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  • With Debate in Town, St. Louis is the Nation’s Capital for a Day

    In 1869 L. U. Reavis spoke for many when he made the case for moving the nation’s capital from, as he put it, “the banks of the Potomac to the banks of the Mississippi.” Citing St. Louis’s location in the exact center of the nation, the growing population of the Mississippi Valley, the presumably temporary expediency that had led leaders to place the capital in Washington in the first place, and the commercial advantages of a capital city on the Mississippi River, Reavis thundered that just as Mohammed had gone to the mountain, so the nation would go to St. Louis. Predicting Congress would make the move within five years, Reavis concluded: “Before 1875 the President of the United States will deliver his message at the new seat of government in the Mississippi Valley.”

    140 years later, the mountain waits. St. Louis today is not without the advantages that led Reavis to paint it as a bustling river town. The city hosts a federal reserve bank, a growing financial sector, a Boeing factory, excellent universities, and a collection of museums, gardens, and theatres that do, in fact, rival D.C.’s. Local demographics reflect the nation as a whole. Behind the Obama and McCain signs that dot my neighborhood are union members, Catholics, college professors, veterans, Jews, Reagan Republicans, pro-lifers, Muslims, and Hillary supporters. I can walk to the city where residents debate gentrification, community continuity, the quality of schools, and the costs of segregation. But if someone had asked me to describe the political vibe of the city when I first moved here in 2006, I would have settled on “resigned.”

    Compared especially to residents of my previous home, Los Angeles, St. Louisans seemed reluctant to admit that they or their concerns mattered at all. At its best, this attitude comes across as midwestern plain-spoken humility. Whereas I couldn’t spend a day in LA without hearing about its status as the city of the future, few folks here mentioned that Missouri is a bellwether state, voting for the winner of every Presidential election since 1904 except that of 1956. And while St. Louisans regularly express familiarity with LA’s geography or its demographics or, at least, its Hollywood productions, I have had to tell Angelenos that St. Louis is on the Mississippi River, that it’s a union town and that, with a greater metro-area population of well over 2 million, we do, in fact, get first-run films in our theaters. At its worst, local humilty seemed to mean passivity and obeisance to national whims dictated by the coasts. When the rest of the nation figured out how to handle crumbling downtowns and failing schools, maybe they’d let us know what to do.

    But in the past month, there’s been a slow rise in local pride. I’ve noticed more signs out for political candidates. Maybe that’s just because the election is nearing. No doubt, too, McCain’s surprise selection of Palin had similar effects here as elsewhere in the country. I see “Hockey Mamas for Obama” scrawled in shoe polish on the backs of mini-vans and sealed with a lipstick kiss. Local moms are writing their suburban papers to say they see themselves in the governor of Alaska and it feels good. The city turns its collective head to Phyllis Schlafly to hear what she has to say. But there’s also suddenly interest in who gets to attend the vice-presidential debates. And the St. Louis Post Dispatch is interviewing a retired high school debate coach on pointers for Biden and Palin, not for Obama and McCain.

    The debates will be here, in St. Louis, at Washington University (what the father of a friend of mine used to call “the best university you’ve never heard of”) and people are excited. WashU has hosted presidential debates before. In fact, it’s hosted more than any other institution in history. And I confess that I detected the slightest disappointment among locals when we first learned that it would be the vice presidential, rather than presidential debates, that would be held there on October 2. But no one complained too loudly. After all, what are you going to do? It’s just St. Louis.

    But all that has changed now. Although the sentiment may be tacit, people are beginning to think that St. Louis matters. Maybe instead of waiting for the nation to tell us what to do, we should be telling the nation. On my way to class at St. Louis University, in the city, I stop and chat with an African American man out registering voters. He’s an Obama supporter. I ask how I can get a handle on which way different St. Louis neighborhoods will go in the election. He tells me to stay in the city: “That way you can talk to immigrants, black people, white people – you’ll get diversity.” It’s an unusually gray day for September. We shiver. I ask him what he thinks of the vice presidential debates. He lights up. “They’ll decide everything!” he tells me enthusiastically. “The debate will determine Missouri, and Missouri is a bellwether state – and it’s going to make all the difference. I’m going to be there! I’m going to be there!” It is the most enthused he’s been in our conversation, the most enthused I’ve seen anyone here about the election.

    I wonder if he’s heard of L.U. Reavis.

    Flannery Burke is an assistant professor in the Department of History at St. Louis University. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, she writes about the American West, the environment, Los Angeles, and St. Louis.

