New Geography

Blog

  • Replicating Bourbon Street

    Editor’s note: following is an excerpt from Tulane University geographer Richard Campanella’s new book, “Bourbon Street: A History” (LSU Press, 2014), which traces New Orleans’ most famous and infamous space from its obscure colonial origins to its widespread reknown today. This chapter, titled “Replicating Bourbon Street: Spatial and Linguistic Diffusion” and drawn from a section called “Bourbon Street as a Social Artifact,” recounts how this brand has spread worldwide and become part of the language—to both the benefit and chagrin of New Orleans.

    Perhaps the best evidence of Bourbon Street’s success is the fact that, like jazz, it has diffused worldwide. It’s a claim few other streets can make. As early as the 1950s, a nightclub named “Bourbon Street” operated in New York City, and apparently successfully, because in 1957 the Dupont family formed a corporation to purchase it with plans to bring “Mambo City” entertainment to clubs named Bourbon Street in Miami and Chicago.1 Today, at least 160 businesses throughout the United States and Canada have “Bourbon Street” in their names and themes; 77 percent are restaurants, bars, and clubs; 11 percent are retailers (mostly of party and novelty items); and the remainder are caterers, banquet halls, hotels, and casinos—more eating, drinking, and entertaining. They span coast to coast, from Key West to Edmonton and from San Diego to Montreal. Greater New York has eleven, while Calgary has six, as does San Antonio (mostly near the River Walk, “the Bourbon Street of San Antonio”). Greater Toronto has sixteen, most of them franchises of the Innovated Restaurant Group’s “Bourbon St. Grill” chain—including one on Yonge Street, which has been described as “the Bourbon Street of Toronto.” There are also Bourbon-named restaurants, bars, and clubs in London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Naples, Moscow, Tokyo, Shanghai, Dubai, and many other world cities. These replicas enthusiastically embrace Bourbon Street imagery and material culture (lampposts, balconies, Mardi Gras jesters, beads) in their signage, décor, and Web sites. Menus attempt to deliver the spice and zest deemed intrinsic to this perceptual package, as does the atmospheric music. How convincingly do these meta-Bourbons replicate the original? A review of one such venue in Amsterdam (“the New Orleans of Europe”) could easily apply to the actual street:

    [T]he jovial Bourbon Street Jazz and Blues Club…attracts a casual, jean-clad crowd of all ages [dancing to] cover bands with a pop flavor [or] blues rhythms. Three glass chandeliers hanging over the bar provide an incongruous dash of glamour to an otherwise low-key and comfortable scruffy décor.2

    In this spatial dissemination we see a trend: while local replication of the Bourbon Street phenomenon usually takes the form of competition tinged with contempt (witness the “anti-Bourbons”), external replicas of Bourbon Street view themselves as payers of homage to the “authentic” original, and modestly present themselves as the next best thing without the airfare. No licenses are needed in replicating Bourbon Street; there are no copyrights, trademarks, or royalties due. The name, phenomenon, and imagery are all in the public domain, a valuable vernacular brand free for anyone to appropriate. Try doing that to The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Presented by Shell and you’d have a lawsuit on your hands.

    Bourbon is also among the few streets to be replicated structurally—by the State of Louisiana, which sponsored a three-acre exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, New York. It featured all the standard architectural tropes of the French Quarter topped off with a huge arch emblazoned LOUISIANA’S BOURBON STREET accompanied by towering Carnival royalty. In typical Louisiana fair tradition, however, the exhibit experienced construction delays and filed for bankruptcy, which caused the state to wash its hands of the fiasco and officially change the name of the exhibit to “Bourbon Street.” “The so-called Louisiana area in its present condition,” state officials solemnly proclaimed, “reflects discredit upon the State of Louisiana, its culture, heritage and people.” Wags pointed out that this was pretty much what locals thought of the original Bourbon Street. But unlike the original, a corporate entity named Pavilion Properties, Inc. took over the exhibit, and after removing all references to Louisiana and spiffing up the props, it managed the Creole food booths, Dixieland trios, sketch artists, organ grinders, street performers, and nightclubs (including the popular “Gay New Orleans”) for the remainder of the fair. Also unlike the original, Pavilion Properties’ exhibit, just like the state’s attempt, failed commercially and also filed for bankruptcy. Nevertheless, it introduced a generation of New Yorkers to the Bourbon Street brand.3

    At the opposite end of the country two years later, another private-sector entity built a “New Orleans Square” at Disneyland. Based on field research conducted in the French Quarter by Walt Disney himself plus a staff of artists in 1965, the $13.5 million West Coast replica (nearly the cost of the Louisiana Purchase, Disney joked) eschewed the Bourbon moniker, presumably not to scare off parents, but nevertheless incorporated everything that worked on the real Bourbon Street minus the breasts and booze. Disney later replicated New Orleans Square at its Adventureland in Tokyo (1983), which may partly explain the popularity of the real New Orleans with Japanese visitors today. It did not, however, build a New Orleans Square at Disneyland Paris (Euro Disney) when it opened in 1992.4

    Bourbon Street has also been thematically and structurally referenced in countless shopping malls, amusement parks, casinos, cruise ship parties, festivals, convention banquets, and wedding receptions, not to mention on film and theatrical sets and in computer animation for movies like The Princess and the Frog. “Bourbon Street” as an adjective has found its way onto menus, usually for spicy dishes, and into household décor, generally to describe old-world filigree inspired by the iron-lace balconies. It’s a case study of cultural diffusion which serves as free worldwide advertising for the original, across various media forms and demographic cohorts, all with zero encouragement and oversight from Bourbonites. Now that’s success.

    Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it also produces competition. Once there was a time when the forbidden pleasures available on Bourbon Street were in high demand and low supply nationwide, particularly in the South. That made Bourbon Street valuable. Today the nation is a whole lot less judgmental about pleasure and much better supplied with comparable pleasure districts. A visit to Galveston’s The Strand, St. Louis’ Soulard, and Mobile’s Dauphine Street, all of which have adopted Bourbon-style Mardi Gras, may satisfy many people’s desire for the escapism that Bourbon Street once monopolized. Even just a few blocks away in downtown New Orleans, Harrah’s has quietly overseen the creation of a Bourbon alternative on the Fulton Street Mall, complete with outdoor dining, festival space, and a growing inventory of venues, all adjacent to the corporation’s hotel and casino. Might such meta-Bourbons erode the market share of the original, in the same way that regional casinos have chipped away at Las Vegas’ domination? Bourbonites would be ill-advised to rely on their fame; better to experiment with innovations, rediscover what worked in the past, and tame that which damages. That said, The Street does have certain inherent advantages: it’s bigger and longer than the competition; it’s embedded into the world-famous French Quarter and enjoys a symbiotic relationship with its tourism industry; and perhaps most importantly, it boasts that intimate historical streetscape and centuries-old civic reputation that infuses in visitors a certain credibility—shall we call it authenticity?—in a way unmatched by places like Las Vegas. On a dark note, Bourbon is also disturbingly vulnerable to accidental or intentional trauma, such as a balcony collapse, crowd stampede, or terrorist bombing, which, in addition to the human toll, could poison The Street’s allure for years. Bourbon, in short, has bright prospects and a record of widespread economic and cultural influence, but should not take its fame and success for granted.

    Speaking of cultural influence, Bourbon Street has entered the language of American English, which, curiously, does not have a perfect word for the Bourbon Street phenomenon. Shall we call it an adult entertainment area? A cluster? A strip? A pedestrian mall? A tenderloin, red-light, or vice district? All are awkward, some are imprecise, and none are perfect. The linguistic lacuna is particularly perplexing because nearly every city since Sybaris has developed such spaces.

