New Geography

Category: Urban Issues

  • Facebook’s False Promise: STEM’s Quieter Side Of Tech Offers More Upside For America

    Facebook‘s botched IPO reflects not only the weakness of the stock market, but a systemic misunderstanding of where the true value of technology lies. A website that, due to superior funding and media hype, allows people to do what they were already doing — connecting on the Internet — does not inherently drive broad economic growth, even if it mints a few high-profile billionaires.

    Of course Facebook is a social phenomenon that has affected how people live and interact, but its economic impact — and future level of profitability — is less than clear. This stands in sharp contrast to Apple‘s iTunes, which has become a new distribution platform for small software companies and musicians, not to mention the role of Amazon in the distribution of books and other products.

    From the standpoint of economic development, it’s time to focus on the growing divergence between two different aspects of technology. One is largely an information sector that focuses on such things as information software (think Facebook or Google), publishing and entertainment. For most journalists and urban theoreticians, this is the “sexy” sector, particularly since it tends to employ people just like them: younger, products of elite college educations, often living in “hip and cool” places like San Francisco, Manhattan or west Los Angeles.

    Then there’s a larger, less-heralded group of workers that my colleague Mark Schill at Praxis Strategy Group has focused on: those in STEM (science-, technology-, engineering- and mathematics-related) jobs. These workers perform technology work across a broad array of industries, including but not limited to computers, media and the Internet, representing some 5.3 million jobs in the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas. This compares to roughly 2.2 million jobs classified as in the information sector in these 51 regions.

    These STEM occupations are about harnessing technology to improve productivity in mundane traditional industries and the service sector. STEM workers are as likely, if not more so, to be working for manufacturers, retailers or energy producers as for software firms. These workers epitomize the notion of technology, as the French sociologist Marcel Mauss once put it, as “a traditional action made effective.”

    The information sector may be increasingly important, but it is STEM workers, working in a diverse set of industries (including information), who hold the broader hope for the U.S. economy. Over the past decade, the information sector has created many stars, but about as many flameouts. Overall information employment peaked in 2000 at 3.6 million jobs; by 2011 this number had dropped by almost a million. Things have not much improved even in the current “boom”; between February and May this year, the sector lost over 8,000 jobs.

    Essentially the information sector has created a huge amount of churn, as the nature of its employment changes with shifts in technology. For example, the software sector within information has seen real growth, adding some 10,000 jobs the past two years, while other parts of the information sector have suffered significant drops. These include, sadly for aged scribblers, traditional publishing, such as newspapers and book publishing, which has gone from nearly 1 million jobs in 2002 to under 740,000 in May of this year.

    With Facebook stock in the tank, and other major social media sites languishing, the current “boom” may prove among the shortest-lived in recent memory. Shares of less well-anchored companies — meaning those with only a vague outlook for long-term profits — such as Zynga and Groupon have fallen dramatically. The market for the next round of ultra-hyped IPOs also seems to be dissipating rapidly. The carnage has led at least one analyst to suggest Facebook’s fall could “destroy the U.S. economy.”

    Fortunately the overall picture in technology is more hopeful than you’d understand from reading about social media startups. STEM employment has grown 3% over the past two years, more than twice the national average. In the 51 largest metros areas, 150,000 STEM jobs were added from 2009 through 2011. More important still, this reflects a long-term pattern: Over the past decade, STEM employment — despite a drop during the recession — expanded 5.4%.

    These two different classifications underpin geographical differences between and within regions. Sometimes the “hot” areas don’t look so great when it comes to actual job creation in these generally well-paying fields.

    Silicon Valley’s social media boom, for example, may have propelled it once again, at least temporarily, into the ranks of the fastest-growing employment centers. Yet it’s not seeing the gains in STEM jobs that took place during earlier Valley booms in the ’80s or ’90s that were broader based, encompassing manufacturing and industry-oriented software. Indeed STEM employment in the Valley still has not recovered from the 2001 tech bust — the number of STEM jobs is down 12.6% from 10 years ago.

    Metropolitan STEM Job Growth, Sorted by 10-year Growth
    MSA Name 2001-2011 Growth 2009-2011 Growth 2011 Concentration
    Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 25.5% -3.4% 0.51
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 20.8% 4.4% 2.16
    San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 20.1% 3.0% 0.82
    Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 18.5% 3.1% 0.74
    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 18.3% -1.6% 0.55
    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 18.1% 7.6% 1.95
    Salt Lake City, UT 17.5% 4.5% 1.17
    Jacksonville, FL 17.4% 3.0% 0.88
    Baltimore-Towson, MD 17.2% 3.9% 1.36
    Raleigh-Cary, NC 14.9% 1.4% 1.56
    Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 14.3% 3.6% 1.25
    Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL 14.2% -1.4% 0.90
    San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 13.1% 6.5% 1.38
    Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 8.8% 2.4% 1.75
    Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC 8.1% 2.1% 0.97
    Columbus, OH 7.8% 3.8% 1.32
    Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 7.7% 2.4% 0.96
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 7.5% -3.1% 1.05
    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 7.5% 2.8% 0.73
    Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 7.5% 1.2% 1.06
    Oklahoma City, OK 7.3% 2.9% 0.89
    Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 6.2% 3.7% 1.21
    Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 6.1% 4.6% 1.08
    Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 6.0% -1.6% 1.19
    Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 5.6% 4.3% 0.77
    Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ 5.4% 1.5% 1.00
    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 5.2% 4.2% 1.24
    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 4.8% 4.3% 1.10
    Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO 4.0% 2.8% 1.47
    Richmond, VA 3.8% 0.4% 1.14
    Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA 3.6% 2.4% 0.90
    Pittsburgh, PA 3.1% 3.6% 1.07
    Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT 3.1% 1.2% 1.18
    Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 2.6% 3.1% 1.37
    Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 2.4% 2.0% 0.88
    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 2.2% 0.3% 1.19
    Kansas City, MO-KS 1.9% -2.6% 1.15
    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 1.2% 2.9% 1.00
    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 0.8% 3.7% 1.60
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR 0.0% 0.7% 0.56
    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH 0.0% 4.8% 1.64
    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA -2.2% 1.7% 0.98
    Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI -2.3% 0.2% 1.04
    St. Louis, MO-IL -3.5% -1.4% 1.05
    Birmingham-Hoover, AL -3.9% -3.4% 0.70
    Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH -4.9% 1.2% 0.93
    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI -5.2% 1.1% 0.96
    New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA -6.7% 3.6% 0.71
    Rochester, NY -8.9% 2.1% 1.19
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA -12.6% 4.9% 3.09
    Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI -14.9% 8.8% 1.42
    Total in Top 51 Regions 4.2% 3.0%

    Data source: EMSI Complete Employment, 2012.1. The “2011 Concentration” figure is a location quotient. That’s the local share of jobs that are STEM occupations divided by the national share of jobs that are STEM occupations. A concentration of 1.0 indicates that a region has the same concentration of STEM occupations as the nation.

     

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

    This piece originally appeared in Forbes.

    Computer engineer photo by BigStockPhoto.com.

  • The Atlanta Transportation Tax: Too Much for Too Little

    On July 31, voters in a 10 counties of the 28 county Atlanta metropolitan area will vote on whether to raise the sales tax by one cent for $8 billion in transit and highway projects over 10 years. The measure is highly tilted towards transit spending. Sadly, this would do virtually nothing to reduce Atlanta’s traffic or its travel times.

    In a metropolitan area in which barely one percent of travel (Figure 1) and less than five percent of work trip travel is by transit, the tax measure devotes more than 50 percent of the funding to transit (Figure 2).   Yet in reality, the focus of any transportation revenue issue should be on reducing travel times, whether by transit or highways. This is how transportation improves an urban economy. The reality is that with nearly all travel by highways and transit’s inherently slower travel times, much of the tax money would have virtually no impact on reducing travel times or traffic congestion.


    Atlanta’s Traffic Congestion: Promoters of the tax claim that the highway projects will reduce traffic congestion. Atlanta is well known for its serious traffic congestion. There are two reasons for this:

    1. Atlanta’s sparse freeway system is limited to little more than a belt route (I-275) and three radial freeways (I-20, I-75 and I-85) that converge into two in the one place more capacity is needed, the core. Trucks are not permitted on freeways inside the beltway, which concentrates the considerable interstate traffic on a single roadway, I-275. If Atlanta had the higher freeway density (freeway mileage per square mile) of Los Angeles or Minneapolis-St. Paul, traffic congestion would be far less of a problem.
    2. Atlanta’s regional arterial (high capacity streets) system is virtually non-existent. For this reason, I proposed (in 2000) development of a one-mile terrain constrained grid of arterials. The Atlanta Regional Council (ARC), the local metropolitan planning organization, has included a somewhat more modest (but useful) arterial grid in is regional plan.

    Yet despite its reputation, Atlanta’s traffic congestion could be worse. The latest INRIX National Scorecard rates the Atlanta metropolitan area as having the 15th worst traffic congestion in the nation, behind Portland, which is nearly 60 percent smaller and twice as dense, with its compact city policies. Among high-income world metropolitan areas with more than 5 million population, only Nagoya outside the United States may have a shorter work trip travel time (Note 1). Atlanta’s world-competitive work trip travel time of 29 minutes is faster than that of far more transit-dependent Toronto (33 minutes), smaller Sydney (34 minutes) and much smaller Vancouver (31 minutes), despite their compact city policies.

