Category: Urban Issues

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Sprawl (Sort of)

I’m a longtime advocate of walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income, transit-served neighborhoods. But lately I’ve been having impure thoughts about suburbia. Let me explain.



What often passes for a neighborhood in America is a low grade assemblage of chain convenience stores, big box outlets, franchise muffler shops, multi-lane highways, and isolated cul-de-sacs. Even when it’s physically possible to walk or bike from Point A to Point B it’s not pleasant, safe, or convenient. I bet there are big parts of the town you live in that look like this.



Here’s what’s happened to the housing stock in previously desirable post war suburbs. They’ve aged and were passed over in favor of new development farther out on the edge of town. The homes are out of fashion. They’re too small. They don’t have the right modern features. There are questions about the quality of the local schools. And there’s a general perception that the kinds of people who remain may not make good neighbors. These properties sell at significantly lower prices relative to the larger region. It’s often assumed that they’re unlikely to appreciate in value so they’re considered a poor investment.



This is what the commercial building stock is like. Cheap disposable plywood and cinder block boxes and industrial sheds set behind a patch of asphalt parking lot. These photos happen to be of Portland, Oregon, but they could be from a thousand other places. They’re all the same. This actually looks a lot like where I grew up in New Jersey.

Sure, the sleek new Pearl District and Historic Pioneer Square are fashionable and urbane. But the vast majority of people will never live there. Most of Portland, like most of America, is sprawl. Forget what you’ve heard about urban growth boundaries, streetcars, and jack booted liberal thugs who make you live in a shoebox apartment and take away your car. The reality on the ground is that most of Portland is indistinguishable from everyplace else.

But here’s the fascinating thing to me – and the source of my recent epiphany about aging sprawl. I always assumed that these neighborhoods would all devolve into the new slums – and many certainly are doing that. Ferguson, Missouri anyone? But it doesn’t have to go that way. These forgotten suburban neighborhoods can just as easily be the new sweet spots for small enterprise and a renewed middle class.

I stumbled on the intersection of 42nd Avenue and Killingsworth (see all photos above) and thought, “What a crap hole.” But then I started to poke around for a couple of weeks. There’s more going on than immediately meets the eye.

Here’s the deal. In the 1970’s and 80’s the cheapest real estate was in America’s abandoned downtowns and industrial zones. They were colonized by people looking for freedom – economic freedom from high rents and mortgages, as well as regulatory freedom to do as they wished without the Upright Citizen’s Brigade shutting them down. Now those places have all been picked over by high end developers and transformed into luxury “lifestyle” centers. The same is true of many close-in historic streetcar suburbs like Portland’s Alberta Arts District here. So if you either can’t afford, or simply don’t want, the premium city condo or the deluxe outer suburb McMansion… where do you go to do your own thing on a tight budget?



This is Pollo Norte here on a miserable intersection where two busy roads collide. A friend brought me here for take away dinner one night and the food was simple, but spectacularly good and it was served by charming people. We arrived at 6:30 on a Tuesday and the place was packed. We were lucky to get the last whole chicken and some side dishes just as they sold out. The place is open until ten but they were overwhelmed by many more customers than they expected. This was their first month in business and they couldn’t keep up with demand. Aside from the great food, the customers all seemed to know each other and were in good spirits even though there wasn’t enough food to go around. They were celebrating the success of a great new local spot. Good beer and companionship were their consolation prizes. Now the owners need to ramp up production and work with their local suppliers to obtain more of the organic free range ingredients in keeping with their mission statement about quality and regional sustainability. This is a good problem for a new business to have.

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By the way, I pulled this image off Google Street View. This is what the building looked like before the Pollo Norte folks scrubbed it clean, gave it some paint, and infused it with new life. It’s still a piece of crap concrete block bunker, but these buildings can be reinvented to good purpose with the right attitude and community support.



Here’s another tiny concrete bunker a few blocks down the road. It’s owned by a woman who runs a 550 square foot commercial kitchen called Dash here. She rents out space to a variety of small scale producers who need an inspected facility in order to comply with health codes. When I dropped in I was able to speak with Nikki Guerrero as she was readying her Hot Mamma Salsa for market in local shops. here. Nikki started out selling small batches of salsa at farmers markets and now has expanded to several local grocers. She’s successful enough to support herself with the salsa. I don’t think Dash was intentionally organized as an incubator per se, but it serves as the next step up after people are ready to graduate from home cooking (Oregon has a cottage food law here) and street vending. This is not only profitable for the woman who owns the building and cost-effective for people who rent space, but it also cultivates community among various small business people as they share the space. The beauty of this business model is that any cheap ugly building in any uninspiring location can work so long as zoning and NIMBYs don’t get in the way. When your neighbors are industrial sheds and no name convenience stores you don’t get any push back.



Miss Zumstein’s Bakery across the street here is owned by Anja, a native Portlander who finds it difficult to afford property in the trendy parts of town now that the city has become much more expensive than in her girlhood. She recently opened her bakery/cafe on 42nd Ave. because so many of her friends have recently colonized the neighborhood. Price has pushed people into places to live that they wouldn’t necessarily have chosen otherwise. Now the big task at hand is how to make the ugly traffic corridor a proper walkable Main Street on a tight budget. She said the new Pollo Norte is a great indication of the kinds of small independent businesses she’s working with to carve out a new business zone in an otherwise not-so-great location. Anja was very supportive of the people at Dash (Hot Mama Salsa et al) and was thrilled that a new bicycle shop opened up nearby. Cheap ugly space and lots of enthusiastic like-minded people are their primary resources.



This is Cat Six Bikes here. Two bike guys just opened up shop seven months ago. They were working for someone else in a more established neighborhood and finally decided to do their own thing. There are so many cyclists in Portland that if there’s a three mile stretch without a bike shop it’s actually a problem for a lot of people who need parts and service. They identified this location, realized it was more affordable than other more fashionable parts of town, and decided to fill the need.

They almost rented the building that the Pollo Norte people are in now, but the current location was ultimately a better deal. The dentist who owns the building and runs his practice next door provided a deep discount on the rent because he lives in the immediate neighborhood and wanted to help establish more independent businesses in the area. The alternative probably would have been a check cashing place or a cell phone outlet. The guys were able to pull together their business and populate their initial stock and equipment for $10,000 which they had in savings. There was no need for a loan. They’re both handy and were able to do the carpentry and interior work for the shop themselves.

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But here’s the other thing they mentioned that got me exploring the rest of the neighborhood. The guys share a house – one lives with his girlfriend upstairs and the other lives downstairs. The house is nearby in the Cully neighborhood where little post war homes often have pretty large lots. Many neighbors do varying degrees of urban agriculture – some for a livelihood. This is absolutely not an option in the city center.

Of course they ride their bikes to work since things are relatively close compared to the far more disbursed newer suburbs far from the downtown core. They were confident that over time they would be able to convince the city to implement road diets that would calm car traffic and make it safer and more pleasant to walk and ride bikes in the area. The primary factor in their favor is that highway expansion and car-oriented improvements are fantastically expensive, while bike infrastructure is ridiculously cheap. They also decided that what the neighborhood lacks in big city urban amenities it makes up for in gardening and door-to-door domestic community as well as significantly lower cost. Many of their friends had already moved to the area so they weren’t alone.



And what about all those tragic little post war ranch homes? Well, it turns out that they’re radically less expensive than either a condo downtown or a McMansion in the newer suburbs. With a little love they can be transformed into something to be proud of. They’re bigger than an apartment, they have a garden, and they’re a whole lot closer to the city center. They’re also a short walk or bike ride to the emerging 42nd Ave, business cluster.

I’m not saying that all, or even most, aging suburbs will blossom. But it’s at least a possibility. The real question to me is… what pushes a neighborhood down vs. what lifts it up? So far what I’m seeing is that a dead downtown contributes to even deader close in neighborhoods. A thriving downtown attracts more people to the city and creates an economic incentive for people to get creative with the reinvention of not-so-fabulous nearby areas. So if you want your struggling suburb to succeed, support your downtown.

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

January 17, 2015

The Cities Where African-Americans Are Doing The Best Economically

The U.S. may have its first black president, but these have not been the best of times for African-Americans. Recent shootings of unarmed black teenagers and the murder of two New York City police officers have inflamed racial tensions. A Bloomberg poll in December found that 53% of respondents believed that race relations have declined since Obama was elected in 2008.

Even if the results were not skewed by the immediate, impassioned responses to the recent tragedies, the persistent economic gap between whites and blacks is a more serious and deep-rooted problem. The unemployment rate for African-Americans stood at 10.4% in December, more than twice that of whites, as it has been formost of the past 40 years.

Blacks’ real median household income ticked up to $34,598 in 2013, roughly 59% that of whites’, a ratio that has also not varied much since the Census Bureau began tracking this data in 1967.

Where African-Americans took a significant step back in recent years was in household wealth, which plunged 31% during the recession, including a steep 35% decline in their retirement assets, which the Urban Institute suggests was partially due to the unemployed drawing down savings to cover living expenses. The wealth of white families fell a comparatively mild 11% from 2007-10.

Yet economic conditions for African-Americans vary widely throughout the country. We decided to look into which of America’s 52 largest metropolitan areas present African-Americans with the best opportunities. We weighed these metropolitan statistical areas by three critical factors — homeownership, entrepreneurship, as measured by the self-employment rate, and median household income — that we believe are indicators of middle-class success. Data for those is from 2013. In addition, we added a fourth category, demographic trends, measuring the change in the African-American population from 2000 to 2013 in these metro areas, to judge how the community is “voting with its feet.” Each factor was given equal weight.

Southern Exposure

In the first half of the 20th century, African-Americans fled the former Confederate state for economic opportunity, to escape from institutional racism and, sometimes, for their lives. This pattern,notes demographer Bill Frey, began to reverse itself in the 1970s, with Southern states becoming destinations for black migrants. Since 2000, when the Census registered the first increase in the region’s black population in more than a century, this trend has accelerated, with African-Americans leaving not just the Northeast or Midwest, but the West Coast as well.