    To fill the gap, some speakers convert common nouns into proper toponyms; examples include Las Vegas’ The Strip, Baltimore’s The Block, and historic New Orleans’ The Swamp or The Line. Others craft “antonamasias,” which, in rhetoric, are attempts to describe the characteristics of a new phenomenon by invoking the name of a comparable known entity, e.g., “the Paris of…,” “the Barbary Coast of…,” “the Greenwich Village of….”5 The antonamasia “the Bourbon Street of….” is among the most popular ways for Americans to refer efficiently and effectively to pedestrian-scale drinking, eating, and entertainment districts. It’s exceedingly common to hear 6th Street, for example, described as the Bourbon Street of Austin. Ybor City is routinely characterized as the Bourbon Street of Tampa, as is Carson Street of Pittsburgh, and Duval Street of Key West (or of the entire Caribbean). Beale Street was completely redeveloped by a real estate corporation in the 1980s from a boarded-up eyesore to become, inevitably, the Bourbon Street of Memphis. A review of 67 published articles since 1986, plus over 300 Internet sources, showed that at least eighty social spaces worldwide have been described as “the Bourbon Street of” their respective communities. They span from Hamburg’s Reeperbahn to Bangkok’s Patpong; from Spain’s Pamplona during the Running of the Bulls to Las Ramblas in Barcelona, from Quay Street in Galway to Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong. They are not always urban; sometimes the phrase it used for frisky beaches at vacation destinations, for boating coves (most notoriously in Lake of the Ozarks, a popular rendezvous for nudity and inebriation), or the Mall of America in Minneapolis, the entire town of Hyannis (“the Bourbon Street of the Cape”) or the city of Ogden (“the Bourbon Street of Utah,” historically). Some use it as a warning (“Let’s not turn the Underground into the Bourbon Street of Atlanta”) or as an ambition (“the big goal is for the Mill Avenue District to become the Bourbon Street of the Southwest”). The phrase even found a home in its own backyard; a travel writer called “Jackson Square…the Bourbon Street of daytime New Orleans,” and the Times-Picayune dubbed the Fulton Street Mall as “the Bourbon Street of the [1984] world’s fair.” Some uses emphasize the spatial clustering over the piquant aspect (“Canyon Road [is] the Bourbon Street of Santa Fe’s art scene”); others do the exact opposite: “USA Network [is] the Bourbon Street of basic cable;” “Louisiana Fried Chicken [is] the Bourbon Street of chicken.”6

    One would be hard-pressed to think of another street so richly representational. The very matriculation of a street to metaphor status is fairly rare. To be sure, we speak of Wall Street to mean corporate power, Madison Avenue to mean marketing, and Broadway for theater, but as we go further down the list, we find fewer linguistic uses and users. Bourbon Street is one of the American English language’s handiest and most evocative place metaphors, a testament to The Street’s widespread renown and iconic resonance.

    Richard Campanella, a geographer with the Tulane School of Architecture, is the author of Bienville’s Dilemma, Geographies of New Orleans, Lincoln in New Orleans, and Bourbon Street: A History (LSU Press, 2014), from which this article was excerpted. Please see the book for sources. Campanella may be reached through http://richcampanella.com or rcampane@tulane.edu ; and followed on Twitter at @nolacampanella.

    1 “Dupont Dough Backs Murphy,” Billboard, December 2, 1957, p. 19.

    2 Corinne LaBalme, “Night Moves of All Kinds: The Club Scene in Seven Cities—Amsterdam,” The New York Times, September 17, 2000.

    3 Francis Stilley, “Visitors to World’s Fair Will ‘Ride Magic Carpet,’ Times-Picayune, April 15, 1964; “Hot Flashes,” Times-Picayune, May 31, 1964, p. 37; Charles M. Hargroder, “Governor, Firm Announce Plant,” Times-Picayune, June 17, 1964, pp. 1-16; Richard Phalon, “Bourbon Street Operator at Fair Is 11th Bankrupt Exhibitor,” New York Times, February 5, 1965, p. 32.

    4 “Disneyland N.O. Replica, Aim,” Times-Picayune, April 11, 1965, p. 17.

    5 I thank sociolinguist Christina Schoux Casey for informing me of this obscure but useful term.

    6 Research by author using hundreds of news and online sources, 1986-present, searched throughout 2012.

  • Watch Chicago’s Middle Class Vanish Before Your Very Eyes

    Note: I owe both the concept for this measurement of income segregation and much of the actual data – all of it, except for 2012 – to Sean Reardon andKendra Bischoff, who wrote a series of wonderful papers on the subject and then were kind enough to send me a spreadsheet of their data from Chicago a while ago. The maps, however, are mine, as is all the data from 2012, and any mistakes in them or in the interpretation of the data is entirely my responsibility.

    I think one reason I’ve felt less than compelled by Chicagoland, CNN’s reasonably well-made documentary series, is that its tale-of-two-cities narrative is so worn, so often repeated, that it’s become a little dull. Not the actual fact of inequality – which only seems to cut deeper over time – but its retelling.

    In fact, I think the point has long passed at which simply repeating the story of Chicago’s stratification is equivalent to fighting it. For a lot of people, in my experience, it’s the opposite: an opportunity for distancing, for washing of hands. It’s a ritual in which we tell each other that this is the way it’s always been – The Gold Coast and the Slum was written about already well-entrenched institutions, after all, over three-quarters of a century ago – that these facts somehow seep out of the ground here, as much a part of the city as the lake, and that as a result there’s really nothing we can do about it.

    But this obscures much more than it clarifies. Inequality has always been a part of Chicago – as it has always been a part of the United States, and a part of humanity – but the forms it has taken, and the severity of those many forms, have changed in truly dramatic ways. Take, for example, today’s monolithic segregation of African Americans: at the turn of the last century, black Chicagoans were less segregated than Italians, and not because Italians were then hyper-segregated.

    Moreover, decisions made by people in the city have played, and continue to play, a huge role in determining what those changes look like. Had Elizabeth Wood received any serious support from white residents or their elected representatives – instead of meeting Klan-like violent resistance – the history of racial integration, economic integration, and public housing in this city would be very, very different. This isn’t to say that national and global factors aren’t important, since they obviously are. But neither do we lack responsibility.

    Anyway, this is all by way of introducing the following maps: their goal is not merely to depress you (you’re welcome!), but to suggest just how dramatically the reality of Chicago’s “two cities” has changed over the last few generations, how non-eternal its present state is, and that a happier alternate reality isn’t just possible, but actually existed relatively recently.

    I feel relatively comfortable telling the story of how Chicago came to be so segregated by race; I’m much humbler about my ability to explain this, except inasmuch as the ever-widening ghetto of the affluent could not exist without, yes, radically exclusionary housing laws, and I will take that up separately in another post. In the meanwhile, I’ll take a page from Ta-Nehisi Coates and ask you all, if you have some background in this, to talk to me like I’m stupid: what does the literature say about growing economic segregation? Who and what should I be reading?

    One last piece: the obvious and immediate reaction to these maps is to see them as a direct consequence of rising income inequality. There is some truth to that, but the researchers from which much of this data came have already discovered that income segregation has actually risen faster than inequality. So that’s not the end of the story.

    Anyway, here you go: the disappearance of Chicago’s middle-class and mixed-income neighborhoods since 1970, measured by each Census tract’s median family income as a percentage of the median family income for the Chicago metropolitan region as a whole.

    Seg70aSeg80a

     

    Seg90aSeg00aSeg07aSeg12a

     

    IncSegGIF


    This piece first appeared at Daniel’s blog City Notes.

  • Growing Traffic Threatens Sydney

    In the "letter of the week" in The North Shore Times, Save Our Suburbs President Tony Recsei decries the rising traffic congestion that is occurring in Sydney from the densification policies. Urban planners had misled residents into believing that higher population densities would reduce traffic congestion as more people shifted to mass transit. Recsei notes that "While in higher densities, a slightly higher proportion of people use public transport, this is completely overwhelmed by the greater number now in the area who still have to use their cars for all sorts of reasons." With an understandable pride typical of Sydneysiders, Recsei asks "Why should policies be allowed to transform beautiful Sydney into just another overcrowded city in the world?"

    Why indeed. There are two overwhelming outcomes that are shared by cities that have climbed on the urban containment bandwagon: (1) destruction of housing affordability and (2) severely intensified traffic congestion. Sydney suffers from a particularly acute strain of the disease. The land rationing of urban containment policy has house affordability to a severely unaffordable level. Sydney’s traffic congestion has also become among the worst in the world. Of course things could be worse. Vancouver, with an urban planning regime to which some Sydney leaders and planners aspire, is even worse in both categories.

    Note: Tony Recsei is also a newgeography.com author (an example is Predictable Political Punditry Down Under).

  • High Frequency Trading Is Not Fast Enough

    A new book by the original yellow journalist of Wall Street, Michael Lewis, initiated global coverage about the flaws of American capitalism. The culprit in Lewis’ new book is High Frequency Trading or “HFT.” There is no doubt that US capital markets are imperfect. New York Times DealBook writer Andrew Sorkin lays the blame at the feet of the stock exchanges of which there are so few remaining that the Federal Trade Commission could label them a monopoly.

    Even defenders of HFT, like Tim Worstall at Forbes, have to admit that it has risks and problems. It pushes volatility when markets are under stress; programming errors and misuse of software packages have been known to bankrupt the trading companies. The argument in favor of HFT fails when its proponents bring in “free market” economic theories – primarily because the stock market is not “free” in any economic sense. There are a limited number of big players – 5 banks in the US control 85-95% of trading depending on which market you measure. That is still more like an oligopoly than a competitive market. There are barriers to entry set up by the SEC, the FRB, and state banking and securities commissions. Finally, the transaction costs are enormous. Anyone active in the market knows about trading commissions and management fees. DTCC took in over $1 billion in revenue in 2012 (latest available) and still lost over $25 million. You get the picture – there is no free market argument.

