New Geography

Tag: Heartland

  • Fighting the Vacant Property Plague

    The term ‘walking away from the property’ usually refers to owners who leave a home when they can’t make the mortgage payments. In Youngstown, Ohio, it may gain a new meaning: to describe banks that abandon a vacant property in foreclosure, and leave neighbors to cope with the blight. Now banks that walk away from their properties are being reigned in by a local community organization. This year, thanks to the efforts of the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative (MVOC), Youngstown, Ohio became the first city in the nation to require banks to pay a $10,000 cash bond to the city when a house is both vacant and foreclosed.

    As a result of the code’s passage in January, the city now has a bond fund of over $870,000. Youngstown can use the funds for upkeep of the vacant properties.

    MVOC organizer Gary Davenport has said of the code, “It’s preventative and not punitive…the goal is to make banks recognize that it’s their responsibility to maintain vacant properties in foreclosure.” More strongly, Claudia Sturtz, a member of the Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association commented, “I spent over 20 hours a month fighting an imminent foreclosure that boiled down to Chase being irresponsible, losing paperwork, and being inflexible. Big banks abuse foreclosure and destroy lives and communities. We need accountability and education for foreclosure.”

    The innovative move by a shrinking city to help keep neighborhoods livable may end up serving as a model for industrial cities across the nation that are faced with smaller populations and high foreclosure and vacancy rates. In Ohio, nearby Warren is now following a similar path.

    Because of the increased number of abandoned properties across the country, many cities are now seeing widespread demolitions. One result has been a vacant property movement by community organizations to build political pressure and stabilize neighborhoods, especially in shrinking cities.

    In the deindustrialized Youngstown-Warren area, vacant and foreclosed housing is now an MVOC priority. For MVOC Executive Director Heather McMahon, this was a no-brainer. “It’s almost anti-American to say our city is shrinking. But with 62,000 residents living in a city built for 250,000, a declining tax base, and approximately 5,000 blighted vacant structures in need of demolition, we were in desperate need of serious, proactive remediation that addresses vacancy before it begins. If Youngstown is going to survive as a city and not go bankrupt like Detroit, we’re going to have to figure something out.”

    The MVOC developed a “listening campaign,” and started walking the neighborhoods to identify vacant properties. MVOC also began working with the Youngstown State University Center for Urban and Regional Studies to develop surveys and analyze and map results. The new data and new public involvement made visible how bad the situation had become. Since 2004, 5,186 properties have been foreclosed on in Youngstown.

    The community group also pressured Youngstown to hire a city official to oversee the largely independent and dysfunctional municipal departments concerned with vacant properties. It pushed the city to set up plans, timelines, and commitments for implementation of new legislation through a series of “public engagements” with a new mayor.

    To assure city accountability, it created a “Demolition Team” composed of local residents that demanded demolition contractors post start and stop dates at job sites. The transparency helped residents to understand demolition workflow and code enforcement more clearly. Because of these efforts, thousands of rental and vacant properties have been inspected and registered, a property maintenance appeals board has been created, and the city prosecutor has held appeal hearings.

    On a state level, vacant property campaigns have pressured the Ohio Attorney General Michael DeWine to develop Moving Ohio Forward, which established a demolition grant program to remove blighted residential structures. DeWine became the only Attorney General in the country to set aside funding ($75 million) from the banks’ robo-signing settlement for needed demolition in disinvested communities.

    Most recently, the MVOC is now trying to introduce statewide legislation that would protect neighbors who seek access to vacant properties without fear of trespass. It is also working with local legislators to introduce a new statewide homeowner’s Bill of Rights. Although neither of these initiatives will easily pass in the Republican-dominated Ohio legislature, they may end up providing a model for communities elsewhere.

    As Joseph Schilling, Director of the Metropolitan Institute and founder of the Vacant Properties Research Network at Virginia Tech says, “Recent case study research by the VPRN shows that community based organizations, such as MVOC in Youngstown, NPI in Cleveland or PACDC in Philadelphia, are often the major catalysts in making vacant property reclamation a top policy priority for local communities.”

    John Russo is a visiting research fellow at the Metropolitan Institute of Virginia Tech, a former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies, and professor (emeritus) in the Williamson College of Business Administration at Youngstown State University. He is a board member of the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative (MVOC) (Youngstown-Warren), and the co-author, with Sherry Linkon, of Steeltown U.S.A.: Work and Memory in Youngstown.

    Flickr photo by Jinjian Liang of a vacant house near Columbus, Ohio.

  • Where Are The Boomers Headed? Not Back To The City

    Perhaps no urban legend has played as long and loudly as the notion that “empty nesters” are abandoning their dull lives in the suburbs for the excitement of inner city living. This meme has been most recently celebrated in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

    Both stories, citing research by the real estate brokerage Redfin, maintained that over the last decade a net 1 million boomers (born born between 1945 and 1964) have moved into the city core from the surrounding area. “Aging boomers,” the Post gushed, now “opt for the city life.” It’s enough to warm the cockles of a downtown real–estate speculator’s heart, and perhaps nudge some subsidies from city officials anxious to secure their downtown dreams.

    But there’s a problem here: a look at Census data shows the story is based on flawed analysis, something that the Journal subsequently acknowledged. Indeed, our number-crunching shows that rather than flocking into cities, there were roughly a million fewer boomers in 2010 within a five-mile radius of the centers of the nation’s 51 largest metro areas compared to a decade earlier.