    The Transit Projects: So Much for So Little: The proposed transit projects have virtually no potential to reduce work trip travel times and traffic congestion. Approximately one-fifth of the transit funding would be used to rehabilitate and upgrade the MARTA subway system, a need that should have been legitimately funded from the existing MARTA sales tax. Another nearly 20 percent of the transit funding would be spent on the "Belt-Line" streetcar project in central Atlanta. The role of the Belt-Line is more "city building" (read "real estate speculation") than it is transportation. It will do nothing to reduce work trip travel times. Further, it is exceedingly costly. The extravagance of this project is illustrated by an annualized capital cost alone (principally construction) high enough to pay the lease on a new mid-sized car for each new regular passenger (Note 2). Moreover, that is before the likely capital cost escalation and the substantial operating subsidies (Note 3).

    Transit’s problem in Atlanta (and elsewhere) lies outside its core downtown job market (Note 4). Most destinations in a metropolitan area cannot be reached by transit in a way remotely competitive with the car. The transit tax would only modestly increase transit ridership. ARC projects the transit projects will boost daily transit ridership less than 10 percent. If all of the forecast new passengers were to be taken from cars (which is not likely), the net reduction in traffic volumes over ten years would be equal to less than three months of traffic growth. Put another way, at the best, the transit proposals would mean that the traffic congestion expected on January 1, 2025 would not occur until March of 2025. That’s less than 90 days of traffic relief for 10 years of taxation.

    The Road Projects: In a metropolitan area in which personal mobility predominates, roadway improvements, such as expansions, an arterial grid in Atlanta’s case and completion of the GA-DOT HOT (high occupancy toll) system provide far greater  potential for reducing travel times. There is another significant benefit to highway investments. As traffic speeds increase fuel efficiency improves and both air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.

    Under the tax referendum, a significant opportunity to improve mobility would be missed, to the detriment of the vast majority of Atlantans; over 88 percent of all commuters in Atlanta travel by car, but the figure is only slightly less (83 percent) among low income commuters (Figure 3).

    What’s Right About Atlanta: For all its problems, Atlanta has much to be proud of. Former World Bank principal planner Alain Bertaud said of Atlanta in a 2002 study:

    While income and population were rising very fast, Atlanta managed to keep a very low cost of living. A worldwide cost of living survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2002 found that Atlanta had the lowest cost of living among major US cities and ranked 63rd among major cities around the world. This achievement is remarkable in view of the rapid rate of growth of the metropolitan area over the last 20 years. It shows that while demographic and economic growth has certainly contributed to generate pollution and congestion, the various actors responsible for the management of metropolitan Atlanta must have done a lot of things right. High income growth and high demographic growth combined with a low cost of living suggests that labor markets are functioning well and that housing does not encounter important supply bottlenecks (Note 5).

    As successful as local land use policies have been in making Atlanta livable by making it affordable (the first principle of livability is affordability), local leaders need to start over with a proposal primarily designed to reduce traffic congestion, reduce travel times and grow the economy.

    Politics Trumps Reducing Traffic Congestion: Traffic congestion is most effectively addressed by projects that reduce work trip travel times, since it is the concentration of work trips at peak hours that   causes the worst congestion. The long-suffering commuters of Atlanta would have been far better served by a program that selected projects based upon their effectiveness in reducing travel times. A simple cost per hour of delay measure would have been appropriate. Atlanta deserves a much better deal.

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

    —————–

    Note 1: Based upon 109 metropolitan areas for which data is available. Japanese data is reported as median work trip travel time. Nagoya’s median work trip travel time (27 minutes) is less than Atlanta’s (29 minutes). The excessively long rail commute times of many Japanese commuters could make Nagoya’s average work trip travel time as great or greater than Atlanta’s. Dallas-Fort Worth has the shortest work trip travel time of any metropolitan area over 5 million population (and the lowest transit work trip market share)

    Note 2: A team led by Oxford University professor Bengt Flyvbjerg found that passenger rail systems typically have cost overruns of 45 percent. If the average increase is experienced, the Belt-Line cost could escalate to $1 billion.

    Note 3: The capital cost is discounted at 4 percent over 35 years, which equals more than $5,500 annually. A new Ford Fusion, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord or Nissan Altima could be leased for less than $5,000 annually, with no down payment, according to internet sources (such as http://www.leasecompare.com/)

    Note 4: More than 93 percent of metropolitan Atlanta’s employment is outside downtown (and Mid-Town). Downtown’s share of employment declined from 2000 to 2009 (latest data available from the US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns).

    Note 5: Atlanta was most affordable major metropolitan area in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Hong Kong in the 8th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

    ——

    Photo: Atlanta Freeway (by author)

  • China’s Top Growth Centers

    Hefei, the capital of historically poor Anhui province emerged as China’s top growth center among major metropolitan areas over the past 10 years. Metropolitan areas from the interior, the Yangtze Delta and the central and northern coast were the fastest growing, displacing Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta, long the growth center for the country.   (Figure 1).

    China’s Trends in Context: China’s growth rate has fallen substantially and the United Nations has projected that the nation will experience population decline starting between 2030 and 2035. However, China’s urban areas have grown strongly as people have continued to move to cities for better opportunities. According to World Bank research, China’s economic progress since 1981 has lifted more people out of poverty than ever before in the world.

    Never before in history have so many people moved to urban areas in such a short period of time.

    Since the reforms began in approximately 1980, all of China’s population growth has been urban. Rural areas lost approximately 110 million people between 1980 and 2010. That is approximately equal to the population of Mexico and more than each of the nations in the world except for 11. Over the same three decades, 470 million people were added to the urban areas. That is more than 1.5 times the population of the United States.

    China’s Metropolitan Areas: This article provides an analysis of the urban districts (qu) of Chinas urban regions (routinely mislabeled "cities"). These districts are designated by regional officials as urban for urban development. Since the peripheral urban districts are principally rural, the combination of urban districts (Shi Shixiaqu)in a region are akin to a metropolitan area (labor market area).

    Among the metropolitan areas that began the decade (2000) with more than 1,000,000 inhabitants, the slowest 10 year growth rate was 36 percent. In comparison, among the 51 US metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population, only three (Las Vegas, Raleigh and Austin) would have placed in China’s top 20, and not higher than 14th (Table). As in the US, the most rapid urban growth is taking place in smaller metropolitan areas with less than 5 million in 2010.  

    Top 20 Metropolitan Growth Centers in China: 2000-2010
    Rank Metropolitan Area 2000 Population 2010 Population Change % Geography
    1  Hefei, AN        1,659,000    3,352,000       1,693,000 102.0%  I 
    2  Xiamen, FJ        2,053,000     3,531,000       1,478,000 72.0%  C 
    3  Zhengzhou, HEN        2,560,000     4,254,000       1,694,000 66.2%  I 
    4  Suzhou, JS        2,473,000     4,074,000       1,601,000 64.7%  Y 
    5  Wenzhou, ZJ        1,916,000     3,040,000       1,124,000 58.7%  Y 
    6  Ningbo, ZJ        2,201,000     3,492,000       1,291,000 58.7%  Y 
    7  Urumqi, XJ        1,753,000     2,744,000          991,000 56.5%  I 
    8  Weifang, SD        1,380,000     2,044,000          664,000 48.1%  N 
    9  Shenzhen, GD        7,009,000   10,358,000       3,349,000 47.8%  P 
    10  Hangzhou, ZJ        4,243,000     6,242,000       1,999,000 47.1%  Y 
    11  Beijing, BJ      12,874,000   18,827,000       5,953,000 46.2%  N 
    12  Changsha, HUN        2,123,000     3,094,000          971,000 45.7%  I 
    13  Chengdu, SC        5,268,000     7,677,000       2,409,000 45.7%  I 
    14  Shanghai, SH      15,758,000   22,315,000       6,557,000 41.6%  Y 
    15  Hohhot, NM        1,407,000     1,981,000          574,000 40.8%  I 
    16  Nanjing, JS        5,098,000     7,166,000       2,068,000 40.6%  Y 
    17  Shijiazhuang, HEB        1,970,000     2,767,000          797,000 40.5%  N 
    18  Fuzhou, FJ        2,124,000     2,922,000          798,000 37.6%  C 
    19  Qingdao, SD        2,721,000     3,719,000          998,000 36.7%  N 
    20  Tianjin, TJ        8,146,000   11,090,000       2,944,000 36.1%  N 
     Metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population in 2000.  
     Metropolitan areas consist of urban districts (qu) 
    Geographical Codes
     C   Central Coast 
     I   Interior 
     N   Northern Coast 
     P   Pearl River Delta (Coast) 
     Y   Yangtze River Delta (Coast) 
     Data from National Bureau of Statistics of China 

     

    The Interior: Six of the top 20 gainers were in the interior, including fastest growing Hefei. This reflects the appeal of   lower labor costs and perhaps also that rural migrants often prefer to work in regions   closer to their homes and families in agricultural regions. These six metropolitan areas had an average growth rate of 71 percent, the largest rate of any geographical grouping.