    The programs used for high frequency trading are bastardizations of heat transfer dynamic equations. Those underlying equations are based on assumptions. First, they only hold true when time goes to infinity – but trades are executed in finite time. Next, they assume linear behavior – but markets are more like waves than straight lines. Finally, those equations require simultaneity of action. No matter how close the servers are located to the exchange, the computers are not fast enough to read the prices in one market and execute a trade in the next without some lag which violates the assumption. Richard Bookstaber called it A Demon of Our Own Design (Wiley, 2007). The university whiz-kids who built the programs knew they were violating the assumptions but they were under pressure from their Wall Street bosses so they decided to take the money and run the programs – warts and all.

    Trading programs treat capital markets as if one security is indistinguishable from the next – and that defeats the purpose of having capital markets at all. The reason we have these markets is so that entrepreneurs can access capital to fund new opportunities. Instead of letting computer programs decide which stock has the best opportunity for a price change, investors should be deciding which business has the best opportunity for success. The funded opportunities create jobs that pay income to households who turn around and put some of those earnings into savings. Lots of little savings accumulate into a pool of loanable funds that become available to other businesses to fund other opportunities to create more jobs, etc., etc. The goal of high frequency trading is to make money – at any cost. And the cost is the ability of capital markets to serve their primary purpose.

  • America’s New Brainpower Cities

    Brainpower rankings usually identify the usual suspects: college towns like Boston, Washington, D.C.,  and the San Francisco Bay area. And to be sure, these places generally have the highest per capita education levels. However, it’s worthwhile to look at the metro areas that are gaining college graduates most rapidly; this is an indicator of momentum that is likely to carry over into the future.

    To determine where college graduates are settling, demographer Wendell Cox analyzed the change in the number of holders of bachelor’s degrees and above between 2007 and 2012 in the 51 metropolitan statistical areas with over a million people (all saw gains). For the most part, the fastest-growing brain hubs are in the South and Intermountain West (which excludes the states on the Pacific Coast). Some of these places are usually not associated with the highest levels of academic achievement, and for the most, they still lag the national average in college graduation rates.

    But times are changing, and educated people are increasingly heading to these metro areas, notably in the South, were job growth has been robust and the cost of living is far lower than in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York or Los Angeles. This includes New Orleans, which ties for first place on our list with San Antonio. The New Orleans metro area’s population of college graduates grew by 44,000 from 2007 to 2012, a 20.3% increase, nearly double the national average of 10.9%. (The percentage of college grads in the U.S. stood at 19.4% in 2012, up from 18% in 2007.)

    New Orleans’ story, of course, is unique; the jump certainly is partly due to the return of evacuees to the city after Katrina, and some scoff that the region is destined to return to its historical pattern of exporting its educated young. But right now the American Community Survey data seems to indicate otherwise, as does the decision in recent years by numerous technology, videogame and media businesses to establish operations in the metro area, including General Electric, Paris-based Gameloft and the satellite communications company Globalstar, which in 2010 moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Covington, a prosperous suburb of the Crescent City.

    What is happening in New Orleans, where I have worked as a consultant, is unique, but it also follows a broader pattern that we see in other areas. Unable to afford to settle long-term in traditional “brain centers,” educated people are increasingly looking for places that have strong economies but also many of the cultural and natural amenities associated with the traditional meccas for the educated. With housing prices that are half to a third of Silicon Valley or San Francisco, New Orleans offered educated workers, particularly younger ones, many of the things they look for, but at an affordable cost.

    “For $65,000 a year in San Francisco you get a shared apartment and no car,” says long-time New Orleans tech entrepreneur Chris Reed. ”Here, you get great restaurants and clubs, and you get to have a car and your own nice apartment. It’s a no-brainer.”

    Other cities with some of the same characteristics are also winning in the race to bring in more educated workers. Nowhere is this more true than in Texas, which is home to four of the top 12 metro areas on our list. Tops is co-first place San Antonio, which had a net gain of 76,000 college-educated people since 2007, or 20.3%.

    Like New Orleans, the San Antonio area has traditionally lagged behind in attracting educated people; nearly one resident in six does not have a high school diploma. But the old Texas town also has many amenities that appeal to educated workers, notably great food and a good nightlife scene. In addition, it boasts one of the fastest-growing regional economies in the country, with expanding tech and energy businesses, something that may have a particular appeal in this still weak recovery.

    “When the buzz starts … and hipsters start to get wise to the neighborhood assets that are here, once the hipsters get wind of it – you’ll have to beat them away with a stick,” says economic geographer Jim Russell.

    Austin places third, which should come as no surprise — the area is home to the main campus of the University of Texas, boasts a thriving music scene and a strong technology infrastructure. Nor should the rapid growth of educated residents in sixth-ranked Houston, up 16% since 2007, which also enjoys low costs, an increasingly attractive cultural scene and one of the fastest growing hubs of dense urban living in the country. Dallas, also a fast-growing area, lands in 12th place on our list, boosting its college graduate population by 13%, or 175,000.

    One of the more surprising metro areas in our top 10 is fifth place Louisville, Ky.-Ind. The home of Humana, it has a thriving health care sector, and also is strong in the food industry and logistics. It has seen a 16.2% increase in the number of educated residents.

    Strong growth has also occurred in the Intermountain West, led by Denver (seventh) and Salt Lake City (eighth). Both areas have been beneficiaries of the migration of people and companies from California. This may also explain the growth of 11th place Phoenix, an area that has made remarkable strides since the disastrous days of the housing bust and is once again attracting migrants in larger numbers than any large metro area outside Texas.

    So if these areas are leading the race to capture “talent,” who is lagging behind? Not surprising at the bottom of the list are a series of Rust Belt cities with relatively weak economies, led by last place Detroit, where the number of college-educated residents rose 4.1%. Its followed by Providence,  Cleveland and Cincinnati.

    Boston, long styled as the “Athens” of America, ranks 47th on our list. Over the past five years Boston has gained some 98,000 college educated people, an increase of 7.2%, well below the national average. Beantown, of course, can always claim it has the highest “quality” brains but even in terms of percentage gains of people with graduate degrees it ranks only 41st .

    The data show the universe of educated people is not becoming more “spiky” as some suggest, but is spreading out. This is true not only in terms of percentage growth, but in absolute numbers. Since 2007, for example, the Houston and Dallas metro areas have added more BAs than San Francisco-Oakland, and nearly twice as many as Boston. As a result, these and other such cities are gaining a critical mass in brainpower not widely recognized in the Eastern-dominated media.

    At very least, we can say that the conventional wisdom favoring the traditional “brain” cities seems flawed. There will always be areas with more educated people per capita than others, if for no other reason than historical inertia and lack of migration, particularly among the less educated. But the clear pattern now is for brainpower, like population and jobs, to continue dispersing, largely to the South, the Southeast and the Intermountain West, with ramifications that will be felt in the economy in the decades ahead.

