Category: Policy

Singapore After Lee Kuan Yew: Future Is Uncertain For The Utilitarian Paradise He Created

In this age of political Lilliputians, we must acknowledge the passing of giants. Although he ran only a small city-state, Lee Kuan Yew, along with late Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping, ranks among Asia’s most pivotal figures of the past 50 years.

These two men — a tall, aristocratic scion of a Hakka trading family and the diminutive Chinese revolutionary — came from very different perspectives, but shared a pragmatic streak, and ultimately strategies that came to be widely copied. You can see their legacy today across the continent, in rapid urbanization and growing economic power.

But it was Lee who first formulated the essentials of the new Asian economic approach, blending capitalistic modernity with a state-directed economy and authoritarianism. Although repression of dissidents in both countries rightfully offends Westerners, particularly journalists, it has not deterred foreign capital, technology and capital from seeking to cash in on Asia’s growth.

American and British capital may have fueled global capitalism’s 20th century triumph, but Lee and Deng shaped its expansion in the 21st.

Lee’s Achievement

This is not merely a testament to Lee’s tenure as prime minister from 1959 to 1990, the longest of any in world history, but the singularity and durability of his accomplishment. From Singapore’s independence to the present day, Lee helped fashion what is arguably the most successful and best run city in the world.

In 1965, after Singapore’s acrimonious exit from Malaysia, its outlook was far from promising. Unemployment was high and the fledgling city-state was wracked by internal dissension between its ethnic mix of Chinese, Indians and Malays, and between conservatives and communists, who seemed in political ascendancy as elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The then rough-edged Asian metropolis, an important trading center, boasted a per capita GDP of$2,667 in 1990 dollars, more than double the average for East Asian countries and trailing only Japan in the region, but well behind European countries and North America.

Faced with imminent disaster, Lee’s response was to create a new political system that blended a mildly socialist program with a development strategy aimed at attracting foreign capital and building up the manufacturing sector. Lee and his People’s Action Party (PAP) focused on developing a modern infrastructure — from the port and roads to education — that is second to none.

Perhaps PAP’s most remarkable achievement was the creation of the Housing Development Board, which turned the vast majority of Singaporeans from slum-dwellers to owners of apartments that were small but clean and modern. As Asian real estate markets have heated up, HDB has helped keep Singaporean housing costs far more reasonable than in China’s primary cities, or Hong Kong or Tokyo.

Lee believed widespread homeownership would make Singapore more stable, but it was not enough to make it rich. Under his guidance, everything — from cleaning the streets to developing arguably the best primary education system in the world — was calculated to attract foreign companies and skilled individuals; this at a time when China, India and much of Southeast Asia was either closed to investment, embroiled in lethal civic conflict or primarily dominated by crony capitalists.

And the world did come, making Singapore among the favored destinations for international corporations. In 1968 Texas Instruments TXN +1.26% established a chip-making plant there, the break Lee later credited with helping transform the city into a technology hotspot.

A 2011 Roland Berger study named Singapore as the leading location for European companies to establish headquarters in the Asia-Pacific region.Companies with regional headquarters include Microsoft MSFT +1.12%, Google GOOGL +0.16%, Exxon Mobil XOM +0.15%, and Kellogg’s. Singapore now has more than twice as many regional headquarters as far-larger Tokyo, not to mention Asia’s less affluent megacities.

Lee’s Chinese Legacy

Cambridge-educated, and with the demeanor of a British aristocrat, Lee promoted English as the country’s primary language, a decision that made the city particularly attractive to foreign investors and workers. But in many ways he remained very Chinese. Lee’s People’s Action Party blended British parliamentary forms with a highly authoritarian, centrally directed system. Author Alex Josey compared Lee’s role in the PAP to Mao Zedong’s suzerainty over the Chinese Communist Party.

When Deng visited the city-state in 1978, he saw it as an appealing model for his poor country: a top-down, mandarin-led system that could appeal to global capitalists. Deng, Lee would later recall, was most captivated by Singapore’s modern prosperity: “What he saw in Singapore in 1978,” he recalled in his book Third World to First, “had become the point of reference as the minimum the Chinese people should achieve.”

Anyone visiting China today can see the results of Deng’s insight: gleaming cities, massive expansion of educational institutions, modern roads and transit systems, and most of a general prosperity that has lifted the mother country of most Singaporeans to almost unimagined heights.

The story is not so positive for those who believe in liberal democracy. Although Singapore is generally less repressive than China, it did show the Chinese communists that being “free” was not necessary for becoming rich. It’s a lesson that many developing countries around the world — in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America — have taken to heart.

Singapore After Lee

Lee bequeathed to Singapore prosperity and order, but the durability of his legacy is in question. To some extent, this reflects the technocratic cast of the Republic; Lee may have been a “founding father” of his country, but he did not leave behind a system of beliefs that can tie people together in the manner of George Washington & co. in the United States. Lee is revered simply for being effective.

Indeed despite massive government efforts to promote a sense of identity, a recent survey found half of all Singaporeans indifferent to their citizenship as long as their wealth could be maintained. Stabilizing forces like religion and family, have also been weakened by the rush to embrace what former foreign minister S. Rajaratnam labeled “moneytheism.” The emptiness of this religion can be seen in the fact that residents of this highly successful city-state are now among the most pessimistic of peoples, alongside understandably dour residents of Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Slovenia and Haiti.

So even as the Republic prospers, there is growing disaffection, with the PAP’s support dwindling to the lowest level since independence. Fed up with government controls and the increasingly high cost of living, many Singaporeans are considering a move elsewhere. Already some 300,000 now live abroad, almost one in 10. As many as half of Singaporeans, according to a recent survey, would leave if they could

The utilitarian paradise created by Lee will also have to face competition from Chinese cities like Shanghai and Beijing, notes Ravi Menon, the former head of the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Companies that might once have located operations in Singapore now feel pressure to locate in Asia’s dominant economy. Once Asia had few places where advanced technology and services could be developed; now it has many. China alone has 13 cities larger than Singapore, many of them with breathtakingly modern infrastructure and far less expensive workforces.

There is also widespread dissent about PAP’s policy prescription. One particularlyunpopular proposal has been to boost the city-state’s population from 5 million to roughly 7 million by 2030, largely through immigration. To help accommodate this growth, planners have suggested building a vast underground city with shopping malls, public spaces, pedestrian links and cycling lanes. Even normally docile and sociable Singaporeans may recoil from spending their lives like Morlocks in H.G. Wells’ Time Machine.

The city also has become more dependent on imported labor, not surprising in a county that has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. Many Singaporeans feel the foreign influx is turning them into strangers in their own city. In 1980, over 90% of residents were citizens. Today the percentage is 63% and, by 2030, if the government’s plans hold up, foreigners will outnumber the natives.

