New Geography

Category: Urban Issues

  • London Special Report: Britain Drifts South – and Why Not?

    The British Broadcasting Corporation wants 1500 of its staff to move to its new ”MediaCity” headquarters in Salford, near Manchester in northwest England. The Corporation, they say with some justification, is too southern, too much part of the metropolitan elite. The move ”addresses concerns that the organisation is not fully representative of the peoples of the UK.”

    On the surface it looks like a good deal. On top of a £5000 payment, they have been offered £350 for each house-hunting journey as well as removal costs, a guaranteed house purchase scheme and and even £3,000 for new carpets and curtains. Other benefits include help securing jobs for spouses or partners jobs in the area and specialist help with children’s schooling. For all that, take up for the scheme has been slow, and the Corporation’s grunts were unhappy to hear that the head of BBC North, Peter Salmon ”is the latest exec to announce that he would rather hack off his own face than move his family anywhere remotely near the north,” as ex-BBC producer Rod Liddle puts it.

    The BBC’s difficulties in persuading its staff of the benefits of the North of England reflects a broader British predicament. Since the 1930s British governments have tried to use grants boost Britain’s depressed regions in the North of England, Wales and Scotland. None of this has stopped the long-term trend of population movement. Demographers Daniel Dorling and Bethan Thomas of Sheffield University point out that outside of London, all major cities are declining in population, and that ”the population of the UK is slowly moving to the South.”

    Dorling and Thomas’s analysis of the 2001 Census drew criticism from regional dignitaries. Bob Kerslake, chief executive of Sheffield City council, and a champion of the lobbying group Core Cities insisted that ”there is already evidence of a turnaround in the last five years and every prospect of things getting better.” Denton and Reddish MP Andrew Bennet, Labour chairman of the Commons local government, housing and planning committee also claimed that ”in the regeneration of cities, the government’s proposals are working well,” while admitting that there were ”horrendous” problems.

    Looking at what Dorling and Thomas say, it is not hard to see why the census should be so problematic for champions of a Northern resurgence.

    At the start of the 21st Century, the human geography of the UK can most simply be summarised as a tale of one metropolis and its provincial hinterland… On each side of the divide there is a great city structure with a central dense urban core, suburbs, parks and a rural fringe. However, to the south these areas are converging as a great metropolis, while to the north is a provincial archipelago of city islands.

    In recent years the decline of the North has at least been mollified by a relatively buoyant economy in contrast to the disaster of de-industrialisation that it was in the 1980s. Yet even still, the divergence is difficult to wish away. Most disturbing, much of the growth taking place in the North owes more to government spending that it does to private initiative. The public spending share in output is 52.6 per cent in the North West, 61.5 per cent in the North East, and 54.9 per cent in Scotland.

    For housing, the importance is clear. With the provinces suffering greater or lesser degrees of depopulation, houses have to be cleared. In 2002 government plans to demolish up to 880,000 homes in northern England and the Midlands were announced. Gateshead, Newcastle, Blackburn, Manchester, Hull, Sheffield, Liverpool, Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham are all earmarked for substantial demolitions. In Liverpool alone, the council has to cope with 28,000 derelict homes. Long-standing development critic Simon Jenkins bemoaned the plans to knock down 100,000 Victorian terrace houses in the Welsh Streets area of Liverpool as they constitute precisely the “sort of buildings” over which yuppies “would purr” if they were in London.’.

    The contrast between empty homes in the North of the country and the prospect of new building in the South offends people like Green Party’s London leader Darren Johnson who says that it is ”particularly ludicrous to have every single scrap of land in London and the South East being eyed up by developers, when the populations of other regions, such as the North West and the North East, are actually declining.”

    Ros Coward, columnist for the liberal Guardian newspaper, protests that ”In the North-West, vast tracts of urban land lie derelict, while in the South-East … our countryside is under ever-increasing threat.” Uber-architect Richard Rogers takes a similar view, arguing that ”regional balance is critical to achieving a sustainable economy”. This is in the context of bemoaning the ”divided country” of the North and the Midlands with the ”bulk of redundant industrial land” and the South-East’ where the ”greatest pressure for new housing development” is felt.

    Though he is cautious to spell it out, Rogers’s ”regional balance” could only achieved by relocating people up North. No doubt the chaotic workings of the economy do create unplanned waste and blight, but does anyone suggest people should be forced to move up North? Infamously Westminster Council housed its homeless out of borough, paying more outlying regions to take on the social problem. More recently the government imposed resettlement schemes on asylum seekers, forcing them into unwelcoming estates in Glasgow and elsewhere. Surely, everybody understands that in a free society you cannot direct people where to live, like Stalin did the Chechens in 1944 – or do they, particularly if the case can be made on ideological grounds, this time green instead of red.

    It’s undoubtedly true that there is indeed a London-centric bias among British policy makers and media professionals. Deeply rooted in the gentrified boroughs of inner London, opinion-formers often treat the rest of the country with disdain. But it would be a mistake to see the population’s southern drift as the ascendance of the metropolitan chattering classes.

    As important as London is to Britain’s economy, the more interesting area of growth is the south east region around London. The South East has the second highest GDP, and the second highest GDP per head of any region. London has the highest GDP, but it also has more of the very poorest people than the South East.

    This is the heartland of Britain’s middle classes, first in the percentage of the population economically active and the fastest growing demographically. Coastal Brighton, 60 miles from London’s centre, is Britain’s fastest growing town. If the BBC offered its relocation package to move staff to Southampton or Brighton, there would be many more takers.

    We cannot keep holding like Canute and wish away the shifting economic geography of Britain. It is something that has to be worked with. For cities and towns outside of the southeast that can mean some profound challenges. It is not easy to manage a downsizing without it appearing to be a rout.

    But the demolition of old houses ought not to be seen as a disaster, so much as an opportunity. Britain’s ageing housing stock needs renewing. Simon Jenkins presumed to speak up for the “local community” of the Welsh Streets area of Liverpool, but Irene Milson and Mary Huxham of the local tenants and residents association saw things differently:

    Far from it being “wrought” on them, residents in this neighbourhood have been campaigning to be included within the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders plan for over four years. The decision was supported in a survey of all Welsh Street residents, with a 72 per cent majority in favour of a clearance. … The campaigners, conservationists and critics don’t have to deal with 125-year old properties that are damp, decaying and expensive to heat – let alone with collapsed Victorian sewage systems now over-ridden with rats.

    In principle, there is nothing wrong with the population concentrating itself more densely in one part of the country than another. It is not as if it will tip up and sink. No doubt a perfectly planned society would achieve things less chaotically, but in a democratic society it is better to manage change,rather have planners reshape our society from above.

    James Heartfield is the author of Let’s Build: Why we need five million new homes, a director of Audacity.org, and a member of the 250 New Towns Club.

    Photo by Feuillu

  • London Special Report: The Making of the Hundred Mile City

    (Part I of II.) The writer Ford Madox Ford summarised the inventiveness of the early twentieth century in an essay The Future of London (1909) by lambasting what he called the “tyranny of the past.” “The future,” he argued on the other hand, wages a ceaseless war against the monuments of the past’.

    This debate is alive today in the battle between the emerging metropolitan reality and the nostalgia of the urban past. Ford’s dream was of a Great London ‘… not of seven, but of seventy-million imperially minded people’.

    Unlike urbanist romantics, Ford’s “Great London” presciently considered the capital in relation to its suburbs. He also refused to call them “suburbs”, which he thought derogatory, from the Latin sub urbe, meaning less than the town, and preferring instead the more ambitious fore town: “The fore town of my Great London would be on the one hand, say, Oxford, and on the other, say, Dover.”

    Ford, much like his contemporary H.G. Wells, imagined a London that extended from Winchester, the delightful country around Petersfield, Chichester, all of the coast down to Brighton, Hastings, Dover, all of Essex and round again by way of Cambridge and Oxford. “All south-eastern England,” he wrote, “is just London.”


    London and the South East, seen from the night sky, shows the expansion into the South East

    Neither Utopian, nor Dystopian, Ford’s vision proved accurate. Sir Richard Rogers says as much himself, in his Cities for a Small Planet, describing London, some thirty miles wide in 1945, as a commuter belt 200 miles wide stretching from Cambridge to Southampton, and is the largest and most complex urban region in Europe. What delights Ford, appals Rogers.

    Ford was also correct that in failing to embrace change and embrace status of the fore town,. it reduced to the status of suburbs, and many opportunities were lost to create a healthier decentralized metropolis. The elements of Ford’s plan that never got off the drawing board were his proposals to “thin out” central London. Perhaps this had something to do with an eagerness to hang onto the Duke of Westminster’s slum tenements.

    It is tragic that Ford’s vision was ignored, and the real day-dream, that of a London contained, has continued to dominate policy. As a result, there is no London, as such. The city has lost all definition, as its outer edges have blurred into the dormitory towns around it. Having burst its bounds, there really is no recognisable unit called London that can be parcelled together under one name any more. The green belt cannot contain the sprawling suburbs. London has dissolved as its boundaries expand and become more porous.

    For more than a century, the London of the Londonostalgics has been a fraction of the administrative London. Victorian London outnumbers medieval London by more than six to one. Since 1965 Greater London has incorporated Essex boroughs like Walthamstow and other “railway suburbs”.

    The Londonostalgics jeer at the suburbs. ‘Barret Hutches … ‘Kennels’, ‘Lego Homes’, ‘They come in kits,’ according to Iain Sinclair. But for all that bitter condescension, London’s suburbs are where most of its population now lives. Put another way, they do not live in London at all, but Stevenage, Shepperton, or even Oxford and Brighton, commuting sometimes to work or play in the central heritage zone.

    How did London expand?

    From 1901 to 1950 the County of London’s population fell. In the 1930s the annual rate of decline was quite steady at around eight percent, but between 1938 and 1947 that climbed to 40%, reducing the County to a population of 3,245,000. By 1961 that number had reduced to 3,200,000.

    But these numbers obscure the demographic vitality of London, if viewed broadly. If one includes the many who live in the suburbs, the green belt or the outer country, the population of London has climbed to 10.6 million.

    London’s population changes continued to present a confusing picture. In 1965, Greater London incorporated parts of Essex and Middlesex to take account of the popular movement. But between 1961 and 1981 the population of this new, Greater London fell 15%, a loss of 1,186,000 people. Then in 1984, against everyone’s expectations, the direction of population movement changed again with the outer suburbs growing, and inner London once again growing, albeit modestly, between 1981 and today.

