New Geography

Category: Urban Issues

  • What Do We Do With Shrinking Cities?

    Shrinking Cities: Understanding Urban Decline in the United States
    By Russell Weaver, Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, Jason Knight, and Amy E. Frazier
    Routledge (2017)

    Cities like Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland have lost stunning percentages of their peak population since 1950. Yet these are all in metro areas whose regional populations are much higher than in 1950, even if not at their all time peak high in all of them.

    Some cities like Youngstown have gone so far as to try to plan for shrinkage and a permanently reduced population future. Detroit did something similar with its Detroit Future City plan, though that has subsequently been scrapped.

    How do we think about shrinkage? How do we define a shrinking city? What should shrinking cities do? These are questions that have been swirling around for the decade I’ve been writing about cities here.

    The new academic book Shrinking Cities aims to put some rigor around those questions. The first half of the book is devoted to an examination of shrinkage in the United States. The authors note that any measure designed to identify shrinking cities has a note of the arbitrary about it. The measure they select is population decline of 25% or more over the 40 year period from 1970 to 2010. They look at both census tracts and cities. Surprisingly, they find the shrinking census tracts are very widespread in America, and are on the rise in the Sun Belt. Shrinkage in terms of population loss is not a Rust Belt only phenomenon, though shrinking municipalities as a whole are concentrated in that region.

    The authors look at economic decline separately, examining census tracts where there were increasing levels of concentrated disadvantage (which include include such measures as female headed household, unemployment rate, and low educational attainment as disadvantage indicators). Unsurprisingly, economic decline is more common and more severe in shrinking tracts, though there is not complete overlap. They find that social distress is more associated with economic decline whereas physical distress (e.g., vacant housing) is associated more with population decline.

    After a presentation of the data, the book reviews various theories of what causes shrinkage and decline such as suburbanization. One that was particularly interesting was the social capital theory. Is low social capital associated with shrinkage and economic decline? It is. One of the indicators of social capital is homeownership. The book observes:

    In other words, relative to tracts that shrank and did not decline, tracts that experienced coupled shrinkage and decline witnessed a substantial drop in homeownership rates that cannot be explained by chance alone. If homeownership is a useful indicator of social capital, then his result implies that social capital may have decreased in these shrinking-declining tracts as well. Thus, tracts that are able to keep their homeownership rates steady during population shrinkage may be more resistant to decline via social capital.

    The second half of the book looks more at potential strategies for countering or adapting to change. These include various pro-growth policies, “rightsizing”, regional government, community development initiatives, etc. While some of these have had success in isolated cases, none of them have had systemic, replicable success. This makes for a bit of depressing reading. As one person told me about this aspect of the book, “Shrinking cities theory is at a dead end.”

    Because of its academic nature, and high price tag, this book is not for everyone. But policy developers in shrinking areas should certainly ground themselves in this summary of shrinking cities research and academic theories found in it.

    Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and an economic development columnist for Governing magazine. He focuses on ways to help America’s cities thrive in an ever more complex, competitive, globalized, and diverse twenty-first century. During Renn’s 15-year career in management and technology consulting, he was a partner at Accenture and held several technology strategy roles and directed multimillion-dollar global technology implementations. He has contributed to The Guardian, Forbes.com, and numerous other publications. Renn holds a B.S. from Indiana University, where he coauthored an early social-networking platform in 1991.

    Photo of Brush Park, Detroit by Stephen Harlan, CC BY-SA 2.0

  • California: The Republic of Climate

    To some progressives, California’s huge endorsement for the losing side for president reflects our state’s moral superiority. Some even embrace the notion that California should secede so that we don’t have to associate with the “deplorables” who tilted less enlightened places to President-elect Donald Trump. One can imagine our political leaders even inviting President Barack Obama, who reportedly now plans to move to our state, to serve as the California Republic’s first chief executive.

    As a standalone country, California could accelerate its ongoing emergence as what could be called “the Republic of Climate.” This would be true in two ways. Dominated by climate concerns, California’s political leaders will produce policies that discourage blue-collar growth and keep energy and housing prices high. This is ideal for the state’s wealthier, mostly white, coastal ruling classes. Yet, at the same time, the California gentry can enjoy what, for the most part, remains a temperate climate. Due to our open borders policies, they can also enjoy an inexhaustible supply of cheap service workers.

    Of course, most Californians, particularly in the interior, will not do so well. They will continue to experience a climate of declining social mobility due to rising costs, and businesses, particularly those employing blue-collar and middle-income workers, will continue to flee to more hospitable, if less idyllic, climes.

    California in the Trump era

    Barring a rush to independence, Californians now must adapt to a new regime in Washington that does not owe anything to the state, much less its policy agenda. Under the new regime, our high tax rates and ever-intensifying regulatory regime will become even more distinct from national norms.

    President Obama saw California’s regulatory program, particularly its obsession with climate change, as a role model leading the rest of the nation — and even the world. Trump’s victory turns this amicable situation on its head. California now must compete with other states, which can only salivate at the growing gap in costs.

    At the same time, foreign competitors, such as the Chinese, courted by Gov. Jerry Brown and others to follow its climate agenda, will be more than happy to take energy-dependent business off our hands. They will make gestures to impress what Vladimir Lenin labeled “useful idiots” in our ruling circles, but will continue to add coal-fired plants to power their job-sapping export industries.

    Read the entire piece at The Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. He is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His newest book, The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, was published in April by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He lives in Orange County, CA.

    Photo: By User “Neon Tommy” (https://www.flickr.com/photos/neontommy/8117052872) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Shape of Things to Come

    After several years of traveling around the country in the presence of city planners, economic development officials, elected representatives, engineers, production home builders, professional consultants, and groups of concerned citizens I’ve come to my own personal unified theory of America’s land use future. The short version is that we’ve got the built environment that we have and the overwhelming majority of it isn’t ever going to change much. If you want to know what things will look like in thirty or forty years… look around. That’s pretty much it.

    There’s so much of it… tract homes on cul-de-sacs, suburban office parks, strip malls, big box stores, light industrial parks, self storage facilities, garden apartment complexes… even if society wanted to radically transform the landscape (which is absolutely not the case) it would be a sixty or seventy year endeavor. Personally, I won’t live long enough to see that shift. But business-as-usual isn’t an option either regardless of what most people might prefer. What will change is the way the existing landscape will be valued and inhabited.

    Communities are hitting a financial wall. Current tax revenue is entirely insufficient to cover the ongoing maintenance of municipal infrastructure – and by “infrastructure” I mean public services and staffing levels as well as the physical roads, pipes, and civic buildings. There simply isn’t enough productive private economic activity to support the underlaying public chassis that’s been built since World War II. So we’re in for a great deal of deferred maintenance, failed pension obligations, reductions in services, higher taxes (which will be called “user fees” and “code enforcement”) and ultimately default on public debt. That’s already baked in to the cake almost everywhere.

