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Robert DeShay

October 20, 2012
Demographic Dead End? Barack Obama’s Single Nation

President Obama brought up Planned Parenthood three separate times at Tuesday’s town hall debate. It was an appeal aimed directly at a key part of his base: If he is reelected, it will be because of the Single Nation.

Democrats have woken up to the huge political rifts that have emerged over the past 30 years—between married and single people, and people with kids and those who don’t have them. And save African Americans, there may be no constituency more loyal to the president and his party than the growing ranks of childless and single Americans.

In the short term at least, the president and his party are seizing a huge opportunity. Since 1960, the percentage of the population that is over age 15 and unmarried increased by nearly half, 45 percent from 32 percent. Since 1976, the percentage of American women who did not have children by the time they reached their 40s doubled, to nearly 20 percent.

And even as the president has slipped in the polls, the fast-growing Single Nation has stayed behind him. Unmarried women prefer Obama by nearly 20 points (56 to 39 percent), according to Gallup, while those who are married prefer Romney by a similarly large margin.

Unmarried women (along with ethnic minorities, the poor and the workers in the public bureaucracy) are rapidly becoming a core constituency of the Democratic party, in a sense replacing the ethnic white working class.

And while single women have long been ignored (or at least not courted directly) by national politicians, Democrats are now taking direct aim—as in the Life of Julia campaign, where every milestone in her life is marked by the government benefit she’d receive under President Obama’s hubby state. Democratic strategists such as Stanley Greenberg also urge targeting singles, particularly “single women,” whom he calls “the largest progressive voting bloc in the country.”

Even among the married, children have become less of a priority. A 2007 Pew Research Center survey found that the number of adults who said that children are very important for a successful marriage had dropped by a third, from 65 percent in 1990 to 41 percent in 2010. Over that same span, financial considerations, and the willingness of a spouse to share chores and even political beliefs all became important to a greater share of adults.

The rise in both childlessness and singlehood parallels developments already evident in other cultures, notably in East Asia and Europe. Many of these countries have experienced declining marriage and birth rates for decades. In Germany and Japan, the demographic results of this—fewer workers to support more retired people—has led to difficult tax hikes to allow the remaining young workers to maintain the funding for a growing number of aging boomers. This is the Europe’s screwed generation: “the victims of expansive welfare states and the massive structural debt charged by their parents.”

In America, by contrast, birth rates rose somewhat over the past two decades. But since the recession, the number of new children has plummeted, and it’s dropped the most precipitously for new mothers. The number of households with children today is 38 million, about the same as a decade ago, even as the total number of households has shot up by nearly 10 million.

There are now more houses with dogs than houses with children.

Singles don’t always show up at the polls, but Democratic party strategists see their numbers as simply too large to ignore, especially in close elections. Singletons almost elected John Kerry: red states had fertility rates 12 percent higher than those than blue ones.

In 2008, singles helped put Obama over the top, something widely recognized by party leaders. This summer’s surge in Obama’s ratings also derived largely from his growing appeal to single voters, and particularly women.

This reliance on single and childless voters could transform the Democratic party in the years ahead. Singlism, a term coined by psychologist Bella De Paulo, embraces the idea that far from undeserved subjects of derision or pity, the unattached represent a bridge to a more evolved humanity. De Paulo sees them as more cyber than the married set, and “more likely to be linked to members of their social networks by bonds of affection” rather than blood. Unlike families, who, after all, are often stuck with each other, singles enjoy the linkage to “intentional communities” and are thus more likely “to think about human connectedness in a way that is far-reaching and less predictable.”

A singleton approach to public policy, notes Eric Klinenberg, author of the widely celebrated Going Solo, notes, favors a high density, urban “new social environment.” This is particularly true in the central cores of social-media hubs such as Manhattan, San Francisco and, most of all, Washington D.C. In many dense urban areas now, 70 percent or more of households are childless. In contrast, the largest growth in families with children are found in places such as Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Raleigh, and the Salt Lake area, which have relatively little impact on the national culture.

The new post-familial politics departs in many ways from the old urban politics. In the past, urban voters focused largely on issues concerning neighbourhood, public safety, schools, ethnic enclaves and churches. The new childless class, notes the University of Chicago’s Terry Nichols Clark, identify less with these mundane issues and more with cultural preference and aesthetics.

Clark also suggests the new singles-dominated electorate will have transcended the barriers of race and even country, embracing what he hopefully calls “a post materialist” perspective that transforms the baser considerations of those embroiled in raising children and maintaining kinship ties. No longer familial, as people have been for millennia, he predicts they could be harbingers not only of a “new race, but even a new politics.”

The emerging “new politics” of the rising Single Nation could impact elections for decades to come, particularly in Democratic strongholds like Chicago, New York or San Francisco. These areas will be increasingly dominated by a vast, often well-educated and affluent class of voters whose interests are largely defined around their own world-view, without overmuch concern with the fate of offspring, along with the urban poor and the public workers who tend to both groups. Since the childless frequently lack the kinship networks that are obliged to provide for them in moments of trouble, they tend to look more to government to care for them in hard times or old age.

But the Single Nation’s grip on power may not be sustainable for more than a generation. After all they, by definition, will have no heirs. This, notes author Eric Kauffman, hands the long-term advantage to generally more conservative family-oriented households, who often have two or more offspring. Birth rates among such conservative populations such as Mormons and evangelical Christians tend to be twice as high than those of the nonreligious.

As a result, Kauffman predicts that inevitably “the religious will inherit the earth” and ensure that conservative, more familial-oriented values inevitably prevail. Even among generally liberal groups like Jews, the orthodox and affiliated are vastly out-birthing their secular counterparts; by some estimates roughly two in five New York Jews is orthodox, including three quarters of the city’s Jewish children. If these trends continue, politics even in the progressive nirvana of Gotham may be pulled somewhat to the right.

But in the here and now, and especially this November, these long-term trends will not yet be evident. The tsunami of Chasidic and Mormon children are not yet eligible to vote, and won’t be for a decade or two. So even as the president loses among the married, the growing ranks of the Single Nation could still assure his reelection, and propel his party’s ascendency for a decade or more before the whole trend crashes against a demographic wall.

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.

Barack Obama Photo by Bigstock.

October 18, 2012
The Land Premium That’s Punishing Property

High land prices have all but killed the Australian housing industry.

Lower housing starts has led to lower GST revenues (house construction attracts full GST) and lower stamp duty receipts are crippling state budgets and cruelling the chances of low and middle income earners to get a start in the housing market.

What has caused this slump in housing starts? Land prices.

Raw land for new housing developments should be close to its agricultural value – in other words, around $10,000 per hectare. But land released for residential development fetches up to $1 million per hectare – 100 times the agricultural price.

Government land management agencies and private land developers may well argue a lot of land has been released for residential development, but clearly it is not enough.

Only when urban growth boundaries are removed will we know a piece of land’s true value. It will then be a trade-off between price and distance. People may be prepared to travel another 10 or 15 minutes by car (10 to 20km) to get a cheaper block.

To highlight the “‘X’ years supply of land available” argument, I heard a state bureaucrat say recently that the government had released enough land for 15 years supply. I raised my hand and asked “15 years supply – at what price?” He didn’t know what I meant. I said “at $200,000 a block it may well take 15 years to sell. So why don’t you double the price and then you’ll have 30 years supply?”

These points highlight the fact that, as with most central planning, housing planning is based on a fundamental flaw – that price does not matter. But as we know, price does matter. Imagine the demand for housing if land was $100,000 per block cheaper. Think LCD, LED and plasma TVs over the past five years.