Today, Dixie has emerged, in many ways, as the new promised land for African-Americans. In our survey the South accounts for a remarkable 13 of the top 15 metro areas.

At the top of our list is Atlanta, long hailed as the unofficial capital of black America. The city, which in the 1960s advertised itself as “the city too busy to hate,” has long lured ambitious African-Americans. With its well-established religious and educational institutions, notably Spellman and Morehouse, which are ranked first and third, respectively, by US News among the nation’s historically black colleges, the area has arguably the strongest infrastructure for African-American advancement in the country. The region’s strong music and art scene has also made it an “epicenter for black glitterati” and culture.

The superlatives extend well beyond glamour to the basics of everyday life. Some 46.9% the metro area’s black population owned their own homes as of 2013, well above the 38% major metro average for African-Americans. Atlanta’s African-Americans have a median household income of $41,800, also considerably above the major metro average, while their rate of self-employment, 17.1%, is second only to New Orleans.

Clear evidence of the Atlanta area’s appeal can be seen in the growth of the black population, up 50% from 2000 through 2013. This is also well above the of 28% average growth in the African-American population in the nation’s 52 biggest metro areas during the same time.

This shift of African-Americans to Southern metro areas is widespread. Population growth since 2000 above 40% was posted by No. 2 metro area Raleigh, N.C.; Charlotte, N.C. (sixth); Orlando (seventh) as well as the three cities that tie for eighth place: Miami; Richmond, Va.; and San Antonio. The same can be said of Texas’ other big cities: Austin (11th), Houston (12th) and Dallas-Fort Worth (13th).

If there’s a challenger to Atlanta and the renewed Southern ascendency for African-Americans, it’s the greater Washington, D.C., area which ranks third. The median black household income in the metro area is $64,896, more than $20,000 above that of Atlanta and other top-ranked southern cities. Home ownership rates, at 49.2%, are also the highest in the nation.

As in Atlanta, Washington’s black community has strong institutions of culture and higher education. The District is home to Howard University, the nation’s second-ranked historically black university. Washington’s urban core may be becoming less black — down from 60% in 2000 to under 50% in 2013– but this has been more than made up for by the burgeoning population of surrounding suburban areas such as Prince George’s County, which is majority black and relatively prosperous, with poverty rates well below those of the city. The key plus here appears to be the the federal government, which employs many people at high wages in the area.

Incomes also have been boosted by the government in No. 4 Baltimore, which enjoys the third highest black median income and the third highest self-employment rate after Atlanta and New Orleans. As in Washington, much of this prosperity is not in the hardscrabble city core, but in surrounding suburban areas such as Baltimore County, where the black population grew from 20% of the total in 2000 to over 26% in 2010.

Where African-Americans Are Struggling

Many of the metro areas at the bottom of our list are the once mighty manufacturing hubs where Southern blacks flocked in the Great Migration: last place Milwaukee, followed by Grand Rapids, Mich.; Cincinnati (50th); Pittsburgh (tied for 48th) Cleveland (47th) and Buffalo (46th). African-Americans in these old industrial towns earn on average $10,000 to $15,000 less than their counterparts in Atlanta. Self-employment rates are half as high as those in our top 10 cities.

Of course, none of this is too surprising, given the long-term economic malaise in the Rust Belt. But some of our most prosperous metro areas are also not working out well for blacks. These include San Francisco-Oakland, which tied with Pittsburgh for 48th, Los Angeles (40th) and Seattle (36th). In these cities, homeownership rates for African-Americans tend to be 10 to 15 percentage points lower, and self-employment close to half of what we see in greater Washington, Atlanta, Raleigh, Charlotte and the four big Texas cities.

Blacks populations have declined in some of these metro areas, including San Francisco, which has seen a 9.1% drop since 2000, and Los Angeles, where the African-American population has fallen 8%. Chicago (31st), long a major center of black America, has seen a 4% drop since 2000, while the black population of the New York metro area (24th) has grown just 2.4%.

Ironically, many of the metro areas at the top of our list tend to vote Republican. But many local Democratic politicians in the South support generally pro-business economic agendas. African-Americans, who tend to have fewer economic assets than whites, need growth to expand their opportunities; that’s one reason they do so well, relatively, in the South.

But it’s not just growth. Places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area are losing black population because of their high housing prices. Hollywood stars and tech titans may not mind, but it’s tough for most everyone else to buy a house in the big California cities and New York. Housing prices in Atlanta and Houston, relative to incomes, are about half or more less than those in the Bay Area.

Best Cities for African Americans
Metropolitan Area	Rank	Score	Home Ownrshp Rate	Median Hshld Income	Share of Self Emplymt	Change in Population: 2000-2013
Atlanta, GA	1	87.0	46.9%	$41,803	17.1%	49.9%
Raleigh, NC	2	84.6	46.7%	$42,285	12.8%	55.9%
Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV	3	83.2	49.2%	$64,896	15.1%	19.7%
Baltimore, MD	4	74.5	46.2%	$47,898	15.0%	15.6%
Charlotte, NC-SC	4	74.5	43.9%	$36,522	13.6%	47.8%
Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	6	72.6	43.8%	$40,677	13.2%	34.6%
Orlando, FL	7	71.6	44.7%	$33,982	11.0%	58.9%
Miami, FL	8	68.3	44.9%	$36,749	11.2%	32.4%
Richmond, VA	8	68.3	47.7%	$38,899	12.7%	17.9%
San Antonio, TX	8	68.3	40.8%	$41,681	9.3%	43.3%
Austin, TX	11	67.8	43.6%	$42,514	9.0%	39.2%
Houston, TX	12	66.3	41.6%	$40,572	9.9%	37.5%
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	13	64.4	38.7%	$40,239	9.5%	45.2%
Nashville, TN	13	64.4	41.8%	$37,716	10.9%	31.9%
Birmingham, AL	15	63.0	50.0%	$33,092	15.0%	12.0%
Memphis, TN-MS-AR	16	61.1	47.2%	$31,981	13.5%	18.5%
Jacksonville, FL	17	58.7	46.3%	$32,469	10.8%	24.2%
Boston, MA-NH	18	58.2	31.7%	$46,556	9.1%	38.9%
Riverside-San Bernardino, CA	18	58.2	40.9%	$42,673	7.6%	32.6%
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD	20	57.2	47.3%	$36,595	9.1%	13.3%
Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL	21	52.9	36.6%	$31,665	10.8%	40.9%
Columbus, OH	22	51.4	35.9%	$33,451	9.3%	40.0%
Hartford, CT	22	51.4	33.3%	$46,097	8.3%	24.4%
New York, NY-NJ-PA	24	49.5	32.0%	$43,381	10.9%	2.4%
New Orleans. LA	25	46.6	45.5%	$27,812	17.4%	-13.4%
Denver, CO	26	46.2	38.9%	$41,215	6.3%	29.6%
Las Vegas, NV	26	46.2	29.0%	$34,281	8.3%	77.7%
Phoenix, AZ	28	45.7	31.5%	$36,779	6.8%	93.4%
Portland, OR-WA	29	44.2	39.7%	$33,699	5.8%	42.5%
Kansas City, MO-KS	30	43.8	39.4%	$35,277	8.3%	15.8%
Chicago, IL-IN-WI	31	42.3	39.4%	$34,287	9.4%	-4.3%
Oklahoma City, OK	32	41.8	39.2%	$34,745	7.8%	18.4%
San Jose, CA	33	40.9	32.9%	$53,645	7.2%	11.4%
Detroit, MI	34	39.9	43.8%	$30,162	9.5%	-4.9%
St. Louis,, MO-IL	35	39.4	42.4%	$31,215	9.1%	6.9%
Seattle, WA	36	37.5	28.3%	$41,081	6.7%	36.4%
Providence, RI-MA	37	36.5	29.3%	$32,907	7.3%	52.5%
Indianapolis. IN	38	35.6	35.4%	$31,452	7.8%	29.1%
San Diego, CA	39	33.7	30.1%	$46,650	7.1%	2.6%
Los Angeles, CA	40	32.2	32.9%	$40,980	7.7%	-8.0%
Rochester, NY	41	31.7	34.2%	$28,104	8.9%	16.2%
Sacramento, CA	41	31.7	31.6%	$33,530	7.2%	26.4%
Salt Lake City, UT	41	31.7	18.7%	$32,102	5.5%	94.2%
Louisville, KY-IN	44	30.8	35.7%	$28,826	7.4%	21.0%
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	44	30.8	26.3%	$31,564	6.4%	69.2%
Buffalo, NY	46	26.9	33.7%	$26,210	9.4%	1.6%
Cleveland, OH	47	26.0	37.8%	$26,646	8.8%	0.0%
Pittsburgh, PA	48	25.5	37.3%	$28,088	8.0%	2.5%
San Francisco-Oakland, CA	48	25.5	30.8%	$40,152	7.3%	-9.1%
Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN	50	23.6	31.4%	$28,684	8.7%	10.7%
Grand Rapids, MI	51	21.6	29.9%	$25,495	8.0%	19.3%
Milwaukee,WI	52	14.4	29.9%	$27,438	7.2%	10.8%

Calculated from 2013 American Community Survey & EMSI data
Analysis by Wendell Cox

This piece first appeared at Forbes.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

January 16, 2015

The Inevitability of Tradeoffs, or Understanding New England’s Sky High Energy Costs

People advance two main sorts of arguments in favor of things for which they advocate: the moral argument (it’s the right thing to do) and the utilitarian one (it will make us better off). As it happens, in practice most people tend to implicitly suggest there’s a 100% overlap between the two categories. That is, if we do what’s right, it will always make us better off too with no down sides at all.

But is that true?

