Category: Small Cities

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 Emerging New Aspirational Suburb

Urban form in American cities is in a constant state of evolution. Until recent years, American suburbia was often built without an appreciation for future evolution. This has left many older suburbs in a deteriorated state, and has accelerated claims of a more generalized suburban decline.

The Indianapolis suburb of Carmel represents a response to this historic pattern. While responding to today’s market demands with a new aspiration level designed to make it nationally competitive, it’s also trying to position itself for success tomorrow and over the longer term.

This is a critical issue for many suburbs. Like big cities before them, many older suburbs have now aged, and no longer necessarily meet the requirements of the marketplace.

There are many reasons for this. The early, usually small-scale Cape Cod-style housing common to many 50s vintage suburbs is not what today’s market is demanding. It’s the same for older enclosed malls – today “lifestyle centers” and other formats are preferred – many of which are now vacant, their grim remains featured on web sites such as DeadMalls.com. Many suburban areas were also built out with “infrastructure light” without upgraded streets, sidewalks, etc. leaving a big backlog of infrastructure need.

Across the country many of these older districts have fallen into decay and become increasingly poor, taking on many of the characteristics of the inner city. As the Brookings Institution noted over a decade ago, they “are experiencing some signs of distress—aging infrastructure, deteriorating schools and commercial corridors, and inadequate housing stock.”1 Today, the public is more aware of the trend, and events in Ferguson, MO recently gave a wakeup call to newer and still-thriving suburbs that they too may be troubled at some point.

Like other American cities, Indianapolis has many of these older, struggling suburban areas. In its case, many of them are within the core city limits due to a 1970 city-county merger. As regional growth continues to expand outside the central urban county, newer generation suburbs have a chance to learn from the struggles of many of their predecessors.

Carmel – pronounced like the Biblical Carmel – is the first suburb directly north of the city of Indianapolis. It is an upscale residential and business suburb similar to many others around the country such as Dublin, OH; Naperville, IL; and the Cool Springs, TN area. Its 2013 population of 83,573 made it the 5th largest municipality in the state. While not monolithically wealthy, its 2013 median household income of $100,358 is the 14th highest in the United States among communities of 65,000 people or more.2 It’s a preferred area for the estate homes of wealthy Indianapolis area residents, such as Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. But it’s not just a bedroom suburb; real estate brokerage Cassidy Turley reports that the Carmel submarket has over six million square feet of office space.3

Being located in the center of the favored quarter of the Indianapolis region, Carmel grew as an upscale area. This gives it a leg up in long term sustainability out of the gate.

Yet Carmel has not relied just on its wealth to insure against decline. Rather, it has embarked on a transformation program now nearly 20 years old from which three major themes emerge:

1. Responding to current market forces to build a “state of the art” community that is competitive globally, not just within the Indianapolis region.

2. Building a full spectrum of amenities and infrastructure to create a “complete city” with a high quality of life and intrinsic appeal that is a) not based solely on newness or low costs, and b) which has broad demographic appeal.

3. Attempting to create unique cultural and regional attractions to turn Carmel into a destination in its own right, as much city as suburb.

The primary driver of this transformation has been Mayor Jim Brainard, a Republican currently in his fifth term. Carmel long had top performing schools – it’s the top rated district in the state – houses with generous yards, low taxes, and other standard attractors of suburbia. Previous administrations had put in place key policies such as reserving the Meridian St. corridor for high end office space and banning billboards. But Brainard brought numerous changes in Carmel during his tenure including:

Annexation. Carmel has undertaken a series of annexations – nearly 20,000 acres since 2001 alone.4 With over 47 square miles of territory, Carmel has now largely achieved its desired geographic scale.

Parks. Carmel’s park acreage increased from 50 to 1000 acres and it has spent heavily on building out its parks. This includes building a $55 million Central Park, which includes a showplace community and fitness facility called the Monon Center.5 And the popular Monon Trail, a rail-trail through the length of the city that extended a previous project built by the City of Indianapolis.

Monon Trail at Main St.

Road Infrastructure. Carmel has invested heavily in upgrading the legacy network of county roads that it overgrew. This includes an aggressive deployment of modern roundabouts. Carmel now has over 80 of these, more than any community in the United States.6 It has upgraded miles of collector roads to urban standards with enclosed drainage, curbs, extra-wide travel lanes, landscaped medians, eight foot multi-use side paths on both sides of the street protected by a landscaped buffer zone, and decorative street signs and other detailing.

Roundabout at Main St. and Illinois St. in the fall

An upgraded segment of River Rd. in early winter

Two major state highways passed through the town, Meridian St. (US 31) and Keystone Ave. (SR 431). These were designed as rural style divided surface highways as is common in Indiana. Carmel convinced the state to relinquish Keystone Ave. to the city and give it $90 million for upgrades and future maintenance. Carmel converted this into a mostly free flowing parkway by spending $108 million to replace stoplight intersections with roundabout interchanges. These not only dramatically improved traffic flow, the bridges over the busy highway provided a high quality, safe connection – especially for pedestrians and bicyclists – connecting eastern and central Carmel, which had previously been separated by this “great wall” of a road. The state is currently performing a similar freeway upgrade on Meridian St., the principal office corridor.

Roundabout interchange at 126th St. and Keystone Parkway.

Water and Sewer Upgrades. Part of Carmel previously received water from the Indianapolis water utility. The City of Indianapolis had privatized this utility but sought to repurchase it. Carmel intervened in the process to pressure Indianapolis into selling it the water lines inside Carmel. Carmel has since undertaken significant infrastructure upgrades such as new wells and pumping stations. During a recent summer drought, Carmel, unlike Indianapolis, did not put in place a mandatory restriction on lawn watering.7

New Urbanism. Beyond core infrastructure, Carmel under Brainard has sought to change its style of development to embrace some of the more positive aspects of New Urbanism such as creating more urban nodes and walkability.

Unlike some traditional railroad suburbs or county seats, the historic center of Carmel was very tiny, and its Main Street populated mostly with one story buildings and empty lots. This was the first focus area, and started with fixing the physical infrastructure.

The city rebranded the area as the “Arts and Design District” and utilized Tax Increment Financing to promote multi-story, mixed use development. The result is a mostly occupied and often well-patronized Main Street district. The surrounding historic residential blocks have seen significant redevelopment activity as well.

Main St. at western fountain and gateway arch entryway to rebranded “Arts and Design Distrct.”

Beyond the historic downtown, Carmel has also implemented multiple New Urbanist style zoning overlays, including on Old Meridian St. and Range Line Rd. (the city’s original suburban commercial strip). These promote mixed use development, buildings that front the street, and multi-story structures. Infrastructure improvements and TIF have been used in these areas as well. There’s also a major New Urbanist type subdivision in western Carmel called the Village of West Clay.

Strip mall and traditional suburban development along Range Line Rd.

New Urbanist style development along Range Line Rd.

New Urbanist development and street improvements under construction on Old Meridian St.

The historic downtown was deemed too small to function effectively as the downtown of a city the size of Carmel today. The city thus decided to create a new downtown area called City Center. The location for this is an area south of the historic downtown area in an older suburban industrial zone that had fallen into a blight pattern. Much of it was vacant and what’s now the principal City Center development was built on the site of a failed strip mall. TIF was aggressively used here as well to redevelop the area.

The City Center development is only partially complete. A veterans memorial and other civic spaces are complete, as are several small office buildings, apartments, and a large mixed use complex. The anchor is a publicly funded $175 million concert hall called the Palladium and an associated theater complex with three stages.8 While these are complete, significant development remains to complete the City Center vision. The city also wants to redevelop the area between City Center and the old downtown, which they now label Midtown, but very little has been done to date.

Interior street of City Center development.

The goal of all this development is not the full urbanization of Carmel; this city does not aspire to be dense metropolis, or even Indianapolis. It’s rather about creating more town center type districts with the walkable feel that’s increasingly in favor, but without compromising the fundamental suburban character of the city. It’s also designed to create a city with options. Having a diversity of development styles within the city is part of a strategy of appealing to a more diverse demographic base, including singles and retirees, not just the stereotypical younger family with kids. Traffic flow has been improved, but short trips are now easier to undertake by foot or bicycle, not just by car.