    There are only two options moving forward. We can build more productive stuff on the existing infrastructure, or we can reduce the amount of infrastructure to come in to balance with the available productive capacity. So we’re going to do both – not necessarily on a voluntary basis. And the results will be unevenly distributed.

    Some places will continue to be maintained pretty much as they are largely by skimming revenue from other locations. Other spots will decline, lose value, become politically and culturally disposable, and be allowed to crumble. Still other districts will intensify and gain value and significance through infill development. I say this with a fair amount of confidence because that’s been the historic pattern for a very long time.

    There are people who advocate for small scale incremental infill development that could double or triple the productive capacity of a place gradually over time. A one story building could become a two story building. A two story building could become a three story building. Small cottages could be built in back gardens. A vacant lot could be filled with a small productive structure with a business on the ground floor and an apartment or two upstairs. It could be intimate and charming like the Norman Rockwell Main Street towns of a previous era. But the current regulatory framework doesn’t permit such a process. Neither does the popular culture that sees such infill as a direct assault on the American Dream. The cost and complexity of navigating multiple opaque and unresponsive bureaucracies is generally greater than the ultimate value of such modest projects. So it’s simply not going to happen.

    Infill development needs to be large, complex, and expensive enough to overcome the administrative and cultural friction. A two hundred unit apartment complex with five stories of structured parking works just fine. It may be wildly out of character with the existing neighborhood. It may load up the area with additional traffic congestion. It may be far too expensive to meet the need for working class housing. It may concentrate ownership in to very few hands. It may be built in an otherwise diffuse suburban landscape where walking and transit are unviable. But it can be built while smaller things can’t. Shrug. Whatever.

    New subdivisions with comfortable attractive middle class homes sprout on the side of the freeway like mushrooms after a good rain. These are pleasant places to live. People like them. They’re profitable to build. Municipal officials embrace growth and development. This is how things are supposed to be.

    A few miles away is yesterday’s version of growth and progress. Property values have declined. Businesses have moved away. The schools have lost their appeal. Municipal revenues have crashed. People and money are disappearing. This isn’t an anomaly. It’s the natural consequence of things playing out to their logical conclusions. This is the shape of things to come.

    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.

    All photos by Johnny Sanphillippo

  • A Victory for Localism in Australia: Court Blocks Forced Amalgamation

    In a rare victory for grassroots activists, The New South Wales Supreme Court has blocked the forced local government amalgamation of northern suburban councils Ku-ring-gai and the Shire of Hornsby in Greater Sydney. The Ku-ring-gai Council had challenged the parliamentary order and lost at a lower court level , but as The Daily Telegraph put it “Ku-ring-gai Council has won its appeal against a forced merger with Hornsby Council this morning in a judgment that was highly critical of the State Government delegate and its process.” The Council was also awarded costs.

    This forced amalgamation is just one of a number of mergers ordered by the ruling Liberal-National Coalition government of Premier Gladys Berejiklian. This and other such orders have been challenged in court and, according to the Daily Telegraph: “The Berejiklian government’s remaining council merger plans have been thrown into upheaval after the NSW Supreme Court ruled the process used ahead of a proposed merger between Ku-ring-gai and Hornsby Councils did not accord with procedural fairness.”

    Statutory Duty, Disclosure, Public Participation and Procedural Fairness

    In particular, the court indicated concern about a failure of statutory duty, lack of public disclosure and insufficient opportunity for public participation.

    At issue was the recommendation of Delegate Garry West that the forced merger proceed (Delegate West was appointed by the government to make a finding on the government’s forced merger proposal). The Ku-rung-gai Council argued that Delegate West had relied on a merger analysis report by KPMG, a report that the government would not release in public.

    Writing in the opinion, Judge J. A. Basten said: “The Council was right to assert that the delegate could not properly carry out his function of examination without having access to that material…" and found that “that the financial advantages identified by KPMG for the government were a critical element in favour of the merger, but this analysis was not provided to the delegate or public.” Judge Basten concluded that Mr. West had "constructively failed" in his statutory duty of examining the government’s merger proposal, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

    In addition, Judge Basten pointed out that "Release of the material was also necessary for public participation in the public inquiry to be meaningful." According to the opinion: “The appellant was denied procedural fairness as the delegate chose to rely on the KPMG analysis, rather than conducting his own assessment of the merger, when the appellant was not in possession of the document in which the analysis was contained.”

    No Amalgamation Based on a Secret Report

    Government News reported Greens Local Government spokesman David Shoebridge as saying “Today the Court of Appeal has said the obvious, that it is blatantly unfair to forcibly amalgamate a local council on the basis of a secret report.” (In parliamentary systems, opposition office holders are designated as spokespersons or shadow ministers, replicating the portfolios of the government ministers, who are also legislative members). He added that the decision could “dismantle every single outstanding amalgamation proposal.” He called the decision “an embarrassing blow” for the government’s forced amalgamation program, which he characterized as “unraveling.”

    The Labor Party Opposition Leader Luke Foley expressed similar sentiments, saying “Thank God we have an independent judiciary.”

    Tony Recsei, president of Save Our Suburbs (SOS) NSW, which has opposed the forced mergers, noted that:  “Rational justification for wholesale forced council amalgamations was never provided by the Government.” He added: “The amalgamation “consultation” process was laughable in its duplicity. It was glaringly obvious to anyone who participated that the results had been predetermined.” He characterized the court decision as “… a rare win for the community against a dictatorial government and represents a complete trouncing of underhand bureaucratic manipulation.” Demonstrations have been held to oppose the forced mergers (Photo).


    Photograph courtesy of FOKE (Friends of Ku-ring-gai Environment)

    Still a Threat

    Deputy Premier John Barilaro had demanded two months ago that the Coalition government abandon its forced amalgamation program. His National Party (the Liberal Party’s coalition partner) had recently lost the Legislative Assembly seat of Orange that it had held for 69 years running, a consequence, at least in part of the government’s forced amalgamation program. The National Party has traditionally been strong in the “bush,” including smaller urban areas (such as Orange), outside the major metropolitan areas of Australia. The National Party usually been the coalition partner of the Liberal Party in government at the federal and state level.

    A compromise was reached  such that “country councils” (outside the Greater Sydney area and where the National Party is strong) will not be required to amalgamate. However, a month ago, the government expressed its intention to continue with the Sydney area amalgamations.

    In fact, the government could resurrect the Ku-ring-gai Hornsby forced merger proposal. However, Ku-ring-gai Mayor Jennifer Anderson told the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) that she was “heartened.” She added that “We have had to go to court to get the Government to listen to us and I am seeking a change of heart from the Premier on this issue as a matter of urgency." She cautioned that "If they continue with the merger process, they will be flying in the face of our community and the court."