For most of us, our life experience suggests that there are always tradeoffs and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Urbanists tend to argue in way that suggests this isn’t the case. The types of policies advocated by urbanists tend to be presented not only as right in a certain moral sense, but also ones that make society better off in every way. When things go awry in some respect, as they always seem to do, this is always seen as an avoidable defect in policy implementation, not as a problem inherent to the policy itself. Urbanists aren’t alone in this of course. It affects most of the world. But since I cover the urban beat, I’ll focus on us for a minute.

Today the New York Times opens a window into the type of trade-offs that are studiously avoided in most writings on the subject of climate change. Called “Even Before Long Winter Begins, Energy Bills Send Shivers in New England,” it talks about how a lack of natural gas pipeline capacity is sending electricity and gas costs through the roof as the temperature turns cold.

John York, who owns a small printing business here, nearly fell out of his chair the other day when he opened his electric bill. For October, he had paid $376. For November, with virtually no change in his volume of work and without having turned up the thermostat in his two-room shop, his bill came to $788, a staggering increase of 110 percent. “This is insane,” he said, shaking his head. “We can’t go on like this.”

For months, utility companies across New England have been warning customers to expect sharp price increases, for which the companies blame the continuing shortage of pipeline capacity to bring natural gas to the region. Now that the higher bills are starting to arrive, many stunned customers are finding the sticker shock much worse than they imagined.

I’ve written about this before re:Rhode Island, which is among the most expensive states in America for electricity (most of which is generated by gas). But all of New England is high, with Connecticut ranked as having the country’s most expensive electricity. Gas prices spike every winter to levels far above the rest of the country, as the graph below that I found via City Lab shows:

This would appear to be a simple problem to solve: just build more pipelines. I included on mylist of starter ideas for improving economic competitiveness in the state.

Unfortunately, planned pipelines haven’t been built due to environmental opposition:

The region has five pipeline systems now. Seven new projects have been proposed. But several of them — including a major gas pipeline through western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, and a transmission line in New Hampshire carrying hydropower from Quebec — have stalled because of ferocious opposition.

The concerns go beyond fears about blighting the countryside and losing property to eminent domain. Environmentalists say it makes no sense to perpetuate the region’s dependence on fossil fuels while it is trying to mitigate the effects of climate change, and many do not want to support the gas-extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that has made the cheap gas from Pennsylvania available.
….
A year ago, the governors of the six New England states agreed to pursue a coordinated regional strategy, including more pipelines and at least one major transmission line for hydropower. The plan called for electricity customers in all six states to subsidize the projects, on the theory that they would make up that money in lower utility bills.

But in August, the Massachusetts Legislature rejected the plan, saying in part that cheap energy would flood the market and thwart attempts to advance wind and solar projects. That halted the whole effort.

Here we see the clear tradeoff in action. Reducing carbon emissions has a clear human and economic cost. High electricity costs wallop household budgets in a region with many communities that are struggling or even outright impoverished (as recently as last year, for example, a third of the residents of Woonsocket, RI were on food stamps). This particularly harms poor and minority residents. What’s more, it helps contribute to the region’s low ranking as a place to do business and its anemic job creation.

Given that gas itself is dirt cheap and will be for the foreseeable future thanks to fracking, hurting residents through high electricity prices designed to drive energy transition is clearly a deliberate policy choice.

Fair enough if you believe reducing carbon requires subordinating other public goals like more money in poor people’s pockets. But how often is this forthrightly stated by advocates? Almost never.

Instead we’re treated to article after article in various urbanist publications talking about some awesome green project that’s being implemented somewhere, and how other places ought to do the same thing. There’s lots of doom and gloom about the increased potential for future disasters if the policies aren’t followed. But there’s seldom much about the immediate negative consequences that almost certainly will follow if they are.

I like energy efficiency. I’m glad we have more fuel efficient cars. I’m very glad I don’t own a car anymore. I’m not so excited about light bulb mandates and other “feel bad” policies that don’t materially affect emissions. But there’s definitely a lot we can do on the energy front.

But I also care about things like poor people’s electricity bills and economic growth. And I’m not willing to make unlimited sacrifices (including imposing sacrifices on other people) in the name of conservation. I can appreciate that others might make different tradeoffs and want more conservation than I do. But at least they ought to be honest about the costs and harm they are imposing on people in the name of their preferred policy matrix.

Instead there’s disingenuous talk about the “green economy” powering local economies when there’s no such thing as green industry. Or claiming, as many did in response to my article earlier this year, that Rhode Island’s government is actually conservative, so its problems can’t be laid at the foot of excessively progressive policies imported from places with vastly more economic leverage than most of New England. I guess I did not know that killing gas pipelines in the name of promoting renewable energy via high prices was a Tea Party idea.

Actually, not even the places that do have huge economic leverage are behaving like this. New York City has more economic leverage than just about anybody. But it also, as the chart above shows, has cheaper gas. One reason is that, as City Lab reported, NYC recently just opened a new gas pipeline into the city:

A really important thing happened last month to New York City and the rest of the mid-Atlantic. This event will change the daily lives of millions of people, especially during the coldest months of winter. And, despite some protesters, it all went down with less fanfare than Jay Z and Beyonce going vegan for a month.

An $856-million pipeline expansion began ramping up service, allowing more natural gas to get to New York City consumers. The New York-New Jersey expansion project moves more gas the last few miles from Jersey, which is the terminus for much of the Marcellus Shale gas flowing out of Pennsylvania, into Manhattan. The Energy Information Administration called it “one of the biggest… expansions in the Northeast during the past two decades.” It will bring an additional 800 billion British thermal units (BTU) of gas to the area per day.

Maybe New England wants to out do New York City when it comes to driving a green energy transition. (NYC seems to be focusing more on climate change adaptation, aka “resiliency,” these days). That’s a valid policy choice to make. But it’s one with consequences.

Unfortunately, the consequences of these policy choices are seldom presented by their advocates. People only discover them when the costs show up in a way that can be tangible traced back to those policies. Maybe in the case of New England and energy costs, people are starting to wake up to the matter, possibly in a way similar to how sky high housing costs in so many cities woke people up to the actual trade-offs being made in housing policy.

Advocates are there to advocate of course. So perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect advocates of any stripe to give you the full story. But that’s why we should always pay attention to what the critics of particularly policies have to say. That will give us a more complete picture of the tradeoffs any particular policy set will require.

Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs and the founder of Telestrian, a data analysis and mapping tool. He writes at The Urbanophile, where this piece originally appeared.

Photo: Pawtucket Power Plant

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January 15, 2015
An Economic Win-Win For California – Lower the Cost of Living

A frequent and entirely valid point made by representatives of public sector unions is that their membership, government workers, need to be able to afford to live in the cities and communities they serve. The problem with that argument, however, is that nobody can afford to live in these cities and communities, especially in California.

There are a lot of reasons for California’s high cost of living, but the most crippling by far is the price of housing. Historically, and still today in markets where land development is relatively unconstrained, the median home price is about four times the median household income. In Northern California’s Santa Clara County, the median home price in October 2014 was $699,750, eight times the median household income of $88,215. Even people earning twice the median household income in Santa Clara County will have a very hard time ever paying off a home that costs this much. And if they lose their job, they lose their home. But is land scarce in California?

The answer to this question, despite rhetoric to the contrary, is almost indisputably no. As documented in an earlier post, “California’s Green Bantustans,” “According to the American Farmland Trust, of California’s 163,000 square miles, there are 25,000 square miles of grazing land and 42,000 square miles of agricultural land; of that, 14,000 square miles are prime agricultural land. Think about this. You could put 10 million new residents into homes, four per household, on half-acre lots, and you would only consume 1,953 square miles. If you built those homes on the best prime agricultural land California’s got, you would only use up 14% of it. If you scattered those homes among all of California’s farmland and grazing land – which is far more likely – you would only use up 3% of it. Three percent loss of agricultural land, to allow ten million people to live on half-acre lots.”

So why is it nearly impossible to develop land in California? The answer to this is found in the nexus between financial special interests, who benefit from asset bubbles, and powerful environmentalist organizations who apparently view human settlements as undesirable blights that should be minimized. In the San Francisco Bay Area, to offer a particularly vivid example, the Santa Cruz mountains are being targeted to be cleansed of human habitation. Instead of creating wildlife corridors, they are eliminating human corridors. Is this really necessary?

Human Cleansing – The Evacuation Plan for the Santa Cruz Mountains

Do you want to live in the mountains?
Forget it. Only billionaires and non-humans allowed.

If you are familiar with the San Francisco peninsula, you will see that the area proposed for the “Great Park of the Santa Cruz Mountains” encompasses nearly the entire mountain range. A coalition of environmentalist organizations and government agencies are proposing to create a park of 138,000 acres, that’s 215 square miles, in an area that ought to make room for weekend cabins, mountain dwellers, and vacation communities. Why, in a region where homes cost so much, is so much land being barred to human settlement? The pristine stands of redwoods in Big Basin and Henry Cowell State Park were preserved a century ago. There is nothing wrong with preserving more land around these parks. But do they have to take it all?

This is far from an isolated example. Urban areas in California, primarily Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, have been surrounded by “open space preserves” where future development is prohibited and current residents are harassed. Ask the embattled residents of Stevens Canyon in the hills west of the Silicon Valley, if there are any of them left. Once you’re in a “planning area,” watch out. Backed by bonds sold to naive voters, endowments bestowed by billionaires, and the power of state and federal laws that make living on any property at all increasingly difficult, the relentless land acquisition machine continues to gather momentum. Anyone who thinks there isn’t a connection between setting aside thousands of square miles in California for “habitat” and the price of a home on a lot big enough to accommodate a swing set for the kids needs to have their head examined.

It doesn’t end with open space that is actually purchased, cleansed of humanity, and turned into government ran preserves for plants and wildlife, however. Acquiring permits to build on any land is nearly impossible in California. Land developers who fight year round to try to build housing for people shake their heads in disbelief at the myriad requirements from countless state, federal and local agencies that make the permit process take not months or years, but decades. And it isn’t just farmland, or wetland, or special riparian habitats where development is blocked. It’s everywhere. Even semi-arid rangeland is off limits for housing unless you are prepared to spend millions, fight for decades, and have the staying power to pursue multiple expensive projects simultaneously since many will never, ever get approved.