Yet despite these problems, Lee Kwan Yew’s accomplishments are undeniable. He took a struggling, ununified city and left it an urban jewel. That history has moved on is inevitable, but one has to wonder, among all the current chiefs of state, whether any will leave behind anything approaching Yew’s legacy when they pass from this world.

Percentage Change In Asian Population Since 2000: +23.5%

This piece first appeared at Forbes.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is also author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Singapore skyline photo by Bigstockphoto.com.

March 23, 2015
Minneapolis-St. Paul: Capital of the New North?
There’s been a lot of discussion in Minneapolis-St. Paul about whether they should try to dissociate themselves from the Midwest by rebranding themselves as the Capital of the North.

This immediately raises three questions:
1. Is “The North” really a distinct region?
2. Are the Twin Cities the capital of it?
3. Is branding the Twin Cities as “the Capital of the North” a good idea and likely to succeed?
What Is “The North”?

Is the North a distinct region from the Midwest? While popular maps of the nine (or eleven) nations of North American don’t include a cohesive North region, there are some reasons that suggest so. The areas of northern Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Dakotas, etc. were more sparsely populated than the rest of the Midwest. They also had a different economic structure.

This map highlights the area whose economy was driven by heavy industry and manufacturing. Most of the North was outside of this zone. The economy of that area was more dependent on natural resources (mining, such as copper in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula), farming, and grain processing. Fracking for oil in North Dakota is a continuation of this resource based economic heritage.

The area is also demographically distinct. It was more heavily settled from northern Europe, notably Scandinavia, versus the Eastern European influence felt elsewhere. The Great Migration of blacks to the industrial north also had much less of an effect on this area, which was historically very white, and still is less diverse than the rest of the country.

Climatically, the North, as the name implies, is the coldest region of the continental United States.

So there are some attributes of this region that do set it apart from the rest of the Midwest.

Are the Twin Cities that Capital of the North?

Where the capital idea doesn’t hold up is in looking at contemporary migration. The map below shades in blue any county that had people move to or from Minneapolis’ Hennepin County between 2001 and 2011, using IRS tax return data:

Outside of Minnesota itself, the only place in the North of which the Twin Cities are the capital from a migration perspective is part of Wisconsin.

Are there other areas where the Twin Cities look more like a capital? One of them would be sports fandom. Here’s a map of football team spheres of influence based on the number of Facebook “likes.”

Here the Minnesota Vikings get no love in Wisconsin, which is owned by the Packers. But the Vikings do have strong followings in much of Iowa and the Dakotas, which fits well to a concept of the North.

The area encompassed by the North is for the most part sparsely populated, with the Twin Cities being the only major urban area (more than a million people) for quite a distance. The closest other city of that size is Milwaukee, about 300 miles away. Minneapolis-St. Paul is about as far away from Chicago as Kansas City. This by itself creates a sort of capital effect, as there is a pretty large swath of territory which logically looks to the Twin Cities for big city amenities and attributes. Pro sports would definitely fall into this category. So perhaps there is some level of “capital” attribute here.

Should the Twin Cities Brand Themselves As the Capital of the North?

If there is conceivably a North and the Twin Cities can potentially claim be or push to develop itself as the capital of this region, is that the best way to brand itself?

There are two basic approaches cities are pursuing today. One is the regional capital approach of a Barcelona. (It would perhaps like to see itself as a national capital). The other is the global city approach of Chicago in which the city seeks to brand itself as a stand alone entity directly in the marketplace while actively divorcing itself from the region.

The global city model seems more popular at present. In Chicago’s case it’s easy to understand why; the Midwestern Rust Belt has struggled so why hitch yourself to that wagon? This has had some good success and Chicago’s brand image is strong. The challenge for Chicago is that its wagon is economically hitched to the Midwest whether it wants it to be or not, at least to some extent. Chicago is the business services, tourism, etc. capital of the Midwest. The struggles of that region explain a chunk of that city’s now well-publicized travails. Chicago’s fiscal weakness, inequality, etc. problems would likely be less if it were in the middle of a booming region.

So if the Twin Cities are functionally a capital, this regional relationship will assert itself organically, however it seeks to brand itself.

Where the branding idea falls flat is in two areas. First, unlike Catalonia, the North isn’t an area with any sort of existing public resonance. Thus the Twin Cities would have to create a brand not just for itself – where they already feel they have weaker marketplace awareness – but also for the North itself, which is presently non-existent. This just makes things harder.

The second is the cultural disconnect between the Twin Cities and the rest of the North. Yes, one can look to Madison, Wisconsin (which probably more connected to Chicago in any case) as sympatico. But the rest of the North seems quite different. Don’t forget, there are a lot of Republican voters in Minnesota. The state had a very conservative Republican governor in Tim Pawlenty until recently. Can the Twin Cities embrace them? Natural resources has always played a key role in the North – 3M is Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, don’t forget. Can the Twin Cities embrace the North Dakota fracking boom as its own?

Color me skeptical. Given our politically polarized environment, the time does not seem ripe for a city to actively embrace its hinterland, and the politics and economic activity it contains. That’s not to say it shouldn’t. America needs more bridge building than ever, not just politically, but between large urban and small urban and rural areas. But I don’t think it likely a region that prides itself on progressivism (e.g., environmentalism) and is already concerned about its standing in elite circles is ready to take that step.

Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Contributing Editor at City Journal . He writes at The Urbanophile.

“Minneapolis on Mississippi River” by Jdkoenig – Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
March 17, 2015
As Nonwhites Grow Their Majority in Southern California, How Can they Find More Success?

California teachers, politicians and media types like to extoll the benefits of ethnic diversity. Certainly, the state’s racial makeup has changed markedly since 1970, with the white non-Hispanic population now a minority. Some, like state Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, and some education activists now insist that multicultural studies be mandated for the public school curriculum. This is in addition to materials that, as most California parents with kids can tell you, already go out of their way to foster appreciation of different cultures and strongly focus on such issues as slavery, racism and discrimination.

Yet, if we look at how minorities are faring in the state, and particularly in the Southland, we need a greater sense of reality about how this new demography is working out. Students in Salinas might soon learn more about ethnic history, but it’s not likely to help rescue their schools, which are rated poorly – even in comparison with the state’s overall mediocre standards.

As California continues to become less white – largely because of both foreign immigration and outmigration of native-born – we have to understand that diversity alone does not assure a prosperous society; that takes greater attention to issues like education and broad-based economic growth than to the politically correct approach of ethnic pandering or curricula manipulations.

Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is also author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

March 16, 2015
Two Sides of the Same Coin: Decline and Gentrification

Recently I attended a presentation at Mission Dolores Church sponsored by the San Francisco Chronicle called “A Changing Mission”. The discussion was based on a newspaper article and associated short film about the neighborhood. It’s well worth a quick look here.





A week later I was in Lancaster, California to attend a similar meeting sponsored by the local city planning authority and the Strong Towns organization here. Lancaster is also changing, but in a different way than the Mission.