    Forced Amalgamation: “Fit for the Dustbin?”

    This initiative is the third local government reorganization since 2000 in New South Wales. Like the previous programs, the justification has been anticipated cost savings. Councils were examined for their fiscal sustainability in “Fit for the Future” reviews.

    Greens spokesman Shoebridge questions the justification for amalgamation. In a Greens of Hornsby website article entitled “Fit for the Future, Fit for the Dustbin,” Shoebridge notes that “When amalgamations have been forced on locals in other states like Victoria and Queensland, rates (taxes) have gone up, services have stagnated and residents end up less connected to the councilors who represent them. In Queensland a number of councils have even begun the expensive process of de-amalgamation, with the Queensland Government bearing the cost of this process.” In that state, the Liberal National government won power promising de-amalgamation votes, yet allowed only four referendums out of the 19 councils seeking relief. All four voted to de-amalgamate.

    Repeating History

    If the Ku-ring-gai amalgamation story sounds familiar, it is. In 2000, the government of Quebec undertook a wholesale program of local government amalgamations. Public reaction was so sharp that the government was defeated at the next election, as the opposition Liberal Party promised de-amalgamation votes. Despite its promises, the Liberals, once elected, required de-amalgamation “yes” votes to equal 35 percent of eligible voters, a prohibitive barrier given the typically low turnouts in local government elections. In the end 32 governments voted to de-amalgamate. In the United States, proposals to force local government amalgamations have not received legislative approval in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois and Ohio.

    The Sydney area consultant savings report is also familiar. In 1997, the Ontario government announced a forced amalgamation of six local governments in the Toronto area. The “megacity” as it was called was, according to an accounting firm report commissioned by the government, to save $300 million annually, which was not achieved, according to University of Western Ontario local governance expert  Professor Andrew Sancton. Despite overwhelming referendum rejections in six of the cities, the government forced the amalgamation.

    Basic Democratic Values

    Ku-ring-gai Mayor Anderson also stressed basic democratic values, the ability of an electorate to control its government, noting that "This merger should not proceed because Ku-ring-gai ratepayers (taxpayers) will be robbed of the means to decide how and where our rates are spent and of any real say in how our local area is managed.

    These are powerful words. The fight for democracy has been waged for at least the 800 years since Magna Carta and progress has been hard won. Forced amalgamations are anti-democratic and a step backward. It would be one thing if the electorate of Ku-ring-gai had determined that it would be best to amalgamate with Hornsby. But there is a big difference between top-down forced amalgamations and amalgamations that arise from the people themselves. Voluntary amalgamations have a better chance of succeeding than those that are forced.

    However, forced amalgamations dilute the voice of voters, and without  their consent. Usually, as in New South Wales, it is argued that larger government units will be more efficient, exercising economies of scale. The reality is all too often that the economies of scale that are actually achieved are only for special interests, not for the people or their pocket books.

    Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the “Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey” and author of “Demographia World Urban Areas” and “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.” He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

    Photograph: Ku-rin-gai anti-forced amalgamation campaign banner, Photography courtesy of Save Our Suburbs (SOS) NSW.

  • Outsmarting Crime Together: CityCop CEO Nadim Curi

    In a new podcast, Sami J. Karam speaks to Nadim Curi, CEO of the anti-crime app CityCop.

    Powered by its successful rollout in Latin America started in 2014 and further boosted by funding from startup accelerator techstars, CityCop has staked a claim to turn its “social platform for community watch” into the global leader in crime reporting and public safety.

    Curi explains:

    What Waze has done for traffic globally, we have done the same for public safety.

    What we are doing at CityCop is to make all of this information [about crime incidents] that today is private or is lost, to make it public. The criminals have always taken advantage of this lack of information. They have always the same modus operandi, in the same areas, at the same hours, against the same unaware people. CityCop is making all of this information public for the people to be much better informed of what is happening.

    FullSizeRender

    Starting in Austin, CityCop plans to expand to San Francisco, Chicago, New York and other cities. Curi’s ultimate ambition is to turn CityCop into a global “Waze against crime”.

    TO HEAR THE PODCAST, CLICK HERE OR ON THE TIMELINE BELOW:

  • Portland Housing Stupidity Grows

    Here’s an incredibly stupid idea to deal with Portland’s housing affordability problems: Multnomah County proposes to build tiny houses in people’s backyard. The people will get to keep the houses on the condition that they allow homeless people to live in them for five years.

    That’s supposed to be an incentive. For five years, you have to share your yard with a homeless person who may be suffering from a variety of problems, after which you get to keep whatever is left of the tiny home. But as one Portland neighborhood activist points out, what homeless people need is healthcare and social work, not to be warehoused in someone else’s backyard.

    I suspect homeowners are going to be wary of this offer because they will have little control who lives in their yard. Not only would the homeowners be required to maintain the tiny houses while the homeless person or people lived in them, Portland is making it increasing difficult for landlords to evict unwanted tenants.

    Update: Despite my pessimism, 580 homeowners have “inquired about hosting a homeless family in their backyards.” Initially, the county will build four, and if it can raise the funds, it will build as many as 300 more.

    More important, this plan is stupidly expensive. The county estimates that each 220-square-foot tiny house will cost $75,000. That’s $341 per square foot! There are an estimated 3,800 homeless people in Portland, so housing them all this way would cost $285 million. That assumes one person per tiny house; some may house two, but housing people in tiny homes will also attract more homeless people into the area.

    There’s also a not-so-hidden agenda here: “creating a denser, more affordable city.” At least, that’s the plan. The reality is density doesn’t make cities more affordable. In fact, the densest cities tend to be least affordable.

    In Portland, people who build tiny houses in their yards face a huge increase in property taxes. That’s because, under Oregon law, their existing home is taxed at its 1996 value, plus a small annual increase for inflation, while new construction is taxed at today’s value. Thus, a new, 220-square-foot tiny house may be taxed more than the 2,000-square-foot house it shares a lot with.

    Multnomah County says it will “try” to waive property taxes for people willing to accept tiny houses for homeless people in their yards, at least for the five years that homeless people live in them. How generous! Mercy, thy name is Multnomah County! Except really, it’s name is Stupid.

    Randal O’Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute specializing in land use and transportation policy. He has written several books demonstrating the futility of government planning. Prior to working for Cato, he taught environmental economics at Yale, UC Berkeley, and Utah State University.

    Photo: DubbaG [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Quest for Food Freedom

    Mariza Ruelas currently faces up to two years in jail in California for the crime of selling ceviche through a Facebook food group. Welcome to the mad world of American food regulation. In Biting the Hands That Feed Us, Baylen Linnekin looks closely at a system that can take pride in a historically safe food supply but that also imposes too many rules that defy common sense.