Australia does not have, and never has had, a housing affordability problem, it has a land affordability problem. The cost of building a new house has hardly moved in 20 years. Land prices however have skyrocketed. By restricting the amount of land available on the urban fringes of our cities, state governments have sent the price of entry-level housing through the roof.

The reasons state governments give for these restrictions all centre on urban planning. They have persisted with their policies of urban densification (squeezing more and more people into existing suburbs), an idea that has failed all over the world.

Whether it’s traffic congestion, air pollution, the destruction of bio-diversity or the unsustainable pressure on electricity, water, sewage or stormwater infrastructure, urban densification has been a disaster. The evidence is overwhelming; urban densification is not good for the environment, it does not save water, it does not lead to a reduction in motor vehicle use, it does not result in nicer neighbourhoods, it does not stem the loss of agricultural land, it does not save on infrastructure costs for government and, worst of all, it puts home ownership out of the reach of those on low and middle incomes.

State governments use urban planning laws to restrict the amount of fringe land available and then drip feed it through their land management agencies to a land- starved housing industry at inflated prices. Hmmm. After a change of state government a few years ago, a former cabinet minister was asked why her government didn’t release more land to kick-start the housing industry. She replied: “We needed the money.” So much for urban planning.

And of course land developers with massive land banks on their books urge state governments to maintain the scarcity to maintain the ‘value’ of the developers’ inventory. Developers would be better off if they supported the removal of urban growth boundaries and allowed more broadacre land to come onto the market which they could buy at greatly reduced prices. With land prices significantly lower than they are today it wouldn’t take long for the industry to recover. Until land prices fall, there will be no recovery.

The Australian housing industry is building 40,000 fewer homes a year than it should be. That’s more than $10 billion worth of work a year the industry is missing out on. That’s a lot of bricks, concrete, timber, tiles, steel and, of course, labour.

Governments and industry associations have known for years this was coming but just played footsies with each other – read US economist George Stigler’s book Regulatory Capture to understand how and why this happens.

Australia’s economy has been seriously distorted due to a massive overinvestment in household debt. We have a housing industry on its knees. Getting all this back into alignment with reality will take time but it is a realignment that is necessary.

We cannot continue to deny the next generation a home of their own merely to satisfy the indulgences of urban planners and state government treasury officials.

This piece originally appeared in Business Spectator.

Bob Day AO is managing director of national homebuilder Home Australia.

Brighton Beach bathing box photo by Bigstock.

October 18, 2012
CERF’s Economic Policy Plan

Here at California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, we think that each presidential candidate does have an economic plan. But it is a bit difficult to discern the policy under all the campaign noise. Then there is the problem of the truth. When out of office, each party claims to be the protector of the public purse. Each accuses the other of running deficits, and both are right about this. Except for a brief respite at the end of the 1990s, deficit spending has been the norm since the 1974 oil crisis. Of course, the current administration has embraced deficit spending with unprecedented enthusiasm.

We think the Democrats’ plan is to increase spending and increase taxes, particularly on “The Rich,” anyone making more money than you. We think the Republicans’ plan is to cut taxes for everyone and cut spending that goes to anyone but you.

These plans won’t work.

To our Democratic friends, we say: You can’t tax and spend your way to prosperity. Governments may be different than people, but they still cannot avoid a budget constraint. The tax and spend policy eventually leads to Spain or Greece. Besides, the government is taking that money from someone. We haven’t seen anything to suggest that, at current spending levels, the government can more productively employ the money than the person they are taking it from.

To our Republican friends, we say: You can’t cut the budget enough to fix it, and cutting taxes won’t fix either the economy or the budget. The deficit is about 10 percent of gross domestic product. That’s about the sum of defense and social security spending. We know you are not ready to get rid of every soldier and kick Granny out onto the street.

Unfortunately, there is not enough fat and waste to argue that efficiency is the solution. The deficit is just too big. Besides, democracies are extremely poor at cutting government spending; witness Europe. We also saw what happened in Wisconsin when the state budget was cut a trivial amount when compared to ten percent of gross product.

The problem is that hard government costs, non-transfers, are just too small to allow the cuts of the size that would be required to eliminate the budget. Transfer payments would have to be cut, but each transfer payment comes with a constituency. Those constituencies will doom spending cuts.

Since your plans won’t work, we’ve come up with our own:

Spending: Total government spending (federal, state, and local) in the United States represents about 37 percent of gross domestic product. It is actually a bit higher than what we saw in World War II. We believe that at this level, government spending is hurting growth. So, government, measured as this percentage, needs to become smaller.

We can’t cut government spending significantly. We can stop its growth. We propose capping real per-capita spending at current levels. This would allow budget growth due to inflation and population growth. No one loses anything. So, while larger-government proponents would object to the plan, the lack of losers would minimize resistance.

Once spending was capped, we recommend some compositional changes that would improve economic outcomes. Because this would create losers, there would be resistance. However, for every dollar reallocated, there is also a winner. The political outcome is uncertain.

Our recommended changes would reallocate government funds away from uses that retard or distort economic growth. This would help minimize future budget challenges, and it would increase economic growth. Still, these changes are not as important as capping spending.

Our first change would be to eliminate all subsidies in the budget. These include subsidies for businesses, farms, and consumers. Government’s place is to provide the environment for economic growth, not pick the winners or losers. There is abundant evidence that government is not better at market decisions than are market participants. Let the markets work.

This is not to say that we would eliminate the safety net. Modern economies need a safety net, one that provides a socially approved standard of living while maintaining incentives for productive work. We would let recipients decide how best to allocate their funds.

We would also raise the retirement age. Official retirement ages have failed to keep up with advances in life expectancy and health. The result is that we are losing, in some cases, forcing out, incredible amounts of human capital. Given the economy and the demographics, we need that human capital working for us.

Finally, we would concede defeat on the War on Drugs. No doubt, drugs impose a heavy price on users, their families, and society. The impacts are tragic. However, the War On Drugs has failed to eliminate drug use. It’s not even clear if the war has reduced drug use. Drugs are not only readily available, it’s easier for a high school student to obtain drugs than alcohol.

The costs of prohibition, even if partially effective, are high. The costs include higher crime rates, gangs, prisons, direct police costs, and the costs of police being diverted from more productive uses. If we were to take all the resources currently spent on the War on Drugs and use those funds to provide education, counseling, and treatment the economic costs of drug use would go down.

Taxes: Our recommended changes to the tax code would increase revenues and improve economic outcomes. So called “spending in the tax code” reduces government revenues and creates effectively distortionary subsidies. We need to get rid of this, for all the same reasons that we need to get rid of subsidies in the budget. We would eliminate all tax deductions, including individuals’ mortgage deductions and employers’ healthcare deductions.

We would keep existing individual income-tax rates, neither lowering marginal tax rates nor increasing marginal tax rates. However, we would eliminate the differential tax rates that capital gains and dividends enjoy. That is, we would tax dividends and capital gains as ordinary income.

Taxing dividends and capital gains would allow us to eliminate corporate taxes, removing the double taxation of capital, putting capital and income taxes on an equal footing. By taxing capital and labor at the same rate, we would eliminate distortions and improve economic outcomes.

Economic Policy: If real per-capita spending is fixed, the only way to reduce government’s share of the economy is to have real per-capita economic growth. While real per-capita economic growth has been the norm since the industrial revolution, achieving it has been a problem in the past few years. Policy has been part of the problem. Fixing the policy will result in an immediate robust recovery.

