New Geography

Category: Urban Issues

  • EPA Joins the Green Building Party

    By Richard Reep

    Well into the last decade, green design and smart growth operated as two separate and distinct reform movements. Both were widely celebrated in media, academic and planning circles, seeing themselves as noble causes albeit underdogs in the struggle against the mighty capitalistic enterprise of real estate development. Starting in 2009, the frozen credit market has kept private development moribund, and these two movements are somewhat moot as development takes a cease-fire.

    Yet now the two movements appear to be joined at the hip, a move encouraged by a federal bureaucracy and an Administration that embraces both groups’ agenda. In the process, what was once seen as an alternative to conventional development appears to be well on the way to becoming federally-mandated regulatory policy. The EPA, DOT, and HUD recently signed a memorandum of understanding to start making policy around green design and smart growth, turning these choices into federal standards.

    The standard bearer for green building, LEED certification, is the U. S. Green Building Council’s definition of energy efficiency and green design. A reform-focused movement, LEED established criteria by which a building’s energy and water use could be measured against a baseline, and the USGBC awards credits to the building when energy efficiency measures are achieved. LEED increases a building’s construction cost but reduces the building’s life cycle cost – monthly electric bills – and real estate developers, who gain nothing from lower energy costs, were slow to become interested in this choice. LEED was the domain of owner-operators like governments, who have a vested interest in keeping their future costs as low as possible, and was adopted as a criterion for capital expenditures by the GSA as well as many cities and counties by the close of the last millennium.

    Smart growth’s official champion is the Congress of the New Urbanism, which offers a design style choice for real estate developers. Developers, being profit oriented, historically have been loathe to tinker with what sells, and thus only in a few areas has New Urbanism gained a foothold. At its best, new urbanism represents a choice for homeowners who prefer dense, mixed-use communities that resemble traditional American towns, accentuating walkability and reducing residents’ dependence upon the car. In this key feature, Smart Growth advocates lobbied the U. S. Green Building Council to create a special category of LEED for Neighborhoods.

    Both movements promised reform. Both movements increased cost. Neither program was particularly effective at penetrating the real estate development market as long as the investment community favored large, formula-driven, profit-oriented real estate developers, and innovation consisted of product cost-cutting. The cost premium associated with each movement left them largely the playthings of boutique, niche-oriented developers aspiring to nobility while protecting their bottom line.

    Changes afoot in the last several months, however, are combining these two movements into one powerful force that turns these laudable movements away from choice and towards a prescriptive, and ultimately restrictive policy. Beginning in 2006, the Environmental Protection Agency encouraged communities to build walkable, energy-efficient growth within their boundaries, rather than continue spreading out – a surprising focus for an agency created to reduce pollution. Little else happened until late 2009, when suddenly the EPA began linking Energy Star (a Department of Energy program) to New Urbanist values such as walkability and mixed-use development. The EPA, which regulates pollution, has suddenly moved front-and-center into regulating growth, as if it were another type of pollution.

    At the same time, the U. S. Green Building Council yielded to heavy lobbying by the New Urbanist movement to create a new criterion, LEED Neighborhood Development. A developer may now submit a new land plan for certification to this LEED standard, and “smart growth” is being codified and standardized into a checklist and formula to be measured against a baseline. Like LEED for New Construction, these standards will also increase the cost for the developer desiring to build to these standards.

    Investors and developers may, on the surface, appear to have lost these dramatic battles. In the bigger picture, however, while the economy retools itself, it is not unusual to see regulation increase. If anyone remembers the S&L crisis of 1990-92, one of the biggest regulatory acts to affect real estate in modern times hit developers right between the eyes: The Americans with Disabilities Act. This reform removed physical barriers for all citizens with disabilities, but as a cost burden to developers it pales in comparison to the premiums that will be paid to meet the smart/green regulations currently being formulated by the Feds.

    Banks – hardly institutions with widely popular standing – stand to gain the most, because a developer who borrowed $10 million for a project in 2006 will probably need to borrow $11 or $12 million for the same project by the time bankers get around to discussing credit again. Developers also stand to gain, because as the cost goes up, so does the price. Coming out of the Millenial Depression, new construction will be faced with higher energy performance requirements, the higher costs associated with urban development, and a longer regulatory review process than ever before seen.

    The losers, of course, will be the vast majority of Americans who work hard and earn modest incomes. New home prices will increase, and renters will have to pay their landlords more to cover the increased costs of politically sanctioned development. While the affluent will be able to enjoy the benefits of a green, urbane lifestyle, the grocery store cashiers, dry cleaner clerks, housekeepers and artists who make up so much of our community will be forced out by the sheer cost of this movement – out to the suburbs, out to the exurbs, and out to the trailer parks beyond them. No green for you: your commute time just got much longer.

    Technology, of course, will eventually decrease in price and become more affordable; like VCRs and DVD players, the early adopters pay the freight until the appliance becomes a commodity. The same is likely true for exotic solutions like photovoltaics or low-voltage lighting as the marketplace sorts out what works from what doesn’t. So the impetus to go green will impose a crushing cost burden on new construction, which may gradually, over time, be absorbed into the mix.

    An affordable starter home in a low-cost subdivision, however, may be as doomed as leaded gasoline, and the American Dream will likely shift away from the landowner-based society once vaunted by Thomas Jefferson. The walkable lifestyle, now being exercised by free will, is well on its way to becoming federal government policy in a grand effort to incorporate reform and regulation into our lives from above.

    Whether or not this achieves the EPA’s mission to reduce pollution will only be discovered in the decades ahead as we incorporate the next hundred million Americans into the urban boundaries we have already set upon the land. It may be entirely possible to reach some of these goals without prescriptive overly burdensome regulation, yet this may only occur if political realities begin to reign in the current regulatory onslaught.

    Richard Reep is an Architect and artist living in Winter Park, Florida. His practice has centered around hospitality-driven mixed use, and has contributed in various capacities to urban mixed-use projects, both nationally and internationally, for the last 25 years.

    Photo by eng1ne

  • Freeing Energy Policy From The Climate Change Debate

    The 20-year effort by environmentalists to establish climate science as the primary basis for far-reaching action to decarbonize the global energy economy today lies in ruins. Backlash in reaction to “Climategate” and recent controversies involving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2007 assessment report are but the latest evidence that such efforts have evidently failed.

    While the urge to blame fossil-fuel-funded skeptics for this recent bad turn of events has proven irresistible for most environmental leaders and pundits, forward-looking greens wishing to ascertain what might be salvaged from the wreckage would be well advised to look closer to home. Climate science, even at its most uncontroversial, could never motivate the remaking of the entire global energy economy. Efforts to use climate science to threaten an apocalyptic future should we fail to embrace green proposals, and to characterize present-day natural disasters as terrifying previews of an impending day of reckoning, have only served to undermine the credibility of both climate science and progressive energy policy.

    The Endless Weather Wars

    The habit of overstating the current state of climate science knowledge, and in particular our understanding of the relationship between global warming and present-day weather events, has been difficult for environmentalists to give up because, on one level, it has worked so well for them.

    Global warming first exploded into mass public consciousness in the summer of 1988, when droughts, fires in the Amazon, and heat waves in the United States were widely attributed as warning signs of an eco-apocalypse to come. Former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth held the first widely covered congressional hearing on the subject that summer and admits having targeted the hearing for the hottest day of the year and turned off the air conditioning in the room to ensure that the conditions would be sweltering for the assembled media.

    Such tactics have only intensified over the past two decades. In the run-up to U.N. climate talks in Kyoto in 1997, the Clinton Administration recruited Al Roker and other weathermen to explain global warming to the public. In 2006, Al Gore used his “Inconvenient Truth” slide show to link Hurricane Katrina, droughts, and floods to warming. And some environmental groups have routinely implied that present-day extreme weather and natural disasters are evidence of anthropogenic warming.

    But it turned out that both sides could play the weather game. Skeptics also started pointing to weather events like snowstorms as evidence of no warming. While environmental advocates frequently criticize opponents such as Sen. James Inhofe for conflating weather with climate, the reality is that both sides abuse the science in the service of their political agendas. Climate change models, created in an effort to understand the potential long-term effect of global warming on regional weather trends, can no more tell us anything useful about today’s extreme weather events than last month’s snow storms can inform us as to whether global warming is occurring.