    If boomers change residences, they tend to move further from the core, and particularly to less dense places outside metropolitan areas. Looking at the 51 metropolitan areas with more than a million residents, areas within five miles of the center lost 17% of their boomers over the past decade, while the balance of the metropolitan areas, predominately suburbs, only lost 2%. In contrast places outside the 51 metro areas actually gained boomers.

    Only one city, Miami, recorded a net gain in the boomer population within five miles of the center, roughly 1%. Much ballyhooed back to city markets including Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco suffered double-digit percentage losses within the five-mile zone.

    Where the boomers move is critical to the real estate industry, as well as other businesses. This is a large and relatively wealthy generation. Boomers account for some 70% of the country’s disposable income, and their spending decisions will shake markets around the country.

    Given the importance of this market, why has the analysis of it proved so wrong? One factor may well be that most boomers generally do not really want to move if they can help it. Three out of four boomers want to “age in place,” according to a recent AARP  study.

    Part of the problem is one found commonly in press reporting on demographic trends; reporters only tend to know what they see, and mostly they work almost exclusively in urban cores. They encounter empty nester who moves to Manhattan or even downtown St. Louis, but not the ones who moves to the desert, lake, the mountains, the woods or into an adult-oriented community on the urban fringe. Out of the core, these people often fade into media oblivion.

    However, as people age, they turn out to be not, as one developer suggests, “more hip hop and happening” than more likely to seek remaining not only close to home, but attached to the workforce and the neighborhood. A recent series in the Dallas Morning News tracked where local empty nesters were moving — largely to low-crime, well-maintained suburbs and exurbs. What were they looking for? The paper found the biggest concern by far to be safety, followed by affordability and quiet.

    So if boomers aren’t flocking to inner cities, which of the 51 biggest metro areas are gaining the largest share of them? The top gainers are all relatively low-cost, low-density Sun Belt metropolises, led by Las Vegas. Its boomer population expanded 20.2% from 2000 to 2010, with a 12.2% decline in the five-mile inner ring and 36.3% growth outside it. In second place, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., up 11.5% (-8.3% in the five-mile zone, +13.5% outside); followed by Phoenix, whose boomer population rose 11.3% (-22.8%, +15.0%). In contrast, more expensive, denser cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose, Calif., saw the worst boomer flight, suffering double-digit percentage losses.

    What are the implications of these findings? For cities, time to forget the long-anticipated “back to the city” trend among seniors as something that can save their downtowns. To be sure, there may be some ultra-affluent urban districts that may attract wealthy older investors and buyers, many of them part-time residents, such as Chicago’s Gold Coast and parts of Manhattan. In some elite Manhattan buildings, full-time residents constitute as little as 10% of the total.

    A  little further out from these hot spots, boomers are fleeing. The five-mile zone around the City Hall of New York lost about 20% of its boomer population in the past decade, while in Chicago the corresponding area lost 26%.

    Ultimately, some downtown places might be a “wonderland,” as The New York Times puts it,for a small group of highly affluent residents. But for most they are outrageously expensive. At an age when capital preservation if often paramount, in New York, the senior best positioned is one living a long time in a rent-controlled apartment.

    Cities need to understand that, for the most part, their appeal remains primarily to young, largely single people, students and couples before they have children; cities’ real challenge, and opportunity, lies in trying to keep more of this youthful cohort in the city as they age and expand their households. Boomers and seniors may be able to support luxury apartment developers in parts of Manhattan, but not in most cities.

    The boomer population in the five-mile radius of the 51 largest U.S. metropolitan areas fell by roughly a million from 2000 to 2010, out of a 2000 population of nearly 6 million, or 17%. The boomer population outside the five-mile zone in these metro areas also fell, but at a much lower rate: 2%, or 800,000 people out of a population of 39.5 million in 2000.  Away from the major metros, smaller metropolitan areas and rural areas gained nearly 450,000 boomers. However, there was an overall loss of about 1.3 million boomers, principally due to deaths.

    Given the trends, suburbs will likely persist as a primary arena for aging populations. This suggests these communities will have to ramp up services to accommodate them, such as shuttle buses and hospitals. They should cultivate  downshifting boomers as new consumers for local stores, and particularly on Main Streets, and as sources for capital and expertise.

    Perhaps the biggest impact, however, may be on smaller metropolitan areas and the less expensive Sun Belt communities. As more boomers achieve “empty nester” status they could bring investment capital, and broader connections to smaller cities that could much use them.

    One early sign of this trend may be the recent rise in migration to Florida. After a brief recession-driven hiatus a net 200,000 people have moved to Florida in the last two years. New Census numbers also suggest a  large number of people continue to leave the Northeast, the Midwest and California.  Also likely to benefit will be some emerging boomer magnet communities in Idaho, Arizona, Uta­h, the Carolinas and Colorado.

    For real estate developers and investors, the ones often most entranced by the “back to the city” story, the lessons are very clear. It makes more sense to follow the numbers, and understand the logic of senior migration, than swallow the snake oil so many have been carelessly imbibing. There are great opportunities in the expanding senior market, including in some uniquely attractive urban districts— but the bigger plays are in outlying areas, and, increasingly, smaller towns.