    Educational Attainment: BAs & Higher
    Corrected (2015-05-07)
    Major Metropolitan Area 2007 2012 Change Change % Rank
    Atlanta, GA    1,151,723     1,243,122       91,399 7.9% 45
    Austin, TX       382,119        477,058       94,939 24.8% 3
    Baltimore, MD       589,874        677,837       87,963 14.9% 14
    Birmingham, AL       187,094        214,201       27,107 14.5% 17
    Boston, MA-NH    1,271,193     1,369,597       98,404 7.7% 47
    Buffalo, NY       207,907        231,718       23,811 11.5% 34
    Charlotte, NC-SC       348,923        401,116       52,193 15.0% 13
    Chicago, IL-IN-WI    1,984,496     2,190,424     205,928 10.4% 40
    Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN       393,076        419,714       26,638 6.8% 48
    Cleveland, OH       380,479        405,731       25,252 6.6% 49
    Columbus, OH       367,811        419,136       51,325 14.0% 20
    Dallas-Fort Worth, TX    1,155,069     1,330,312     175,243 15.2% 12
    Denver, CO       595,437        708,325     112,888 19.0% 6
    Detroit,  MI       786,153        819,347       33,194 4.2% 51
    Hartford, CT       276,002        305,100       29,098 10.5% 39
    Houston, TX       972,615     1,157,627     185,012 19.0% 6
    Indianapolis. IN       333,079        377,189       44,110 13.2% 24
    Jacksonville, FL       221,907        258,893       36,986 16.7% 9
    Kansas City, MO-KS       410,109        460,391       50,282 12.3% 32
    Las Vegas, NV       257,886        293,001       35,115 13.6% 23
    Los Angeles, CA    2,458,215     2,720,654     262,439 10.7% 36
    Louisville, KY-IN       195,760        233,566       37,806 19.3% 5
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR       197,292        222,813       25,521 12.9% 26
    Miami, FL    1,058,815     1,186,398     127,583 12.0% 33
    Milwaukee,WI       308,214        337,253       29,039 9.4% 42
    Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI       774,669        881,581     106,912 13.8% 21
    Nashville, TN       287,154        355,630       68,476 23.8% 4
    New Orleans. LA       172,965        216,970       44,005 25.4% 1
    New York, NY-NJ-PA    4,433,180     4,836,321     403,141 9.1% 43
    Oklahoma City, OK       210,720        237,329       26,609 12.6% 28
    Orlando, FL       379,636        409,263       29,627 7.8% 46
    Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD    1,204,380     1,377,684     173,304 14.4% 18
    Phoenix, AZ       709,284        818,434     109,150 15.4% 11
    Pittsburgh, PA       456,717        513,838       57,121 12.5% 30
    Portland, OR-WA       479,207        549,825       70,618 14.7% 16
    Providence, RI-MA       301,591        320,262       18,671 6.2% 50
    Raleigh, NC       278,754        324,318       45,564 16.3% 10
    Richmond, VA       244,277        280,650       36,373 14.9% 14
    Riverside-San Bernardino, CA       469,381        519,680       50,299 10.7% 36
    Rochester, NY       205,014        226,912       21,898 10.7% 36
    Sacramento, CA       403,140        435,485       32,345 8.0% 44
    Salt Lake City, UT       193,167        229,140       35,973 18.6% 8
    San Antonio, TX       300,114        376,445       76,331 25.4% 1
    San Diego, CA       631,996        722,819       90,823 14.4% 18
    San Francisco-Oakland, CA    1,251,139     1,414,393     163,254 13.0% 25
    San Jose, CA       527,167        592,703       65,536 12.4% 31
    Seattle, WA       814,902        918,119     103,217 12.7% 27
    St. Louis,, MO-IL       521,047        586,547       65,500 12.6% 28
    Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL       496,826        544,121       47,295 9.5% 41
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC       284,924        317,741       32,817 11.5% 34
    Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV    1,658,902     1,885,862     226,960 13.7% 22
    Total  34,181,501   38,352,595  4,171,094 12.2%
    Outside MMSAs  20,152,010   22,389,927  2,237,917 11.1%
    United States  54,333,511   60,742,522  6,409,011 11.8%

     

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

    Graduation image by BigStockPhoto.com.

  • Leadership and the Challenge of Making a City Visible

    Cities of varying sizes struggle with two related, but seemingly opposing, global and local forces. At one level, every city would like to benefit from the global flow of capital and the emerging landscapes of prosperity seen in “other” places. At another level, to be a recipient of such attention, a city has to offer something more than cheaper real estate and tax benefits.

    What cities need is a sense of uniqueness; something that separates them from other cities. Without uniqueness, a city can easily be made invisible in a world of cities. In other words, without defining the “local,” there is no “global.” Here is where identifying a coherent message about a place, based on its identity, becomes crucial. One of the major challenges facing many cities, small and large, is how to make themselves visible, and how to identify, activate, and communicate their place identity – their brand – through actions.

    The challenge of urban branding is that cities are not commodities. As such, urban branding is not the same as product or corporate-style branding. Cities are much more complex and contain multiple identity narratives; whatever the business and leadership says, there are other local voices that may challenge the accepted “script”. In fact, while city marketing may focus mainly on attracting capital through economic development and tourism, urban branding needs to move beyond the simply utilitarian, and consider   memories, urban experiences, and quality of life issues that affect those who live in a city. A brand does not exist outside the reality of a city. It is not an imported idea. It is an internally generated identity, rooted in the history and assets of a city.

    Catchy phrases, logos, shiny booklets, invented cultural events, or the latest urban design schemes are not the answer. Copying tactics from other cities won’t make a city recognizable; it will make it less visible and less unique. The challenge is, then, to ask what assets a city has that others do not possess; which of these assets can be seen as a city’s mark of achievement or recognizable characteristics; and how does one activate, elevate and sustain those characteristics?

    This search necessarily starts with residents, who are best suited to answer the first question. And who can respond to the second question better than the collective leadership of a city, including its public and private sectors? Leadership needs to be inclusive of all stakeholder groups, as should the voice of the residents, which must include gender, race, class, and age differences.

    At every step of the way, from collecting the diverse narratives to formulating and activating a brand, leadership and inclusive governance play central roles. But who are the leaders? As Robin Hambleton suggested at a recent Urban Studies Lecture at University of Washington Tacoma, leadership does not exclusively translate to political leaders, and governance is not the same as government. He identified four categories of leaders: political, managerial/professional, community, and business. He was careful to distinguish between predatory businesses that are typically place-less and care little about the future of a city, and producer businesses that are typically rooted and place-bound. His fourth category of leaders came from the latter and not the former group of businesses.

    Based on his international observation of various cities, many of which suffered a post-industrial condition (e.g. Malmo, Sweden and Melbourne, Australia) the convergence and collaboration of the four leadership categories created an innovation zone that allowed them to turn their cities around and adopt a way forward. The example of Freiburg in Germany, a city of slightly larger than 200,000 residents, is instructive. With the persistence of the Green political party, the mayor, community activists and an imaginative public servant (the Director of Planning and Building), Freiburg was able to enact a particular vision that elevated its status regionally, nationally and internationally. The city is recognized today as a leading European ‘eco-city;’ its history, geography and natural settings at the edge of the Black Forest in Germany allow Freiburg to incorporate this brand with ease. The four categories of leadership converged on this issue and their innovation paid off.

    The challenge before most post-industrial and mid-size cities is as follows: who are the leaders within each of these four sectors who can help convene, identify, and activate an urban brand, befitting of this urban region? Are these categories equally powerful? Do political and community leaders carry the same clout as the business and the managerial class? Most mid-size cities typically lack predatory businesses, but who are the producer businesses? More importantly, who are the leaders from that sector that could play an active role in the branding process? Is the leadership balance-sheet lopsided in favor of the managerial/professional class? With limited budget, can they carry forward a bold plan that could make this city visible?

    To make a city visible takes more than a logo. The future of a city region depends on a diversity of political, managerial, community and business leaders who will participate and sustain a process that will lead to an inclusively created brand, followed by actions that embrace it. Cities without articulated identities will remain invisible, lamenting at every historical turn the loss of yet another opportunity to be like their more successful neighbors.

    Ali Modarres is the Director of Urban Studies at University of Washington Tacoma.  He is a geographer and landscape architect, specializing in urban planning and policy. He has written extensively about social geography, transportation planning, and urban development issues in American cities.

    Photo by FLickr user belem

  • Special Report: 2013 Metropolitan Area Population Estimates

    The 2013 annual metropolitan area population estimates by the US Census Bureau indicate a continuing and persistent dominance of population growth and domestic migration by the South. Between 2010 and 2013, 51 percent of the population increase in the 52 major metropolitan areas (over 1 million population) was in the South. The West accounted for 30 percent of the increase, followed by the Northeast at 11 percent and eight percent in the North Central (Midwest).

    Components of Population Change: Major Metropolitan Areas

    The dominance of the South was even greater when we turn to net domestic migration between Census Bureau regions. Nearly 785,000 more people moved to the major metropolitan areas of the South from other parts of the country than left. A much smaller 170,000 net domestic migrants moved to major metropolitan areas in the West. At the same time the Northeast lost 485,000 net domestic migrants and the Midwest lost 280,000.

    Perhaps even more remarkable, the South, long a laggard as an immigrant destination, even led in net international migration (666,000 for a 1.2 percent over three years), though the Northeast added 546,000, for a 1.0 percent rate). Net international migration to the West was about the same, some 454,000 for a 1.0 percent rate. The Midwest had the lowest net international migration in the country and well below any other region (280,000, for a 0.6 percent rate), as is indicated in Table 1.

    There was a substantial gap in the natural increase (births minus deaths) between the regions as well. The West (2.1 percent relative to the 2010 population over the three years) lead the South (2.0 percent) slightly in rate. Both were well ahead of the Midwest at 1.5 percent and especially the Northeast, at 1.2 percent (Table 1).