Most people would not suspect that immigration policy is the first policy we would change. Specifically, we would initiate a massive increase in legal immigrations. The benefits would be far-reaching and immediate. An increase in population would drive up housing prices. This would restore Americans’ balance sheets by offsetting the losses from the bust. It would immediately increase activity in the construction sector and in all sectors that benefit from increased home construction.

There would be other benefits. Legal immigrants are educated risk takers with a lot to gain. Far from taking jobs from Americans, they create new businesses at higher rates than the domestically born. The talents, creativity, and drive they would bring would hit all sectors like a power drink.

By itself, changing immigration policy would change our economy’s trajectory in a dramatic way, but there is more that could be done. Removing all trade barriers is an obvious option, but decreasing regulation offers the most gains after changing immigration policy.

Bad regulation is a bipartisan activity. Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank are two of the worst regulations to come along. They need to be repealed.

Sarbanes-Oxley, passed under George Bush, fixed a problem that did not exist. It was passed in response to the Enron scandal, even though everyone involved went to jail under pre-existing law. It imposes a huge and unnecessary burden to small business in particular.

Dodd-Frank was passed in response to the 2008 financial crises, but it does nothing to prevent another crises. In fact, it imposes huge costs to financial institutions, even as it enshrines the concept of too-big-to-fail into law, guaranteeing another crisis. It needs to be repealed, and too-big-to-fail needs to be addressed directly.

Finally, we would require a cost-benefit analysis of all existing and proposed legislation. Those provisions that failed the analysis would be rejected or repealed.

That’s CERF’s proposed economic policy. It would result in an immediately robust economy. It would change lives, especially the lives of young people just entering the workforce. We put it out in the hopes that it advances our national economic debate.

Bill Watkins is a professor at California Lutheran University and runs the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, which can be found at clucerf.org.

Flickr photo by s_falkow

October 17, 2012
A Planet of People: Angel’s Planet of Cities

Professor Shlomo Angel’s new book, Planet of Cities, seems likely to command a place on the authoritative bookshelf of urbanization between Tertius Chandler’s Four Thousand Years of Urban Growthand Sir Peter Hall’s Cities and Civilization and The Containment of Urban England. Chandler produced the definitive volume of gross population figures for urban areas (cities) over millennia. Angel, takes the subject much further, describing detail how urban areas have grown over the last two centuries, both in population and continuous urban land area. The book focuses principally on population growth, urban spatial expanse, and density. Moreover, Professor Angel develops both a statistical and analytic framework that complements the voluminous work of Peter Hall. Planet of Cities is liberally illustrated, which greatly aids understanding the trends.

Urban Population, Land Area & Density Evolution from 1800

Planet of Cities looks at the urbanization trend from various dimensions. A sample of 30 urban areas was used to gauge urban expansion and density changes from 1800 to 2000.

At the same time, he describes the well documented urban density declines in the United States as well as the similar trends in Western European urban areas often been missed by analysts who imagine that spatial expansion is limited to America.

He goes further, showing that the rapidly growing urban areas of the developing world are also declining in urban density, with spatial expansion rates far exceeding those of population growth. This has been evident in New Geography’s Evolving Urban Areas series (such as Mumbai, Jakarta, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City and others).

Angel uses examples, such as Cairo and Accra, Ghana to illustrate both longer term and recent expansions of urban land area and the consequent drastic declines in urban density. In Cairo, the urban land area increased 16 times from 1938 to 2000, well in excess of the approximately 10 times population increase. In Accra, a 50 percent population increase from 1985 to 2000 was dwarfed by a 150 percent increase in urban land area.

The analysis also includes a larger number (3600) with populations greater than 100,000. He estimates that all of the world’s urbanization covers no more than 0.5 percent of the world’s land. Angel suggests that the world the urban footprint could double or triple in the next few decades. However, he concludes that, even with this expansion, there are "adequate reserves of cultivatable land sufficient to feed the planet in perpetuity."

Taking note of the slow growth or even population declines in the more developed world, he reminds readers that that nearly all of future population growth will occur in the urban areas of the less developed world. Angel strongly contends that this urban expansion is necessary. This, of course, places him "swimming upstream" against the prevailing doctrines of urban planning. The title of his first chapter "Coming to Terms with Urban Expansion" gives fair warning of his challenge to current planning doctrines. Throughout the volume, Angel expresses the view that declining urban densities are "inevitable," based upon his historic analysis, review of current trends and perceptions of the future.

A Mumbai slum

The Prime Concern: Housing

Angel’s "primary policy concern" as "that in the absence of ample and accessible land for expansion on the urban periphery, artificial shortages of residential land will quickly extinguish any hope that housing will remain affordable, especially for the urban poor…"

Angel expresses concern that the urban containment policies that so dominate American and Western European planning could be damaging to less developed nations, cancelling out much of the economic rewards of rapid urbanization. He expresses surprise that the attempt to impose Western planning models on the developing world raises so little objection (see China Should Send the Western Planners Home).

Consistent with his "primary policy concern," Angel offers a "decent housing proposition," countering the present one-dimensional focus on environmental issues. In contrast, Angel suggests a more rounded approach to urban planning. He surmises \ the very purpose of cities: to improve the economic lot of those who are attracted there. People are not generally attracted to cities because of the quality of their planning or the uniqueness of their architecture. In short, as he puts it, "few move to the city for its fountains." Unless they perform their economic task, cities stagnate or die, as so often happened before the modern age. The near exclusive draw of cities is household economics. Beyond the unprecedented value of the quantitative data and analysis provided, Planet of Cities is rooted in the reality of that measure.

At the same time, Angel is himself is unabashedly a planner. He is an adjunct professor of urban planning at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, a lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and a senior research scholar at the urbanization project at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

Restoring a Genuine Focus to Planning

Angel expresses a strong interest in the most fundamental of planning issues: the provision of infrastructure that allows the urban area to better serve its residents and those it attracts. He is thus simultaneously for both more and less planning. He would curb the excesses of intervention in land markets that are now rife because they compromise the ability of cities to perform their primary function of improving affluence. He would expand the focus of planning to facilitate the organic urban expansion associated with growing cities. This means that sufficient available land must be available for development without materially increasing land and house prices. It also requires making provision for the basic infrastructure such as an arterial grid of dirt roads on the expanding fringes of developing world cities.

Abandoning Destructive Planning Doctrines

Angel calls for abandonment of artificial limits on urban expansion and population growth (such as urban growth boundaries and housing moratoria) and instead seeks economic development and improvements in the quality of life.

Professor Angel does not mince words about the consequences of relying of urban containment policy ("smart growth," "growth management," "compact cities,") as a strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The consequence would be that the "protection of our planet would likely come at the expense of the poor." He adds that strict measures to protect the natural environment by blocking urban expansion could "choke the supplies of affordable lands on the fringes of cities and limit the abilities of ordinary people the house themselves." He decries the notion that "cities should simply be contained and enclosed by greenbelts or impenetrable urban growth boundaries as "uninformed and utopian" because it makes sustainability "an absolute end that justifies all means to attain it." This policy approach sacrifices such imperatives as the quality of life and full employment.

A Planet of People

Angel’s treatment is consistent with the urban scaling research of West et al at the Santa Fe Institute, which found that as cities increased in population they become more productive (As we indicated in a previous article, the Santa Fe Institute research did not deal with urban densities, despite misconceptions of some analysts).

Angel’s concern about the impact on low income households is consistent with the focus of the international sustainability movement, which , declared at the recent Rio +20 conference:

Eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an
indispensable requirement for sustainable development. In this regard we are committed to
free humanity from poverty and hunger as a matter of urgency.