Retro Architecture. Carmel has de facto mandated traditional architectural styles. There’s no one consistent style. Major buildings have been done in Georgian, Second Empire, and Neoclassical type designs. But modernism has been rejected, further differentiating suburban Carmel from urban areas that frequently elect for starchitecture that is unapologetically “of the now.”

The city has also attempted to prevent large corporations from building their standard architectural templates. Brick is effectively mandated, even for big box retailers like Lowes. Retailers like CVS and Kentucky Fried Chicken were forced to build second stories on their structures to locate in certain areas. Another Carmel CVS has an art deco façade.

The city wants high quality aesthetics and a unique sense of place. They also want “timeless” design, though like much New Urbanism architecture it can sometimes come across as pastiche.

Arts and Culture. As part of the attempt to appeal to more arts minded middle aged consumers, as well as members of the so-called “Creative Class,” Carmel has heavily invested in the arts. The City Center performing arts center was paid for almost entirely with public funds (TIF), an investment in the arts dwarfing even that of Indianapolis. The city has also paid for an extensive public art program, mostly statues by Seward Johnson. And it makes operating grants to local arts organizations such as the Carmel Symphony Orchestra.

Interior of the Palladium concert hall. Photo by Zach Dobson.

Seward Johnson is not a favorite of urban sophisticates. His statutes illustrate the type of play it safe art generally featured by Carmel. More sophisticated or cutting edge fare is not as prevalent. And there have even been some complaints by a limited number of citizens about items such as the classical nudes featured on the door handles of the Evan Lurie Gallery.

Brainard is thinking about the long term when Carmel is no longer the shiny new thing. As he put it, “Because we are designing a new city that will be in place for hundreds of years, the responsibility of doing it right falls to this generation…Carmel is a young city – we are still building our parks, trails, roads and sanitary sewer and water systems that will be here for centuries.”9

He’s also keenly aware of global economic competition and the fact that Indiana lacks the type of geographic and weather amenities of other places. He frequently uses slides to illustrate this point. In one talk he said, “Now this picture, guess what, that’s not Carmel; but this picture is the picture of some of our competition. Mountains – that’s San Diego of course, mountains, beautiful weather, you know I think they have sunshine what, 362 days out of the 365…. What we’ve tried to do is to design a city that can compete with the most beautiful places on earth. We’ve tried to do it through the built environment because we don’t have the natural amenities.”10 While the claims to want to equal the most beautiful places in the world may be grandiose, the key is that mayor believes Carmel’s undistinguished natural setting and climate requires a focus on creating aesthetics through the built environment.

What have the results been to date? Economically and demographically, the city has performed well. It has managed to create an environment that is proving competitive for business opportunities that might have previously bypassed Indiana. For example, American Specialty Health relocated its headquarters to Carmel from San Diego, with the CEO of the company personally making the move from La Jolla to Carmel.11 Geico also recently expanded. Numerous other corporations are either based in Carmel or have major white collar facilities there. The income levels are very strong, as noted above.

The city’s demographics have also expanded to become much more diverse. The minority population grew 295% between 2000 and 2010, adding 9,630 people and growing minority population share from 8.7% to 16.3%.12 12% of the city’s households speak a language other than English at home.13 Many of these are highly skilled Chinese and Indian immigrants working for companies like pharmaceutical giant Lilly. Even black professionals are increasingly moving to Carmel, with the black population growing 324% in the 2000s and black population share doubling to 3%.14 Carmel is not a polyglot city today, but it’s far more diverse than in the past.

Carmel has also attracted both national press and national awards. Money magazine ranked Carmel as the #1 best small city to live in 201215, and it’s scored highly in other surveys as well. Drew Klacik of the Indiana University Public Policy Institute notes that in an echo of the transformation of the city of Indianapolis since the 1970s, “Carmel has transformed itself from a desirable community within Indiana to a desirable and competitive community nationally.”16

However, it’s hard to argue that Carmel’s results materially outperform peer cities in other regions. Places like Dublin, OH and Cool Springs, TN have significantly more office space, for example. Many of those places are, however, implementing policies similar to those in Carmel . Most Carmel New Urbanist development continues to require TIF subsidies and is not yet sustainable at market rates. The city has obtained better financial terms in some recent deals, however. And despite major public investment and construction in the central city, many central area census tracts lost population during the 2000s.

The changes have also attracted significant criticism and opposition in some quarters. While the public remains largely positive on the results, there have been many critiques of the way they were done, some of them legitimate. A number of the projects had significant cost overruns. The mayor originally said that the Keystone project could be completed for the $90 million the state gave it. The actual cost was nearly $20 million higher.17 The Palladium was originally sold as an $80 million facility, but ended up costing $175 million. The city also said it planned to pay for ongoing operations by raising a $40 million endowment, but was unable to raise the funds, leaving it on the hook for $2 million in annual operating costs. These are not small misses.

Critics also pointed to state figures showing Carmel with nearly $900 million in total debt.18 While it is a wealthy community that can afford the payments, in a conservative state like Indiana, a suburb accumulating nearly a billion dollars in debt raises eyebrows. Carmel’s tax rates remain among the lowest the state, however.

The way the debt was accumulated has been criticized as well. The Palladium was paid for with TIF funds. Rather than bonds, the Carmel Redevelopment Commission – the authority that manages the TIF program and which was controlled by mayoral appointees – structured the Palladium debt as Certificates of Participation to circumvented the need for city council approval, incurring higher interest rates in the process. The city council later refinanced the debt at a lower rate using a general taxing power guarantee in what some called a bailout. In return for the refinancing, the council obtained more oversight over TIF activity.19

Though some controversy is inevitable and some criticisms are legitimate, ultimately the change program in Carmel has proven popular with the public and the city is booming, a boom that’s lending an increasingly bitter tone to the longstanding hostility Carmel has enjoyed from the region due to its status as the highest profile “rich suburb” in the region.

Yet for all the controversy, many regional suburbs are copying some aspects of Carmel’s approach, with roundabouts now a regular feature in area communities and major park programs and New Urbanist style town center developments as well. This includes the massive sports-oriented Grand Park in Westfield and the Nickel Plate District in next door Fishers’ town center.20

It’s also clear that peer type suburbs around the country are adopting similar strategies, such as Dubin, OH’s Bridge Street Corridor proposal21 or Sugar Land, TX’s $84 million performing arts center.22 Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Carmel represents the leading edge of the emergence of a new type of post-Edge City aspirational suburb. It’s something we may be seeing a lot more of in the future.

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

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1 Robert Puentes and Myron Orfield. “Valuing America’s First Suburbs: A Policy Agenda For Older Suburbs in the Midwest,” Brookings Institution, 2002.

2 U.S. Census Bureau, “American Community Survey 2013 1-yr”, Table B19013.

3 Cassidy Turley, Indianapolis Office Market Snapshot (Third Quarter 2014), 3.

4 Ellen Cutter. “Explaining the annexation process,” Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly, June 12, 2014. Accessed January 8, 2015. http://www.fwbusiness.com/opinions/columnist/businessweekly/article_f42da036-6182-575a-8445-274cd82ca296.html

5 Matthew VanTryon. “Carmel then and now: World’s Apart,” IndianapolisNewsBeat.com, December 16, 2014. Accessed January 8, 2015. http://blogs.butler.edu/multimedia-journalism/2014/12/16/carmel-worlds/

6 James Brainard, transcript of speech at 2014 International Making Cities Livable Conference, June 23-27, 2013.

7 “Why no watering ban in Carmel,” WISH-TV News, July 12, 2012. Accessed January 8, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y51BJYM4Fgc

8 David Hoppe. “The Palladium’s boffo budget,” Nuvo Newsweekly, June 20, 2011. Accessed on January 8, 2015. http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/the-palladiums-boffo-budget/Content?oid=2275080

9 James Brainard, notes for 2014 State of the City Address.

10 James Brainard, transcript of speech at 2014 International Making Cities Livable Conference, June 23-27, 2013.

11 Andrea Muirragui Davis. “Wellness provider beefing up new Carmel office,” Indianapolis Business Journal, October 29, 2014. Accessed on January 8, 2015. http://www.ibj.com/blogs/11-north-of-96th/post/50241-wellness-provider-beefing-up-new-carmel-office?id=11-north-of-96th