What is the result? Here is an aerial photo of a subdivision in the Sacramento area, one that every hedge fund billionaire turned environmentalist in California – especially one who runs cattle on his own special 1,800 acre fiefdom in the Santa Cruz mountains on a property that just happens to be in a “non-targeted area” – might consider living in for the rest of his life in order to understand the human consequences of his ideals – cramped homes on 40′x80′ lots, at a going price in October 2014 of $250,000. Notwithstanding being condemned to a claustrophobic existence at a level of congestion that would drive rats in a cage to madness, $250,000 is a pittance for a billionaire. But for an ordinary worker, $250,000 is a life sentence of mortgage servitude. And even this, the single family dwelling, is under attack by “smart growth” environmentalists and public bureaucrats who prefer density to having to divert payroll and benefits to finance infrastructure. The excess! The waste! Stack them and pack them and let them ride trains!

Priced to Sell at $250,000 – Housing for Humans on 40′x80′ Lots

No mountain air, ocean breezes, or open space for the little people.
Buy a permit, get in line, visit for a day, but then come home to this.

When public employee union leadership talk about the importance of paying their members a “middle class” package of pay and benefits, they’re right. Government workers should enjoy a middle class lifestyle. But they need to understand that the asset bubbles caused by high prices for housing are not only making it necessary to pay them more, but are also creating the inflated property tax revenue that they rely on for much of their compensation. They need to understand that the phony economic growth caused by everyone borrowing against their inflated home equity is what creates the stock market appreciation that their pension funds rely on to remain solvent. And they need to understand that all of this is a bubble, kept intact by crippling, misanthropic land use restrictions that hurt all working people.

There is another path. That is for public employee union leadership to recognize that everyone deserves a chance at a middle class lifestyle. And the way to do that is not to advocate higher pay and benefits to public employees, but to advocate a lower cost of living, starting with housing. One may argue endlessly about how to regulate or deregulate water and energy production, essentials of life that also have artificially inflated costs. But as long as suburban homes consume less water than Walnut orchards – and they do, much less – build more homes to drive their prices way, way down. There’s plenty of land.

Ed Ring is the executive director of the California Policy Center, where this piece first appeared.

January 14, 2015
California’s Rebound Mostly Slow, Unsteady

California, after nearly five years in recession, has made something of a comeback in recent years. Job growth in the state – largely due to the Silicon Valley boom – has even begun to outpace the national average. The state, finally, appears to have finally recovered the jobs lost since 2007.

To some, this makes California what someone called “a beacon of hope for progressives.” Its “comeback” has been dutifully noted and applauded by economist Paul Krugman, high priest of what passes for the American Left.

In reality, however, California’s path back remains slow and treacherous. California Lutheran University economist Bill Watkins, like other economists, is somewhat bullish on the state’s short-run situation, but suggests that the highly unequal recovery, particularly for the middle class, could prove problematic over time.

“It’s very narrow and not broad-based,” he observes. “That is very troubling.”

Things certainly are better than they were, a few years back but still are far from ideal. Right now, California employment is about 1.1 percent above 2007 levels, slightly below the 1.4 percent growth for the country. In contrast, Texas’ economy has created jobs at roughly 10 times that rate. With a population much smaller than California’s, the Lone Star State added more than 1.2 million jobs, compared with 162,000 for California. No great surprise, then, that California has become, by far, the largest exporter of domestic migrants – more than twice that of any other state – to Texas.

Our unemployment rate, while falling, at 7.3 percent in October was still the nation’s fifth-highest. Even as California has improved, Texas continues to grow as fast, or faster, than the Golden State. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Texas ranked third in growth over the past year, while California achieved a respectable ninth. It’s possible, though, that with falling oil prices, California might edge out Texas in growth for 2014, but the performance gap – due to the narrowness of the recovery – is likely to remain huge for the foreseeable future.

Regional Disparities

Most of the gains in high-wage jobs in California since 2007 have been in professional and business services – up almost 200,000 – a sector that clusters along the coast. Most strong job gains have been concentrated in the Bay Area, primarily along the 50-mile strip from San Francisco to San Jose. At the same time, conditions have remained sluggish both in less tech-oriented Los Angeles and the Inland economies.

The Sacramento region, for example, remains down 32,000 jobs from 2007 levels; most other Central Valley communities, with the exception of oil-fired Bakersfield, remain stuck at or below their 2007 levels. The Inland Empire may be improving, but remains down 30,000 jobs. Other blue-collar economies, such as Oakland, just across the Bay from booming San Francisco, remains 9,000 jobs below its 2007 level. Los Angeles County, historically the linchpin of the state economy, is down 44,000 jobs.

Improving the economy in these areas may be very difficult as California’s regulatory environment makes it hard for many firms to expand as easily as they can in Nevada, Arizona, Utah or Texas. Under current circumstances, even when Silicon Valley firms expand their middle-management workforce, they are likely to do it in other more business-friendly states – or abroad – than move further east toward the Central Valley.

Blue Collar Bust

One of the great success stories in America the past few years has been the growth of the blue-collar economy. Credit goes to, first and foremost, the energy boom that accelerated growth not only in states like Texas, North Dakota and Oklahoma, but also in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where fracking has expanded. This energy boom has also spilled over into the industrial sector, creating new demand for such things as pipes and sparking a recovery in the auto industry, both in the traditional Rust Belt and the newly industrialized zones of the Southeast.

California, sadly, has remained largely on the sidelines during this great boom, which is one reason why its population suffers the highest poverty rate in the country. Since 2007, for example, Texas has added some 54,000 jobs in the natural-resource extraction sector. California, with some of the nation’s largest oil reserves, has added 15,000. Critically, this sector provides high-wage jobs not only to geologists and managers, but also to an assortment of blue-collar workers, who earn wages, according to Economic Modeling International, of roughly $100,000 annually.

A similar pattern can be seen in manufacturing. As the economy has recovered, U.S. industrial expansion has increased, with employment up 2 percent in the past year. Manufacturing in California, meanwhile, has grown at half that rate. Over the past seven years, the Golden State has lost some 200,000 manufacturing jobs, and, with the state’s high energy costs, it’s difficult to see how this pattern will reverse in the foreseeable future.

Wholesale trade and warehousing represents another key blue-collar industry but California has had virtually no growth here since 2007, while Texas has gained well over 100,000 positions. Future growth for the state in this area may be slowed as trade moves away from the chronic congestion, environmental and labor conflicts surrounding California ports, particularly the key Los Angeles-Long Beach complex. Instead, traffic is headed to more business-friendly facilities along the Gulf Coast and Southeast, as well as to the west coasts of Canada and Mexico.

Similarly, construction, a critical blue-collar sector, and the one that employs more Latinos than any other, has been slow to grow in California, where construction employment remains 190,000 jobs below 2007 levels. Even in the past year, with rising home prices, California construction growth has lagged well behind that of Texas. Looking forward, with ever stricter restraints on single-family housing, the prospects for growth are limited.

Silicon Valley a savior?

Today, most of the hope about California centers on Silicon Valley. “Silicon Valley,” notes economist Watkins, “is the last goose laying golden eggs in California.” It’s hard not to be impressed with the massive wealth accumulation around Silicon Valley and its urban annex, San Francisco. This growth has boosted the state’s improved short-term financial position. But it’s highly improbable that the Valley’s information sector – even at today’s often-absurd valuations – can create enough jobs to sustain the rest of the state. Since 2007, notes economist Dan Hamilton, the state has gained less than 11,000 information jobs, hardly sufficient to make up for the massive losses from the recession.

So, in what sectors are the job gains concentrated? Generally, not necessarily the sectors that create middle-class jobs. The biggest winners, outside of business services, have been generally lower-wage sectors such as education and health care, up 24 percent since 2007 – a remarkable 464,000 jobs – as well as leisure and hospitality, which has grown 10 percent, or almost 158,000 positions.

The class implications of this unbalanced growth are profound. Even in Silicon Valley, Latinos and African Americans have seen wages fall, and the area has been home to the nation’s largest homeless encampment. Meanwhile, many solid middle-class employers – Boeing, Chevron, Charles Schwab and Toyota – continue to shift jobs out of state; Occidental Petroleum, a longtime boon to the Southern California economy, pulled up stakes and moved to Houston.

So, rather than break out the organic champagne to toast California’s comeback, as the Jerry Brown administration would have us do, we would do better to address the ever-growing economic divide in the state. And, to be sure, with little prospects for renewed middle-class and blue-collar job growth, California should not be held up as a model for other states, particularly those that lack both California’s innovation economy and its remarkable natural advantages.

In fact, neither is this situation ideal for most Californians – particularly if you are concerned about the state’s middle class and the consequences of an expanding, often undereducated population with little prospect of ascending the economic ladder.

This piece first appeared at the Orange County Register.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

January 13, 2015
The “Inner Cleveland” of Trendy Cities

Check out these photos and try to guess where they were taken. If you thought Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo, Cincinnati, or a dozen other Rustbelt towns you’d be mistaken, although your confusion is completely understandable. It’s actually Portland, Oregon – that bastion of liberal, crunchy, hippie, yuppie, hipster, eco-friendliness. Go figure. I’m not putting down Portland. Portland is great. I love Portland. I’m making a point about the reputation of some cities and how we perceive places differently based on a lot of vague stereotypes. If the only images we ever saw of Portland all looked like this it would be hard to persuade people to migrate there – even if the photos don’t portray the complete reality on the ground.