If I were to boil down the two situations into crude cartoon blurbs they might go something like this. “The Mission is being overrun with rich white people who are screwing up the place.” And “Lancaster is being overrun with poor brown people who are screwing up the place.” Like I said… crude. Obviously the reality is far more nuanced and complicated than that. But that’s pretty much the gist of things. Gentrification and economic decline are two sides of the same coin and a lot of folks don’t like any of it. The irony is both sides seem to want the same things even if they don’t know it.



There’s a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1958 film “Vertigo” where James Stewart mentions an appointment he has with a shady character in the Mission. Kim Novak looks concerned and comments, “That’s Skid Row”. That always gets a laugh from San Franciscans in the audience at the revival theaters. Many people who don’t know San Francisco well assume it’s all tourist spots, internet millionaires, and gay bars. If you walk around the Mission you’ll quickly discover a neighborhood full of families with young children, elderly pensioners, and lots of small mom and pop shops. Until the 1950’s the Mission was a working class neighborhood dominated by German, Irish, Italian, and Greek stock. After World War II white flight to the suburbs left behind a great deal of inexpensive real estate that was eventually filled by Central American and Asian immigrants, as well as various bohemian types. The neighborhood and its low wage workers were quietly ignored by city authorities as well as the more prosperous residents in more fashionable neighborhoods. This was a part of the city no one ever saw on a postcard.



The Mission deteriorated and served as a repository for the low rent light industrial activities that every city needs but are generally kept out of pricier neighborhoods: auto body shops, carpentry shops, iron and steel fabricators, glass cutting shops, upholsters, discount fabric warehouses, plumbing and electrical supply companies… But it was also the perfect place for nightclubs and after hours establishments since there were no hostile neighbors to complain. The Mission was noisy and ugly, but it was that unseemly quality along with the cheap rent that made it possible for a lot of people to scrape by while pursuing other activities that didn’t necessarily pay well. It’s no coincidence the Burning Man and other such movements emerged from the Mission rather than exclusive Pacific Heights or Sea Cliff. You might have to tolerate the occasional drug dealer or prostitute, but there was no HOA regulating your every move. The Mission was all about slack and that’s what made it interesting and vibrant, if a bit rough around the edges.



As the tech economy out in the distant suburbs heated up over the last twenty years more and more of the smart young IT professionals chose not to live in the dull suburban cul-de-sacs of Silicon Valley. They were looking for a grittier more dynamic environment and found it in the Mission. Tech workers endured a lengthy reverse commute in order to achieve a higher quality of life in their off hours at home in the city. In order to attract talent tech companies in the suburbs created the private so-called “Google Bus” system to shuttle workers from the Mission to corporate campuses an hour and a half outside the city. Tech workers had unlimited budgets compared to the existing Guatemalans, Vietnamese, and artists. Rents and property values rose considerably year after year. Today a one bedroom apartment in the Mission typically rents for $3,800 a month – if you can find a vacancy. If you want to buy that same place it will set you back well north of $850,000 and there is precious little on the market to satisfy the endless demand. If you want a single family home with a little patch of back yard you can buy the ruined shell of an old Victorian for a couple of million dollars and then spend at least as much to renovate it. Evictions and property conversions have skyrocketed. Bodegas and pho noodle shops are being replaced by boutiques and fine dining establishments. Hence all the fuss about gentrification driving out the working class. For the city’s coffers it’s a nice problem to have. The city is flush and is on a prolonged capital improvement spree that is transforming the local infrastructure and public spaces from parks, to school buildings, to libraries, to fire and police stations. Everything is getting a massive face lift and city workers have all been given substantial raises. But for the displaced residents it often means leaving the city altogether.



Now let’s get back to Lancaster which is in the Antelope Valley of far eastern Los Angeles County in southern California. Lancaster was a small agricultural community until in was discovered by the aerospace industry in the 1950’s. The high desert location not too far from Los Angeles made it the perfect place to develop and test rockets, fighter jets, and ultimately the Space Shuttle and Stealth Bomber. Along the way it attracted people from the city who were looking for a more relaxed environment at a lower price point. The area sprouted endless white middle class subdivisions and accompanying shopping centers. For most residents work and culture remained “Down Below” in Los Angeles proper. That became increasingly true as the aerospace industry ramped down and was phased out. What remained of the local economy was based primarily in building and servicing more suburban development.



The entire Antelope Valley, including Lancaster, was hit especially hard by the crash of 2008. Homes lost half their value overnight. Foreclosure and unemployment rates shot way up just as tax revenues plummeted and city services were cut. What was once a solidly middle class community became economically insecure and especially sensitive to further downward mobility – real or perceived. Both private developers and the City of Lancaster worked hard to deliver a better more up-to-date “product” incorporating the latest bells and whistles to jump start the resumption of growth after the crash. New homes boasted renewable energy packages and gray water recycling systems. The city began installing bicycle lanes. LEED certified office parks were promoted. And Lancaster’s economic development plan included inducements to battery and electric bus manufacturers for the growing market for clean energy and transportation. So far these measures have been too little too late. The solar and wind farms are great for generating clean power, but they don’t employ very many locals. New homes aren’t selling well and profit margins are down to a couple of thousand dollars per home which just isn’t enough to keep developers interested in building any more. The market for far flung exurban living has simply dried up. The bike paths that are all the rage in reviving city centers are effectively useless out in the distant sprawl. It isn’t the paths that are attracting prosperous new residents – it’s the urbanism the paths encounter along the way. Putting green lipstick on a sick pig hasn’t helped.



While Lancaster has concentrated most of its efforts on inducing new construction it has ignored its older building stock. Each new home and commercial complex built out on the edge of town only cheapens the older existing suburban fabric. There’s no economic justification for buying, maintaining, or improving a fifty year old home or thirty year old strip mall when brand new homes and shops sit unsold and half vacant. Unfortunately for old timers in Lancaster all that cheap property has proven very appealing to many of the lower income residents from down below in Los Angeles who are rapidly being displaced. Like the Mission in San Francisco many previously impoverished neighborhoods in central Los Angeles are experiencing serious gentrification and all those poor folks who are getting squeezed out have to move and live somewhere else. The last several years have been a perfect storm delivering a massive wave of new arrivals to Lancaster who are not only poorer than the existing population, but overwhelmingly black and brown. This has set off alarm bells with the already stressed locals with vocal demands for government policies to prevent “Them” from moving in. (I’ll refrain from commenting on the whole race thing here. It is what it is.) In the end these are powerful market forces that the city has very little control over. For those people who are financially able their first choice is to sell and move. For those who are trapped in a home that is worth less than they owe the choice is to tough it out and hope for a market rebound or to walk away and take a big loss.

So there you have it. Gentrification in one community and economic decline in another. These are two sides of the same coin. In the end I suspect the freakish bubble in places like San Francisco will eventually cool while the decline in outer suburbs like Lancaster will level off and stabilize. In the meantime it’s all pretty bumpy for the folks caught in the middle.