    Year

    Inner London Population

    Greater London Population

    1939

    4,364,457

    8,615,000

    1951

    3,679,390

    8,197,000

    1961

    3,492,879

    7,992,000

    1971

    3,031,935

    7,452,000

    1981

    2,550,100

    6,806,000

    1991

    2,559,300

    6,890,000

    2001

    2,859,400

    7,322,400

    2009

    3,061,000

    7,750,000

    Not only did London’s population change unexpectedly, in the opposite direction planned for in Patrick Abercrombie’s 1944 plan for the region: the outer boroughs expanded at the expense of the inner. The greater growth took place in the belt just beyond Greater London,adding another 2-3 million.

    Long before Lord Rogers sought to promote the city against sprawl, planners were trying to reverse the flow of people from London. Then why is London’s expansion so confusing?

    London’s growth combines two distinct trends. There is an underlying trend towards expansion and dispersion due to shifts in the locus of economic growth and better transport. But in the 1980s there was counter-trend of inward migration (much of it from Bangladesh) and later some gentrification in the inner city.

    The secular expansion and dispersal of London’s population can be seen in the fact that the thinning out of inner London’s population is roughly proportional to the expansion of outer London. From 1940, the same trend is expressed in the decline of Greater London’s population relative to the expansion of the outer suburbs of Surrey, Essex, Middlesex and Hertfordshire. “In each decade, the centres of growth moved a little farther out,” says Stephen Inwood, and this continues to be the pattern.


    London and its commuter belt (the ‘Travel to Work Area’, where three quarters of those working work in London) has a population of 9,294,800

    Transportation is the most important factor in dispersal. A.N. Wilson notes that even in the mid-nineteenth century the breakthrough of elliptic springs led to the “age of the carriage folk”, and that this was in turn spurring a movement out of the centre: even “the Marxes abandoned their cramped flat in Soho and moved to a variety of new-built family houses in Kentish Town on the edges of Hampstead Heath.” * So too did William Morris, in his Pre-Raphaelite phase, move from lodgings in the then run-down Red Lion Square, to Bexleyheath in Kent, where he built his celebrated Red House with Philip Webb in 1859. “He continued to curse the iniquities of railways,” writes his biographer Fiona MacCarthy, “but he was to make good use of Abbey Wood, his local station, only three miles away on the newly opened North Kent line.” * Edward Burne-Jones and Gabriel Dante Rossetti were just some of the medieval revivalists collected from the station in Morris’s specially built carriage.

    Later on, lower rail prices – “workmen tickets” – helped clerks establish themselves in Hackney, Wood Green, Hornsey, Hendon, Willesden, Balham and Camberwell. However, these same railway terminals were also adding to the overcrowding of inner London, as land was found for stations by knocking down working-class slums, or “rookeries” – with the surplus population generally moving to the adjacent neighbourhood. *

    In the early century it was electric trams and underground extensions. Historian Asa Briggs says that the slogan of the North Metropolitan Railway (extended from Baker Street to Harrow in 1880) Live in Metroland!, “showed that it was not so much satisfying existing needs as creating new residential districts.” *

    By the post-war period the South-East went through another expansion, one that was driven by the car, rather than the train, which was losing out to its more versatile rival. In 1951 the M1 to Birmingham opened just as car ownership spread among the middle classes. In 1970 the Westway took the M40 right into central London, and in 1986 the London orbital outer ring-road, the M25 was opened by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

    Greater car ownership was helping to accelerate the process of suburbanisation, coupled with the policies pursued in the 1980s of promoting home ownership (at the expense of public housing). Tories took pride in winning over “Essex Man” – the psychological construct of the aspirant working class voter. Though between 1981 and 1991 it was Cornwall, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire whose population grew fastest, while those of London, Liverpool and Belfast were all stagnant or falling.

    Planners have tried again and again to restrict the growth of London, from the Abercrombie Plan of 1946 to the Urban Task Force of 1998. But just as they planned for a denser inner core and to limit outward sprawl, Londoners stubbornly have preferred the opposite. Even when they changed the boundary to include more of the suburbs and called it Greater London, the main thrust of growth had already moved further outwards into the commuter belt, and the rest of the South East. In reality, today, Oxford and Brighton, Southend and even Southampton are all part of a vast Southern conurbation. Political leaders have failed to catch up with these changes and even tried to stop them – but the change, as Ford explained, is happening with or without them.

    James Heartfield, of the development think-tank audacity.org spoke, at the Mayor’s ‘Story of London’ event on ‘Is London Growing Too Fast?’ on 5 October 2010.

    Photo: By J. A. Alcaide

  • North America’s Fastest-Growing Cities

    The U.S. and Canada’s emerging cities are not experiencing the kind of super-charged growth one sees in urban areas of the developing world, notably China and India. But unlike Europe, this huge land mass’ population is slated to expand by well over 100 million people by 2050, driven in large part by continued immigration.

    In the course of the next 40 years, the biggest gainers won’t be behemoths like New York, Chicago, Toronto and Los Angeles, but less populous, easier-to-manage cities that are both affordable and economically vibrant.

    Americans may not be headed to small towns or back to the farms, but they are migrating to smaller cities. Over the past decade, the biggest migration of Americans has been to cities with between 100,000 and 1 million residents. In contrast, notes demographer Wendell Cox, regions with more than 10 million residents suffered a 10% rate of net outmigration, and those between 5 million and 10 million lost a net 2.4%.

    In North America it’s all about expanding options. A half-century ago, the bright and ambitious had relatively few choices: Toronto and Montreal for Canadians or New York, Chicago or Los Angeles for Americans. In the 1990s a series of other, fast-growing cities–San Jose, Calif.; Miami; San Diego; Houston; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; and Phoenix–emerged with the capacity to accommodate national and even global businesses.

    Now several relatively small-scale urban regions are reaching the big leagues. These include at least two cities in Texas: Austin and San Antonio. Economic vibrancy and growing populations drive these cities, which ranked first and second, respectively, among large cities on Our “Best Places For Jobs” list.

    Austin and San Antonio are increasingly attractive to both companies and skilled workers seeking opportunity in a lower-cost, high-growth environment. Much the same can be said about the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, and Salt Lake City, two other U.S. cities that have been growing rapidly and enjoy excellent prospects.

    One key advantage for these areas is housing prices. Even after the real estate bust, according to the National Association of Homebuilders, barely one-third of median-income households in Los Angeles can afford to own a median-priced home; in New York only one-fourth can. In the four American cities on our list, between two-thirds and four-fifths of the median-income households can afford the American Dream.

    Advocates of dense megacities often point out that many poorer places, including old Rust Belt cities, enjoy high levels of affordability, while more prosperous regions, such as New York, do not. But lack of affordability itself is a problem; areas with the lowest affordability, including New York, also have suffered from high rates of domestic outmigration. The true success formula for a dynamic region mixes affordability with a growing economy.

    Our future cities also are often easier for workers and entrepreneurs alike. Despite the presence of the nation’s best-developed mass transit systems, the longest commutes can be found in the New York area; the worst are for people living in the boroughs of Queens and Staten Island. As a general rule, commuting times tend to be longer than average in some other biggest cities, including Chicago and Washington.

    In contrast, the average commutes in places like Raleigh or San Antonio are as little as 22 minutes on average–roughly one-third of the biggest-city commutes. Figure over a year, and moving to these smaller cities can add 120 hours or more a year for the average commuter to do productive work or spend time with the family.

    Similar dynamics–convenience, less congestion, rapid job growth and affordability–also are at work in Canada, where two cities, Ottawa (which stretches from Ontario into Quebec) and Calgary, stand out with the best prospects. Many Canadians, particularly from Vancouver, would dispute this assertion. But Vancouver, the beloved poster child of urban planners, also suffers extraordinarily high housing prices–by some measurements the highest in the English-speaking world. This can be traced in part to the presence of buyers from other parts of Canada and abroad, particularly from East Asia, but also to land-use controls that keep suburban properties off the market.

    Calgary, located on the Canadian plains, not much more than an hour from the Rockies, retains plenty of room to grow, and its housing price-to-income ratio is roughly half that of Vancouver’s. Calgary is also the center of the country’s powerful energy industry, which seems likely to expand during the next few decades, and its future is largely assured by soaring demand from China and other developing countries.

    The other Canadian candidate, the capital city of Ottawa and its surrounding region, has developed a strong high-tech sector to go along with steady government employment. Remy Tremblay, a professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal, notes that Ottawa “is changing very rapidly” from a mere administrative center to a high-tech hotshot. Yet for all its growth, it remains remarkably affordable in comparison with rival Toronto, not to mention Vancouver.

    In developing this list we have focused on many criteria–affordability, ease of transport and doing business–that are often ignored on present and future “best places” lists. Yet ultimately it is these often mundane things, not grandiose projects or hyped revivals of small downtown districts, that drive talented people and companies to emerging places.

    Raleigh Durham, N.C.

    Even in hard times this low-density, wide-ranging urban area has repeatedly performed well on Forbes’ list of the best cities for jobs. The area is a magnet for technology firms fleeing the more expensive, congested and highly regulated northeast corridor. One big problem obstructing the region’s ascendancy has been air connections. But Delta recently announced a large-scale expansion of flights there from around the country. Population growth will likely be lead by educated millennials seeking affordable housing and employment opportunities. Today the region has 1.7 million residents; the State of North Carolina projects it will grow to 2.4 million by 2025.

    Austin, Texas

    Austonites tend to be smug, but they have good reason. The central Texas city ranked as the No. 1 large urban area for jobs in our last Forbes survey. Along with Raleigh-Durham, Austin is an emerging challenger for high-tech supremacy with Silicon Valley. The current area’s population is 1.7 million and is expected to grow rapidly in the coming decades. Austin owes much both to its public sector institutions (the state government and the main Campus of the University of Texas) and its expanding ranks of private companies–including foreign ones–swarming into the city’s surrounding suburban belt.

    Salt Lake City, Utah

    Once seen as a Mormon enclave, the greater Salt Lake urban area–with roughly 1 million people–has every sign of emerging as a major world player with a wider appeal. The church still plays a critical role, in part by financing a massive redevelopment of the city’s now rather dowdy city core. The area’s population has doubled since the early 1970s and will grow another 100,000 by 2025 to well over 1.1 million. New companies are flocking to this business-friendly region, particularly from self-imploding California. Increasing national and global connections through Delta’s hub will tie this once isolated city closer with the wider world economy.

    Calgary, Alberta, Canada

    You don’t have to buy the notion of a climate-change-driven northern ascendancy to see a bright future for Alberta’s premier city. Calgary is positioned well on the fringe of Canada’s largest energy belt and enjoys lower taxes and less stringent regulations than its Canadian rivals. Calgary has been hit by a slowdown in energy business, but over time demand from China, India and a slowly recovering world economy should boost this critical sector. The region is expected to be back to its familiar place on top among Canadian urban economies by next year.