    • The capital of Anhui province, Hefei (photo), had the largest gain, at 102 percent. Hefei grew from 1.659 million to 3.352 million. Hefei is developing one of the most dispersed urban forms among China’s metropolitan area and there continues to be considerable construction. Hefei’s population growth rate was nearly one-half more than of second place Xiamen. Anhui is one province removed from the coast and Hefei is only 115 miles (185 kilometers) from the Yangtze Delta’s Nanjing.
    • The third ranked metropolitan area was Zhengzhou (photo), the capital of Henan province (also separated from the coast by one province), which experienced a 66 percent population gain.
    • Urumqi, the capital of China’s large northwestern province of Xinjiang ranked 7th with a gain of 57 percent. Urumqi is by far the most remote from the East Coast of the large gainers (2,000 miles or 3,250 kilometers from Tianjin, near Beijing).
    • Other interior fast growers were Changsha, capital of Hunan (12th, with 46 percent growth), Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan ranked 13th, with 46 percent growth and Hohhot, capital of Nei Mongol (Inner Mongolia), ranked 15th, with a growth rate of 41 percent.


    Hefei


    Zhengzhou

    Central Coast: Xiamen (photo), one of the first special economic zones designated after Shenzhen and placing 2nd in growth, added 72 percent to its population. This metropolitan area is centered on an island in Fujian province on China’s central coast, less than 10 miles from to Jinmen (Quemoy), an island controlled by Taiwan. Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province was another central coastal metropolitan area among the top 20 growth centers (18th, at 38 percent). The average growth rate of these metropolitan areas on the central coast was 55 percent.


    Xiamen

    Yangtze River Delta: Like the interior, the Yangtze River (Changjiang) Delta also placed six metropolitan areas among the top 20 growth centers. The average growth rate was 52 percent. The Yangtze River Delta is a large area with a population greater than that of the Pearl River Delta, but with urban regions that are separated from one another by considerable rural territory (unlike the Pearl River Delta). The exception is the Shanghai-Suzhou-Wuxi corridor (Note), where the urbanization is continuous in limited corridors.

    • Suzhou (Photo), part of which (Kunshan qu) abuts Shanghai ranked as the third fastest growing metropolitan area, with a growth rate of 65 percent. Suzhou added 1.6 million people and is nearing 4.1 million. As the growth of Shanghai continues to spill westward and northward, Suzhou is likely to continue its strong growth.
    • The other three top 10 metropolitan growth areas in the Yangtze River Delta were in the province of Zhejiang, including Wenzhou at 5th, growing 59 percent (Photo), Ningbo, one of the nation’s largest ports was 6th, at 59 percent and Hangzhou, the provincial capital, which Marco Polo claimed was the largest city in the world in his Travels was 10th, at 47 percent.
    • Shanghai, the nation’s largest metropolitan area, placed 14th in growth, at 42 percent. Shanghai had the largest numeric growth, adding 6.6 million to its population, more people than live in Toronto.
    • Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province ranked 16th in growth, at 41 percent.


    Suzhou


    Wenzhou

    Northern Coast: Five northern coastal metropolitan areas were among the top 20 metropolitan gainers, with an average growth rate of 42 percent.

    • Weifang, in the province of Shandong ranked 8th in growth, the highest rating among metropolitan areas in the northern coastal area. Weifang added 48 percent to its population.
    • Beijing ranked 12th in growth, at a 46 percent rate. Beijing’s numeric growth was second only to Shanghai, at 6 million.
    • The other northern coastal growth centers were Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei (17th, at 41 percent) and 175 miles (280 kilometers), south of Beijing. Qingdao, of brewing fame ("Tsingtao" beer) ranked 19th, with a growth rate of 37 percent, while Tianjin, which is close enough to be Beijing’s port, ranked 20th, with a growth rate of 36 percent.

    Pearl River Delta: In contrast the Pearl River Delta, the home of so much urban growth over the past 30 years, placed only one metropolitan area among the top 20 growth centers, Shenzhen. Shenzhen placed 9th, with a growth rate of 48 percent. This is in stark contrast to 1990 to, when Shenzhen and adjacent Dongguan both more than doubled in population.

    Missing Giants: Chongqing was not among the top growth centers. Chongqing has been routinely mischaracterized as China’s largest metropolitan area (because of semantic confusion over the word "city"). Chongqing’s metropolitan districts grew only 22 percent and the region (a provincial equivalent) lost population. Neighborhood rival Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province from which Chongqing was separated in 1996 more than doubled its growth rate. Manchuria, China’s "Dongbei" (Northeast) also failed to place any areas among the fastest growing. Shenyang, the center of China’s Rust Belt, grew less than 10 percent, though Harbin, capital of Helonjiang grew nearly 30 percent.

    More Growth to Come: Despite an overall population that is just peaking, urban population growth is expected to be substantial. In addition to the 470 million people that have moved to urban areas since 1980, the United Nations projects that another 340 million people will be added to the urban areas by 2045 (after which a modest decline is expected). Over the same 35 years, China’s rural population is expected to fall by 387 million (Figures 2 and 3). Where these new migrants move and how they make do will be among the most important urban stories of the next decade.


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

    ——-

    Note: Includes Kunshan, part of the Suzhou metropolitan area, but a separate urban area (between the Suzhou urban area and the Shanghai urban area).

    Note: Corrected Hefei data on 6/3/2012.

    Top photo: Hefei: All photos by author.

  • From Connection to Dispersal: Urbanisation in the 21st Century

    Commentators have long studied connections between cities and how these influence their development. The city is the natural focus of trade-based theories of growth. Exporting a surplus, based on local resources and specialisation was – and is – considered the way to city wealth.

    In this world, transport is the key to the trade portal. The cities that dominated world trade in the 19th and 20th centuries were those best connected, initially through their ports and sea links complemented later through strong ties over the airways. Mega-ports and airport hubs were marks of city success. 

    This model may be changing, and we need to change our thinking about the future of our cities with it.

    Connectedness and concentration
    Connectedness is a mantra for the new urbanists: through international connection cities exploit the economies assumed to arise from ever-increasing concentration of people and business. Hence, the city seeking to make its mark globally must invest in ever increasing transport infrastructure. Acknowledging the information age, it may add high-speed broadband to the mix and perhaps, in a symbolic move, an international convention centre.

    But is this the right model for 21st century urbanisation?

    Aviation – moving on
    Think for a moment about what has happened in aviation. The last decade saw a quantum shift from a model whereby a few powerful hubs concentrated movement between a few major centres from which passengers and goods could, in turn, be distributed along local spokes – by regional aircraft, train, coach or car. Airlines based themselves overwhelmingly at these hubs.  The large, twin isle jet reigned supreme. The Airbus A380 is the latest conveyor of that model, but most likely the last.

    Because late in the 20th century there was a divergence between an ageing hub and spoke model and a growing model based on  dense networks connecting more and more cities directly. The single aisle, medium-haul jet took off.  And now the long-haul, highly efficient, medium-sized jet is further expanding this capacity to directly connect former spokes – smaller cities – without the need to hub through major cities.

    And all of this has been supported by the productivity leap brought about by the low cost airline model. More people, more cities, more directly connected than ever before with the capacity to transform economic, political and social relations among them.  [1]

    From transport to logistics
    The transport sector was about moving goods from A to B as cost effectively as regulation allowed; and all too often regulation kept costs up to protect old technology and incumbent operators, whether by surface, air, or sea. That, though, is changing as international transport is liberalised.    

    And today transport is itself transforming into the business of logistics. And logistics is about distribution – through a production chain, between producers and consumers, and among places.  Goods move seamlessly through integrated operations that can deliver almost anything almost anywhere in a matter of days. 

    An informational world
    As the capacity to transport goods went up and the cost went down, academics trying to explain the differential growth of cities appealed to a new notion that dominating the exchange of information was the new key to prosperity.  Knowledge and expertise were concentrated in key informational hubs where they became the centres of capitalist power, the hearths of globalisation.  [2]

    Well that’s changing, too. Information and expertise is becoming dispersed, knowledge ubiquitous.  This is not just about the internet – although it obviously plays a huge part.  It’s also about the explosion of personal mobility as informational cities give way to an informational world.  (It may also be about the potential for implosion as a result of over-concentration, a threat still lingering in the financial centres of the world). 

    Linked cities are giving way to networked communities.

    From consolidation …
    The lesson? Those of us involved in planning the city cannot assume the same structures will prevail in the future as those we inherited from the past.  We tend to plan, though, by looking for repeat patterns, seeking generalisation, extracting principles, predicting the unpredictable.  And because infrastructure – roads, rail, ports – are large scale, expensive, and enduring they become the bones around which we construct our futures. 

    Infrastructure, particularly transport infrastructure, shapes our presumptions about how the city will function and the form it will take. Hence, urban planning is preoccupied with how to consolidate existing structures, increasing their capacity by building up rather than out and moving to mass transit, among other things.

    … to dispersal
    Yet the shifts in 21st century logistics and information technology support dispersal.  And it might just be that dispersal is the key to 21st century urbanisation.
    Light rail systems, dedicated bus lanes, smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles, lower housing costs, more intimate localised but inter-connected sub-urban communities, common information and mobile expertise cutting across diverse tastes, experiences, and places – these may be the way of the future.

    In the developing world where urbanisation is most rapid they may be the only way.  Here dispersal is already the dominant reality. While urbanisation may be exemplified in a few megacities in Asia, these account for only a small part of the total. And even they are marked by rapid peripheral expansion, with distinctive, sprawling, dense and diverse communities on the edge. Democraticised, localised self help institutions and NGOs may be the way to improved sanitation and health care in this environment, and micro-commerce the way to sustainable prosperity. 

