New Geography

Tag: California

  • The Costs of Smart Growth Revisited: A 40 Year Perspective

    “Soaring” land and house prices “certainly represent the biggest single failure” of smart growth, which has contributed to an increase in prices that is unprecedented in history. This  finding could well have been from our new The Housing Crash and Smart Growth, but this observation was made by one of the world’s leading urbanologists, Sir Peter Hall, in a classic work 40 years ago. Hall led an evaluation of the effects of the British Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 (The Containment of Urban England) between 1966 and 1971. The principal purpose of the Act had been urban containment, using the land rationing strategies of today’s smart growth, such as urban growth boundaries and comprehensive plans that forbid development on large swaths of land that would otherwise be developable.

    The Economics of Urban Containment (Smart Growth): The findings of Hall and his colleagues were echoed later by a Labour Government report in the mid-2000s which showed housing affordability had suffered under this planning regime. Author Kate Barker was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, which like America’s Federal Reserve Board, is in charge of monetary policy. Among other things, the Barker Reports on housing and land use found that urban containment had driven the price of land with "planning permission" to many multiples (per acre) above that of comparable land where planning was prohibited. Under normal circumstances comparable land would have similar value.

    Whether coming from the left or right, economists have demonstrated that prices tend to rise when supply is restricted, all things being equal.  Certainly there can be no other reason for the price differentials virtually across the street that occur in smart growth areas. Dr. Arthur Grimes, Chairman of the Board of New Zealand’s central bank (the Reserve Bank of New Zealand), found the differential on either side of Auckland’s urban growth boundary at 10 times, while we found an 11 times difference in Portland across the urban growth boundary. 

    House Prices in America: The Historical Norm: Since World War II, median house prices in US metropolitan areas have generally been between 2.0 and 3.0 times median household incomes (a measure called the Median Multiple). This included California until 1970 (Figure 1). After that, housing became unaffordable in California, averaging nearly 1.5 times that of the rest of the nation during the 1980s and 1990s (adjusted for incomes). Even after the huge price declines from the peak of the bubble, house prices remain artificially high in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose, with median multiples of six or higher.

    William Fischel of Dartmouth University examined a variety of justifications for the disproportionate rise of California housing prices and dismissed all but more restrictive land use regulation. He noted that "growth controls (restrictive land use regulations) have the undesirable effect of raising housing prices." Throughout the rest of the nation, more restrictive land use regulations have been present in every market where house prices rose substantially above the historic Median Multiple norm, even during the housing bubble. No market without smart growth has ever reached these heights.

    Setting Up for the Fall: Excessive Cost Increases in Smart Growth Markets: The Housing Crash and Smart Growth, published by the National Center for Policy Analysis, examined the causes of house price increase during the housing bubble. The analysis included all metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population. It focused on 11 metropolitan areas in which the greatest cost increases occurred (the "ground zero" markets), comparing them to cost increases in the 22 metropolitan areas with less restrictive land use regulation (Note 1).

    • Less Restrictively Regulated Markets: In the less restrictively regulated markets, the value of the housing stock rose approximately $560 billion, or 28 percent from 2000 to the peak of the bubble (Note 2). In nearly all of these markets, the Median Multiple remained within the historical range of 2.0 to 3.0 and none approached the high Median Multiples that occurred in the "ground zero" markets.
    • Ground Zero Markets The value of the housing stock rose $2.9 trillion from 2000 to the peak of the bubble in the "ground zero" markets, all of which have significant land use restrictions (Note 3). The 112 percent increase in the "ground zero" markets was four times that of the less restrictively regulated markets. The Median Multiple rose to unprecedented levels in each of the "ground zero" markets, peaking at from 5.0 to more than 11.0, four times the historic norm.

    The 28 percent increase in relative house value that occurred in the less restrictively regulated markets (those without smart growth) is attributed to the influence of loosened lending standards. The excess above 28 percent, which amounts to $2.2 in the "ground zero" markets is attributed to to the supply restricting strategies of smart growth (Figure 2).

    The Fall: Smart Growth Losses

    The largest house price drops occurred in the markets that had experienced the greatest cost escalation, both because prices were artificially higher but also because prices in smart growth markets are more volatile.  The "ground zero" markets, with only 28 percent of the owner occupied housing stock, accounted for 73 percent of the pre-crash losses ($1.8 trillion). Thus, much of the cause of the housing crash, which most analysts date from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy (September 15, 2008), can be attributed to these 11 metropolitan areas.

    By contrast, the 22 less restrictively regulated markets accounted for only six percent ($0.16 trillion) of the pre-crash losses. These 22 markets represented 35 percent of the owned housing stock (Figure 3).

    If the losses in the ground zero markets had been limited to the rate in the less restrictively regulated markets (the estimated impact of cheap credit), losses would have been $1.6 trillion less (Note 4). The Great Recession might not have been so "Great."

    Economic Denial and Acknowledgement: In his writing forty years ago, Dr. Hall noted that English planners denied the connection between the unprecedented house price increases and urban containment. This same denial also informs smart growth advocates today. This is perhaps to be expected, because, as Hall noted 40 years ago, an understanding of the longer term consequences would have undermined support for these policies.

    To their credit, some advocates recognize that smart growth raises house prices. The Costs of Sprawl – 2000¸ a volume largely sympathetic to smart growth, also indicates that urban containment strategies can raise housing prices. The only question is how much smart growth raises house prices. The presence of urban containment policy is the distinguishing characteristic of metropolitan markets where prices have escalated well beyond the historic norm.

    The Social Costs of Smart Growth: Moreover, the social impacts of smart growth are by no means equitable. Peter Hall says that the "less affluent house-owner … has paid the greatest price for (urban) containment" (Note 5). He continues: "there can be little doubt about the identity of the group that has got the poorest bargain. It is the really depressed class in the housing market: the poorer members of the privately-rented housing sector." Finally, Hall laments as well the impact of these policies on the "ideal of a property owning democracy."

    Hall’s four decades old concern strikes a chord on this side of the Atlantic. Just last week, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that nine out of ten respondents associated home property ownership with the American Dream. Planning needs to facilitate people’s preferences, not get in their way.