    Linnekin traces the system’s origins to The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s exposé of the appalling conditions in Chicago’s slaughterhouses, and to the New Deal’s hyper-regulation of agriculture. Such intrusiveness culminated in the case of Wickard v. Filburn, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Americans don’t even have the right to consume food they grow themselves, on their own land. Food regulation has marched steadily onward ever since.

    While working conditions and food safety improved dramatically thanks to these efforts, the move to regulate all food products according to uniform standards also produced a system with a host of strange rules—such as requiring organic skim milk that is free of additives to be labeled “Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product–Natural Milk Vitamins Removed.” Bans on urban agriculture have outlawed backyard chicken coops and front-yard gardens. Seemingly random changes in safety requirements force the shutdowns of businesses with no incidents of contamination or sickened customers. In some jurisdictions, it’s illegal to slice off a sample of cheese or cut the stalk off of lettuce at farmer’s markets. Microbreweries were threatened with having to register as pet-food manufacturers if they wanted to donate their spent grains for animal feed (a long-standard practice even for big breweries). In public parks, foraging of any sort—such as picking wild berries—is often banned.

    Mariza Ruelas made her ceviche at home, which is why she’s in trouble with the law: food-safety mandates have made home production of food for sale, even in small quantities, illegal. You might be in trouble, too, if, say, you contribute a pan of brownies to the bake sale at your child’s school. That’s probably illegal.

    States and localities are starting to push back at this regulatory insanity. Some states have instituted “cottage-food laws” allowing home preparation of small amounts of food for sale in limited venues, such as at farmer’s markets. Wyoming passed a comprehensive Food Freedom Act reducing regulation of food sales, so long as no middleman is involved. Some cities have legalized the raising of chickens or urban beekeeping. But there’s a long way to go.

    For Linnekin, a food-law professor, the goal is to make traditional and “sustainable” agricultural practices legal. Much of what he argues for makes good sense, but there’s another side to the issue. Because so many urban hipsters want to produce (or at least consume) artisanal food products, food law, along with zoning, often serves as their point of entry into the vast regulatory web that smothers so many American businesses. This awareness doesn’t necessarily turn urban epicures into liberty-minded activists, though. Many small-scale organic-food producers and their customers simply want to make their preferred practices legal and easier to practice—while saddling major corporate producers of food with added regulations. In general, food activists aren’t much interested in establishing better rules and then letting the market determine outcomes. Instead, they seek specific outcomes—more composting, for example—and deem any rule that fails to support such goals to be a bad one.

    Linnekin seems somewhat sympathetic to this small-is-better tendency. He wants to eliminate “ag-gag” laws that protect farmers from harassment by activists. He thinks that many food products carry antiquated grading standards and wants to see them changed. But many of these standards have solid rationales. Linnekin objects, for example, to the USDA’s “prime” grade for beef being determined by the level of fat marbling. But fat is the driver of taste, and many small producers of leaner, grass-fed beef sell products that often don’t taste very good. They don’t deserve a “prime” grading.

    While regulations hostile to industrial, mass-scale agriculture—which feeds a global population of 7 billion people—should be avoided, rationalizing archaic and protectionist regulations makes sense. So does exempting small-scale producers from many regulations and embracing a more general “food-freedom” philosophy. As Biting the Hands That Feed Us makes clear, our current food-regulatory approach is too often a theater of the absurd.

    This post original appeared in City Journal on March 15, 2017.

    Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and an economic development columnist for Governing magazine. He focuses on ways to help America’s cities thrive in an ever more complex, competitive, globalized, and diverse twenty-first century. During Renn’s 15-year career in management and technology consulting, he was a partner at Accenture and held several technology strategy roles and directed multimillion-dollar global technology implementations. He has contributed to The Guardian, Forbes.com, and numerous other publications. Renn holds a B.S. from Indiana University, where he coauthored an early social-networking platform in 1991.

  • Flight from Urban Cores Accelerates: 2016 Census Metropolitan Area Estimates

    The flight from the nation’s major metropolitan area core counties increased 60 percent between 2015 and 2016, according to just-released estimates from the US Census Bureau (Note). A total of 321,000 more residents left the core counties than moved in, up from 199,000 in 2015. This is ten times the decade’s smallest domestic migration loss of 32,000 for the same counties which occurred in 2012.

    Suburban counties continued to attract net domestic migrants, at a somewhat higher rate than in recent years and much higher than in the early part of the decade. The suburban counties gained 235,000 domestic migrants in 2016, compared to 224,000 in 2014 and more than double the low point of 113,000 in 2011 (Figure 1).

    The 60 percent rise in net domestic migration out of the core counties converts to a 0.4 percent annual loss relative to last year’s population. This loss is more than one-half the annual growth rate of only 0.7 percent. This is a substantial deterioration from the net domestic migration loss in 2012 of 0. 04 percent, which was only 1/25th of the 1.1 percent growth rate for the core counties.

    At the same time, the suburbs had their best performance of the decade. Their minimum advantage was in 2012, when the suburbs attracted 150,000 new domestic migrations relative to the core counties (118,000 compared to negative 32,000). The 2016 advantage was 556,000 (235,000 compared to negati ve 321,000).

    The suburbs outperformed core county domestic migration in 40 of the 50 major metropolitan cases. The ten exceptions include three with strong urban cores (San Francisco, Boston and Washington) and seven with very small urban cores, indicating that much of the central county population is post-war suburban (see: Growth Concentrated in Most Suburbanized Core Cities).

    Overall Domestic Migration

    The deterioration in core county domestic migration led to overall negative domestic migration for the major metropolitan areas in 2016, the first time this has happened this decade. Overall, the 53 major metropolitan areas had a net domestic migration loss of 64,000, down from 17,000 in 2015 and 98,000 in 2012. Since the 2010 census, the major metropolitan areas have gained 222,000 net domestic migrants. This represents an overall net domestic migration rate of 0.13 percent relative to their 2010 population.

    The big, and perhaps surprising, news here is that the “second tier” of metropolitan areas   (between 500,000 and 1 million population) have begun to perform better than their larger counterparts, a result reminiscent of the last decade. These 53 metropolitan areas gained 97,000 net domestic migrants, topping the major metropolitan areas for the third year in a row (Figure 2). Since the 2010 census, second tier metropolitan areas have gained 334,000 domestic migrants. This is 0.92 percent of the 2010 census population, seven times the major metropolitan area figure of 0.13 percent.

    Where People Are Moving To and Away From

    As has become customary, the greatest rates of domestic migration among the major metropolitan areas are overwhelmingly in the South. Austin is again number one, gaining nearly 1.7 percent from domestic migration. Austin is followed by Tampa St. Petersburg, Raleigh and Jacksonville. Las Vegas is the only non-southern major metropolitan area among the top five in net domestic migration. The second five includes four southern metropolitan areas, Charlotte, Orlando and Nashville, ranking sixth through eighth and San Antonio ranking tenth. Phoenix placed ninth.