  • Dennis Powell

  • The future of urban settlement? Look in the suburbs

    Let’s look at general urban settlement and suburbia from a geographic and demographic, not a planning or ideological viewpoint. There’s really no point to the fruitless and unscientific harangues about how people ought to live or about allegedly better or poorer forms of settlement. This is really trying to understand what is happening in the metropolitan level of settlement, agglomerations of at least 50,000 and their commuter hinterlands — where at least 80 percent of Americans live.

    Definitions: I will use terms precisely. The central city is the historic, largest core incorporated place (OK, there are a few with 2 or 3 core cities). Suburbs are the rest of the urbanized area and may be usefully be differentiated between older, inner and newer, outer suburbs. Exurbia is the area of intense commuting to the urban core from beyond the urbanized area boundary, and it can be differentiated between rural territory (a.k.a. “sprawl”) and satellite towns.

    As of 2000 “central cities” had 70 million persons (25 %) of the population, suburbs 120 million people (43 %) and exurbia up to 36 million (12 %). That puts the suburban and exurban share to well over 50 percent of the US total population, not even including the suburbs or smaller towns and cities.

    Even worse for urban boosters, the suburbs — and particularly the exurbs — is where the growth is. In the Seattle metropolitan area, which is under unusually strong growth management restrictions and has a stronger than usual urban core, growth continues to head outwards, with inner, outer suburbs, as well as exurbs easily adding many more people than the central city.

    The question now is whether this pattern will hold for a longer term or whether significant change can be expected. My sense is that these trends will broadly continue —that suburban and exurban growth will continue to be greater than central city growth, despite the passing of peak oil, the passion of anti-suburb intellectual currents, the energy crisis and new urbanist planning policies. But central cities will probably do somewhat better than they have in the last 20 years. So it is sensible to ask: what are forces for and against central city, suburban and exurban growth; and, as important, how will the character of these components of urban settlement change?

    Demography

    The combination of many suburban empty nesters, later marriage and fewer children for generation X’ers (those born 1965-1981) should foster selective central city growth . But this appears to apply only for the subset of more glamorous cities with a well-developed amenity structure. . But these cities often suffer housing price inflation and strong anti-growth lobbies which constrain may constrain growth. Many, perhaps most, cities lack the appeal to attract population in from lower-density areas.

    Older inner suburbs represent a zone of significant change between and the traditional newer middle class family suburbs and the gentrifying or stagnant central cities. Some are receiving the displaced poor and minorities; some have matured into quality communities, and, like parts of the central city 50 years earlier, are still attractive to families, with or without children, as well as many recent immigrants.

    Housing prices and taxes vary greatly across the US, which will like push movement toward lower cost places, including to non-metropolitan small towns and rural areas. This may be particularly true for those with adequate retirement income. But middle class families remain a huge demographic component for far suburban and exurban living (see market forces below).

    On balance, demographic forces seem to reinforce existing patterns rather than favor either central cities or suburbs, or more rapid non-metropolitan growth.

    Economic factors

    Economic changes are even more uncertain. The vast expansion of producer services to replace the huge decline in primary and secondary (manufacturing) jobs clearly is in some jeopardy, as evidenced by the problems evident finance and insurance sector. The key is whether American entrepreneurs can partially restore a greater industrial base. In general, suburban and exurban sites are likely to be cheaper, more politically pliable and more available than central city sites, particularly compared to more elite gentrified core cities. A partial recovery of production in some less glamorous cities with available idle plant could occur but does not seem very likely.

    Energy, technology, environment, and cars

    Most observers concerned with the “end of oil” and with global warming argue that these will inevitably drive people to denser concentrations of settlement in central cities and older inner suburbs. They even predict a decline in far suburban and exurban settlement. US technological history, however, suggests that if innovation and investment take place anywhere, it will likely be on alternative energy sources, conspicuously including the continued popularity and dominance of trucks and cars. Nevertheless, persistent high energy prices could yield some acceptance of moderately higher densities for housing and business, and a slightly higher growth in central cities and older inner suburbs.

    Market forces

    Markets refer to preferences and needs, and the willingness to pay among households and businesses. There is relatively little uncertainty as to preferences. Even in the biggest metropolises, no more than 30 to 40 percent of households prefer denser urban settings and enjoy apartment or townhouse living. For the nation as a whole, the share is only 10-15 percent! Those who prefer it tend to be younger, unmarried persons and empty nesters without children and are (or will be) more educated and professional than the US norm. But 60 to 70 percent of households, and not just families with children, prefer single family homes and cars. These households will pay or MOVE in order to act on these preferences. At the same time perhaps 35 to 45 percent of jobs thrive in dense urban settings, as downtown towers, leaving 55 to 65 percent to seek less dense suburban and exurban settings, often by logistic necessity. These are the continuing and overwhelming facts that created and will sustain suburban living.

