a home run.

    “It has a hip cool side to it,” Shultz observes, “but it’s also a great place to raise kids.”

    A caveat to all this: We also have to consider scale. With roughly 1.5 million people, Austin simply offers more convenient choices than a megalopolitan behemoth like Los Angeles, New York or the Bay Area. In Austin, nice, single-family homes within walking distance of cool urban streets are not uncommon or absurdly expensive–and even a larger, more affordable house out in the suburbs is usually less than a half an hour from downtown.

    Additionally, Texas, unlike its main rival California, is not teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and is instead a stable long-term bet in this recession. Rather than haggling with bankers or public employee unions, it is busy building its future: attracting new comers, investing in its university and building new transportation infrastructure.

    “Austin is off the charts livable, but it’s in a state that makes it viable,” says Shultz, the entrepreneur. “You can’t say that about California and many of the other places where our competitors are.”

    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 and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • In California, the Canary is Dead

    Canaries were used in early coal mines to detect deadly gases, such as methane and carbon monoxide. If the bird was happy and singing, the miners were safe. If the bird died, the air was not safe, and the miners left. The bird served as an early warning system.

    Domestic migration trends play a similar early warning system for states. California’s dynamism was always reflected by its ability to attract newcomers to the state. But today California’s canary is dead.

    Here’s the logic. If net domestic migration is positive, the state’s economy is reasonably sound. Economic growth, taxes, housing, and amenities are strong enough to keep people where they are and attract others. If net domestic migration is negative, it usually means that lack of economic growth, taxes, quality of life, and housing have deteriorated sufficiently to drive people away. This happens despite the inevitable pain of leaving the security and comfort of family, friends, and familiar surroundings.

    California has been a destination for migrating workers and families since 1849. They came form every state and from around the world. Often the migrants faced tremendous challenges and hardship. Illegal immigrants from Mexico and other developing countries still must leap over such barriers. Often, California’s migrants came in waves. The 1850s, 1930s, and 1950s all saw huge surges tied to huge events – the Gold Rush, the Depression and the post-war boom. But even between these waves, California consistently experienced a steady inflow of new immigrants.

    Immigration has been good for California. The new residents brought ambition, skills, and a willingness to take risks. They found a state with abundant natural resources, from oil to rich soil and ample, if sometimes distant water resources. Together with the people already there, they created an economic powerhouse. They built cities with amenities that rival any other. They fed much of the nation and large numbers overseas. They did this while persevering much of California’s unique endowment: the vast coastline, the Sierra Nevada, and the deserts.

    California, with 12 percent of the United States population, became the world’s sixth largest economy while managing to maintain the aura of paradise at the same time. Opportunity and housing were abundant. California was a great place to have a career and raise a family.

    Most recently, though, this has begun to change. California is no longer a preferred destination, at least for domestic migrants. The state’s economy is limping along considerably worse than that of the nation. Opportunity is limited. Housing is relatively expensive, even after the dramatic deflation of the past two years, except for some very hard-hit and generally less attractive inland areas. Taxes are high and increasing. Regulation is onerous and becoming more so. Many California communities are outright hostile to business.

    Consequently, net domestic migration has been negative for 10 of the past fifteen years. International migration to California remains positive, but that reflects more on the weakness of the economies and the attraction of existing ethnic networks than the intrinsic superiority of California. This represents a sea change: anyone predicting it fifteen years ago would have been laughed out of the room.

    What happened?

    California’s economy was badly hit by the 1990s recession. The State’s aerospace and defense sectors were especially decimated. Middle-class families moved out by the hundreds of thousands.

    The 1990s out migration caused some soul searching in California. There was lots of talk, and a little action on making the State more competitive. Then came the technology and real estate booms. Domestic migration turned positive. The half-hearted efforts to make California more competitive faded as policy makers were lulled into complacency by the strength of California’s resurgence.

    But the problems that bedeviled the state in the 1990s – high housing prices and taxes, cascading regulations and a deteriorated infrastructure – had only been obscured by the boom. By 2005 migration began to turn negative, largely as soaring housing prices discouraged newcomers and encourage many residents to cash out and move to less expensive places. California had priced itself, and the dream, out of competitiveness. Since then, California has seen four consecutive years of increasingly negative domestic migration. The recent net outflow numbers have been smaller than in the 1990s, but it may be because other tradidional California migrant destination economies – like Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Arizona – have become less competitive as well.

    Today, many argue that California will bounce back, but they can’t identify the reason. What sector will lead the resurgence? They seem to think economic growth will come with the sunshine, beaches, and mountains. There was plenty of sunshine in the 80 years between the founding of the first mission and the gold rush, and not much happened. Similarly, the differences between California cities and neighboring Mexican cities show clearly that successful economies need more than good looks and nice climate.