12 U.S. Census Bureau, calculations by author from Census 2000 and Census 2010.

13 U.S. Census Bureau, “American Community Survey 2013 1-yr”, Table B05007.

14 U.S. Census Bureau, calculations by author from Census 2000 and Census 2010.

15 “CNNMoney Ranks Americas Best Places to Live,” Daily Finance, August 20, 2012. Accessed January 8, 2015. http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/20/cnn-money-ranks-americas-20-best-places-to-live/

16 Drew Klacik, telephone interview with author, December 29, 2014.

17 “Brainard seeks bonds to finish Keystone,” The Indianapolis Star, October 18, 2009. Accessed January 8, 2015. http://archive.indystar.com/article/20091018/LOCAL/910180409/Brainard-seeks-bond-finish-Keystone

18 Indiana Department of Local Government Finance. “Local Government Debt Report,” September 21, 2012, 15.

19 Kathleen McLaughlin. “Brainard seeks deal on maxed-out TIF,” Indianapolis Business Journal, March 31, 2012. Accessed January 8, 2015. http://www.ibj.com/articles/33569-brainard-seeks-deal-on-maxed-out-tif

20 Cara Anthony. “New look for the Nickel Plate District in Fishers,” The Indianapolis Star, June 28, 2014. Accessed January 16, 2015. http://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/hamilton-county/fishers/2014/06/27/new-look-nickel-plate-district-fishers/11537251/

21 Brent Warren. “Dublin Moves Ahead With Bridge Street Corridor Plans, Connecting Across River,” Columbus Underground, March 23, 2013. Accessed January 8, 2015. http://www.columbusunderground.com/dublin-moves-ahead-with-bridge-street-corridor-plans-looks-to-connect-across-river-bw1

22 Rebecca Elliott. “Sugar Land breaks ground on $84 million performing arts center,” Houston Chronicle, December 9, 2014. Accessed January 12, 2015. http://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/fortbend/news/article/Sugar-Land-breaks-ground-on-84M-performing-arts-5946247.php

February 10, 2015
Go East, Young Southern California Workers

Do the middle class and working class have a future in the Southland? If they do, that future will be largely determined in the Inland Empire, the one corner of Southern California that seems able to accommodate large-scale growth in population and jobs. If Southern California’s economy is going to grow, it will need a strong Inland Empire.

The calculation starts with the basics of the labor market. Simply put, Los Angeles and Orange counties mostly have become too expensive for many middle-skilled workers. The Riverside-San Bernardino area has emerged as a key labor supplier to the coastal counties, with upward of 15 percent to 25 percent of workers commuting to the coastal counties.

In a new report recently released by National Core, a Rancho Cucamonga nonprofit that develops low-income housing, I and my colleagues, demographer Wendell Cox and analyst Mark Schill, explored the challenges facing the region. Although we found many reasons for concern, the region’s overall condition and its long-term prospects may be better than many might suspect.

Population trends

The region’s once-explosive growth has slowed considerably. From 1945-2010, the area’s population soared from 265,000 to 4.25 million. Already the nation’s 12th-largest metropolitan area, the I.E. could pass San Francisco and Boston by 2020 (unless faster-growing Phoenix does so first).

Yet, contrary to expectations (and, perhaps, hope among anti-sprawl campaigners), the area continues to be a beacon for people from the rest of the region. There is a notion, widely expressed in the mainstream media, that Southern California’s growth will now focus more on the urban core around Downtown Los Angeles. Yet, as is often the case, what planners and pundits desire is not widely shared by the vast majority of people.

People continue to vote for the Inland Empire – and other peripheral areas – with their feet. Census Bureau data indicates that, from 2007-11, nearly 35,000 more residents moved from Los Angeles County to the Inland Empire than moved in the other direction. There was also a net movement of more than 9,000 from Orange County and more than 4,000 net migration from San Diego County.

Several long-standing demographic trends favor a continued shift to the Inland region, according to Cox and Schill. Immigrants and their offspring may prove the critical factor. Over the past decade, the Inland region dramatically increased its population of foreign-born residents, more than three times the number and at nearly 18 times the rate of the coastal counties.

The influx of immigrants and their children is largely responsible for the region’s relatively young population, compared with the rest of Southern California. As recently as 2000, the proportion of population ages 5-14 in Los Angeles and Orange counties stood at 16 percent, the sixth-highest level among the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan areas. Thirteen years later, that proportion had dropped to 12.8 percent, 33rd among the 52 largest metropolitan areas. In terms of a dropping share of youngsters, the area experienced a 20 percent reduction, the largest in the nation.

In contrast, the Inland Empire remains a bastion of familialism, with 15.3 percent of the population aged 5-14, among the highest levels in the nation. This follows a general pattern; according to recent analysis of Census data, high-cost areas tend to repel families. Of the nation’s most expensive areas, such as the Bay Area, New York and Boston, all tend to have well below national norms in terms of families among their populations.

Perhaps more surprising, younger educated workers also are heading to the region. In fact, from 2011-13, according to American Community Survey data, Riverside-San Bernardino witnessed the 12th-largest increase among the 52 major metro areas in the share of college-educated residents ages 25-34. No major California metro area, including Silicon Valley, could match it. From 2000-13, the Inland region experienced a 91 percent jump in population with bachelor or higher degrees, just less than twice the increase for either Orange or Los Angeles counties.

Overall, the I.E. has become something of a growth area for millennials – basically, adults ages 20-29. San Bernardino-Riverside ranked second among 52 metro areas, adding 50,000 millennials, an 8.3 percent increase since 2010. Los Angeles and Orange counties – older, settled areas with far lower population growth – together registered 18th.

Economic Restructuring

These trends also may reflect improving prospects for the region’s economic recovery. The area remains some 30,000 jobs below its 2007 level, notes California Lutheran University economist Dan Hamilton, but is now growing faster than the rest of the Southland. The region created jobs over the past year at a 2.2 percent rate, well above the 2.0 percent increase in Orange County and almost twice that of L.A.’s 1.3 percent. Foreclosures have diminished to the lowest levels since 2007 and appear back to something resembling normalcy.

One important source of new employment is grass-roots entrepreneurship. Overall, the Inland Empire accounted for a large proportion of the new businesses created statewide from 2012-13 – despite hosting only 7.4 percent of the total businesses in California. A recent report by Beacon Economics suggested that growth will accelerate over the next five years.

At the same time, some of the core industries – such as manufacturing and warehousing – have shown signs of recovery. Industrial vacancy rates have fallen from nearly 12 percent in 2009 to roughly half that level today.

Much of the growth has been for “middle-skilled jobs,” paying $14 to $21 per hour, including positions in medical services, trucking and customer service. Overall, according to one recent survey, the Inland Empire ranked 13th among the nation’s large metropolitan areas in creating such positions. These jobs, notes economist John Husing, are critical to a region where almost half the workforce has a high school education or less.

Even the housing sector, the driver of the post-crash employment decline, has improved considerably. Today, the Inland Empire is experiencing a far greater increase in construction permits than either Los Angeles or Orange counties. This has also helped boost construction employment, although not to anything like the levels experienced a decade before. Construction employment, although up recently, still totals barely half the people it did in 2006.

Some, such as University of Redlands economist Johannes Moenius, express concern that important industries, like warehousing and manufacturing, are increasingly using part-time workers. Positions paying $15,000 to $30,000 annually constitute nearly half of all new jobs.

The ambiguity in the recovery is reflected in a recent survey by Cal State San Bernardino, which found the percentage of those saying the economy was excellent or good had almost doubled since 2010, from 9 percent to 17 percent, but this was considerably below the 40-plus percent seen before the crash.

The Path Ahead

The fate of the Inland Empire remains in the balance. The recovery of the region depends largely on continued widespread population growth, largely stimulated by the production of affordable housing. Yet, at the same time, state regulations, spurred on by the environmental lobby, which seeks to slow, or even eliminate, single-family construction, threaten to force up prices and drive young families outside the state.