    Planning

    Intellectual hatred of suburbia is a century old and has been especially fervent in the last 60 years. From the late 1970s the planning profession has embraced what has come to be called “new urbanism,” advocating urban containment, urban redevelopment, densification, urban villages, and a new wave of rail transit, now under the broad rubric of growth management. These efforts often have been strongly supported by environmental groups concerned with the loss of open space as well as by central city political and business interests.

    Several metropolitan areas are becoming increasingly regulated by such planning ideology. But to date the movement has not been successful at significantly slowing suburban or exurban growth. A few central cities, such as San Francisco, Seattle, New York, San Francisco and Portland, have gentrified, but have not grown much in population, since the mass of new housing is occupied by much smaller non-family households. Costs of growth management include displacement of minority and less affluent families, often to the older suburbs or to other neighborhoods of the core city.

    Conclusions

    Market preferences have prevailed. Businesses as well as households have resisted substantial concentration or been priced out of the gentrifying core. So the suburbs persist. But they have changed, especially in those more regulated metropolises. The older inner suburbs have become more central-city like, with more diversity in ethnicity and class. But this has not slowed the long-standing trend of net growth of housing and of jobs at the suburban edge – even in the most growth managed cities, and even in the most recent 2000-2007 period.

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

  • Richard Morrill

  • Pennsylvania: Where the Collar Counties Are the Big Dogs

    Pennsylvania, as with most states, can be analyzed politically by looking at a few key counties and how they break in a political campaign.

    Historically, the four collar counties of Philadelphia broke heavily Republican and neutralized the advantage Democrats had coming out of Philadelphia. Over the past decade this trend has reversed itself — and with it the political balance in the state.

    Over the past eight years Pennsylvania has gained some 500,000 voters but the Democrats have doubled their lead over Republicans to over one million. In short, since 2000 Democrats have outgained Republicans in Pennsylvania by a ratio of 39:1. The significant growth in Independents is now a major factor in GOP victory in statewide elections.

    The City of Philadelphia has been solidly Democratic for generations. The big changes are in the four suburban “collar counties” around Philadelphia which account for 17.6 percent of the state’s voters. Starting in 2000, Republican registration in the Philadelphia suburbs has dropped by 85,494 voters or 10.1 percent.

    On the Democratic side is a far different story. Registration increased by 220,149 voters or 45.5 percent from its 2000 level. The Republican advantage now stands at a mere 55,557 voters and the number of straight ticket voters has dropped.

    This surge in registration reflects a shift in voting patterns that have existed in these counties for decades starting at the top of the ticket and slowly working their way down to local levels of government. In 2000, Al Gore defeated George W. Bush by 204,840 votes in Pennsylvania with the four collar counties going to Gore by 54,346 votes. This region supplied Gore with 27 percent of his victory margin in Pennsylvania despite Republicans having a 357,200 voter registration advantage at that time.

    In 2002, Ed Rendell defeated Mike Fisher for governor by 323,827 votes. Rendell won all four collar counties and when Philadelphia is included the southeast region supplied Rendell with a 515,441 vote margin, negating the vote in the rest of Pennsylvania which Fisher, a former State Senator and then current Attorney General, won handily.

    In 2004, John Kerry defeated then President Bush in Pennsylvania by 144,248 total votes. Kerry did not win all our collar counties. He lost to Bush in Chester County and his margins in the three others were far less than Rendell’s two years earlier. But, other Republicans including Senator Arlen Specter survived by winning in this increasingly contested territory.

    Increasingly this trend has moved down the ballot. In 2006 when State Auditor General Bob Casey, Jr. trounced incumbent Senator Rick Santorum statewide by 708,206 votes, Casey won all four collar counties by significant margins. Also, two Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives were replaced by Democrats as Patrick Murphy, an Iraq war vet, won the seat in Bucks County while Joe Sestak, a retired Navy admiral, defeated incumbent scandal-tainted Rep. Curt Weldon in Delaware County by a wide margin. Today, three of the four collar counties are represented by Democrats in Congress.

    The lessons are clear. Democrats are gaining in the collar counties, particularly when conservatives like Santorum head the ticket. Republican moderates like Specter, however, have remained competitive in these suburbs, and thus have survived the Democratic onslaught.