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

March 14, 2015
California’s Social Priorities, A New Report
This is the introduction to a new report, California’s Social Priorties, from Chapman University’s Center for Demographics and Policy. The report is authored by David Friedman and Jennifer Hernandez. Read the full report (pdf).

California has achieved a great deal since 1970, including much cleaner air, water and more effective resource stewardship notwithstanding a population increase from approximately 19.9 million in 1970 to over 38 million by 2014. 2 Nevertheless, the state continues to face significant, and in many cases increasingly adverse educational and social equity challenges. As summarized in more detail below:
- California’s grade 9-12 dropout rates remain high and, contrary to national trends, the state’s population of adults with less than a high school education significantly increased from 1970 and currently accounts for nearly 20% of the state’s adults, second highest in the nation. The number of Americans with less than a high school education fell by over 23 million during 1970-2012, and rose in only four states: California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. California’s net increase—over 515,000 adults—was greater than the increase in the other three states combined (409,000).
- The state’s population of high school and community college graduates grew much slower than in the rest of the country, and the population of 4-year or more college educated adults barely kept pace with average national growth rates. In contrast, Texas, also a large, high-immigration state, has added high school and community college-level educated adults more rapidly than the national average since 1970, while the number of adults with less than a high school education declined.
- Inequality has dramatically increased since 1970, when California’s rate of inequality was 25th in the nation. By 2000, the state had the second worst in – come inequality in the country, trailing only New York. The state’s inequality remained fourth worst in the nation (behind only New York, Connecticut and Louisiana) in 2013.
- Income growth for all but the richest 20% of all California households was below the national average from the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s. Incomes for the richest 20% and 5% of all house – holds rose much faster than in the rest of the country.
- Between 1970 and 2013, California’s official poverty rate (which ignores cost of living differences in the U.S.) rose from less than 10% to over 16% of the population. In 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau developed a supplemental poverty measure that accounted for higher living costs in coastal locations such as California. The supplemental measure indicated that, during 2010-2012, nearly 9 million Californians, or about 24% of the state’s population, was impoverished, by far the largest poverty rate in the country. Although California accounts for 12% of the U.S. population, the state has over 18% of the nation’s poor.
- California’s capacity to generate new jobs has severely diminished over time. During 1970-1990, the state generated nearly 5.6 million new jobs and 14.5% of the total employment growth in the country although it accounted for less than 10% of the nation’s population in 1970. From 1991-2013, the state produced 2.6 million new jobs, just 9.7% of the net U.S. employment growth, and well below the state’s 12% share of the nation’s population in 1990. Although the state’s population rose by roughly similar amounts in 1970-1990 (9.8 million) and 1991-2013 (8.6 million), California was unable to generate even half the number of jobs during 1991- 2013 than were created in 1970-1990.
- Annual nonfarm employment growth averaged 3% in 1970-1990, well above the national average, but just 0.8% in 1991-2013, well below the national average. In contrast Texas, with 70% of California’s population, produced over 4 million new jobs during 1991-2013, and Florida, with half of California’s population, generated nearly the same number of new jobs as California (2.2 million). During 1991-2013, California more closely resembled historically slow growing northeastern and Midwest states than faster-growing regions of the U.S., especially in the southeast.
These data show that California needs to address significant, and growing social priorities, including significant improvement in adult educational rates at the high school and post-secondary level, increasing employment opportunities at a rate sufficient to serve past and forecast population growth, and reducing the state’s inequality and very high poverty rates.

California continues to lead the country, and by some measures even the world, in environmental quality and climate change initiatives. But public policy must evolve to leverage these environmental achievements into corresponding improvements in educational attainment and middle class job creation. With more than 18% of the nation’s poor, and less than 1%3 of global greenhouse gas emissions, California should also embrace the challenge of leading the world in the creation of middle class manufacturing jobs for the rapidly evolving clean and green technology that California’s laws mandate, California’s educational and technology sectors invent, and California’s venture capital investors bring to the global market.

Instead, California’s policies, and regulatory and legal costs and uncertainties, tend to divert thousands of middle class jobs even in emerging green industries (including those not requiring high school diplomas) to other locations, including the Tesla battery manufacturing facility, which moved to Nevada. The loss of projects that help achieve important environmental objectives, create high quality jobs, and comply with California’s strict environmental and public health protection mandates, continues to occur in part because well-funded special interest groups ranging from business competitors to labor unions file "environmental" lawsuits as leverage for achieving narrow political or pecuniary objectives rather than to protect the environment and public health. This study suggests that the state must work much harder to ensure that California’s landmark environmental laws are not misused or pursued in a manner that adversely affects other, equally important policy priorities for California’s large undereducated and underemployed population.

Read the full report (pdf).
March 11, 2015
North By Midwest: Minneapolis-St. Paul as the Capital of the North

In November, I joined an overflow crowd at the Walker Arts Center to hear a panel discussion entitled Midwest? The Past, Present, and Future of Minnesota’s Identity. The discussion stemmed from common questions of identity, and proposed that Minnesota and the Twin Cities secede from the “Midwest” and claim ownership of a new region: the North. You might have heard about this, perhaps from the Star Tribune’s original write-up. There are some powerful people behind the movement. It’s the brainchild of Eric Dayton, son of the governor and owner of The Bachelor Farmer restaurant and the Askov Finlayson clothing store.

Recently, the idea has experienced another surge of media interest. Brian Martucci, The Line‘s Innovation and Jobs News Editor, wrote an article that catalogs piecemeal some of the projects and movements that are transforming the Minneapolis-Saint Paul cityscape. A day later, The Wall Street Journal (of all newspapers), published a different take by Christina Brinkley, their fashion and style columnist.

It’s a fascinating experience to read these two commentaries side by side. Martucci writes from the perspective of someone who lives here, and his focus is firmly on the built environment. As is evident to any resident, Minneapolis and Saint Paul are undergoing a breakneck physical transformation, with further changes hurtling down the pipeline. Meanwhile from New York, Brinkley is interested in goods. Red Wing shoes, Faribault wool, Duluth packs, and other ‘Made in Minnesota’ products are reportedly—this writer wouldn’t know, he cannot afford them—in vogue, thanks in part to their decades-old, blue collar, lumberjack bona fides. At the confluence of both of these trends, both writers found Eric Dayton and his determination that we live in the ‘North’, and that Minneapolis-Saint Paul should assert its place as the capital of this new region.