    Climate Science Disasters

    For more than 20 years, advocates have simultaneously overestimated the certainty with which climate science could predict the future and underestimated the economic and technological challenges associated with rapidly decarbonizing the energy economy. The oft-heard mantra that “All we lack is political will” assumes that the solutions to global warming are close at hand and that the primary obstacle to implementing them is public ignorance fed by fossil-fuel-funded skeptics.

    Environmental advocates — with help from pollsters, psychologists, and cognitive scientists — have long understood that global warming represented a particularly problematic threat around which to mobilize public opinion. The threat is distant, abstract, and difficult to visualize. Faced with a public that has seemed largely indifferent to the possibility of severe climactic disruptions resulting from global warming, some environmentalists have tried to characterize the threat as more immediate, mostly by suggesting that global warming was already adversely impacting human societies, primarily in the form of increasingly deadly natural disasters.

    The result has been an ever-escalating set of demands on climate science, with greens and their allies often attempting to represent climate science as apocalyptic, imminent, and certain, in no small part so that they could characterize all resistance as corrupt, anti-scientific, short-sighted, or ignorant. Greens pushed climate scientists to become outspoken advocates of action to address global warming. Captivated by the notion that their voices and expertise were singularly necessary to save the world, some climate scientists attempted to oblige. The result is that the use, and misuse, of climate science by advocates began to wash back into the science itself.

    Little surprise then, that most of the recent controversies besetting climate science involve efforts to move the proximity of the global warming threat closer to the present. The most
    explosive revelations of Climategate involved disputed methodological techniques to merge multiple data sets (e.g., ice cores, tree rings, 20th century weather station readings) into a single global temperature trend line, the “hockey stick” graph. Whatever one thinks of the quality of the data sets, the methods used to combine them, or the efforts by some to shield the underlying data from critics, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that those involved were trying to fit the data to a trend that they already expected to see – namely that the spike in global carbon emissions in recent decades tracked virtually in lockstep with a concomitant spike in present-day global temperatures.

    Other faulty or sloppy claims in the IPCC’s voluminous reports — such as the contention that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035 — followed the same pattern.

    Perhaps most problematic of all, with some environmentalists convinced that connecting global warming to natural disasters was the key to climate policy progress, researchers felt enormous pressure to demonstrate a link. But multiple studies using different methodologies and data sets show no statistically significant relationship between the rising cost of natural disasters and global warming. And according to a review sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation and Munich Re, researchers are unlikely to be able to unequivocally link storm or flood losses to anthropogenic warming for several decades, if even then. This is not because there is no evidence of increasing extreme weather, but rather because the rising costs of natural disasters have been driven so overwhelmingly by social and economic factors — more people with more wealth living in harm’s way.

    Yet prominent environmental advocates, including Al Gore, have continued to make claims linking global warming to natural disasters. And in its 2007 report, the IPCC — ignoring evidence to the contrary — misrepresented disaster-loss science when it published a graph linking global temperature increases with rising financial losses from natural disasters.

    Action in the Face of Uncertainty

    It was only a matter of time before such claims would begin to undermine public confidence in climate science. Weather is not climate and linguistic subterfuges, such as the oft-repeated assertion that extreme weather events and natural disasters are “consistent with” climate change, do not change the reality that advocates and scientists who make such assertions are conflating short-term weather events with long-term climactic trends in a way that simply cannot be supported by the science.

    For 20 years, greens and many scientists have overstated the certainty of climate disaster out of the belief that governments could not be motivated to act if they viewed the science as highly uncertain. And yet governments routinely take strong action in the face of highly uncertainty events. California requires strict building codes and has invested billions to protect against earthquakes even as earthquake science has shifted its focus from prediction to preparedness. Recently, the federal government mobilized impressively and effectively to prevent an avian flu epidemic whose severity was unknown.

    In the end, there is no avoiding the enormous uncertainties inherent to our understanding of climate change. Whether 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, or 450 or 550, is the right number in terms of atmospheric stabilization, any prudent strategy to minimize future risks associated with catastrophic climate change involves decarbonizing our economy as rapidly as possible. Stronger evidence of climate change from scientists was never going to drive Americans to demand economically painful limits on carbon emissions or energy use. And uncertainty about climate science will not deter Americans from embracing energy and other policies that they perceive to be in the nation’s economic, national security, and environmental interest. This was the case in 1988 and is still largely the case today.

    But the danger now is that having spent two decades demanding that the public and policy-makers obey climate science, and having established certainty and scientific consensus as the standard by which climate action should be judged, environmentalists risk undermining the case for building a clean-energy economy. Having allowed the demands of advocacy efforts to wash back into the production of climate science, the danger today is that the discrediting of the science will wash back into the larger effort to transform our energy policy.

    Now is the time to free energy policy from climate science. In recent years, bipartisan agreement has grown on the need to decarbonize our energy supply through the expansion of renewables, nuclear power, and natural gas, as well as increased funding of research and development of new energy technologies. Carbon caps may remain as aspirational targets, but the primary role for carbon pricing, whether through auctioning pollution permits or a carbon tax, should be to fund low-carbon energy research, development, and deployment.

    No longer conscripted to justify and rationalize binding carbon caps or the modernization and decarbonization of our energy systems, climate science can get back to being primarily a scientific enterprise. The truth is that once climate science becomes detached from the expectation that it will establish a standard for allowable global carbon emissions that every nation on earth will heed, no one will much care about the hockey stick or the disaster-loss record, save those whose business, as scientists, is to attend to such matters.

    Climate science can still usefully inform us about the possible trajectories of the global climate and help us prepare for extreme weather and natural disasters, whether climate change ultimately results in their intensification or not. And understood in its proper role, as one of many reasons why we should decarbonize the global economy, climate science can even help contribute to the case for taking such action. But so long as environmentalists continue to demand that climate science drive the transformation of the global energy economy, neither the science, nor efforts to address climate change, will be well served.

    Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are the authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility and a recent collection of energy and climate writings, The Emerging Climate Consensus, with a preface by Ross Gelbspan, available for download at www.TheBreakthrough.org. In previous articles for Yale Environment 360, they have written about what they consider flaws in the cap-and-trade debate and why public concern in the U.S. about global warming has declined.

    Photo by ItzaFineDay

  • Don’t Mess With Texas

    One of the most ironic aspects of our putative “Age of Obama” is how little impact it has had on the nation’s urban geography. Although the administration remains dominated by boosters from traditional blue state cities–particularly the president’s political base of Chicago–the nation’s metropolitan growth continues to shift mostly toward a handful of Sunbelt red state metropolitan areas.

    Our Urbanist in Chief may sit in the Oval Office, but Americans continue to vote with their feet for the adopted hometown of widely disdained former President George W. Bush. According to the most recent Census estimates, the Dallas and Ft. Worth, Texas, region added 146,000 people between 2008 and 2009–the most of any region in the country–a healthy 2.3% increase.

    Other Texas cities also did well. Longtime rival Houston sat in second, with an additional 140,000 residents. Smaller Austin added 50,000–representing a remarkable 3% growth–while San Antonio grew by some 41,000 people.

    In contrast, most blue state mega cities–with the exception of Washington, D.C.–grew much more slowly. The New York City region’s rate of growth was just one-fifth that of Dallas or Houston, while Los Angeles barely reached one-third the level of the Texas cities.

    These trends should continue: According to Moody’s Economy.com, Texas’ big cities are entering economic recovery mode well ahead of almost all the major centers along the East or West Coasts. This represents a continuation of longer-term trends, both before and after the economic crisis. Between 2000 and 2009 New York gained 95,000 jobs while Chicago lost 257,000, Los Angeles over 167,000 and San Francisco some 216,000. Meanwhile, Dallas added nearly 150,000 positions and Houston a hefty 250,000.

    This leads me to believe that the most dynamic future for America urbanism–and I believe there is one–lies in Texas’ growing urban centers. To reshape a city in a sustainable way, you need to have a growing population, a solid and expanding job base and a relatively efficient city administration.

    None of these characteristics apply to places like President Obama’s hometown of Chicago, which continues to suffer from the downturn–but you would never know it based on media coverage of the Windy City.

    The New Yorker, for example, recently published a lavish tribute to the city and its mayor, Richard Daley. But as long-time Chicago observer Steve Bartin points out, the story missed–or simply ignored–many critical facts. Mistaking Daley’s multi-term tenure as proof of effectiveness, it failed to recognize the region’s continued loss of jobs, decaying infrastructure, rampant corruption and continued out-migration of the area’s beleaguered middle class.