Angel’s Planet of Cities is about urban areas that serve their residents instead of theoretical, often utopian notions.

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.”

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Publication information:
Shlomo Angel, Planet of Cities (2012) Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

Photo: Cover: Planet of Cities. http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/images/2094_Planet_of_Cities_Cover_web.jpg

October 16, 2012
Thoughts on Chicago’s Tech Scene

I’ve said before that I don’t think Chicago is well positioned to become some type of dominant tech hub, but should only seek to get its “fair share” of tech. However, as the third largest city in America, Chicago’s fair share on tech is still pretty darn big. If you look at what’s been happening in the city the last couple of years, I think you’d have to have to say it’s something real. Built in Chicago lists 1145 companies in its inventory, and that’s definitely something. I’ll give a bit of a mea culpa by admitting that the tech community has done better than I probably thought it would a couple years ago, though I still stand behind the statement I made at the beginning of the paragraph.

Part of what has happened in Chicago is the general decentralization of technology in America. It used to be that tech in America was heavily concentrated in the Bay Area and Boston. In an era when pretty much literally anybody can start a company, you simply don’t need to be in any particular place to be successful these days.

Mark Suster made this point in his Tech Crunch post, 12 Tips To Building A Successful Startup Community Where You Live:

I would point out that these days there are really talented tech developers and teams everywhere. And I really mean everywhere. Ever play Zynga’s “Words with Friends” or any of their “with Friends” games? Didn’t come out of the SF facility. It came from an amazing small startup in McKinney, Texas (30 miles North of Dallas) called NewToy, which they acquired.

Think the next big startup can’t come from Dallas? Think again. Angry Birds? From startup Rovio in Finland.

Think USV is only invested around Union Square in NYC? How about in the last 12 months deals were announced with Dwolla (Iowa) and Pollenware (Kansas City). I met the Pollenware team myself – they were KILLER.

In this environment, it’s possible for lots of cities to find success. This is why places like New York and Chicago have been table to reboot their tech ambitions, and why some of those hot startups Suster mentioned are in smaller Midwest cities. Strong tech/startup scenes have been emerging all over the country. Being a startup hub isn’t what it used to be in terms of joining a highly exclusive club.

This is a case where there aren’t of necessity winners and losers. It isn’t like the Midwest can have just one tech center, for example, and thus the battle for Chicago is to be the winner, while everyone else gets to be a loser. The good news here is that Chicago can win and other places can win too. This might be one economic change that really can start rebranding a region.

Not only has there been legitimate strength in the Chicago tech community of late, it is also starting to get some good press. For example, just this week the New York Times ran a story on tech businesses moving into the Merchandise Mart. (An unfortunate subtext of this piece appears to be a serious decline in Chicago’s vaunted design community, however). This is one of a number of positive pieces that have appeared recently.

The city has really put on the full court press for tech, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel in effect making it the signature economic development cluster of his administration. I cannot think of any other sector of the economy in which Emanuel has so put his personal imprimatur. He has repeatedly stood up to endorse Chicago tech and its ambitions, and I think it’s fair to say he’s got a lot riding on it being successful – and not just successful, but an outsized success compared to peer cities.

Rahm has also put city action behind the marketing. For example, making an open data push, and also the recent broadband deployment initiative to underserved areas.

The trendlines certainly appear positive for Chicago at this point, but I want to highlight a few areas I find lacking and/or risky to the future.

The Booster Club Society

I’ll lead off a video from last year’s Chicago Ideas Week. This is JB Pritzker’s keynote at the Midwest Entrepreneur’s Summit. (If the video doesn’t display for you, click here).

This is a pretty good talk, but thinking about it a bit, a few things jumped out at me.

First, this is a talk in the finest tradition of “the sun is always shining on Chicago.” I’ve noted many times that under the Daley administration there was in effect a gag rule against saying anything that could be construed as even slightly negative about the city. I’ve noticed a change in that under Emanuel, but there’s one big exception, and that’s the tech sector. In Chicago tech pretty much everybody is pretty much 100% on the rails of the marketing message all of the time.

Listening to this, you’d think Chicago basically is tech nirvana, with the exception of a central gathering place for techies, something that Pritzker conveniently has a plan to create. Strong as Chicago may be, I can’t believe everything could possibly be this rosy. Similar sentiments from various members of the tech community are prominently on display in pretty much every article out there.

There’s nothing wrong with being a champion for your city, but when you become too much the booster club society, it’s not healthy. A little more paranoia and a little less spin would probably do the city good. Chicagoans would clearly recognize the excess earnestness that characterizes such rhetoric if they saw it in another city – I see it all over the place, as all kinds of cities make the case for why they too are one of the next great tech hubs by closing ranks and presenting a unified, totally positive marketing front to the outside world – so I’d suggest they think about how they’d evaluate the statements they make if those same statements were being made by boosters of another place like say Kansas City.

Here’s another example. Announcing some additional protected bike lanes, Rahm Emanuel had this to say:

It’s part of a planned bike lane network that Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Sunday said will help Chicago to attract and keep high tech companies and their workers who favor bicycles.

“By next year I believe the city of Chicago will lead the country in protected bike lanes and dedicated bike lanes, and it will be the bike friendliest city in the country,” Emanuel said Sunday at Malcolm X College.

“It will help us recruit the type of people that have been leaving for the coast. They will now come to the city of Chicago. The type of companies that have been leaving for the coast will stay in the city of Chicago.”

I like protected bike lanes. I applaud Chicago’s protected bike lane program. But this is a bit over the top. I got unsolicited email from as far away as the West Coast mocking this.

I think Emanuel’s media savvy and willingness to sell Chicago is a big plus for the city. But he has had a tendency to sometimes step over the line and make extravagant statements that just don’t pass the sniff test. I think this comes from his days in Washington where that sort of thing is expected, understood, and discounted by everyone. It’s just the way the game is played there. But for mayors there’s a different standard of judgement. Yes, everyone expects you to make the aggressive case for your city. But mayoral statements that seem un-moored from reality – like the various claims that have been made about crime and shootings, for example – end up calling into question the truth of everything else you say. This in my view is a danger for Rahm or anyone else who has been overly steeped in Beltway style communications.

So I would suggest that Chicago continue to be aggressive on marketing, but tone down some of the orgasmic rhetoric and take care that they don’t end up believing too much of their own press. This can be a fine line to walk. I hope that in private at least the city’s tech community has a huge punch list of things that need to be better they are actively working on.

Better Tech Media

Another aspect of Pritzker’s talk that jumped out at me immediately at the time he gave it (I attended the event), was his failure to mention that Chicago already had a very successful version of his own 1871 incubator called Tech Nexus. Tech Nexus is a self-described “clubhouse” for Chicago’s tech community, a co-working space, and an incubator (ranked one of the top ten in the United States by Forbes) that has served over 100 companies. Tech Nexus also hosts tons of meetups and other events, and through the affiliated Illinois Technology Association has been an instrumental booster of the Chicago tech scene the last few years.

Now Pritzker did mention them in passing in a long list of institutions he gave in the talk. But to claim Chicago lacked the central gathering place for tech until he, JB, rode to the rescue with 1871 is a) not true and b) pretty obviously a deliberate snub of Tech Nexus.

I certainly don’t think everybody needs to be on the same page in a city’s tech community. I actually think that would be a weakness. I think it’s healthy to have different groups of people with different visions each pushing them. Building a space like 1871 is a positive. The more the merrier I say. But this type of talk smells to me like pretty much just a political power play in the Chicago tech community.