    Baby Boomer Population (35-54 in 2000/45-64 in 2010)
    Comparison: 5 Mile Radius of City Hall v. Balance of Metropolitan Area          
    51 Major Metropolitan Areas (2010 Popultion over 1,000,000)            
    In thousands (000)                
                       
        POPULATION   % OF POPULATION
        2000 2010 Change %   2000 2010  % Change
                       
    5-MILE RADIUS     5,895     4,890   (1,005) -17.1%   7.1% 6.0% -15.7%
    BALANCE     39,352   38,575      (777) -2.0%   47.5% 47.3% -0.4%
    MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS (MMAS)   45,247   43,464   (1,783) -3.9%   54.6% 53.3% -2.4%
                       
    OUTSIDE MMAS   37,579   38,025        446 1.2%   45.4% 46.7% 2.8%
                       
    UNITED STATES   82,826   81,489   (1,337) -1.6%   100.0% 100.0% 0.0%
                       
    Calculated from Census Burea data

     

    This story originally appeared at Forbes.

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

  • History, Landscape, Beauty on the American Freeway

    Freeways, particularly urban freeways, have had a bad press for several decades now.  They are accused of despoiling scenery, destroying habitat and causing urban sprawl.  Many observers report with glee on the latest news of a small segment of urban freeway being dismantled.

    This blanket condemnation makes it easy to overlook the remarkable contribution that these freeways have made to the American economy and to American culture.  It is hard to imagine the growth in productivity in the country during the postwar years without these roads, which vastly increased the mobility of goods and people and connected parts of the country together in ways that were unprecedented.

    The constant criticism also makes it difficult to appreciate these roads as cultural artifacts and a wonderful way to see the country.  This is all the more surprising since Americans in recent years have been discovering the rich legacy of our nation’s highways. There has been spate of books that celebrate travel on America’s pre-freeway-era highways. Many authors wax eloquent over the remaining motels, fast food restaurants and drive in theatres along US 66 or advise motorists on finding abandoned segments of roadway by passed by later highway alignments.   There has also been a remarkable surge of interest in America’s parkways, from the earliest parkways like the Bronx River Parkway in Westchester County New York, started in 1907, to parkways at the end of the parkway era in the years immediately before and after World War II when they gradually became more like freeways, for example the Arroyo Seco Parkway in Los Angeles, or the later segments of Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, the Taconic Parkway in New York State or the George Washington Parkway outside Washington.   

    America’s postwar freeways merit a similar rediscovery.   I think that one of the biggest obstacles to appreciating them has been a question of scale.  Driving along a two-lane roadway it is possible to pull off the pavement and look at an historic courthouse or a particularly interesting agricultural landscape or early gasoline station. That is not possible on a freeway. It is also true that the engineers who designed the nation’s postwar freeways were probably less conscious of the aesthetic dimensions of the roadways than the designers of the German autobahn, who set a standard for integration of landscape and roadway  never surpassed, or American designers like landscape architect Gilmore Clarke who played important role in designing the parkways of metropolitan New York.   There is, moreover, no doubt that the push to accommodate increasing traffic loads and to make freeways safer in this country has led to a certain uniformity of standards that some people find boring.  Finally, the proliferation of sound walls over the last few decades all too often makes driving through urban areas like driving through a tunnel. 

    Still, there is no better way to get a good view of the larger features of the American landscape or cityscape than looking through the windshield of an automobile rolling along a freeway at 65 miles per hour. At that speed it is often easier than on a slower road to appreciate the changes that occur in plant species as the highway climbs a steep ridge or to appreciate the way massive cuts to lower the grades on the climb over a hill that provide a graphic illustration of the underlying geology.  It might be difficult for many people to appreciate long stretches of flat country but, if a driver can put herself into the proper frame of mind, this experience can have its own rewards because of the way it accentuates the scale of the landscape. Even the billboards, which many drivers consider simply objectionable intrusions into the natural landscape, can, by their style and content, illustrate a great many regional differences.

    And fortunately, there has been over the last two decades a growing recognition of the aesthetic dimensions of freeways.   In some ways this marks a reversion to ideas that were common in the parkway era when there was almost always a conscious attempt to integrate road and landscape into a successful composition reflecting  the landscape and culture of the region through which it passed. 

    A pioneer postwar example of this push to bring conscious aesthetic design to the freeway can be seen in I-280, the Junipero Serra freeway, which runs between San Francisco and San Jose.  Here the engineers worked with Lawrence Halprin, the landscape architect, and architect Mario Ciampi to create a road that was widely considered the “most beautiful freeway in the world” when the initial segment was opened in the 1960s.  This highway, with its careful alignment, minimizing cut and fill, and the bold, sculptural concrete overpasses does little to diminish the spectacular landscape of the San Francisco Peninsula.  In fact it affords a wonderful way to experience the golden hills on one side of the roadway and the coastal range on the other, often seen in the morning or late afternoon with fog pouring over the crest.

    In recent years the highway departments in an increasing number of American states have attempted to be more attuned to the aesthetic dimensions of freeways and of the places through which the roads run.   Wildflowers now bloom in medians and margins of a great many American freeways.   In arid landscapes engineers and landscape architects have worked to preserve native plants and use them as elements in a kind of idealized desert landscape in the median and along the berms.    In one of the most impressive achievements, a twelve mile stretch of I-70 passing through the tortuously narrow Glenwood Canyon west of Denver, opened in 1992, the designers went to great length to fit the roadway into the landscape in the least obtrusive way possible.  They accomplished this by splitting the roadway alignments, reducing the section of the roadway structure to a minimum, cantilevering both alignments from the canyon walls to reduce their bulk, pushing tunnels through the most difficult spurs of land and even treating the rocks that were scarred by excavation so they would not produce jarring juxtapositions.