    And in the slower-growing cities of the west, the maturing of sub-urban life, a return to lifestyle-focused localism, ageing in place, and the growing importance of community-based care point to a future in which dispersal rather than concentration could be the dominant mode of social and spatial organisation. Central structures may still have a role, but a diminishing one.

    More generally we may have to think of cities themselves as comprising networks of connections, within and across boundaries. The stronger these networks, perhaps, the more resilient the city. But this does not translate to physical density. Proximity is not the issue. Well connected, dense networks will support, if not encourage, dispersal. 

    This is contrary to the currently favoured model in places like my city of origin – Auckland – but it is not at all contrary to the centre within that city that I call home.

    Getting it wrong
    More than ever as we try to plan for the very long-term, we need to open our minds to alternatives. You only need to look at the list of bankrupt airlines (or in and out of Chapter 11 in the US) to appreciate the consequences of overinvesting in the current model on the assumption that it will prevail indefinitely.

    Phil McDermott is a Director of CityScope Consultants in Auckland, New Zealand, and Adjunct Professor of Regional and Urban Development at Auckland University of Technology.  He works in urban, economic and transport development throughout New Zealand and in Australia, Asia, and the Pacific.  He was formerly Head of the School of Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University and General Manager of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation in Sydney. This piece originally appeared at is blog: Cities Matter.

    Aircaft photo by BigStockPhoto.com.

    [1]            See, for example, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (2003) Low Cost Airlines in Asia Pacific: A Force for Change and (2009) Global Low Cost Carrier Report
    [2]           E.g. Castells M (1990) The Informational City: Economic Restructuring and Urban Development Blackwell; Sassen S (1991) The Global City, New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton University Press

  • Midcentury Modern

    Midcentury modern tours now are taking place in cities all over the country. Renewed interest in this era capitalizes on the millennials’ interest in design from a time that seems almost impossibly optimistic compared to today’s zeitgeist. Most cities around the country boast a healthy building stock from this postwar period, nicknamed “the suburbs,” although these are ritually condemned – and designated for annihilation – by academics, urban land speculators and the urban clerisy.

    Yet the new interest in the mid-century modern form reflects its basic and enduring appeal. As the curious and the trendy take bus tours of these inner-ring neighborhoods, the forms of this era evoke a sense of great confidence and faith in the future, both of which seem to be lost in the obsession with neo-traditional forms that hearken to the pre-car era or to the cartoonlike, sculpture-as-architecture one sees in many urban centers.

    Suburban expansion after World War II reached out beyond the streetcar systems that created the traditional neighborhoods of the late 19thand early 20th Century. The returning GIs wanted something simple and affordable to begin their lives after serving their country. Confidence surged in America’s know-how and ability to solve even the deepest social problems. The triumph of science and technology was a palpable presence. The dark side, of course, was the atomic threat, restraining our enthusiasm but only a little.

    In this midcentury era, planning and design began to be car-based. Residences were designed to show off the car, putting it out front for display – and some home plans even had tailfinned beauties in the living room. 


    Living Garage, photo from Populuxe by Thomas Hine

    Consumer goods were no longer accessed on foot; a new form of luxury consisted of driving up to the front door of a shop with parking in front. Front-loading houses and stores became unquestionably more efficient as a means to accommodate the new American lifestyle.

    Yet despite the auto-orientation, the architecture of this era retained the pedestrian scale and intimate feel that marked Main Street before World War 2. This both/and aesthetic marks the form of the 1940s and 1950s, with streamlined design styles like Art Deco Revival and materials like glass and stainless steel. Gentle angles suggested motion, and the theme of mobility was everywhere in the architecture.  Wider streets and lower, longer horizontal lines accommodated this theme and even today the architecture reinforces a feel of motion when driving past these structures.

    Modernism also formed a certain ethic. To be modern was more than a lifestyle choice; it was an acceptance of science, knowledge, and technology, free from preconceptions.  At the time, modernism elevated architecture above the style debate, and was considered even a shedding of styles. The politics of the time was similarly marked by Truman’s “straight talk”, and there was a shedding of rhetoric and posturing that lasted up until Joe McCarthy began once again a divide-and-conquer campaign against people.

    Translated to the suburbs, modernism meant practical homes, without the adornment that marked Victorian architecture. Instead, modernist residences were marked by deep horizontals and large picture windows, providing a sense of openness that was a hallmark of modernist thought. Floor plans also were open, allowing free movement through space, rather than cutting the house up into cluttered little parlors, dining rooms, or nooks. 

    Today, midcentury modern design is fetishized for mass consumption in magazines like Dwell that emphasize acquisitiveness over ethics. But back then, the design meant something else, something cleaner and more powerful. In the 1950s, modernism meant consumption, but even more, the modernism defined the quest for the inner self and a new, forward looking outlook.

    By reducing modernism to a sofa style or wallpaper pattern, we risk losing all that this era stood for.  Buildings from the 1950s have sustained themselves through multiple recessions, the rise of the internet, cultural acceleration, massive city growth, and globalism. So perhaps they point towards a real definition of sustainability by having good bones and adapting through all these changes.

    The current millennial generation seeks a practical domestic situation, much like returning GIs. Most would prefer to reduce car-trips, but are realistic about this goal, given the range of their travel. Most in this generation see right through car-free living claims; more than one of my students, when discussing walkability, stated that “I’m not gonna lug my groceries even a block in this heat.” The battle with the car is chiefly about making the car more efficient, and less ubiquitous through the use of telecommuting and on-line shopping. It is not about removing it from the scene entirely.

    So as McMansions have swollen to represent a kind of architectural obesity, they have made many midcentury neighborhoods unfashionable, for typically these older homes have one parking space, often in a carport, not a true garage. They also are front-loaded, a much more efficient planning concept than alleys, but then the car becomes part of the front façade. Millennials have a hard time understanding what’s wrong with that. Again, as one 28-year-old student put it to me, “It’s just a house, after all…what’s the big deal?”

    Developers seeking first-time homebuyers, however, respond to the regulatory climate, which favors solutions like garages on alleys, big homes on tight lots, and neotraditional styling.  Bonus density and other zoning incentives rig the game in favor of this highly regulated development pattern, even in the exurbs.  Here in Central Florida, the development zone nicknamed Horizon West has been codified to enforce these form-based principles, with stiff permitting fees and a highly participatory government staff to keep things on the straight-and-narrow.

    Keeping prices low with all this overburden requires developers to cut the cost of the home drastically, likely reducing lifespan of components and systems. Ironically, the house meeting these tortured standards of today is less sustainable than the house built in 1953, with better bones and an adaptable floor plan.

    Meanwhile, these 1950s neighborhoods are under attack for their very form. Cities, persuaded by planners to heal the effects of the car, cannot do so in a granular manner, so ordinances are passed  forbidding front-facing garages, or garages set back arbitrarily from the house front. These 1950s homes, with their carports, couldn’t be built today, and so are reduced to the status of heritage sites from a bygone era. In Winter Park, garages are banished to the rear on new homes, and if you are adding a garage to your midcentury home, it must be arbitrarily set back at least four feet from your front wall whether or not your lot can accommodate this arbitrary, and seemingly pointless, ordinance.

    Of course mid modern tours allow people to rediscover the essence of the 1950s, and these overlooked neighborhoods could be the springboard for a new era in modern planning.  Front-loaded neighborhoods can be successful when the architecture is designed at a human scale, and fine-grained integration of residential and commercial uses point to a future of home-office, cottage-industry, people-based industry once again.

    The Victorian era ended rather abruptly in the 1890s with a series of economic catastrophes that changed America’s middle class. Architecture switched to a more streamlined, Edwardian style – simple, flexible, and utilitarian forms that quickly gave rise to modernist design.  This current economic transition may well bode a similar outcome – design styles, often labeled “contemporary,” reduce the amount of architectural gingerbread and fussiness, reducing cost and maintenance, and may be favored by the coming generation for its cleanliness and utility.

    A new era that manages the car at a human scale, forgives people for wanting mobility and efficiency, and allows for contemporary exploration of style and design can and should inform new neighborhood planning. Midcentury suburbs, rediscovered by popular interest, can point the way to a middle ground between mcmansion-style subdivisions and neotraditional fussiness, and maybe even help us rediscover our confidence and faith once again.

    This essay is a summary of Richard Reep’s talk “Populuxe and the Atomic Bungalow” given at the 3rd annual Colloquium on Historic Preservation, hosted by Friends of Casa Feliz, Winter Park, Florida in April 2012.  Richard and his wife, Kim Mathis, hosted a midcentury modern tour in their own 1950s home for the colloquium.

  • The Evolving Urban Form: Shenzhen

    No urban area in history has become so large so quickly than Shenzhen (Note 1). A little more than a fishing village in 1979, by the 2010 census Shenzhen registered 10.4 million inhabitants. It is easily the youngest urban area to have become one of the world’s 26 megacities (Figure 1). Most other megacities were the largest urban areas in their nations for centuries (such as London and Paris) and a few for more than a millennium (such as Istanbul and Beijing). Shenzhen’s primitiveness can be seen in this 1980 internet photo, and shows the beginnings of construction. A 2006 photograph of one of Shenzhen’s principal streets (Binhe Avenue) is above.

    Pearl River Delta Location: Shenzhen is located in Guangdong Province adjacent to Hong Kong’s northern border. Shenzhen is China’s fourth largest urban area, following Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzou-Foshan.