    Not surprisingly, the Obama campaign hopes to paint John McCain as a right-wing clone of President Bush. If he is successful, then McCain will likely lose the collar counties, and with them Pennsylvania. In a best case scenario for the Democrats, 2008 could mirror Governor Rendell’s 2002 triumph where wins in the collar counties and Philadelphia make up for losses elsewhere in the state.

    McCain, however, is not without hope. If he is able to position himself as a reformer willing to work against the interests of his party for the broader interests of the country, he could win two or even three of the collar counties. If he does that Pennsylvania could become the keystone of an unconventional victory in November.

    Dennis M. Powell is president and CEO of Massey Powell an issues management consulting company located in Plymouth Meeting, PA.

  • Latest Case-Shiller Housing Price Index

    S&P released the July Case-Shiller Index today. Check out our line chart to follow the trend in each market.

    Click the graph for a larger version. Many of the most inflated markets are still in free-fall mode, but the 20 metropolitan area composite seems to be starting to level off. Markets such as Charlotte, Denver, Atlanta, and Dallas – areas with the most moderate increases during the height of the bubble – seem to be in the best shape.

    Minneapolis seems to be rebounding slightly after a sharp decline in the last year, but Detroit has fallen below its mark in 2000. How far can prices fall? Check out Wendell’s take on realistic housing prices. Here’s a big version of the chart.

  • Case-Shiller Housing Price Index, July 2008

  • Campaign Money and the House Bailout Vote

    The late Jesse Unruh, longtime speaker of the California Assembly, was a giant of a man, both in accomplishment and girth. But he will be forever remembered for having said that “Money is the mother’s milk of politics”.

    Never truer words were said. We got a good glimpse of that in the recent vote on the Paulson-Pelosi Wall Street bailout. A quick survey conducted by the Berkeley, California based Maplight.Org showed that members of Congress in both parties who supported the bailout received 54% more money from the financial service industry than those who voted against it.

    The differential among Democrats was even wider — those who backed the bailout received almost twice as much from Wall Street than those who opposed the measure. A regional analysis conducted by the New York Times showed another interesting pattern, with opposition to the measure strongest in the heartland states, Texas and other places where the housing bubble was less inflated.

    Clearly constituents in these areas reached some of their representatives with complaints. As for those who went the other way, well, somewhere in heaven, California’s “Big Daddy” is wearing a sly, knowing smile.

  • Suburbs will decide the election

    By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill

    Suburbs may not have cooked up the mortgage crisis, but they absorbed much of initial damage. Now that Wall Street and the big cities are also taking the fall, suburbanites might feel a bit better — but there’s still lots of room for anger out in the land of picket fences, decent schools and shopping malls.

    Widely demeaned in the media and academe, suburbs still exercise their power at election time. Home to roughly half the country’s population, and likely a greater share of its voters, suburbs seem destined to remain — to borrow from that great wordsmith George W. Bush — “the decider” in this election.

    Indeed, as the campaign has evolved, the critical position of suburbs seems to have grown. Barack Obama’s stranglehold on the urban vote seems unshakeable — even against a maverick “moderate” such as John McCain.

    At the same time, after seeming unsettled, the rural and small-town electorate appears to be returning to the GOP fold. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s place on the Republican ticket and, perhaps even more, the mainstream media’s snooty reaction to her, may have sealed the GOP deal in the countryside, at least at the presidential level. One sure sign: The small Obama strike team sent to reliably red North Dakota this summer has departed for more competitive terrain in nearby Minnesota and Wisconsin.

    So now it’s really up to the suburbanites, who come from the only geography that has grown faster than the national average over the past 30 years. But it’s critical to recognize that suburbs themselves have changed, becoming more reflective of America’s diversity, just as cities have grown more bifurcated between rich and poor. Once lily white, suburban America is now roughly 21 percent minority.

    Voting behavior among suburbs overall also has changed over the years. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan carried the suburbs in the key swing states by between 20 points and 40 points. Bill Clinton ended this dominance, essentially battling the GOP to a suburban standoff. He even beat the Republicans in the peripheral communities of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Missouri and Florida.

    In 2000 and again in 2004, President Bush recovered some of the Republican edge, running as much as 10 percent better than Sen. Bob Dole’s weak 1996 effort. But in the 2006 congressional elections, Democrats regained much of the ground Clinton had carried.

    As of now, polls suggest McCain, who lagged in the suburbs into the summer, has pushed back some of the Democratic momentum. He now enjoys, according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, a 10-point edge among suburban voters, not far from what Bush garnered in those parts of the swing states. If McCain can combine this suburban group with his rural and small-town base, he could be in striking distance of staging an upset.