    Even the urban freeway, target of the most vociferous criticism, offers interesting perspectives for those willing to look.  Unlike the case in much of Europe, where planners have often attempted to create a parkway-like driving experience by providing a wide buffer between the roadway and nearby urban areas and tightly restricting new development along the highways, American freeways have become the new main streets of many cities.  Driving along the ring roads around American’s large cities can offer some of the most compelling views of these metropolitan areas. For the motorist driving along I-80, the Ohio Turnpike, there is the view from the giant viaduct crossing the Cuyahoga River.  There, 20 miles to the north, up the heavily wooded deep gash created by the river, the gleaming tip of the Key Bank Building peaks out  above the intervening ridges in clear weather, unfortunately all too rare in Northeast Ohio.  Likewise, very few urban views can compare with the panorama that suddenly unfolds for motorists as, emerging from I-376’s Fort Pitt Tunnel under Mount Washington, they suddenly burst out onto a bridge over the Monongahela River and a view of the Golden Triangle and the entire skyline of Pittsburgh. 

    A drive along a city’s freeways is often the best way to get a good grasp of a region’s economic geography.   It would be hard to miss the contrast between the view from the Indiana Toll Road across the grimy industrial landscape of steel mills and refineries just east of Chicago, on the one hand, with the landscape of heavily planted berms and expensive new houses along the Tri-State Expressway in the north suburbs.

    Many of the earliest freeways have crossed the 50 year threshold and deserve a closer look as some of the country’s most important historical and cultural artifacts.  And they provide a wonderful way to observe America’s landscape and cityscape.

     


    Taconic State Parkway north of New York City.  The New York area had the first and largest set of parkways in the nation.  The Taconic, running along the Taconic Mountains from the Kensico Dam in Westchester County to Chatham near Albany, was not finished until 1960, but it maintains the earlier parkway standards rather than those of the later freeway era.   Because of its careful alignment and roadway design by landscape architect Gilmore Clarke and the beauty of the rugged countryside which it runs, it remains one of the country’s great driving experiences.

     


    I-280, Junipero Serra freeway, south of San Francisco.  Although a much wider highway than the prewar parkways, this road, constructed in the 1960s, maintains much of the feel of the earlier parkways though the use of alignments carefully fitted into the rolling hills, integrating the road beautifully into the spectacular landscape of the San Francisco peninsula.    

     

    I-20 east of Birmingham Alabama.  The undulating line that marks the edge of the pine forest and the beginning of the mowed grass in the freeway margins recalls the long curving vistas of English 18th century picturesque landscape tradition. On an overcast morning the resemblance to the British landscape tradition is particularly striking.

     


    I-10 and I-215 at Colton, California.   No place in the United States is so associated with freeways as the Los Angeles region, but actually this region has fewer lane miles of freeway than most large American metropolitan areas.  Because freeway construction pretty much stopped in the 1970s but the population continued to grow and the density rose, this region has some of the most congested roads in the country.  If there is any consolation, they offer some remarkable displays of engineering bravado and urban intensity.

     


    I-70 west of Denver, Colorado.  The construction of this roadway through the Glenwood Canyon in the Rockies is both an engineering feat and an aesthetic tour de force.  By separating the alignments and cantilevering the roadway from the canyon wall, the designers were able to minimize the visual impact of the road and provide spectacular vistas for travelers.

    US 75 approaching downtown Dallas.  This short piece of roadway completes a loop around downtown Dallas that allows two interstate roads to bypass downtown.  A drive around the loop provides a kaleidoscopic sequence of views of tall buildings and a highly effective orientation to downtown Dallas.


    I-10 east of Blythe Arizona.  Perhaps even more than in the East, the great distances of the American West make the freeway a lifeline for residents who live far from population centers.  The smooth roadway makes a striking contrast with the great rock outcrops and vast stretches of scrubland.

     

    I-80 and I-94 Pennsylvania Turnpike north of Pittsburgh.  The era of the parkway ended at about the time of the second world war as a new generation of freeways started to emerge.  One of the interesting features of the interstate system today is the way it provides testimony to the shifting ideals of roadway design.  Although large stretches of the Pennsylvania turnpike, whose initial segment opened in 1940, have been upgraded, the narrow right of ways and steep gradients of the older portions of the road as well as the streamlined design of the overpasses recall the transition from one age to the next.

     


    I-20 between Covington and Augusta Georgia.  A classic piece of interstate road with the smooth ribbon of pavement gliding effortlessly through a landscape of low hills and dense forest.


    I-10 west of downtown Phoenix.  The state of Arizona has been particularly active in trying to create an appropriate landscape for the state’s highways.   They have pioneered techniques for saving cacti and other native species in the path of the roadway and then re-installing them alongside the new roads to create an idealized desert landscape.