Speaking of which, Pritzker may be a venture capitalist, but he’s also an heir to the Pritzker family fortune and one of the richest men in America. (Oh, the irony of having as the keynote speaker for your entrepreneurship conference a guy who inherited over a billion dollars – that tells you a lot about how Chicago works). The Pritzkers have long been power players in Chicago and a key part of what I’ve called the Nexus. So being on the executive committee of World Business Chicago is not so far a leap as he may have us believe. (I also wonder if perhaps Pritzker is the guy who convinced Emanuel to make the very risky move of piling all those chips on the tech square, as he’d appear to be one of the few guys with an interest who would have the clout to do it).

My point here isn’t to bash JB Pritzker, but rather to wonder why no one is asking questions or talking about stuff like this in the press. There are lots of very rich guys with no doubt big egos involved Chicago tech. There’s bound to be lots of interesting politics and personality clashes and maneuverings going on behind the scenes. I want to be able to pop some popcorn and follow the drama. But it doesn’t get covered. I think the local media is basically out of their depth when it comes to covering Chicago tech.

My believe is that Chicago needs a new, independent media source covering the local tech market. This would not be part of the marketing machine of Chicago tech, though like TechCrunch would of course be institutionally favorable to the industry, but instead would provide real, credible coverage of the what’s what and who’s who of the community. As Mark Suster said in the post I linked to earlier, “Local press matters.”

In my review of Enrico Moretti’s book, I noted how he took a face value some mainstream media reports on how tech giants like Facebook were acquiring startups just to get their talent while shutting down the actual companies. He apparently didn’t read Gawker, which gave a fuller story. New York tech community also benefits from other sites, such as the irreverent Betabeat from the New York Observer. Suster mentions sites like GeekWire in Seattle and SoCalTech as well but I don’t know them personally so can’t say they’d be the models to replicate.

In any event, I believe Chicago needs a first class tech media site. A site like Technori does a good job, but it strikes me more as a “how to” site than a media property. Chicago needs a someone asking tough questions, and looking at the people and politics around tech, not just the bits and the bytes. Because IMO the traditional Chicago media hasn’t really shown any interest in pursuing this.

Why Digital?

I’m also a bit puzzled as to why Chicago is leading its marketing with the digital/social media/consumer space. Obviously Groupon (which seems to be in the process of getting airbrushed out of the Chicago tech politburo photo) played a role in this. But this seems like a shaky place to stake a claim. I don’t see consumer type brands as Chicago’s strong suit, and the digital market seems weak in any case. Even juggernaut type companies like Facebook and Groupon have struggled financially. There’s a big question mark over the whole space. What’s more, it seems like lots of places, ranging from San Francisco to New York, are rushing to tell basically the same story in digital and are frankly ahead in the space.

By contrast, Chicago has a long and successful history of business to business and information technology. Flip Filipowski’s Platinum Technology was a great example of this. These types of companies might not have the sexiest brands, but they deliver value and make money. What’s more, because of the support demands of corporate clients, these businesses often employ a material amount of highly skill, highly paid people, unlike most digital startups.

Also, Chicago has been a major center of corporate IT for a long time. This is often not valued by the pure tech crowd, but is a huge source of value and good paying jobs. Terry Howerton (who runs TechNexus) said of State Farm:

“State Farm has 12,000 employees in IT in Bloomington,” Howerton said. “I’m sure many of those employees are really smart people, but how innovative can you be with 12,000 IT workers in your bureaucratic corporate environment in an industry as historic as insurance?”

Well, to start with, 12,000 IT employees is likely more than the total local employee count of every digital startup in Chicago combined. And that’s just one company. Howerton is the best advocate out there for a B2B vision for Chicago tech, but I would also add the IT part to the equation as well.

Chicago’s IT shops have a long track record of innovation going back to before a lot today’s digital folks were even born. Walgreen’s Intercom system, for example, linked all their pharmacies nationwide together back in the 1980s so that you could get your prescription refilled anywhere you needed it. And they didn’t have today’s open systems and frameworks to make life easy. They had to use a proprietary satellite system and a specialized high volume, 24×7 uptime mainframe operating system called TPF (originally developed for airline reservations). I’m not sure most of today’s digital coders could figure out how to build and support a TPF application if their lives depended on it.

Given Chicago’s heritage as a center for professional and business services, and corporate headquarters, I believe its natural strengths in technology are in B2B tech companies, technology consulting, and corporate IT. If you can get digital/consumer startups that’s great, but I wouldn’t make that the public face of the city. Instead, take all that corporate services mojo and embed it in tech.

The Big Risk

If you look at what I’ve written about changes so far, most of them are tweaks around the margins. They don’t indicate core weaknesses. Frankly they are sort of nit-picky. That should tell you something. As I said, I think the Chicago market has been doing well – better than I thought it would. I’m not even concerned about the so-called “developer drought” of which I’m extremely skeptical (see more here).

But there’s one thing that is a clear risk to Chicago, one that could undo all its effors – and it’s one that the city can’t do anything about. That’s the risk of another tech crash.

Technology is very cyclical. Every so often, Silicon Valley has had a major crash. I believe it is these crashes that have actually helped to keep the tech industry concentrated in its major hubs. That’s because when crashes come, industries retrench and reconsolidate. For example, Joel Kotkin has said that it was actually the 1980’s energy crash, the one that devastated Houston, that actually helped trigger the industry consolidation there. We’re seeing something similar in media, where financial pressure is consolidating it into NYC and to a somewhat lesser extent DC while secondary markets get wiped out.

So too in tech. Think about the dot com era. Lots of cities had their startup dreams back then too, and it seemed like parts of the country outside the major hubs would be able to get their bite at the apple. Chicago had its “Silicon Prairie” and New York its “Silicon Alley.” All of them got blown up by the dot com crash. But Silicon Valley and Boston survived. Chicago and New York tech eventually came back, but it was on a totally new basis.

There’s a tendency locally in Chicago to now talk about the flaws of the city’s tech ambitions in the Silicon Prairie days in contrast to how it now has its act together. The idea is that Silicon Prairie collapsed because people didn’t get along, or because they chased away their entrepreneurs, etc. But the reality is that it most likely collapsed simply because the market did, not because of flaws or mistakes. I’m not convinced there’s anything the city could have done to survive that shakeout. And if another crash hit, the same thing might easily happen all over again.

We’re seeing the early part of the cycle repeat again today. We’ve had a frothy investment climate with a spread of tech around the country to a whole slew of me-too places. But as I said, the whole digital startup thing has questions marks. It’s not clear that there’s a lot of sustainable, cash generating businesses out there. Many of them (e.g. Groupon) are not even really tech companies. A lot of them are basically media type entities, and like much media in the world have more eyeballs than profits.

Regardless of whether the digital wave crashes soon, another tech crash would appear to be inevitable at some point. If it happens at a time when Chicago hasn’t built some sort of a sustainable franchise, that would be bad. Right now, I don’t believe the Chicago tech scene as currently conceived would survive a major crash. I’m somewhat skeptical New York’s would either. That’s not because the city is doing anything wrong, but because of where it is in the maturity cycle.

That is really the key weakness in the Chicago story. It’s not the fortress hub that Silicon Valley is. I believe it is benefiting from a general decentralization of tech along with a boom cycle investment climate. That can be very good for Chicago, but unless and until it can turn the corner into something that can survive the next big crash, there will continue to be a major question mark over its viability.