    Table 1
    Components of Population Change by Region
    Major Metropolitan Areas
      Total Natural Growth (Births Minus Deaths) Net Domestic Migration Net International Migration
    Northeast              546,742              434,872             (434,029)              545,899
    South           2,555,304           1,105,631              783,438              666,235
    North Central              398,536              472,017             (280,022)              206,541
    West           1,543,319              917,852              171,444              454,023
    Change Compared to 2010 Population
    Northeast 1.5% 1.2% -1.2% 1.5%
    South 4.6% 2.0% 1.4% 1.2%
    North Central 1.2% 1.5% -0.9% 0.6%
    West 3.5% 2.1% 0.4% 1.0%
    From Census Bureau Data

     

    Population Growth

    The New York metropolitan area continues to hold the top position, having added nearly 400,000 residents since 2010 to rise to a population of 19,950,000 residents. At its current rate of growth, New York will exceed a population of 20 million in 2014. There was a time that many expected second-place Los Angeles to overtake New York. However, since 1990 the New York population advantage over Los Angeles has expanded from 6.1 million to 6.8 million, including a further 80,000 advantage built up since 2010 (present geographical definitions). Part of this because much of the growth has been pushed to the more distant Riverside-San Bernardino area.

    Los Angeles and Chicago continued to retain the second and third positions, which they seem likely to maintain for decades. Population projections by the National Conference of Mayors indicates strong growth in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston over the next three decades could have them by pass Chicago by 2050. The challenge could be even more immediate, since Chicago’s growth rate over the first three years of the decade is approximately one half the annual rate projected by the US Conference of Mayors between 2012 and 2042.

    Late in the last decade, Dallas-Fort Worth passed Philadelphia to become the fourth largest metropolitan area. Then, Philadelphia was passed by Houston in 2011. The result is that, for the first time since the nation’s founding, two of the five largest cities (which are functionally defined as metropolitan areas) are in a single state (Texas).

    Philadelphia seems likely to fall further. The strong growth rate of seventh ranked Washington suggests that this nearby rival may also pass Philadelphia as early as 2015. Eighth ranked Miami is growing fast enough that it also could drop Philadelphia a position, to 8th place the 2020 census.

    But Philadelphia is not the only metropolitan area in relative decline. Detroit started the decade as the nation’s 12th largest metropolitan area, but has since fallen to 14th. Detroit has been passed by both Riverside-San Bernardino and Phoenix. Phoenix rose 14th to 12th, passing Riverside-San Bernardino (which remained in 13th position) in the process.

    Among the 52 major metropolitan areas, Austin has grown at the greatest percentage rate since 2010 with Raleigh was the second fastest growing. Houston was the third fastest growing major metropolitan area over the three year period. Orlando ranked 4th in growth from 2010, while San Antonio was the fifth. The top ten was rounded out by Denver, Washington, Dallas-Fort Worth, Charlotte and Oklahoma City. Thus, among the 10 fastest-growing major metropolitan areas, nine were in the South and one (Denver) was in the West (Table 2).

    Table 2
    Major Metropolitan Area Population: 2010, 2012 & 2013
    Metropolitan Areas 2010 2012 2013 2010-13 2012-13
    Atlanta, GA       5,304,197       5,454,429       5,522,942 4.12% 1.26%
    Austin, TX       1,727,784       1,835,110       1,883,051 8.99% 2.61%
    Baltimore, MD       2,715,312       2,753,922       2,770,738 2.04% 0.61%
    Birmingham, AL       1,129,096       1,134,915       1,140,300 0.99% 0.47%
    Boston, MA-NH       4,564,054       4,642,095       4,684,299 2.63% 0.91%
    Buffalo, NY       1,135,314       1,133,767       1,134,115 -0.11% 0.03%
    Charlotte, NC-SC       2,223,635       2,294,990       2,335,358 5.02% 1.76%
    Chicago, IL-IN-WI       9,470,335       9,514,059       9,537,289 0.71% 0.24%
    Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN       2,117,344       2,129,309       2,137,406 0.95% 0.38%
    Cleveland, OH       2,075,690       2,064,739       2,064,725 -0.53% 0.00%
    Columbus, OH       1,906,243       1,944,937       1,967,066 3.19% 1.14%
    Dallas-Fort Worth, TX       6,452,758       6,702,801       6,810,913 5.55% 1.61%
    Denver, CO       2,553,829       2,646,694       2,697,476 5.62% 1.92%
    Detroit,  MI       4,291,400       4,292,832       4,294,983 0.08% 0.05%
    Grand Rapids, MI          989,196       1,005,493       1,016,603 2.77% 1.10%
    Hartford, CT       1,214,014       1,214,503       1,215,211 0.10% 0.06%
    Houston, TX       5,948,689       6,175,466       6,313,158 6.13% 2.23%
    Indianapolis. IN       1,892,323       1,929,207       1,953,961 3.26% 1.28%
    Jacksonville, FL       1,349,095       1,378,040       1,394,624 3.37% 1.20%
    Kansas City, MO-KS       2,013,691       2,038,690       2,054,473 2.03% 0.77%
    Las Vegas, NV       1,953,106       1,997,659       2,027,868 3.83% 1.51%
    Los Angeles, CA     12,844,070     13,037,045     13,131,431 2.24% 0.72%
    Louisville, KY-IN       1,237,851       1,251,538       1,262,261 1.97% 0.86%
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR       1,326,595       1,340,739       1,341,746 1.14% 0.08%
    Miami, FL       5,581,524       5,763,282       5,828,191 4.42% 1.13%
    Milwaukee,WI       1,556,549       1,566,182       1,569,659 0.84% 0.22%
    Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI       3,355,167       3,422,417       3,459,146 3.10% 1.07%
    Nashville, TN       1,675,945       1,726,759       1,757,912 4.89% 1.80%
    New Orleans. LA       1,195,757       1,227,656       1,240,977 3.78% 1.09%
    New York, NY-NJ-PA     19,596,183     19,837,753     19,949,502 1.80% 0.56%
    Oklahoma City, OK       1,257,883       1,297,397       1,319,677 4.91% 1.72%
    Orlando, FL       2,139,372       2,223,456       2,267,846 6.01% 2.00%
    Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD       5,971,397       6,019,533       6,034,678 1.06% 0.25%
    Phoenix, AZ       4,208,770       4,327,632       4,398,762 4.51% 1.64%
    Pittsburgh, PA       2,356,658       2,360,989       2,360,867 0.18% -0.01%
    Portland, OR-WA       2,232,177       2,289,038       2,314,554 3.69% 1.11%
    Providence, RI-MA       1,601,798       1,601,160       1,604,291 0.16% 0.20%
    Raleigh, NC       1,137,351       1,188,504       1,214,516 6.78% 2.19%
    Richmond, VA       1,210,015       1,232,954       1,245,764 2.95% 1.04%
    Riverside-San Bernardino, CA       4,244,089       4,342,332       4,380,878 3.22% 0.89%
    Rochester, NY       1,080,081       1,082,375       1,083,278 0.30% 0.08%
    Sacramento, CA       2,154,417       2,193,927       2,215,770 2.85% 1.00%
    St. Louis,, MO-IL       2,789,893       2,796,506       2,801,056 0.40% 0.16%
    Salt Lake City, UT       1,091,452       1,123,943       1,140,483 4.49% 1.47%
    San Antonio, TX       2,153,288       2,234,494       2,277,550 5.77% 1.93%
    San Diego, CA       3,104,182       3,176,138       3,211,252 3.45% 1.11%
    San Francisco-Oakland, CA       4,344,584       4,454,159       4,516,276 3.95% 1.39%
    San Jose, CA       1,842,076       1,892,894       1,919,641 4.21% 1.41%
    Seattle, WA       3,448,425       3,552,591       3,610,105 4.69% 1.62%
    Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL       2,788,961       2,845,178       2,870,569 2.93% 0.89%
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC       1,680,120       1,698,410       1,707,369 1.62% 0.53%
    Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV       5,664,789       5,862,594       5,949,859 5.03% 1.49%
    Major Metropolitan Areas   169,898,524   173,253,232   174,942,425 2.97% 0.97%
    From Census Bureau Data

     

    Domestic Migration

    Net domestic migration is, not surprisingly, dominated by the major metropolitan areas of the South, especially Texas and Florida. Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston led the nation with more than 100,000 net domestic migrants (Figure $$$). Austin placed third in San Antonio was sixth. Charlotte ranked seventh, while the Florida entries Orlando stood at eighth and Tampa-St. Petersburg at 10th. The West had three big domestic migration lures, Phoenix (4th), Denver (5th), and Seattle (9th).

    Austin also led in the percentage of net domestic migration gain relative to its 2010 population. Again, nine of the top gainers were in the South, with one entry from the West, Denver (Figure 2).