    ——–

    Note 1: The housing stock value uses a 2000 base, which adjusts house prices based upon the change in household incomes to the peak.

    Note 2: The underlying demand for housing was substantial in some of the less restrictively markets, which is illustrated by the strong net domestic migration to metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Austin, Dallas – Fort Worth, Houston, Raleigh and San Antonio. At the same time, some more restrictive markets (smart growth) that hit historically experienced strong demand were experiencing huge domestic outmigration, indicating little in underlying demand. This includes Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose. Demand, however is driven upward in more restrictively metropolitan areas by speculation which, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas is attracted by supply constraints.

    Note 3: The 11 "ground zero" metropolitan markets were Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, Riverside-San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Miami and the Washington, DC area.

    Note 4: The pre-crash losses in the 18 other restrictively regulated markets were $0.5 trillion. These markets accounted for 37 percent of owner occupied housing in the metropolitan areas of more than 1,000,000 population, compared to 35 percent in the less restrictively regulated markets, yet had losses three times as high.

    Note 5: The Containment of Urban England also indicates that new house sizes have been forced downward by the planning regulations (see photo at the top of the article).

    Photograph: New, smaller exurban housing in the London area (by author)

    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”

  • The New State of Coastal California?

    In 2009, former California legislator Bill Maze proposed dividing his state, hiving off thirteen counties as Coastal (or Western) California (see map). Maze, a conservative from the agricultural Central Valley, objects to the domination of state politics by the left-leaning Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas. The initial impetus for his proposal was the passage by state voters in 2008 of Proposition 2, requiring larger pens and cages for farm animals. Agricultural interests denounced the measure, arguing that it would increase their costs and threaten their livelihoods. Meanwhile, the state’s on-going water crisis, which largely pits farmers against environmentalists, widens the divide. Unforgiving invective marks both sides of the debate. A post in Politics Daily characterized secessionist farmers as dolts fighting against “liberal Hollywood types [who] don’t understand the importance of torturing animals.” The Downsize California website, on the other side, fulminates against coastal “radicals” who are “infatuated with nature over mankind and are sympathetic to illegals and criminals.”

    The desire to divide unwieldy California may be quixotic but it is nothing new; at least 27 divisional schemes have been proposed since statehood in 1850. Most have sought to split the state along north-south lines. In the mid 1800s, southern California secessionists felt marginalized and ill-served by a state government based in the distant Sacramento. By the mid 1900s, the tables had been turned, as northern Californians came to resent the demographically and economically dominant greater Los Angeles (LA) area. The California State Water Project, with its vast pipes snaking over the Tehachapi Mountains, was a particular irritant. As a child growing up in northern California’s Bay Area in the 1960s, I almost never heard positive statements about LA, which was widely condemned as a vast suburban wasteland inhabited by shallow people scheming to “steal our water.” Such naked regional bigotry was spouted by people who would have been ashamed to say anything remotely smacking of racial or religious prejudice.

    Economic and political evolution, coupled with substantial immigration and emigration, gradually reduced the tensions between the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas while accentuating the division between urban coastal and interior agricultural regions. But as the 2004 “voter index map” reproduced above shows, the state’s actual political divide is far more complex than that. Close inspection reveals a Democratic voting zone essentially split between coastal northern California and the Los Angeles area, with a few interior outliers in college towns, urban cores, Hispanic rural areas, and mountainous recreation sites. Contrasting to this area is a spatially larger and more contiguous but demographically smaller Republican-voting block covering the rest of the state.

    Maze’s scheme places several relatively conservative countries (Ventura, San Luis Obispo) in liberal Coastal California, doing so largely for reasons of geographical contiguity. Less explicable is his exclusion of the left-voting northern coastal countries of Sonoma, Mendocino, and Humboldt. These may be relatively rural counties, but where the main crops are wine grapes and marijuana one should not expect conservative voting patterns. Note that certainly highly rural and relatively remote regions have solidly left electoral records, an unusual pattern. These include the Big Sur coast in Monterrey County, with its artistic heritage, and the counter-cultural “hippy” centers of Mendocino and southern Humboldt counties, such as Willits and Garberville.

    Martin W. Lewis has taught college-level geography for 20 years, and is currently a senior lecturer at Stanford University. He is a co-author on two leading textbooks in world geography, Diversity Amid Globalization and Globalization and Diversity. He is also the author of Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism, and Wagering the Land: Ritual, Capital, and Environmental Degradation in the Cordillera of Northern Luzon, and is co-author of The Myth of Continents.

  • Blight Envy – How Development Works in LA

    I never thought I’d say this, but I think I want to live in a blighted neighborhood. Well, actually, a community redevelopment area (CRA). They used to be one and the same, but no longer. Apparently you have to live or do business in a redevelopment area to get any “love” in Los Angeles … love being when the government takes your tax dollars and gives them to someone else no more needy.

    Let me explain.

    The City Council of Los Angeles just approved a program to loan CRA money to businesses in the Hollywood redevelopment area, which extends from Franklin Avenue south to Santa Monica Boulevard. If borrowers meet certain conditions, loans for storefront improvements never have to be paid back … wow, free money!

    As a card-carrying member of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, I certainly don’t begrudge businesses financial support to help improve their prospects, including the streetscape, when the whole community benefits.

    But let’s be real: Many parts of the Hollywood redevelopment area, which includes the Hollywood & Highland complex, Sunset + Vine and the Roosevelt Hotel, are no more blighted than any other part of the city.

    That includes my neighborhood council district, which lies south of the designated redevelopment area and encompasses Melrose Avenue, West Third Street and Wilshire Boulevard on the Miracle Mile. But there’s no money for our businesses. Or businesses on West Pico Boulevard. Or businesses on Van Nuys Boulevard. We are chopped liver.

    There is a place for redevelopment, to be sure, but this program illustrates exactly why the CRA has so many critics. In this case, the problem isn’t the program — storefront improvement loans are a great idea. The problem is in the execution. This should be a citywide program, with funds shared among all Council districts in Los Angeles and doled out based on objective criteria.