This is what I find most interesting about Rahm’s all-in bet on tech. The last go round ended badly. There’s lots of reasons to believe Chicago can be a strong player in the current market, but the city doesn’t have intuitive structural advantages that would make it a slam dunk candidate to become a fortress hub in tech. The digital market is looking somewhat questionable, as the stock charts on Groupon and Facebook show. This was a risky bet. Not to say a bad one, but a risky one. That’s why I think it would be a very intriguing story to find out how it came to be.

In the meantime, while we wait for the judgement of history, Chicago should enjoy where it’s at, build on the present success, and look to shore up those addressable areas of weakness around an excessive booster club mentality, the need for stronger media, and getting away from an overly digital based marketing approach to Chicago tech.

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

Photo by Doug Siefken

October 15, 2012
A Geographer Who Navigated the Globe

Many people ask, “What do geographers do?” I would suggest that Marvin Creamer’s life story is all you need to know about the practical application of geography, even though most of us will never be stuck in a horizonless Indian Ocean on a “sea of glass”, or try to navigate the ferocious Drake’s Passage. Ancient mariners may have been able to sail long distances without instruments, but it is difficult, tricky, and can be extremely hazardous. Only one person, New Jersey’s Marvin Creamer, has ever attempted to circumnavigate the globe this way. I had the distinct honor of interviewing Marvin Creamer for the thirtieth anniversary of his historic achievement. The 96 year old sailor and geographer also founded Rowan University’s geography department, and taught there for over three decades.

At 66 years old in 1982 (five years after his retirement), Creamer became the only person ever to sail around the world without any navigational aids, not even a watch. He had spent three years thinking about it, two years making practice runs and doing research on the possibility, and 18 months accomplishing it. Instead of a compass and sextant, his only navigational tools were his extensive knowledge of geography, an hourglass, and a lot of optimism.

Creamer and his crewmates braved all manner of conditions over an 18 month period to accomplish the truly historic feat. He became an expert at celestial sailing, designating a “North Star” and triangulating his position off of it. Using this method he could keep within 1 degree of latitude and longitude, but this would not help him during the daytime or cloudy conditions.

For navigation during daytime or overcast conditions, he needed to find other ways to determine latitude. He studied ocean currents, marine life, water color and temperature. These skills would be critical not only in stormy conditions, but also in calms under slate skies.. He used his encyclopedic geographic knowledge to — for example — glean vital information from a squeaky hinge by determining where a desiccating wind (that caused the squeaking) would originate from. Sailors can become disoriented the same way pilots become confused when they have no visual cues to reference. More than once Creamer found himself fogged in on a shipping lane, and shaken by the blaring fog horns of massive tankers nearby.

The biggest planning problem was how to get around Cape Horn. Scientists who had worked in Antarctica advised that maybe once a month clear skies would exist on the Cape. He would have to be able to navigate the world’s most treacherous waters blind. Not only were the currents savage, the winds were often gale force, with high waves and icebergs. It’s no surprise that the Drake Passage is known as a sailor’s graveyard.

The southern sky is also much cloudier on average that the northern hemisphere’s, which would add to the difficulty of navigating without instruments there. But Boy Scouts in New Zealand taught him how to use the Southern Cross and only a thin sliver of sky to find the Polar Point.

Marvin Creamer departed Cape May, NJ on December 21, 1982 under overcast skies with temperatures in the teens and an advancing cold front. He arrived in Cape Town South Africa on March 31st , 1983, and spent 8 weeks there fixing the boat and getting rest. The next leg was crossing the Indian Ocean in winter time to get to Tasmania. Upon arrival in Hobart, the fishermen there were so impressed that he could make landfall in such harsh conditions on the dark and desolate coast that they threw him 36 parties in the 6 weeks he stayed. Heading back down the Derwent River, 90 mph winds tossed the Globe Star upside down. His steel hulled boat with its shortened mast, built for this trip., sustained only minor physical damage, but an ill crew member needed to be dropped off in Sydney.

On the way he was trapped for two days by Bomboras — dangerous eddies over hidden reefs of rocks — crashing around him (he described them as ‘going off like geysers’ all around him), in one of the journey’s most terrifying episodes. Finally, after navigating through a minefield of rocky outcrops, he made it through to the East Australian Current and Sydney. After stopping in New Zealand, it was off to Cape Horn and Drake’s passage.

Sailing through the Drake was a wild adventure with winds and currents so strong that the boat could never be turned more than 15 degrees without it feeling and sounding like it was being hit with mortar fire. During the 600 mile passage his tiller broke and his shoulder was dislocated. Creamer worked furiously to cut loose his camera mount and build a makeshift steering shaft.

After the near catastrophe he turned north towards the Falklands, which are notoriously difficult to sail, due to their remoteness and constantly changing conditions. In addition to the geographic challenges, he had entered a sensitive area that had seen war only months before. The British were still on high alert. When Creamer saw British fighters overhead (and they spotted him as well), he looked for a place to make port, and unknowingly chose a top secret British base, where he immediately found himself under house arrest. But after a little dialogue his captors treated him royally, and provisioned him for the final leg of his incredible journey. Marvin arrived in Cape May, NJ safely on May 17, 1984.

Photos by Ralph Harvey

Chuck McGlynn is an assistant professor at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. The university is planning a series of major events next spring to commemorate Creamer’s achievement, including a planetarium experience where attendees will be able to “travel with Marvin and the Globe Star” around the world. An interactive map experience will allow users to select any point along the journey for a display of the Globe Star journey’s date, time, longitude, average air and water temperatures, prevailing winds and sea-current.

October 13, 2012
Florida: When Your Best (Place) Just Ain’t Good Enough

Real estate broker Coldwell Banker handles corporate relocations for a large portion of our middle class. It recently released a survey of Suburbanite Best Places to Live. While it’s easy to dismiss as a sales tool for their realtors, the survey provides a fascinating glimpse of middle class, suburban preferences, influenced by our current economy. Coldwell Banker’s top honors go to Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. Suburbs of Seattle, New York City, Washington, DC, and other prominent cities feature strongly on Coldwell Banker’s list, which highlights places that are sprinkled evenly throughout the United States. Notably missing are any communities in Florida.

For a state with sunshine, beaches, and low taxes, Florida just doesn’t have the chops to get even one community onto the top 100 list.

Weather, evidently, has little to do with our middle class’s desirable locations. Frigid Whitefish Bay, just south of Milwaukee, captured spot #100. Situated along the shore of Lake Michigan, this suburb of 14,000 doesn’t exactly have the kind of weather that makes people flock to the beach. Instead, it offers residents a strong sense of community, heritage, and a culture that values education and family. If you move here, you’ll find yourself within a suburban community with a high homeownership ratio, an educated population, and a quality of life that includes short commutes, low crime rates, close conveniences, and a tendency to eat at home.

Suburban living has maintained a strong appeal for middle-class Americans due to the popularity of many of the factors on which Coldwell Banker based its rankings. While socialites prefer more urban, dense lifestyles (which is another list that Banker recently produced), suburbanites prefer backyards and quieter neighborhoods away from the hustle and bustle of the city; they don’t need to be near the action. Florida has all these things in abundance, except when compared to… almost everywhere else.

Windermere, Florida’s top ranked suburb, came closest, ranking just below Whitefish Bay and a couple of others. Like most suburbs on the list, Windermere is on the periphery of a large metropolitan area (Orlando), and contains conveniences, good schools, parks, and recreation facilities.

For much of its history, Florida represented the suburban American dream. The net benefits included an affordable cost of living and upward mobility, and Florida’s growth has consisted almost entirely of suburban densities. No one can accuse Florida developers of building communities that people didn’t want – the product was carefully researched to fit the market.