    The bottom 10 are a relatively familiar group of metropolitan areas, with San Jose placing last and being alone in having more than one percent (1.1 percent) of its population move away between 2015 and 2016. San Jose was also last in net domestic migration in the decade of the 2000s, if hurricane ravaged New Orleans is excluded. The bottom five also includes New York, Chicago, Hartford and Milwaukee. Los Angeles had the sixth worst net domestic migration, followed by Rochester, Virginia Beach-Norfolk, Washington and Buffalo (Figure 3).

    The net domestic migration leaders among the large metropolitan areas posted even stronger gains than Austin. All of the top five had greater net domestic migration rates, and all are in Florida. Leader Cape Coral added more than 2.5 percent to its population from domestic migration. Nearby Sarasota was near 2.5 percent in Daytona Beach was also over two percent. Melbourne and Lakeland were approximately 1.9 percent. The second five was led by Charleston, South Carolina, followed by Boise, Fayetteville AR-MO, Spokane and Provo, UT.

    The largest domestic migration loss was in Honolulu, at 1.1 percent and slightly worse than San Jose (minus 1.08 percent compared to 1.06 percent in San Jose). Two of New York’s commuter rail exurbs ranked second and fourth worst, Bridgeport-Stamford and New Haven, while Syracuse ranked third. El Paso had the fifth worst net domestic migration. The second five worst in net domestic migration were Springfield, Massachusetts, Youngstown, Bakersfield, Oxnard and McAllen, Texas (Figure 4).

    Population Rankings and Trends

    Again, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston were the largest. They were followed by Washington (which passed Philadelphia last year), Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta and Boston. There was no change in the rankings of the top 22 major metropolitan areas. Portland dropped two notches, from 23rd to 25th largest, as both Orlando and San Antonio jumped ahead. Austin jumped 2 positions, passing both Cleveland and Columbus, becoming the 31st largest metropolitan area. Finally, Raleigh passed Louisville to become the 43rd largest metropolitan area. The table at the end of the article includes information on the 106 largest metropolitan areas.

    The population growth rates for both the major and second tier  metropolitan area leaders and trailers looks similar to the domestic migration rankings (Figures 5 and 6). Austin leads the majors and Cape Coral leads the large metropolitan areas. There are greater differences in the bottom ten, where some of the largest domestic migration losers (such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) attract strong international migration have been replaced by others that attract fewer, and tend to have lower population growth rates as a result.

    More Major Metropolitan Areas?

    Meanwhile, some metropolitan areas should soon pass the 1,000,000 mark. Honolulu has been at the top of the list for some time. If the annual growth rates from 2010 to 2013, 2014 or 2015 had been sustained, Honolulu would have reached a million by 2016. But, Honolulu’ growth rate has slowed substantially in each of the last years since 2012, culminating in a modest population loss in 2016, leaving Honolulu 7,000 short of a million. Current growth rates suggest that Tulsa and Fresno could get to a million before Honolulu.

    Reason For Concern

    While the domestic migration data has long since disproven any thesis of a general movement of people from the suburbs to the urban core, the escalation in core county domestic migration losses is cause for concern.

    The urban cores are far nicer places than they were before. But their recovery has been all too concentrated ; meanwhile the rings around trendy downtown residential areas continue, as before the micro-core renaissance, to suffer serious poverty levels and other social ills more intensely than elsewhere. We have been down a similar road before, and have never recovered from the serious costs.

    Note: Major metropolitan areas have more than 1,000,000 population. The domestic migration comparison between core and suburban counties is limited to 50 of the 53 metropolitan areas, because four have only one county (Las Vegas, San Diego and Tucson). The lowest geographical level at which domestic migration data is available is counties. The core counties are often so large that they include large suburban components. This makes for a more crude comparison than would be the case if more precise data were available.