    It’s hard right now to assume California’s future will include the same predominance in technological innovation. Agriculture is running out of water, in large part due to environmental lawsuits, and the state no longer seems willing to invest in new water projects. Even the entertainment industry is increasingly looking outside of California for growth. You have to ask: what does California offer that will overcome the State’s high costs, regulatory environment, and antipathy to business?

    That is the short term. The long term doesn’t look very good either. The public universities, a major source of innovation over the past two decades, are facing increasingly severe budget challenges. It is unlikely that they will be able to maintain their status even as other states – Texas, Colorado, New Mexico – eye further expansion. Even more ominous are gains in countries, such as China and India, who have long sent their best and brightest to the Golden State.

    All this suggests a relative decline in California’s long-term prospects. What should we do? Part of California’s problem is its political process. The state’s chronic inability to do much of anything reinforces stasis. As Dan Walters says, “everyone has a veto on everything.”

    But even improving the political process may not be enough. Much of Coastal California is dominated by rich, aging, baby boomers. The residents of this increasingly geriatric ghetto often don’t worry much about economic opportunity. They may have the money and votes to guarantee that growth does not impinge on their lifestyles. Unless these conditions change, it will be unlikely to see a renewal of strong domestic migration to California in the coming years.

    Bill Watkins, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Economic Forecast Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also a former economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington D.C. in the Monetary Affairs Division.

  • U-Haul Prices as Migration Indicator

    Austin fared very well on this year’s Best Cities Rankings, and here’s another interesting indicator of the difference in migration between Austin and San Francisco:

    “When comparing California with Texas, U-Haul says it all. To rent a 26-foot truck oneway from San Francisco to Austin, the charge is $3,236, and yet the one-way charge for that same truck from Austin to San Francisco is just $399. Clearly what is happening is that far more people want to move from San Francisco to Austin than vice versa, so U-Haul has to pay its own employees to drive the empty trucks back from Texas.”

    This anecdote comes from a report comparing business environments in Texas to California.

    Here’s a table of the latest domestic migration numbers from US Census for all metropolitan areas of more than 1.5 million total population (rate numbers are per 1,000 population):

    NAME
    Population, 2008
    Net Domesitc Migration Rate, 2008
    Ave. Net Domesic Mig Rate, 2001-2008
    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 19,006,798 -7.6 -12.0
    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 12,872,808 -9.0 -12.2
    Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI 9,569,624 -4.4 -6.8
    Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 6,300,006 7.0 5.7
    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 5,838,471 -3.8 -2.3
    Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 5,728,143 6.6 4.5
    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 5,414,772 -8.7 -5.1
    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 5,376,285 8.2 10.2
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 5,358,130 -3.4 -2.9
    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH 4,522,858 -1.8 -7.1
    Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI 4,425,110 -13.9 -9.1
    Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ 4,281,899 12.3 17.9
    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 4,274,531 1.3 -10.5
    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 4,115,871 -1.9 16.1
    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 3,344,813 3.6 0.9
    Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 3,229,878 -1.1 -1.0
    San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 3,001,072 0.1 -4.8
    St. Louis, MO-IL 2,816,710 -2.0 -1.8
    Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 2,733,761 2.4 12.9
    Baltimore-Towson, MD 2,667,117 -4.6 -1.6
    Denver-Aurora, CO /1 2,506,626 7.3 1.8
    Pittsburgh, PA 2,351,192 -1.0 -2.9
    Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA 2,207,462 8.3 6.2
    Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 2,155,137 -1.7 -1.2
    Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 2,109,832 2.2 8.7
    Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH 2,088,291 -7.1 -7.5
    Orlando-Kissimmee, FL 2,054,574 1.6 15.9
    San Antonio, TX 2,031,445 11.5 10.4
    Kansas City, MO-KS 2,002,047 0.7 1.5
    Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 1,865,746 7.9 23.7
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 1,819,198 -1.5 -16.4
    Columbus, OH 1,773,120 1.4 1.8
    Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 1,715,459 4.0 4.8
    Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC 1,701,799 20.9 18.2
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 1,658,292 -9.4 -0.6
    Austin-Round Rock, TX 1,652,602 22.0 17.2
    Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA 1,596,611 -6.6 -3.7
    Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 1,550,733 10.9 9.6
    Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI 1,549,308 -4.2 -5.9

  • America’s (Sub)Urban Future

    Cities today have more political clout than at any time in a half century. Not only does an urbanite blessed by the Chicago machine sit in the White House, but Congress is now dominated by Democratic politicians hailing from either cities or inner-ring suburbs.