To be perfectly honest, Portland is a small blue collar city out in the sticks with a fairly recent trendy overlay. Its economy is fair-to-middling. Stable, but nothing to write home about. It’s primary source of dynamism comes from inflows of cash, talent, and people from other more expensive west coast cities who seek out a higher quality of life at a lower price point. That migration is fueled by the popular image many people have about the city more than the reality on the ground. Over time this branding becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now check out these next photos.



When you look at these pictures what do you think of? Portland? Seattle? Boston? Chicago? It’s actually Cincinnati.



How about these photos? San Francisco? Maybe a cool part of LA? Nope. It’s Pittsburgh.



How about these photos? Brooklyn? Chicago? Boston? How about Buffalo? Yep. Buffalo.



Are you looking for a great walkable vibrant neighborhood, but really want a single family home with a patch of garden to go along with all the cool nearby shops and fun stuff on Main Street? Maybe something with a bit of historic charm instead of a cookie cutter tract home? Well, for north of $500,000 you can get one of these great places in Portland. Or…



For about $200,000 you could get something like this in Buffalo. Don’t have $200,000? If you’re willing to work on a fixer upper in a transitional neighborhood really close to the areas that have already gentrified you can find something for $50,000.



How about one of these in Cincinnati for between $50,000 and $200,000?

Will you make as much money in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, or Buffalo as you might in Seattle, Chicago, or Brooklyn? No. But when your housing cost has been radically reduced you really don’t need nearly as much cash. It isn’t how much you earn that matters. It’s how much you have left over at the end of the month that determines how well you live. Personally I spend 90% of my life within a five block radius of my apartment in San Francisco. Do I love having ready access to the rest of an amazing city? Absolutely. Could I afford to enjoy most of what San Francisco has to offer if we hadn’t bought our place a million years ago when the Mission was still a cheap funky neighborhood? Not even close.

Here’s my advice to both young people who are just starting out as well as older people who are struggling to manage in a tough economic environment. Stop fighting expensive housing markets. Stop trying to wedge yourself into an overpriced shoe box apartment in a mediocre neighborhood in a top tier city. Stop driving an hour and a half out to an isolated subdivision just to hold on to your status in a big metroplex. It’s not worth it. The interior of the country is absolutely full of amazing places at a price you can comfortably afford. Give yourself and your family a big raise and leave the coast behind.

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

January 10, 2015

The Geography of Lower, Middle and Higher Income Households in the United States

Data on incomes of households for US counties allow us to see the geographic patterns of poorer, average and richer households. Covering the numbers of households and shares of households that are relatively poor to rich, we get a fascinating picture of American economic diversity.

Four maps are used, one each for numbers and shares of lower income: under $40,000, middle income: $40,000 to $100,000, and higher income: over $100,000. These three are the main focus, but I also show a map of mean incomes (aggregate income of the county divided by the number of households), instead of the familiar map of median or typical income, which provides us with some interesting insight into the impact of ultra-affluent households.

In addition, I present a few tables listing the more “extreme” counties: those highest and lowest in mean income, those with the highest share of rich, middle class and poorer households, and counties with the greatest inequality. These numbers, it should be add, do not factor in the cost of living, nor distinguish between families and non-families, which might produce very different results.

Lower income households

Areas with highest shares of lower income households (< $40,000), shown in orange, red and almost black, are quite distinct. Poorest America is concentrated within a massive contiguous zone, punctuated by less poor urban islands, spreading over much of the South and border states, and also encompassing Appalachia and Ozarkia. The northern portion, MO, northern AR, KY, TN, WV, into OH, and western VA and NC, are mainly white and rural, small town. And there are some mainly white rural low income counties in TX, LA, MS, AL, GA, SC, and NC. But lower income black households dominate in AR, MS, AL, GA, SC, NC into VA, and some American Indian areas in OK.

Outside the southern core region, there are several distinct areas of poorer households, (1), core metropolitan counties in Megalopolis (Baltimore, Philadelphia, NJ-NY), (2), heavily Hispanic areas in Texas, along the border with Mexico, (3), Indian reservation areas across the West, (4) and most interesting, several clusters of declining resource dependent counties in ME, northern MI, and a relatively unknown stretch of resource dependent communities in the Pacific Northwest and CA. .

In contrast areas with the lowest shares of low income households include suburban Megalopolis, Minneapolis and Chicago, and the Pacific coastal metropolitan areas in general.

Table 1 lists the very highest share of poorer households for the lower income, < $40,000. The map shows the 30 counties from Table 1 with a higher than 70% share of lower income. These include 11 from Appalachia. Even more counties, 19, are minority dominated. Two are Hispanic and one American Indian. Of the 44 counties with highest share of the poorest category, < $25,000, 14 are in Appalachia, 8 are Hispanic, mostly in TX, 19 are black majority counties in the south, 1 is Indian and 2 are characterized by many poor whites as well as blacks.

Table 1: Highest shares of low income households
Counties	Poor %	Mean Income
Owsley County, Kentucky	64.4%	$ 30,654
Brooks County, Texas	58.0%	$ 38,721
Allendale County, South Carolina	57.5%	$ 37,662
Breathitt County, Kentucky	57.0%	$ 36,737
Holmes County, Mississippi	57.0%	$ 31,294
Zavala County, Texas	56.7%	$ 30,994
Hancock County, Georgia	56.2%	$ 30,209
Wolfe County, Kentucky	56.2%	$ 28,594
Clay County, Kentucky	55.7%	$ 33,904
Chicot County, Arkansas	55.5%	$ 37,631
McDowell County, West Virginia	55.1%	$ 31,002
McCreary County, Kentucky	55.1%	$ 31,517
Knox County, Kentucky	54.6%	$ 35,052
Leflore County, Mississippi	54.6%	$ 35,095
Noxubee County, Mississippi	54.5%	$ 34,046
Wilcox County, Alabama	54.4%	$ 34,585
Issaquena County, Mississippi	54.3%	$ 33,698
Willacy County, Texas	53.6%	$ 36,137
Magoffin County, Kentucky	53.3%	$ 36,653
Clinton County, Kentucky	53.0%	$ 33,799
Jackson County, Kentucky	53.0%	$ 32,884
Greene County, Alabama	52.7%	$ 36,678
Lee County, South Carolina	52.6%	$ 36,284
Hancock County, Tennessee	52.6%	$ 31,170
Taliaferro County, Georgia	52.4%	$ 35,122
Galax city, Virginia	52.2%	$ 39,006
East Carroll Parish, Louisiana	51.9%	$ 51,241
Quitman County, Mississippi	51.7%	$ 33,462
Hudspeth County, Texas	51.5%	$ 34,453
Telfair County, Georgia	51.4%	$ 34,131
Shannon County, South Dakota	51.3%	$ 31,875
Kinney County, Texas	51.0%	$ 36,953
Claiborne County, Mississippi	51.0%	$ 33,386
Elliott County, Kentucky	51.0%	$ 34,786
Zapata County, Texas	51.0%	$ 42,526
Williamsburg County, South Carolina	51.0%	$ 36,065
Jefferson County, Mississippi	50.9%	$ 33,777
Starr County, Texas	50.9%	$ 39,871
Costilla County, Colorado	50.8%	$ 38,967
Tallahatchie County, Mississippi	50.8%	$ 34,418
Lake County, Tennessee	50.7%	$ 37,016
Coahoma County, Mississippi	50.6%	$ 42,045
Bell County, Kentucky	50.4%	$ 36,482
Sunflower County, Mississippi	50.0%	$ 37,361

It is fascinating that while the poor black, Hispanic and Indian poorer areas tend to vote Democratic, the northern poor white areas, especially in Appalachia, now generally support Republicans.

Middle income households: $40,000-$100,000

While it could be argued that my $40 to $100k range is too narrow for middle classes, I don’t think so, at least for most areas, and I feel that the data reveal the income polarization of American society, with middle classes getting squeezed by the rising shares of the poorer and richer.

From the map the most telling feature is how sparse are counties with the highest shares of middle incomes. There is a polarization, reflecting a processes of deindustrialization, and the increasing income disparities between professional and the new service workers. Shares over 40% are predominantly suburban and exurban in the eastern half of the country. They are well represented across the South, most prominently in TX, OK, TN, and VA, but far more pervasive in the Midwest, most notably in MN (greater Minneapolis), WI, IA, MO, IL, IN, and to some degree around cities that still have an industrial base and/or a productive hinterland. A secondary set of counties with high middle income shares are spread across the Mountain West, but different in character, often rural to small city, and notably in UT, CO, and WY. Note their total absence in mighty CA, where the middle class, as we define it, is clearly shrinking.

In table 2 I list the 45 counties with 46 to 64% middle income shares. Many are quite small and none is very populous. The state with the most such counties is UT, then MN, CO, VA, NE, and IA. It may be significant that Utah has by far the highest share of these high middle income counties. Generally counties with high shares of middle class households have the lowest income inequality.