Many other core industries of the area – such as warehousing and manufacturing – also face growing regulatory barriers. High taxes and energy costs originating from Sacramento are particularly difficult for industries that require power to operate. Southern California Edison’s rates, for example, are almost twice those found in Salt Lake City, Seattle or Albuquerque.

Some may celebrate these policies that encourage people to say “good riddance” to a region too sprawling and insufficiently cultured. Yet, it’s hard to see how Southern California can continue to add workers – notably, younger middle-class families – without a vibrant Inland Empire. It remains the one Southern California region with the land, and the housing cost structure, to accommodate much of the hard-pressed middle class. Without growth inland, Southern California will be largely relegated to a torpid economy and rapidly aging demographics, a fate that would compromise the aspirations of future generations.

This piece originally appeared in 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 9, 2015
Roadmap to Surprises of the Rustbelt

Back in New York, no one quite believed my accounts of urban renewal across the Midwest, through a piece of the Rustbelt, and then back — that St. Louis is the Brooklyn of the heartland, or that even downtown Buffalo has charms. I tended to be on safer ground when I described Targeted small towns in Ohio, or drive-by shootings in Chicago.

Despite the skepticism I knew I would eventually encounter, my idea was to go intercity with mass transit and to get around locally with my bike. I found that the downtown areas of many Midwestern cities are vibrant, rust free, and often ideal for biking, as well as for hotels, trendy restaurants, and funky businesses.

It’s on the periphery of these Potemkin-convention cities that the bright lights dim on the porches of ramshackle wooden frame houses. That’s where the new ghettos look less like rundown public housing and more like rural shanties that have washed up in earlier working-class suburbs.

Does it work to travel from Chicago to New York with a folding bike on trains and buses? Give or take, I managed fine. Amtrak grudgingly accepts folding bikes as normal luggage (it is easier to take a gun on board Amtrak than a full-sized bike), and intercity bus drivers (many are cheerful souls) are indifferent about baggage stowed below.

The bigger problem in my planning was that few trains other than freights cut across the heartland from St. Louis to Cleveland. While buses do make the connections — say, from Terre Haute to Bloomington, Indiana — many of my departures took place between 5 and 6 a.m., the time that a friend calls o’dark.

Nor were the intermodal connections seamless. Routinely, I was dumped off the bus at a Hardee’s in Nowheresville. Between Quincy, Illinois, and Hannibal, Missouri, the only place open at lunchtime was an adult superstore, but I hadn’t worked up an appetite for lace underwear.

Herewith, by city, are some observations from behind the handlebars:

Chicago: I went all over Chicago on the bike, from Frank Lloyd Wright’s show-homes in Oak Park to the South Side slums (where that weekend twelve people were wounded in assorted shootings). I also made it to the old stockyards, Haymarket Square (of anarchist fame), and the Hyde Park home of President Barack Obama, which now is unpleasantly hidden away behind tall trees, concrete anti-terror barriers, and snarling guards, giving it the air of a Beirut embassy.

Beyond the elegant Loop, lakefront, university districts, and various solid neighborhoods, Chicago has endless stretches of abandoned warehouses—no man’s lands between the city and suburbs, belts in search of manufacturing.

I felt better when I found where the Marx Brothers had lived when they were still playing vaudeville; Ernest Hemingway’s boyhood home (when he sported curls in what he famously called that place of “broad lawns and narrow minds”); and a magnificent bike lane that sweeps along Lake Michigan. I even found myself agreeing with former vice president Dan Quayle, who said “It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.”

St. Louis: Few city downtowns are as pleasant as that of St. Louis, which struck me as having a perfect mix of parks, restaurants, stadiums, hotels, and office buildings converted into residential lofts, many with views of the Mississippi and the Gateway Arch. I biked out as far as Clayton, Missouri, through the incomparable Forest Park, and looped around several universities, hospitals, and museums, all of which add to the city’s infrastructure luster.

Most of what I saw was white St. Louis, as gracious as a southern plantation, although coming and going I went through northern and eastern satellite suburbs — Ferguson is one of many — where the local economy seems to revolve around selling tires, check cashing, and all-night convenience stores.

Indianapolis: On the way from St. Louis to Indianapolis, I stopped in Springfield (part of a Lincoln haj) and Terre Haute. My bus into the Indiana capital left me at the “downtown transit center,” a dreary cave of broken vending machines, now that the former railroad station is an elegant hotel.

The rest of downtown Indianapolis sparkled, and I spent the best day of my travels ducking into the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, drinking coffee on sunny terraces, following bike paths, exploring the canals, and touring the city’s many universities, Butler and Indiana-Purdue among them.

Only when I went out on the bike that night looking for the boyhood home of writer Kurt Vonnegut did I find the other Indianapolis, which is camped out in dilapidated wooden frame houses or low-rise housing projects, clearly off the convention-city grid. No wonder Vonnegut wrote “So it goes.”

Canton: So poorly is Ohio served with public transportation that I was forced to rent a car to go from Dayton Trotwood (a sad shopping center where the Indianapolis bus dropped me) to Canton and Cleveland. I stuck mainly to the secondary roads, often clogged with traffic and slow lights. Unless someone can add a dome, Astroturf, and The Gap to Hometown USA, it will be lost.

Canton was the saddest city on my travels. Not even the presence of the Pro Football Hall of Fame or William McKinleyism can put a positive spin on the vacant lots and boarded-up storefronts.

Cleveland: I was back on the bike, and loved much of what I saw downtown in the canyons of Art Deco office buildings.

Cleveland is more of an extended suburb than a city — if not a state of mind with a football team — although it can quickly change from blocks of lakefront mansions to rows of seedy body shops… emphasis here on the word “body”.

Buffalo: On my night bike ride into the city from Amtrak’s suburban Depew Station, I passed through a series of depressing slums and at one point had to out-sprint a highwayman who wanted to steal my rig. (“Give me that fucking bike,” is how he introduced himself.)

The new ghetto arose from the old working class neighborhoods; a nether world in the shadows of subsidized convention centers and urban renewal towers. Buffalo at night is a ghost town, although I loved riding north along Delaware Avenue to the state university.

In upstate New York, I made a loop around the Finger Lakes through such rustbelt stalwarts as Corning, Binghamton, Syracuse, and Auburn. The delight was Elmira, with its local college that has the Mark Twain writing studio in which he wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Ithaca is a labyrinth of universities and dead-end streets that gets my vote for the most confusing city grid in America.

Syracuse at night — on the bike or waiting at the bus station — felt like the set of a sci-fi movie in which everyone has been vaporized. Binghamton aspires to hipness, but, well, it’s Binghamton. At least Auburn has the prison, and at midnight its strange aurora borealis of klieg lights made my bike vest glow like medieval chain-mail.

A series of buses and commuter trains took me down to New York City. I had booked on Amtrak, but its Lake Shore Limited was routinely seven or more hours late. One conductor blamed the delays on the weather from the previous winter, although my seat mate said impoverished locals robbed the copper from the track signals.

At the end of my riding, I think I came across as someone as morose as the novelist Theodore Dreiser, who took what he called “a Hoosier holiday,” at a time when, as he wrote, “America was in the furnace stage of its existence.” But I defy anyone who doesn’t take heart from a Lake Erie sunrise.

Photo by the author: Downtown Cleveland from Lake Erie

Matthew Stevenson, a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, is the author, most recently, of Remembering the Twentieth Century Limited, a collection of historical travel essays, and Whistle-Stopping America. His next book, Reading the Rails, will be published in 2015. He lives in Switzerland.

January 23, 2015
Measuring Economic Growth, by Degrees

In this information age, brains are supposed to be the most valued economic currency. For California, where the regulatory environment is more difficult for companies and people who make things, this is even more the case. Generally speaking, those areas that have the heaviest concentration of educated people generally do better than those who don’t.

Nothing more illustrates this trend than the supremacy of the Bay Area over Southern California in the past five years. Since the 2007-09 recession, the Bay Area has recovered all of its jobs, as has San Diego, but Los Angeles-Orange and the Inland Empire, although improving, lag behind.