    Perhaps because of this representation, some are calling for the administration and Congress to “bail out” urban America. Yet there’s grave danger in heeding this call. Hope that “the urban president” will solve inner-city problems could end up diverting cities from the kind of radical reforms necessary to thrive in the coming decades.

    Demographics and economics make self-help a necessity. Despite the wishful thinking of urbanophile pundits and policymakers, central cities have little realistic chance to reclaim their pre-1950 role as the dominant arbiters of American life.

    Short of a catastrophic change, the country will remain predominately made up of suburban, exurban and small town residents. Since 2000, more than four-fifths of metropolitan growth has taken place in suburbs and exurbs. Economically, we see a similar pattern. According to a recent Brookings Institution study of 98 large metropolitan areas, only 21% of employees work within three miles of downtown. The report found that only three regions avoided the decentralizing trend.

    The Brookings report and many others decry all these trends as promoting “sprawl,” but name-calling will not assure that urban areas can impose their political hegemony over the long run. The Obama administration may try to boost cities by imposing barriers to suburban growth, but these seem doomed to failure given both the preference of most Americans for lower-density lifestyles and the president’s demonstrated ability to count votes.

    Rather than waiting for Barack, urban boosters should instead take up the New Testament injunction to “heal thyself.” Cities should have a chance to grow based on the roughly 10% to 20% of Americans who tell researchers they would like to live in a dense urban environment. With an extra 100 million Americans coming on line by 2050, cities could look forward to accommodating upwards of 20 million more people in the next few decades. As my grandmother would say, that’s not exactly chopped liver.

    Yet in order to enjoy this repast, cities will need to address three fundamental and inextricably related issues: public safety, business climate and political reform. Of these, public safety is the most critical. From the earliest times, security has represented a critical pre-condition for urban success. The huge surge in urban crime during the 1960s, for example, played an enormous role in the precipitous decline of cities in the ensuing decades.

    Conversely, improvements in public safety after 1990–notably in New York and Los Angeles but also in other large cities–helped slow the out-migration from urban cores and attract new residents, mostly young educated professionals and immigrants. Now urban crime may be on the rise, and could again threaten new growth.

    This is worrying because urban crime rates, notes demographer Wendell Cox, remain still three times higher than those of surrounding suburbs. Almost all the highest crime areas in America can be found in urban settings, while the safest places tend to be in suburban towns.

    Even the president’s much-celebrated hometown of Chicago suffered roughly a murder a day last year. On the city’s MTA trains, robbery soared 77% between 2006 and 2008. Now there’s also more than a stickup a day.

    Hard economic times may exacerbate these problems, with an estimated 250,000 more Chicagoans predicted to fall into poverty by the end of the year. More widely, unemployment among core urban populations–young people, minorities and immigrants–is on the rise, even more than in the general population. Indeed, for the first time since the mid-1990s, the foreign born now suffer a higher rate of joblessness than the native born.

    Yet even in the face of a tough economy, few cities seem to focus on long-term middle-class job creation. Most seem to prefer to indulge in marginally useful taxpayer-subsidized prestige projects like convention centers, arts complexes, ball parks and arenas. Meanwhile, the core issues stifling growth–high taxes, stiff regulatory burdens and sometimes corrupt governments–remain largely ignored.

    Recently while researching the middle class in New York, I met many otherwise committed urbanites considering leaving to less costly, lower-tax and more business-friendly locales. Up until recently, this problem was somewhat obscured by spectacular earnings on Wall Street, which engendered the growth of an extensive “luxury economy” largely insulated from high costs. But even Timothy Geithner won’t be able to bail out this favored segment of the economy ad infinitum.

    Instead cities, including New York, will have to diversify to less gilded industries. Increasingly cities will need to rely on small companies, micro-enterprises and self-employed high-tech artisans to drive their economies. To keep them there, they will need to attend to basic services–education, police and transportation–while managing to curb taxes and regulations.

    This will necessitate confronting the largest source of high city costs: public employee salaries and pensions. This problem is not unique to core cities, but tends to be more severe in urban areas where public employee unions often dominate local politics.

    Finally, cities need to address their educational systems. Despite all the talk of urban educational reform, the urban dropout rate, according to a recent study of the nation’s largest cities by America’s Promise Alliance remains around 50%, roughly 20 points higher than the rate for suburbs. Poor-quality urban schools drive out both the middle class and the most upwardly mobile segment of the working class.

    Even more money from Washington won’t solve this problem. Cleveland, with a 38% graduation rate, spent far more on students per capita than Ohio’s statewide averages. In contrast, the surrounding suburbs enjoyed an 80% graduation rate.