    It’s time to rethink redevelopment.

    Cary Brazeman, a former executive with CB Richard Ellis in Los Angeles, is a neighborhood council member and founder of LA Neighbors United. Contact him through www.LAneighbors.org

  • Outlawing New Houses in California

    UCLA’s most recent Anderson Forecast indicates that there has been a significant shift in demand in California toward condominiums and apartments. The Anderson Forecast concludes that this will cause problems, such as slower growth in construction employment because building multi-unit dwellings creates less employment than building the detached houses that predominate throughout California and most of the nation. The Anderson Forecast says that this will hurt inland areas (such as the Riverside-San Bernardino area and the San Joaquin Valley) because their economies are more dependent on construction than coastal areas, such as Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego.

    Detached Housing Permits Remain Strong in the Historic Context: The Anderson Forecast reports that multi-unit building permits have recovered more quickly than building permits for detached housing. However, any such shift is likely to be highly volatile. Since the peak of the bubble, the distribution of building permits between detached and multi-unit in California has been on a roller coaster. Indeed the Anderson Forecast characterizes the "2010 US Census" as "showing a significant shift in demand toward condominiums and apartments." Actually, the 2010 US Census asked no question from which such a conclusion about housing types or any question from which such a conclusion could be drawn.

    The trends in the building permit data are not completely clear. In 2005, the year before prices started to collapse, 75 percent of building permits in California were for detached housing. This trended downward, reaching a low of 52 percent in 2008. In 2009, the detached housing recovered to account for 73 percent of all housing building permits. Then the figure fell back to 59 percent in 2010.

    With these erratic trends, it is tricky to forecast longer term market trends and consumer demand.  Economic projections in 1934 would have suffered from a similar problem, as the Great Depression was continuing and no one could really tell when it would end. Today’s continuing housing depression may be similar.

    Moreover, as the Anderson Forecast notes, detached housing construction declined in the early 1980s, dropping to 42 percent in 1985. In fact, over the 25 years between 1960 and 1985, detached houses accounted for an average of only 54 percent of new housing construction in California, well below the 2010 figure of 59 percent (Figure 1).

    Equally important, the condominium market remains in a deep depression. In 2010, less than four percent of houses built for sale in the United States were multi-unit buildings, including condominiums (Figure 2), as an increasing majority of multi-unit buildings have been built as rentals (Figure 3). Comparable California data is not available, but from the peak of the bubble (2006/7) to 2009, there was a loss of more than 3,000 owner occupied  multi-unit dwellings with 10 or more units, while owner occupied detached houses increased by nearly 100,000 (Note 1).

    If there is an intrinsic pent-up preference for condominium living, it is not evident in the poor performance of high-density developments even in such theoretically desirable places as Santa Monica, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and North Hollywood. Condominium prices, for example, have fallen 52 percent in the major California metropolitan areas, compared to 48 percent for single-family houses (Figure 4). Naïve developers, relying too much on the much promoted notion that suburban empty-nesters were chomping at the bit to move to new housing in the core area, often watched their empty units liquidated at $0.50 or less on the dollar or turned into rentals.  Further, if people are moving to apartments, it’s not for love of density but more likely due weakening economic circumstances.

    Inland California Continues to Grow Faster: The Anderson Forecast also suggests that growth in interior California will suffer because "workers are less likely to move inland into an apartment and commute toward the coast." This assumption of slower inland growth reflects the conventional wisdom that areas outside the large coastal metropolitan areas have stopped growing since the burst of the housing bubble as people flock towards the coastal urban core (Note 2). The reality is different, as interior California and the peripheral metropolitan areas of the larger metropolitan regions (Note 3) continue to grow more strongly even in bad economic times. After the burst of the bubble, from 2008 to 2010 (Figure 5):

    • In the Los Angeles area, the adjacent Riverside-San Bernardino ("Inland Empire") and Oxnard metropolitan areas, combined, have grown at seven times the rate of the core Los Angeles metropolitan area.
    • In the San Francisco Bay area, the adjacent Napa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and Vallejo metropolitan areas, combined, have grown nearly twice as quickly as the core San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas.
    • California’s deep interior, the San Joaquin Valley has grown even faster than the exurban areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    One key reason: most people who move to interior areas do not commute toward the core.  For example, less than 10 percent of workers in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area commute into Los Angeles County, a market share that declined 15 percent between 2000 and 2007. Many also simply cannot afford the higher cost of living in the coastal metropolitan areas, which likely will continue to retard growth in the core metropolitan areas.

    The Policy Threat to New Houses : A survey by the Public Policy Institute of California suggests a vast preference (70%) for detached housing among the state’s consumers.  This continuing preference is demonstrated by detached housing prices that are generally two times historic norms relative to incomes in the coastal metropolitan areas (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose).

    Yet now, this choice is under a concerted assault by both the state and many local governments, cheered on by most media and the academic community.  For years, planning regulations have driven land prices so high that house prices have risen to well above the rest of the nation (Figure 5) under regulations referred to by terms such as "smart growth" and "urban containment." The regulations and the inevitably resulting speculation propelled a disproportionate rise (nearly $2 trillion) in California house prices compared to national norm. If California house prices had risen at the same rate relative to incomes as in more liberally regulated areas, the loss to financial markets could have been hundreds of billions of dollars less when the bubble burst (Figure 6).

    Planning for Crowding and Density: California’s assault on detached housing is taking on a distinctly religious fervor.  The state’s global warming law (Assembly Bill 32) and urban planning law (Senate Bill 375) is providing a new basis to impose draconian limits on the construction of detached housing. For example, in the San Francisco Bay area, it has been proposed that 97 percent of new housing be built within the existing urban footprint. That would mean an emphasis on multi-unit housing and little or no new housing on the urban fringe. The option of a single family home will be all but non-existent for   even solidly middle income Californians.