    Generally speaking, as Urbanophile blogger Aaron Renn points out, the repeated reports of an urban renaissance in older northern cities should be viewed with skepticism. In the Midwest region over the past year the share of population growth enjoyed in core counties–an area usually much larger than the city boundary–actually declined in most major Midwestern metros, including Chicago.

    Yet urbanists generally have not embraced the remarkable growth in the major Texas metropolitan areas. Only Austin gets some recognition, since, with its hip music scene and more liberal leanings, it’s the kind of place high-end journalists might actually find tolerable. The three other big Texas cities have become the Rodney Dangerfields of urban America–largely disdained despite their prodigious growth and increasingly vibrant urban cores.

    Part of the problem stems from the fact that all Texas cities are sprawling, multi-polar regions, with many thriving employment centers. This seems to offend the tender sensibilities of urbanists who crave for the downtown-centric cities of yesteryear and reject the more dispersed model that has emerged in the past few decades.

    Yet despite planners’ prejudices, places like Houston and Dallas are more than collections of pesky suburban infestations. They are expanding their footprints to the periphery and densifying at the same time.

    Of course, like virtually all other regions, Houston and Dallas suffer excess capacity in both office buildings and urban lofts. But the real estate slowdown has not depressed Texans’ passion for inner city development. Indeed, over the past decade the central core of Houston–inside the boundaries of the 610 freeway loop–has experienced arguably the widest and most sustained densification in the country.

    An analysis of building permit trends by Houston blogger Tory Gattis, for example, found that before the real estate crash, the Texas city was producing more high-density projects on a per-capita basis than the urbanist mecca of Portland. Significantly, as Gattis points out, the impetus for this growth has largely resulted not from planning but from infrastructure investment, job growth and entrepreneurial venturing.

    This process is also evident in the Dallas area, which has experienced a surge in condo construction near its urban core and some very intriguing “town center” developments, such as the Legacy project in suburban Plano. In Big D, developers generally view densification not as an alternative to suburbia but another critical option needed in a growing region.

    It’s widely understood there that many people move to places like Dallas, whether in closer areas or exurbs, largely to purchase affordable single-family homes. But as the population grows, there remains a strong and growing niche for an intensifying urban core as well.

    Dallas and other Texas cities substitute the narrow notion of “or”–that is cities can grow only if the suburbs are sufficiently strangled–with a more inclusive notion of “and.” A bigger, wealthier, more important region will have room for all sorts of grand projects that will provide more density and urban amenities.

    This approach can be seen in remarkable plans for developing “an urban forest” along the Trinity River, which runs through much of Dallas. The extent of the project–which includes reforestation, white water rafting and restorations of large natural areas–would provide the Dallas region with 10,000 acres of parkland right in the heart of the region. In comparison, New York City’s Central Park, arguably the country’s most iconic urban reserve, covers some 800 acres.

    If it is completed within 10 years, as now planned, the Trinity River project will not only spawn a great recreational asset, but could revitalize many parts of the city that have languished over the past few decades. It could become a signature landmark in the urban development of 21st-century America.

    As we look at the coming decades, this Texan vision may help define a new urban future for a nation that will grow by roughly 100 million people by 2050. To get a glimpse of that future, urbanists and planners need to get beyond their nostalgic quest to recreate the highly centralized 19th-century city. Instead they should hop a plane down to Dallas or Houston, where the outlines of the 21st-century American city are already being created and exuberantly imagined.

    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 Febuary, 2010.

    Photo by Stuck in Customs

  • SPECIAL REPORT: Metropolitan Area Migration Mirrors Housing Affordability

    On schedule, the annual ritual occurred last week in which the Census Bureau releases population and migration estimates and the press announces that people are no longer moving to the Sun Belt. The coverage by The Wall Street Journal was typical of the media bias, with a headline “Sun Belt Loses its Shine.” In fact, the story is more complicated – and more revealing about future trends.

    Domestic Migration Tracks Housing Affordability: There have been changes in domestic migration (people moving from one part of the country to another) trends in the last few years, but the principal association is with housing affordability.

    Severe and Not-Severe Bubble Markets: Overall, the major metropolitan markets with severe housing bubbles (a Median Multiple rising to at least 4.5, see note) lost nearly 3.2 million domestic migrants (all of these markets have restrictive land use regulation, such as smart growth or growth management) from 2000 to 2009. However, not all markets with severe housing bubbles lost domestic migrants. “Safety valve” bubble markets drew migration from the extreme bubble markets of coastal California, Miami and the Northeast. These “safety valve” markets (including Phoenix, Las Vegas, Portland, Seattle, Riverside-San Bernardino, Orlando, Tucson and Tampa-St. Petersburg), gained a net 2.2 million from 2000 to 2009, while the other bubble markets lost 5.3 million domestic migrants from 2000 to 2009 (See Table below, metropolitan area details in Demographia US Metropolitan Areas Table 8). At the same time, the markets that did not experience a severe housing bubble (those in which the Median Multiple did not reach 4.5) gained a net 1.5 million domestic migrants.

    The burst of the housing bubble explains the changes in domestic migration trends. Housing affordability has improved markedly in the extreme bubble markets, so that there was less incentive to move. Then there was the housing bust-induced Great Recession, which also slowed migration since people had more trouble selling their homes or finding anew job. As a result, the migration to the “safety valve” markets and to the smaller markets dropped substantially.

    • During 2009, the “safety valve” markets gained only 51,000 net domestic migrants, one-fifth of the annual average from 2000 to 2008.
    • At the same time, the other severe housing bubble markets lost 236,000 domestic migrants in 2009, compared to the average loss of 638,000 from 2000 to 2008.
    • Areas outside the major metropolitan areas also experienced a significant drop in domestic migration, dropping from an annual average of 203,000 between 2000 and 2008 to 23,000 in 2009.
    • The major metropolitan markets that did not experience a severe housing bubble gained 161,000 domestic migrants in 2009, little changed from the 169,000 average from 2000 to 2008. These markets are concentrated in the South and Midwest. Indianapolis, Kansas City, Nashville, Louisville and Columbus as well as the Texas metropolitan areas continued their positive migration trends.
    Domestic Migration by Severity of the Housing Bubble
    Metropolitan Areas over 1,000,000 Population
    2000-2008
    Metropolitan Areas 2000-2009 2009 2000-2008 Average
    Withouth Severe Housing Bubbles     1,509,870         160,514      168,670
    With Severe Housing Bubbles    (3,161,514)        (184,486)     (372,129)
       Not "Safety Valve" Markets    (5,347,211)        (235,838)     (638,922)
       "Safety Valve" Markets     2,185,697           51,352      266,793
    Outside Largest Metropolitan Areas     1,651,644           23,972      203,459
    Severe housing bubbles: Housing costs rose to a Median Multiple of 4.5 or more (50% above the historic norm of 3.0). 
    Median Multiple: Median House Price/Median Household Income
    "Safety Valve" refers to markets with severe housing bubbles that received substantial migration from more expensive markets (coastal California, Miami and the Northeast). These markets include Las Vegas, Phoenix, Riverside-San Bernardino, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Orlando, Tucson and Tampa-St. Petersburg.

    Moreover, the Census Bureau revised its previous domestic migration figures for 2000 to 2008 to add more than 110,000 from the markets without severe housing bubbles, while taking away more than 150,000 domestic migrants from the markets with severe housing bubbles. This adjustment alone rivals the 2009 domestic migration loss of 183,000 in these markets

    Population Growth: The Top 10 Metropolitan Areas: Sun Belt metropolitan areas continued to experience the greatest population growth. Between 2000 and 2009, the fastest growing metropolitan areas were Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, In 2009, Washington, DC was added to the list (Details in Demographia US Metropolitan Areas, Table 2).

    New York: The New York metropolitan area remains the nation’s largest, now reaching a population of over 19 million. More than 700,000 new residents have been added since 2000. However, New York’s population growth has been the second slowest of the 10 largest metropolitan areas since 2000 (Figure 1). Moreover, New York’s net domestic out-migration has been huge. New York has lost 1,960,000 domestic migrants, which is more people than live in the boroughs of The Bronx and Richmond combined. Overall, 10.7% of the New York metropolitan area’s 2000 population left the metropolitan area between 2000 and 2009. More than 1,200,000 of this domestic migration was from the city of New York. Between 2008 and 2009, New York’s net domestic out-migration slowed from the minus 1.32% 2000-2008 annual rate to minus 0.58%., reflecting the smaller migration figures that have been typical of the Great Recession.