    San Antonio, Texas

    Last year this historic Texas metropolis–home to the Alamo–ranked second on our list “best cities for jobs” among larger cities. The region has been growing rapidly to well over 2.1 million. As the economy, particularly in Texas, recovers, an already strong health care sector will be joined by an expanding industrial base. One key factor in San Antonio’s favor: stable house prices–even by Texas standards. PMI Mortgage Insurance Co.’s most recent risk index, which is a two-year measure, lists San Antonio as having the lowest risk from falling prices among large Texas cities.

    Ottawa, Ontario-Quebec

    Canada’s capital region, which extends across the border to Gatineau, in Quebec, has grown to over 1.2 million. This growth has come in large part from government–which may slow after the end of Canada’s stimulus–but also a vibrant private sector. Ottawa boasts a pleasant quality of life and is one of Canada’s most affordable big cities. The population, notes the University of Quebec’s Remy Tremblay, is the “most educated, with the highest disposable income, of all Canadian cities.” Ottawa airport, Tremblay adds, is experiencing the fastest traffic growth of virtually any in Canada.

    Oklahoma City, Okla.

    Oklahoma City–with its business-friendly environment and abundant oil and natural gas reserves–ranked No. 11 in Forbes’ list of the best big cities for jobs. A KPMG study named it the least costly metro area to do business among U.S. cities with populations between 1 million and 2 million, and according to the Census Bureau Community Survey, it has the third-shortest commute time among the 52 largest cities. Such factors–plus its exciting new basketball star, Kevin Durant–have definitely attracted plenty of new residents. An article in the Sacramento Bee reported that many Californians were migrating to the former Dust Bowl town in search of jobs and more stable housing prices, and its population, at 1.2 million, is expected to grow 9.8% in the next 10 years, according to the Greater Oklahoma City Partnership.

    Omaha, Neb.

    The Omaha metro area has a population of 838,875, making it the 60th largest metropolitan area in the country. And it’s growing, thanks to high in-migration and a recent baby boom that added about 4,600 children between 2008 and 2009. The population has grown 9.4% to from 2000 to 2009, and it is expected to grow another 2.3% by 2014. Why are so many people flocking to Omaha? One reason is the low cost of living, including stable housing prices (like many of the Great Plains cities). Another reason: jobs. Omaha ranked ninth in our most recent best big cities for job list, with its healthy agriculture and civil engineering industries. Its friendly attitude toward business and innovation–as well as the strong universities in the area–has made it a leader in biotechnology. More than 20 bioscience companies are headquartered there–including Streck Laboratories and ConAgra Foods.

    Northern Virginia

    Formerly considered a suburb of Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia–which comprises Arlington, Fairfax, Loudon and Prince William counties, as well as other independent cities–has become a metro area of its own. The expanding federal government no doubt plays a large part in the area’s growth; the CIA and the Department of Defense are headquartered there, and it is home to many other government agencies. The area also has one of the largest technology industries outside Silicon Valley. Northern Virginia has one of the most affluent, as well as the most educated, populations in the country; an astonishing 35% of Arlington County’s population, for example, holds a graduate or professional degree.

    Nashville, Tenn.

    A high quality of life, a vibrant cultural and music scene and a diverse population make Nashville a desirable place to live. The Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization expects the 10-county greater Nashville area, home to 1.3 million people, to add close to another million by the year 2035. Low housing costs contribute to a cost of living that is lower than other affordable cities, like Raleigh, Austin, Dallas or Indianapolis. Nashville is also home to a growing health care industry: More than 250 health care companies have operations in Nashville, and 56 are headquartered there.

    Columbus, Ohio

    While the recession has taken a huge toll on the rest of Ohio, Columbus has been thriving, thanks to strong population growth, a booming startup culture and the largest college campus in the country–Ohio State University, a major employer and information center. Forbes named the Columbus metropolitan area–home to 1.8 million residents– one of America’s best housing markets, as well as one of the best places for businesses and careers. The city enjoys below-average unemployment and a strong tech presence that includes Battelle Memorial Institute, which oversees laboratories for several federal agencies.

    Indianapolis, Ind.

    Thanks to a business-friendly attitude, inexpensive housing and a strong cultural community, Indianopolis’ population–now at 1.7 million–has increased at a rate that is 50% higher than the national average. That’s faster than hot spots Washington, D.C., and Seattle, and nearly as fast as urban-planner darlings Portland or Denver. But while Portland and Denver may attract more young singles, Indianapolis boasts a growing population of educated, young married couples–many coming from cities like Chicago for the shorter commutes and lower cost of living–an arguably more attractive demographic since they will most likely stay, raise families and invest in the communities, boosting the area’s growth even more.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.

    Photo by branewphoto

  • The Hudson Tunnel: Issues for New Jersey

    New Jersey Governor Chris Christie sent shockwaves through the transportation industry on last Thursday when he cancelled the under-construction ARC (Access to the Regional Core) rail tunnel under the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York (Manhattan).

    The Governor accepted the Access the Regional Core (ARC) Executive Committee’s recommendation to “pull the plug” on the expensive project because of cost overruns. The project was to have cost $8.7 billion, but could escalate up to $14 billion according to the Governor’s office. All of any such cost overrun would have to be absorbed by the state of New Jersey, which like many other states is in dire financial straits.

    Christie said:

    “I have made a pledge to the people of New Jersey that on my watch I will not allow taxpayers to fund projects that run over budget with no clear way of how these costs will be paid for. Considering the unprecedented fiscal and economic climate our State is facing, it is completely unthinkable to borrow more money and leave taxpayers responsible for billions in cost overruns. The ARC project costs far more than New Jersey taxpayers can afford and the only prudent move is to end this project.”

    Governor Christie indicated that the project could become New Jersey’s “Big Dig,” referring to the Boston highway project that he said escalated in cost by 10 times (that is not a typo).
    Yet supporters of the tunnel were unanimous in their condemnation of Christie’s move, from Paul Krugman of The New York Times to the Regional Plan Association.

    New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg announced that Christie had backed down, noting his “reversal of yesterday’s decision to kill” the tunnel project. Referring to a meeting between US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and Governor Christie, Lautenberg said “The Secretary was clear with Governor Christie: if this tunnel doesn’t get built, the three billion dollars will go to other states. We can’t allow that to happen.” Lautenberg listed a litany of benefits such as a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 70,000 tons annually. He also noted that New Jersey would have to reimburse the federal government the $300 million it had received for the tunnel. Senator Robert Menendez added that “New Jersey taxpayers don’t want to own a $600 million hole to nowhere.”

    However, under examination, it is unclear whether Christie had “reversed” his position. Christie agreed to consider “options to potentially salvage” a tunnel project based upon options (not made public) offered by LaHood. New Jersey and Federal officials will be meeting on the matter over the next two weeks. Christie, however, reaffirmed his concern about project finances, stating that” the ARC project is not financially viable “ and its expectation “to dramatically exceed its current budget remains unchanged. ” The Newark Star-Ledger cited state officials as saying that the decision does not represent a reversal of Christie’s original decision.

    Thus, everything may be up in the air. Given that, here are a few issues the state of New Jersey may like to consider as it finalizes its decision:

    1. Exaggerating the Need for the Project The new rail tunnel is to serve a purported increase in commuter rail ridership to Manhattan jobs in the future. The project’s Final Environmental Impact Statement says that Midtown Manhattan’s employment will grow from its present 2.6 million by another 500,000 by 2030. This is unlikely. Manhattan’s entire employment (not just Midtown) peaked at 2.4 million in 2008. One might expect the planners could have gotten something so simple correct. Manhattan employment remains below 2001 levels and never rose more than 35,000 even at the peak of the last boom (annual figure, from 2001). The consultants also are projecting a 1.6 million population increase west of the Hudson River (New Jersey suburbs along with the New York counties of Rockland and Orange) by 2030. However, the New Jersey and New York metropolitan counties to the west of the Hudson are more likely to grow only 1.1 million, based upon official state projections (Note). The questionable population and employment projections reveal that the “need” for the new tunnel may have been grossly overstated.

    2. Exporting New Jersey Jobs to New York Why should New Jersey pay to build more capacity so that its people can work across the state line? Why should they not work in New Jersey? New Jersey is often thought of an economic afterthought in Manhattan centric media and business interests (such as by The New York Times). In fact only a small share of New Jersey commuters travel to Manhattan for work. Even in the New Jersey counties that border New York, only 12% of commuters work in Manhattan. In the other New York metropolitan area counties in the metropolitan area, the figure drops to 5%.

    The trends here are also important. Since 1956, every new job in the New York metropolitan area has been created outside Manhattan (Manhattan’s employment is 400,000 lower now than back then). New Jersey depends on New Jersey far more than it does New York. New Jersey has developed successful new office complexes in Jersey City, New Brunswick, along the I-287 Belt Route and elsewhere. Perhaps New Jersey should seek to minimize work trip lengths and encourage the next 500,000 jobs to be created in the state rather than in New York. Downtown Newark, for example, has excellent transit access and could use substantial new employment investment. This might prove more beneficial for New Jersey and its taxpayers.

    3. Costs Could Rise Even Higher The tunnel could easily climb in cost beyond the now feared $14 billion. Big Dig cost escalation continued almost to the project’s opening. There is no reason to expect it will be different with the Hudson tunnel. It has been reported that one of LaHood’s options is simply to lower cost projections. New Jersey should buy that option only if the federal government underwrites all of the cost overruns. However, such a deviation from federal policy would bring stiff opposition from other parts of the country.

    4. The Cost of Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Like so many transit projects, the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is raised as a benefit of the tunnel. But at what cost? Each of the 70,000 annual tons of greenhouse gas emissions removed would require a capital expenditure of $16,000. The present market price for greenhouse gases is $20 per ton. New Jersey could accomplish the same objective for just $1.4 million annually.

    The Decision Much rides on Governor Christie’s decision. It may be better for the state to have a $600 million tunnel to nowhere than a $14, $20 or $25 billion tunnel that may not really be needed. Moreover, frustration is building with Washington’s “plunder” philosophy that encourages wasting money at home, so that another state doesn’t get the chance. Digging the nation out of its present (and future) malaise seems likely to require fresher thinking than this.

    If Governor Christie musters the courage to stop this project now, it could be a shot across the bow of an international vendor and consulting engineering community that has routinely low-balled costs only to later jack them up, confident that no project would be canceled once started.