    Planning authorities in the Bay Area seem oblivious to the fact that destroying affordability also destroys growth, already evident by the state’s poor economic performance and ebbing demographic vigor.    Planners rosily project 2 million more people between 2010 and 2035 in the San Francisco Bay area. The growth rate over the past 10 years suggests a number less than half that (Figure 7) and given the rapid aging of the area, even this estimate may be too high. The planners also project more than 1.2 million   new jobs, something difficult to believe given the more than 300,000 job loss (Note 4) that occurred in the Bay Area between 2000 and 2010 (Figure 8).

    The Environmental "Fig Leaf:" The environmental justification for these policies is fragile . Research supporting higher density housing has routinely excluded the greater emissions from construction material extraction and production, building construction itself and common greenhouse gas emissions from energy consumption that does not appear on consumer bills. Further, higher densities are associated slower and more erratic speeds, which retards fuel efficiency and increases greenhouse gas emissions, a factor not sufficiently considered.

    The report seems to ignore any other options besides rapid densification, which as McKinsey Global Institute has pointed out is not at all necessary to reduce GHG emission reductions. They point to other factors as more fuel efficient cars.   

    Oddly, the San Francisco Bay Area proposal does not even mention working at home (much of it telecommuting), the most environmentally friendly way of accessing employment. Working at home has grown six times the rate of transit since 2000 in the Bay Area.

    Outlawing New Houses Detached housing remains the overwhelming choice of Californians. There is no indication that this preference is about to be replaced by a preference for high-density housing.  Current and future middle class Californians could be corralled into more crowded conditions, because questionable planning doctrines mandate that detached housing should be outlawed.

    —-

    Notes:

    1. Calculated from 2006, 2007 and 2009 American Community Survey data. The over ten unit category is used because is more generally reflective of the dense condominium development generally favored by densification advocates (Latest data available).

    2.  Another questionable tenet of conventional wisdom is that the price declines in the outer suburbs were greater than in the cores. When the price declines reached their nadir, core California markets were generally at least as depressed from their peak prices as suburban markets.

    3. Metropolitan region refers to combined statistical areas, which have a core metropolitan area, such as the Los Angeles MSA and include surrounding metropolitan areas, such as the Riverside-San Bernardino MSA and the Oxnard MSA.

    4. Annual, 2000 to 2010, calculated from California Economic Development Department data.

    Lead photo: Houses in Los Angeles. Photograph by author.

    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”

  • Transportation Infrastructure: Yankee Ingenuity Keeps California Moving

    A friend was explaining some philosophy to me the other day and he used an analogy to make his point: If you can get a cannibal to use a knife and fork, is that progress? Of course, the answer is "no". So when I heard the next day that transportation infrastructure performance in the US improved significantly at the height of the worst recession since the great depression I had to ask: is that progress?

    We do not want to stop all economic progress just so that a privileged few with access to resources may enjoy an easier ride on the I-95 interstate highway between Wall Street and Congress. Stopping economic growth is not a solution to the problem of crumbling infrastructure in America.

    In fact, my economic analysis shows that transportation infrastructure is a “leading indicator” of economic activity. In other words, infrastructure performance has to improve for a while – and stay improved – before economic activity will pick up in an area. Alternatively, infrastructure performance would have to decline for a while before businesses would leave that location, too. Think about it this way. From the perspective of a company already in business in a particular location, they would not pack up and leave town the first day that, for example, traffic congestion slows down the delivery of products to their customers. Companies like FedEx Freight plan distribution locations 20 years in advance. For a while, they will find a way around congestion. FedEx Freight uses elaborate technology to “route trucks around huge bottlenecks, but this adds circuitous miles and costs”. Their policy is to “minimize the impact as best you can.”

    We see evidence of how business finds a way to make it work even when government and infrastructure try to stand in their way. California ranked 43rd in 1995 and fell further to 47th in 2000 and 2007 among the 50 states (plus D.C.) in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s transportation infrastructure performance index. Although California’s infrastructure is crumbling, businesses are finding a way to work around it. California’s economy could grow faster than the rest of the US economy this year.

    In economics we talk about the efficient use of resources – getting the most out of what you have to work with. In a new study getting underway at the University of Delaware, early results indicate that businesses are operating successfully in the United States despite being hampered by problems like congestion and the lack of intermodal-connectivity (that is, being able to move products from trucks to trains and from trains to ships). California, in fact, may be a benchmark state for economic efficiency. They rank at the bottom for infrastructure performance but business is finding a way to make it work.

    My old pal, Larry Summers – former Economic Advisor to President Obama and subverter of all things economic – took a last final swipe at spending on transportation infrastructure in April 2011. In his first public appearance at Harvard University after leaving the White House, he talked about investment in infrastructure as a way to “…tackle high levels of unemployment, especially among the low-skilled.” He just doesn’t get it. He continues to believe that the way to stimulate the economy is to give tax breaks to business – as if they will build their own roads. He just didn’t get that infrastructure is what supports all economic activity. It’s the stuff that business does business on, not the classical economic “capital” that business brings to the table.

    In fact, it costs businesses to have to work around the crumbling infrastructure. When you ask academic, government and researchers to measure that cost, you get a wide range of views about what constitutes a direct or an indirect cost to business from traffic congestion. But some of these costs are undeniable. There is a cost of computer technology for monitoring congestion; the cost of employees for communicating with drivers about alternate routes; the cost of extra fuel; driver overtime resulting from congestion; refunds to customers for missing guaranteed delivery deadlines, etc. etc.

    So, there’s a benefit to business from improving the performance of transportation infrastructure. They will be saving the money that they are spending now to work-around the infrastructure. And money not spent is at least as good as a tax break.

    Disclosure: Dr. Trimbath’s research on the economic impact of transportation infrastructure performance was supported by the National Chamber Foundation and sponsored in part by FedEx Freight. The 2009 Transportation Performance Index will be released on July 19, 2011 in Washington, D.C. It will show a substantial improvement over 2008.

  • Fwd: California’s Bullet Train — On the Road to Bankruptcy

    For California’s high-speed rail boosters including their chief cheerleader, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the month of May must have felt like a month from hell. First came a scathing report by California legislature’s fiscal watchdog, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), questioning the rail authority’s unrealistic cost estimates and its decision to build the first $5.5 billion segment in the sparsely populated Central Valley between Borden and Corcoran. That segment, the LAO noted, has no chance of operating without a huge public subsidy, yet the terms of the voter-approved Proposition 1A, explicitly prohibit any operating subsidies.