    The largest net domestic migration losses were more dispersed across the country, with metropolitan areas from every region represented. New York lost the most net domestic migrants (more than 300,000) and was joined by Philadelphia, Hartford, and Providence from the East. Chicago lost the second most domestic migrants (more than 150,000) and was joined by Detroit, St. Louis and Cleveland from the Midwest. Los Angeles ranked third in the bottom 10, losing more than 100,000 net domestic migrants, the only western metropolitan area to suffer a significant migration loss. The South’s only representative in the bottom 10 was Virginia Beach-Norfolk (Figure 3).

    Table 3
    Major Metropolitan Area Net Migration: 2010 to 2013
    Metropolitan Areas Net Domestic Migration Change Relative to 2010 Population Net International Migration Change Relative to 2010 Population
    Atlanta, GA      44,433 0.84%         49,375 0.93%
    Austin, TX      87,189 5.05%         15,685 0.91%
    Baltimore, MD          (121) 0.00%         24,366 0.90%
    Birmingham, AL       (2,918) -0.26%           3,585 0.32%
    Boston, MA-NH           101 0.00%         70,356 1.54%
    Buffalo, NY       (7,774) -0.68%           7,341 0.65%
    Charlotte, NC-SC      56,478 2.54%         14,590 0.66%
    Chicago, IL-IN-WI   (161,558) -1.71%         69,041 0.73%
    Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN     (16,893) -0.80%           9,703 0.46%
    Cleveland, OH     (28,780) -1.39%         10,837 0.52%
    Columbus, OH      11,425 0.60%         13,752 0.72%
    Dallas-Fort Worth, TX    127,315 1.97%         57,403 0.89%
    Denver, CO      70,668 2.77%         14,160 0.55%
    Detroit,  MI     (58,343) -1.36%         30,281 0.71%
    Grand Rapids, MI        4,594 0.46%           3,290 0.33%
    Hartford, CT     (18,979) -1.56%         15,206 1.25%
    Houston, TX    116,956 1.97%         74,817 1.26%
    Indianapolis. IN      13,698 0.72%         12,031 0.64%
    Jacksonville, FL      16,932 1.26%           9,760 0.72%
    Kansas City, MO-KS       (3,738) -0.19%           9,162 0.45%
    Las Vegas, NV      17,419 0.89%         19,041 0.97%
    Los Angeles, CA   (125,037) -0.97%       145,101 1.13%
    Louisville, KY-IN        4,874 0.39%           6,530 0.53%
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR     (13,723) -1.03%           4,868 0.37%
    Miami, FL      31,750 0.57%       152,998 2.74%
    Milwaukee,WI     (14,282) -0.92%           6,547 0.42%
    Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI        2,664 0.08%         30,341 0.90%
    Nashville, TN      42,090 2.51%         10,201 0.61%
    New Orleans. LA      20,721 1.73%           8,727 0.73%
    New York, NY-NJ-PA   (336,566) -1.72%       372,651 1.90%
    Oklahoma City, OK      30,086 2.39%           6,759 0.54%
    Orlando, FL      49,244 2.30%         43,230 2.02%
    Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD     (49,564) -0.83%         51,244 0.86%
    Phoenix, AZ      72,985 1.73%         24,885 0.59%
    Pittsburgh, PA        7,564 0.32%           8,129 0.34%
    Portland, OR-WA      30,244 1.35%         15,350 0.69%
    Providence, RI-MA     (17,253) -1.08%         13,365 0.83%
    Raleigh, NC      38,088 3.35%         10,875 0.96%
    Richmond, VA      10,777 0.89%           9,542 0.79%
    Riverside-San Bernardino, CA      18,321 0.43%         14,997 0.35%
    Rochester, NY     (11,558) -1.07%           7,607 0.70%
    Sacramento, CA        6,922 0.32%         17,662 0.82%
    St. Louis,, MO-IL     (28,809) -1.03%         11,556 0.41%
    Salt Lake City, UT        3,367 0.31%           7,560 0.69%
    San Antonio, TX      63,391 2.94%         10,778 0.50%
    San Diego, CA           455 0.01%         35,199 1.13%
    San Francisco-Oakland, CA      37,157 0.86%         68,510 1.58%
    San Jose, CA       (6,245) -0.34%         41,207 2.24%
    Seattle, WA      45,188 1.31%         50,351 1.46%
    Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL      45,071 1.62%         28,621 1.03%
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC     (17,944) -1.07%         15,650 0.93%
    Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV      32,749 0.58%       107,875 1.90%
    Total    240,831 0.14%    1,872,698 1.10%
    From Census Bureau Data

     

    Migration Gains in the Suburbs, Losses in the Core

    This year was notable for the virtual absence of the customary "return to the city" stories. In recent years, historical core municipalities have done better in population growth than in the past. In previous decades, some lost large amounts of their population. However, an improving urban environment, not least because of better crime control, has led to something of a residential resurgence, especially in the immediate area of downtowns, though inner core populations (within five miles of City Hall) have continue to decline (see Flocking Elsewhere: The Downtown Growth Story).

    Specious claims of a net suburban movement to the cores have been refuted by the domestic migration data. Net domestic migration is reported by the Census Bureau only at the county level. Thus, any analysis of domestic migration between the cores and the suburbs must be county-based. During the Great Recession, domestic migration declined substantially, as is to be expected when the economy is depressed.

    Yet, in each of the three years of this decade, suburban counties have experienced net domestic migration gains and in each year have substantially led the core counties. In only one year, 2012, was there a net domestic migration gain in the core counties. The most recent 2013 data shows that core counties experienced a 70,000 net domestic migration loss, while the suburban counties gained 163,000 net domestic migrants. This difference of 233,000 was approximately four times the demographic gains made by the suburbs in both of the previous years Figure 4).

    Returning to Normalcy?

    With the economy still depressed, it would be premature to declare that the more typical results of the last year presage a return to normalcy. Any such reliable judgment must await restoration of broad-based, job and salary driven – as opposed to asset-based – economic growth. However, the trends of the last year indicate more than anything that the basic patterns of at least the past quarter century – with higher suburban growth and a shift towards the South – to be reasserting themelves.

    Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. He was appointed to the Amtrak Reform Council to fill the unexpired term of Governor Christine Todd Whitman and has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

    Photo: Downtown Houston (by author)

  • Good Jobs Often Not Matter of Degrees

    If there’s anything both political parties agree upon, it’s that our education system is a mess. It is particularly poor at serving the vast majority of young people who are unlikely either to go to an elite school or get an advanced degree in some promising field, particularly in the sciences and engineering.

    Historically, education has been a key driver of upward mobility and progress in our society. But, increasingly, its impact on boosting incomes has slowed, or even reversed, and, for many, the attempt to get a four-year degree ends in debt and widespread unemployment or underemployment. Worse still, many don’t make it. Indeed, according to a 2010 report by the Public Policy Institute of California, young adults in California are less likely to graduate from college than were their parents.

    These failures make things even worse for workers with only a high school education, as they must compete for even low-wage jobs with people who either have been in college or have graduated. So, we now see college graduates working in jobs as humdrum as barista or even janitor. This has even led to some pretty dubious lawsuits against schools by disgruntled graduates who feel they were misled by post-graduate employment claims.

    The worst performance is at the grade-school and high school levels, particularly in California. Blame funding, teachers unions or demographics, but our state’s basic education system has been deteriorating for decades. California was ranked 48th in 2009 for high school attainment. In 2000, it ranked 40th. In 1990, it was tied with Illinois for 36th place.

    Clearly, if we are to advance as a state, and a country, we need to develop a new perspective on education. It’s not just a matter of money, as progressive journalists,teachers unions, education lobbyists and advocates for various ethnic and political causes all insist. Money should be spent but more emphasis needs to be placed on how it is spent. After all, America boosted per-pupil spending on public elementary and secondary education by 327 percent from 1970-2010 (adjusted for inflation) with no rise in student test scores.

    As for the effectiveness of college, a recent Rutgers University report found that barely half of college graduates since 2006 had full-time jobs. And it’s not getting better: Those graduating since 2009 are three times more likely to not have found a full-time job than those from the classes of 2006-08. Since 1967, notes one 2010 study, the percentage of underemployed college graduates has soared from roughly 10 percent to more than 35 percent.

    What we need to do is rethink the notion, supported by President Obama and others, that the solution to our education woes primarily is “more.” More what? What are the job prospects for the new crop of ethnic-studies majors, post-modern English graduates and art historians, for example, particularly those from second-tier institutions? These kind of liberal-arts degrees are, as the New York Times recently reported, that tend to earn graduates the least, while those degrees that pay the most are largely offered by schools aimed at technology, mining and other “hard skills.”