Table 2: Highest shares of middle income households
Counties	Mid-Income Households	Low Income %	Mid-Income %	High Income %
Skagway Municipality, Alaska	206	16.8%	53.4%	27.2%
Craig County, Virginia	1,045	32.9%	52.5%	10.0%
McPherson County, Nebraska	104	27.5%	51.0%	5.9%
Reagan County, Texas	581	27.7%	50.9%	14.2%
Bath County, Virginia	1,029	36.6%	50.8%	5.6%
Rich County, Utah	386	24.7%	50.7%	12.1%
Tooele County, Utah	8,937	27.5%	50.4%	18.0%
Storey County, Nevada	912	28.4%	49.9%	18.0%
Moody County, South Dakota	1,281	33.5%	49.4%	9.6%
Manassas Park city, Virginia	2,071	17.9%	49.2%	28.5%
Iowa County, Iowa	3,230	35.0%	48.5%	12.9%
Grundy County, Iowa	2,442	32.9%	48.4%	13.5%
Lyon County, Iowa	2,095	38.4%	48.0%	8.4%
Grand County, Colorado	2,557	28.8%	48.0%	18.9%
Chisago County, Minnesota	9,267	26.6%	47.9%	20.8%
Lincoln County, Wyoming	3,094	32.5%	47.8%	15.7%
Greenlee County, Arizona	1,586	38.5%	47.7%	6.3%
Box Elder County, Utah	7,436	32.8%	47.6%	13.9%
King William County, Virginia	2,814	26.7%	47.6%	20.7%
Lincoln County, South Dakota	7,494	25.2%	47.5%	23.4%
Teton County, Idaho	1,791	32.8%	47.3%	14.1%
Routt County, Colorado	4,766	22.6%	47.0%	21.9%
Paulding County, Georgia	21,807	28.7%	47.0%	18.9%
Sherburne County, Minnesota	13,684	22.2%	46.8%	26.7%
Juab County, Utah	1,422	34.8%	46.7%	13.8%
Calumet County, Wisconsin	8,505	27.7%	46.6%	20.6%
Wayne County, Utah	418	37.5%	46.5%	13.3%
Dodge County, Minnesota	3,392	27.3%	46.5%	21.7%
Sioux County, Iowa	5,351	37.3%	46.4%	10.0%
Stanton County, Kansas	339	34.6%	46.4%	8.9%
Iowa County, Wisconsin	4,498	35.3%	46.3%	14.1%
Cameron Parish, Louisiana	1,233	35.1%	46.3%	16.4%
Nicollet County, Minnesota	5,624	31.7%	46.3%	16.1%
Wabaunsee County, Kansas	1,272	39.3%	46.3%	11.1%
Wasatch County, Utah	3,308	24.5%	46.2%	23.9%
Pershing County, Nevada	914	37.6%	46.2%	11.2%
Ouray County, Colorado	783	30.0%	46.0%	19.0%
Morgan County, Utah	1,247	21.0%	45.9%	27.0%
Park County, Colorado	3,248	24.1%	45.9%	24.0%
Logan County, Nebraska	147	42.8%	45.9%	4.4%
Carson County, Texas	1,109	34.9%	45.9%	16.1%
Emery County, Utah	1,735	38.4%	45.9%	9.6%
Cass County, Nebraska	4,408	27.5%	45.9%	21.2%
Jasper County, Indiana	5,602	33.7%	45.8%	15.0%
Polk County, Nebraska	1,019	40.1%	45.7%	8.6%

High Income counties

The geography of higher income counties is again completely different – and rather amazing. Higher shares of richer households are located overwhelmingly in large metropolitan areas in all regions of the country, predictably but most dominant around greater New York City. The few rural small town counties are generally the resort playgrounds of the rich, as found in CO.

Table 3A lists the counties with the highest shares of higher incomes (>$100,000). Of the 32 higher income counties, 23 are in Megalopolis, including the 3 richest areas, from 53% to 59% high income. Of the 32 richest counties, 11.1% to 19% of the households are above $200,000, again 22 counties are in Megalopolis, then 4 in CA (Bay Area).

Table 3A: Highest share of rich households
Counties	Rich % $100-200,000	Rich % Above $200,000	Mean Income
Falls Church city, Virginia	35.4%	19.6%	$ 134,264
Hunterdon County, New Jersey	33.0%	17.5%	$ 130,723
Fairfax County, Virginia	35.8%	17.4%	$ 132,662
Loudoun County, Virginia	41.7%	17.4%	$ 134,098
Marin County, California	28.2%	16.8%	$ 128,544
Somerset County, New Jersey	32.6%	16.0%	$ 129,222
Fairfield County, Connecticut	25.0%	16.0%	$ 130,074
Westchester County, New York	24.7%	15.8%	$ 128,127
New York County, New York	19.5%	15.8%	$ 122,620
Morris County, New Jersey	32.7%	15.6%	$ 128,371
Howard County, Maryland	36.3%	15.4%	$ 123,234
Montgomery County, Maryland	31.6%	15.3%	$ 125,557
Pitkin County, Colorado	20.0%	15.1%	$ 134,267
Arlington County, Virginia	32.4%	15.1%	$ 121,315
Nantucket County, Massachusetts	26.3%	14.4%	$ 137,811
Nassau County, New York	33.0%	13.9%	$ 121,567
San Mateo County, California	29.1%	13.8%	$ 118,774
Santa Clara County, California	30.3%	13.5%	$ 113,161
Skagway Municipality, Alaska	14.2%	13.0%	$ 93,822
Fairfax city, Virginia	35.4%	12.6%	$ 114,007
Goochland County, Virginia	27.9%	12.5%	$ 118,743
Los Alamos County, New Mexico	40.3%	12.3%	$ 117,400
Williamson County, Tennessee	31.1%	12.3%	$ 114,801
Bergen County, New Jersey	28.4%	12.1%	$ 111,219
Borden County, Texas	16.4%	11.9%	$ 93,417
Chester County, Pennsylvania	29.6%	11.8%	$ 110,798
San Francisco County, California	24.9%	11.7%	$ 102,267
Monmouth County, New Jersey	29.3%	11.7%	$ 109,042
Alexandria city, Virginia	28.4%	11.2%	$ 110,671
Norfolk County, Massachusetts	28.7%	11.2%	$ 108,887
Douglas County, Colorado	38.4%	11.1%	$ 117,692
Rockland County, New York	30.1%	11.1%	$ 105,450

Table 3B which lists the 37 counties with the highest MEAN incomes, including 9 around Washington DC, 8 around New York, and 3 around San Francisco, reinforcing the fact of the concentration of wealth.

Table 3B: Mean Income (highest)
County	Rich % $100-200,000	Rich % Above $200,000	Mean Income
Nantucket County, Massachusetts	26.3%	14.4%	$ 137,811
Pitkin County, Colorado	20.0%	15.1%	$ 134,267
Falls Church city, Virginia	35.4%	19.6%	$ 134,264
Loudoun County, Virginia	41.7%	17.4%	$ 134,098
Fairfax County, Virginia	35.8%	17.4%	$ 132,662
Hunterdon County, New Jersey	33.0%	17.5%	$ 130,723
Fairfield County, Connecticut	25.0%	16.0%	$ 130,074
Somerset County, New Jersey	32.6%	16.0%	$ 129,222
Marin County, California	28.2%	16.8%	$ 128,544
Morris County, New Jersey	32.7%	15.6%	$ 128,371
Westchester County, New York	24.7%	15.8%	$ 128,127
Montgomery County, Maryland	31.6%	15.3%	$ 125,557
Howard County, Maryland	36.3%	15.4%	$ 123,234
New York County, New York	19.5%	15.8%	$ 122,620
Nassau County, New York	33.0%	13.9%	$ 121,567
Arlington County, Virginia	32.4%	15.1%	$ 121,315
San Mateo County, California	29.1%	13.8%	$ 118,774
Goochland County, Virginia	27.9%	12.5%	$ 118,743
Douglas County, Colorado	38.4%	11.1%	$ 117,692
Los Alamos County, New Mexico	40.3%	12.3%	$ 117,400
Williamson County, Tennessee	31.1%	12.3%	$ 114,801
Fairfax city, Virginia	35.4%	12.6%	$ 114,007
Santa Clara County, California	30.3%	13.5%	$ 113,161
Bergen County, New Jersey	28.4%	12.1%	$ 111,219
Delaware County, Ohio	32.3%	10.6%	$ 110,917
Chester County, Pennsylvania	29.6%	11.8%	$ 110,798
Alexandria city, Virginia	28.4%	11.2%	$ 110,671

Table 3C lists the counties with the most extreme income inequality, characterized by high shares of the poorer and the richer, with lower shares of the middle classes. The list includes both inequality based on high shares of lower income (<$4,000) and higher income (>$100,000), and as estimated from highest shares of the poorest (<$25,000) and richest (>$200,000) households. Many counties are on both lists. New York (Manhattan) and San Francisco top both lists. Other counties prominent on both include Fairfield, CT; Westchester, NY; Norfolk, MA; Monmouth, NY; Contra Costa, CA; Rockland NY; and Goochland, VA – all suburban or exurban. Summit, UT and Pitkin, CO are rural resort areas in the west. Many of the core counties on the lists are high in minority populations, e.g., New York; Fulton, GA; Washington, DC; and Alameda, Contra Costa, Orange, and Ventura, CA.

Table 3C: Most Unequal Counties
Counties	<$40k	$40-$100k	>$100k
New York County, New York	35.0%	26.5%	35.2%
San Francisco County, California	30.9%	28.8%	36.5%
Pitkin County, Colorado	30.0%	29.8%	35.1%
Fulton County, Georgia	36.7%	29.9%	28.7%
Westchester County, New York	25.7%	30.1%	40.6%
District of Columbia, District of Columbia	35.8%	30.1%	29.6%
Fairfield County, Connecticut	25.1%	30.5%	41.0%
Rappahannock County, Virginia	35.3%	30.5%	31.3%
Goochland County, Virginia	25.2%	30.8%	40.4%
Rockland County, New York	24.6%	31.2%	41.2%
Monmouth County, New Jersey	24.2%	31.4%	41.0%
Kendall County, Texas	31.4%	32.0%	33.2%
Boulder County, Colorado	32.4%	32.1%	31.3%
Alameda County, California	29.6%	32.5%	34.1%
Norfolk County, Massachusetts	24.1%	32.6%	39.9%
Mercer County, New Jersey	28.7%	32.9%	35.0%
Middlesex County, Massachusetts	25.6%	33.0%	37.7%
Contra Costa County, California	24.9%	33.0%	38.4%
Essex County, Massachusetts	32.6%	33.1%	30.6%
Summit County, Utah	23.5%	33.5%	38.9%
Union County, New Jersey	30.2%	33.7%	32.0%
Bristol County, Rhode Island	30.7%	33.9%	31.6%
Santa Cruz County, California	31.2%	33.9%	30.8%
Napa County, California	29.4%	33.9%	32.4%
Richmond County, New York	29.1%	34.2%	33.0%
Ventura County, California	25.1%	34.6%	36.1%
Orange County, California	25.3%	34.6%	36.0%
St. Johns County, Florida	30.8%	34.9%	29.0%
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania	24.5%	35.2%	36.3%
Oakland County, Michigan	29.9%	35.2%	30.8%
Newport County, Rhode Island	29.4%	35.5%	30.3%
King County, Washington	28.4%	35.6%	31.8%
Placer County, California	25.6%	35.6%	34.6%
San Diego County, California	31.4%	35.6%	28.5%