    These concerns were echoed by an eight-member Independent Peer Review Group. “We believe the Authority is increasingly aware of the challenge of accurate cost estimating,” wrote its chairman Will Kempton in a letter to the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s CEO, Roelef van Ark. The Legislative Analyst‘s Office had concluded that if the cost of building the entire Phase I system were to grow as much as the revised HSRA estimate for the Central Valley segment (an increase of 57%), the Phase I system would end up costing not $43 billion as originally estimated, but $67 billion.

    The two reports unleashed a torrent of criticism from the press. In sharply critical editorials, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times questioned the project’s fiscal viability and the Authority’s poor decisionmaking. The project is “a monument to the ways poor planning, management and political interference can screw up major public works,” opined the LA Times. (“California’s High Speed Train Wreck,” May 16). “If the state can’t come up with enough money to finish the route, a stand-alone segment in the Central Valley would literally be a train to nowhere and a big drain on taxpayers,” said the Wall Street Journal (“California’s Next Train Wreck,” May 18). “The legislature needs to kill the train now. Once this boondoggle gets out of the station, the state will be writing checks for decades,” added the Journal in its most recent editorial (“Off the California Rails,” May 30). The San Francisco Examiner and The Sacramento Bee also have been critical in their reporting. Governor Brown needs to “squarely address the issues raised by the legislative analyst’s report,” a Sacramento Bee editorial urged.

    Even some of the state’s former legislative supporters, such as state senators Joe Simitian, Alan Lowenthal, Anna Eshoo and Mark DeSaulnier have expressed reservations and urged the Authority to rethink its direction. “I don’t want to see an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) completed for a project that will never be built,” Senator Joe Simitian told Roelef van Ark at a Senate Budget Subcommittee hearing on financing the first rail segment in the Central Valley.

    At the urging of the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the rail authority asked the U.S. DOT for more flexibility about where and when to build the initial “operable” segment. The LAO went as far as recommending that “If the state can’t win a waiver from the federal government to loosen the rules and the timing for using high-speed rail grants, it should consider abandoning the project.” Not only would the Central Valley segment, by itself, have insufficient ridership and revenues to stand on its own, the Legislative Analyst wrote, but “the assumption that construction of the Central Valley segment could move quickly because of a lack of public opposition has already proved to be unfounded.” The LAO suggested several alternative segments that could be more financially viable and economically beneficial than the Central Valley segment. They included Los Angeles-Anaheim, San Francisco-San Jose and San Jose-Merced.

    But in a remarkable exercise of inflexibility and delusion, the U.S. Department of Transportation turned a deaf ear to the request. “Once major construction is underway…the private sector will have compelling reasons to invest in further construction,” the DOT letter stated in an assertion totally unsupported by any evidence.

    “California is a test case for whether high-speed trains can succeed in the U.S. — and so far, the state is failing the test,” the LA Times editorial concluded. The feds’ refusal to reconsider their position has substantially magnified and accelerated the likelihood of that failure.

    LATE-BREAKING NEWS 6/6/2011: In the wake of the LAO report, both houses of the California Legislature have passed legislation that, in effect, is a vote of no confidence in the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) and its Board. The bills place the Authority within the state’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, thus giving the Governor decisionmaking power over the project. The Senate bill would “vacate” the appointments of the current Board members and provide for the appointment of a new advisory Board with special expertise in construction management, infrastructure finance and operation of rail systems. The House bill would retain the current Board but only in an advisory capacity. The two bills will have to be reconciled before they are sent to the Governor for signature. However, with the bills sponsored by three Democrats, the Governor is expected to sign the final bill into law [SB 517 (A. Lowenthal), passed on June 1 by a vote of 26-12; AB 145 (Galgiani and B. Lowenthal) passed on June 3 by a vote of 50-16].

    There is a possibility that a change of leadership at the Authority, coupled with mounting grassroots opposition in the Central Valley, might delay the project past September 2012 — the federal deadline to start construction— and thus disqualify the project from federal grant assistance extended under the stimulus (ARRA) legislation. The deadline was reaffirmed in a letter from U.S. DOT’s Undersecretary for Policy, Roy Kienitz. “U.S. DOT has no administrative authority to change this deadline, and do not believe it is prudent to assume Congress will change it,” Kienitz wrote to Roelof van Ark.

  • Natural Gas Vehicles Floor It in Long Beach

    The Alternate Clean Transportation Expo held in Long Beach earlier this month was a spectacular display of engineering ingenuity by Natural Gas Vehicle providers. The event’s theme was that America’s self sufficiency in natural gas has decoupled our energy resources from petroleum prices. But the consensus among the gathered engineers and scientists was to look beyond the current prices of petroleum alone, and consider that domestic self sufficiency includes keeping jobs at home.

    The NGVs (Natural Gas Vehicles, which include Compressed Natural Gas—CNG, as well Liquefied Natural Gas—LNG) reduce greenhouse gas emissions almost 20 percent on medium and heavy duty models, and 30 percent on light duty vehicles.

    All fuels, including natural gas, release energy by burning. But cleanliness and renewability are probably the single most talked-about aspect of NGVs. From energy field to vehicle engine, natural gas needs very little processing to make it usable, compared to crude oil, which is processed into gasoline by complex and expensive refining techniques. A naturally occurring fuel, its chemical formulation is about 90% methane, with smaller amounts of ethane, propane, butane and carbon dioxide, a high octane rating of about 120 – 130, and clean burning characteristics.

    Biomethane gas is extracted from biomass, and is therefore renewable, and it can be produced economically in large quantities. Current estimates are that the US has proven reserves of over 1500 TCFs (trillion cubic feet) of natural gas which, by some estimates, should last for the next 100 years.