    Los Angeles: For decades, Los Angeles has been one of the world’s fastest growing metropolitan areas. Growth had ebbed somewhat by the 1990s, when Los Angeles added 1.1 million people. The California Department of Finance had projected that Los Angeles would add another 1.35 million people between 2000 and 2010. Yet, the Los Angeles growth rate fell drastically. From 2000 to 2009, Los Angeles added barely one-third the projected amount (476,000) and grew only 3.8%. Unbelievably, fast growing Los Angeles became the slowest growing metropolitan area among the 10 largest. In 2009, Los Angeles had 12.9 million people. Los Angeles lost 1.365 million domestic migrants, which is of 11.0% of its 2000 population, and the most severe outmigration among the top 10 metropolitan areas (Figure 2).

    Chicago: Chicago continues to be the nation’s third largest metropolitan area, at 9.6 million population, a position it has held since being displaced by Los Angeles in 1960. Chicago has experienced decades of slow growth and continues to grow less than the national average, at 5.1% between 2000 and 2009 (the national average was 8.8%). Yet, Chicago grew faster than both New York and Los Angeles. Chicago also lost a large number of domestic migrants (561,000), though at a much lower rate than New York and Chicago (6.2%). Even so, Chicago is growing fast enough that it could exceed 10 million population in little more than a decade, by the 2020 census.

    Dallas-Fort Worth: Dallas-Fort Worth has emerged as the nation’s fourth largest metropolitan area, at 6.4 million, having added 1,250,000 since 2000. In 2000, Dallas-Fort Worth ranked fifth, with 500,000 fewer people than Philadelphia, which it now leads by nearly 500,000. Dallas-Fort Worth added more population than any metropolitan area in the nation between 2008 and 2009 and has been the fastest growing of the 10 top metropolitan areas since 2006. As a result, Dallas-Fort Worth has replaced Atlanta as the high-income world’s fastest growing metropolitan area with more than 5,000,000 population. Dallas-Fort Worth added a net 317,000 domestic migrants between 2000 and 2009.

    Philadelphia: Philadelphia is the nation’s fifth largest metropolitan area, at just below 6,000,000 population. Like Chicago, Philadelphia has had decades of slow growth, yet has grown faster in this decade than both New York and Los Angeles (4.8%). Philadelphia has lost a net 115,000 domestic migrants since 2000, for a loss rate of 2.2%, well below that of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

    Houston: Houston ranks sixth, with 5.9 million people and is giving Dallas-Fort Worth a “run for its money.” Like Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston has added more than 1,000,000 people since 2000. Over the same period, Houston has passed Miami and Washington (DC) in population. Houston has added a net 244,000 domestic migrants since 2000, and added 50,000 in 2008-2009, the largest number in the country. Like Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston accelerated its annual domestic migration growth rate in 2008-2009. At the current growth rate, Houston seems likely to pass Philadelphia in population shortly after the 2010 census.

    Miami: Miami (stretching from Miami through Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach) is the seventh largest metropolitan area, with 5.6 million people. Miami has added more than 500,000 people, for a growth rate of 10.4%. However, Miami has suffered substantial domestic migration losses, at 287,000, a loss rate of, 5.7% relative to its 2000 population.

    Washington (DC): Washington recaptured 8th place, moving ahead of Atlanta, which had temporarily replaced it. Washington’s population is 5.5 million and added 655,000 between 2000 and 2009, for a growth rate of 13.6%. However, Washington lost a net 110,000 domestic migrants, 2.2% of its 2000 population. That trend was reversed in 2008-2009, when a net 18,000 domestic migrants moved to Washington, perhaps reflecting the increased concentration of economic power in the nation’s capital.

    Atlanta: Atlanta is the real surprise this year. For more than 30 years, Atlanta has had strong growth, however, this year it slowed. Atlanta is the 9th largest metropolitan area in the nation, at 5.5 million. Since 2000, Atlanta has added 1.2 million people, though added only 90,000 last year. Atlanta has added a net 429,000 domestic migrants since 2000, though the rate slowed to only 17,000 in 2008-2009.

    Boston: Boston is the nation’s 10th largest metropolitan area, with 4.6 million people. During the 2000s, Boston has added nearly 200,000, growing by 4.2%. Yet, Boston has also experienced a net domestic migration loss of 236,000, or 5.4% of its 2000 population. In 2008-2009, Boston, like Washington, reversed its domestic migration losses, adding 7,000.

    Trends by Size of Metropolitan Area: As throughout the decade, the slowest growing areas of the nation have been metropolitan areas over 10,000,000 population (New York and Los Angeles), which grew 3.9% and non-metropolitan areas, which grew 2.6% during the decade Metropolitan areas that had between 2.5 and 5.0 million population in 2000 boasted the biggest jump (these include fast growing Houston and Atlanta, which are now more than 5 million), at 13.4% for the decade. All of the other size classifications grew between 8.9% and 11.3% over the decade (see Demographia US Metropolitan Areas, Table 1). Metropolitan areas that began the decade with between 5,000,000 and 10,000,000 population gained 10.0%. Those with 250,000 to 500,000 grew 10.4%, those with 500,000 to 1,000,000 grew 10.2% and the smallest metropolitan areas, those from 50,000 to 250,000 grew 8.9%

    Metropolitan areas over 1,000,000 population lost 2.19 million domestic migrants during the decade, but smaller metropolitan areas added 2.24 million domestic migrants. Non-metropolitan areas lost 50,000 domestic migrants. In 2009, the smaller metropolitan areas gained 125,000 domestic migrants, while the larger metropolitan areas lost 30,000. Non-metropolitan areas lost more than 90,000 domestic migrants. As noted above, these smaller figures for 2009 reflect the more stable housing market and the extent to which the Great Recession has reduced geographic mobility (See Demographia US Metropolitan Areas, Tables 1 and 3).

    Note: The Median Multiple is the median house price divided by the median household income. The historic standard has been 3.0.

    Photograph: Dallas

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

  • Mayor Daley’s Report Card

    In December of 2010 Mayor Daley will become Chicago’s longest serving Mayor. In office since 1989, he will surpass the record held by his father. In the March issue of The New Yorker magazine, journalist Evan Osnos has a long article on Mayor Daley. The front cover of the magazine calls Daley, “America’s most successful mayor”.

    By longevity standards Mayor Daley is a success, but then again so was the late Coleman Young who was Detroit’s Mayor for over 20 years.

    The tone of Osnos’ piece is mostly positive, providing some history:

    He took office at a moment when Chicago was paralyzed by infighting and mismanagement. In 1987, William Bennett, the Secretary of Education, said that Chicago had the worst school system in the country—“ an education meltdown.” The center of the city was a desiccating museum of masterpieces by Mies van der Rohe and Louis Sullivan. Infant mortality in remote neighborhoods was comparable to levels in the Third World.

    In the years that followed, Detroit, Cleveland, and former industrial powers continued to wither, but Chicago did not. It has grown in population, income, and diversity; it has added more jobs than Los Angeles and Boston combined.

    The problem with Osnos’ history is it’s not entirely accurate. First of all, by the time Mayor Daley was elected in 1989 the City Council infighting had mostly stopped. Eugene Sawyer, Chicago’s second African American Mayor, was supported by the white elements of the Chicago Democratic Machine.

    Some of the mistakes are hard to fathom. Osnos cites no source on his rather incredible job numbers. Chicago has roughly the same population as it did in 1989, unlike Los Angeles which has climbed past the 4 million mark. Chicago is stuck under 3 million people with the long term population trend in decline. It’s difficult to have population growth without decent job growth.

    Osnos’ article has provoked a heated reaction from Chicago Reader ace columnist Ben Joravsky. The Chicago Reader and Joravsky, over the years, have covered Daley’s shady tenure as Mayor. Jorasky reminds us in attacking the New Yorker article:

    And why is it that Daley’s boosters always compare Chicago to poor, unfortunate Detroit—a one-industry town battered by the collapse of its one industry? Chicago has always been a larger, healthier, more diverse town than Detroit. If you want to see how Chicago really ranks, compare it to New York City, whose population and wealth are rising faster than Chicago’s with a fraction of the attendant corruption. In fact, Chicago’s population has fallen in the last few years.

    Joravsky could hardly keep from mentioning Chicago’s murder problem:

    Did I mention that in recent years Chicago has been the murder capital of the country? In fact, the murder tally has been much higher under Daley than it ever was under Byrne or Washington—it’s even higher than, yes, Detroit, which Osnos points out was known as the nation’s murder capital in the 1970s. And now we’re so broke we can’t hire police officers to replace the hundreds of veterans who are retiring—even though our taxes keep going up and up. My property taxes were $2,700 in 1997; this year I expect I’ll pay close to $8,000.