Counties	<$25k	>$200k
New York County, New York	24.5%	15.8%
San Francisco County, California	20.9%	11.7%
Borden County, Texas	18.9%	11.9%
Fairfield County, Connecticut	15.3%	16.0%
Westchester County, New York	15.2%	15.8%
Norfolk County, Massachusetts	15.0%	11.2%
Pitkin County, Colorado	14.6%	15.1%
Monmouth County, New Jersey	14.4%	11.7%
Contra Costa County, California	14.3%	10.7%
Rockland County, New York	14.2%	11.1%
Bergen County, New Jersey	13.9%	12.1%
Santa Clara County, California	13.5%	13.5%
Nantucket County, Massachusetts	13.5%	14.4%
Goochland County, Virginia	13.3%	12.5%
Summit County, Utah	13.2%	10.8%
Marin County, California	13.1%	16.8%
Lake County, Illinois	12.6%	10.9%
Chester County, Pennsylvania	12.0%	11.8%
Alexandria city, Virginia	11.6%	11.2%
San Mateo County, California	11.6%	13.8%
Nassau County, New York	11.4%	13.9%
Williamson County, Tennessee	10.8%	12.3%
Delaware County, Ohio	10.7%	10.6%
Fauquier County, Virginia	10.5%	10.1%
Arlington County, Virginia	10.3%	15.1%
Putnam County, New York	10.0%	10.4%

It doesn’t take much of a cynic to conclude that the way to get rich is to be around Wall Street (the pinnacle of capital) or around the U.S. Congress, the pinnacle of government largess (including lobbyists for Wall Street). Do you doubt? Please see the final map of mean income. Yes, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Atlanta are represented at the table, as is the San Diego to San Francisco corridor, but Megalopolis dwarfs them all.

As if this were not scary enough, consider the relation between these income figures and how Americans voted in for president in 2012. Without showing a map, I can simply state that the areas that provided the extra millions of votes for Obama are precisely the giant metropolitan areas, suburbs and exurbs as well as core counties, with the highest mean income and shares of the rich. While it is also true that Obama carried poorer minority areas, rural as well as metropolitan, he LOST most areas of poor to middle income whites, urban and rural. Weirdly, both the rich (professionals) and the poor (minorities) in the most unequal counties are cores of Democratic strength. The traditional economic basis for Democrat versus Republican partisan difference has essentially disappeared, replaced by distinctions of culture and race, leading to the current screwed up state of not only our political party system, but of governance more widely, and yes, of society itself.

Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist).

January 9, 2015

Divergent Demographic and Economic Trends in Chicago

The fortunes of the city of Chicago have become clouded in recent years as concerns over its weakening finances and heavy debt obligations have grown. The tally for the unfunded public employee debt obligations of Chicago’s overlapping units of local governments (including those for public schools, parks, and county services) is now approaching $30 billion. Moreover, the city government has been criticized for its practices of funding current public services with proceeds from the issuance of long-term debt and the long-term leases of public assets (such as its parking meter system). However, faith in Chicago’s ability to address its debts has not fallen so far as that in Detroit’s, chiefly because the Windy City’s economic trends display more vibrancy.

Population change is a prominent indicator of the health of an urban economy because it reflects a city’s ability to hold on to its residents (as opposed to losing them to the suburbs or other locales). Over the past few decades, similar to other central cities, Chicago has experienced an erosion in its population share of the broader metropolitan statistical area (MSA);[1] in contrast, the surrounding suburbs have seen their share climb. According to the U.S. Census, Chicago held 38% of the MSA’s population in 1980, with this share falling to 35% by 1990; in the subsequent 20 years, Chicago’s population share of the MSA decreased another 3 percentage points per decade, reaching 29% by 2010 (see table below). During the 1980–2010 period, Chicago lost a total of over 300,000 residents. At the same time, suburban Chicago gained close to 2 million in population. Since 2010, the city of Chicago’s population and population share of the MSA have strengthened somewhat, though the (off-Census year) estimates are probably not as reliable.

While population trends can be telling for a city’s prospects, they can also belie changes in its residents’ wealth and income. Despite the city of Chicago’s population loss over the past few decades, its economic trends have been generally more encouraging.[2] Household income is an important indicator of Chicago’s fortunes relative to those of its suburbs. In 1990, median household income in the city was just 67% of the median household income in suburban Chicago. By 2010, this income ratio had climbed to 73% (see table below). Decomposing household income statistics by (self-reported) racial/ethnic group reveals that this trend was pervasive for the three largest groups: non-Hispanic white, black, and Hispanic. The ratio of city median income to suburban median income among white households experienced the greatest change; it rose from 77% in 1990 to 98% (near parity) in 2010.

These robust trends are echoed by Chicago’s rising share of adults aged 25 and older who have attained at least a bachelor’s degree. In 1990, among adults aged 25 and older, 19% of those residing in the city had attained a four-year college degree versus 28% of those residing in the suburbs (see table below). By 2010, Chicagoans in this age demographic had almost reached the same share in this regard as their suburban counterparts (33% for city residents versus 35% for suburban residents). The non-Hispanic whites again experienced the greatest change among the three largest racial/ethnic groups. In 1990, 29% of the white city population aged 25 and older had a four-year college degree—the same percentage as the white suburban population in this age demographic; however, by 2010, 55% of such white city dwellers had a bachelor’s degree, while 39% of their white suburbanite counterparts did. Between 1990 and 2010, the city’s black population also made substantial gains in education, as evidenced by the share of black adults aged 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree having risen from 11% to 17%.

By “drilling down” through the data to examine specific neighborhoods, we can see how geographically concentrated the city’s gains in college-educated adults aged 25 and older have been. These gains have been highly concentrated in Chicago’s central business district (“the Loop”) and the surrounding areas, as well as the neighborhoods west of Chicago’s northern lakeshore. As shown in the table below, dramatic gains in the college-educated population were seen in the Loop and the neighborhoods just south, west, and north of it. For example, the Near South Side saw an increase in the share of adults with a four-year college degree climb from 9% in 1980 to 68% in 2010. No less dramatic were such gains in Chicago’s neighborhoods west of its northern lakeshore: The shares of the college-educated population there typically doubled or tripled between 1980 and 2010 (in the case of the North Center neighborhood, this share increased sixfold—from 11% in 1980 to 66% in 2010).

As one might expect, many college-educated Chicago residents work in proximity to their residence. Of those living in the Central Area and Mid-North Lakefront, an estimated 57% work in the Central Area of Chicago and 79% work somewhere in the city.[3] Of those who do work in the Central Area, an estimated 19% travel to work by driving alone (as opposed to walking, public transit, bike, and carpooling); this percentage is much smaller than the nearly 70% of metropolitan Chicago workers who travel to work by driving alone.[4] The trends highlighted thus far point to the fact that the city of Chicago draws and retains many jobs. By one count, the city of Chicago’s Central Area is the domicile of over half a million jobs. As seen below, job counts in the Central Area have remained fairly constant over the past 13 years, even while job levels in the remainder of the city and in the remainder of Cook County have been falling.

Meanwhile, compensation levels per job have continued to climb in Chicago’s Central Area, reflecting a work force with greater skills and education. Annual compensation per worker on the payroll in Chicago’s Central Area exceeds that of the overall MSA by 50%.

Many of the trends shown here bode well for the city of Chicago, despite the fiscal challenges it currently faces. To be sure, many large central cities in the Midwest, including Detroit, are experiencing strong growth of both jobs and households centered around their central areas and downtowns. In this, the central Chicago area enjoys a strong start.

William Sander (Ph.D., Cornell University) is professor of economics at DePaul University in Chicago. He has also taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of the Philippines.

William A. Testa (Ph.D., Ohio State University) is Vice President and Director of Regional Programs, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He has also taught at Tulane University.

Flickr photo by Chris Smith: Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park

________________________________________

[1] Current and historical delineations of MSAs are available atwww.census.gov/population/metro/. (Return to text)

[2] This is not to say that all parts of the city have been on the economic upswing. Several Chicago neighborhoods have seen severe deterioration in wealth and income, as well as in living conditions, as evidenced by increasing incidences of homelessness and crime in certain areas in the past few decades; see, e.g., http://danielkayhertz.com/2013/08/05/weve-talked-about-homicide-in-chicago-at-least-one-million-times-but-i-dont-think-this-has-come-up/. (Return to text)

[3] This statement covers 113,000 workers living in these areas as of the year 2000. Estimates were pulled from www.rtams.org and are based on the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP), “which is a special tabulation of the decennial U.S. Census for transportation planners” and “contains detailed tabulations on the characteristics of workers at their place of residence (‘part 1’), at their place of work (‘part 2’), and on work trip flows between home and work (‘part 3’)” (see www.rtams.org/rtams/ctppHome.jsp). Workers who work at home are excluded. See also http://definingdowntown.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/Defining_DowntownReport.pdf; this report ranks Chicago second among major U.S. cities in terms of the percentage of residents living within one mile of downtown who work downtown (figure 3 in the report), and ranks Chicago first in terms of population growth in the downtown area over the period 2000–10 (figure 4 in the report).(Return to text)

[4] Estimates are from www.rtams.org and are based on the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP). (Return to text)

This post originally appeared in Chicago Fed Midwest Economy on December 3, 2014.