The Idea of North

I love the idea of “North.” I am a New York native. I came to Minnesota for college, studied geography and have lived here in the short period since. I have flown over Minnesota and I have also called it home. I have an unshakable certainty that Minnesota is deeply underrated, especially among people like myself. After the event at the Walker in November, I convened a Facebook focus group of high school friends and asked them what came to mind when they imagined Minnesota. I heard back—

The Vikings—

Adrian Peterson—

Outdoorsy stuff when it’s not cold—

You can go to the movies or marry your high school sweetheart or get cold in Minnesota—

We’ve all heard something to the same effect. Minnesota is a frozen tundra populated by mostly second rate football players and provincial people. No theater. No bikes. No beer. We barely get credit for being an objectively incredible sports town. I wholeheartedly blame our association with the Midwest for this. We are shoehorned into a familiar “flyover state” template and the thermostat is turned down. At least Ohio gets to choose the president.

Why yoke our region to images of yokels? There’s hardly a consensus that we’re part of the Midwest anyway. Meanwhile, the commonly used “Upper Midwest” is the unsweetened oatmeal of place names, hardly worth insisting on.

In “North,” we would own an identity that is simple, evocative, and accurate. It is miles beyond what we have now.

Keep Minnesota weird

Yet is this reason enough? It may be that most Minnesotans feel the same way and that the roots are already laid for a reinvention. The capacity crowd at the Walker indicated that many are ready to jump on board. But the success of the North movement relies on both broad and fervent support. To harness both, advocates need to make a compelling argument that embracing our Northern identity is not just a good idea because it feels better than before, but because there is an economic and cultural imperative toward doing so.

Do we Really Have a Place-Branding Problem?

It’s not clear that the Twin Cities and our hinterland are struggling because of our attachment to the boring Midwest and our reputation as the American manifestation of Hoth.

Minneapolis-Saint Paul is punching well above its weight economically. The metro unemployment rate is the lowest of any large American city, we have high wages, and a modest cost of living. We have the fifth most Fortune 500 companies and the most per capita of American metropolitan areas. We’re not bad for small businesses either. As a result of the MSP economic engine, the state of Minnesota is also doing relatively well. Our state’s unemployment rate is the nation’s fifth lowest and our economy is growing at a reasonably strong rate.

Of course, the problem here is that we’re dealing with a counterfactual. If Minneapolis-Saint Paul had a stronger identity, would we see the results in a better economy?

It’s nearly impossible to prove, but with basic data we can make a few back-of-the-envelope observations that may bolster that claim. We know that cities and regions with more human capital have a strong correlation with economic strength. There is some evidence that suggests we could do better at attracting that talent. Data from City Observatory‘s ‘Young and Restless’ Report shows that the Twin Cities boasts one of the better educated cohorts of young people in the country. Given our strong economic position and wealth of colleges and universities this is not surprising. But despite an increase in the number of young and educated in the city and the metro area, we lag behind some of our national rivals in growing these numbers in a way that seems at odds with what our economic and educational attractiveness would predict.

Minneapolis-Saint Paul ranks tenth in young and educated adults who live in the city, but fourteenth in terms of real growth, and twenty ninth in percentage terms. Denver is an easy comparison. The Mile High City (that’s their tourist slogan too—straight, to the point, and in sync with how outsiders think of the city) had just over 2000 more young and educated adults than MSP in the year 2000. Now the gap is over 6000. That’s why Denver got the star treatment from the New York Times in this article that Facebook’s algorithm has been advertising to me for the past three months.

Baltimore is the nation’s biggest turnaround story, having doubled the young and educated population of the city from 2000 to 2010, surpassing MSP in the meantime. Baltimore doesn’t have a brilliant identity (The Charm City), but it offers a relatively low cost of living,dramatic cityscape improvements, powerful educational institutions, and an enviable position in the undoubtedly cool Northeast megalopolis (with the ability to commute to DC). MSP can boast three of the four, but not the East Coast brand.

It’s plausible to infer that Baltimore’s low cost, urban and high ed assets, and unique position have helped it draw in a young, educated crowd, but that its lack of a compelling identity has contributed to the lack of attachment to it that residents feel.

The Branding Theory

So the theory as a whole goes like this:

We are mired in a classic economic morass of having a product that people cannot distinguish from other substitutes. Those substitutes are regional railroad and rust-belt towns like Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. The image of these cities is cold, boring, and downtrodden. If we want Minneapolis-Saint Paul to attract people, especially people who have the agency to move to a place of their choosing, what outsiders think of us matters. It is not enough to simply have a superior product. We want to be competing globally as a region and nationally with places like Baltimore and Denver, cities near our size that are buoyed by capturing a greater share of the flood of young human capital. To better compete, we need to celebrate our strengths, turn our weaknesses into opportunities, and emphasize what makes us unique.

Minneapolis at its most dramatic

The third rail to this argument is the (in)famous University of Toronto geographer and public intellectual Richard Florida. His work, first laid out in his astonishingly influential 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, is referenced in the original Star Tribune article, and was also brought up at the Walker discussion. Florida essentially takes the human capital economic theory and identifies certain groups—like scientists, engineers, gays, and bohemians—who are “creatives”, and thus (more) important to urban economic vitality. Creative class theory offers policy prescriptions that are extremely appealing to many urbanites, and a beguiling foundation for the Northern argument. There are two problems with it. The first is that Florida’s work, while popular with policy makers and media, is extremely controversial among academics, and has been thoroughly criticized. Second, the creative class is a deeply exclusionary group. While I enjoy belonging to the demographic being fêted by city officials, the identity of our cities and our region must belong to all, not just people like me.

This perspective is biased in another way, too. When I ran this article past a friend of mine who is originally from Wisconsin, he called me out on my own coastal bias. In writing extensively on how to make Minnesota attractive to outsiders, I had left unsaid what championing the North might say to those who already live here. This was an embarrassing omission. 29,000 young adults leave Minnesota to attend schools out of state (21,000 come in) and far fewer return. Overall, Minnesota suffers a net loss of residents to domestic migration. Even to those who live here, the North’s image could use burnishing.

Culture is the Key

That’s why the Northerners must make a cultural argument as well.

There’s a lot of low hanging fruit here. Minnesota is the state of hockey (despite thedisappointments wrought by our local professional team). We supply the US Olympic Team’s curlers. We host the Loppet, a pond hockey championship, and the best attended Red Bull Crashed Ice event. Snowmobile manufactures Polaris and Arctic Cat are Minnesota-based. We’re avid ice anglers, an activity that is the subject of ridicule in most of America. (Full disclosure: I don’t really get it either.) There is no state in the union that so thoroughly embraces the full spectrum of winter activity. Meanwhile, in the summer, Saint Paul hosts the Minnesota State Fair, which can claim the highest daily attendance in the nation. If any event celebrates the spectrum of what it means to be a Northerner, it’s this.

That’s what you put in a 30 second tourism television spot. But being from the North can mean more than just winter activities. Cabin culture is something that seems a uniquely Northern phenomenon. Minnesota has one of the highest rates of second homes among US states (5.1% of the total dwellings); fifth if you remove sparsely populated states. Wisconsin and Michigan have similarly high rates of vacation homes, while Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont have the highest percentages nationwide. Northern forests are a transcendent cultural asset.