    First, we need to understand that educational differences and capabilities exist and cannot be easily adjusted simply by forever lowering standards. Our most competitive institutions need to make sure that people leave with the highest degree of critical skills. Grade inflation at Harvard may not produce unemployables, but it does weaken the value of the degree and, even worse, suggests that one can not expect too much knowledge, or reasoning capacity, from graduates. Indeed, many employers complain about the lack of “soft skills,” such as communication and critical thinking, as much as they do about applicants’ lack of harder skills such as math and science.

    This suggests that even those of us who teach at more selective universities cannot just rest on laurels. Schools have to focus more on developing actual skills – notably in presentation and research – even among the brightest students. Instead, all too often, as the Manhattan Institute’s Heather McDonald has pointed out, political education – usually, but not always, tending toward the progressive left – actually predominates over learning how to think critically and express ideas coherently.

    More important is the need to put greater effort in lifting students who may not be ideal for a classical liberal four-year education. This may include a greater emphasis on skills with practical applications, such as nursing, rehabilitation, technical and scientific areas of specialization. It also includes expanding innovative programs, such as at LaGuardia College in New York, that helps high school dropouts to get their diplomas.

    Although some of these students will still seek four-year degrees, for many, the best opportunities for employment do not require more than a two-year degree, or simply a certificate. This may be particularly critical for the roughly 40 percent of students who attend college but don’t finish.

    These include many fields where employment has been growing, notably, in energy, manufacturing and – with the resurgence of the housing market – construction. But the biggest shift may be as a result of the current energy revolution, which, notes the president of the engineering and electronics conglomerate Siemens, Joe Kaeser, “is a once-in-a-lifetime moment.” Cheap and abundant natural gas, in particular, is luring investment from European and Asian manufacturers and sparking demand not only for geologists and engineers but also machinists, rig operators and truck drivers.

    The workforce in many of these fields is rapidly aging, and the demand for new, updated skills, particularly involving computers, has soared, leaving manufacturers desperate for necessary workers.

    There is already, notes a recent Boston Consulting Group study, a shortfall of some 100,000 skilled manufacturing positions. In this respect, millennials – which I have called “the screwed generation” – may have finally caught a break. By 2020, according to the consultancy BCG and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation could face a shortfall of about 875,000 machinists, welders, industrial-machinery operators and other highly skilled manufacturing professionals.

    This already is the case in parts of the country now enjoying the energy and manufacturing renaissance. In training facilities in the New Orleans area, where some of the new trade school students have migrated after receiving four-year degrees, and near Columbus, Ohio, you can see many young people preparing for positions not only in medical fields, but as technicians, machinists, plumbers and electricians.

    Businesspeople almost everywhere decry such labor shortages, but rarely lament a lack of English post-modernist scholars. As I saw on a recent trip to Houston – in many ways the country’s most economically dynamic city – developers enjoy high demand by are stymied by a lack of skilled labor. In some cases, companies are beginning to invest not only in community colleges but also looking to recruit high school students into these professions.

    This practical approach may offend people to whom it seems reminiscent of the infamous “tracking” system, which was used to steer even the most academically gifted minority students into manual professions. Still, stuffing more students into a system that, in the end, fails to prepare young people for the future, and lands them in debt, makes little sense. Today a record 1-in-10 recent college borrowers has defaulted on student debt, the highest level in a decade. And, with wages for college graduates on a downward slope, one has to wonder how many more will join them.

    Some “progressives” believe the solution lies in subsidizing even more the current system. In reality, such an approach will only continue the current failures, with fewer students graduating with needed skills and more years of wasted effort. Shifting the financial burdens from parents and students and onto business and the taxpayer does not seem the best way to boost public support for education.

    Instead of bailing out the current system, we need to find ways to change our educational focus from the elite level to the certificate program, in ways that serve the needs of both the economy and the next generation. For the talented students I so often encounter at Chapman, this means greater rigor, more serious reading and opening themselves to conflicting ideas. But, for many others, the focus should be on practical skills that can lead to middle-class jobs. We have to learn to appreciate that there’s nothing wrong with a son or daughter, rather than aspiring to become a doctor or lawyer, instead, earning a good living as a plumber.

    This story originally appeared at The Orange County Register.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

    Graduation photo by Bigstock.

  • Crimea and Ukraine: What Putin Could Learn from Yugoslavia

    While American government officials respond to the Russian Anschluss in Crimea by mobilizing their Twitter feeds and making the rounds of the Sunday morning meetings of the press, the Moscow government of Vladimir Putin reinforced its occupation forces around Simferopol and Sebastopol, perhaps at some point passing out small Russian flags to local sympathizers, who can wave them gratefully when the symbolic gates between Russia and Crimea are thrown open.

    To paraphrase a quote that circulated in the 1930s: “The West likes to spend its weekends in the country, while the Russians prefer to take their countries in a weekend.”

    The reason the Russians have chosen this moment to move against Ukraine and its Western patrons is not difficult to reconstruct. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the United States, NATO, and most recently the European Union have treated Russia as little more than a Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

    The moment it could, when the Soviet Union was in liquidation and Russia was weak, NATO pushed its military frontiers into Poland, the Baltic States, Slovakia, and even Georgia. At international conferences such as the G7, it sat Russian presidents at the children’s tables. In the Middle East, the United States and its allies blew away Russia’s man in Baghdad — Saddam — and is now doing the same with Assad in Syria.

    In Libya, despite giving Russia assurances that the no-fly zone was there to protect citizens trudging to markets with their donkeys, it was expanded to justify killing Qaddafi and reserving the sweetheart oil contracts for western corporations. No wonder Russia had its doubts when the US and the EU started hinting that Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko, had stolen more than was necessary.

    More immediately, Putin felt humiliated when the Western press comically treated his Olympics as though he was Comrade Kane, staging a $51 billion snow opera for his girlfriend.

    Putin did not become president-for-life of Russia by giving fundraisers in Napa Valley or interviews to Esquire. By nature intensely competitive, he still smarts from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, especially the loss of Ukraine.

    Short of reviving the 1854 Crimean War coalition (Britain, France, and Turkey, with Austro-Hungary and Prussia neutral) and besieging Sebastopol, there isn’t much that the West can do, or will want to do, to evict Russian troops from Crimea. Will Russia now take up the fallen mantle of the Soviet empire? Will it work?

    By invading or partitioning the Ukraine, Russia sets itself up as the Yugoslavia of the 21st century—Russoslavia? Like Slobodan Milosevic before him, Putin is a former Communist war horse who champions the nationalist cause of disenfranchised Russians cut adrift after the dissolution of the Soviet Union — Yugoslavia on a grander scale, with the same hodgepodge ethnicity. Ukraine becomes the Bosnia of the 21st century.

    Yugoslavia was a 19th century political ideal, to pull together a number of smaller, vulnerable Balkan states from the encroachments of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the north and the Ottomans to the south. It came into being at the end of World War I, although by that time neither the Austro-Hungarians nor the Turks were powers in southwest Europe.

    Almost immediately, without the common threats, the countries of the Yugoslav federation fell out, although the country lasted, officially anyway, until the 1990s. To be a Serb living in Bosnia or Croatia was fine until those republics went for the exits of Yugoslavia, when to be Serb became to be a symbol of a failed central government or, worse, a second-class citizen living in a new country.

    Russia’s role in the Soviet Union was not unlike the position of Serbia in Yugoslavia. It had the largest population, was the seat of the central government, and, later, had the most to lose when constituent states of the federation decided to secede and take with them large blocs of Russian citizens.

    With the Soviet devolution, Russians became a lost tribe of the Cold War, stranded with few rights and much contempt in places like Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Latvia.

    When I have traveled in Russia or the ex-Soviet Union, I have met many who say, for example, “My father was from Moldova and my mother was Russian, but during the war we were moved to Uzbekistan, although later I went to school in Riga.”

    Putin is their archangel, much as the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was their philosopher-king, writing in 1995, “Russia has truly fallen into a torn state: 25 million have found themselves ‘abroad’ without moving anywhere, by staying on the lands of their fathers and grandfathers. Twenty-five million — the largest diaspora in the world by far; how dare we turn our back to it?? Especially since local nationalisms (which we have grown accustomed to view as quite understandable, forgivable, and ‘progressive’) are everywhere suppressing and maltreating our severed compatriots.”

    While there is a rationale for Putin speaking up for the lost rights of the Russian diaspora, the last thing he needs, in exchange for the liberation of Donetsk, is a Muslim Risorgimento in Tatarstan, Chechen agitation, a separatist movement in Siberia, or rebellion from the two million Ukrainians living inside Russia.