    This isn’t Chicago’s only problem. Its convention business is evaporating. Chicago’s union run McCormick Place is headed towards financial ruin. Major trade shows have left Chicago for better places to do business. Part of McCormick Place’s problem has been the pervasive influence of the Chicago Mob, also known as the outfit. Mayor Daley is quite sensitive to the subject because it has affected so many aspects of Chicago. Recently, the Chicago Tribune quoted former senior FBI agent James Wagner explaining the situation:

    The Outfit has long been entrenched at McCormick Place and in many of the unions and contractors that do business there.
    “It’s been a rehabilitate-the-felon location in terms of being a place to get people jobs when they get out of prison,” said James Wagner, a former longtime organized-crime supervisor for the FBI in Chicago and now top investigator at the Illinois Tollway. “It’s had these kinds of problems for about as long as it’s been there. And it’s had someone associated with the Outfit in just about every job there.”
    Among the factors that make McCormick Place a haven for the mob are its sheer size and the number of contracts and trade shows there, Wagner said.
    Four years ago, the riggers union, whose members set up exhibits at McCormick Place, was under federal investigation after its boss, Fred Schreier, who was once married to the niece of the late mob boss Tony Accardo, pleaded guilty to taking a bribe.

    Near the end of Osnos’ New Yorker article Mayor Daley’s scandals get a mention without too much detail. Daley fails to answer questions on the massive Hired Truck scandal which has been closely linked to the Chicago Mob. Daley also refuses to remain silent on why a major campaign contributor and close friend bombed a restaurant with the Chicago Mob, according to federal testimony. Recently, Daley admitted that he’s been questioned by the FBI concerning a major bribery and zoning case which just concluded.
    Chicago’s immediate economic situation has been nicely summarized by blogger Gary Lucido:

    How much worse can it get?

    I just picked up the January employment numbers for the greater Chicago metropolitan area and the picture is getting more grim than I thought – we have hit a new 14 year low. The Chicago area has lost 162,000 jobs in just the last 12 months and a total of 459,000 jobs have been lost since employment peaked in July 2007. The unemployment rate for the Chicago area is now at 11.7%, which is up from a low of 4.6% in November 2007 and that is higher than any rate that I have access to (going back to 1990).

    The New Yorker article mentions Mayor Daley polling numbers dropping into the 30s. In Chicago’s one party state, Daley can run next time, even with low polling numbers, and win — unless a credible wealth financed candidate materializes. No candidate has. But, one sign that Mayor Daley feels he’s got a bad report card coming: he opened up a Twitter page.

    Steve Bartin is a resident of Cook County and native who blogs regularly about urban affairs at http://nalert.blogspot.com. He works in Internet sales.

    Photo by kate.gardiner

  • The Asian Urban Ascendancy

    Urbanization doubtlessly has been the most significant demographic trend in the world for at least a century and promises to become even more significant in the future. The trend began in the United States and Western Europe as people moved by the millions from the countryside to the urban areas, where employment and a better life were possible.

    World Urbanization: By 1950, approximately 30% of the world’s population lived in urban areas (that is they did not live in rural areas). The number has passed 50% in the last few years and the United Nations estimates that 60% of the population will live in urban areas by 2030. Today, China has approximately the same urban population share as did the United States 100 years ago (45%), and will reach 60% by 2030. Even with its slow population growth, China will add 270 million people to its urban areas by 2030. Only 30% of India’s population is urban, which will increase to 40% by 2030. This apparently modest increase will amount to 250 million new urban residents. Thus, combined, China and India will add about 60% more population to their urban areas than live in the United States today.

    As late as 1950, 10 of the world’s 20 largest urban areas were in the United States or Europe. Asia accounted for 6. There was only two “megacities” (urban area with a population of more than 10 million), New York and Tokyo. Over the next 50 years, Tokyo signaled the urban ascendancy of Asia, adding more than 20 million people, a larger population than lived in the second largest urban area in 2000.

    Demographia World Urban Areas: The continuing Asian urban ascendancy is illustrated in our 6th Annual Edition of Demographia World Urban Areas. This list includes all identified urban areas (Note) in the world with more than 500,000 population, and, unlike other lists estimates the urban land area and population density of each.

    Things have changed markedly since 1950. Now, 13 of the 20 largest urban areas in the world are in Asia. Only three are in the United States or Europe (New York, Los Angeles and Moscow). For the first time in at least 200 years, none of the top 5 urban areas in the world are in the United States or Europe. Now, all five of the largest urban areas in the world are in Asia. There are now 26 megacities, up from 2 in 1950. At current growth rates, there could be 39 megacities by 2030, only five of which will be in the United States or Europe (New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris and Chicago)

    Tokyo remains the largest urban area (35.2 million) in the world, far larger than any other. Yet, with a slow growth rate, Tokyo is predicted to increase to only 36.0 million by 2030 and could be displaced by Jakarta.

    Jakarta is estimated to be the world’s second largest urban area, with 22.0 million people. This is a larger population than indicated on some lists, which fail to include all of the suburbs within the urban footprint. At currently projected growth rates, Jakarta could edge out Tokyo to become the largest urban area in the world by 2030, at 37.0 million. Jakarta is also unique in having adopted an official metropolitan area name, Jabotabek (taken from JAkarta, along with the large suburban municipalities of BOgor, TAngerang and BEKasi).

    Mumbai ranks third with a population of 21.3 million. Some demographers expect that Mumbai could become the largest urban area in the world eventually. The trends suggest that it will not even prevail as India’s largest urban area, falling to fifth in the world, behind Delhi. Currently projected growth rates indicate a population of 31.4 million by 2030.

    Delhi is the fourth largest urban area, with a population of 21.0 million. Like Jakarta, Delhi’s population is often under-estimated by limiting its urbanization to the National Capital Territory. However, the large, adjacent suburbs of Faridibad, Ghaziabad and Nodia add considerably to estimates. At projected growth rates, Delhi could have 32.8 million people by 2030 and be ranked as the fourth largest urban area in the world.

    Manila ranks fifth and is another urban area often characterized as having a smaller population than the reality. Various lists confine Manila to the National Capital District, which has about 11 million people. This is rather like thinking of the Toronto area as confined within the city limits of Toronto, missing half of the urban area population. In fact, the urban organism in Manila (and Toronto) extends to where the rural areas begin, and that gives Manila a population of 20.8 million. The currently projected growth rate indicates that Manila could reach 34.1 million by 2030, to rank third in the world.

    Predictions are Just Predictions: Of course projections are speculative and often do not come true. Before the 1985 earthquake, for example, many demographers expected Mexico City to become the largest urban area in the world. Since that time, Mexico City has grown, but not at the spectacular rate that was expected. In 1985, Mexico City was the third largest urban area in the world. Today Mexico City ranks 9th and could fall to 12th by 2030.

    New York, which had been the perennial leader from early in the 20th century to 1950, fell to 6th place in 2010 and looks likely to fall further, to 10th in 2030. London, which had led the world from the early 19th century until New York assumed the top position, fell from 3rd place in 1950, to 29th in 2010 and could fall to 46th by 2030.

    Urban Land Area: Housing and serving 10 million or more people takes a lot of space. The New York urban area covers the largest land area in the world, at 4,300 square miles (11,300 square kilometers), followed by Tokyo (3,400/8,700), Chicago (2,300/6,000), Los Angeles (2,200/5,800) and Boston (2,100/5,500). Another 17 urban areas cover more than 1,000 square miles or 2,500 square kilometers (such as Paris, Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Buenos Aires).

    Urban Density: Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has been growing very rapidly and especially its high-density slum or shanty town population, which can reach densities as high as 2,500,000 per square mile (1,000,000 per square kilometer). Dhaka is estimated to be the densest urban area in the world, with more than 100,000 people per square mile (40,000 per square kilometer). The “historical accident” city-states of Hong Kong and Macao are in a virtual three way tie with Mumbai (65,000/25,000), followed by Surat (India) at 55,000/21,000. The highest US urban area density is in Los Angeles, at 6,400/2,500; while Western Europe’s highest urban area density is in Madrid, at 14,100/5,400.

    Of course, as the Dhaka case indicates, average densities can mask huge variations. The differences in density (density gradients) tend to be the greatest in developing world urban areas, where shantytown densities can be substantially greater than the Lower East Side of New York in 1910. However, average urban densities are the appropriate overall density measure for the urban organism, which includes everything from the core of the urban area, through the suburbs, ending at the countryside.