    Metropolitan Areas Over 500,000:  Population Estimates: 2016
    Population (Millions) 2015-2016
    Rank Metropolitan Area 2010 2015 2016 Population Change Net Domestic Migration Rank: Domestic Migration
    1 New York, NY-NJ-PA     19.566    20.118    20.154 0.18% -0.99% 103
    2 Los Angeles, CA     12.829    13.269    13.310 0.31% -0.66% 95
    3 Chicago, IL-IN-WI       9.462      9.533      9.513 -0.21% -0.94% 101
    4 Dallas-Fort Worth, TX       6.426      7.090      7.233 2.02% 0.85% 25
    5 Houston, TX       5.920      6.647      6.772 1.88% 0.42% 38
    6 Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV       5.636      6.078      6.132 0.88% -0.51% 91
    7 Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD       5.966      6.062      6.071 0.14% -0.43% 84
    8 Miami, FL       5.566      6.002      6.066 1.08% -0.28% 72
    9 Atlanta, GA       5.287      5.699      5.790 1.59% 0.64% 30
    10 Boston, MA-NH       4.553      4.767      4.794 0.58% -0.35% 76
    11 San Francisco, CA       4.336      4.642      4.679 0.80% -0.26% 69
    12 Phoenix, AZ       4.193      4.568      4.662 2.05% 1.13% 20
    13 Riverside-San Bernardino, CA       4.225      4.475      4.528 1.17% 0.34% 43
    14 Detroit,  MI       4.296      4.298      4.298 0.00% -0.47% 86
    15 Seattle, WA       3.440      3.727      3.799 1.93% 0.83% 26
    16 Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI       3.349      3.518      3.551 0.93% 0.01% 57
    17 San Diego, CA       3.095      3.290      3.318 0.84% -0.25% 68
    18 Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL       2.784      2.971      3.032 2.06% 1.57% 7
    19 Denver, CO       2.544      2.809      2.853 1.58% 0.72% 28
    20 St. Louis,, MO-IL       2.788      2.808      2.807 -0.05% -0.41% 83
    21 Baltimore, MD       2.711      2.794      2.799 0.18% -0.40% 81
    22 Charlotte, NC-SC       2.217      2.425      2.474 2.05% 1.31% 13
    23 Orlando, FL       2.134        2.38      2.441 2.48% 1.24% 15
    24 San Antonio, TX       2.143        2.38      2.430 2.01% 1.04% 21
    25 Portland, OR-WA       2.226      2.385      2.425 1.68% 1.01% 22
    26 Pittsburgh, PA       2.356      2.351      2.342 -0.38% -0.33% 73
    27 Sacramento, CA       2.149      2.268      2.296 1.27% 0.54% 34
    28 Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN       2.115      2.155      2.165 0.45% -0.06% 61
    29 Las Vegas, NV       1.951      2.109      2.156 2.20% 1.31% 12
    30 Kansas City, MO-KS       2.009      2.084      2.105 0.96% 0.32% 44
    31 Austin, TX       1.716      1.998      2.056 2.92% 1.67% 6
    32 Cleveland, OH       2.077      2.060      2.056 -0.21% -0.49% 89
    33 Columbus, OH       1.902      2.020      2.042 1.06% 0.22% 48
    34 Indianapolis. IN       1.888      1.987      2.004 0.89% 0.13% 51
    35 San Jose, CA       1.837      1.969      1.979 0.52% -1.06% 105
    36 Nashville, TN       1.671      1.829      1.865 1.99% 1.14% 19
    37 Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC       1.677      1.723      1.727 0.20% -0.55% 92
    38 Providence, RI-MA       1.601      1.613      1.615 0.13% -0.24% 66
    39 Milwaukee,WI       1.556      1.574      1.572 -0.12% -0.72% 98
    40 Jacksonville, FL       1.346      1.448      1.478 2.09% 1.36% 11
    41 Oklahoma City, OK       1.253      1.357      1.373 1.20% 0.40% 39
    42 Memphis, TN-MS-AR       1.325      1.342      1.343 0.07% -0.48% 88
    43 Raleigh, NC       1.130      1.271      1.303 2.48% 1.46% 10
    44 Louisville, KY-IN       1.236      1.278      1.283 0.46% -0.01% 58
    45 Richmond, VA       1.208      1.270      1.282 0.89% 0.26% 46
    46 New Orleans. LA       1.190      1.262      1.269 0.54% -0.07% 62
    47 Hartford, CT       1.212      1.210      1.207 -0.26% -0.80% 100
    48 Salt Lake City, UT       1.088      1.168      1.186 1.60% 0.32% 45
    49 Birmingham, AL       1.128      1.145      1.147 0.22% -0.05% 60
    50 Buffalo, NY       1.136      1.135      1.133 -0.24% -0.51% 90
    51 Rochester, NY       1.080      1.081      1.079 -0.22% -0.64% 94
    52 Grand Rapids, MI       0.989      1.038      1.047 0.84% 0.11% 53
    53 Tucson, AZ       0.980      1.008      1.016 0.79% 0.25% 47
    54 Honolulu, HI       0.953      0.993      0.993 -0.06% -1.08% 106
    55 Tulsa, OK       0.938      0.980      0.987 0.69% 0.17% 50
    56 Fresno, CA       0.930      0.972      0.980 0.80% -0.27% 71
    57 Bridgeport-Stamford, CT       0.917      0.945      0.944 -0.05% -1.04% 104
    58 Worcester, MA-CT       0.917      0.934      0.936 0.17% -0.39% 79
    59 Omaha, NE-IA       0.865      0.914      0.924 1.08% 0.12% 52
    60 Albuquerque, NM       0.887      0.905      0.910 0.52% 0.11% 54
    61 Greenville, SC       0.824      0.873      0.885 1.34% 0.88% 24
    62 Bakersfield, CA       0.840      0.879      0.885 0.60% -0.48% 87
    63 Albany, NY       0.871      0.881      0.882 0.12% -0.25% 67
    64 Knoxville, TN       0.838      0.861      0.869 0.86% 0.73% 27
    65 New Haven CT       0.862      0.859      0.857 -0.26% -0.79% 99
    66 McAllen, TX       0.775      0.839      0.850 1.25% -0.41% 82
    67 Oxnard, CA       0.823      0.848      0.850 0.24% -0.44% 85
    68 El Paso, TX       0.804      0.837      0.842 0.57% -0.69% 97
    69 Allentown, PA-NJ       0.821      0.833      0.836 0.31% -0.08% 63
    70 Baton Rouge, LA       0.803      0.830      0.835 0.65% 0.03% 56
    71 Columbia, SC       0.767      0.810      0.817 0.95% 0.48% 36
    72 Dayton, OH       0.799      0.800      0.801 0.11% -0.17% 65
    73 Sarasota, FL       0.702      0.768      0.788 2.66% 2.46% 2
    74 Charleston, SC       0.665      0.745      0.761 2.22% 1.54% 8
    75 Greensboro, NC       0.724      0.752      0.756 0.58% 0.17% 49
    76 Little Rock, AR       0.700      0.732      0.735 0.42% -0.10% 64
    77 Stockton, CA       0.685      0.723      0.734 1.41% 0.57% 32
    78 Cape Coral, FL       0.619      0.700      0.722 3.15% 2.54% 1
    79 Colorado Springs, CO       0.646      0.698      0.712 2.11% 1.16% 18
    80 Akron, OH       0.703      0.703      0.702 -0.16% -0.35% 75
    81 Boise, ID       0.617      0.676      0.691 2.32% 1.47% 9
    82 Lakeland, FL       0.602      0.649      0.666 2.58% 1.87% 5
    83 Winston-Salem, NC       0.641      0.658      0.662 0.64% 0.45% 37
    84 Syracuse, NY       0.663      0.660      0.657 -0.53% -0.99% 102
    85 Ogden, UT       0.597      0.642      0.654 1.88% 0.69% 29
    86 Madison, WI       0.605      0.641      0.649 1.30% 0.49% 35
    87 Wichita, KS       0.631      0.643      0.645 0.26% -0.35% 74
    88 Daytona Beach, FL       0.590      0.623      0.638 2.29% 2.24% 3
    89 Des Moines, IA       0.570      0.623      0.635 1.95% 0.95% 23
    90 Springfield, MA       0.622      0.630      0.630 0.02% -0.67% 96
    91 Toledo, OH       0.610      0.606      0.605 -0.06% -0.37% 77
    92 Provo, UT       0.527      0.585      0.603 3.07% 1.18% 17
    93 Augusta, GA-SC       0.565      0.590      0.595 0.83% 0.35% 42
    94 Jackson, MS       0.568      0.579      0.579 0.10% -0.37% 78
    95 Melbourne, FL       0.543      0.568      0.579 1.97% 1.91% 4
    96 Harrisburg, PA       0.549      0.565      0.568 0.52% -0.03% 59
    97 Durham, NC       0.507      0.551      0.560 1.51% 0.55% 33
    98 Spokane, WA       0.528      0.547      0.557 1.69% 1.23% 16
    99 Scranton, PA       0.564      0.558      0.555 -0.45% -0.40% 80
    100 Chattanooga, TN-GA       0.528      0.547      0.552 0.85% 0.64% 31
    101 Youngstown, OH-PA       0.566      0.549      0.545 -0.85% -0.59% 93
    102 Modesto, CA       0.514      0.535      0.542 1.15% 0.38% 40
    103 Lancaster, PA       0.519      0.536      0.539 0.40% -0.26% 70
    104 Portland, ME       0.514      0.527      0.530 0.54% 0.37% 41
    105 Fayetteville, AR-MO       0.463      0.513      0.525 2.26% 1.28% 14
    106 Santa Rosa, CA       0.484      0.501      0.503 0.32% 0.06% 55
    From: US Census Bureau Data

    Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

    Photo: Coral Gables Florida (MSA), largest domestic migration and population gain of any metropolitan area over 500,000 population, 2015-2016 (by author)

  • Ten Things You Need to Know About Indianapolis City Culture

    What makes one city different from another? Some of it is the geography, the economy, or the buildings. But a big chunk of it is culture.