Overall, the San Jose and San Francisco areas boast shares of college graduates at around 45 percent, compared with a 34 percent average for the 52 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The San Diego area clocks in at 34.6. In comparison, the Los Angeles-Orange County area has roughly 31 percent college graduates while the San Bernardino-Riverside area has the lowest share of four-year degrees – 20 percent – of any large region in the country – this is worse even than backwaters like Memphis, Tenn., and Birmingham, Ala.

Dividing this region by counties shows Orange County well in the lead, with 37.6 percent college-educated, well above Los Angeles County’s 30 percent.

Recent Trends

To see where these metrics are headed, Mark Schill, an analyst with the Praxis Strategy Group (www.praxissg.com), was asked to identify the share growth of bachelor’s degrees in the country’s largest metropolitan areas during 2000-13. The share of the adult population with college educations rose by 6.8 percent in San Jose and 6.4 points in the San Francisco-Oakland region. Some regions did better, including Boston, Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids, Mich., Baltimore, New York and St. Louis. All these were considerably above the national average increase of 5.2 percent.

In contrast, most areas of Southern California have shown more meager growth in their educated workforces. Los Angeles, overall, enjoyed a very average increase of 5.2 percent. San Diego, despite its high-tech reputation, notched a 5 point jump while the Inland Empire increased by 3.8 points, one of the lowest performances in the country. The biggest gainer in the Southland was Orange County, where the share of educated workers grew by a healthy 6.3 percent.

Whither young, educated workers?

The picture, particularly for the Inland Empire, is not totally bleak. In a recent survey conducted by Cleveland State University, there have been some promising developments in the growth of younger educated workers. This key cohort, notes researcher Richey Piiparinen, appears to follow a very different path than do older educated workers, with many seeking out careers in less-expensive locales.

Indeed, looking at educated growth among 25-34-year-olds from 2010-13 finds that the most rapid expansion is taking place in unlikely places, such as the areas around Nashville, Tenn., Orlando, Fla., and Cleveland, all which experienced increases of roughly 20 percent or more. This is better than twice the growth rate in such noted “brain centers” as San Jose and San Francisco, which were around 10 percent, and New York at 9 percent. The Los Angeles-Orange County area saw a similar increase.

The reasons for these surprising, and somewhat encouraging results, particularly for the Inland Empire, may vary. One thing, of course, is the low base from which the area starts. After all, until the past decade, the employment profile of the Inland Empire favored manufacturing, logistics and construction, all fields not dependent on large contingents of highly educated workers.

Another critical factor may well be price, as we saw in our surprising findings on millennials. Simply put, many of the areas attractive in the past to educated workers have become extraordinarily expensive – as demonstrated by San Francisco-based writer Johnny Sanphillippo – while some more affordable locales have become “sweet spots” for younger educated people, particularly as millennials enter their family formation years.

County, city breakdowns

The Southland, of course, is a vast region, and even every county contains hosts of cities that are very different from each other. In terms of counties, the biggest gains – albeit from a smaller base – took place in the Inland Empire, notably Riverside, which saw a 93 percent jump in its educated population since 2000. Orange County saw a 37.6 percent gain, ahead of Los Angeles’ roughly 36 percent gain.

More intriguing, and revealing, is the distribution of college degrees by city areas. Here, the supremacy of a few areas is very clear. In three Southland communities, more than 60 percent of the adult populations have college degrees: Santa Monica, Newport Beach and Irvine. Yorba Linda, Pasadena and Redondo Beach all boast rates close to, or above, 50 percent.

Obviously, these towns are something of outliers in the region. Los Angeles, by far the region’s largest city, has roughly 31 percent of its adults with college degrees. Many communities do far worse, most of all, Compton, where less than 6 percent have four-year degrees. Hesperia, Southgate, Lynwood and Victorville have educated percentages under 10 percent.

Adjacent communities sometimes have radically different rates of education. Santa Ana, for example, abuts Irvine, but has an educated population of barely 12 percent. And while some areas have shown meager growth in their share of educated residents, several areas have seen double-digit percentage increases, including Burbank, Yorba Linda, Rancho Cucamonga and Santa Monica.

Implications

As the Southland economy evolves, it makes sense to look at those areas most likely to have more of the educated workers that high-end industries need. These increasingly are clustered in a few places, such as Irvine, Newport Beach, Rancho Cucamonga and Costa Mesa, that are both suburban in form but tend to have better schools than much of the region. These areas also tend to have lower-than-average unemployment rates. Educated people tend to migrate, for the most part, to areas where others of their ilk are concentrated, and often where their children have the best chance at a decent education.

These statistics and trends suggest that our leaders, in education and politics, need to focus on reality. It is dubious that many communities throughout the Southland will develop large shares of educated people in the immediate future. Indeed, given the quality of public education throughout most of the region, it seems almost inevitable that much of the region will lag in terms of skills well into the next decade.

This means that local leaders cannot expect to duplicate in the near future the success of places like Boston, the Bay Area, or even Pittsburgh. Instead, there needs to be a two-pronged attempt to address this issue. One is to boost preparatory and higher education throughout the region, which will allow for Southern California to better compete at the highest-end of employment.

But the other strategy, not to be discounted, is a full-scale commitment to skills training for those unlikely to earn bachelor’s degrees. This also means taking measures allowing the industries that would employ such workers – largely manufacturing, logistics, medical and business services – to flourish, so this training will have rewards. The Southland’s already large educated population is one key to its future, but finding a decent work environment for those without a four-year degree merits equal, if not greater, emphasis.

This piece first appeared 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. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Graduation image by BigStockPhoto.com.

December 30, 2014
Towns With a Past, Towns With a Future

Over the last fifty or sixty years most towns have been dedicated to accommodated cars in order to cultivate business and permit people to live better more convenient lives. For new developments out in a former corn field this was effortless since everything was custom built with the automobile in mind. But older towns that had been built prior to mass motoring were at a distinct disadvantage.



In order to keep up with changing times older neighborhoods, particularly older Main Street business districts, did whatever possible to retrofit themselves. The roads were widened, sidewalks were narrowed, street trees were removed, obsolete buildings were torn down to make way for parking lots, new zoning regulations and building codes were introduced to ease traffic and ensure abundant free parking. Unfortunately for many historic towns there simply was no contest. New strip malls and office parks could provide endless free parking and massively wide roads. If you add in the competition from big box national chains and the politics of race and class driving people across municipal borders for lower taxes and segregated school districts… Main Street never had a chance. The irony is that the more towns tried to accommodate cars the less pleasant they became.



Google Earth

This is a Google Earth image of the area around Cheviot, Ohio. The people of Cheviot self-identify with the fictional 1950’s TV town of Mayberry made famous by The Andy Griffith Show. It really is a lovely place, but it effectively has no business district anymore thanks to the Western Hills Plaza Shopping Center half a mile away which straddles Green Township and the Westwood district of suburban Cincinnati. Harrison Avenue, Cheviot’s century old Main Street, is circled at top right. Western Hills Plaza is circled at bottom left. The Home Depot, Target, Kroger, and Dillard’s make it impossible for mom and pop shops on Harrison Avenue in Cheviot to sustain themselves. Half the shops are empty and the others limp along. It’s a shame, because Cheviot is a charming town full of great old commercial buildings and solid housing stock. It’s a good town full of good people. The German Catholics who settled and built this part of Ohio have managed to hold on to a fair-to-middling set of arrangements through the worst years of decline, but the town is a shadow of its former self. It has excellent bones, but the flesh is sagging through no fault of its own.



However, Cheviot has one thing that Western Hills Plaza doesn’t – a walkable, bikable, fine-grained pleasant neighborhood. That may not sound like much, but it’s more than nearly anyplace built after 1950 anywhere in North America can boast. Cheviot is an actual town, not just mindless suburban sprawl. That’s a rare commodity these days and a lot of people are hungry for it. Just about every home in Cheviot is within a five or ten minute walk of the old business district, local public schools, library, churches, and parks. It has become unusual in America for people to live in this kind of environment and it’s coming back in fashion with increasing demand and limited supply. There’s an opportunity here for people with the right attitude.

Google Earth

In contrast let’s say that you lived here on this cul-de-sac in Green Township and you wanted to go to one of the fast food places directly behind your back fence. This is the route you’d need to take.