    ——–

    Note: This figure is derived using New York 2030 projections and New Jersey 2025 projections, increased by the 2020-2025 growth rate to project 2030 population.

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

    Photo: Hudson River looking south between Lower Manhattan and Jersey City (photo by author)

  • Aussie Urban Myths

    Urban planning in Australia is lost in a dense fog of presumption and theory. What’s needed is to toss out the hype and to illuminate some of the common planning myths for what they really are: impediments to progress.

    An example of planning hype occurred not long ago when ten urban academics loudly criticised the Victorian government’s decision to develop about 40,000 hectares of new land on Melbourne’s fringe, calling the decision short-sighted and unsustainable.

    The best way to development Melbourne, they said, is to intensify redevelopment along tram and train lines and around existing activity centres, with such developments being more dense than the surrounding suburbs, but not necessarily high-rise. Their modelling suggests that the 600,000 new dwellings required by 2030 could be accommodated under four stories within the existing built-up area.

    They did confess that not everyone wants or needs to live in an activity centre or on a rail/tramline, but were adamant that a sustainable city is “one where you can get there without a car”. The future, according to them, will be “fitter rather than fatter”; where we will “live with more amenity” and have more “choice of housing type”.

    They concluded that this is a national issue because when we finally commit to a low-carbon economy, we will have these extra 40,000 undeveloped hectares which, one assumes, will act as some form of carbon sink.

    Under normal circumstances, one might be tempted to dismiss the more extreme machinations of latte-left academia, but unfortunately, some serious decision makers are starting to listen to this type of questionable commentary.

    Without doubt, a key challenge facing Australia’s major capitals is how to redevelop the middle-ring suburbs, but placing all of one’s development eggs in this basket is lunacy and is based on misguided presumptions and poor theory. In this light, it is pertinent to consider several urban myths.

    But before our myth busting, it is worth stating that infill development is more expensive than many realise, in terms of site acquisition, approval processes, infrastructure provision, and combating NIMBYism. This is reflected in the high end prices of infill stock which, in short, costs more than twice as much as broadhectare product.

    For example, the cost of a new infill dwelling (which is two bedroom/two bathroom and one car space) within five kilometres of the Brisbane CBD is $650,000. But a new detached house (around 20 kilometres from the GPO, comprises three bedrooms, study, two bathrooms, double garage and on a 500 sqm allotment) can cost $325,000. On a rate per square metre basis the infill product (including any land) is $8,000, the detached house (again including land) is around $2,000, sometimes less depending on who the builder is.

    Low affordability makes the sale of infill product often slow, even in stronger economic times. In addition, there is often a large mismatch between the product type (and size) offered in infill locations and household demographics and, importantly, the market’s aspirations.

    Our urban academics were somewhat correct on one point – not everyone wants to live in an infill development. Our experience is that demand for such product – and assuming the dwellings can be delivered at an economic price point – varies between 25% and 40% of overall demand, depending on the urban location in question. Under current conditions, the real demand, however, is around 15% at best. So from the get-go, delivering such an ambitious infill development target is extremely unlikely. In fact, it is impossible.

    Myth – higher densities will mean less traffic
    The theory is that higher densities around existing public transport networks will see a lift in public transport use and fewer cars on the road. Public transport accounts for about 10% of total trips in our major cities. Most urban metropolitan strategies aim to increase this to 20%. So, four-fifths of the trips will, at best, still be via private vehicle. Why? Because the car is much more convenient.

    Without serious infrastructure commitments to repair and upgrade the public transport networks in our cities, cars will continue to dominate. In fact, under current conditions, and somewhat ironically, infill development would lead to more traffic congestion.

    Most infill product built within Australian cities will not sell without a car space. The quality of our public infrastructure, especially outside of Melbourne, is not good enough for infill owners (or their tenants) to forgo the security of their cars. So, new infill development is increasing the number of cars on the road and often in areas which are already congested and are hard to improve from a traffic management perspective.

    One could argue that it would be better to further decentralise employment and settlement around the edges of the metropolitan area, and most obviously upgrade the existing road network.

    Academia, obviously, have never tried to sell a dwelling without a dedicated car parking space.

    Myth – urban consolidation is better for the environment
    This implicit assumption is now widespread among the media, the planning community, government agencies and in political circles. Yet the available evidence suggests the opposite.

    • Comparison between suburban houses and infill product often overlooks the number of persons per household, which is much higher in the traditional suburban detached house.
    • In traditional suburban detached homes, larger household numbers share various facilities – the refrigerator; television; washing machine; dishwasher etc., and even the lighting needed to light a room. The per capita energy, and even water consumption, is more efficient in suburbia than in more central urban locations. The “average” household size within an infill development across Australia is around 1.6 people, in detached housing it is 3.2. In most cases infill product have as many appliances as are in a detached house, yet the number of occupants living in infill product is about half that living in detached suburban homes.
    • The nature of infill housing is, in itself, prejudicial to positive environmental outcomes due to things like clothes driers (lack of outdoor drying areas), air conditioners, lifts and the need to service (lights and air-conditioning) common areas. Also, suburban development allows for wider footpaths and private yards, which in turn provide space for trees to grow. There is less opportunity for greenery – a key producer of carbon offsets – in higher density urban development.

    Not withstanding anything about the actual built form, the greatest correlation between energy and water use (and hence, environmental impact) is based on per capita income. Wealthy people consume more energy/water and thus have a bigger environmental impact. The better off are the only ones who can afford to live in infill housing.

    Research in 2007 by the Australian Conservation Foundation found that in almost all Australian cities, higher-density, infill housing produced higher per capita greenhouse emissions and had larger eco footprints than outer suburbs, notwithstanding the greater access to public transport.

    Myth – most jobs are downtown
    There is also a widespread presumption that central business districts and their immediate fringes contain the majority of jobs in a city’s economy, and are therefore the major generators of traffic. Developing housing further from the downtown area, the argument goes will only mean more congestion as commuters try to get into and out off the downtown area.

    It is easy to understand how this myth developed: the CBD/fringe holds the tallest buildings; the seat of government is often located there; so, too, are many cultural facilities; they are the hub of train/tram networks and the focus of much of our angst about traffic congestion.

    But downtown is home to around 20% of all jobs in a city’s metropolitan area (just 10%, when looking at the CBD alone. According to the latest Australian census (2006) the proportion of employment in our major CBDs (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide) ranges from 9% to 11% – thus 10% is pretty consistent). So 80% of our jobs are actually outside of the downtown area. The implications of this are profound. Our ten friends from academia are proposing a policy based on a myth: that urban dispersal of housing will mean longer commutes to work.

    The facts are that most commutes (over 90%) within a city are across suburbs and not downtown. Unfortunately, this type of travel (and the nature of the work involved) makes it impossible to service efficiently via public transport.

    So in truth, more housing on the urban fringe will not in itself lead to more inner-city congestion, but will produce more suburb-to-suburb work trips. Perhaps as a priority (and in concert with more decentralisation and suburban development), we should build better ring-road systems (and more river crossings in a city like Brisbane, for example), rather than advocating mostly infill redevelopment and heavy urban infrastructure spending.

    Michael Matusik is a qualified town planner and director of independent residential development advisory firm, Matusik Property Insights, based in the Brisbane region in Australia.

    Photo by Onlygoneanddoneit – Suziflooze & Stuart

  • The World’s Fastest-Growing Cities

    The evolution of cities is a protean process–and never more so than now. With over 50% of people living in metropolitan areas there have never been so many rapidly rising urban areas–or so many declining ones.

    Our list of the cities of the future does not focus on established global centers like New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong or Tokyo , which have dominated urban rankings for a generation. We have also passed over cities that have achieved prominence in the past 20 years such as Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Beijing, Delhi, Sydney, Toronto, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

    Nor does our list include the massive, largely dysfunctional megacities–Mumbai, Mexico City, Dhaka, Bangladesh–that are among planet’s most populous today. Bigger often does not mean better.

    Instead, our list focuses on emerging powerhouses like Chongqing, China, (population: 9 million), which Christina Larson in Foreign Policy recently described as “the biggest city you never heard of.”

    Chongqing sits in the world’s most important new region for important cities: interior China. These interior Chinese cities, notes architect Adam Mayer, offer a healthy alternative to coastal megacities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzen and Guangzhou, which suffer from congestion, high prices and increasingly wide class disparities. China’s bold urban diversification strategy hinges both on forging new transportation links and nurturing businesses in these interior cities. For example, in Chengdu, capital of the Sichuan province, new plane, road and rail connections are tying the city to both coastal China and the rest of the world. And the city is abuzz with new construction, including an increasing concentration of high-tech firms such as Dell and Cisco.

    India, although not by plan, also is experiencing a boom in once relatively obscure cities. Its rising urban centers include Bangalore (home of Infosys and Wipro), Ahmedabad (whose per-capita incomes are twice that of the rest of India) and Chennai (which has created 100,000 jobs this year). Many of India’s key industries–auto manufacturing, software and entertainment–are establishing themselves in these cities.

    The growth of India and China also creates opportunity for other emerging players, particularly in Southeast Asia by creating markets for goods and services as well as investment capital. Potential hot spots include places like Hanoi, Vietnam, which is attracting greater interest from Japanese, American and European multi-national firms upset with China’s often bullying trade practices and rising costs. Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur–with its rising financial sector–also displays considerable promise.

    Africa also boasts many huge, rapidly growing cities, but it’s hard to identify many of these places–like Lagos, Nigeria, Luanda, Angola or Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo–as bright prospects. One exception may well be Cape Town, the beautiful South African coastal city that shone so well during the recent World Cup.

    Latin America, too, has a plethora of huge and growing cities, but it’s hard to nominate the likes of Mexico City or Sao Paulo as likely hot spots for future sustainable growth.

    The best economic prospects in this region lie in more modestly sized cities like Santiago, the capital of resource-rich Chile, and even Campinas, Brazil, a growing smaller city–with 3 million residents–that lies outside the congested Sao Paolo region. This shift to smaller-scaled cities, as Michigan State’s Zachary Neal points out, has been conditioned by massive improvements in telecommunications and transportation infrastructure throughout the urban world. Today, he asserts, it is the ability to network long-distance–not girth–that makes the critical difference.

    This is clear in the Middle East, where the emerging stars tend to be smaller cities. Tel Aviv, whose total metropolitan area is no larger than 3 million, has emerged as a major center for technology as well as one of the world’s premier diamond centers. The other leading candidates in the region hail from the United Arab Emirates, notably oil-rich Abu Dhabi and perhaps its now weakened neighbor, Dubai.