    Potentially, natural gas will create jobs not only through vehicle manufacturing, but through the construction of new CNG stations. A landfill processing plant near Dallas, Texas, owned by a pioneering company in CNG station installation, Clean Energy™, creates up to 9,000,000 GGEs (gasoline gallon equivalents)of biomethane gas for fueling stations. It has agreements with airports in Tampa, New York City, New Orleans and Philadelphia to build CNG filling stations that will support ground transport vehicles and off-airport parking shuttles.

    Of course, legitimate concerns have been expressed about the safety of natural gas vehicles. Notably, in a tragic 1998 accident a stopped bi-fueled Honda (a vehicle that can run on CNG or gasoline) was impacted by another vehicle moving at almost 100 mph. A fire started by the gasoline engine broke out.

    NGV supporters counter that the 50 liter CNG tank was intact and remained secure in its support bracket, that NGVs are subject to same federal standards as regular vehicles, and that natural gas cylinders are thicker and stronger than conventional gas tanks.

    The NVG safety record also includes a survey of more than 8,000 natural gas utility, school, municipal and business fleet vehicles that have traveled 178 million miles, in which the vehicle injury rate was 37% lower than in a gasoline fleet. Under federal and state regulations, fueling stations, indoor parking structures, repair garages and car dealerships must all meet high safety standards. Leaking gasoline forms puddles and creates a fire hazard; if the CNG engine leaks at all, the fuel will normally rise to the ceiling and disappear. Insurance companies nationwide have looked at the safety of natural gas buses and fleets and have no reservations about insuring them.

    Hybrids were also on display at the Expo, including a notable innovation by Parker Hannifin Company. Says Tom Decoster, business development manager of the Cleveland-based firm, “We are going to let California know there are alternatives to electric and CNG.” Parker’s alternative is the hydraulic hybrid, with regenerative braking energy stored as a pressurized gas in a vessel. These vessels are known to be accumulators, which Parker compares to batteries. While stored electricity from a battery drives a motor, energy from an accumulator powers a pump-motor to drive wheels. This assistance increases fuel efficiency and sometimes permits a smaller engine.

    Average fuel consumption for a conventional Class 8 vehicle is about 9,800 gallons per year. RunWise™, Parker’s vehicle, reduces the fuel consumption by 30 to 50 percent, depending on route density and operating conditions. “The more stops a vehicle makes during the day, the more efficient the system becomes relative to a conventional drive train,” Decoster says, adding that the NGV also reduces CO2 emissions, compared to a conventional vehicle, by 38 tons per year, the equivalent of about six midsize cars or planting 1,500 trees. It has reduced brake replacement cycles from every few months to almost 2 years. Parker’s technology is intended for refuse trucks and for fleets that need frequent stops, such as those run by FedEx and UPS.

    This highly technical conference and engineering-driven trade show was innovative in one other way, too. Expo organizer GNA designed events to reach out beyond the technorati to ordinary consumers who — it hopes — will one day be its loyal customers.

    Shashi Parulekar is a Los Angeles-based engineer. He holds an MBA, and served as Asia Pacific M.D. with Parker Hannifin Co in Michigan for over ten years.

  • Is The Information Industry Reviving Economies?

    For nearly a generation, the information sector, which comprises everything from media and data processing to internet-related businesses, has been ballyhooed as a key driver for both national and regional economic growth. In the 1990s economist Michael Mandell predicted cutting-edge industries like high-tech would create 2.8 million new jobs over 10 years.  This turned out to be something of a pipe dream. According to a recent 2010 New America Foundation report, the information industry shed 68,000 jobs in the past decade.

    Yet this year, information-related employment finally appears to be on the upswing, according to statistics compiled by Pepperdine University economist Michael Shires. The impact of this growth is particularly marked in such long-time tech hot beds as Huntsville, Ala., Madison, Wis., and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, all of which have relatively high concentrations of such jobs.

    The San Jose area, home of Silicon Valley, arguably has benefited the most from the  information job surge. Much of this gain can be traced to the increase in social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, all of which have been incubated in the Valley. Good times among corporations  have led many to invest heavily in software productivity tools, while those marketing consumer goods have boosted spending for software and internet-related advertising.

    The 5,000 mostly well-paying information jobs added this year was enough to boost San Jose’s standing overall among all big metros 20 places to a healthy No. 27 in our ranking of the best cities for jobs.

    But as economists enthuse over the tech surge, we need to note the limitations of information jobs even in the Valley. Software and internet jobs, which have increased 40% over the past decade, have not come close to making up for the region’s large declines in other fields, notably manufacturing, construction, business and financial services. Overall, the region has lost 18% of its jobs in the past decade — about 190,000 — the second-worst performance, after Detroit, among the nation’s largest metros. It still suffers unemployment of close to 10%, well above the national average of 9.0%.

    This dual reality can also be seen in the local real estate industry. Office vacancies may be back in the low single digits in some markets popular with social networking firms, such as Mountain View, but they remain around 14 or higher throughout the region — 40% higher than in 2008. No matter how impressive reporters find a new headquarters for high-fliers like Facebook, the surplus of redundant space, particularly in the southern parts of the Valley, suggest we are still far from a 1990s style boom.

    Some observers also warn that the long-term prospects for the Valley may not be as good as local boosters assume.  Analyst Tamara Carleton cites many long-term factors — like the financial condition of local cities and diminishing prospects for less skilled workers — that make it tougher on those who live below the higher elevations of the information economy. She also says that a precipitous decline in foreign immigration could slow future innovation.

    This dichotomy is even more evident in the other big information gainer among our large cities, Los Angeles. Although it is little known by the media or pundit class, the Big Orange actually boasts the nation’s single largest number of information jobs. Its over 5% growth in information jobs translates to roughly 10,000 new positions over the past year. In LA, the big sector for information jobs is likely not social media but traditional entertainment, one of the area’s core industries.

    Yet information growth clearly is not bailing out the overall economy. Other much larger sectors, such as manufacturing and business services, continue to shrink. The area still suffers from an unemployment rate of roughly 12%.

    Other information winners among our large metros include Boston and Seattle, both traditional centers for software-related jobs. These areas have not been as hard-hit by the real estate and industrial declines as their California counterparts, so increasing information employment does not constitute the outlier that we see in the Golden State.