Google Earth

If you’re used to driving everywhere everyday you might not think twice about hopping in the car. In fact, you might not even realize that the Burger King and KFC are so close. But if you were somehow forced to walk one day you might be surprised at how hard it would be given all the walls, fences, and drainage ditches that stand between you and your fast food. And the walk would be a miserable and potentially dangerous experience. The highway and its cavalcade of concrete and plastic bunkers is so wretched when you aren’t in a car that developers and city planners go out of their way to keep homes as isolated and buffered as possible. This radical separation of uses makes perfect sense in a car-oriented environment. Who wants to look out at a highway strip mall from the back yard? But it’s Hell on foot. And don’t even think of riding a bike. You’ll either get hit by a speeding car or attract the attention of the local police who will immediately identify you as a deviant. Being a pedestrian or cyclist in this environment constitutes “probable cause”. You must be unsavory if you lower yourself to such desperation here. Sitting at a bus stop in this setting is no joy either.



So here’s the challenge of the next few decades. The aging sprawl in Green Township and similar nearby post war suburbs like White Oak, Sharonville, and Deer Park on the edge of Cincinnati aren’t aging well. Their roads and sewer systems are right at the point where they need complete overhauls and there’s no money for any of it. Don’t expect Columbus or Washington to send big checks because they’re broke too. The housing stock in these places is neither charming in a Norman Rockwell sort of way, nor sufficiently Mad Men modern. Their roofs, windows, kitchens, baths and furnaces all need replacing right about now and there isn’t a lick of insulation in most of them. Fifty years ago these suburbs were white middle class havens with their backs to inner city decay and race riots.



Now newer more prosperous suburbs Like Mason and Beavercreek farther out attract wealthier residents looking for larger homes with all the latest bells and whistles along with premium public schools and lower taxes. Green Township has less than half the average family income of Mason. Homes in Green Township and other similar areas sell for $75,000 although many homes can be found for considerably less. Mason homes sell for north of $250,000 with many at much higher price points. Meanwhile downtown Cincinnati and Over-the-Rhine are rapidly gentrifying as people who prefer an urban environment reinvigorate long abandoned neighborhoods. The poor are being displaced in the process and they’re going to have to live somewhere. Given the trajectory of these shifts it isn’t looking good for the so-so suburbs in the middle distance. We can expect more “Fergusons” on the horizon although the particulars are unknowable at this time. This economically induced migration won’t be good for the poor either. They just spent the last few generations sucking up the desiccated crumbs of 19th Century industrialism and now they’re being shunted off to the stale left overs of 20th Century sprawl just in time for it to die.



But there’s hope for some of these places. Pressed up against both Cheviot and Green Township is Westwood, a former streetcar suburb that also uses Harrison Avenue (the old streetcar route) as its long-lost Main Street. Westwood was once an independent town, but was annexed by Cincinnati a hundred years ago. It fell out of favor beginning in the 1950’s when the streetcar was ripped up and shiny new subdivisions and shopping centers were built-in places like Green Township. Moving children out of Cincinnati public schools to another jurisdiction a mile away was one of the primary motivations as racial tensions in the city grew. Taxes were also lower in the new suburbs. (Is any of this ringing a bell?) Cincinnati has recently figured out that it can’t compete with Mason or Beavercreek for that particular share of the upscale suburban real estate market, but it’s looking at the success of Over-the-Rhine and wondering what the family friendly conservative Republican Catholic version of revitalization might look like in Westwood. In other words, what can parts of Cincinnati provide in the way of a value-added “product” or “experience” in their century old neighborhoods of single family homes that Mason can’t. There’s a chance that Westwood’s competitive advantage might just be walkability and historic charm. The city adopted a form based code for this part of Westwood and has been investing money in the schools and parks with plans to create a town square in what is now an awkward triangular intersection next to the Carnegie library. There are also existing businesses and subtle interdependent institutions that simply don’t exist out in new suburban locations. If you want your cello or violin repaired you’re not going to find that sort of thing at the mall between the food court and the Sunglass Hut. A more pedestrian oriented Westwood with unique family oriented destinations and activities could be an engine that pulls the area in a better direction. Sooner or later all those Hipsters downtown are going to start getting married and having kids and their going to want a house with a patch of garden. There could be an advantage to having that life three miles from downtown instead of twenty-two miles out in Mason. On the other hand, Westwood could simply languish and be dragged down by the failing sprawl that surrounds it. It could go either way. Time will tell.

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.

December 20, 2014
The Other Side of the Tracks

I tend to fixate on certain places – sometimes because I love them, other times because I can’t help but stare at twisted wreckage. Lancaster, California has always been 30/70 leaning toward wreckage, although it does show signs of ongoing reinvention so I keep going back. Lancaster is highly representative of most places in suburban America. If Lancaster can successfully adapt to changing circumstances then there’s hope for the rest of the country. I’ve already written several blog posts about the place here, here, here, and here.

Recently Mayor Rex Parris has been in the news suggesting that the MetroLink commuter rail station should either be shut down or moved to the far edge of the city limits. Why? Well… Lancaster is a typical suburb. In fact it’s a far flung exurb with a self-selecting population who left the city in order to escape certain things and particular kinds of people. You know where I’m going with this right? The proverbial “wrong element” whispered by terrified white people who are nervous about their property values and crime. I have no idea what Mr. Parris himself believes one way or another, but he’s genuinely good at representing the concerns of his constituency. In this instance the electorate felt that the wrong kinds of folks were taking the train from downtown Los Angeles and showing up in Lancaster where they proceed to loiter in a disagreeable manner. These weren’t “our kind of people”. After a period of review between the mayor and various agencies it was announced that the MetroLink station would remain, although there were hints at new procedures and assurances of an unspecified nature.

Photo Credit: Google Earth

This got me thinking about the neighborhoods immediately around the train station. To the west of the tracks is an eight block commercial strip referred to as The BLVD. It was once a floundering half dead Main Street that was completely revamped by the local planning department in 2010 and has enjoyed remarkable success on multiple levels. The adjacent streets of single family homes have gotten a boost in popularity and higher property value while the rest of the Antelope Valley is still struggling unsuccessfully to recover from the 2008 crash.



But then there’s the east side of the tracks… These photos look like an Edward Hopper retrospective: bleak, empty, soulless, and unloved. No one has spent ten cents on this part of town in decades and it shows, yet it’s only a block from the beginning of The BLVD. and it’s pressed up against the back side of the train station. In another kind of town this might constitute prime real estate, or at least a place that had a little something going on. After all, the commuter train gives you direct convenient access to everything greater Los Angeles has to offer from jobs to culture. But in Lancaster it’s mostly vacant land, underutilized parking lots, semi-occupied warehouses, and marginal low value businesses. That’s not to say that people don’t live, work, attend church, and go to school in the nearby blocks. They’re just doing so without the benefit of any viable civic infrastructure.

There may be good reasons why extending The BLVD east to the other side of the tracks won’t work. Aside from any physical or political limitations Lancaster may not be able to absorb much more in the way of upscale dining and discretionary shopping. I’ve had conversations with locals who say they can’t afford a $25 Italian dinner or a $6 beer at a trendy brew pub. Maybe eight blocks of good quality brick and mortar establishments is all Lancaster can handle at the moment. I’ve also heard that developers think the local real estate market might be able to absorb another fifty urban style condo/apartments near The BLVD. But five hundred? They just don’t know since this is terra incognita for them and their traditional business model. But the east side of the tracks might be the perfect place to establish an entirely different kind of environment at a lower price point that actually works for the people who already live nearby. Yucca Ave. runs parallel to the railroad tracks rather than perpendicular like The BLVD. More importantly, it’s an area the theater and chardonnay crowd never sees and doesn’t care about so it’s a great place to do some low cost, low risk, potentially high return experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t.



The city of Lancaster spent $10.5 million on the redevelopment of The BLVD, plus some state and federal funds. Personally, I can’t see the city mustering the political will to scrape together that kind of money to transform Yucca Ave. in a similar fashion. Instead, I see the back alleys and vacant parking lots as incubators for local micro-entrepreneurs who will interact with the people who live next door and down the street. It’s less about making everything “pretty” and more about making the place vibrant and productive at a scale that works on a tight budget. Yucca is just too big and wide and needs too much major help to be saved at the moment. But the backs and sides of these commercial buildings actually have a human scale and can be connected to the smaller more domestic streets and buildings they face across the alley.