    I-10 approaching downtown Los Angeles, California.  The advent of sound walls has changed the driving experience in some profound ways.  In places it has severed the visual connection between the roadway and the city around it.  On the other hand, in some places, as here, when vines and other plants grow up over the walls and trees overtop them, the result is a curious but not entirely unpleasant sensation of floating through a city without being part of it.  Until the traffic backs up, of course.

     


    I-27 between Amarillo and Lubbock, Texas.  The long flat stretches of the Llano Estacado of northwest Texas produce an almost hypnotic effect.  Even highway signs and telephone poles take on a monumental character, and train elevators loom up in the distance like the skyline of a great city.

     

      

    I-70 in eastern Utah.   Although freeways can seem intrusive and over-scaled in the city, they are often dwarfed by the huge open spaces in states like Utah or Nevada.

     


    I-5 south of Longview, Washington.   A trip across the country on the interstate roadway system allows for a panoramic view of the regional differences between, for example, the flat, semi-tropical landscape of central Florida and the deep green evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest.

     


    State route 99, the Alaskan Way Viaduct, downtown Seattle.   Completed in 1953, this roadway, this roadway like a number of freeways built in the heart of American cities, created a barrier in the city.  Some of these highways, for example the Central Artery in Boston have been relocated underground. In other cases, like the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco the replacement was a surface boulevard.  In this case, after a considerable debate, officials made the decision to create a massive tunnel.  It is difficult to argue that a road like this should be preserved, given its structural problems and the way it cuts off Seattle from its waterfront.  Still, it is almost inevitable that some of the drivers navigating the new tunnel will keenly miss the spectacular urban spectacle that unfolds today as they sweep along the viaduct.

    Robert Bruegmann is professor emeritus of Art history, Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

  • A Map Of America’s Future: Where Growth Will Be Over The Next Decade

    The world’s biggest and most dynamic economy derives its strength and resilience from its geographic diversity. Economically, at least, America is not a single country. It is a collection of seven nations and three quasi-independent city-states, each with its own tastes, proclivities, resources and problems. These nations compete with one another – the Great Lakes loses factories to the Southeast, and talent flees the brutal winters and high taxes of the city-state New York for gentler climes – but, more important, they develop synergies, albeit unintentionally. Wealth generated in the humid South or icy northern plains benefits the rest of the country; energy flows from the Dakotas and the Third Coast of Texas and Louisiana; and even as people leave the Northeast, the brightest American children, as well as those of other nations, continue to migrate to this great education mecca.

    The idea isn’t a new one – the author Joel Garreau first proposed a North America of “nine nations” 32 years ago – but it’s never been more relevant than it is today, as America’s semi-autonomous economic states continue to compete, cooperate … and thrive. Click on the thumbnail of our map to see our predictions for the job, population and GDP growth of these 10 regional blocks over the next decade, and read on below for more context.

    View the map graphic at Forbes.com.


    INLAND WEST

    The Inland West extends from the foothills of the Rockies to the coastal ranges that shelter the Pacific Coast. This is the West as we understand it historically, a land of spectacular scenery: icecaps and dry lands, sagebrush, high deserts and Alpine forests. From 2003 to 2013, it enjoyed the most rapid population growth in the nation: 21%. It is expected to continue to outgrow the rest of the country over the next decade, as the area boasts the highest percentage of young people under 20 in the U.S.

    Much of this growth was driven by a combination of quality of life factors — access to the outdoors and relatively low housing prices — as well as strong economic fundamentals. Over the past decade the area has enjoyed nearly 8% job growth, the strongest in the country, with the highest rate of STEM growth in the nation over the past decade.  Boise, Denver and Salt Lake City have posted stellar employment growth due to the energy boom and growth in technology. The western reaches of the region — the inland parts of Washington, Oregon and California — have not done as well. These areas suffer from being “red” resource- and manufacturing-oriented economies within highly regulated, high-tax “blue states.”

    THE LEFT COAST

    The Northeast may still see itself as the nation’s intellectual and cultural center, but it is steadily losing that title to the Left Coast. This region sports a unique coastal terroir, with moderate temperatures, though it may be a bit rainy in the north. The climate requires less power than elsewhere in the country for heating and air-conditioning, making its residents’ predilection for green energy more feasible.

    Over the past 20 years, the Left Coast — the least populous nation with some 18 million people — has rocketed ahead of the Northeast as a high-tech center. It has by far the highest percentage of workers in STEM professions — more than 50% above the national average — and the largest share of engineers in its workforce as well. No place on the planet can boast so many top-line tech firms: Amazon and Microsoft in the Seattle area, and in the Bay Area, Intel, Apple, Facebook and Google, among others.

    Over the next decade, the Left Coast should maintain its momentum, but ultimately it faces a Northeast-like future, with a slowing rate of population growth. High housing prices, particularly in the Bay Area, are transforming it into something of a gated community, largely out of reach to new middle-class families. The density-centric land use policies that have helped drive up Bay Area prices are also increasingly evident in places like Portland and Seattle. The Left Coast has the smallest percentage of residents under 5 outside the Great Lakes and the Northeast, suggesting that a “demographic winter” may arrive there sooner than some might suspect.

    CITY-STATE LOS ANGELES

    Once called “an island on the land,” southern California remains distinct from everywhere else in the country. Long a lure for migrants, it has slipped in recent decades, losing not only population to other areas but whole industries and major corporations. The once-youthful area is also experiencing among the most rapid declines in its under-15 population in the nation. Yet it retains America’s top port, the lion’s share of the entertainment business, the largest garment district–and the best climate in North America.