January 7, 2015
Don’t Boost Cities by Bashing the ‘Burbs

There is nothing like a trip to Washington, D.C., to show how out of touch America’s ruling classes have become. I was in the nation’s capital to appear on a panel for a Politico event that – well after I agreed to come – was titled “Booming Cities, Busting Suburbs.”

The notion of cities rising from the rotting carcass of suburbia is widely accepted today by much of our corporate, academic and media leadership. This notion has been repeatedly embraced as well by the Obama administration, whose own former secretary of Housing and Urban Development declared several years back that the suburbs were dying, and people were “moving back to the central cities.”

Some on Wall Street also embrace this notion. Having played a pivotal role, along with regulators, in the housing crash of the late 2000s, some financiers have been buying up foreclosed homes for rental income and also back many high-density projects, which are built to house, in large part, those who cannot buy a home, particularly the younger generation.

As the Economistrecently pointed out, the suburban house, or a house in less-crowded parts of cities, is an aspiration of upwardly mobile people in the United States and around the world. Surveys, including those conducted by Smart Growth America, demonstrate that the vast majority of Americans prefer single-family houses; most millennials seem to feel that way, too, according to both a Frank Magid Associates survey and a more recent one from Nielsen. As the economy improves, and the people in the millennial generation enter their thirties, it is likely that they – as did other generations – will start buying houses as they start families.

At the very least, suburbia clearly predominates among Americans. Roughly 85 percent of people in our major metropolitan areas, notes demographer Wendell Cox, inhabit suburban neighborhoods, dominated by cars and single-family houses, even though they live within the boundaries of the largest cities. They are definitively not moving en masse into the urban core. In the most recent census, from 2010, the urban core, defined as territory within two miles of city hall, grew by 206,000 people. In contrast, areas 10 or more miles away from an urban center grew by some 15 million people.

Nor has this appreciably changed over time. Since the housing bust, the growth rates of core cities and suburbs are now basically even, but the preponderance of suburban population means that the periphery is adding many more people. From 2010-13, the suburbs added 5.4 million people, while the core cities have added 1.5 million, accounting for less than 30 percent of all major metropolitan population growth.

Other recent analyses, such as from the real estate website Trulia, confirm that this pattern continues. Meanwhile, demand for suburban office space, often seen as dying by urban boosters, now is recovering faster than that of the central core, according to the consultancy CoStar.

The boom in U.S. energy production, and the resulting drop in energy prices, could accelerate the suburban recovery. For years, smart-growth advocates counted on pricey “peak oil” to turn suburbs into “remote slums.” Brookings has estimated that every 10 percent rise in oil prices lowers suburban housing prices by several thousand dollars while raising prices closer in. Not surprisingly, cheaper energy does not sit well with the progressive clerisy, as epitomized by a recent New Yorker article, which likens it to “an industrial form of crack.”

No one buys the mindless embrace of higher housing density and expanding rail transit more than urban mayors. At the Politico event in Washington, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker insisted gamely that transit is “less expensive” than building and maintaining roads, which is not even remotely the case. Transit’s fully loaded capital and operating expenditures per passenger mile are more than four times that of the automobile and road system. Nor is the Salt Lake City area about to become a region of strap hangers: 3.2 percent of workers in the Salt Lake City region commute by transit, down slightly since 2000.

The real Salt Lake City, Becker’s perception notwithstanding, is very much a sprawled one. The downtown may have been spiffed up a bit, largely due to a massive investment by the Mormon church, but, since 2010, the periphery has grown by 48,000 people, compared with 5,000 in the city. In 1950, Salt Lake City accounted for 66 percent of the region’s population; today that is a mere 17 percent.

Another of my fellow panelists, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, is fantastical in his embrace of transit and the future of metropolitan geography. Reed counts on millennials transforming his city, but, overall, the millennial population share in urban cores has dropped since 2010, with strong percentage declines registered in such varied core counties in New York, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C., as well as Atlanta.

Reed, something of a darling of the Davos crowd, presides over something around 8 percent of the Atlanta metro area’s population, down from half in 1950. The most recent estimates from the Census Bureau, suggest that Atlanta may have gained 28,000 people since 2010, compared with 209,000 gained in the suburbs. But even this must be taken with a grain of salt; in the most recent census, it turned out that estimates in many cities, including New York, Chicago and St. Louis, were greatly inflated – in metro Atlanta’s case, by over 100,000.

Although poverty has seeped out of central Atlanta and into the periphery, in part due to the relatively small size of its urban core, the poverty rate in the city is close to twice that of the suburbs, which mirrors the national trend. Its crime rate ranks among the nation’s worst, up there with Detroit, Oakland and St. Louis. An Atlanta resident is roughly more than three times more likely than an average Georgian to become the victim of a violent crime. Although worse than most, Atlanta’s metropolitan core is not unusual; overall, the rate of violent crime in urban cores, although down from 2001, is almost four times higher than that of suburbs, where the rate has also declined.

Nor is Atlanta about to turn into a Southern version of successful transit “legacy” cities like New York or even Washington. Despite a massive investment in rail transit, the regional share of transit commuting today, according to Census Bureau estimates, is a mere 3.1 percent, compared with 3.4 percent in 2000. In reality, transit ridership has risen mostly in a handful of “legacy” cities, notably New York, while overall the share of transit commuters nationally is almost a whole percentage point lower than in 1980. In most U.S. metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, more people telecommute than take transit.

To be sure, Atlanta is, in certain spots, looking better. Upscale districts, like Midtown and Buckhead, have rebounded smartly from the real estate crash, but downtown Atlanta has among the highest vacancy rates in the country. The once-ballyhooed Underground Atlanta downtown shopping and entertainment district is widely seen as something of a disaster. Progressive rhetoric aside, Atlanta, according to the liberal Brookings Institution, has the greatest income inequality of any large city in America, even worse than luxury cities like San Francisco, New York or Boston.

To be sure, one can still make a sounder case for Atlanta’s evolution. There is a sizeable youth demographic, particularly students and childless households, who are attracted to such places, and some companies find the central location better than that of the suburban periphery. It is still a liveable city with many nice, relatively low-density neighborhoods that could accommodate middle-class families. It possesses a canopy of trees – leading some to call it “a city in a forest.”

Cities like Atlanta are important, and it’s great that they are doing better than they were three decades ago. But the urban turnaround, more tentative in places like Atlanta than in Manhattan, does not have to be predicated, as the Politico event seemed to suggest, on the projected ruin of suburban aspirations. Despite the hopes nurtured in places like Washington, D.C., and among parts of financial oligarchy, suburb-dwelling Americans are likely to dominate our housing market, economy and demography for generations to come.

Rather than target suburbia for extinction, cities should focus on the hard work ahead of them. Even as pundits worry about the loss of artists in high-cost cities, the urban future really depends on holding onto middle-class families and millennials as they age. To keep them, mayors need to focus not just on the densest sections of the urban core and rail transit, but on improving the roads, reducing crime, improving both neighborhoods and the broad-based economy. And they must radically reform the schools, critical to luring middle-class families with children. Rather than celebrating the supposed demise of suburbia, city leaders like Mayor Reed should take heed of the biblical injunction: “Physician, heal thyself.”

This piece first appeared at the Orange County Register.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. His newest book, The New Class Conflict is now available at Amazon and Telos Press. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

January 6, 2015
2014’s Top Stories at New Geography

We’ve come to the end of another year at New Geography. Here’s a look back at the most popular pieces from 2013. Happy New Year, and thanks for reading.

12. The Rust Belt Roars Back from the Dead In December, Joel and Richey Piiparinen laid out the case for the rustbelt resurgence based on human capital and a new maker economy. This piece also appeared at The Daily Beast.

11. Best Cities Rankings Our annual Best Cities for Jobs rankings crunched by Michael Shires are based on an index of short-, medium-, and long-range job growth.

10. How Segregated is New York City? Daniel Hertz uses a series of maps to show that New York City is more segregated than many people realize. Be sure to check out Daniel’s blog: City Notes.

9. Affordable Cities are the New Sweet Spots Photographer and keen city observer Johnny Sanphillippo uses a Cincinnati neighborhood to point out that older, affordable urban neighborhoods are great places to be. He concludes that “It’s like moving to the suburbs except you get to live in a great vibrant city instead of a crappy tract house on a cul-de-sac an hour from civilization.” Read more from Johnny at GranolaShotgun.com.

8. Composite Traffic Congestion Index Shows Richmond Best In June, Wendell Cox combined the results of the three major American traffic congestion indexes to show the best and worst metropolitan areas for traffic.

7. Special Report: 2013 Metropolitan Area Population Estimates In April Wendell summarized the results of the latest Metropolitan Area population estimates.

6. Our Father, Who Art in the Apple Store In this Forbes column, Joel ponders the implications of our increasingly techno-centric culture.

5. The U.S. Middle Class is Turning Proletarian Joel argues that the biggest issue facing American society is the gradual decent of the middle class to proletarian status. What to do about it? Encourage growth of blue-collar industries over those profiting from asset inflation, address the costs of education, promote skills training, and work to ensure the benefits of capitalism inure to all. This piece also appeared in Forbes.

4. The Metro Areas with the Most Economic Momentum Going into 2014 One year ago, Joel and I created this economic performance index of the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan areas using 8 short-term indicators, covering jobs, unemployment, income growth, migration, birth rates, and education. This piece was also published by Forbes.

3. America’s Smartest Cities This piece covers our human talent index of all the nation’s metropolitan areas. Places ranking at the top increased their share of residents with a bachelor’s degree the fastest, added the most educated residents, and have the highest current educational attainment rates.

2. The Demographics that Sank the Democrats in the Midterm Elections Joel’s post-mortem from November’s mid-term elections was this year’s second most read piece on the site. It also appeared at Forbes.

1. Largest World Cities: 2014 This year’s most read article is Wendell’s intro to his annual World Urban Areas publication, a comprehensive report listing population, land area, and density data for the world’s urban areas. The report is the only annually published inventory of these data for the world’s urban areas of more than 500,000 population.

January 1, 2015