    Every city has its own culture. A journalist recently interviewed me about Indianapolis and asked about some of the things that make that city’s culture distinct. I’m reposting ten of my observations here. Keep in mind that many of these points are relative, not absolute. They are comparisons versus what I see in other cities.

    1. Indianapolis has a very open social structure. Many cities have very insular cultures that are difficult to penetrate. The Midwest river cities like Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis are like this. If you weren’t born there, in a sense you’re always something of an outsider. I’ve also heard reports of similar things about Cleveland, where people who come there have trouble making new friends and connections. The stereotype of some Southern cities is that who your daddy was, etc. matters a lot.

    In Indy, outsiders can move to the city and rapidly make friends and contacts, and to get integrated into civic networks. Columbus, Ohio is similar I’m told. I speculate that these cities have a more open orientation because they are state capitals. They frequently have new players circulating in and out, and this opens up the social networks considerably.

    A newcomer is likely to have a much better time of it in Indianapolis than most other Midwest cities.

    2. The social life of Indianapolis happens in back yards. This was an observation made some time ago by local cultural commentator David Hoppe. It’s dead on. In a city like New York or Chicago, there’s a palpable sense of bustling street life. This is largely absent in Indianapolis. If you operate on the assumption that this is the One True Way cities should function, Indy looks bad. But in reality the history and even built environment of Indy simply created different forms of social life. Different doesn’t mean worse.

    People in NYC have tiny apartments, so of course they want to be out and meet people out. People in Indy mostly have single family homes, and so people can gather inside and in back yards. This produces things like Sunday night dinners and porch parties. In my experience, this produces many more useful “collisions” than the merely physical ones you’re likely to have on the street in Chicago.

    3. A bimodal distribution of quality. Indianapolis has a “barbell” shaped quality curve. There’s a lot of stuff that’s pretty bad, but some things that are truly excellent. So, for example, the design of the average street in Indianapolis is terrible, but Monument Circle is one of the world’s great urban spaces. This contrasts with say Columbus, Ohio, where the vast majority of things are solid but relatively few stand out as terrible or exceptional. Interestingly, Nassim Taleb recommends barbell strategies. This may be one reason why Indy has the best small city tech scene in the Midwest.

    4. An excessive preference for the pragmatic. This is a common Midwest trait. Again, I’m writing a future magazine column about this and its downsides. But for now note that the Midwest tends to actively discourage ambitious undertakings and the pursuit of excellence. This can produce a stifling environment for people who want to dream big and care about doing things right. Indy is certainly far better than the rest of Indiana on this, but it’s still present.

    Looking at Indy’s barbell quality distribution, it’s clear the community gives itself permission to do A+ level work in certain areas: sports hosting, Monument Circle, etc. But I’ve yet to crack the code on what the characteristics of these are that made them acceptable while so many others were not.

    5. A weak sense of neighborhood identity. Cities like Chicago and Cincinnati are deeply steeped in a sense of neighborhood. They have strongly delineated, long-standing neighborhood areas people strongly feel themselves to be part of. Like Detroit, Indy has always been more about what side of town you live on than what neighborhood you live in. There were some exceptions to this, but the norm has been a weak sense of neighborhood identity. Unigov, where the city took in a lot of suburban and rural areas in a city-county merger, doubtlessly contributed to this, but I suspect it far predates that.

    One reason some friends and I started the Naplab Indianapolis Neighborhood Map project was to start strengthening a sense of neighborhood identity.

    6. Low cultural differentiation vs. the state. People who live in Indianapolis are Hoosiers and think of themselves that way. There’s historically been little sense of urban identity apart from the state. Chicago is like a different planet from Illinois. People in Chicago think of themselves as Chicagoans first, and Illinoisans secondarily if at all. By contrast, in Indy people are Hoosiers first, residents of the city second. It’s telling that there isn’t even a commonly used word to refer to residents of Indianapolis. Indianapolitans anyone?

    Also, the city is mostly a draw from the rest of the state, so it has a very Hoosier feel. In Chicago, there’s a Midwest feel because it draws from a regional catchment area. In Dallas, you meet people from everywhere.

    This is one the urban progressives would probably like to dispute, but they are a relatively small tribe in the city.

    7. Low institutional differentiation vs. the state. As the only big city in the state, the city’s major institutions are frequently pressed into double duty as statewide ones. There’s an Indiana Historical Society but no Indianapolis Historical Society. (Is Indianapolis the biggest city in the country without its own historical society?) The major state economic development groups like TechPoint are basically Indianapolis organizations that serve a statewide audience.

    People in the rest of the state people feel the state and major institutions give too much focus to Indy. But again, in many cases these are de facto Indianapolis institutions doing double duty for the state. In many (most?) states there would be separate organizations for the major urban region and for the state. In Indiana, that’s not the case. (I’m not familiar with how others states with one major city like Georgia and Minnesota are set up. Are they similar?)

    8. A strong civic but weak political culture. Indianapolis is known for having three top notch mayors in a row: Richard Lugar, Bill Hudnut, and Stephen Goldsmith. But in general mayoral leadership and city government have not been the drivers of change. I don’t know how Lugar operated as I was not around. Goldsmith seemed to have a strong mayoral agenda (e.g., outsourcing). But others relied more on a broader civic grouping of people – business, foundations, etc. to get things done.

    I suspect most cities would claim their civic sector is strong. Chicago likes to boast of its corporate involvement, for example. But it’s also clear that Chicago likes to get things done through a powerful mayor in City Hall. In Chicago, if the mayor says Yes to you, you are probably golden. In Indy, however, that’s not the case.

    It’s hard to describe how this works because frankly it’s very opaque. Civic initiatives are largely cooked up in the back room behind the scenes. There seems to be a big focus on consensus. Disputes are generally not aired in public. And there’s a very “go along to get along” civic ethic.

    This has had a lot of benefits. First, while it generally takes longer for Indy to decide to do something than other cities, once the decision is made to go forward, it almost always happens. You don’t see things like Louisville arguing for 40 years over whether and where to build a bridge (which only got built because Mitch Daniels stepped in). You don’t see repeated failures to pass a light rail program, like in Kansas City. When Indy decides to do something, it has a very high success rate. (A critic might say some of these things should have failed and that success at doing something you never should have done in the first place is a Pyrrhic victory).