    Of Urbanization and Aspiration: Much has been written about the challenges of urbanization and it is clear they are accelerating. UN estimates indicate that virtually all of the population increase in the world will be in urban areas between 2010 and 2030. There is a simple reason for this. The urban areas are far better places to live, even for low income people, than rural areas. This is because urban areas have strong economies. If conditions were better outside the urban areas, then the millions who have migrated to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo would long since have returned to their roots in northeastern Brazil. Jakarta and Karachi would be emptying out. Urban areas will continue to grow strongly, because people are driven by their aspirations, which are far better served in the urban areas.

    Note: An urban area is an urban agglomeration or an urban footprint (area of continuous development). An urban area is the organism of the “city” in its spatial dimension. A metropolitan area is the organism of a city in its economic dimension and includes labor market areas that extend beyond the urban area. Census authorities in a number of nations have adopted similar definitions for urban areas (Examples are United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Norway, Sweden and Australia). Demographia World Urban Areas uses national census bureau data for both population and land area estimates where it is available and estimates urban land area from satellite imagery for all others, applying the international urban area criteria to the greatest possible extent.

    Photograph: Suburban Manila

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

  • The Not-So-Lucky Country

    President Obama’s last-minute decision to postpone his homecoming to Indonesia and a trip to Australia expands the list of friendly countries–which include France, the U.K. and most of Eastern Europe–that have received a presidential snub. Yet in putting off his Australia trip, Obama will also miss an opportunity to commune with the politician whom he most closely resembles.

    Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, like Obama, symbolizes a distinct shift in his country’s politics. Replacing the rough-hewn but long-serving Liberal Party leader John Howard, Rudd offered sophisticated Australians a better reflection of their own savoir faire, much as Obama restored the self-image of America’s Bush-wracked educated classes. Like Obama, Rudd is widely seen as smart and worldly as well as perhaps a bit rude and arrogant.

    On a more serious note, Rudd reflects a shift from the country’s foreign policy orientation, which historically focused on British and, later, American ties. Like Obama, Rudd has little patience for the old ties to the English-speaking world. A confirmed sinophile, Rudd clearly sees the sun rising in the east–or in his case, the north. He has made no bones of his post-European perspective and his interest of aligning his country closer to Beijing.

    Indeed the affection of Rudd, a former diplomat fluent in Mandarin, for things Chinese worries some Australians, given the Middle Kingdom’s increasingly assertive authoritarianism.. His coziness with the Communist Party bosses has provided fodder for clever comic videos from down under.

    Also like President Obama, Rudd epitomizes the ascendancy of a new “progressive” educated class in Australia that has little allegiance to the traditional notions of what constitutes “the good life” for the vast majority of citizens. Down under–even more than in America–the “good life” generally means a suburban home with a backyard.

    In contrast, Rudd’s core supporters are disgusted by what they see as a wasteful, anti-social suburban sprawl. Like their counterparts here in North America, they have embraced a climate change agenda that, as part of its dogma, seeks to densify Australia’s cities.

    Although the Labour Party’s roots lay with the working class and private sector unions, New City co-editor John Muscat contends that the Rudd Labour Party has transformed into an instrument of the bureaucracy and “progressive” gentry. The latter includes academics, green activists, media stars and some prominent business interests well-positioned to flourish in a hyper-regulated state.

    The losers, Muscat notes, are the traditional middle- and working-class constituencies of the party. Where the Labour government has in the past sought to help people fulfill their quest for the “Australian dream,” the current leadership plans to make it difficult for them to achieve it. “Green planners,” Muscat says, “engage in a form of class discrimination. The costs of climate change are heaped on outer-suburban working people, who lose jobs, mobility and housing amenity, while the affluent emerge unscathed.”

    Such a result would seem to be unnecessary in a vast country with a population that in 2050 will be smaller than California’s today. Australia has often been called “the lucky country” since its prodigious natural resources and fertile agriculture have long afforded an astonishingly high quality of life for its citizens. This position has been made even stronger as demand for commodities has skyrocketed in recent years, paced largely by demand from China, India and other developing countries.

    Yet now, at precisely the time that the Australian “dream” would appear, if anything, more supportable, the administration and local state governments seem determined to wage war against the aspirations of its own citizens. Strict limits on developing land on the periphery–something supported both by oligopolistic property interests and greens–have been turning Australia from highly affordable to one of the least affordable places to buy a home in the English-speaking world.

    These changes are evident in Sydney, a city that 20 years ago was filled with charming tree-lined, relatively low-density neighborhoods. Strict land regulation has made homes more expensive by restricting new subdivisions further in the periphery; indeed the city is now the second most expensive major housing market, based on income, in the English-speaking world, behind only Vancouver.

    At the same time that suburban housing has been limited, Sydney has allowed the spread of high-rise apartments into formerly bucolic neighborhoods. To many natives it seems less like the very livable old Australia and more like the overcrowded, frenzied new China. Similar policies are infecting other Australian cities, including Melbourne and Perth. As the New City bloggers warn, “Enjoy your country while it still exists.”

    Not surprisingly, the agenda embraced by Rudd, like that of Obama, also has had negative political consequences. Rudd’s attempt to force a “cap and trade” system on his country is problematic given the country’s dependence on fossil fuel and mineral production as well as greenhouse-gas-gushing big agriculture. In December Rudd’s cap and trade proposal was blocked by opposition in the Australian Senate, much as Obama’s cap and trade legislation has been stymied by malcontents, including some in his own party, in the American Senate.

    When they do finally get together, Obama and Rudd could also commiserate on their falling poll numbers. Rudd’s 74% support last year has declined to a new low of 48%. He now runs neck and neck in surveys with the opposition leader, Tony Abbott. Rudd wants to run largely on the issue of climate change, a course that one suspects Barack Obama may not be so deluded as to pursue.

    Of course, Rudd’s gentry liberal politics still play well among Sydney’s media mavens and pundits, just as Obama’s does in similar circles here. But they both are running into strong opposition from voters, with whom their appeal is clearly weakening.

    Ultimately, these two very modern leaders will have to face the consequences of their own worldviews, which are shaped primarily by a belief in the superiority of the prescriptions favored by the highly educated classes .This defines their approaches in everything from foreign policy and climate change to governing how people should live.

    The problem with this philosophy is that neither the U.S. nor Australia functions along the lines of Plato’s Republic, where the enlightened get to rule unhindered by the hoi polloi. Despite the preferences of their betters, citizens in both countries still have a say over what happens to them. This is something that may not bother Rudd’s Chinese Communist allies, but it can prove troublesome for those politicians wishing to take their people places they may not want to go.

    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 Febuary, 2010.

    Photo by London Summit

  • Ruining our Cities to Save Them

    Latching onto Kevin Rudd’s call for “a big Australia” and forecasts that our population will grow by 60 per cent to 35 million in 2050, urban planners are ramping up their war against suburbia. In paper after paper, academics across the country have been pushing the same line. Climate change, peak oil and the financial crisis mean we can’t go on driving and borrowing for low-density housing. Choices must be narrowed to buying or renting compact homes in high-density, multi-unit developments along public transport corridors, preferably rail lines.

    Underlying it all is a radical vision of suburban doom. “That is one of my themes”, said Professor Peter Newman, anti-car activist and head of Curtin University‘s Sustainable Policy Institute, “that we stop cities developing into eco enclaves surrounded byMad Max suburbs”.

    The alarming truth is that planners are blasé about prosperity, living standards and choice because they see them as second-rate issues. The point is to save us from eco-apocalypse.

    And their voice grows louder by the day. The mantra of green urbanism has long been heard on ABC radio programs like Background Briefing and Future Tense, but matters reached a crescendo in January when ABC TV’s 7:30 Report rounded up the usual suspects for a four-part series on preparing our cities for the population boom. Framed by scary graphics and a menacing soundtrack, the series delivered a stream of breathless dialogue from talking heads like Newman, who declared that “if we just roll out those suburbs one after the other, making a more and more carbon intensive world in our cities, then we’re stuffed.”

    This current of thought has always lurked beneath the Rudd Government’s “nation building” agenda. But last October it burst open when the prime minister announced his plans to wrest control of urban policy from the states.

    Rattling off tenets of the planning ideology, Mr Rudd said “we must ensure that communities are not separated from jobs and services”, that “increasing density in cities is part of the solution to urban growth”, that “forms of development need to be fully integrated with current and future transport networks”, that “climate change requires a whole of government response”, and that “we must make long-term investments in transport networks that minimise carbon emissions.” It’s all a question of government action, if he is to be believed.