    Are cities capable of changing their governance for the better? In the 1990s, the emergence of tough, reform-minded mayors like New York’s Rudy Giuliani, Indianapolis’ innovative Steven Goldsmith, Richard Riordan in Los Angeles and Houston’s hard-driving Bob Lanier all sparked urban revivals in their cities.

    Today, however, there are few such personages; Houston’s Bill White is one glaring exception. Yet without an infusion of bold new leadership, the future of American cities, although not universally bleak, will not be nearly as bright as it should be. Rather than a constellation of strong, reviving cities, we can envision the emergence of a less promising set of scenarios.

    One archetype will be the Bloombergian “luxury city,” a very expensive urban area dominated by the wealthy and their servants, students and nomadic young workers as well as the poor. The affluent will drive this growth, but only in a relatively few neighborhoods in attractive places like New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Denver and Minneapolis.

    San Francisco may presage this urban form. Already middle-class families are becoming scarce in the city by the bay. The place seems increasingly something of a Disneyland for privileged adults, exempting of course the large homeless population. “A cross between Carmel and Calcutta,” jokes California historian and San Francisco native Kevin Starr.

    At the opposite end of the spectrum lie those cities consistently at the bottom of our Worst Cities For Jobs ranking. Despite some zones of gentrification, such once-great cities as Detroit, Cleveland, Memphis, Baltimore and Philadelphia could continue to suffer persistently high rates of poverty, diminished populations and high crime rates.

    Not that this has to be. These areas could stage a real resurgence if their governments determine to throttle criminals, improve basic services and nurture small businesses. Low housing prices, cheap land and, in some cases, strategic locations could attract businesses as well as some of the millions who will be seeking out an urban lifestyle in the coming decades.

    Currently the brightest hopes for America’s urban future lie with newer, “aspirational,” middle-class-oriented cities such as Houston, Dallas, Austin, Phoenix, Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte and Orlando. Although some are now suffering from the recession, these places will benefit from both lower costs and more business-friendly regimes. Primarily suburban in nature, many of these cities have worked to develop attractive dense urban districts, which could expand much further over the next few decades.

    There remains nothing pre-determined about the urban future. Some cities may surprise us by reviving strongly while others may continue to disappoint. Success will depend not on Washington, but on how each city addresses the basics of safety, economics and governance. Grasping this fundamental truth constitutes the first step towards creating a sustainable long-term urban resurgence.

    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 and is finishing a book on the American future.

  • How Austin’s Rise Became a Tale of Two Cities

    Austin has enjoyed healthy growth during its 150-year history. As a rule of thumb, its population doubles every 20 years, and has done so since it was founded. It continues to grow at a healthy clip: from a population of 345,000 in 1980 to 656,000 in 2000; the Census Bureau estimates it had nearly 750,000 residents in 2008.

    But if the city of Austin has grown briskly, its suburbs have exploded. Williamson County to its north was the sixth fastest-growing county in the United States between July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008. Hays County to the south was the tenth.

    This is not a recent development. Williamson and Hays Counties have outpaced Travis County (Austin) and Texas for years:

    The figures for individual suburbs reflect this spectacular growth:

    • Between 1990 and 2007, Round Rock, ten miles north of Austin and home to Dell Computers, tripled from 31,000 to almost 100,000; its population grew by 50% between 2000 and 2007 alone.
    • Pflugerville, just south of Round Rock, grew from a tiny village of 4,000 in 1990 to 34,000 in 2007.
    • Cedar Park and Leander grew tenfold and sevenfold, respectively, between 1990 and 2007.

    The scale of rapid growth is noteworthy, but the distribution of growth is hardly unique. After all, American cities have been suburbanizing for the last 60 years (and in some cities, for much longer). Austin’s suburbanizing growth merely mirrors the national trend.

    But Austin’s growth evinces another pattern. As Austin and its suburbs have grown, families with children have left central Austin for its fringes, ceding central Austin to singles and couples without children.

    Central Austin is typically defined as the area urbanized by 1970, delineated by a perimeter of highways and lakes. But there’s an alternative definition: Central Austin is where the families with children are not.

    The map below tells the story. It depicts, using 2000 Census data, the percentage of households consisting of married couples with children. Darkly-tinted regions have a relatively high percentage of such households; lightly-colored regions, relatively few. The area bounded by the heavy, black line – the lightly-tinted region in the center of the map – is central Austin.

    This map excludes the suburbs in Williamson and Hays Counties. Needless to say, these cities would also be colored brown and deep-orange. For example, 45% of Cedar Park’s households in 2000 consisted of married couples with children. In Pflugerville, the figure was 48%. Over the last few decades, Austin has sorted itself into two cities: suburbs populated by families with children, and a central core populated largely by singles and childless couples.

    Why?