    Like Yugoslavia, Russia has a lot it can lose in playing the nationalist card, because it risks a series of border wars if it tries to impose Greater Russia not just on gleeful former citizens, but on less enthusiastic minorities, who want nothing to do with a Russian restoration.

    In its attempts to hang on to its cordon sanitaire in the past, Russia became the patron of bizarre breakaway republics, such as Transnistria (a Russian enclave between Ukraine and Moldova), Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, and Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia. An Autonomous Republic of Crimea, run by shady commissars flitting around in SUVs, would fit well with these no-man’s lands, dressed up for the Kremlin masquerade.

    Most likely the Ukraine crisis will end with the same vagueness that has characterized so much of international diplomacy since the end of the Cold War. In most cases, Moscow has ended up as the guardian of a series of rump states, the latest of which might be Crimea.

    Matthew Stevenson, a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, is the author of Remembering the Twentieth Century Limited, a collection of historical travel essays. His new book, Whistle-Stopping America, was recently published. He first traveled to the former Soviet Union in 1975, and over the years has been to many of its then-constituent parts, usually by train.

    This post is a different version of a longer analysis at NYTimes eXaminer.

    Flickr photo by Alexxx Malev: Sevastopol 187

  • Sunday Night Dinner in Indianapolis

    Urban culture varies radically from city to city. Yet to a great extent the culture of the usual suspects type of places tends to get portrayed as normative. In New York, for example, with its tiny apartments, the social life is often in public, in many cases literally on the streets of the city, which pulse with energy. As the ne plus ultra of cities, the street life of New York is often seen as what every place should aspire to. There’s a body of literature which attributes all sorts of positive effects to this New York style urbanism, such as the notion of “collisions” and “serendipitous encounters”. But while New York’s street life and social scene may indeed be engaging, how often does one actually strike up a conversation with someone random on the street or in a coffee shop there that turns into something meaningful? The only collisions I’ve ever had there were literal.

    New York is the most well known and championed style of interaction, though hardly the only one. Think of San Francisco and something clearly distinct will come to mind, albeit with some similarities. LA has its own mythos. The TV show Portlandia does a great job of capturing our idea of the quirky urban life of that city.

    Cities that lack the cachet of an NYC, SF, or Portland can often find their own urban culture lacking in comparison. To be taken seriously, the logic goes, they must measure up to the yardstick defined by others. But while I do not subscribe to the idea of value free cultural comparisons, I do believe cities need not judge themselves as wanting just because they don’t function like New York City. Rather, they should seek to be the best they can be on their own terms. Since few cities are anything like New York, aspiring to that kind of urbanism would only be a case study in frustration anyway.

    Indianapolis cultural commentator David Hoppe once said something to the effect that “the social life of Indianapolis happens in back yards.” And this is true. Unlike a New York City, Indianapolis does not wow you just by walking down the street. While I believe in trying to contextualize the facts on the ground in the most positive way possible for moving forward, that doesn’t mean reclassifying genuine defects as virtues. In the case of Indianapolis, the generally poor impression left by its built environment and lack of street life can’t be denied. There are plenty of great places to go, but you generally need someone to point you in the right direction.

    But there are countervailing virtues as well, ones generally under appreciated. Unlike New York, Indy has a far more robust social life in private spaces like houses and back yards. This produces a qualitatively different type of social capital, one with its own unique set of strengths.

    One example of this is the emergence of community based Sunday dinners. This was an organic movement and as a result lacks a fancy name, but in keeping with the generally low key and unpretentious character of the city, let’s just call it Sunday Night Dinner.

    Sunday night dinners are a type of intentional community in which 6-8 families in a neighborhood decide to get together for dinner every Sunday night on a rotating basis. This originated in 2006 on Pleasant St. in the Fountain Square neighborhood when a group of neighbors decided to start getting together regularly for dinner. Here’s how Tonya Beeler, one of the founding members, describes it:

    When most of us talk about it, we just call it Sunday Night Dinner. It’s unassuming, I know – but that’s what Sunday Dinner is to us. We’ve had it consistently for almost 8 years – having only cancelled dinner a handful of times. The majority of the families on the original list are still regular participants and we’ve added and lost a few through the years.

    What is Sunday Night Dinner to us? In this stage in our lives, its sometimes difficult to physically connect to your neighbors, but we know that each Sunday we’re going to see our friends. It’s also a good time to have newcomers to the neighborhood connect with some of us old timers. We’ve also had visits from Mayor Ballard (before he was elected) and Melina Kennedy (when she was running) and I still have a fond memory of John Day sitting down to sup with us. But what is it mostly? Just a day in the week where we meet to take a breath, sit down, and eat together. It’s my favorite day of the week.

    I used to be part of a quarterly dinner club in Chicago. Given the frequency, our idea was to make each dinner “special” in the sense that we went all out with super high-quality food, etc. In Indy, while good food is certainly part of the equation, the regular weekly cadence means it’s as much about friends and neighbors as it is special ambiance. It’s about regular life lived in the city. In the picture at the top it’s paper plates and plastic cups all the way – and that’s just fine. Can’t stay for some reason? No worries, bring some tupperware, grab some food, and run. In a sense, it’s the Kinfolk Magazine ethic (motto: doing things simple sure is complicated – and expensive) in genuine form, shorn of Portland pretense.



    Sunday night dinner in the Beeler’s backyard in Fountain Square, Indianapolis, Easter 2012. Photo: Cindy Ragsdale

    Oh, and typically with children, which actually exist in abundance in Indianapolis.

    The idea spread and now there are Sunday night dinner groups all over the city. I’m told there are three in Herron-Morton Place alone, which I can’t quite wrap my head around given how small the area is.

    I can’t help but notice the similarity of these dinner groups to religious small group gathering. In the last couple decades, Evangelical churches have moved away from mid-week services in favor of small group gathering during the week (sometimes called home groups or other names). The idea is to promote more actual community than is possible in a larger assembly format. These dinner groups are in effect secular small groups, ones that help provide the sense of connectedness, regularity, and rootedness that’s so often missing from our contemporary world.



    Outdoor fun on Sunday night isn’t just for summer in Herron-Morton Place, Indianapolis. Photo by Amanda Reynolds.

    These groups aren’t just walled garden cliques, however. The host generally invites guests to attend. So there’s a type of brokered introduction which in my experience is the real source of “serendipitous” encounters of genuine value. An arranged guest invite is one way to get people connected in their neighborhood, or even to help people who are deciding whether or not to take the plunge into city living to get a feel for what life lived in a particular neighborhood is actually like.

    In fact, if you are visiting Indianapolis on a Sunday night, or live there and want to check it out, email the City Gallery at the Harrison Center For the Arts and they will set you up. The email address is citygallery@harrisoncenter.org

    I don’t want to suggest that Indianapolis invented the concept of the dinner club or is the only place such events occur. For all I know, lots of places do this. (Heck, as big as it is, odds are that includes New York City). And as with all traditions, this particular instantiation will likely die off at some point (though it’s still growing eight years after starting on Pleasant St). Yet the prevalence of this type of cultural phenomenon is part of the explanation for why Indianapolis has consistently managed to punch above its weight class in so many areas. Although the type of obvious assets and strength evidenced by super-cool buildings or crowds on the street may be lacking in Indianapolis vis-a-vis some other places, the city contains deep reservoirs of cultural capital that aren’t as visible and may never be fully understood or mapped, but nevertheless are of profound importance. This is the real secret sauce of the city.

    Copying this idea, locally or anywhere, is definitely welcomed. Should you be interested, here are the “Indianapolis Rules” for Sunday night dinners, courtesy of Tonya Beeler:

    1. Dinner is every Sunday night, with six to eight families, each hosting on a rotating basis.

    2. The host is responsible for preparing all of the food for everyone. (Work? Yes, but it also means seven weeks of not having to do anything but show up).

    3. The host is responsible for inviting all guests. Do not invite guests without checking with the host first.

    4. If you’re not coming, tell the host as far in advance as possible.

    5. At the very beginning of the dinner, the host makes sure all the guests know of any rules for the house (no one allowed upstairs, kids can’t eat in the living room, toilet handle needs to be held down for 3 seconds, whatever).

    6. If your family will not be coming for dinner, but you still want food, there’s no need to let the host know, just stop by early in the meal (so you don’t miss anything, food goes fast!!!) with some tupperware and fill it to go.



    Sunday night dinner in Fountain Square, Indianapolis. Painting by Kyle Ragsdale.

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

    Lead photo: Sunday night dinner in Herron-Morton Place, Indianapolis. This is one of three dinner groups in that neighborhood. Photo by Amanda Reynolds (check out the mirror!)