    That too was the message from infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese at the recent launch of State of Australian Cities 2010. Little wonder that he appointed Newman to the board of Infrastructure Australia.

    Defying urban laws of gravity

    “Cities are an immense laboratory of trial and error, failure and success” said the great urbanist Jane Jacobs, but today’s planners seem to think they’re as pliable as dough. Just tweak a couple of variables, say transport modes and population densities, and everything falls into place.

    As a discipline, urban planning never emerged from behind Berlin Wall of command economics, albeit with a green face. Early hopes that the financial crisis would shift public sentiment in this direction have faded, and climate change hasn’t registered as an issue for commuters and home buyers.

    Despite this, planners show no sign of losing confidence in their power to abolish fundamental laws of supply and demand. They’re still apt to dream up grand schemes for zoning, development and infrastructure controls with barely a thought about the impact on land values and bid-rents, two price inputs with far-reaching implications for urban commerce.

    Nor have they managed to repeal the law of unintended consequences. Year after year, the Demographia housing affordability survey confirms the link between “more prescriptive land use regulation” and high median house prices. This is elementary economics. Restricting the supply of land for development, a starting point for all green planning, combined with rising demand from population growth, will ratchet up values, with knock-on effects for the whole economy. The survey continues to rank all of our capital cities, and some of our regional centres, in the “severely unaffordable” category. No amount of “cutting-edge design” or “more imaginative” planning can counter this effect.

    The claim that concentrating development in dense “activity centres”, “urban villages” or “transport corridors” will ease the problem is a sham. Development controls will always drive up the price of land. When planners talk about affordability in this context, they really mean inferior housing in terms of space, amenity and title, even if it’s dressed-up as “design innovation” or “green rated building”.

    But inferior quality may not be enough to compensate for escalating land values, so consumers get less housing for higher prices. And more are stuck renting instead of buying. Large numbers of low to middle income earners will be shut out of the housing market

    Interestingly, Perth appears in Demographia’s “severely unaffordable” category along with Sydney and Melbourne, despite having only around a quarter of the population. Newman neglected this detail while praising the city’s rail network on the 7:30 Report.

    Though Perth can fall back on the resources boom, south-eastern cities aren’t so lucky. They are service-based regions with very dispersed patterns of employment, even by world standards.

    Writing in a publication of the 2008 9th World Congress of Metropolis, Sydney University’s John Black observed that “apart from some noticeable peaks, employment density is quite uniform across the [Sydney metropolitan] region”. According to the NSW Department of Transport, only 12 per cent of Sydney’s jobs are in the CBD and second tier centres like North Sydney, Chatswood, Parramatta, Hurstville and Penrith have less than 2 per cent each. David McCloskey, Bob Birrell and Rose Yip of Monash University (demographers, not urban planners) report the same about Melbourne. The CBD hosts around 20 per cent of jobs and the rest are scattered all over the metropolitan region.

    Platitudes like “we must locate people close to where they work”, or “we must locate jobs close to where people live”, have little basis in reality. They infringe another immovable law of economics, relating to economic rents or bid-rents. This mechanism determines how industries and firms are distributed. Put simply, a parcel of land will go to whichever use delivers the highest profits. Centrally located land (near major transport or infrastructure hubs) commands high prices, and goes to the most profitable uses. Peripheral land goes to less profitable or marginal activities.

    Over the last thirty years, economic deregulation, flexible transport, advanced communications and population growth have raised up a sector in the latter category, extracting value from cheap outer-metropolitan land and low rents. It includes industries like transport and distribution, building and construction, food, consumer products, personal services, wholesale and retail. They depend on favourable location costs and proximity to urban markets and labour pools. According to the Greater Western Sydney Economic Development Board, “prime industrial land with direct access to transport infrastructure is 75% cheaper [in GWS] than other areas of Sydney”.

    Ultimately, green planning will phase out cheap urban land, undermining this sector and destroying jobs in the process. Breakthroughs in automotive and energy technologies offer the prospect of adaptation to a distant future of expensive oil. There’s no way to adapt to rising land values.

    Green rated chaos

    Many are in denial about this, recycling visions of the “concentric ring model” of urban form. This relic of pre-war sociology allocated industry to the core, or cores, and residences to the periphery. Take the Sydney Morning Herald sponsored Long Term Public Transport Plan, recently released with great fanfare. Authored by a committee of green-tinged experts and academics, the plan proclaims, according to a Herald feature, that “Sydney retains a strong centre-based structure, with nearly 40 per cent of the city’s jobs and most of its major retail, educational and entertainment facilities located within 26 key centres”. This is an essential precondition for the proposed network of denser rail infrastructure.

    But the plan’s own figures don’t add up to Sydney having a “strong centre-based structure”. A hefty 60 per cent of jobs aren’t centralised and the plan actually cites 33 “centres” flung all over the Sydney region, from Norwest Business Park in the north, to Penrith in the west and Hurstville in the south. Apart from the CBD with 12 per cent, none of the centres have more than 1.8 per cent of Sydney’s jobs.

    Concentrating housing in a city of dispersed jobs means horrendous traffic congestion, the costs of which loom large in State of Australian Cities 2010. Currently, around 72.3 per cent of Sydney’s people drive to work. No configuration of public transport will be efficient, leaving motorists to converge on dense localities. This is a city projected to explode from today’s 4.2 million people to 7 million in 2050. In Melbourne’s case, McCloskey, Birrell and Yip state plainly that raising densities along tram and train lines will end in chaos. Of the 1.4 million people who work outside central Melbourne, only 4.4 per cent use public transport.

    On the other hand, attempts to concentrate jobs will throw thousands onto the dole queues. At least this is a type of solution: the unemployed don’t commute.

    Ironically, some thriving “centres” in the Herald plan wouldn’t exist without the expansion of Sydney’s arterial road network. Examining the “edge city” phenomenon in Sydney, Peter Murphy and Robert Freestone conceded, way back in 1994, that the jobs-rich “global arc corridor” owed a lot to strategic road junctions like the intersection of Lane Cove Road with Epping Road in North Ryde and with the Pacific Highway in Gordon.

    “The most prestigious development has overwhelmingly favoured the middle-ring northern and north-western parts of Sydney in centres easily accessible by car …” say Murphy and Freestone, having explained that “there are now diversified employment centres in the suburbs which have grown up almost despite, rather than because of, traditional land-use planning policies”. These days the NSW Government bows to green intimidation, failing in its new Metropolitan Transport Plan to complete the highly successful Orbital Motorway Network, leaving M4 West, the F3 link and duplication of the M5 tunnel in limbo.

    Demands that at we reshape our cities to fight climate change are illogical. Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that there’s a case to cut Australia’s 1.4 per cent contribution to global carbon. Even the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Consumption Atlas ranks urban settlement patterns well below the general level of consumption as a factor in emissions. And general consumption is a function of living standards, not urban form. Since the world is far from putting constraints on consumption, calls for a transformation of settlement patterns are baseless.

    But it’s worse. The Consumption Atlas and an analysis by Demographia’s Wendell Cox disclose that emissions across affluent inner-urban areas exceed those on the fringe. By focusing on settlement patterns rather than consumption levels, green planners engage in a form of class discrimination. The costs of climate change are heaped on outer-suburban working people, who lose jobs, mobility and housing amenity, while the affluent emerge unscathed.

    This article first apeared at The New City Journal

    Photo by Amit (Sydney)

  • Will a Dying City Finally Turn to Immigrants?

    Cuyahoga County Treasurer Jim Rokakis, who is based in Cleveland, estimates that new census numbers might show Cleveland’s population to be 325,000, a whopping 153,000 drop in 10 years! That would be an average of 15,000 people leaving Cleveland every year.

    That’s 1,250 people jumping ship every month,

    312 people fleeing the wreckage every week,

    45 people evacuating every day, or

    2 people running out of Cleveland every hour, 24/7, the whole year, for 10 straight years.

    Even conservative estimates have us losing 10 percent of our population this decade, the fastest rate of decline of any major American city (except New Orleans). And still, remarkably, we hear no alarm bells from City Hall, no calls of urgency, just a commitment to stay the course and manage the decline.

    While the extent of the exodus is debateable, it’s obvious that Cleveland, a city that once boasted 1 million residents, is not on the bright path to rebirth.

    Maybe we don’t really understand the problem.