    In North America the best urban prospects–Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Austin, Texas; Salt Lake City; and Calgary, Canada–are far smaller than homegrown giants New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Generally business-friendly and relatively affordable, these cities will attract many talented millennials as they start forming families in large numbers later in this decade.

    Europe’s urban problem lies with stagnant or slow-growing population levels, and in the south at least, very weak economies. The only rapidly growing big city lies on the region’s periphery: Istanbul, which straddles the border between Europe and Asia and faces many of the problems common to developing-country mega-cities.

    Overall, the populations of Europe’s cities are growing at barely 1%, the lowest rate of any continent. With low birthrates and growing opposition to immigration, it seems unlikely that any European city will emerge as a bigger global player in 20 years than today.

    Other leading cities all over the world may also be in the early stages of fading from predominance. In the United States, according to analysis by the California Lutheran University forecast, Los Angeles and Chicago, America’s second and third cities, respectively, have fallen behind not only fast-comers like Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, but even historically dominant New York in such key indicators as job generation and population growth.

    Similarly Berlin, once seemingly poised to thrive in the post-Cold War future, has chronic high unemployment and a weak private sector, compared with Germany’s generally smaller, less unruly successful cities. The Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto area in Japan may also be set to fade a bit, due largely to the overwhelming predominance of Tokyo and the general demographic and economic decline of Dai Nippon.

    Of course, none of this is set in stone. But this list provides an educated peek into which cities are best positioned to prosper and grow in our emerging era of cities.

    Chengdu, China

    The development of interior China, long on the back burner of national priorities, has reached the country’s western-most large city. Chengdu is abuzz with new construction, including an increasing concentration of high-tech companies, including Dell and Cisco. New plane, road and rail connections are tying the city to both coastal China and the rest of the world. With a metropolitan population of 6 million, economic factors–including lower costs–may prove critical to the capital of the Sichuan province. The business-friendly city still has a way to grow to catch up to the GDP per capita of Shanghai.

    Chongqing, China

    Chongqing enjoys rapidly improving transportation links with its neighbors to the west and the coastal megacities. Foreign companies like Ford, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines are flocking to the city. The Business Times of Singapore reports that since 1998, Chongqing’s GDP has quadrupled from $21 billion to $86 billion. Last year alone, Chongqing’s GDP expanded at almost twice the rate of China as a whole. The population, according to United Nations projections, should grow from 9 million to 11 million by 2025.

    Chongqing, China

    Chongqing enjoys rapidly improving transportation links with its neighbors to the west and the coastal megacities. Foreign companies like Ford, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines are flocking to the city. The Business Times of Singapore reports that since 1998, Chongqing’s GDP has quadrupled from $21 billion to $86 billion. Last year alone, Chongqing’s GDP expanded at almost twice the rate of China as a whole. The population, according to United Nations projections, should grow from 9 million to 11 million by 2025.

    Ahmedabad, India

    This is the largest metropolitan region in Gujarat, perhaps the most market-oriented and business-friendly of Indian states. Gujarat’s policies helped lure away the new Tata Nano plant from West Bengal (Kolkata) to Sanand, one of Gurajat’s exurbs. One Indian academic, Sedha Menon, compares the state–which has developed infrastructure more quickly than its domestic rivals–with Singapore and parts of Malaysia. Per-capita incomes in Gujarat are more than twice the national average. India’s seventh-largest city has a population of roughly 5.7 million and is expected, according to the U.N., to grow to over 7.6 million by 2025.

    Santiago, Chile

    Santiago boasts a diversified economic base: mining, textile production, leather technologies and food processing. Its favorable investment climate has enticed many multinational companies; there are few restrictions on foreign investment, and transparency is extensive. Recent surveys have ranked Chile and Santiago as leading locations in Latin America in terms of competitiveness. The 2010-2011 Global Competitiveness Report ranked Chile the highest in terms of competitiveness (based on institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, education, market efficiency, financial market development, et. al).

    Raleigh Durham, North Carolina

    Even in hard times this low-density, wide-ranging urban area has repeatedly performed well on Forbes’ list of the best cities for jobs. The area is a magnet for technology firms fleeing the more expensive, congested and highly regulated northeast corridor. One big problem obstructing the region’s ascendancy has been air connections. But Delta recently announced a large-scale expansion of flights there from around the country. Population growth will likely be lead by educated millennials seeking affordable housing and employment opportunities. Today the region has 1.7 million residents; the State of North Carolina projects it will grow to 2.4 million by 2025.

    Tel Aviv, Israel

    This urban region of roughly 3 million may boast the most vibrant economy of any along the Mediterranean. Tel Aviv and its surrounding environs control the vast majority of Israel’s high-tech exports, making it what may well be the closest thing to a Silicon Valley outside East Asia or California. It also boasts a household income that is nearly 50% above the national average for Israel. But perhaps its greatest asset is its free-wheeling lifestyle: Tel Aviv combines an Israeli entrepreneurial culture with the attributes of a thriving seacoast town.

    Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Kuala Lumpur’s prospects lie in a development strategy focused on improving its air service, road and trade infrastructure, much as occurred in previous decades in Singapore. The urban area’s population has grown to over 5.8 million, and demographer Wendell Cox projects a population of roughly 8.2 million by 2025. KL has emerged as a global Islamic financing hub and maintains close ties with the Arabian Gulf’s finance sector. Educational and health care institutions also bolster the city’s growth. Forbes lists Kuala Lumpur as one of Asia’s future financial centers.

    Suzhou, China

    As in the U.S., some of the fastest-growing cities in China are located close to the bigger cities. Suzhou, only 75 miles from Shanghai, seems well positioned to benefit from spillover growth from the megacity. Known as the Venice of China, with many attractive canals and vast international tourism potential, its beauty and history could help secure its aspiration to become “the world’s office.” Some reports suggests Suzhou may already be the most affluent city in China; demographer Wendell Cox estimates that per-capita income is more than three times that of interior cities like Chengdu.

    Hanoi, Vietnam

    Chinese, Japanese, American, Singaporean, European and Indian companies identify this fast-growing city as ripe for industrial and infrastructure growth. The population of the region has doubled since the end of the Vietnam War to almost 3 million, and the U.N. projects a population of 4.5 million by 2025. Along with Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Hanoi is expected be one of the fastest-growing GDPs in the world. Hanoi’s GDP growth rate for the first nine months of 2010 was estimated at 10.6%, almost twice that for the same period of last year.

    Chennai, India

    Formerly known as Madras, this metropolitan area of 7.5 million, up from 4.7 million 20 years ago, is projected by the U.N. to approach 10 million by 2025. Located on India’s east Asian coast, the city has so far this year created over 100,000 jobs–more than any other Indian city outside of the much larger Delhi and Mumbai. Chennai’s metropolitan area is taking full advantage of India’s soaring industrial sector, particularly the booming automobile sector. Electronics, led by Dell, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Siemens, Sony and Foxconn, are also booming. Chennai is home to India’s second-largest entertainment industry, behind Mumbai.

    Austin, Texas

    Austonites tend to be smug–but they have good reason. The central Texas city ranked as the No. 1 large urban area for jobs in our last Forbes survey. Along with Raleigh-Durham, Austin is an emerging challenger for high-tech supremacy with Silicon Valley. The current area’s population is 1.7 million and is expected to grow rapidly in the coming decades. Austin owes much both to its public sector institutions (the state government and the main Campus of the University of Texas) and its expanding ranks of private companies–including foreign ones–swarming into the city’s surrounding suburban belt.

    Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Oil rich Abu Dhabi is among the world’s wealthiest countries in terms of per-capita GDP, which exceeds $68,000. However, the non-oil sector is likely to grow to about 45% of the GDP in coming years. To do so, the government has started to invest its oil revenues in construction, tourism and the electricity and water industry. Abu Dhabi is also helping to keep its neighbor Dubai afloat. If Dubai, with its world class infrastructure, can make a comeback, a global city separated by 80 miles of desert Arabian Gulf coastline could arise.

    Campinas, Brazil

    Campinas, located around 50 miles north of São Paulo, the country’s dominant industrial center, has attracted many technology companies, including IBM, Dell, Compaq, Samsung and Texas. The city also boasts a major research and university center. Firms engaged in high-tech activities–following a global pattern–tend to cluster in relatively pleasant, affordable and efficient places. Campinas could prove a big Brazilian beneficiary of this trend.

    Melbourne, Australia

    Australia has resources galore and relatively few people. But which of its cities is poised to benefit most from the nation’s expanding trade with China and India? Sydney’s costs have been shooting up–particularly for housing, but Melbourne’s political class seems about to open up new land for suburban development to restore some of the area’s affordability for younger Australians. Demographer Bernard Salt has predicted that Melbourne’s population will exceed Sydney‘s in less than 20 years. Melbourne also boasts Australia’s most walkable and pleasant urban cores , a pleasant San Francisco-like climate and a European ambiance.

    Bangalore, India

    Many big players in tech and services–Goldman Sachs, Cisco, HP as well as India-based giants like Tata–have located operations in Bangalore. But the city also boasts home-grown tech giants Infosys and Wipro, which each have over 60,000 employees worldwide. Since 1985 Bangalore’s population has more than doubled to over 7 million and is projected by the U.N. to reach 9.5 million by 2025. In the future, maintaining Bangalore’s advantage over smaller, less congested cities could prove a challenge.

    Salt Lake City, Utah

    Once seen as a Mormon enclave, the greater Salt Lake urban area–with roughly 1 million people –has every sign of emerging as a major world player with a wider appeal. The church still plays a critical role, in part by financing a massive redevelopment of the city’s now rather dowdy city core. The area’s population has doubled since the early 1970s and will grow another 100,000 by 2025 to well over 1.1 million. New companies are flocking to this business-friendly region, particularly from self-imploding California. Increasing national and global connections through Delta’s hub will tie this once isolated city closer with the wider world economy.

    Nanjing, China

    The one-time Imperial and Republican (Nationalist) capital sits only 150 miles from Shanghai. The relative affordability of Nanjing has drawn huge construction projects to the city, which is also the capital of Jiangsi Province. The city is developing a transport hub, and huge commercial construction projects abound in the downtown area. A majority of employment is in the fast-growing service sector. The metropolitan economy grew 50% just between 2006 and 2008, and future rapid growth is likely.

    Cape Town, South Africa

    The second-largest city in South Africa behind Johannesburg, Cape Town made the most of the recent World Cup. The region of some 3 million boasts fast-growing communications, finance and insurance sectors. Cape Town is looking to intellectual capital, transportation assets, business costs, technology, innovation and ease of doing business as its primary assets. In 2009 Empowerdex rated Cape Town as the top-performing municipality in South Africa for service delivery. About 97% of the operational budget went to infrastructure development, ensuring that households can enjoy adequate sanitation and water access.