    This might seem a trite question at first blush. This pattern has repeated itself in one American city after another for many decades.

    But Austin’s case is interesting because many standard explanations do not hold. Austin’s families have not had to flee the central city to escape crime, or dense, overcrowded neighborhoods, or failing schools, or the pollution and blight of old, abandoned industrial sites. Nor have they had to abandon the central city in search of jobs.

    Austin historically has had a low crime rate with one of the lowest homicide rates in the country. And many of those crimes occur outside the central city. Austin’s slums are not located in central Austin, but in the aging suburbs just north and southeast of the urban core. Central east Austin – where African Americans and Latinos were banished for much of Austin’s history – was, and to some extent remains, an exception. But even that area has gentrified rapidly in recent years. And, in any event, neither east Austin’s problems nor a racist desire to avoid people of color can explain the flight of families from the historically “whiter” parts of town.

    Central Austin certainly has plenty of bad schools. But it also has plenty of good schools, and a liberal transfer policy. Moreover, many of the central schools began to deteriorate after they were abandoned by middle-class families. Thanks to declining populations of children, the Austin school district has been forced to close several small, neighborhood elementary schools, even as it strains to add classrooms to the burgeoning suburbs. Austin includes many of its suburbs – it grows rapidly through annexation – and AISD covers these.

    Families also did not have to flee central Austin to escape dense, overcrowded neighborhoods. The typical central Austin neighborhood is no denser than a typical suburban neighborhood. Most central Austin neighborhoods consist almost entirely of single-family residences. Indeed, in some, nearly 90% of the residential acreage is set aside for single-family housing, with multi-family developments relegated to busy streets. And yard sizes in suburbs are frequently little larger than the yards in the central neighborhoods.

    Nor did families flee central Austin in a quest for green space. Austin’s great parks are concentrated in its core. These include Zilker Park – Austin’s equivalent of central park; Barton Springs, fed by springs bubbling up from the Edwards Aquifer; Lady Bird Lake, neé Town Lake; and more green belts than a die-hard hiker could cover in a summer.

    Central Austin has no pollution or industrial blight. Austin has never been a manufacturing town. Its employment base has always been the University of Texas, the state government and, more recently, high tech.

    The high-tech job growth has blossomed in Austin’s suburbs. Austin styles itself “Silicon Hills,” and virtually all high-tech jobs have spring up in the rolling country west and north of the downtown. But the addition of jobs to the periphery does not explain why families have been abandoning the central city. Austin’s core has not only retained its jobs, it has seen healthy growth. A recent Brookings study estimates that central Austin employment grew by almost 13% between 1998 and 2006 According to the Brookings study, the number of jobs more than 10 miles from the CBD increased by 77,523, or 62%. Obviously, this was incredible growth. But this does not explain why families abandoned the central core when it, too, was adding jobs.

    In the end the key reason people have been moving to the suburbs lies in a mundane reality. Austin families have been moving to the suburbs because the suburbs have bigger, better and cheaper houses.

    Austin’s inner neighborhoods may be packed with single-family housing, but they are small, old and increasingly expensive. The central neighborhoods were built before 1970 and, in most cases, before 1960. The houses are usually no more than 1200 or 1400 square feet. And these houses are expensive (for Austin) and often fixer-uppers to boot.

    By contrast, the suburban stock is much newer and larger. Between 2000 and 2006, for example, the average new home in Circle C, a prominent suburb to the south, had 3,965 square feet; the average new home in Steiner Ranch, a western suburb had 3,915 square feet. And these houses were and are much cheaper than central city houses. One might find a 3,000 square-foot home in the suburbs for $250,000. The same home in central Austin might cost $750,000. Many suburban subdivisions have much smaller homes, of course, but a middle class family only able to afford an 1,800 square foot house in the suburbs is not likely to pay $400,000 for a smaller house in central Austin.

    Families want space, and the central housing stock is either too small or too expensive. This basic reality has transformed Austin into essentially two largely successful cities: a central core left to small households and suburbs that offer either larger housing, or smaller housing at much cheaper prices.

    This trend may have been slower if developers had been allowed to continue replacing small bungalows with larger, more modern houses. But this trend prompted an outcry from central Austin residents, who pushed the city council to enact a “McMansion” ordinance to “protect” central Austin neighborhoods. The title was a clever bit of marketing. The word “McMansion” evokes an enormous, pretentious structure – and who wants that? But Austin’s stringent ordinance takes aim at much more modest homes. Depending on lot size, a home with an attached two-car garage may be limited to 2,000 square feet, smaller than the typical new American home. The ordinance imposes other complicated limitations, turning modest home additions into a complicated, extensive ordeal. A homeowner who wants to add a second story, for example, must ensure that the second story fits within an elaborate “building envelope” – a complicated calculation unless the addition is centered in the lot – and new setback lines calculated as a rolling average of neighboring setbacks. (Incidentally, the new setbacks and square-foot limitations have all but eliminated granny flats.) The only option for adding a significant amount of new space is often the construction of a basement buried completely below grade; basements do not count against the square footage limits.