    New York City and Chicago, like most major cities, see significant out-migration of their existing residents each year. What is atypical is that Cleveland does not enjoy the energy of new people moving in.

    Put simply, the city needs the fresh optimism and pluck of new immigrants, the most likely source of New Clevelanders.

    New immigrants are inherently mobile,and can move to Cleveland as part of secondary migration from New York City or other gateway cities. Many would be excited to pursue their American Dream right here on the shores of Lake Erie. In part due to the presence of immigrant language cable television and the internet, they can come to Cleveland and still retain ties to their native culture. Immigrants are moving to far more isolated places, such as Fargo, North Dakota.

    The great shame is that this was once proud city of immigrants (nearly 1/3 foreign-born in the early 20th century). But it now only 5% of its population is foreign-born, well-below the national average of 12%.

    But none of this impresses Mayor Frank Jackson who summarily dismisses immigrant-attraction initiatives like those in Philadelphia and those being discussed now in Detroit. Yet the basic reality is that immigration provides the only way for cities like Cleveland to generate the kind of numbers needed to make up for decades of mass out-migration.

    In numerous cities around the country, economic development professionals and foundations are looking at ways to tap the immigrant market. This will not only counter local depopulation and stabilize local the housing market, but will also attract a new wave of urban entrepreneurs, investors and consumers.

    They also realize that a globally diverse city would act as a magnet for the young, international and minority professionals leading the New Economy. These people could help catalyze a transformation to a more entrepreneurial, globally-connected and innovation-based local economy.

    Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter announced his plans to recruit 75,000 newcomers within five years to fill the city’s abandoned homes. And he’s targeting immigrant newcomers who have recently arrived in New York City.

    In Detroit, the New Economy Initiative (a $100 million regional fund for economic development), the Skillman Foundation, and the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce are conducting a community-wide discussion about ways to rebuild the city by attracting immigrants and international resources and promoting new intercultural partnerships for the benefit of all its citizens.

    Other cities consider immigrant-attraction strategies, but Cleveland City Hall ignores the very people most likely to move to Cleveland: immigrants looking to own their first homes and to start their new businesses.

    Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group conducted a study on Northeast Ohio’s economy and concluded that that the region is likely to suffer even after the rest of the country recovers from the recession. PNC’s Senior Economist and author of The Econosphere, Craig Thomas, found that attracting immigrants would help the region’s economy through investments in housing stock and start-ups.

    “As people leave, it really does take international folks to come in, open up stores and fill up neighborhoods,” Mr. Thomas told Crain’s Cleveland Business.

    But Mayor Jackson insists that efforts like those in Philadelphia and supported by economists like Mr. Thomas are not for Cleveland. As he began his second term, he said that he is positioning the City to compete in the global economy by building from within by using what he calls “self-help.”

    But not many are left to help. And by the time the policy is seen as a failure, even more will be gone.

    As people leave, so do businesses, from neighborhoods and many parts of downtown where vacancy rates have skyrocketed.

    As Cleveland’s downward spiral continues, the local leadership appears clueless on how to stop it.

    Richard Herman is the co-author of Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy (and how they will save the American worker) (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). Herman is the founder of an immigration and business law firm in Cleveland, Ohio, which serves a global clientele in over 10 languages. He is the co-founder of a chapter of TiE, a global network of entrepreneurs started in 1992 in Silicon Valley by immigrants from India. For more information on immigrant entrepreneurship and rust belt revival, see www.ImmigrantInc.com ; www.youtube.com/user/Immigrantinc2010 ; www.ohio.tie.org . Contact Richard at richard.t.herman@gmail.com or 216-696-6170.

    Photo by ScallopHolden.com

  • Midwest Success Stories

    Most observers do not associate the Midwest with urban success, but quite the opposite in fact. But while there are plenty of places that are legitimately suffering, there are also plenty of success stories out there that don’t always get the mindshare or press they deserve.

    First on my list of Midwest success stories is Des Moines, Iowa. This is a smaller,, largely under the radar city, but it has emerged as one of the strongest performers anywhere in the United States. This city defines the term “easy living”, while still managing to be home to major industries like insurance. Being smaller has proven an asset here, as Des Moines has avoided many of the large scale boondoggles like pro sports stadiums cities sometimes engage in to try to prove they are “major league”.

    Instead of competing for bragging rights, Des Moines instead has grown its job base significantly during the “lost decade” of the 2000s. Between 2001 and 2009, it added over 25,000 jobs – a healthy 8.9% clip – and boasts a close to rock bottom (for these times) 6.5% unemployment rate. Des Moines metro grew its population at 15.5% between 2000 and 2008, nearly double the national average, belying the notion that no one wants to live in Iowa. Despite this growth, labor shortages remain a long term local concern. That’s called a nice problem to have.

    Indianapolis is another standout, with a profile closer to the Sun Belt than the Rust Belt. It grew its population at a rate 50% greater than the national average, and also had strong net in-migration,with almost 65,000 net people deciding to pack up and move to Indy. Its demographic and economic stats are very comparable to Portland, Oregon, the urban policy poster child. In fact, Indianapolis actually added more jobs than Portland – where job growth has been largely in the suburban periphery – last decade thanks to an aggressive pro-business attitude and local industry clusters like life sciences, motorsports, and internet marketing.

    Indianapolis may also be the least expensive major housing market in America, but it maintains a full range of urban amenities and is only three hours drive from Chicago for those things it lacks. This is one reason Business Week just named the large suburb of Fishers the best affordable suburb in the United States. Indy has also quietly established a position as an urban innovator, with unique to the nation projects like a downtown urban trail. It is also a leader in modern roundabouts, with suburban Carmel having 5% of all the modern roundabouts in the entire United States.

    Head east on I-70 and three hours later you’ll arrive in Columbus, Ohio, Indy’s “twin city”. Like Indianapolis, an artificially chosen state capital, Columbus is thriving in a struggling state. Like Indy, it also has strong population growth and net in-migration, and a below average unemployment rate. It’s home to powerhouse Ohio State University, which boasts the nation’s largest college campus, and stunning historic neighborhoods like German Village. Columbus is home to a thriving LGBT community, and the second largest gay pride parade in the Midwest after Chicago, one of the top ten in the country, attracting over 100,000 attendees.

    West along I-70 is Kansas City. Described as a “zone of sanity”, Kansas City avoided the housing boom and thus largely the bust, remaining another affordable and attractive place to live. It too has had strong population growth and net in-migration, along with below average unemployment. The city is the second largest rail hub in the United States after Chicago, but lacks that city’s legendary rail congestion. Unsurprisingly, rail carriers are investing heavily there. With rail connectivity to Mexican ports, and sitting along I-35, Kansas City is looking to be one of the winners of NAFTA. Plentiful fountains and miles of lush parkways make Kansas City a lovely city. It is also a cultural hub, with the respected Nelson-Aktins Museum at the high end and the thriving Crossroads Art District on the grass roots side.

    Madison, Wisconsin is one of the rare Midwest cities that actually gets national respect. Its location along a narrow isthmus creates a charming physical setting and compact urban core. Home to the University of Wisconsin, its progressive credentials are unimpeachable. But it is also an economic success story, with strong job growth of 6.6% from 2001-2009, along with impressive population growth. Part of this is the university’s powerhouse researchers, who attracted the likes of Google to open an office. The city is also the state capital. Despite being a smaller city, it boasts amenities worthy of America’s elite metropolises, including super-high end denim retailer Context Clothing and the luxurious Candinas Chocolatier.

    Despite its reputation for frigid weather and its geographically peripheral location, Minneapolis-St. Paul offers both economic strength and high quality of life. Its residents embrace the recreational opportunities provided by numerous nearby lakes, including several inside the Minneapolis city limits, as well as the winter. The region was early to the starchitect game, with Frank Gehry designing the metallic Weisman Art Center before the Bilbao Guggenheim. But it’s not all fun and games there. The region has an unemployment rate well below average and a GDP per capita well above it. It is home to numerous household name firms like Target, Best Buy, and 3M. And it is a center for the medical device industry.

    These six cities show that there’s a lot more to the Midwest than rusted steel mills, shuttered auto plants, and abandoned houses. It is also home to healthy cities and thriving suburban communities that are outpacing the nation demographically and economically. These places offer affordability and a high quality of life, but still manage to feature many more urban amenities and innovations than commonly assumed. These characteristics make them well-positioned to be among the urban winners in the 21st century.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.

    Photo by Carl Van Rooy (vanrooy_13)