    Along with Dongguan, Guanzhou, Foshan and smaller neighbors, Shenzhen forms the Pearl River Delta,   the world’s largest manufacturing center. The Pearl River Delta, along with Hong Kong and Macau, constitutes the world’s largest populated extent of urbanization, with nearly 50 million people. They live in a land area of just over 3,000 square kilometers (7,800 square kilometers. By comparison the world’s largest urban area, Tokyo-Yokohama, has a population of 37 million and covers 3,300 square miles (8,500 square kilometers). I recall from a Hong Kong to Guangzhou trip on the Canton-Kowloon Railway in 1999 that there was plenty of rural territory on the 100 mile (170 kilometers) route. Today,   development takes place along virtually the entire route (Note 2).

    The Special Economic Zone: Shenzhen was established as China’s first special economic zone by Deng Xiaoping in the period of liberalization after the death of Mao Zedong. The special economic zones allowed for alternative, generally market oriented reforms, with the end of improving economic growth. The result was economic progress far greater than anyone expected. The special economic zone program was eventually extended to several other urban areas in the nation.

    Some governmental officials preferred the previous state dominated approach, despite its greater poverty and sought to roll back the reforms. This threat reached its peak in the early 1990s, after Deng Xiaoping had retired from his government positions. In response, Deng undertook his renown "southern tour" to Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other parts of Guangdong province to promote the new economic approach and the progress that had been made. During the southern tour, Deng is reputed to have said that "to be rich is glorious." Three decades before he had said “I don’t care if it’s a white cat or a black cat. It’s a good cat as long as it catches mice." He committed to results rather than to ideology, in a sense Shenzen and its environs are the engines of non-state owned prosperity. Eventually, the publicity from Deng’s southern tour overwhelmed the opposition and China accelerated its move toward a more open economy.

    Shenzhen’s Core: Unlike the fast growing, but much smaller new urban areas of the United States (for example Phoenix, which is largely a low rise, dispersed expanse of suburbanization), Shenzhen has developed a dense central business district. Even though Shenzhen started the decade of the 1990s with little more than 1,000,000 residents, by 1996 it had the fourth tallest building in the world, the Shun Hing Tower. Only the Sears Tower in Chicago and the two World Trade Center Towers in New York were taller.

    In 2011, the Shun Hing Tower lost its local tallest building title to the Kingkey Financial Tower, at 1,449 feet (447 meters) is the 10th tallest building in the world. Now, the world’s second tallest building is under construction in Shenzhen, the Ping An International Financial Center, which is reported to reach 2,125 feet or 655 meters, with 116 floors. Only the Burj Khalifa (2,717 feet, 828 meters, 163 floors) in Dubai would be higher. Like Shanghai and Chongqing (and unlike most Chinese urban areas), Shenzhen has a highly concentrated central business district. As a result deserio.com rates Shenzhen’s skyline as 9th in the world (Note 3).

    Outer Areas Growing Faster: The three central districts (the qu of Futian, Luohu and Nanshan) grew from 2.4 million to 3.3 million population between 2000 and 2010, a rate of 38 percent. However, as is natural for a growing urban area, most of the growth was in the outer districts (Photo: Suburban Shenzhen), which grew from 4.6 million to 7.0 million, a growth rate of 52 percent. Thus, nearly three-quarters of the growth was on the periphery (Figure 2). Population growth in the earlier 1990 and 2000 period was slightly less concentrated in the outer area (68 percent). But overall  population growth has begun to slow down, with Shenzhen added 3.3 million new residents, compared to 4.3 million between 1990 and 2000.  


    Photo: Suburban Shenzhen (Longgang)

    The Urban Area: Overall, it is estimated that the Shenzhen urban area (area of continuous development) has a 2012 population of 11.9 million, with a land area of 675 square miles (1,745 square kilometers). The urban area has now crossed the border into the Huiyang district of the Huizhou region, to the east. The population density is estimated at 17,600 per square mile, or 6,800 per square kilometer,  approximately 10 percent less dense than the average urban area in China. Shenzhen is about one quarter the density of Hong Kong and double the density of Paris.

    Rich and Poor in Shenzhen: Like all urban areas, Shenzhen is a mixture of rich and poor. Shenzhen is generally considered one of the most affluent urban areas in China, yet it also has a very large low income population. Approximately one-sixth of China’s residents are considered to be temporary migrants; many work in boomtowns like Shenzhen. Seven million of these 220 million migrants live in Shenzhen,  considered the largest migrant population of any region in the nation. Migrants are attracted to Shenzhen for the same reasons people have moved to cities from early on: to get ahead. At the same time, their remittances sent back home are contributing to improved living conditions far beyond Shenzhen. It is expected that reforms to the "hukou" system of residence permits will allow many of the temporary migrants in Shenzhen and elsewhere obtain permanent residence status. Many of the migrants live in factory housing, or older, very densely packed buildings. At the same time, Shenzhen has a large number of world-class condominium buildings.


    Photo: Older Housing: Central Business District


    Photo: Newer Housing: Central Business District

    The Future of Shenzhen: Much of Shenzhen’s future will depend upon the economy of the Pearl River Delta and the extent to which migrants are able to obtain permanent residency status. There is still land enough in the region for substantial population growth. The longer term integration of the Hong Kong and Shenzhen economies could produce an even larger economic dynamo than the two that are currently separate. One thing is certain, however. Shenzhen has led China into a new economic and urban reality.

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

    —–

    Note 1: Shenzhen is one of China’s regions, often called "cities," as translated from "shi."  "Shi" more resemble regions than "cities" in the non-Chinese sense, this article refers to "shi" as regions. "Shi" were formerly referred to in English as prefectures. A province is usually composed of "shis" and other "shi" level jurisdictions.

    Note 2: These combined regions are not a metropolitan area, for two reasons. First; there is little daily commuting between them and thus they are not a single labor market, which is the definition of a metropolitan area. Second, one of the regions, Hong Kong, has a border with Shenzhen that has international style customs and immigrant controls, which further precludes the two adjacent regions from being a single metropolitan area. In the longer run, greater affluence, greater mobility between the regions and relaxation of border controls could merge some or all of the now separate metropolitan areas.

    Note 3: Desiro.com, unlike some other skyline rating systems, places a premium on the density of buildings, rather than simply amalgamating building heights from throughout an urban area.

    Photo: Shenzhen:  Binhe Avenue from the Shun Hing Tower (by author)

  • Seattle Is Leading An American Manufacturing Revival – Top Manufacturing Growth Regions

    In this still tepid recovery, the biggest feel-good story has been the resurgence of American manufacturing. As industrial production has fallen in Europe and growth has slowed in China, U.S. factories have continued an expansion that has stretched on for over 33 months. In April, manufacturing growth was the strongest in 10 months.

    There are a number of reasons for this revival. Rising wages in China – up from roughly one-third U.S. levels to half that in a decade — and problems associated with protection of trademarks and other issues have led many U.S. executives to look back home. Some 22% of U.S. product manufacturers surveyed by MFGWatch reported moving some production back to America in the fourth quarter of 2011, and one in three said they were studying the proposition.

    Certainly how long this expansion can last is an open question, particularly given weakness in Europe and the slowdown in formerly fast-growing developing countries. But one thing is clear: the industrial resurgence is reshaping the economic and employment map in often unexpected ways.

    Now rather than being pulled down by manufacturing, our Best Cities For Jobs survey, conducted by Pepperdine University’s Michael Shires, found that many industrial regions are benefiting from their prowess.

    From 2010 through March, manufacturers added 470,000 jobs and enjoyed a rate of job growth 10% faster than the rest of the private economy. In the past many areas suffered from having too many industrial workers. Now it looks like we will have too few skilled ones, even in hard-hit sectors like the auto industry. In 2011 there were 50,000 unfilled U.S. job openings in industrial engineering, welding, and computer-controlled machine tool operating, according to the forecasting firm EMSI. If the revival continues, this shortage could worsen.

    To determine the cities that are leading the manufacturing revival, we assessed manufacturing employment growth in the 65 largest metropolitan statistical areas. Rankings are based on recent growth trends, as well as job growth over the past five and 10 years, and the MSAs’ momentum (see the bottom of this piece for the full rankings list).

    Where Technology Meets Manufacturing

    In an era of excitement over the Internet, it is often forgotten that a majority of the country’s scientists and engineers work for manufacturers, and that industrial companies account for 68% of business R&D spending, which in turn accounts for about 70% of total R&D spending.

    Nowhere is this linkage between technology and industry more evident than in the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area, which ranks first on our list of the metropolitan areas leading the manufacturing revival. Over the past year the region was No. 2 in the nation in manufacturing growth, with employment expanding 7.9%. The aerospace sector, led by Boeing, accounted for roughly half this expansion.

    The growth in aerospace and high-tech employment creates precisely the kinds of high-wage jobs, including for blue-collar workers, that are lacking in many parts of the country. In 2010 the average factory wage in the area was $64,925, up 9% from 2007. Most critically, manufacturing activity drives growth in other sectors of the economy. About one in six of all private-sector jobs depend on the manufacturing sector, and every dollar of sales of manufactured products generates $1.40 in output from other sectors, the highest of any industry.

    As manufacturing employment overall has dropped, the percentage of higher-wage, skilled industrial jobs has been climbing over the last decades, particularly in high-technology related fields Overall, according to EMSI data, the average American factory worker earned $73,000 in 2011, $20,000 more than the average job.