    Less expected gains were notched by some of our other big information sector winners. One big surprise was New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, whose information sector, including a growing film and television industry, expanded almost 39% in past year. As is the case with its strong overall rankings in our best cities survey, the Big Easy’s comeback from the devastation of Katrina is heartening. But we must curb our enthusiasm by pointing out that total regional employment remains 100,000 less than it was before the hurricane.

    Equally intriguing has been the strong performance of Warren-Troy-Farmington, Hills, Mich., and Detroit-Livonia, each of which has benefited from the resurgence of the American auto industry. In these areas, information jobs tend to be tied to the needs of large industrial companies. The state has also waged a major campaign for film and television jobs, as part of an attempt to diversify its economy.

    Yet for all the hype that surrounds industries like media and software, it’s critical to point out that overall this is not a huge employment sector. Even in Seattle — home to Microsoft, Amazon and other software based companies — information jobs account for barely 6% of the total. In Los Angeles, it’s 5%, compared with 10% each for manufacturing and hospitality. In media-centric New York, information accounts for barely 4% of jobs, less than half that of financial services and one-third that of the huge business service sector.

    In most other areas, including those experiencing strong growth, information jobs constitute an even smaller part of the economy. In New Orleans, Warren, Mich., and Detroit, such jobs account for less than 2% of employment . Still, the growth of this sector is a promising one for  economies that have long been dominated, like New Orleans, by the generally low-paying hospitality industry, or in the case of the Michigan cities, the volatile and often chronically hurting manufacturing sector.

    The increase in information jobs, however welcome, should not be sold as a universal elixir for  creating widespread prosperity. Over time, strong regional economies are those that rely on diverse employment sources rather than one.  Growth in high-tech and media jobs can wow impressionable reporters and earn economic developers bragging reights, but they can do only so much to lessen the recession’s impact on the vast majority of workers and the broader regional economy.

    Top Cities for Information Job Growth, 2009-2010
    New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 38.86%
    Honolulu, HI 25.11%
    Shreveport-Bossier City, LA 18.85%
    Huntsville, AL 14.71%
    Leominster-Fitchburg-Gardner, MA  13.33%
    Redding, CA 10.53%
    Madison, WI 10.20%
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 10.01%
    Grand Rapids-Wyoming, MI 7.63%
    Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA 6.33%
    Top Big Cities for Information Job Growth, 2009-2010
    New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 38.86%
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 10.01%
    Providence-Fall River-Warwick, RI-MA 6.33%
    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA  5.08%
    Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, MI  3.97%
    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA  3.54%
    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 3.46%
    Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC 3.02%
    Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI  2.48%
    Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA  1.47%

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

    Photo by Angelo Amboldi

  • Hollywood Unions

    If you work in L.A. in film, tv, radio, music, news, live or “new” media, there’s a very good chance you’re in a union.

    That’s true if you’re an actor, camera operator, broadcaster, hair stylist, electrician, costume designer, truck driver, writer, production manager, art director or stunt man or woman.

    It’s one of last industries in America with what’s called “union density,” in which collective bargaining determines wage scale, residuals, medical and pension coverage; and sets work rules and jurisdiction (who does what).

    Some members earn a fortune, others a decent living, many barely – or don’t – get by.

    I can’t think of another field, however, where people will pay to get into the union even before they have a chance to put their talent to work.

    And though there’s a mixed historical legacy to the Hollywood labor movement – anti-communism, race and gender discrimination, corruption and complicity – these unions have mostly cleaned house, adapted to changing conditions, and (to varying degrees) have learned to organize new work.

    Industry employers include some of the most powerful corporations on the planet. But despite intense fights over nonunion and “runaway” productions, you don’t hear talk about getting rid of the unions.

    That’s partly because the unions help manage the “freelance” workforce. It’s also that powerful people in the industry – labor and management – accept the system, flaws and all.

    More than 90 percent of private sector American workers are nonunion. For most, the idea of making their job union never crosses their mind.

    But here in L.A., many workers know someone who’s “gotten in” to “the business” and one of its unions.

    And, over the past 20 years, both “above and below the line” unions have integrated into the region’s labor movement, recognizing the value of solidarity in organizing and contract campaigns, politics and strikes.

    It’s too bad most American workers – stuck in low wage jobs with marginal or no benefits – know virtually nothing about how this industry really operates; and – in particular – the role its unions play in sustaining the region’s middle class.

  • The New Geography of Population Loss and Gain

    Dramatic shifts in population growth across the United States in the last decade should surprise no one. Some patterns are continuing trends of earlier decades, but other patterns show substantial change.  I show these changes in three ways, first a conventional choropleth map coloring counties by broad classes from high losses to moderate and high percent gain, second a map in which absolute gains and losses are depicted by proportional symbols, with colors showing the rate of change, and third, a look a counties that experienced either extreme loss and gain. 

    There are four major regions that experienced population loss. The largest covers the rural high plains from Texas to Canada, and most marked in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, North and South Dakota, and eastern Montana in a continuation of at least 60 years, and no surprise, as farms get larger and more mechanized, small towns decline. Yet these losses are less pervasive than earlier, especially due to energy development in Wyoming, North and South Dakota and Montana, and energy and agricultural change in Oklahoma and Texas. 


    The second area of decline, also continuing a long historic trend, can be seen in the heavily African-American dominated areas in the Mississippi Delta, in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and across the Black belt, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, where significant development investment simply did not occur—race matters.

    Third, we see continued population reductions  across Appalachia from eastern Kentucky, through West Virginia, but this loss has now taken gotten more severe in western Pennsylvania and New York, largely due reductions in  mining and manufacturing as well as a dearth  of new investment.

    Fourth is decline across many urban as well as rural counties in the upper Midwest, in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, due to a complex mix of deindustrialization and related forces.

    Looking at losses from the map emphasizing absolute number of population change reduces the significance of the losses in the Plains, as most were small, reveals somewhat larger absolute losses in the Mississippi delta, and the specific Katrina-led losses in greater New Orleans. It highlights the concentration of larger losses in core metropolitan counties, not only in northern Appalachia and the upper Midwest, particularly in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, but also in other large cities, as St. Louis and Chicago.