    THE GREAT PLAINS

    The vast region from Texas to Montana has often been written off as “flyover country.” But in the past decade, no nation in America has displayed greater economic dynamism. Since the recession, it has posted the second-fastest job growth rate in the U.S., after the Inland West, and last year it led the country in employment growth. The Dakotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas all regularly register among the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

    The good times on the Plains are largely due to the new energy boom, which has been driven by a series of major shale finds: the Bakken formation in North Dakota, as well as the Barnett and Permian in Texas. The region’s agricultural sector has also benefited from soaring demand in developing countries.

    Most remarkable of all has been the Plains’ demographic revival. The region enjoyed a 14% increase in population over the past 10 years, a rate 40% above the national average, and is expected to expand a further 6% by 2023, more than twice the projected growth rate in the Northeast. This is partly due to its attractiveness to families — the low-cost region has a higher percentage of residents under 5 than any other beside the Inland West.

    But outside of the oil boom towns, don’t expect a revival of the small communities that dot much of the region. The new Great Plains is increasingly urbanized, with an archipelago of vibrant, growing cities from Dallas and Oklahoma City to Omaha, Sioux Falls and Fargo.

    Its major challenges: accommodating an increasingly diverse population and maintaining adequate water supplies, particularly for the Southern Plains. The strong pro-growth spirit in the region, its wealth in natural resources and a high level of education, particularly in the northern tier, suggest that the Plains will play a far more important role in the future than anyone might have thought a decade ago.

    THE THIRD COAST

    Once a sleepy, semitropical backwater, the Third Coast, which stretches along the Gulf of Mexico from south Texas to western Florida, has come out of the recession stronger than virtually any other region. Since 2001, its job base has expanded 7%, and it is projected to grow another 18% the coming decade.

    The energy industry and burgeoning trade with Latin America are powering the Third Coast, combined with a relatively low cost, business-friendly climate. By 2023 its capital–Houston–will be widely acknowledged as America’s next great global city. Many other cities across the Gulf, including New Orleans and Corpus Christi, are also major energy hubs. The Third Coast has a concentration of energy jobs five times the national rate, and those jobs have an average annual salary of $100,000, according to EMSI.

    As the area gets wealthier, The Third Coast’s economy will continue to diversify. Houston, which is now the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse metro area, according to a recent Rice study, is home to the world’s largest medical center and has dethroned New York City as the nation’s leading exporter. Mobile, Ala., seems poised to become an industrial center and locus for trade with Latin America, and New Orleans has made a dramatic comeback as a cultural and business destination since Katrina.

    THE GREAT LAKES

    The nation’s industrial heartland hemorrhaged roughly a million manufacturing jobs over the past 10 years, making it the only one of our seven nations to lose jobs overall during that period. But the prognosis is not as bleak as some believe.

    Employment is growing again thanks to a mild renaissance in manufacturing, paced by an improving auto industry and a shale boom in parts of Ohio. The region has many underappreciated assets, such as the largest number of engineers in the nation, ample supplies of fresh water and some of the nation’s best public universities. With fifty-eight million people, it boasts an economy on a par with that of France.

    Yet we cannot expect much future population growth in the Great Lakes, the second most populous American nation. Its population is aging rapidly, and the percentage under 5 is almost as low as the Northeast.

    THE GREAT NORTHEAST

    The Northeast–which excludes the city-state of New York–has been the country’s brain center since before the American Revolution. This region is home to some 41 million people, and leads the nation in the percentage of workers engaged in business services, as well as in jobs that require a college education. With average wages of $76,000, $19,000 above the national average, the area boasts a GDP of $2.2 trillion, about equal to that of Brazil.

    The Northeast is one of the country’s whitest regions — Anglos account for over 70% of the population — and one of the wealthiest. In many ways, it resembles aging Western Europe in its demographic profile. The Northeast is the most child-free region outside the retirement hub of south Florida. Coupled with sustained domestic out-migration, its population growth is likely to be among the slowest in the nation in the decade ahead.

    Good thing its residents are highly educated — diminishing numbers and the consequent decline in political power suggest that the Northeast may need to depend more on its wits in decade ahead.

    CITY-STATE NEW YORK

    The Big Apple’s much heralded comeback has assured its place as one of the world’s great global cities. But the city faces challenges in terms of soaring indebtedness, rapid aging, a weak technical workforce, expensive housing and high taxes. It also will struggle with competition from rising cities of the other nations such as San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Houston, each of which threatens New York’s traditional role in key sectors of the economy.

    THE SOUTHEAST MANUFACTURING BELT

    At the time of the Civil War the southeastern United States was both outpeopled and outmanufactured. Today the Southeast, is the largest region in terms of population (60 million) and is establishing itself as the country’s second industrial hub, after the Great Lakes.

    It is attracting large-scale investment from manufacturers from Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Although most of the region still lags in educational attainment, the education gap with the Northeast and Great Lakes is slowly shrinking. The population holding college degrees has been expanding strongly in Nashville, Raleigh, Birmingham, Richmond and Charlotte.

    More babies and the migration of families, including immigrants, to this low-cost region suggest an even larger political footprint for the Southeast in the decades ahead. Population growth has been more than twice as fast since 2001 as in the Northeast, a trend that is projected continue in the next decade. The region looks set to become smarter, more urban and cosmopolitan, and perhaps a bit less conservative.