    Seattle is not alone in creating high-tech-oriented industrial jobs. Over the past two years Salt Lake City, Utah, which ranks third on our list, has seen significant growth in both electronics and aerospace employment, including a new Northrop Grumman facility. Firms connected to the medical device industry such as Biomerics are also expanding in the area.

    Manufacturing is also rebounding in Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, which ranks eighth on our list and No. 1 on our overall list of Best Big Cities For Jobs. Last year industrial employment in the Texas state capital area jumped 5%. Semiconductor firms are a big force, employing over 10,000 workers. Although more known for its high-tech electronics, Austin has also enjoyed an expansion in automobile-related employment as well as medical devices.

    Energy Capitals

    The largest grouping of manufacturing stars have emerged from the Texas-Oklahoma energy belt. With the shale drilling boom unlocking ample supplies of natural gas and lowering prices, petrochemical companies have undertaken major expansions. The rise in drilling and exploration has also sparked greater demand for industrial products such as pipes, drill rigs and other machinery. No surprise that the biggest backers of shale gas exploration are prominent CEOs of industrial firms. A recent study by PwC suggests that shale gas could lead to the development of 1 million industrial jobs.

    The shale drilling revolution is making an impact across the country, in places like North Dakota and Youngstown, Ohio, but the epicenter of this boom remains firmly in the oil patch. The Thunder you hear in Oklahoma City is not just on the basketball court — energy growth has propelled a 1,500 person jump in manufacturing employment, a 6.1% increase, with another 1,000 new jobs expected this year. Oklahoma City ranks second on our list.

    Other energy capitals are also thriving on the industrial front, including Houston (fourth place), San Antonio (seventh) and Ft. Worth-Arlington (ninth). Although energy is the main driver, manufacturing has been on the rise in a broad array of areas, including aerospace, biomedical and food processing. The surging export economy — Texas is easily the nation’s number one exporter — has further bolstered this growth.

    Rustbelt Rebounders

    The high-tech and energy economies may be fast-breaking in terms of industrial growth, but manufacturing’s comeback has put some new bounce in the step of many long forlorn parts of the nation’s “rustbelt.” Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, Mich., epitomizes this trend. Unlike Detroit, which has suffered mass disinvestment, this more suburban area a half hour drive away has become the epicenter of a new, more tech-oriented auto industry.

    The Warren-Troy area’s rich concentration of skilled tradespeople and industrial engineers has been described as America’s “automation alley.” It continues to attract high-industrial firms from abroad such as Brose, a German car parts manufacturer, which has recently announced a $60 million investment in the area. Even housing is on the rebound, with rents rising at the fourth highest clip in the country, just behind such standouts as San Francisco and Miami.

    Nor is the Midwest manufacturing rebound limited to Michigan. Over the past year sixth-ranked Cincinnati enjoyed 5.4% growth in industrial employment. Manufacturing growth was also strong in Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wisc., a center for the production of machine tools and other precision equipment that ranks 10th on our list.

    Who’s Falling Behind

    Of course not all regions have benefited from the industrial resurgence. For example, the nation’s largest industrial area, Los Angeles, ranks a miserable 49th. The area lost some 20% of its industrial jobs since 2006, and the losses continued over the past year. This goes a long way to explain the area’s continued underperformance before, during and, now, in the early days of recovery from the financial crisis.

    Some other large regions did even worse, including such one-time industrial powerhouses as Philadelphia (55th) and New York (59th). Some may argue that these, and other areas, which have been losing manufacturing jobs for decades, no longer need to engage in the messy business of making stuff. But that long fashionable way thinking may be outdated itself, as seen by the improving fortunes of our industrial top 10.

    Top Large Regions for Manufacturing Growth

    Rank Area 2012 Weighted INDEX 2011 Manuf. Employment (000s)
    1 Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA Metropolitan Division 81.2 164.3
    2 Oklahoma City, OK 74.8 33.6
    3 Salt Lake City, UT 74.7 55.1
    4 Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 74.6 229.8
    5 Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI Metropolitan Division 74.4 135.3
    6 Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 71.7 109.3
    7 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 70.3 46.3
    8 Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 69.3 50.9
    9 Fort Worth-Arlington, TX Metropolitan Division 68.3 89.1
    10 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI 67.9 118.5
    11 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 67.3 157.9
    12 Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 65.8 52.3
    13 Kansas City, MO 65.2 40.5
    14 Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA 64.7 31.8
    15 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 63.5 178.7
    16 Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach-Deerfield Beach, FL Metro. Division 63.1 27.1
    17 Bergen-Hudson-Passaic, NJ 62.8 63.3
    18 Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH 61.7 121.2
    19 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 61.1 110.0
    20 Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA Metropolitan Division 60.0 154.9
    21 Columbus, OH 58.0 65.2
    22 Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC 57.4 67.9
    23 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA NECTA Division 56.9 94.6
    24 Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI Metropolitan Division 55.8 72.9
    25 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 55.2 147.9
    26 Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL Metropolitan Division 54.4 322.4
    27 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT NECTA 54.1 57.0
    28 Pittsburgh, PA 53.3 87.8
    29 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 52.8 92.0
    30 Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX Metropolitan Division 52.8 167.4
    31 St. Louis, MO-IL 52.8 111.4
    32 Rochester, NY 51.7 61.1
    33 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 51.3 52.0
    34 Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO 51.0 61.2
    35 Nassau-Suffolk, NY Metropolitan Division 50.4 72.8
    36 Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA NECTA 48.8 51.8
    37 San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, CA Metropolitan Division 47.4 36.8
    38 New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 45.8 31.3
    39 Northern Virginia, VA 43.7 23.0
    40 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL 43.4 37.8
    41 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 43.3 60.0
    42 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 42.9 44.3
    43 Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ 42.9 112.3
    44 Oakland-Fremont-Hayward, CA Metropolitan Division 42.3 78.2
    45 Raleigh-Cary, NC 41.5 27.3
    46 Birmingham-Hoover, AL 39.7 35.2
    47 Louisville-Jefferson County, KY-IN 38.8 63.5
    48 Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 38.3 62.8
    49 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA Metropolitan Division 38.2 359.7
    50 Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 37.9 80.8
    51 Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 37.1 19.7
    52 Newark-Union, NJ-PA Metropolitan Division 35.2 68.8
    53 Jacksonville, FL 34.5 26.7
    54 Bethesda-Rockville-Frederick, MD Metropolitan Division 34.1 16.1
    55 Philadelphia City, PA 33.3 23.1
    56 West Palm Beach-Boca Raton-Boynton Beach, FL Metropolitan Division 32.4 15.0
    57 Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 31.9 32.5
    58 New York City, NY 30.9 73.3
    59 Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL Metropolitan Division 28.9 35.4
    60 Camden, NJ Metropolitan Division 27.5 36.2
    61 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metro. Division 27.1 33.6
    62 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 25.5 86.6
    63 Putnam-Rockland-Westchester, NY 24.8 24.6
    64 Edison-New Brunswick, NJ Metropolitan Division 24.3 58.2
    65 Richmond, VA 18.7 30.9

    The index is calculated using the same methodology as our Best Cities for Job Growth, but using only manufacturing employment in each region.

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

    Seattle waterfront photo by BigStockPhoto.com.

  • Populate or Perish?

    Many global population projections point to the current world population of roughly seven billion people peaking at around nine to ten billion in 2050, after which numbers will slowly decline. In the midst of this growth, Australia’s current population of 23 million is predicted to rise to around 30 or 35 million in the same period. This low growth outlook has been called ‘big Australia.’ We are kidding ourselves, aren’t we?

    ‘Populate or perish’ was a rallying cry of post-World War II Labor Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell as he sought to overcome domestic resistance to immigration. For Calwell, immigration was the key to quickly boosting Australia’s population numbers in the interests of economic and military security. An avowed supporter of the ‘white Australia policy’ he sought immigrants from European backgrounds. Asia was, back then, regarded as the enemy.



    Above: world populations since 1960. Below: Australia’s rate of population growth since 1960. Source: World Bank.

    How things change, yet stay the same. In 2012, it’s arguably just as much in Australia’s interests to boost its population numbers, in the interests of economic security and (according to some) military security also. And again, immigration – not an accelerated breeding program of naturalised Australians – is the only way this can realistically occur. As domestic industries increasingly surrender to global competition and as energy, agriculture and services industries increasingly depend on foreign markets for their long term survival, the issue of Australia’s relatively small population – despite its huge continental mass – raises little by way of public debate. A larger domestic population might provide markets for domestic industries, for local employment and for community wide infrastructure.

    In contrast the planning fraternity’s dreams of Parisian, London, or New York standards of public transport, for example, will never succeed. Our cities are simply too small to make this work.

    But talk of a ‘big Australia’ has become ‘persona non grata’ in public policy circles. We have a Federal Population Minister, but he hasn’t issued a single statement on population policy this year.  Our Prime Minister has other things on her mind, but even if her government was on more solid ground her antipathy to a ‘big Australia’ is well known and a matter of public record. And such is the apparent public hostility to the notion of a bigger population, intermixed as it is with a blend of doomsday environmentalism and references to failed Malthusian or Paul Ehlrich ‘Population Bomb’ scenarios and  myths (suggesting that Australia is running out of room and resources), that few political or public policy leaders want to take up the debate in favour of growth.