    Austin’s McMansion ordinance will ensure that its central Austin neighborhoods remain the domain of small, aging bungalows – and people without children – for the foreseeable future. In this way, it will reflect the demographic realities of many prosperous, “hip” cities from San Francisco and Boston to Seattle and Portland.

    Yet there’s an ironic side to this. Alarmed by the decline of families in the city, the same city council that enacted the McMansion ordinance created a new task force a few months later to determine why central Austin has now so few families with children.

    Chris Bradford is a 1992 graduate of the Yale Law School, where he was an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics. He is an attorney at Clark, Thomas and Winters, P.C. in Austin, Texas. Visit Chris’s blog at austincontrarian.com

  • California Natives

    If you are going to San Francisco, be sure to say hello to mom, dad, and maybe your best friend from third grade.

    California has traditionally been a land of migrants from around the country and around the world, but for the first time in the state’s history, the majority of California residents are native-born.

    A study done by researchers at the University of Southern California has determined that more than 70% of those between the ages of 15 and 24 were born in the Golden State. Native-born Californians were also found to be less likely to move out of the state.

    This increase in locally born residents comes with profound implications about the state’s future. For example, more workers will be educated in California, “putting a greater burden on the state’s taxpayers to pay for quality schools.” At the same time, with a greater number of residents staying in-state, a wealth of workers, taxpayers, and home buyers could keep more business from moving.

    Additionally, as more people continue to put down roots, the potential support for investments in such public goods such as transportation networks and public universities could grow as more residents become committed to investing in California’s future.

  • New Towns and New Lives in the Country

    Back in the 1950s when I was growing up, pundits worried a lot about automation and the problem of leisure in a post-industrial society. What were the American people going to do once machinery had relieved them of the daily burden of routine labor? Would they paint pictures and write poetry? Armchair intellectuals found it hard to imagine.

    It was the age of Ozzie and Harriet, when ordinary working and middle-class families could aspire to a house in the suburbs and a full-time Mom who stays at home with the kids. Today, of course, that popular version of the American dream is a thing of the past, especially the part about a full-time Mom who stays at home with the kids.

    Ironically it was washing machines and automatic dishwashers – automation – that brought this idyll to an end. These two labor saving devices made it possible for housewives to go out into the workforce and compete with their husbands. At first they did it because they were bored at home and wanted to earn extra money, if only to help pay for those new household appliances. Gradually, however, it became a matter of necessity as two-paycheck families bid down wages even as they jacked up the price of suburban real estate in areas where the schools were good and the neighborhoods safe. By the time you subtracted the costs of owning a second automobile and using professional child care services, the advantages of that extra paycheck had largely disappeared.

    The biggest surprise – to me as well – was that labor-saving technologies do not automatically redound to the benefit of labor. Other things being equal they reduce the demand for labor and hence its price in the marketplace. We saw this happen in the 19th century when modern agricultural machinery forced three-quarters of the population off their farms and into the cities, where they had to compete with immigrants and each other in the new industrial economy. Not until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1937, which outlawed child labor and established the 40 hour work week, did the world of Ozzie-and-Harriet become a democratic possibility.

    But of course Modern Marvels never cease. Thanks to a never-ending supply of new labor-saving machinery, today’s industry employs only half as many people as it did in the 1950s when housewives first started entering the job market. Meanwhile medical science has greatly extended the average human lifespan, which has created a much larger pool of able-bodied adults who must either work or be supported by those who do. The Wal-Martization of retail and wholesale trade is yet a third development tending in the same direction.

    Given this trajectory, perhaps it is time to consider a further reduction of the standard work week and the creation of new forms of suburban development. The goal would be for ordinary working families to begin enjoying the fruit of fifty years of economic and technological progress.

    In particular let us consider the advantages of a program to build new towns in the exurban countryside in which people would be employed half-time (18-to-24 hours a week) outside the home, and in their free time would participate in the construction of their own houses, cultivate gardens, cook and eat at home, and look after their own children (and grandchildren) in traditional neighborhood settings close to village greens.

    Once work and leisure are integrated into the fabric of everyday life people will not feel the same need to retire they do today. Instead of retiring in their sixties seniors could take easier jobs as they grow older and continue working for as long as they are able and willing. The Social Security crunch could be relieved without having to raise taxes on the younger generation.