    At least eight regions of significant growth can be described. Territorially, the most obvious can be seen in the Mountain stares, from Arizona, through Utah and much of Colorado, Wyoming into parts of Idaho and Montana. The reasons vary, from energy in Wyoming, to more amenity based growth in western Colorado and Montana, to broader, across the board expansions in Arizona, Utah and Idaho. The high fertility in the Mormon realm also played a role. Nevada is, well, Nevada.

    A second area of continuing growth is across the Pacific coast, but especially the entire I-5 corridor, the spillover counties surrounding Los Angeles, California’s Central valley, largely due to high Latino growth (which was a major factor way to the north in Washington state).

    Third is the continuing and large scale boom in and around the largest Texas cities, Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. All have enjoyed a combination of population and economic growth.

    Fourth is a pickup in growth from Oklahoma across the Ozarks, through northwestern Arkansas and across southern Missouri, from a mixture of industrial development and amenity migration.

    Fifth is a less expected belt of growth from the Chicago suburbs, across western Wisconsin, and Minnesota (especially northern), to Fargo, ND.

    Sixth is the never ending growth of Florida. Seventh is the continuing significant urban and industrial based growth in the middle South, from Tennessee and Kentucky, northern Georgia, through South and North Carolina, into Virginia. Then, eighth, is the high level of growth over what we might call the outer, exurban edges of Megalopolis, from Richmond, Virginia, to southern Maine.

    Looking at absolute gains from the second map shows a quite widespread geography of growth, many micropolitan and small metropolitan counties across the west registered  the highest rates of gain. Similarly across the Plains, while the greatest growth is in suburban counties around the Texas giants, growth was robust in many smaller metropolitan areas and cities, from the Mexican border up to Canada.  Likewise, in the upper Midwest, despite problem in the declining big city cores, growth was stronger in exurban and small metropolitan areas. Across the southeast, despite the stupendous growth around Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh and Washington DC, the significant pattern is how widespread growth was across much of the region. Florida, too, perhaps grew less fast in its long time biggest cities, but is now filling up the remaining space!

    Finally Megalapolis is far from dormant. The old cores of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Boston may be slow growing or even declining a little,but  the satellite and exurban belt show remarkable gains, especially in Maryland, Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania, in a kind of spillover of investment and residence to its outer limits.

    The Biggest Losers and Gainers

    Absolute losses: The largest loss numbers are in core counties of de-industrializing metropolitan areas in the north. Among just the 21 counties losing more than 10,000, Michigan has 3 for a loss of 260,000, Ohio, 6, for a loss of 228,000, and Pennsylvania 3, for a loss of 81,000. Others include Cook county (Chicago), St Louis city and county, Erie (Buffalo), and Baltimore. Greater New Orleans includes three counties, with a loss of 195,000. The one non-metropolitan county is highly African-American Washington County, MS (Greenville). Indeed, high Black concentration is a common denominator among all these areas.  Race continues to rule demography in much of the south.

    Relative losses:  Most of the counties with the highest loss rate (48 counties with over a 17 percent loss) are rural or small town. The only exceptions are Orleans and St. Bernard (New Orleans). States with high rate loss counties include Texas (7), Mississippi and North Dakota (6), Louisiana (5) Arkansas and Kansas (4), South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana and Alaska (2), and one each in Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma and West Virginia.  The AR, LA and MS counties are heavily African American.

    Absolute Gains

    51 counties gained more than 100,000 residents. The top 11 are
    Wake, NC :: 273,000
    San Diego :: 281,000
    Collin, TX (Dallas suburb) :: 291,000
    Los Angeles :: 299,000
    Bexar (San Antonio :: 322,000
    San Bernardino :: 326,000
    Tarrant (Ft. Worth) :: 363,000
    Clark, NV (Las Vegas) :: 576,000
    Riverside :: 644,000
    Harris (Houston) :: 692,000
    Maricopa (Phoenix) :: 745,000

    Of the 51 big gainers, ALL are metropolitan, as the 12 in Texas gained 3,171,000, the 12 in California 2,640,000, 7 in Florida 1,335,000, two in North Carolina 497,000, three in Virginia 384,000, and two in Georgia 332000. Many of these counties are Sunbelt core counties, or satellite or spillover counties. Many are suburbs of large metropolitan centers. Of the 51, only 8 are in the “north” of the country (Illinois, Utah, Washington and northern California).

    Relative Gains

    The eight counties gaining more than 75% are
    Sumter, FL :: 75%
    Forsyth GA  ::  78
    Rockwall, TX :: 82
    Loudon, VA :: 84
    Lincoln, WY  :: 86
    Flagler, FL :: 92
    Pinal, AZ :: 109
    Kendall, IL :: 110

    Of the top 35 counties, gaining over 50 percent, Texas had seven, Georgia, six, Florida four, Utah 2, with one each in AK, AZ, CO,ID, IL, IN, IA, MS, NV,NC, OH, PA, SD, VA, WA and WY. Twenty-eight are metropolitan suburbs, three are new small metropolitan areas (FL UT), two are energy development areas (SD, WY) and two more environmental (PA, ID). Finally of the 35, 11 are in the North, 24 in the South.  Eight counties are in both the highest absolute and highest relative lists—Pinal, AZ, Douglas, CO, Loudon, VA, and five in Texas, Collin, Denton, Montgomery, Ft. Bend, and Williamson. Overall, in terms of growth, Texas wins.

    Conclusion

    I know a lot about population in the US, but still I’m glad I didn’t venture predictions ten years ago, as population change is more than a little unpredictable. Yes, Sunbelt growth was expected, but the details were sometimes as expected but there were unusual gains and losses. The data reviewed here are just the totals for redistricting, so no attempt was made to relate population change to economic change. Still, while some of the redistribution to the Sunbelt, or to the Mountain states was amenity or retirement driven, much more seems to be a consequence of massive shifts of industry and services from the higher cost north to the lower cost south. But there is a vast amount of talent and physical plant in these areas so I would not dare to predict that 2020 would be a simple continuation of the last decade.

    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).