    CITY-STATE MIAMI

    Greater Miami often seems more the capital of Latin America than it does an American region. Its population is heavily Hispanic, and trade, finance, construction and tourism tend to focus southward. But Miami faces the constraints of an aging, and largely childless, population–which means it will continue to rely on newcomers both from abroad and from the colder regions of the U.S.

    This story appears in the September 23, 2013 issue of Forbes.

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

    Mark Schill is Vice President of Research at Praxis Strategy Group, an economic development and research firm working with communities and states to improve their economies.

  • America Hanging in There Better Than Rivals

    To paraphrase the great polemicist Thomas Paine, these are times that try the souls of optimists. The country is shuffling through a very weak recovery, and public opinion remains distinctly negative, with nearly half of Americans saying China has already leapfrogged us and nearly 60 percent convinced the country is headed in the wrong direction. Belief in the political leadership of both parties stands at record lows, not surprisingly, since we are experiencing what may be remembered as the worst period of presidential leadership, under both parties, since the pre-Civil War days of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.

    Yet, despite the many challenges facing the United States, this country remains, by far, the best-favored part of the world, and is likely to become more so in the decade ahead. The reasons lie in the fundamentals: natural resources, technological excellence, a budding manufacturing recovery and, most important, healthier demographics. The rest of the world is not likely to cheer us on, since they now have a generally lower opinion of us than in 2009; apparently the "bounce" we got from electing our articulate, handsome, biracial Nobel laureate president is clearly, as Pew suggests, "a thing of the past."

    But as the Romans used to say, don’t let the bastards get you down. After all, it’s not like our competitors are stealing the march on us. Start with Europe. Just a few years ago, writers like Jeremy Rifkin and Steven Hill were telling us that Europe was the "model" for the world. Expand the welfare state, curtail capitalist excess, provide a comfortable partner to the rising nations of the world, and, well, enjoy a long and comfortable early retirement.

    Now, that early retirement is quickly turning into a kind of senility. Not only is Europe continuing to age – particularly along its Southern rim – but the fiscal pressures of ultrahigh unemployment, approaching 30 percent or above, among the young and the costs of maintaining a strong welfare state could create what urban analyst Aaron Renn has labeled "a demographic Lehman Brothers."

    At the same time the near-collapse of the Southern-rim countries threatens the viability of Europe’s banks, including those in Germany. Increasingly, Germany lives largely so the rest of Europe can die more quickly. Like a prototypical science-fiction villain, Germany – with fewer children than it had in 1900 – relies increasingly on the blood taken from the decaying Southern rim countries. By 2025, Germany’s economy will need 6 million additional workers, likely from such countries as Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, to keep its economic engine humming, according to government estimates.

    Asian anemia

    What about our prime Asian competitors? Japan has been the sick man of Asia for more than two decades. It’s now desperate enough to unleash Bernanke-like money-printing policies to supply some desperately needed economic Viagra. With a weaker currency, and more money from the Tokyo exchange, there could be a temporary recovery, but Japan’s long term prognosis is not good.

    What Japan really needs is more animal spirits – particularly the kind that produce offspring. By 2050, according to UN estimates, Japan will have 3.7 times as many people at least age 65 than 15 and younger. By then, there will be 10 percent more Japanese over 80 than under 15. Without an unlikely embrace of immigration, Japan is destined to become the nation in wheelchairs.

    China poses a more serious challenge, but the Middle Kingdom appears headed toward what one analyst calls "the end" of its amazing and profound economic miracle. Growth, once projecting Chinese global preeminence, is slowing precipitously. The country now faces a growing rank of competitors from lower-wage countries poised to take market share from the Middle Kingdom.

    China faces growing political instability at the grass-roots level, a mountain of state-issued bad debt and a festering environmental crisis, which threatens long-term food supplies and could create massive health problems. China is rapidly aging. It will have 60 million fewer people under age 15 by 2050, while gaining nearly 190 million people at least 65, approximately the population of Pakistan, the world’s fourth-most populous country.

    The so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), once the darlings of the investment banking set, all are facing slowing growth and rising political instability. It doesn’t help that most are either total or partial kleptocracies, dependent on commodity exports or cheap labor. This is not a solid foundation for ascendency as newer emerging nations – Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam – ramp up.

    ENERGY SHIFT

    On all these accounts, North America, including our Canadian and Mexican neighbors, looks best-positioned. The first, and, arguably, most important game-changer is the energy revolution that could realign the economic stars for decades to come. The shale oil and natural gas boom, as the Economist recently noted, is as illustrative of America’s future, and genius at reinvention, "as the algorithms being generated in Silicon Valley."

    The energy boom’s best aspect, besides the emergence of relatively cleaner natural gas, is making global tyrants, such as those ruling Saudi Arabia and Russia, nervous about their future place in the world. These worries alone should send a three-word message to our leaders: Go for it.

    But North America is not, like Russia, a one-trick pony. The U.S. remains the world’s leading food producer and exporter, sending out more of such critical commodities as soybeans, corn and wheat than any other country. After decades of decline, the U.S. industrial base is growing again, and, although job growth is likely to be limited, our manufacturing sector is already the most productive in the world. With the advantages of a decent legal order, a huge domestic market and available workforce, the U.S. has remained the largest recipient of foreign investment on the planet, roughly five times that so far accumulated in China.