    Calgary, Canada

    You don’t have to buy the notion of a climate-change-driven northern ascendancy to see a bright future for Alberta’s premier city. Calgary is positioned well on the fringe of Canada’s largest energy belt and enjoys lower taxes and less stringent regulations than its Canadian rivals. Calgary has been hit by a slowdown in energy business, but over time demand from China, India and a slowly recovering world economy should boost this critical sector. The region is expected to be back to its familiar place on top among Canadian urban economies by next year.

    The World’s Diminishing Cities: Chicago, Ill.

    Great cities don’t only rise, some decline. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, Chicago is struggling with persistent job losses that, since 2000, are exceeded only by Detroit among the nation’s top 10 largest U.S. regions. The Windy City’s deficit as a percentage of spending–a remarkable 16.3 %–is now higher than Los Angeles and twice that of New York. Moreover, crime remains stubbornly high, and the widely hyped condo boom has left a legacy of uncompleted buildings, foreclosures and vacancies.

    The World’s Diminishing Cities: Berlin, Germany

    By all rights, Berlin should be a European boomtown: The capital of united Germany, a natural crossroads to the east and Europe’s bohemian hot spot. But it remains, as its mayor, Klaus Wowereit, famously remarked, “poor but sexy.” Berlin suffers unemployment far higher than the national average, and its gross added-value per inhabitant amounted to just over half that created by residents in the northern city of Hamburg, which has about half as many people. One-quarter of the workforce earns less than 900 euros a month, and one out of every three children lives in poverty.

    The World’s Diminishing Cities: Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Japan

    Few places possess a more glorious urban pedigree than Japan’s Kansai region. But the shift of manufacturing to China and other countries has undermined the economy of Osaka, traditionally the industrial heart of Japan. As Japan shrinks both economically and demographically, Tokyo, the world’s largest city, looms ever larger while Osaka’s role is, as one demographer put it, “fading away.” Tokyo’s population, now over 30 million, has grown to be double that of the Osaka region, and continues to outpace it. Most critical: It is to Tokyo, not Osaka, that Japan’s diminishing reserves of educated young people–and industries dependent on their talent–are headed.

    This article originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.

    Photo by Sarmu

  • Religious Freedom or A Tax-Free Ride?

    The furor over a mosque in Manhattan has swirled around issues of personal freedom and collective tolerance. But very little of the discussion has focused on the pros and cons of construction of places of worship in our cities and suburbs, or on their tax status. In a country that displays high rates of worship and has a growing population, it’s to be expected that religious spaces would be on the increase. Yet, like all things that are added to the built environment, churches, synagogues, temples and even meeting halls can have a negative impact on those who live in the area. Economists term this a ‘negative externality’.

    Parks are a simple analogy, in that it is nice to have somewhere to walk your dog if you live nearby, but it is not so pleasant if dogs are shipped in by their owners from other neighborhoods to use the space, especially if they have little incentive to clean up after themselves [that would be the owners, not the pets]. Places of worship are the same, insofar as it might be convenient to have a temple next door, but only if it is for a compatible religion. If not, it is just another source of traffic and noise for the neighborhood, and if it is a religion that is presently controversial, then there is even more likelihood of unhappiness.

    One of the reasons that so many congregations can afford to build new spaces for themselves is that religious enterprises are not taxed. A glance at the chat rooms across the Internet suggests that this is a warm-button topic — not of major importance, but ready to become so at a moment’s notice. Those who patrol these issues have developed a rather neat logic for this tax exemption, namely, that payment of income or property taxes by religious institutions would violate the separation of church and state. Indeed, the Supreme Court seems to have fostered this logic, arguing in 1970 in Walz vs. Tax Commission of the City of New York, that a tax exemption for churches “restricts the fiscal relationship between church and state, and tends to complement and reinforce the desired separation insulating each from the other”.

    Logically then, payment of taxes by religious groups should indeed be considered unconstitutional. But what if we were to separate the payment of taxes on income from the payment of property taxes? It’s reasonable enough to argue that the former should be exempt, especially if you are comfortable with the reality that plenty of corporations and many affluent individuals pay little or nothing in income tax.

    However, the non-payment of property taxes is quite different, as it has a large impact on the way in which cities operate. Religious enterprises can afford to outbid their competitors when purchasing land as they buy at a discount, namely, the dollars saved on non-payment of property taxes. Put another way, they can afford to purchase marginally larger properties, as they are able to fold the putative taxes into their bids for land.

    Congregations can often afford to buy prime locations at urban intersections; in the suburbs, they can afford to buy larger lots and build mega-churches with vast parking lots. The scale of these developments can be remarkable. A new LDS temple that is planned for Gilbert, Arizona will cater to tens of thousands of worshipers on a 21 acre site.

    Now, I would rather that the urban fabric be maintained than be left idle, especially at present, while the construction industry is in poor shape. It makes little sense, though, to encourage market distortions. Churches can break up the land-use in a city, inserting a structure that is used intermittently among, say, office spaces for which there can be high demand. Building any kind of religious structure in Manhattan, where land can fetch $100 million per acre, serves to drive up the costs of real estate yet further. In the suburbs and exurbs, where land is of course infinitely cheaper, the distortion is less, but the impacts are potentially higher. Vast mega-churches have all the impact of a Wal-Mart but none of the tax benefits, and of course none of the jobs.

    How much are we talking here in hard cash? My simplistic calculations and equally non-rigorous research suggest that there are approximately 350,000 religious spaces in the US. If we assume that each occupies 10,000 square feet [and many are five to ten times larger], then that would be approximately 80,000 acres of land on which taxes are not being paid. Clearly, few of those acres are as expensive as those in Manhattan, but even in suburban Phoenix, raw land reached $300,000 per acre before the 2008 correction. My arithmetic suggests that $20 billion of land is being used without tax payment, which would amount to tens of millions annually.

    Places of worship are in general highly inefficient uses of space if you simply take into account the number of hours per week they are used. This notwithstanding, they place a burden on the public purse in terms of water and sewerage links, road maintenance, and fire and police protection—the fact that they are unoccupied may actually increase the cost of surveillance. These services, plus the opportunity costs of lost taxes, come at a moment when nearly all municipalities and most States are looking for ways to replace contracting revenues. Law professor Evelyn Brody has done a fabulous job in documenting the ways in which non-payment is hurting the public sector, and the innovative ways in which some jurisdictions are using PILOTS (payments in lieu of taxes) to make up the losses.

    As we know, religion is a touchy subject. Asking congregations to pay their property taxes will be taken by many as an assault on religious freedom. But if we also look at the larger class of charitable and non-profit organizations, we find many small charities that could not and thus should not pay property taxes. Small churches, mosques and temples would be in this category. But there are also non-profit organizations that are wealthy; Harvard University should pay millions of dollars on its holdings in Boston, and the same is true of large, wealthy religious organizations with land holdings throughout the country’s urban areas.

    Why single out what many regard as ‘the good guys’? The answer is that welfare subsidies distort the market, wherever and whenever they occur. That’s true of mega-churches, and it’s equally true of new shopping malls that receive tax incentives to locate in one jurisdiction rather than another. Taxes are of course anathema to many in our society, but then so is welfare. So let’s be consistent and get rid of property tax subsidies for developers and large charities, regardless. If that includes large churches, then so be it. The new revenues will be a boon for municipalities, so that they can provide services for those who need them most. Some organizations will claim they cannot pay, but even there the news is not bad: There is evidence that when land-uses change, redevelopment can have a multiplier effect. This was true of plenty of military sites, and it has been documented for churches being re-purposed in inner city redevelopment areas.

    In its 1970 decision, the Supreme Court observed that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Yet it is also the case that the power to provide exemptions is a powerful distortion of the ways that cities organize themselves as efficient providers of goods and services. To the extent that we can have a sensible discussion of religion or taxation, let’s explore just which interests are served by subsiding worship.

    Photo by rauchdickson of Solid Rock megachurch, Monroe, Ohio

    Andrew Kirby is an urbanist based in Phoenix. For several years he lived next door to the 12th century church in Cholsey in the UK, where Agatha Christie is buried.
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  • Decade of the Telecommute

    The rise in telecommuting is the unmistakable message of the just released 2009 American Community Survey data. The technical term is working at home, however the strong growth in this market is likely driven by telecommuting, as people use information technology and communications technology to perform jobs that used to require being in the office.

    In 2009, 1.7 million more employees worked at home than in 2000. This represents a 31% increases in market share, from 3.3 percent to 4.3 percent of all employment. Transit also rose, from 4.6% to 5.0%, an increase of 9% (Note). Even so, single occupant automobile commuting also rose, from 75.7% to 76.1%, despite the huge increase in gasoline prices. The one means of transport that continued to decline was car pooling, which saw its share decline from 12.1% in 2000 to 10.0% in 2009.

    The increase in working at home was pervasive in scope. The share of employees working at home rose in every major metropolitan area (over 1,000,000 population), with an average increase of 38%. The largest increase was in Charlotte – ironically a metropolitan area with large scale office development in its urban core – with an 88% increase in the work at home market share. In five metropolitan areas, the increase was between 70% and 80% (Richmond, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Raleigh, Jacksonville and Orlando). Only five metropolitan areas experienced market share increases less than 20% (New Orleans, Salt Lake City, Rochester, Buffalo and Oklahoma City). Nonetheless, the rate of increase in the work at home market share exceeded that of transit in 49 of the 52 major metropolitan areas. Transit’s increase was greater only in Washington, Seattle and Nashville (where the transit market share is miniscule).

    The working at home market share increase was also strong outside the major metropolitan areas, rising 23%.

    Working at home is fast closing the gap with transit. In part driven by the surge in energy prices since earlier in the decade, transit experienced its first increase since data was first collected by the Bureau of the Census in 1960. Yet working at home is growing more rapidly, and closing the gap, from 1.7 million fewer workers than transit in 2000 to only 1.0 million fewer in 2009. At the current rate, more people could be working at home than riding transit by 2017. This is already the case in much of the country outside the New York metropolitan area, which represents a remarkable 39 percent of the nation’s transit commuters. Taking New York out of the picture, 31% more people (1.35 million) worked at home than traveled by transit, more than 4 times the 7% difference in 2000 (Table 1, click for additional information).