    Secondly, there is long term continuity in civic initiatives. Rarely do things die when mayors change. The sports hosting strategy has gone back over 30 years, for example. While the current mayor didn’t strongly support the transit initiative developed under his predecessor of a different party, he didn’t stand in its way either. Contrast with how a new mayor came into Cincinnati and tried to pull the plug on a streetcar project. Or at the state level Chris Christie in New Jersey taking office and cancelling a rail tunnel project.

    The downside is a very enfeebled and low capacity city bureaucracy. Also, some changes need to come from the political sector in order to have democratic legitimacy. This makes the Indianapolis system bad at solving certain kinds of civic challenges. It should be no surprise that the mayor-driven (i.e., politically driven) system of suburban Carmel, Indiana was better able to redesign infrastructure, for example.

    Another downside is that it’s an extremely difficult environment for a civic entrepreneur to try to get things done. That’s where cultural fit comes in. If you don’t know how to navigate an opaque civic structure, accumulate political capital in that environment, etc. then you are going to fail to accomplish anything. This tends to reward insiders vs. outsiders. Though because of point #1, outsiders can become insiders fairly easily in Indianapolis, if they know how to play the game. Due to the nature of the civic structure, playing the game is likely to involve significant dilution of their ideas and compromises many people might find unpalatable.

    9. A strong preference for local hires. Indianapolis might be the biggest city in the country that’s basically never hired a global starchitect to design a major civic structure. Now there are many negative things one might say about the starchitect trend, but this is still revealing of the local culture. There’s a strong preference to hire locally in most places, but it’s very high in Indianapolis and often very clearly trumps quality. In fact, an out of towner with high flying ideas is exactly the kind of person who is going to be resented by a significant faction of the local power structure, and probably not be long for this world.

    10. You need to a guide to find the good stuff. Similar to point #2, you’re not just going to stumble into some famous place randomly, like you can in many cities. It’s a city where you need a guide to point you at the good stuff. For example, PRINTtEXT at 52nd and College is one of the best magazine stores in the entire world. I’m not exaggerating. But you’d never find it unless you were looking for it. There are all sorts of great things and great people in Indy, but they take time to find and get to know. In some cities the greatness is on the surface. In Indy, it’s in layers you need to dig up over time.

    Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and an economic development columnist for Governing magazine. He focuses on ways to help America’s cities thrive in an ever more complex, competitive, globalized, and diverse twenty-first century. During Renn’s 15-year career in management and technology consulting, he was a partner at Accenture and held several technology strategy roles and directed multimillion-dollar global technology implementations. He has contributed to The Guardian, Forbes.com, and numerous other publications. Renn holds a B.S. from Indiana University, where he coauthored an early social-networking platform in 1991.

    Top photo: Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 4.0

    Second photo: Monument Circle. Photo Credit: alexeatswhales, CC BY 2.0

    Fourth photo: Indianapolis hosting the Super Bowl. Image via Shutterstock.

    Fifth photo: Image via PRINTtEXT Instagram

  • Suburban and Urban Housing Cost Relationships

    Perhaps this is old hat to you, but this came across as a bit of an epiphany to me earlier today.

    I was listening to the local public radio station this morning and there was a segment about the Chicago regional housing market that was fairly interesting.  Real estate and personal finance expert Ilyce Glink talked about home buying in the Chicago regional market.  Like many other housing markets nationwide, Chicago took an incredible hit in 2008-09 via the Great Recession, and regionally, home prices have been slow to rise from the depths of the early parts of the 2010s.  There’s some greater optimism that prices might be up throughout the area, even as the potential for higher mortgage rates increases, too. 

    In describing the Chicago regional housing market, Glink described many things in our recent housing history that are familiar to a lot of people in metro Chicago, and in other metros as well — depressed prices, numerous foreclosures, and a razor-thin inventory.  But she also alluded to the pre-Great Recession pattern that defined the region’s housing market — the continued movement outward of new home construction at the edges of the region — and how that essentially stopped around 2009 and hasn’t resumed since. 

    That got me thinking.  YIMBYs, the “yes-in-my-backyard” group that’s been pushing for relaxed housing regulation so that more housing units are built in cities to address affordable housing, have been effective in using the obscene housing prices and rents of cities to justify new city housing construction, despite my repeated objections.  My contention has usually been that prices rose so steeply in the hottest city neighborhoods because the demand was so high.  There was a newfound preference for city living, especially among young professionals.  However, there simply wasn’t enough of Lincoln Park or Wicker Park for everyone that wanted in.  Furthermore, there are other neighborhoods, like South Shore, that have the same positive qualities (lakefront location, easy public transit, close to the Loop) that should make it appealing to those wanting to live in the city, but it was being bypassed.  My argument was that such neighborhoods might actually welcome investment.  The combination of these factors, I believed, led to the price and rent spikes in the hottest areas, and it could be resolved in part by city newcomers considering previously unconsidered parts of the city.

    Here’s the epiphany — what if the lack of housing supply, at the regional level, has less to do with the lack of housing production within cities, and more to do with the lack of housing production at the metro area’s margins?

    Just before and well after the last recession, I worked for a city at our region’s edge and it was a huge beneficiary of the pre-2007 housing free-for-all.  In fact, the city where I worked more than doubled its population between 1990 and 2010 on the strength of annexation and new housing construction, becoming one of the largest cities in Illinois.  In 2007, weaknesses in the housing market were becoming apparent; in 2008, the bottom fell out; in 2009 and 2010, people were wondering when the old normal would return, or if a new normal would set in.  I think it’s fair to say the latter, since nothing approaching the pre-2007 boom has returned to the metro edges. 

    This would require further study and analysis by someone far more qualified than me, but here’s what I’m thinking.  Maybe, in a strange way, early urban pioneering was dependent on housing growth at the margins.  It could be affordable for those who chose to live there because it was one part of a housing market conveyor belt: first step a trendy but safety-optional urban apartment, second step a safer and quieter apartment or condo, third step a house in the suburbs.  The lack of edge housing construction disrupts that model, especially if there’s a shift in housing preferences as well.

    In other words, what’s broken is not the ability of cities to accommodate new construction, but the edge-driven model we’ve had for the last 60-70 years. 

    Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t see a return to our suburban-sprawl frenzy as a way to reduce prices and rents in cities.  But maybe it pays to examine the entirety of a regional housing market before designating a culprit.

    Pete Saunders is a Detroit native who has worked as a public and private sector urban planner in the Chicago area for more than twenty years.  He is also the author of “The Corner Side Yard,” an urban planning blog that focuses on the redevelopment and revitalization of Rust Belt cities.

    An unfinished subdivision.  Source: joyyehle.com