Historically, the North was settled by Germans and Scandinavians, and their legacy is evident in a way that is easy to spot. Perhaps as a result, our region differs linguistically, which is a powerful source of identity. The Minnesota accent is distinct and a cultural hallmark of the region, just as the drawl defines the American south. Some of our words are different too. Northerners play Duck, Duck, Grey Duck and eat hot dish. (NOT grape salad, remember that now.) And if we’re talking about the legacies of the past, the new North could properly recognize the American Indian history of the region, something that only the Southwest and Pacific Northwest seem to do in any measure.

Our region is also different politically, especially given recent elections in which our neighbors have become Republican territory while Minnesota has remained steadfastly progressive. But this is an element of Northern identity that is problematic, not least because it threatens to excommunicate about half of those whom we would welcome into our tent. Another concern is that political winds are mercurial. Not long ago Minnesota was governed by a Republican and represented by a Republican senator, while Wisconsin was more proudly liberal. Any Northern identity must be durable enough to withstand political shifts.

The Economic Argument

But what do we get from affirming these cultural quirks as the bedrock of an identity distinct from the Midwest? I think a few things.

One, we bolster the value of Minnesotan goods. The ‘North’ movement has been criticized as an elaborate branding campaign by Dayton on behalf of his businesses. Obviously I believe it is and ought to be much more than that. But that does not mean that spreading and supporting Minnesota brands cannot be one of the goals of the campaign. If Minnesota-made boots, sweaters, blankets, and more become fashionable, than Minnesota itself benefits. In the Star Tribune article, Thomas Fischer, dean of the College of Design at the U of M, admits that the region has a “slightly hick” reputation. Northern goods can pave the way for greater respect for Minnesota, the Twin Cities, and this region’s lifestyle.

Second, we better control our own narrative. Fargo is a wonderful movie, but the impact it has had on Minnesota’s image is hard to understate. At Macalester (where I went to college), the movie is one of the few reference points many new students have when relating to their new home. It’s a wonder anyone actually attends. Prairie Home Companion is another revered Minnesotan cultural export that does the state few favors in the population at large. I love it too, but it benefits substantially from context (and repeated listening). ‘North’ can be that context. ‘North’ can trigger the connections between not just Fargo and PHC, but on to other strengths as well. There’s a reason that no amount of Hollywood violence set in New York can diminish that city’s glamour. The context is too strong. Yet Minnesota is best known by just a few cultural touchstones.

Third and finally, emphasizing a Northern culture also includes our rural hinterland. I live in the Twin Cities, as do those who have launched this campaign. At the discussion at the Walker, there was a tension in defining the North; who is a part of it, and who is not? This does not need to be centrally planned; as with all of our nation’s regions, membership islargely down to self-identification. But the North’s borders will not extend beyond I-494 if Minneapolis-Saint Paul dictates the entire platform. There is no dispute that MSP is the economic and cultural capital of the region. There is no dispute that becoming more attractive to young, college educated, creative professionals (near and far) is primarily an urban concern. But rural areas demand respect and deserve it, given that much of the Northern identity we’re peddling is derived from and preserved by them.

The Wall Street Journal’s map of Minnesota’s offerings

A Northern Agenda

In one sense, there’s not a lot that really needs changing. The North already exists; it’s not something we need to invent, only identify. This is already well-covered ground. Look no further than The Line or the WSJ articles for a detailed survey of how Minnesota and Minneapolis-Saint Paul are distinct from other Midwestern places, better than other Midwestern places (would we be here if we didn’t believe that on some level?), and uniquely represent what it means to be a Northern region and city. At the Walker, one point of discussion was how to turn our biting winter into a positive. That’s something that Northerners already do. From the Winter Carnival, to the Holidazzle Parade/Village, to Crashed Ice there is plenty to do in wintertime. What’s left for us to do is to be proud of our region’s characteristics (in this case, the climate) and to sell them.

But in another sense, it would be a missed opportunity to think of North as simply a marketing campaign. North could (should) be as much about placemaking as place branding. This may be a chance to set the course of the region in a deliberate way. The recent media coverage illustrates these dual objectives, because both Brinkley and Martucci capture important parts of what North is about. The aim is to reinvent the image of our cities and our region—and reinvent the cities and the region themselves.

If we want it to be—this could be a big undertaking.

Marketing Ourselves

One thing we could get right immediately is the marketing. We should learn from Denver, whose municipal logo and tourism logo both emphasize the skyline of a major metropolis, the rocky mountain backdrop, and the same evocative nickname: ‘The Mile High City’. On the other hand, Minneapolis, our region’s most dynamic hub and economic powerhousehas an awful logo that comes in ballpoint-pen-blue and says absolutely nothing meaningful about the city. Meet Minneapolis has a nice logo, but the tagline; “City By Nature” falls flat. It’s certainly not wrong, our parks are one of the absolute highlights of the cities, but it doesn’t play any of the chords that outsiders have when it comes to Minneapolis. “The Capital of the North” is a bold statement of the city’s prominence, and one that also embraces the region’s climate and culture. It would serve well as both the city’s nickname and tourist slogan, or in a parallel universe, the slogan of a combined MSP tourism agency. As for a logo, there are a number of possible starting points. But my vote is for the North Stars’ iconic mark, which could easily be converted from an “N” to an “M”. The Minnesota/Northern state/region motto and team namesake L‘Etoile du Nord is referenced brilliantly here, and I love the dual meaning that comes from the mapping convention of using a star to represent a capital city.

There’s also a conversation to be had about Minneapolis-Saint Paul’s symbols. Seattle has the Space Needle, St. Louis has the Gateway Arch, Chicago has the Willis Tower, and so on. It’s certainly not necessary to have a single monolith somewhere, but it’s hard to think of an iconic image of MSP that outsiders might have. Unless MSP hosts the Olympics (which we might want to consider, we wouldn’t have to build much) or the World’s Fair, we’re unlikely to throw a ridiculous amounts of money at a massive landmark project in the future. Plus,we’re already doing it. The new Downtown East stadium will soon be the most well-known building in the cities, beating out four important Minneapolis works by Pritzker Prize winning architects, two classical marvels in Saint Paul, and a sculpture of a utensil that will soon be usurped on all the postcards. That’s not the end of the world. The stadium may well look pretty tremendous. It might also change the default-picture-taking-place fromthat pedestrian bridge over 35W to the Cedar Avenue bridge that crosses over the light rail, which would put the green line in the foreground.

The renewed focus on Downtown East offers some unique chances to create a unique, iconic place. One interesting urban feature that will come from the downtown east redevelopment is Wells Fargo’s rooftop signage that will shine down on the Commons park. Here’s to hoping that Wells Fargo does something interesting with their branding. The Twin Cities already have a plethora of memorable advertising signs, but none that really stand out as a regional symbol. If the city asked to be able to take over a rooftop space, they could do something much more interesting. As placemaking ideas go, signs are ridiculouslycheap.