    Table 1
    Transit & Work at Home Share of Commuting
    Major Metropolitan Areas: 2000 & 2009
      Transit Work at Home
    Metropolitan Area 2000 2009 2000-2009 2000 2009 2000-2009
    New York 27.4% 30.5% 11.4% 2.9% 3.9% 32.6%
    Los Angeles 5.6% 6.2% 11.6% 3.5% 4.8% 35.3%
    Chicago 11.3% 11.5% 2.0% 2.9% 4.0% 37.1%
    Dallas-Fort Worth 1.8% 1.5% -13.3% 3.0% 4.1% 37.0%
    Philadelphia 8.9% 9.3% 3.7% 2.9% 3.9% 35.0%
    Houston 3.2% 2.2% -29.2% 2.5% 3.4% 37.4%
    Miami-West Palm Beach 3.2% 3.5% 9.7% 3.1% 4.5% 48.0%
    Atlanta 3.4% 3.7% 8.7% 3.5% 5.6% 59.9%
    Washington 11.2% 14.1% 26.6% 3.7% 4.5% 22.7%
    Boston 11.2% 12.2% 9.8% 3.3% 4.3% 31.9%
    Detroit 1.7% 1.6% -4.7% 2.2% 3.1% 40.1%
    Phoenix 1.9% 2.3% 17.5% 3.7% 5.3% 44.3%
    San Francisco-Oakland 13.8% 14.6% 6.0% 4.3% 6.0% 40.5%
    Riverside 1.6% 1.8% 9.0% 3.5% 4.6% 32.6%
    Seattle 7.0% 8.7% 25.0% 4.2% 5.1% 23.6%
    Minneapolis-St. Paul 4.4% 4.7% 6.4% 3.8% 4.6% 20.6%
    San Diego 3.3% 3.1% -7.0% 4.4% 6.6% 50.2%
    St. Louis 2.2% 2.5% 14.2% 2.9% 3.5% 22.5%
    Tampa-St. Petersburg 1.3% 1.4% 11.0% 3.1% 5.5% 75.7%
    Baltimore 5.9% 6.2% 5.8% 3.2% 3.9% 23.2%
    Denver 4.4% 4.6% 4.3% 4.6% 6.2% 36.4%
    Pittsburgh 5.9% 5.8% -2.9% 2.5% 3.2% 28.5%
    Portland 6.3% 6.1% -3.0% 4.6% 6.1% 32.9%
    Cincinnati 2.8% 2.4% -13.4% 2.7% 3.8% 40.3%
    Sacramento 2.7% 2.7% 0.8% 4.0% 5.4% 33.1%
    Cleveland 4.1% 3.8% -8.1% 2.7% 3.4% 25.0%
    Orlando 1.6% 1.8% 15.4% 2.9% 4.9% 71.4%
    San Antonio 2.7% 2.3% -12.5% 2.6% 3.4% 29.0%
    Kansas City 1.2% 1.2% 4.6% 3.5% 4.3% 24.7%
    Las Vegas 4.4% 3.2% -26.8% 2.3% 3.3% 45.1%
    San Jose 3.4% 3.1% -9.6% 3.1% 4.5% 44.4%
    Columbus 2.1% 1.4% -35.0% 3.0% 4.1% 36.7%
    Charlotte 1.4% 1.9% 32.2% 2.9% 5.4% 88.1%
    Indianapolis 1.3% 1.0% -22.2% 3.0% 3.7% 24.7%
    Austin 2.5% 2.8% 11.7% 3.6% 5.9% 64.6%
    Norfolk 1.7% 1.4% -17.7% 2.7% 3.4% 27.9%
    Providence 2.4% 2.7% 12.8% 2.2% 3.6% 64.5%
    Nashville 0.8% 1.2% 38.5% 3.2% 4.3% 34.6%
    Milwaukee 4.2% 3.7% -12.5% 2.6% 3.2% 25.3%
    Jacksonville 1.3% 1.2% -9.1% 2.3% 4.0% 73.8%
    Memphis 1.6% 1.5% -8.1% 2.2% 3.1% 41.3%
    Louisville 2.0% 2.4% 20.2% 2.5% 3.1% 22.9%
    Richmond 1.9% 2.0% 6.5% 2.7% 4.7% 76.8%
    Oklahoma City 0.5% 0.4% -13.0% 2.9% 3.1% 4.7%
    Hartford 2.8% 2.8% -1.3% 2.6% 4.0% 53.6%
    New Orleans 5.4% 2.7% -50.3% 2.4% 2.9% 19.2%
    Birmingham 0.7% 0.7% -2.3% 2.1% 2.7% 29.5%
    Salt Lake City 3.3% 3.0% -10.1% 4.0% 4.7% 17.8%
    Raleigh 0.9% 1.0% 10.7% 3.5% 6.0% 74.4%
    Buffalo 3.3% 3.6% 7.9% 2.1% 2.3% 8.3%
    Rochester 2.0% 1.9% -4.3% 2.9% 3.3% 13.7%
    Tucson 2.5% 2.5% 1.8% 3.6% 5.0% 36.3%
    Total 7.5% 8.0% 6.4% 3.2% 4.4% 37.7%
    Other 1.0% 1.2% 12.3% 3.4% 4.2% 23.0%
    National Total 4.6% 5.0% 9.2% 3.3% 4.3% 30.9%
    Major metropolitan areas: Over 1,000,000 population in 2009
    Metropolitan Area definitions as of 2009
    Data from 2000 Census and 2009 American Community Survey

    The rise of working at home is illustrated by the number of major metropolitan areas in which it now leads transit in market share. In 2000, working at home had a larger market share than transit in 28 of the present 52 major metropolitan areas. By 2009, working at home led transit in 38 major metropolitan areas, up 10 from 2000. Between 2000 and 2009, the working at home market share increased nearly 6 times as much as the transit share in the major metropolitan areas (38.4% compared to 6.4%).

    Working at Home Leaps Above Transit In Portland and Elsewhere: Perhaps most surprising is the fact that Portland now has more people working at home than riding transit to work. This is a significant development. Portland is a model “smart growth” having spent at least $5 billion additional on light rail and bus expansions over the last 25 years. Portland was joined by other metropolitan areas Houston, Miami-West Palm Beach, New Orleans and San Jose, all of which have spent heavily on urban rail systems. Working at home also passed transit in Cincinnati, Hartford, Las Vegas, Raleigh and San Antonio (Table 2).

    Table 2
    Work at Home Share Greater than Transit
    Major Metropolitan Areas
    Atlanta Houston Norfolk Sacramento
    Austin Indianapolis Oklahoma City Salt Lake City
    Birmingham Jacksonville Orlando San Antonio
    Charlotte Kansas City Phoenix San Digo
    Cincinnati Las Vegas Portland San Jose
    Columbus Louisville Providence St. Louis
    Dallas-Fort Worth Memphis Raleigh Tampa-St. Petersburg
    Denver Miami-West Palm Beach Richmond Tucson
    Detroit Nashville Riverside
    Hartford New Orleans Rochester
    Indicates working at home passed transit between 2000 and 2009

    Further, the shares are close enough at this point that working at home could surpass n transit in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Minneapolis-St. Paul in the next few years.

    Transit: About New York and Downtown

    As noted above, transit also has gained during this decade. However, the gains have not been pervasive. Out of the 52 major metropolitan areas, transit gained market share in 29 and lost in 23. As usual, transit was a New York story, as the New York metropolitan area saw its transit work trip market share rise from 27.4% to 30.5%. New York accounted for 47% of the increase in transit use, despite representing only 37% in 2000. New York added nearly 500,000 new transit commuters. This is nearly five times the increase in working at home (106,000). Washington also did well, adding 125,000 transit commuters, followed by Los Angeles at 73,000 and Seattle at 41,000.

    Transit’s downtown orientation was evident again. This is illustrated by the fact that more than 90% of the increased use in the major metropolitan areas occurred in those metropolitan areas with the 10 largest downtown areas (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle). Among these, only Houston experienced a decline in transit commuting.

    Implications

    Working at home has been the fastest growing component of commuting for nearly three decades. In 1980, working at home accounted for just 2.3% of commuting, a figure that has nearly doubled to 4.3% in 2009. This has been accomplished with virtually no public investment. Moreover, this seems to have happened without any loss of productivity. Companies like IBM, Jet Blue and many others have switched large numbers of their employees to working at home. These firms, which necessarily seek to provide the best return on their investment for stockholders and owners would not have made these changes if it had interfered with their productivity.

    Over the same period, and despite the recent increases, transit’s market share has fallen from 6.4% of commuting in 1980 to 5.0% in 2009. At the same time, gross spending over the period rose more than $325 billion (inflation and ridership adjusted) from 1980 levels. Inflation adjusted expenditures per passenger mile have more than doubled since that time.

    Given the remarkable rise of telecommuting, its low cost and effectiveness as a means to reduce energy use, perhaps it’s time to apply at least some of our public policy attention to working in cyberspace. It presents a great opportunity, perhaps far greater and far more cost-effective than the current emphasis on new rail transit systems.

    ———-

    Note: Work trip market share reflects transit in its strongest market, trips to and from work. Transit’s overall impact, measured by total roadway and transit travel (passenger miles) is approximately 1%, compared to the national work trip market share of 5%.

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

    Photograph: DDFic

  • Shifting Religious Climate

    While the new Memphis Islamic Center in Cordova, TN awaits completion, members meet at a nearby church building that houses Cordova’s Heart Song Church. The Christian congregation has opened its doors to the Muslim community as a gesture of good will.

    This kind act is in contrast with other recent activities, like an August arson fire to an Islamic Center’s construction equipment in suburban Murfreesboro just south of Nashville. And to complicate things even more, there’s that tiny little church that had planned to burn the Qur’an on September 11th. While all of this is going on, there is of course the ongoing debate surrounding plans to build a mosque near ground zero.

    These stories serve to illustrate the ongoing struggle many Americans have with how to navigate the country’s shifting religious climate.

    The United States is the most religiously diverse country in the world. We already noticed that much of America’s religious geography has trended suburban, as indicated in a previous article titled “The Suburbanization of Religious Diversity.” This has put new religions face-to-face with America’s mainstream faiths. The big question remains: how do “mainstream” (Evangelical, Catholic, and Mainline Protestant) Americans view neighbors both culturally distant yet geographically close?

    Many Americans say that religious beliefs affect their views on social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty. On the other hand, fewer Americans, according to a Pew Research Center report, are inclined to lean on their religious beliefs when it comes to issues like immigration or the environment. Only 7% of Americans say that religion is “the most important influence on their opinions about” immigration but more than one third report that religion influences their opinions on same-sex marriage.

    It ends up being a matter of interpretation. Some Christians cite Biblical texts to inform their approach towards new and diverse residents in their communities. “And you shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21) Or, “(God) executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing.” (Deuteronomy 10:18).