    We might even consider a return to the three-generation form of the family – except under two roofs instead of one, say, at opposite ends of the garden. Grandparents could use their savings to help their children with the initial purchase of their homesteads, while later on their children and grandchildren could help care for them in their old age, providing a more humane (and far more affordable) alternative to nursing homes and assisted-living arrangements.

    And instead of being designed around high-speed automobiles the new towns could be small enough (25,000 to 30,000 inhabitants) and be laid out in such a way that the residents could get around on foot, by bicycle, or in “neighborhood electric vehicles” (souped up golf carts) designed to go 30 mph. In other words, with careful planning the efficiencies of urban density could be realized without forcing people to move back into the dense centers of our cities and surrounding both privacy and space.

    I once hired the Gallup Organization to survey the American public about a lifestyle similar to this. The question asked was the following:

    “As a new way to live in America, it has been suggested that we build our factories in rural areas outside the cities and run them on part-time jobs. Under this arrangement both parents would work six hours a day and three-days a week and in their spare time would build their own houses, cultivate gardens, and pursue other leisure-time activities. How interested would you be in living this way?”

    Forty percent of the population said they would be either “definitely” or “probably” interested in the idea, with another 25 percent expressing possible interest. Included in these figures were two-thirds of those who had attended college, 60 percent of people with incomes in the top quartile, and 80 percent of African Americans.

    Industries might be interested in the idea because part-time workers can work faster and more efficiently than full-time workers, just as in track and field the short-distance runners always run faster than the long-distance runners. When I explained this in a letter to one of America’s leading industrial relocation firms, the executive vice-president flew down to Tennessee the very next day to discuss it with me. He assured me that this was “a doable idea” and not “pie in the sky.”

    Even so building New Towns in the Country is no easy task. It won’t happen spontaneously if for no other reason that people will not move to places where industry does not exist, and industry will not move to places where people do not live. It takes coordination, planning, organization, and investment in infrastructure.

    There is a movement afoot in America for a new nation-wide infrastructure spending program. This proposal could be one part of it. After all, our federal government in the past has done things for the people to create a better way of life: the trans-continental railroad, the Homestead Act, the Interstate Highway System, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the FHA.

    New Towns in the Country and a much shorter work-week would work well together, even if the two things are impossible to achieve by themselves. We need to reorganize both time and space if we hope to create a healthy, productive way of life for tomorrow’s working families.

    Luke Lea is a retired landscape gardening contractor and one-time professional carpenter. A graduate of Reed College, he lives in the small town of Walden, Tennessee, near Chattanooga where he was born.

  • The Draw of Dhaka

    In recent centuries, the principal migration of the world’s population has been from rural areas to urban areas. As late as 1900, less than 20 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas. That figure has now risen to more than 50 percent. Urbanization occurred earliest in the first world, as the increased wealth produced by the industrial revolution attracted people from the countryside. In 1900, 40 percent of the US population was urban, a figure that had risen to 80 percent by 2005. Trends in Europe, Japan and other first world nations are similar.

    The migration to cities has been slower to start in the less developed world. Only in 2005 did China achieve a 40 percent urbanization rate. Urbanization is expected to continue virtually everywhere, with the world rate increasing to 70 percent by 2050.

    Nowhere, however, are the trends starker than in Bangladesh and its capital, Dhaka, which I had the privilege of visiting a few weeks ago. Bangladesh is approaching 160 million people, despite having a land area less than that of Wisconsin. Its population density, rural and urban combined, is approximately 3,200 per square mile (1,250 per square kilometer) and is nearly equal to that of the Portland urban (urbanized) area, which had 3,300 per square mile. The nation’s population density is more than three times the minimum population density used by census authorities in the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Canada for definition of urban areas.

    However, most of Bangladesh is not urban. The United Nations puts the urban share of the Bangladesh population at 28 percent, barely two-thirds of the less developed world average. Even this is a stunning increase from the less than 5 percent of 1950. By 2050, the United Nations says that the urban areas of Bangladesh will add 97 million people, as the rural population declines, sending the urban population to roughly 60 percent of the total.

    Growing Dhaka: Dhaka is the world’s newest megacity, with an urban agglomeration just over 10 million population (based upon United Nations population growth rate projections). There are few urban areas in the world that are growing faster. Historically, nearly one-third of the urban population increase in Bangladesh has been in Dhaka. This seems likely to continue, since the nation has few other urban centers. The second largest, Chittagong, is just one-third the size of Dhaka. At projected urban population growth rates, Dhaka could have 40 million people by 2050.