There are other major projects going on that will be local landmarks. The Water Works park would be a tremendous addition to the river, which remains our best (and not entirely fully realized) asset. The reconstruction of Nicollet Mall is another large scale project, and one that’s much further along in the planning and funding. The city has repeatedly indicated their desire to see the mall become the region’s “main street”. On February 3rd, the city issued a call for artists for four large scale projects along the street. Among the projects, the city would like to see an artist “create a large-scale iconic artwork” on the mall. Whatever shape this takes will probably come down to the mind of a mad genius, but the selection process ought to consider work that is derivative our our city and region.

The key date for this marketing push is February 4th, 2018. That’s the day when over 100 million Americans will tune in to watch two teams—neither of whom is likely to be the Vikings—contest Super Bowl LII. For the week leading up to this event, the nation’s sports media will be in the cities, making jokes about the weather. During the game, NBC will be leading into the play with blimp shots and stock footage. It’s easy to overstate the effect of events like these; politicians do it repeatedly. But the Super Bowl’s visibility and timing make it a natural checkpoint in any branding initiative. The bid committee reportedly won the NFL owners over with their plans to embrace winter. Hopefully that does not just mean hanging out in the MoA. If the organizers are true to their word, the Super Bowl will be the perfect opportunity to show the largest possible audience what living in the North is all about.

A new image of Northern cool

Growing the Region Through Tolerance

Altering the image of the region is one project. Altering the region itself is another. The North is worth distinguishing and promoting. But it is certainly worth working to change and improve. It seems as though every month brings new construction projects that will transform the Twin Cities into a more dense, livable, and remarkable place. Yet there is still a parking lot across from the Warehouse District light rail station and the downtown Saint Paul Macy’s still casts a pall over the surrounding sidewalks. The real estate market is strong, but not yet strong enough to fill all of the available holes. Growth is still an imperative. Meanwhile the battles over transportation investments, which could bind the cities, state, and region closer together, instead divide them along political lines.

Is there an apolitical, Northern resolution to these issues? Perhaps not, but in building a Northern identity, we could make choices about our culture that would help us navigate these storms. In particular, I’d urge a reflection on what ‘Minnesota Northern Nice’ could mean.

All sides of every issue do not need to agree on the particulars, but what they should do instead is make a commitment to a process of compromise and conciliation. Many Minnesotans are descended from Scandinavians, who have a long political tradition of seeking consensus. In an increasingly polarized America, politicians and those promoting the idea of a Northern identity should all agree to work to make Minnesota an exception that can serve as a model. We already can count on voter turnout and civic engagement that rank among the highest in the nation. All sides should at minimum find common ground in bolstering the ownership that all Northerners feel in their society through a political process that takes inspiration from our Nordic cousins. Initiatives like solving the achievement gap and reducing our pernicious residential segregation (linked issues that have been addressed by both parties) would be a powerful start.

Northern identity should also influence our perspective of who becomes a Minnesotan. The state loses more people each year to other states than it takes in. However, Minnesota is still adding newcomers, thanks to international immigration. Again, Scandinavian nations should provide a Northern model. While these nations are more restrictive towards immigration than the United States, they accept high numbers of refugees. This tradition already exists in the state, and it should become a point of policy emphasis. As Minnesota ages, it will become increasingly crucial to bring people to the state from wherever we can; not just the educated 20-somethings covered above. Other regions will have a similar idea, but the North can gain an advantage by creating resettlement policy in the Scandinavian image that would attract those seeking to start a new life in this country. Meanwhile, the North would set in stone a welcoming and helpful culture that eases the transition for international migrants. We have the affluence, the space, and the culture to adopt such a policy.

Assessing how Minnesota markets itself, inside and out, is easy. Building and shaping our landscape and culture in this new image is profoundly difficult. But small steps count too, and we should be bold in setting far reaching goals for the city and the region. If there’s a thread that runs through the North campaign, it’s about taking charge of our own story. As the Midwest, we’re on the fringe of a large, flat, and forgettable mass. As North, we’re at the center of a region with its own story to tell and our own story to write.

Keep Minnesota awesome

Yes, I Know This Is Long…

At one point, this article was conceived as a personal reaction to an issue that struck a chord. It ballooned, in part because everywhere I looked, I found more to discuss. The prospect of changing an entire geographic identity is a daunting one. I believe it can be done, and moreover, I believe there’s a compelling case to be made that it should be done.

That said, I have just one perspective. This article attempts to approach from multiple angles, but there is only one that this writer can truthfully inhabit. I expect to hear about those I shortchanged in the comments.

I have some reservations about the Northern idea. Would it be possible to maintain MSP’s exceptional gap between wages and cost of living if the cities became more popular? New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg once referred to Manhattan as a luxury product, and luxury goods behave differently in economic theory. While comparisons between the Twin Cities and Manhattan are ludicrous, it’s possible to envision the Twin Cities as losing their budget option appeal if the market properly valued (or overestimated) our assets. There’s surely a benefit for those of us who are here now in living in a place that is underrated.

Or might the concept of North simply divide, instead of unite? Would we end up with Team Midwest vs. Team North?

And of course, there’s the real possibility that the idea just never gains momentum. This is the eventuality I can do the most about, and this article’s main contribution may simply be to keep the idea of North in the spotlight. But beyond that, I’d love to add to the debate about the idea. There is not necessarily a right or a wrong answer, nor may there be disagreement as to whether there’s a solution at all. But I think in this time of change, the discussion is worth having.

This piece first appeared on the non-profit and volunteer run Streets.mn. Support Streets.mn by becoming a member.

Alex Schieferdecker is a New York City native. He graduated from Macalester College with a major in Geography and an Urban Studies concentration. He’s currently stationed on the border between Minneapolis and Saint Paul, living the Green Line life. He also writes about Minnesota soccer for The Loon Call. His twitter handle is @theschief.

March 10, 2015
Rise of the Nation-States

In this highly polarized political environment, states and localities, are ever more taking on the character of separate countries. Washington’s gridlock is increasingly matched by decisive, often “go it alone” polices from local authorities. Rather than create a brave, increasingly federalized second New Deal, the Obama years, particularly since the Republicans took control of the House in 2010, have seen discord rise to a level more akin to that left by James Buchanan, the last president before the Civil War, than Franklin Roosevelt.

This makes understanding the sometimes-divergent economic and demographic trends of various states ever more important. With no compelling national vision, not only are politics more “local” but are increasingly distinct by region.

The Main Event: Texas vs. California

Today’s two leading economic models come, not surprisingly, from our two megastates, California and Texas. For its part, the Lone Star State follows a traditional American growth model, spread among a wide array of industries, notably energy, and prodded by population growth.

Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is also author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is co-author of the “Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey” and author of “Demographia World Urban Areas” and “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.” He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He was appointed to the Amtrak Reform Council to fill the unexpired term of Governor Christine Todd Whitman and has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

USA map image by BigStockPhoto.

March 9, 2015
Misunderstanding the Millennials

The millennial generation has had much to endure – a still-poor job market, high housing prices and a generally sour political atmosphere. But perhaps the final indignity has been the tendency for millennials to be spoken for by older generations, notably, well-placed boomers, who often seem to impose their own ideological fantasies, without actually finding out what the younger cohort really wants. The reality, in this case, turns out far different than what is bespoken by others.

Nowhere is this tendency clearer than in the perception of what kind of life – and what places – will millennials find attractive. Generally, the narrative goes like this: Millennials are different, they don’t care about owning homes, detest the suburbs and would prefer to spend their lives in dense apartment blocks, riding the rails or buses to whatever work they might be able to find.

Urban theorists, such as Peter Katz, insist that millennials (the generation born after 1983) have little interest in “returning to the cul-de-sacs of their teenage years.” Manhattanite Leigh Gallagher, author of “The Death of Suburbs,” asserts with certitude that “millennials hate the suburbs” and prefer more eco-friendly, singleton-dominated urban environments.

Such assessments thrill the likes of real estate speculators, such as Sam Zell, who welcomes “reurbanization” as an opportunity to cash in by housing a generation of Peter Pans in high-cost, tiny spaces unfit for couples and unthinkable for families. Others of a less-capitalistic mindset see in millennials a post-material generation, not buying homes and cars and, perhaps, not establishing families. Millennials, for example, are portrayed by the green magazine Gris as “a hero generation” – one that will march, willingly, even enthusiastically, to a downscaled and, theoretically, greener future.

Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is also author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

New home photo by BigStockPhoto.com.

March 1, 2015
What’s This Place For?

I was recently asked by Gracen Johnson (check out her site here) to elaborate on the possible future of suburbia. How are the suburbs likely to fare over time? This coincided with a city planner friend of mine who asked a more poignant question about the suburban community he helps manage. “What’s this place for?” If we can answer that question we might be able to get a handle on the possible trajectories of various suburbs.



For example, we all understand what a farm town is for. Small rural towns produce food. The people who live in the countryside are actively engaged in the business of feeding society. They take soil, water, plants and animals and convert it all into breakfast, lunch and dinner. For the people who want to live this way there are tremendous benefits: fresh air, open space, privacy, independence, a direct connection to nature, strong family bonds, tradition, and so on. Whatever else we might say about farm country we can be certain that it will carry on one way or another or else civilization will grind to a halt pretty quickly.



We also know what industrial cities are for. They take the raw materials from the surrounding countryside and transform them into finished goods. Grain becomes flour and bread. Timber becomes lumber, then homes and furniture. Iron ore and coal become machinery and power. Crude oil becomes gasoline, petrochemicals, and plastics. There are obvious trade offs for industrial workers, but for many people it’s a pretty good arrangement. If we expect to have manufactured goods in the future these cities will have to continue somehow.



The new post-industrial locus is a bit trickier to pin down. The service economy doesn’t actually produce any “thing” so the workforce is liberated to live just about anywhere in a way that farmers and factory workers can’t. Oddly, well educated highly paid people don’t actually spread out and inhabit a million cabins in the woods as you might expect. Instead they clump up in a handful of regions that provide abundant cultural amenities. At the same time the post-industrial economy exists in a physical world and all those people and electronic components rely on the underlaying farms, factories, and raw resources that support them. The so-called dematerialization of the economy still requires a serious amount of real “stuff” to function.



So what does this all mean for the suburbs? The nature of suburbia has always been consumptive rather than productive. People move to the suburbs in order to purchase and enjoy things: a spacious home, a good school district, security, a clean environment, more respectable neighbors, and so on. The majority of the commercial activity is actually in service to suburbia itself. The mortgage brokers, insurers, real estate agents, landscapers, school teachers, firefighters, orthodontists, pancake houses, and auto body shops are all there to help keep the suburbs humming along. But they’re all consumptive in nature. No one is making the tennis shoes sold at the mall or growing the oranges at the supermarket. This is compounded by the fact that the suburbs are maintained largely through debt. Private debt is required for all the mortgages, car loans, credit cards, student loans, and business loans while municipal bonds prop up many essential suburban government functions. The fact that many people don’t understand the difference between production and consumption is one of the big problems the suburbs are going to have to sort out in the future.

I’m going to get a lot of push back on this concept. I’m sure many of you think that your suburb is full of productive enterprises: the Krispy Kreme, the Jiffy Lube, the dozen Shell and Exxon stations, the Applebee’s, the Foot Locker, the Honda dealership, and the Kroger’s. But these are merely outlets for things that were produced elsewhere. Let me offer another example from my own life. I spent a chunk of my childhood in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s nearly everyone had some connection to companies like Rocketdyne, Litton, and General Dynamics. Those were the engines of the local economy for decades. And they did in fact produce real physical things. But they were all funded entirely by the federal government. Tax money was skimmed off the national productive economy (all those farms and factories) and then spent on missile guidance systems, satellites, and fighter jets. The same was true in Huntsville, Alabama and Marietta, Georgia. Remember what happened to all those places when the feds turn off the spigot during budget cuts? Money flowed in, not out. There’s a reason Peru doesn’t have a space program. The underlying national economy isn’t productive enough to support such extravagant government spending.

As the material abundance we enjoyed in the Twentieth Century tightens up suburbs will have to become much more efficient places that provide things the outside world needs and is willing to pay for. At the same time internal consumption and debt are going to have to be pulled back. That doesn’t necessarily mean a lower quality of life, but it does demand that suburbs retool and ask themselves, “What’s this place for?”

John Sanphillippo lives in San Francisco and blogs about urbanism, adaptation, and resilience at granolashotgun.com. He’s a member of the Congress for New Urbanism, films videos for faircompanies.com, and is a regular contributor to Strongtowns.org. He earns his living by buying, renovating, and renting undervalued properties in places that have good long term prospects. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

February 27, 2015
The Three Faces of Populism

More than at any other time in recent memory, American politics now are centered on class and the declining prospects of the middle class. This is no longer just an issue for longtime leftists or Democratic or right-wing propagandists. It’s a reality so large that even the most detached and self-satisfied Republicans must acknowledge it.

The Left’s new superstar, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, identifies inequality as “the dominant issue in our public discourse” but similar assessments have recently been coming from such unlikely sources as GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Jeb Bush and even Mitt Romney.

So, if populism will become a dominant theme in the next election, what form will it take? Populism itself is more a sentiment than a program; it reflects people’s deep-seated fears about the future and a festering resentment of the seemingly unassailable power of financial and other corporate elites.

Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is also executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is also author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

February 24, 2015