    But this may not be so easy. Democrats’ recent gains seem to be solidifying, particularly in older, metropolitan suburbs. Fairfax County, home to one out of seven Virginians, has been trending strongly Democratic in recent years, even supporting John F. Kerry in 2004.

    McCain, who appeals more to independents than Bush did, should be able to erode some of this advantage in such communities. But Palin’s social conservatism could turn off many generally well-educated, middle-of-the-road voters who are so prominent in many of the most upscale suburban communities.

    At the same time, Palin — herself a former mayor of an Anchorage exurb — could help McCain consolidate Bush’s gains in the fast-growing exurbs, which tend to be more heavily composed of traditional families and generally less ethnically diverse. In his 2004 victory, Bush won 97 of the nation’s 100 fastest-growing counties with roughly 63 percent of the vote. If McCain can duplicate that feat, he will be well-positioned.

    Several factors, notably the financial crisis, could work against these efforts. Foreclosure rates in many of these exurban suburban counties are well above the national average, particularly in Florida and the Virginia suburbs of Washington and also outside Denver, Detroit and Cleveland.

    The mortgage crisis affects not only foreclosed homeowners, but also homeowners who are still above water. First, foreclosures lower everybody’s home values and bring on the possibility of renters replacing owners — not a good development in a suburban context. Second, particularly in exurban counties, construction has often been the basis for a lot of job growth in this decade, because construction jobs and other employment related to the real estate industry has been centered there.

    All of this makes suburbs a theoretically good target for Obama. In places like Pennsylvania, as longtime Republican activist Dennis Powell suggests, Obama should try to duplicate Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell’s wildly successful performance in 2002 in the so-called collar counties around Philadelphia. By winning those counties, in addition to building up a huge margin in his native Philadelphia, Rendell built a margin of more than a half-million votes that helped him win, even while he was getting thrashed throughout most of the rest of the state.

    In 2004, Kerry also won Pennsylvania’s collar counties, not by a large margin but by enough to secure his victory in the state. If Obama does as well as Kerry in the collar counties, he will win the state — perhaps not at a Rendellian scale, but comfortably enough.

    For his part, McCain needs to emulate the success of maverick Republicans, such as Sen. Arlen Specter, who have won by winning the Philadelphia suburbs. If McCain can replicate Specter’s performance and add some of the disgruntled Clinton Democrats in the rural south and west of the state, he could pull off a game-changing upset.

    McCain also has an opportunity to win in the Detroit suburbs, where Obama’s ties to disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick could hurt him. Bush won those areas in 2000 and 2004, but not by enough to capture the state’s electoral votes. As in Pennsylvania, McCain needs to forge a rural-suburban coalition to capture this traditionally blue-tinged state.

    For Obama, suburbs in wobbly red states such as Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Virginia and Missouri offer similarly critical opportunities. Even traditionally conservative exurban voters may feel that under Bush they have been led down the bubble path only to have it pop painfully in their faces.

    Ultimately it may all come down to “body language.” In our estimation, Obama’s weakness stems not so much from his race — he may well run better in suburbia than did the very white Kerry — but with his close identification with Chicago and Mayor Richard Daley’s Democratic machine. Having spent his adulthood in college towns and big cities, Obama seems to lack the instinctive Clintonian understanding of the suburban mindset. You never got the sense that Clinton was too urbane to wolf down a Big Mac or get a Slurpee at the local strip mall — and he really seemed to “feel the pain” of an overstressed homeowner.

    In contrast, Obama and his team, including campaign manager David Axelrod, reflect the mentality of a totally urban political culture. Obama’s intellectual and media supporters also include elements — ensconced at publications such as The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly as well as within the leftist Netroots — that often regard suburbs and their denizens as a form of social and environmental pestilence.

    Obama is simply too smart, as a candidate and perhaps also as a president, to publicly give in to this mindset. He’s certainly trying to appeal to suburban voters who are too concerned with issues such as health care and foreclosures to worry about his lack of geographic empathy.

    If he can convey this message effectively, Obama could benefit from the suffering now taking place in suburban communities. There may well be enough disgruntled suburban voters, even in the more peripheral areas, to blunt McCain’s suburban lead down to manageable numbers.

    If so, McCain’s rural and small town base will not be enough to win the critical swing states and the election. If the Republicans can hold their 2004 suburban base, though, McCain could yet triumph. Whatever the result, one thing is clear: Suburban voters will be the deciders.

    Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow at Chapman University and executive editor of www.newgeography.com. Mark Schill is a principal at Praxis Strategy Group and the site’s managing editor.

  • Suburban Battleground Counties with High Foreclosure Rates