    With that in mind, I thought some very simple reality checks might prove helpful to stimulate your thinking about Australia’s population capacity relative to the rest of the world. Wendell Cox, author of the global housing affordability study ‘Demographia’ recently published his Demographia World Urban Areasreport with this summary on New Geography. I want to take just two examples and interpose them into the Australian context.

    First, let’s look at Los Angeles, California.  Often cited as a region with similarities to the Australian urban context (both in a positive and negative sense), this city popularly known for its ‘sprawl’ actually has a very high level of population density. The total population of the Greater Los Angeles area is around 15 million people. Put into context, that’s roughly two thirds of the entire population of Australia living in the Greater Los Angeles ‘sprawl.’


    Above: The greater Los Angeles area and below, the same area superimposed in south east Queensland.

    Put into a visual context, the contrast is even more apparent. At LA levels of population density, roughly the area we know of as south east Queensland could accommodate some 15 million people comfortably. Yet the conventional “wisdom” is that with just 3 million people it’s bursting at the seams and can’t possibly take any more

    A more extreme example, just to stretch the imagination further, is worth thinking about. Jakarta, Indonesia (our nearest large foreign neighbour) has a population of 26 million people. That’s more than the entire population of Australia, living in one (very crowded) city – at the rate of 9,400 people per square kilometre.

    Now, I’m not wishing that sort of urban density (and in large part, misery) on anyone in Australia, but the hypothetical comparison still applies, for the sake of discussion only. The footprint of greater urban Jakarta, home to 26 million people, easily fits within the boundary of south east Queensland.  In fact, it doesn’t even require the Gold or Sunshine Coasts to do it. Imagine this: the entire population of Australia, crammed as it would be into this super-compact urban footprint, and not a single soul living anywhere else on the entire continent?


    Above: Jakarta’s footprint and below, the same footprint – home to 26 million people – superimposed on south east Queensland.

    The argument that Australia is somehow incapable of supporting substantially larger population relies on a myth that we short of room. Nor can it rely on suggestions that we would exhaust our energy stocks (we are a net exporter and would remain so at much larger population numbers), nor our food production capacity (again, we are a net exporter and would remain so even with much higher levels of population). In fact, in terms of food production, a lack of domestic market scale poses a significant problem for producers. The efficiency gains of primary production (livestock to cropping) have outpaced the growth in population.

    There is an argument regularly raised that Australia has insufficient water supply to support much larger population numbers but this argument doesn’t hold water (sorry, couldn’t help that) either. What we do lack is water storage by way of dams, but the environmental lobby has vigorously opposed almost every proposed dam in the last 30 years whether for domestic supply, agriculture or hydro energy. The lack of water storage has been a policy decision made by successive governments for varying political reasons.   

    Think also for a moment how cities like Mexico City (population nearly 20 million people) or Cairo (population 18 million) or even countries like Morocco (population 32 million in 500,000 square kilometres on the edge of the Sahara compared with Australia’s 7.6 million square kilometres) manage for water? For Australia to claim it cannot support more people due to water limitations is a bit of joke.

    Above: arable land area in hectares per person. Australia is well ahead of the field.

    Infrastructure deficits are the other vexed issue raised by by those concerned with population growth. They have pointed out that infrastructure investment has not kept pace with population, and they’re right. The problem though is largely that strategic infrastructure investment in this country is something really only talked about. Instead, what typically happens is that billions are doled out on pet projects in marginal seats or designed to win over particular interest groups that some focus group or other suggests could hold the key to winning the next election. Politically motivated rail projects (especially in NSW), home insulation schemes, TV set box boxes, green energy schemes… the list of our nation’s capacity to waste vast sums quickly is pretty impressive. Our deficient national road network, our inadequate domestic water storage (in many areas), our looming potential energy problems (not just in price thanks to a carbon tax but also in terms of power generation shortages according to some experts) – the bigger and more strategic infrastructure priorities which would support growth seem to get the least attention. Witness the latest Federal Government budget. (Read what Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, among others critical of the budget, had to say here).

    So the capacity to fund and deliver strategic infrastructure isn’t the issue. Inept public policy is.

    Instead, do we have some other more deep seated aversion to a bigger population? And is this race based? Despite being a successful nation of immigrants (  are we fearful for our culture if we had more immigration? Environmental impacts are often publicly cited as the reason to oppose more people, but if the examples of Los Angeles or Jakarta are remembered, we could in theory house a great deal more people without encroaching on vast areas of natural terrain.

    Another big reason to reconsider objections to a ‘big Australia’ is the ticking clock on Australia’s ageing population. Even the Federal Government’s own ‘Tax Reform Roadmap’ released with the May budget warned that:  “The proportion of working age people is projected to fall markedly over the coming decades. Today there are about 4.8 people of traditional working age for every person aged 65 and over. This is expected to fall to around 4 people within the next 10 years and to around 2.7 people by 2050.”

    Australia’s current rate of population growth is hovering around 1.4%. We are just shy of 23 million people. We say we’re concerned about getting to 35 million by 2050, by which time the world population will have increased by 2 billion people. We know that our ageing population will struggle to be supported by a diminished workforce  and that we lack sufficient critical mass to sustain a variety of industries in the face of global competition. Yet we consistently refuse to confront the question of a larger population and the consequences of failing to have one.

    Ultimately even if we agree collectively to prefer to remain a small nation of less than 30 million, it’s a discussion we need to be having. Pretending the issue isn’t there won’t do anyone any good.

    Ross Elliott has more than 20 years experience in property and public policy. His past roles have included stints in urban economics, national and state roles with the Property Council, and in destination marketing. He has written extensively on a range of public policy issues centering around urban issues, and continues to maintain his recreational interest in public policy through ongoing contributions such as this or via his monthly blog The Pulse.

    Australia graphic by Bigstockphoto.com.

  • CNU20: New Urbanism’s Young Adult Angst

    Possibly the most earnest folks in the real estate development industry assembled for the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Congress of the New Urbanism in West Palm Beach, Florida this month. Among the excellent accomplishments of CNU20 attendees: a credible car/pedestrian strategy, some fine looking new communities, and perhaps best of all, a body of hard-won knowledge about town-making for citizen education.

    Officially, CNU20 was optimistic and confident, but an undercurrent of negativism marred the event. More than one New Urbanist questioned the validity of what by now should have been a transformative movement. But the imposition of form-based codes and regulations on city growth has become a stress point in the movement’s evolution.

    Three hundred communities now boast New Urbanist town planning, over a dozen communities have adopted form-based zoning, and urban design schools are teaching the New Urban principles all over the country, facts triumphed during the opening plenary session. Form-based zoning uses a hierarchy of increasingly dense districts with defined boundaries, rather than land-use (or Euclidian) zoning to regulate growth. These principles are exquisitely defined in a model code nicknamed the Smart Code, which defines street width and sidewalk width, and provides fine-grained guidance on the form of a building on a given lot. Participants in early work sessions were taught how to work the code, and walked the hot, humid streets of West Palm Beach to interpret its many nuances and subtleties.

    In 2003, Downtown West Palm Beach was redeveloped, and it should be a proud example of the earliest New Urban efforts. Instead, conference participants spoke of the result with open distaste. The main outdoor plaza features a noisy fountain, which a group of attorneys, architects, and land planners belittled as “a mini Bellagio”; a pale imitation of the huge Las Vegas hotel’s water feature. Andrés Duany, one of the founders of the CNU, stated during the conference that “much of the architecture of the downtown zone was junk.” The movement’s most flamboyant spokesman, James Howard Kunstler, cited the “cartoonish, low quality finish of the buildings” as a failure. The distance New Urbanists have put between themselves and one of their finest achievements is dismaying.

    When not complaining about West Palm Beach, many practitioners wandered the somewhat sparse exhibit hall of booths sponsored by municipalities, attorneys, and consultants. Conversations often hit notes of personal suffering. Few new communities of any scale are being funded, so just as the supply of highly trained New Urbanists has hit the market, demand has dwindled to a trickle of infill projects here and there. Morale at the ground level was quite low, given the effort New Urbanists have put forth.

    Pedestrian-based urban form is a science that New Urbanists can offer to every community, and it has been a win for them where it has been implemented. Our monocultural vehicular transport model of car-dominated cities has made people work hard to carve out social space. The New Urbanist critique of the aesthetics of transportation is right on target. Armed with plenty of real data about how pedestrian environments work, New Urbanists have succeeded at softening the city and allowing pedestrians to compete.

    New Urbanists can also point to successes in the real estate market. In one study session, three single-family residential New Urbanist communities were analyzed, and the developer’s financial models were revealed. Each of the three communities fared better than their competitive set through the 2008-2012 cycle, in terms of net present value, appraisals, and foreclosure rate. New Urbanists claimed credit for this, although the affluent demographics and in-town locations tilted the plate in their favor. Still, New Urbanists have created a strong model that works for a segment of the population.

    Perhaps New Urbanism’s most potent contributions are to the art and science of traditional town planning. A solid body of knowledge that is based upon beautiful real places— Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, to name just two — now informs much of the theory behind place-making. We Americans are notably unsentimental about our cities, tearing down landmarks and whole districts in the quest for efficiency and betterment. New Urbanists have made it fashionable once again to care about history and good design, and our cities are the better for it.

    The CNU’s 20th anniversary marks a curious point in the life of this laudable and lasting movement. Because there isn’t any new development occurring, government effortshave turned towards adding form-based code overlays to existing cities. Already, Miami and Philadelphia have passed these codes to regulate growth. Many other cities like Orlando operate a standard zoning code by ordinance, while enforcing a form-based code as well. Property owners, developers, and design teams must now satisfy the intricacies of two local codes, rather than one, to get a building permit.