    Recalling a role that Christianity played concerning “immigration” in ancient Greco-Roman society, sociologist Rodney Stark wrote, “To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments.”

    So is the same true for the country’s new immigrant populations?

    Gwinnett County near Atlanta, for example, has seen an influx of new foreign-born neighbors over the past two decades. Duluth, one of Gwinnett County’s largest communities, epitomizes the cultural diversity of the county.

    In 2008, as part of a multi-church research project, several of Duluth’s pastors gathered as a “learning community” on a monthly basis to discuss ways in which Duluth’s churches could better serve their community. The pastors agreed that their churches were not culturally integrated with the many ethnic congregations scattered around the community. The pastors were asked how people would know whether or not churches were making a difference in their community. One of the pastors stated that it would be significant if each person could identify one friend of a different economic sector or different culture and be able to say that they met at church.

    It’s no secret that the religious beliefs of America’s new immigrants don’t always mesh with the country’s more traditional, or mainstream, religious groups.

    Some believe that America is, traditionally speaking, a “Christian” nation. This is also the perception of others outside the United States. Just ask a student studying in the U.S. from a Middle Eastern country how he or she perceives America’s religious identity . Yet, not all Americans take the position that America is a “Christian” country. Others suggest that North America has always been home to diverse religious ideas.

    Some mainstream religious groups and religious adherents, however, feel threatened by the increased religious diversity in this country. They view pluralism as a dangerous thing, something that might impede or compete with the values of those who share a more traditional (traditional-Christian) perspective on faith and life in the United States.

    At the same time, sociologists and cultural anthropologists who study religions have stated for years that the even center of “Christian” demography no longer resides in the West . Today, Christianity’s geography looks less European and more Asian, African, and Latin American – cultures that will constitute upwards of half America’s population in the next 30 – 40 years when minorities become the majority.

    This is a key issue facing places like Knoxville, which with nearly 700 churches, has more churches per capita than any other city in Tennessee. Religion has shaped Knoxville’s social climate more than any other factor in the city’s history. But even in Knoxville, religious geography is changing.

    According to the findings from the Religious Congregations and Membership Study conducted ten years ago by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB), more than 10,000 Knoxvillians claimed adherence to some “other” religious tradition – meaning non-Evangelical, non-Mainline Protestant, non-Orthodox, and non-Catholic.

    Today, there is at least one Buddhist center in Knoxville. And according to Brian Long, a writer with the Knoxville News Sentinel, as of 2007 there were 300-500 Hindu families in the area. Knoxville has also had a growing Muslim population since the 1970s and today has roughly 4000 Muslim adherents and three places of worship in the Knoxville region.

    Some of America’s more traditional religious groups view new(er) religions in the U.S. such as those in Knoxville to be “compassionate” or “peaceful” religions, while others believe that a religion like Islam is “wicked” or “evil”, even “dangerous,” according to a study produced by the Tennessee-based Lifeway Research group earlier this year.

    Then again, it depends on where you live, work, and play.

    A few years ago, Deborah Laverty of the Northwest Indiana Times reported that “efforts to establish mosques resulted in controversy and lawsuits” in some of Chicago’s suburbs.
    However, in the same article titled “Muslim Mecca in Merrillville,” Laverty wrote about a favorable reception given to Muslims in the region by others. Regarding a willingness of some to invest in the area’s newest Muslim center, Laverty wrote, “One reason the group has chosen to invest in Merrillville is because the community has welcomed those of the Muslim faith with open arms.” Quoting an investment banker, Laverty pointed out, “The Muslim community (in Merrillville) is growing because of a good relationship with members of the law enforcement, government officials and even those of other religions and faiths. We haven’t had any negative incidents and the word is getting around, even in Chicago…”

    As the country’s demography continues to change, “mainstream” religious groups in the U.S. will undoubtedly re-calibrate their approaches to the country’s new religious landscape. Already there are some community-based movements that consist of people from diverse religious traditions attempting to figure out how they can serve the common good of their cities without blending together incompatible theological beliefs. Such groups from both “old” (mainstream) and “new” (not-so-mainstream) streams of thought are trying to help communities flourish and dispel fear.

    Critical thinking and meaningful dialogue will have to be applied at every level as America grows more – not less – religiously diverse in years to come.

    Since 2006, Travis Vaughn has conducted community studies in a number of U.S. cities. He is a visiting instructor at Covenant Theological Seminary and is the catalyst behind cityandcitizen.com.

    Photo: Church in Santa Fe by author.

  • Portland Metro’s Competitiveness Problem

    Portland Metro’s president, David Bragdon, recently resigned to take a position with New York’s Bloomberg administration. Bragdon was nearing the end of his second elected term and ineligible for another term. Metro is the three county (Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties) planning agency that oversees Portland’s land use planning and transportation policies, among the most stringent and pro-transit in the nation.

    Metro’s jurisdiction includes most of the bi-state (Washington and Oregon) Portland area metropolitan area, which also includes the core municipality of Portland and the core Multnomah County.

    Local television station KGW (Channel 8) featured Bragdon in its Straight Talk program before he left Portland. Some of his comments may have been surprising, such as his strong criticism of the two state (Washington and Oregon) planning effort to replace the aging Interstate Bridge (I-5) and even more so, his comments on job creation in Portland. He noted “alarming trends below the surface,” including the failure to create jobs in the core of Portland “for a long time.”

    Bragdon was on to something. Metro’s three county area suffers growing competitive difficulties, even in contrast to the larger metropolitan area (which includes Clark and Skamania counties in Washington, along with Yamhill and Columbia counties in Oregon). This is despite the fact that one of the most important objectives of Metro’s land use and transportation policies is to strengthen the urban core and to discourage suburbanization (a phenomenon urban planning theologians call “sprawl”).

    Anemic Job Creation: Jobs have simply not been created in Portland’s core. Since 2001, downtown employment has declined by 3,000 jobs, according to the Portland Business Alliance. In Multnomah County, Portland’s urban core and close-by surrounding communities, 20,000 jobs were lost between 2001 and 2009. Even during the prosperous years of 2000 to 2006, Multnomah County lost jobs. Suburban Washington and Clackamas counties gained jobs, but their contribution fell 12,000 jobs short of making up for Multnomah County’s loss. The real story has been Clark County (the county seat is Vancouver), across the I-5 Interstate Bridge in neighboring Washington and outside Metro’s jurisdiction. Clark County generated 13,000 net new jobs between 2001 and 2009 (Figure 1).

    Domestic Migration: Not only are companies not creating jobs in the three county area, but people are choosing to locate in other parts of the metropolitan area.

    Between 2000 and 2009, the three counties – roughly 75% of the region’s total population in 2000 – attracted just one-half of net domestic migration into the metropolitan area. Washington’s suburban Clark County, across the Interstate Bridge, added a net 48,000 by domestic migration and has accounted for 40% of the metropolitan area’s figure all by itself.

    Core Multnomah County, which had nearly double Clark County’s 2000 population, added only 4,000 net domestic migrants, at a rate less than 1/20th that of Clark County. Suburban Clackamas and Washington counties did better, but between them achieved barely one-half of the Clark County rate.

    Exurban Columbia and Yamhill counties, outside the jurisdiction of Metro but inside the metropolitan area, added nearly 13,000 domestic migrants, more than three times that of Multnomah County, despite their combined population less than one-fifth that of Multnomah’s in 2000.

    Effects of Pro-Transit Policies: Portland’s unintended decentralization has even damaged the much promoted, and subsidized, public transit agencies. Despite Portland’s pro-transit policies, the three county transit work trip market share fell from 9.7% in 1980, before the first light rail line was opened, to 7.4% in 2000, after two light rail lines had opened. Two more light rail lines and 9 years later, (2009) the three county transit work trip market share had fallen to 7.4%, despite the boost of higher gasoline prices. The three county transit work trip market share loss from 9.7% in 1980 to 7.4% in 2009 calculates to a near one-quarter market share loss. By contrast, Seattle’s three county metropolitan area, without light rail until 2009, experienced a 5% increase in transit work trip market share from 1980 to 2009 (8.3% to 8.7%).

    While taxpayer funded transit was attracting less than its share of new commuters out of cars, one mode –unsupported by public funds – was doing very well. Between 1980 and 2009, working at home rose from 2.2% of employment to 6.2%. in the four county area (including Clark County). Thus, nearly as many people worked at home as rode transit to work in 2009 (Note). Already, working at home accounts for a larger share of employment than transit in the larger 7 county metropolitan area. All of this is despite Portland’s having spent an extra $5 billion on transit in the last 25 years on light rail expansions and more bus service. (Figure 2).

    Why is the Three County Area Doing Less Well? Why have Portland’s policies that are designed to help the core failed to draw jobs and people? People who move to the Portland area from other parts of the nation are probably drawn by the lower house prices in Clark County, where less stringent land use regulation has kept houses more affordable. New housing in Clark County is also built on average sized lots, rather than the much smaller lots that have been required by Metro’s land use policies. House prices are also lower in the exurban counties outside Metro’s jurisdiction.

    As Metro has forced urban densities up in the three county area and failed to provide sufficient new roadway capacity, traffic congestion has become much worse. A long segment of Interstate 5 in north Portland seems in a perpetual peak hour gridlock unusual for a medium sized metropolitan area, which is obvious from Google traffic maps that show average conditions by time and day of week. Even more unusual is the gridlock on a long stretch of the US-26 Sunset Highway that serves the suburban Silicon Forest of Washington County. A long overdue expansion will soon provide some relief on US-26. However transportation officials seem in no hurry to provide the additional capacity necessary to reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and excessive travel delays on Interstate 5 in north Portland. People who move to Clark or the exurban counties can avoid these bottlenecks by working closer to home or even in the periphery of the three county area.

    Portland has important competitive advantages, such as a temperate climate and marvelous scenery. It also helps to be close to hyper- uncompetitive California, which keeps exporting households to neighboring states. But a higher cost of living driven by policies that have kept prices 40% higher than before the housing bubble (adjusted for household incomes), and increasing traffic congestion make Portland’s three county area less competitive and nearby alternatives more attractive.

    This is not surprising. More intense regulation deters business attraction and expansion. An economic study by Raven Saks of the Federal Reserve Board concluded that … metropolitan areas with stringent development regulations generate less employment growth. At least part of the reason the Metro region’s diminished competitiveness lies with a failed strategy that appears to be having the exact opposite effect to what has been advertised – and widely celebrated – among planners from coast to coast.

    Note: 1980 three county data not available on-line.

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

    Photograph: South Waterfront Condominiums, Portland. Photo by author