In the late period of the boom, urban options were also developed, in the belief that a new demand for socialite “downtown” style living would emerge. Townhomes and condominiums rose in Florida’s primary and secondary urban markets. Even tertiary cities like Sanford, a historic agricultural town north of Orlando, begot a six-story condo. Those who migrated from Chicago and the dense Northeast now had a diverse set of choices, from rural to urban, with something to please everybody.

It is perhaps this dilution of the market that has made Florida’s star fade a bit in relation to the national constellation of suburbs. If East Grand Rapids, Michigan (Coldwell Banker’s #8) can outrank the hundreds of suburbs around Tampa, Miami, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, and Orlando, there’s something else going on besides beauty.

One thing that many of the top 100 have in common is a strong public education system. Florida, which has refused to invest in education, may now be harvesting the bitter fruit of this stubborn negligence. The state’s primary growth today continues to be in retirees who are uninterested in supporting education, and who control a large part of the state’s political power.

Another aspect that the top 100 suburbs offer is safety. “Safety is a priority,” states the opening page of this survey, but it simply isn’t something that most people associate with the Sunshine State. A state that doesn’t offer a strong sense of personal safety isn’t going to rank highly, no matter what else is being offered. With two out of the ten most dangerous cities in the country, Florida seems more like the wild West than a suburbanite’s dream come true.

Increasing public safety and public education are two efforts that government can do best, most people agree. Florida has spiraled downward on both fronts. The state’s leadership, by cutting taxes during the worst part of the recession, haven’t exactly helped the situation. With Florida’s new home sales up, the state’s economists are whistling a happy tune, convinced that the worst is over. But what Coldwell Banker is telling Florida is a different, darker story.

Florida’s best offerings are attracting a population less interested in the core values stated in the Coldwell Banker survey – safety, good education, a sense of community – and so we continue to get more of the same. More population that reinforces Florida’s lack of investment in community, more population reluctant to put money into education, and more population that is quick to move somewhere else at the earliest opportunity seem to be Florida’s fate. This represents a lost opportunity to those who wish to see Florida make gains in these spheres – education, community, and safety. And it represents a lost opportunity to match up a truly beautiful place with truly involved people.

Corporations seeking to relocate and recruit good people pay attention to these surveys. Florida’s low taxes may lure a few more down south, but if corporations need to attract and retain top talent, this survey points to where they are likely to go, regardless of the incentives our state has to offer.

Places like Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin; Rossmoor, California; and Haworth, New Jersey will continue to gain in the type of population that share these same values. The middle class, fighting its way back from a threatened extinction, isn’t likely to take a chance on a place that has a rapidly degrading quality of life. Until Florida’s culture starts caring about the quality of its community, safety, and education, our state will continue to grow without flourishing as a place where people desire to be.

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.

Bigstock photo: Florida Housing

October 12, 2012

Even After the Housing Bust, Americans Still Love the Suburbs

For decades, Americans have chosen to live in suburbs rather than in cities. Suburban growth has outpaced urban growth, and many big cities have even lost population. But in recent years, some experts have said it’s time for cities to make a comeback. Why? Urban crime rates have fallen; many baby boomers want to live near restaurants, shops, and all the other good things that cities offer; and the housing bust has caused more people to rent instead of buy – sometimes by choice and sometimes out of necessity. Moreover, cities offer shorter commutes, a big draw given today’s higher gas prices and growing concerns about the environment.

So is there evidence that cities are really making a comeback? Earlier this year, a widely-reported Brookings analysis using 2011 Census estimates suggested that they were, reversing the long-term trend of faster suburban growth. However, it later became clear that those 2011 Census estimates should not be used for areas smaller than counties, which includes most cities and suburbs (see “the fine print” at the end of this post).

Knowing that we couldn’t use these Census data, we decided to tackle this question another way. Using U.S. Postal Service data on occupied addresses receiving mail, we calculated household growth in every ZIP code from September 2011 to September 2012. (A previous Trulia Trends post explains in more detail how these data are collected.) Consistent with earlier studies of city versus suburb growth, we compared the growth in a metro area’s biggest city with the growth in the rest of the metropolitan area, across America’s 50 largest metros.

By this measure, there was essentially no difference between city and suburban growth. When we looked at all 50 metros together, household growth was 0.536% in the metros’ biggest cities and 0.546% in the rest of the metro area over the past year – which means that suburbs grew ever so slightly faster than big cities. The biggest city grew faster than the suburbs in 24 of those metros, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia; the suburbs grew faster than the biggest city in the other 26 metros, including Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit and Phoenix.

But comparing the biggest city with the rest of the metro area misses some of the action. In most metros, there are neighborhoods outside the biggest city that are more urban than some neighborhoods in the biggest city (as measured by density). For example, Hoboken NJ, just across the river from New York City, is denser and feels more urban than much of Staten Island, which is part of New York City. Central Square in Cambridge, next to Boston, feels more urban than West Roxbury and Hyde Park, two quiet neighborhoods within the City of Boston. In southern California, Santa Monica and Pasadena – which are outside the Los Angeles city boundary – feel more urban than Sylmar, Chatsworth and other outlying neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley that are technically part of the City of Los Angeles.

Therefore, we took a new approach. We compared growth in neighborhoods based on whether they actually are more urban or suburban based on their density, regardless of whether those neighborhoods happen to be inside or outside the boundary of a metro area’s biggest city. Within each metro area, we ranked every neighborhood – as defined by ZIP codes — by household density. Neighborhoods with higher density than the metro area average are “more urban”; neighborhoods with lower density than the metro area average are “more suburban.” (See “the fine print” at end of this post.)

By defining “urban” and “suburban” in this way, suburban growth is clearly outpacing urban growth. Growth in the “more suburban” neighborhoods was 0.73% in the past year, more than twice as high as in the “more urban” neighborhoods, where growth was just 0.35%. In fact, urban neighborhoods grew faster than suburban neighborhoods in only 5 of the 50 largest metros: Memphis, New York, Chicago, San Jose and Pittsburgh – and often by a really small margin. In the other 45 large metros, the suburbs grew faster than the more urban neighborhoods.

Top 5 Metros Where Urban Growth Outpaced Suburban Growth
U.S. Metro	Urban Growth	Suburban Growth	Difference: Urban minus Suburban
Memphis, TN	0.92%	0.42%	0.50%
New York, NY	0.58%	0.27%	0.31%
Chicago, IL	0.31%	0.26%	0.06%
San Jose, CA	0.73%	0.71%	0.02%
Pittsburgh, PA	0.44%	0.43%	0.01%

Note: among largest 50 metros.

Top 5 Metros Where Suburban Growth Most Outpaced Urban Growth
U.S. Metro	Urban Growth	Suburban Growth	Difference: Urban minus Suburban
San Antonio, TX	0.40%	2.46%	-2.07%
Oklahoma City, OK	0.38%	1.87%	-1.49%
Houston, TX	0.44%	1.91%	-1.48%
Austin, TX	0.88%	2.13%	-1.25%
Detroit, MI	-0.94%	0.20%	-1.14%

Note: among largest 50 metros.

Looking more closely: what happened to growth in not just in the “more urban” neighborhoods, but in the MOST urban? Within each metro, we split neighborhoods into ten categories, based on their density. The highest-density category covers just the “most urban” parts of big cities (much of Manhattan, for instance, but none of Brooklyn) including a few neighborhoods that are technically outside the metro’s biggest city (parts of Cambridge MA, Arlington VA and Scottsdale AZ, for instance). On the other end of the spectrum, the lowest-density neighborhoods are the “most suburban” (in fact, in some metros, the lowest-density neighborhoods feel downright rural). Now the pattern gets interesting:

In general, the “more suburban” neighborhoods grew faster than the “more urban” neighborhoods. But the “most urban” neighborhoods actually had solid growth, as the leftmost bar in the graph shows. Household growth was 0.54% in these “most urban” neighborhoods,” which matched the overall growth rate for the metro areas examined. Furthermore, among only the largest 10 metros, household growth was 0.65% in the “most urban” neighborhoods, compared with 0.48% growth in these metros overall.