    While de-regulation is a term on everyone’s lips, this quiet up-tick in regulation has occurred largely under the radar screen. Those pushing for form-based code are largely consultants, who argue that the code will make for a better city by protecting us from ourselves. Municipal officials are amenable to, it, too.Both groups see the job security it promises them. Developers see profit if their communities can boast adherence to a strict code that promises a better lifestyle.

    Developers would normally scream loudly at any new regulation, no matter how trivial, but they are passively allowing form-based code because of the effect it can have on their bottom lines.
    If these codes tend to increase cost, well, the financial investors don’t complain, because the more money that’s borrowed to complete these structures, the more interest income they earn. So — form-based codes benefit all the interest groups that advocate their implementation.

    At CNU20 we witnessed the coming of age of a new regulatory regime. Place-making, once an activity trusted to individual citizens, has become codified; a vision enforced by authorities and interpreted by high priests who have special training to understand how to make a proper city. Maybe we have so abused our power as individuals that we deserve to have this power taken away. Perhaps our city form is so ugly, and so dysfunctional, that we cannot rescue it without serious intervention.

    Or, perhaps not. The American Dream is not about freedom from sprawl, as suggested in the movement’s seminal manifesto, “Suburban Nation”. Rather, it’s about freedom to choose. New Urbanists might be able to provide this freedom within the confines of a new institution, the Smart Code, as long as the Smart Code produced good results. But if the critique at CNU20 of their own Downtown West Palm Beach is any indication, the Smart Code ain’t so smart after all.

    American town planning needs less regulation, not more. Let’s use CNU’s body of knowledge to educate citizens and provide a path forward, not with the manacles of a new code, but with the freedom to create a new urban form that suits the lifestyles of the 21st century.

    Flickr photo by Eric Alix Rogers, New Urban, in Six Corners, Chicago. New houses, all facing a common sidewalk, with garages on alleys behind. Off of Kilbourn, just south of Irving Park.

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

  • Facebook’s IPO Testifies to Silicon Valley’s Power but Does Little for Other Californians

    The  $104 billion Facebook IPO testifies to the still considerable innovative power of Silicon Valley, but the hoopla over the new wave of billionaires won’t change the basic reality of the state’s secular economic decline.

    This contradicts the accepted narrative in Sacramento. Over five years of below-par economic performance, the state’s political, media, and business leadership has counted on the Golden State’s creative genius to fund the way out of its dismal budgetary morass and an unemployment rate that’s the third highest in the nation. David Crane, Governor Schwarzenegger’s top economic adviser, for example, once told me that California could easily afford to give up blue-collar jobs in warehousing, manufacturing, or even business services because the state’s vaunted “creative economy” would find ways to replace the lost employment and income. California would always come out ahead, he said, because it represented “ground zero for creative destruction.”

    Schwarzenegger’s successor, Jerry Brown, and his economic team have been singing the same song, hoping, among other things, that the Facebook offering, and other internet IPOs, might bring in enough money to stave off the state’s massive, growing deficit, now estimated at more than $16 billion. Yet even as the new IPO wave has risen, California’s fiscal situation has worsened while state tax collections around the nation have begun to rise.

    Of course, Facebook’s public offering will help, but only so much. According to the legislative analyst’s office, the Facebook gusher should put an additional $1.5 billion into the state coffers this year, roughly one tenth of the state deficit, with perhaps another billion in the following few years. This constitutes a nice win, but barely enough to sustain the state even over the short—not to mention the long—run.

    The problem lies in large part in the nature of the economy epitomized by Facebook. Being based in cyberspace and driven entirely by software, such companies employ almost exclusively well-educated workers from the upper middle and upper classes. In the past “a booming tech economy created all kinds of jobs,” notes Russell Hancock, president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a key industry research group. “Now we only create these rarefied jobs.”

    As Hancock suggests, this contrasts with previous California booms. Back in the ’80s or even the ’90s, California’s tech booms were felt broadly in Orange and other Southern California counties and appeared to be moving inland to places like Sacramento. Anchored by its then dominant aerospace industry, Los Angeles remained a tech power on its own while enjoying employment from a burgeoning fashion industry, the nation’s dominant port and, of course, Hollywood. 

    In contrast, today’s job surge has been largely concentrated in a swath from San Francisco down to Sunnyvale. These firms create the kind of outrageous fortunes celebrated in the media, but their overall employment impact has not been enough to keep California even at parity with the rest of the country. Over the past decade, the state has created virtually no new STEM jobs (science, technology, engineering and math-related employment), while the U.S. experienced a 5.4 percent increase. Arch rival Texas enjoyed a STEM job gusher of 13.6 percent. More important still, mid-skill jobs grew only 2 percent, one third the rate nationally and roughly one fifth the expansion in the Lone Star State.

    Even the Bay Area itself has enjoyed less than stellar growth. Indeed, even now overall unemployment in the Valley remains at 9.3 percent, below the state average of more than 11 percent but higher than the national average. The Valley now boasts 12 percent fewer STEM jobs than in 2001; manufacturing, professional, and financial jobs also have shown losses. Overall, according to research by Pepperdine University economist Mike Shires, the region at the end of last year had 170,000 fewer overall than just a decade ago.

    Today’s Valley boom is also very limited geographically as well, with most of the prosperity concentrated in the Peninsula area, particularly around places like Mountain View (headquarters of Google), Menlo Park (headquarters of Facebook) and in pockets of San Francisco. Meanwhile, San Jose, which fancies itself “the capital of Silicon Valley,” faces the prospect of municipal bankruptcy, a fate increasingly common among cities across the state.

    The magnetic pull of the current tech boom is even weaker across the bay in the Oakland area, where unemployment scales to 14.7 percent. According to the recent rankings of job growth Shires and I did for Forbes, Oakland ranked 63rd out of the nation’s 65 largest metropolitan areas, placing between Cleveland and Detroit.

    Outside of San Diego, which has continued to gain jobs, the echoes of the tech “boom” are even fainter elsewhere in the state. Sacramento placed 60th in the job creation study, just behind Los Angeles, by far the largest region in the state. Former high-flier Riverside-San Bernardino ranked 50th, while the once booming “OC,” Orange County, could do no better than a mediocre 47th.

    These economies have also become technological laggards. According to a study on tech job creation by my colleague Mark Schill, greater Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Riverside-San Bernardino, three large regions, now rank  in the bottom third in tech growth. The Los Angeles area, once the global center of the aerospace industry, now has a lower percentage of jobs in tech-related fields than the national average.

    Beyond the big coastal cities, in places few reporters and fewer venture capitalists travel to, things are often worse. Fresno, Modesto, and Merced have among the weakest employment numbers in the nation. They may be partying in Palo Alto, but things are becoming increasingly Steinbeckian just 50 miles inland.

    This is happening even as there has been an ominous decline in the overall quality of California’s talent pool. For residents over age 65, the state ranks 2nd in percentage of people with an AA degree or higher, but among workers 25 to 34 it falls to 30th. Even worse, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress, California eighth graders now rank 47th in science-related skills, ahead only of Mississippi, Alabama, and the District of Columbia.

    None of this seriously affects the new wave of Valley firms. A Google, Apple or Facebook can cream the top not only of the California workforce, but the most gifted drawn from around the world. The old Valley depended on engineers and technicians cranked out in unheralded places like San Jose State and the junior colleges; the new Valley simply mines Stanford, CalTech, Harvard and MIT for its most critical raw material.

    This reflects the contradiction inherent in California’s emerging economy.  High-end, massively financed tech firms like Facebook can endure the Golden State’s weak general education, insanely tough regulations, high energy costs, and rising tax rates. Silicon Valley software firms generally tend to support, or certainly don’t oppose, the draconian energy, land use, and other state regulations widely opposed by other, less ethereal industries.

    The main reason: costs cannot be so well sustained outside the favored zones. This explains why people are not flocking in large numbers to California anymore. Last year, according to IRS data, California ranked 50th ahead of only Michigan–for rate of in-migration. So as the most gifted young nerds cluster around Palo Alto, middle-class families leave; between 2000 and 2009, 1.5 million more domestic migrants left the state than came. Even the Bay Area–the epicenter of the boom—has been losing 50,000 domestic migrants a year, due to unsustainably high housing prices and a narrower range of employment options for all but the best educated.

    Many of these people–and companies—are moving to places that are far less attractive in terms of climate or culture, such as Utah, Texas, or even Oklahoma. The migrants may miss the beach or the temperate climate but reap huge benefits from lower home prices, lower taxes, and much better business environments. 

    Of course, any state would welcome the windfall that is coming from Facebook and other dot.com phenomena. But the celebration over IPOs and rich payouts obscures the greater danger that threatens the future of the Golden State. The current boom demonstrates that Californians can no longer count on the prosperity of a few as the harbinger of better things for the rest of us. Instead Californians now inhabit, as a recent Public Policy Institute of California study    suggests, a society that is increasingly class divided, far more so than the national average.

    Ultimately, one should not expect Facebook, or any company, to solve these vast problems. To expect this tech wave to reverse California’s decline is nothing short of delusional. 

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

    This piece originally appeared in The Daily Beast.

    Facebook photo by BigStockPhoto.com.