Here’s one possible model that Lancaster might try along Yucca. This is a crappy triangular parking lot in San Francisco sandwiched between a double decker freeway and a Costco. I can’t imagine a worse location for anything. But a clever entrepreneur decided to rent the parking lot, install a few port-a-potties and hand washing stations, set up some inexpensive outdoor furniture, and then charge a modest rent for parking spaces to a rotating cast of local food trucks. It’s been fantastically successful and unlike The BLVD it costs almost nothing to install. This kind of operation does best in a marginal location with no NIMBYs or brick and mortar competition. Food trucks are infinitely less expensive to buy and operate than a traditional restaurant so the bar to entry is much lower for small business people. If the bank says no to a modest loan it’s possible to get start up capital from an aunt or cousin. In fact, these are most likely to be collaborative family businesses. The food these trucks serve is radically more affordable and can represent the specific tastes of the community in a way that McDonald’s or Domino’s may not – and the profits stay local rather than being sucked out to corporate headquarters. All the city of Lancaster would need to do is keep out of the way and let small business people do their thing without an endless amount of code enforcement to gum up the works.



Here’s a different approach that might work even better since I’ve never actually seen a food truck anywhere in the Antelope Valley. My guess is that they’re illegal and/or can’t find a hospitable spot to park given the relentless and pervasive “mall security” guarding the Taco Bells and Applebees. This is the Underground Food Market in Oakland. This is a pop up market that appears quickly and then melts away in a single day. Both the vendors and the customers are told the date of the next event, but only alerted to the exact location at the last moment in order to keep code enforcement people unaware long enough to actually conduct business for an afternoon. None of these people use anything more elaborate than folding tables and barbecue equipment and it all fits in the trunk of a car or a pick up truck. Does this sort of thing violate a dozen health, safety, and zoning regulations? Yep. Has anyone ever gotten sick or died? Nope. If Lancaster could find a way to legitimize this sort of activity they might discover a ready supply of people in the neighborhood who would bring their talents to bear.



I want to get back to the idea of human scale and how the best parts of Yucca are the little spaces between and around the buildings instead of the big parking lots and super wide street frontage. Everywhere I go in the world I find some of the best streets are barely wide enough for a car to pass through – and that’s part of the magic. I could see stretching some sun shades over the top of these alleys in Lancaster and lining the blank walls with shallow market stalls. This is an economic incubator that costs pennies and could lead to bigger and more permanent local businesses. The trick is to get the entry cost for experimentation down low enough to engage people without much capital or credit. Will this sort of thing terrify suburban homeowners out in the gated communities? Yep. Will they care if it happens in the “bad” part of town that they never visit? Maybe not…



Here’s another example of a reuse of an existing space with very little actual construction. Property values are so high and vacancies are so low in places like San Francisco that every crappy building in every marginal location is being pressed into service for things that no one would have envisioned twenty years ago. Lancaster could do exactly the same thing at a much lower price point. I don’t imagine the wine and cheese crowd being interested in Yucca anytime soon, but there are all sorts of other subcultures that would love this much space to tinker with for their legitimate enterprises so long as the local authorities cut them some slack. What most of these empty warehouses in Lancaster need is fresh paint and the right people to colonize them. The trouble with lone mom and pop operations in this sort of desolate location is that without community and other active participants they tend to wither. Lancaster desperately needs a well organized group to adopt this place. Koreans, Mormons, Armenians, Hasidic Jews, Guatemalans… it needs a La Raza, a Chinatown, or a respectable gay population – any cohesive subculture that can reimagine the place and add vitality in a focussed and concentrated manner. Would it kill city officials to hang out the welcome mat instead of freaking out when “They” appear at the train station?



Here’s one last example of a seriously bad location that is starting to be transformed in a way that cost the city almost nothing. Flora Grubb was a successful business woman who rented a vacant lot in San Francisco’s Mission District back when The Mission was cheap and considered a bad neighborhood. Renting a vacant lot was one of the few affordable options back when she was younger and just starting out. She didn’t need a building or much infrastructure since she sold plants, garden supplies, and outdoor furniture. As The Mission gradually became fashionable (largely due to lots of cool people like Flora doing their thing) property values rose so high that she was asked to leave so her landlord could put up luxury condos on the site. But the landlord was a clever guy. He had another vacant lot in a different miserable part of town half a block from the sewage treatment plant. He arranged for Flora to set up shop there. She had enough of a loyal following by then that people were willing to follow her to the new location. Her current shop is an open air industrial shed and a former parking lot. The landlord owns other nearby properties and is leveraging Flora’s activities to boost those values. Flora is the catalyst for the transformation of an entire block.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Lancaster needs to become a mini San Francisco. That isn’t going to happen. But there are cost-effective techniques for jumpstarting a revival that Lancaster might consider in one of its least loved neighborhoods.

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.

November 22, 2014
Would the Twin Cities Survive New Urbanism?

In December, the Metropolitan Council of Minneapolis and St. Paul is scheduled to vote on a vision for the region’s housing and transportation future. “Thrive MSP 2040” is the council’s comprehensive development plan for the seven-county Twin Cities metro area for the next 30 years. It’s a regional growth plan that will result not in a cure for the area’s ills, though, but in a virus that will kill its vitality.

The Minneapolis/ St. Paul area is one of the most livable regions in the nation. That’s not because residents were forced onto transit and into high density housing, as ‘Thrive’ will do. Growth occurred in a natural manner, in an area with great schools, because people here had the freedom to choose the size of yard for their kids, and the ability to embrace the natural openness of the region. The vigorous suburban growth that resulted has helped our vitality, despite past decisions from the Met Council to neutralize it.

The Metropolitan Council isn’t alone in adopting New Urbanist plans on a wholesale basis. Their approach, and the problems that go with it, are being repeated by many planning boards nationwide. The 350-page ‘Detroit Future City’ plan is a tunnel-vision strategy based on the same New Urbanist thought. With the best of intentions — goals of avoiding pre-fabricated monotony and sprawl, and creating affordable, livable communities — municipalities are actually writing prescriptions that will do just the opposite.

I speak with the perspective of a locally-based development consultant, and as an observer and resident of the region for 31 years. I’ve witnessed what has actually helped make this area succeed. At my company, we’ve designed hundreds of sustainable neighborhoods that don’t adhere to the New Urbanist principles of high density and only public transit.

Two decades ago, the Met Council placed its faith in an urban growth boundary, limiting sewer development in the metro area to inoculate itself against “sprawl”. The result was an increase in the very sprawl the council sought to avoid, as development leap-frogged outside the seven-county area to escape the high land prices created by the artificial land limitation.

The Met Council hired Peter Calthorpe, founder of Congress for the New Urbanism, for several million in tax dollars, to provide a vision for our region’s future growth. The ‘one size fits all’ approach resulted in projects like Clover Ridge in Chaska, Ramsey Town Center, and indirectly, others like St. Michaels ‘Town Center’, none of which delivered the promises that had been made.

Calthorpe’s attempt to create a ‘sense of place’ failed to sufficiently attract home buyers. For example, the ‘conventionally planned’ sections of Clover Ridge sold well. But, with their sardine-like density, the housing along alleys remained vacant. Because the development did not attract as many homebuyers as anticipated, among other reasons, local shopping and restaurants did not materialize as the Met Council had promised.

More recently, ‘Smart Growth’ planners of projects such as ‘Excelsior and Grand’ in St. Louis Park failed to acknowledge why retailers were abandoning their spaces. A spokeswoman for Panera Bread cited poor location and lack of convenience for customers. Yet ‘Excelsior and Grand’ is a model New Urbanist plan, complete with the obligatory central ‘traffic circle’ with a ‘sense of place’ sculpture.

These smart-growth projects are examples of architects preaching a singular growth model that does not work for all people, in all climates. Those who assume that working class residents will appreciate waiting outside in 20 below zero weather at an architecturally designed “sense of place” bus stop, and then coming home to the 14th floor of a high rise, are clueless. And the dense projects being built in this region have the same sort of repetition of design that smart-growth planners criticize in suburbia.