That’s the punchline: America’s suburban areas are continuing to grow faster than America’s urban areas. Despite falling homeownership, rising gas prices, downsizing baby boomers and improvements to city living, American suburbanization hasn’t reversed. Even though the highest-density neighborhoods, particularly in the largest metros, have grown in the past year, the suburbanization of America marches on.

We’ve provided the full data set of urban and suburban growth in the 50 largest U.S. metro areas below.

The fine print:

This Brookings analysis showed cities growing faster than their suburbs between 2010 and 2011, based on 2011 Census estimates. Posts at newgeography.com here and here criticized the 2011 Census estimates and questioned research based on those estimates, including the Brookings analysis. The problem with the 2011 Census estimates is that the 2010-2011 growth rates for subcounty areas – which includes most cities and suburbs — were assumed to be the same as the growth rate for the whole county (with the exception of population in “group quarters”).
We used the largest 50 metro areas. In this report, the “San Francisco” metro area includes Oakland; “Dallas” includes Fort Worth; “Washington DC” includes the Bethesda metro division; “New York” includes Long Island; and so on. (Most Trulia Trends posts use the smaller “metropolitan division” where they exist for consistency with other housing data reports.)
The U.S. Postal Service reports delivery statistics by ZIP codes. We calculated density using 2010 Census data for ZCTA’s, a Census approximation of ZIP codes.

Jed Kolko is Trulia’s Chief Economist, leading the company’s housing research and providing insight on market trends and public policy to major media outlets including TIME magazine, CNN, and numerous others. Read more of his work at Trulia Trends blog.

This piece originally appeared at the Trulia blog.

Suburban neighborhood photo by Bigstock.

October 11, 2012

The Rise of Post-Familialism: Humanity’s Future?

This piece is the introduction to a new report on post-familialism from Civil Service College in Singapore, Chapman University, and Fieldstead and Company and authored by Joel Kotkin.

For most of human history, the family — defined by parents, children and extended kin — has stood as the central unit of society. In Europe, Asia, Africa and, later, the Americas and Oceania, people lived, and frequently worked, as family units.

Today, in the high-income world1 and even in some developing countries, we are witnessing a shift to a new social model. Increasingly, family no longer serves as the central organizing feature of society. An unprecedented number of individuals — approaching upwards of 30% in some Asian countries — are choosing to eschew child bearing altogether and, often, marriage as well.

The post-familial phenomena has been most evident in the high income world, notably in Europe, North America and, most particularly, wealthier parts of East Asia. Yet it has bloomed as well in many key emerging countries, including Brazil, Iran and a host of other Islamic countries.

The reasons for this shift are complex, and vary significantly in different countries and cultures. In some countries, particularly in East Asia, the nature of modern competitive capitalism often forces individuals to choose between career advancement and family formation. As a result, these economies are unwittingly setting into motion forces destructive to their future workforce, consumer base and long-term prosperity.

The widespread movement away from traditional values — Hindu, Muslim, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist or Confucian — has also undermined familialism. Traditional values have almost without exception been rooted in kinship relations. The new emerging social ethos endorses more secular values that prioritise individual personal socioeconomic success as well as the personal quest for greater fulfilment.

To be sure, many of the changes driving post-familialism also reflect positive aspects of human progress. The change in the role of women beyond sharply defined maternal roles represents one of the great accomplishments of modern times. Yet this trend also generates new pressures that have led some women to reject both child-bearing and marriage. Men are also adopting new attitudes that increasingly preclude marriage or fatherhood.

The great trek of people to cities represents one of the great triumphs of human progress, as fewer people are necessary to produce the basic necessities of food, fibre and energy. Yet the growth of urban density also tends to depress both fertility and marriage rates. The world’s emerging postfamilial culture has been largely spawned in the crowded pool of the large urban centres of North America, Europe and, most particularly, East Asia. It is also increasingly evident in the fast growing cities of developing countries in south Asia, North Africa, Iran and parts of the Middle East.

The current weak global economy, now in its fifth year, also threatens to further slow family formation. Child-rearing requires a strong hope that life will be better for the next generation. The rising cost of urban living, the declining number of well-paying jobs, and the onset of the global financial crisis has engendered growing pessimism in most countries, particularly in Europe and Japan, but also in the United States and some developing countries.

This report will look into both the roots and the future implications of the post-familial trend. As Austrian demographer Wolfgang Lutz has pointed out, the shift to an increasingly childless society creates “self-reinforcing mechanisms” that make childlessness, singleness, or one-child families increasingly predominant.2

Societal norms, which once almost mandated family formation, have begun to morph. The new norms are reinforced by cultural influences that tend to be concentrated in the very areas — dense urban centres — with the lowest percentages of married people and children. A majority of residences in Manhattan are for singles, while Washington D.C. has one of the highest percentages of women who do not live with children, some 70%. Similar trends can be seen in London, Paris, Tokyo and other cultural capitals.3

A society that is increasingly single and childless is likely to be more concerned with serving current needs than addressing the future oriented requirements of children. Since older people vote more than younger ones, and children have no say at all, political power could shift towards nonchildbearing people, at least in the short and medium term. We could tilt more into a ‘now’ society, geared towards consuming or recreating today, as opposed to nurturing and sacrificing for tomorrow.

The most obvious impact from post-familialism lies with demographic decline. It is already having a profound impact on fiscal stability in, for example, Japan and across southern Europe. With fewer workers contributing to cover pension costs,4 even successful places like Singapore will face this same crisis in the coming decade.5

A diminished labour force — and consumer base — also suggest slow economic growth and limit opportunities for business expansion. For one thing, younger people tend to drive technological change, and their absence from the workforce will slow innovation. And for many people, the basic motivation for hard work is underpinned by the need to support and nurture a family. Without a family to support, the very basis for the work ethos will have changed, perhaps irrevocably.

The team that composed this report — made up of people of various faiths, cultures, and outlooks — has concerns about the sustainability of a post-familial future. But we do not believe we can “turn back the clock” to the 1950s, as some social conservatives wish, or to some other imagined, idealised, time. Globalisation, urbanisation, the ascendancy of women, and changes in traditional sexual relations are with us, probably for the long run.

Seeking to secure a place for families requires us to move beyond nostalgia for a bygone era and focus on what is possible. Yet, in the end, we do not consider familialism to be doomed. Even in the midst of decreased fertility, we also see surprising, contradictory and hopeful trends. In Europe, Asia and America, most younger people still express the desire to have families, and often with more than one child. Amidst all the social change discussed above, there remains a basic desire for family that needs to be nurtured and supported by the wider society.

Our purpose here is not to judge people about their personal decision to forego marriage and children. Instead we seek to launch a discussion about how to carve out or maintain a place for families in the modern metropolis. In the process we must ask — with full comprehension of today’s prevailing trends — tough questions about our basic values and the nature of the cities we are now creating.

Anuradha Shroff, Ali Modarres, Wendell Cox, and Zina Klapper contributed to this report.

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 report was organized by Civil Service College in Singapore with research support from Chapman University and Fieldstead and Company.

October 10, 2012

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