    Dhaka’s Unfortunate Location: As difficult to imagine as this urban growth may seem, other emerging super-cities such as Shanghai can be imagined with 40 million people, with their plentiful supply of quality land for development. Things are much different in Dhaka. No rapidly expanding urban area (and no nation) faces greater locational challenges.

    Dhaka could be the most inconveniently placed urban area in the world, even worse than New Orleans. The urban area sits on the world’s largest river delta, the Ganges – Brahmaputra Delta (The Ganges is called the Padma River in Bangladesh). This Delta, nearly the size of Oregon, is more than 1.5 times the size of the nation, though not all of the nation is in the Delta.

    Dhaka itself is virtually surrounded by the rivers of the Ganges-Brahmaputra system, from which most of it is protected from routine and disastrous floods by floodwalls. The main channel of the Ganges is less than 20 miles distant the confluence with the Brahmaputra and is less than 50 miles away and the Indian Ocean (Bay of Bengal), barely 100 miles away. Dhaka lies at a low elevation, so rising sea levels could intensify the problem. The same river delta is also home to another megacity, Kolkata (India). However Kolkata’s geographical challenges are far less, with fewer Ganges outlet channels and less in wetlands, which has permitted it to develop at one-third the density of Dhaka.

    Dhaka’s Unprecedented Population Density: The urban area is the world’s most dense, having recently passed Hong Kong (based, again on United Nations estimates and projections). Covering a land area of little more than 100 square miles, Dhaka’s population density is now approaching in excess of 100,000 per square mile (40,000 per square kilometer). At that density, the New York urban area would accommodate all of the population of the United States and Mexico.

    Dhaka’s Impossible Traffic: The urban area is from five to seven miles wide and from 15 to 20 miles long, north to south. There is a single north to south thoroughfare through the whole urban area, which the Inspector General of Police estimates is blocked for 6 hours per day at railroad crossings. Needless to say, with its density inducing traffic congestion and insufficient road infrastructure, Dhaka’s traffic is horrific.

    The Poverty: There is, of course, the grinding poverty. Most recent estimates place the gross domestic product per capita of Bangladesh at under $1,500 annually (purchasing power parity). Dhaka is very likely the world’s poorest megacity. Progress is being made, principally from the fruits of globalization. There has been strong growth in garment production and huge numbers of jobs have been created. However, even this progress is threatened by inward-looking anti-trade movements in developed countries whose proponents ignore the likelihood that their policies would drive the poor of Dhaka into even greater decrepitude. Even if these selfish intentions fail, it will take decades for Bangladesh to join the ranks of middle income nations, much less high income nations. That, nonetheless, should be the objective.

    The Shantytowns: Various estimates indicate that up to one-quarter of Dhaka’s population lives in informal settlements (shantytowns, slums or favelas). These settlements tend to be “marbled” throughout the urban area, along the streams, railroads, lakes and ponds and in the drainage canals. However, none of the shantytowns are so expansive as those in Mumbai. Perhaps that is because commerce is decentralized in Dhaka, with garment factories spread throughout the urban area. People in the shantytowns have to work and many walk to their jobs, both factory and domestic. Their lives are precarious. Population densities in the slums have been reported as high as 4,200 per acre, which converts to more than 2,500,000 per square mile or more than 1,000,000 per square kilometer. At that density, the population of the world could be accommodated in the Tokyo-Yokohama urban area, leaving 10 percent of the land for open space.

    The Draw of Dhaka: Why do they come to Dhaka? What is the draw of a place that to western eyes could be dismissed as one of the least attractive urban environments in the world? It is the same incentives that drew people to Chicago from the farmlands of Poland, Italy or Iowa and to Sao Paulo from the sugar plantations. People routinely seek better lives. As in other cities in the developing world (or the developed world before), rural populations did not migrate to Dhaka because they were better off where they came from. Moreover, virtually all of the migrants from rural areas could return home tomorrow. Not surprisingly, few do.

    Moreover, there is progress, even in the shantytowns. Many residents “cook with gas” and have access to electricity, even if pirated from adjacent lines. There are schools where the children of the migrants are exposed to the foundation of literacy required for better lives in the future.

    Dhaka: City of Hope: Of course, it is all a matter of perspective. Dhaka may not look pleasing to affluent foreigners. Few residents of Portland, Paris or Perth would willingly embrace even a privileged lifestyle amidst the poverty of Dhaka. But despite the intense challenges, for the rural poor of Bangladesh, Dhaka remains very much a city of hope.

    Additional References:
    The Megacity Book: http://www.rentalcartours.net/megacity_book.pdf
    Dhaka Rental Car Tour: (soon to be published): http://www.rentalcartours.net/rac-dhaka.pdf

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris. He was born in Los Angeles and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission by Mayor Tom Bradley. He is the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”