Today in the Twin Cities, sales of new, single-family homes are rebounding, creating a catalyst for economic stability. Despite this market reality, some developers are still submitting new multifamily housing proposals. That’s due to Met Council density mandates, not because of market demand. The Council’s assumption is that the population will migrate to the urban core for its (expensive) restaurants and its 19th century rail technology, abandoning spacious suburbs and cars. But sales suggest otherwise.

The Met Council’s ‘Thrive 2040′ vision will undermine the American Dream of obtaining an affordable single-family home in an area where one desires to live, with the freedom of travel (and protection from our harsh winters) that only personal vehicles currently provide. Under the ‘Thrive’ mandates, more workers will need to live in ‘affordable housing’ (mid- or high rises) and take mass transit to their jobs. Yet ‘affordable housing’ remains elusive in ‘Smart Growth’ projects, unless it is heavily subsidized with tax dollars.

Calthorpe’s Congress for the New Urbanism actually boasts of the gentrification it produces. But when home prices go up, what happens to the living standard for displaced low-income families? The working class, regardless of race, should be outraged by ‘Thrive’.

Density does not guarantee affordability. We cannot forever throw tax dollars at high-density development solutions in an effort to make them economically feasible. A successful, balanced housing market drives the economy. At their December meeting, let’s hope the Met Council recognizes that the ‘Thrive’ vision is anything but balanced.

Rick Harrison is President of Rick Harrison Site Design Studio and Neighborhood Innovations, LLC. He is author of Prefurbia: Reinventing The Suburbs From Disdainable To Sustainable and creator of Performance Planning System. His websites are rhsdplanning.com and pps-vr.com.

Flickr photo by Adelie Freyja Annabel: Edina, a suburb of Minneapolis. “This is the original Caribou Coffee, which opened in 1992 on France Avenue between Sunnyside and 44th Street.”

November 21, 2014
Canada’s Prairie Cities Step Up

Traditionally, the discussion of Canadian urban issues focussed almost exclusively on the Big Three cities: Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, with the occasional nod to Ottawa. Calgary, Winnipeg, and Regina were generally only mentioned as punchlines, and, until recently, no one in urban Canada really knew what was going on in Edmonton other than that they had a winning hockey team in the ’80s and a really big mall. Saskatoon, which Joni Mitchell famously escaped as soon as she could, hasn’t historically been on anyone’s radar, and Regina is scarcely mentioned outside the context of football. It’s not surprising that many Prairie residents are defensive or bashful about their cities, given the PR they’ve gotten over the years. But from an outsider perspective, now is a very good time to live on the Prairies.

With Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, and Saskatoon perennially vying for the title of fastest growing Canadian city, and with Winnipeg in the early stages of an urban renaissance, it’s getting harder to ignore Canada’s Prairie cities. The narrative is shifting. The election of young, urbane, and pragmatic mayors in Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg has put the spotlight on these once ignored cities.

Naheed Nenshi, a Harvard-educated McKinsey consultant turned university instructor, was improbably elected Mayor of Calgary in a 2010 landslide victory. His quick wit and social media savvy have made him a darling of Canadian urbanists. He was recently short-listed for the World Mayor Prize. Regardless of what one thinks of his policy agenda, he is a good ambassador for the city.

Not to be outdone, Edmonton elected 34-year-old city councillor and self-proclaimed nerd Don Iveson as mayor in 2013. Iveson recently made headlines for showing up at a comic expo in full Star Trek attire. His nerd-chic appeal has resonated with a cohort of young Edmontonians who feel that the city’s creative community gets short shrift. He, like Nenshi, is thought of as a smart, moderate mayor, an image that flies in the face of the redneck Albertan stereotype that hasn’t been an accurate representation of either of these Alberta cities for quite some time.

Winnipeg has followed suit, electing privacy lawyer Brian Bowman as mayor. The 43-year-old has chaired both the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce. Like Nenshi and Iveson, Bowman was elected with a diverse support base, including the business and arts communities. Being of Metis descent, he is also considered to be in a strong position to address some of the challenges facing the city’s large, indigenous population.

The three mayors have more in common than belonging to roughly the same age cohort. All three are seen as moderates, and all have had some minor political experience but aren’t identified strongly with any political party. Each grew up in his respective city. Their biographies underscore an often overlooked advantage of Prairie cities: opportunities for economic mobility.

As Canada’s Big Three cities get more expensive, Prairie cities are becoming increasingly attractive to recent graduates and early career professionals. Relatively affordable rents and tighter labour markets make them bargains, relative to Toronto or Vancouver. Tighter labour markets combined with the general default instinct among young professionals and graduates to move to Toronto or Vancouver mean that Prairie cities are a good place to get from the bottom to the middle in one’s industry. While there is a ceiling – the best paid financial sector employees will be in Toronto for the foreseeable future – there is less competition. Being able to live in the most attractive urban neighbourhoods for less than the cost of living in generally undesirable Toronto neighbourhoods, or being able to buy a house for a fraction of the sale price in Vancouver, sweetens the deal.

Prairie cities are also a great place to take a chance. Lower rents mean that someone who wants to open a business needs to accumulate less capital and borrow less money than he or she would in a bigger city. That makes opening a restaurant or founding a start-up a less risky proposition. The same goes for aspiring artists. Relatively cheap gallery space makes it much easier to display one’s work. Whereas it might take family connections or years of networking to get on the board of a non-profit in Toronto or Vancouver, opportunities abound on the Prairies.

In the world of politics, contrast Nenshi, Iveson, and Bowman, all from fairly ordinary families, with the winner of the last Toronto election.

Toronto’s new mayor, John Tory, was born to the founder of the prestigious law firm Torys LLP. Tory was given his start in business at telecom giant Rogers by family friend Ted Rogers, the son of Rogers founder Edward Rogers, and went on to later run Rogers. His career also included running the Canadian Football League, making partner at the family firm, serving as principle secretary to former Premier of Ontario Bill Davis, chairing the campaign of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and leading the official opposition in the Ontario legislature. In short, John Tory is the epitome of the Canadian establishment. His chief opponents weren’t exactly political novices either.

Could Nenshi, Iveson, or Bowman have plausibly become the Mayor of Toronto? The answer is likely no. While some might argue that the level of political competition is necessarily higher in Toronto, the bigger reason is that the entrenched political and business elites in the three major cities have more clout than their Prairie counterparts.

Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, and Saskatoon are dominated by new money. While Winnipeg has some influential legacy families, the political barriers to entry are generally much lower than they are in Toronto. A person of Bowman’s upbringing would have had an exceedingly difficult time becoming chair of the Chamber of Commerce in Toronto. An academic City Hall gadfly like Nenshi wouldn’t have a chance, even if he considered making a run for Mayor of Toronto. And someone as young as Iveson would have a hard time getting elected as a city councillor in Toronto, let alone as mayor. That isn’t meant to take away from them in the least. It is merely a recognition that the political system in Toronto is much more elite-driven.

The combination of affordability, opportunity, and economic mobility presents a major opportunity for Canadian Prairies cities. Lower political barriers to entry can facilitate more responsive local governments. Relative isolation can help to spawn innovation of necessity. And upward mobility can help lure young talent from across the county.

Cynically – or optimistically, depending on one’s view – none of these young mayors has a great deal of power to bend the trajectory of their cities. Mayors are merely single votes on councils, and even city councils are only one of many actors that shape these respective cities. Arguably the most important thing that mayors can do is serve as good ambassadors for their cities. The first step is to convince residents of the reality that things are going pretty well, and even better times lay ahead. The rest of the world won’t believe in Prairie cities until their own residents do. Civic pride is contagious.

So far Nenshi has been an exceptional civic booster, and Iveson appears to be on that trajectory, too. Bowman seems keen on following in their footsteps. Hopefully, mayors and councillors in the rest of the Prairie cities can do the same. Prairie cities are having a moment, and that moment could potentially be a very long and a very good one.

Steve Lafleur is the Assistant Director of Research for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and has lived in every major Prairie city with the exception of Saskatoon.

Flickr Photo by Elsie, Calgary Reviews: A chai latte at Caffe Rosso, Calgary

November 13, 2014