    Technology can be a fickle industry, but at this point of the game, it’s fair to say the U.S. is winning that race. As potentially dangerous as the tech giants may become over time, the U.S. dominance in everything from software code (Microsoft) and design (Apple), search (Google), e-retailing (Amazon), and social networking (Facebook) is nothing short of astounding. We even lead in the coffee business (Starbucks) that keeps all those nerds typing code late into the night.

    Cultural influence

    Then there’s the matter of culture. For years, Asian, Third World and European cultural warriors have plotted to knock the U.S. off its pre-eminent perch. But the European film industry is a shadow of its once-glorious efflorescence; much the same can be said about the once-splendid Japanese cinema. To be sure, Chinese films, Korean pop stars and Bollywood are rising forces, but U.S. exports more than $14 billion annually in film and television. On a global level, no one can compete with Hollywood as a packager of images and dreams – and Silicon Valley’s control of new distribution technology could further boost this advantage.

    Finally, there’s the matter of demographics. The United States, like its competitors, is aging, but not as quickly as our prime rivals. The birth rate has slowed with the recession, but it’s likely to come back toward replacement levels in the years ahead as millennials enter their thirties en masse, and immigrants continue coming to the country. America should be the only one of the top five economies with a growing workforce over the next few decades.

    So, if things are so good, why do they seem so bad? Sixteen years of lackluster leadership has not helped – a succession of two spendthrift presidents, one a too-happy warrior with a weak sense of the limits of even an imperial power, and the other, a posturing and arrogant academic oddly disconnected from the fundamental grass-roots drive that moves his country’s economy. Yet I prefer to see it in a more positive light: If we can do better than our major competitors under such leadership, how great a country is this?

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

    This piece originally appeared at The Orange County Register.

    USA map image by BigStockPhoto.

  • The Cities That Are Stealing Finance Jobs From Wall Street

    Over the past 60 years, financial services’ share of the economy has exploded from 2.5% to 8.5% of GDP. Even if you believe, as we do, that financialization is not a healthy trend, the sector boasts a high number of relatively well-paid jobs that most cities would welcome.

    Yet our list of the fastest-growing finance economies is a surprising one that includes many “second-tier” cities that most would not associate with banking. To identify the cities making the biggest gains, we ranked metropolitan statistical areas’ employment growth in the sector over the long-term (2001-12), mid-term (2007-12) and the last two years, as well as momentum.

    Best Cities for Jobs in Finance Industries

    New High-Fliers

    Tops on our list among the 66 largest metro areas is Richmond, Va., where financial sector employment has grown an impressive 12% since 2009. This reflects the presence of large banks such as Capital One Financial , the area’s largest private employer with 10,900 jobs, and SunTrust Banks , which employs 4,400. The insurer Genworth Financial is based in Richmond, and Wells Fargo and Bank of America also have sizable operations there. Along with the Northern Virginia metropolitan statistical area (an area encompassing the state’s suburbs of Washington, D.C., including Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun and Prince William counties), which is No. 7 on our list, the Old Dominion is quietly becoming a major financial power.

    In once-gritty Pittsburgh, which places second on our list, financial services is now the largest contributor to the regional GDP, according to the Allegheny Conference. Long seen as a backwater, the area has begun to lure the kind of highly trained workers used by financial firms, leading Rust Belt analyst Jim Russell to joke, “Pittsburgh is becoming the new Portland.” Financial employment there has grown nearly 7% since 2009. The strongly reviving local economy spans everything from energy to medical technology.

    Like Pittsburgh, some of the areas doing well in financial services are also thriving generally. These include such Texas high-fliers as No. 3 Ft. Worth-Arlington, where financial services employment has expanded over 12% since 2007, as well as No. 4 San Antonio-New Braunfels. And it is not real estate that is driving this boom—in Fort Worth, for example, the “real estate and rental and leasing” sub-sector of financial services shed jobs over the last five years while the “finance and insurance” subsector expanded almost 20%.

    Some metro areas that aren’t exactly setting the world on fire are scoring in the financial job sweepstakes. Jacksonville, Fla., ranks fifth on our list and St. Louis, MO-IL ranks eighth. In St. Louis, financial sector employment is up 6.4% since 2007 by our count, and the number of securities industry jobs has increased 85% to 12,000 over that span, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    What’s Driving Dispersion of Financial Services?

    The largest traditional financial centers appear to be losing their edge. New York, home to by far the largest banking sector with 436,000 jobs, places a meager 52nd on our list of the cities winning the most new jobs in the sector. Big money may still be minted in Gotham, but jobs are not. Since 2007 financial employment in the Big Apple is down 7.4%.

    The next four biggest financial centers are also doing poorly. San Francisco-San Mateo ranks 37th – remarkably poor given that San Francisco placed first overall on our 2013 list of The Best Cities For Jobs. Meanwhile Boston-Cambridge-Quincy ranks 44th (despite notching a strong 17th place ranking on our overall list), Los Angeles-Long Beach is 47th, and Chicago-Joliet-Naperville is 57th.

    So what gives here? A key factor is cost-cutting. As firms look to move back office and some sales functions to less expensive locales, the traditional financial centers are losing out. Between 2007 and 2012, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco lost a combined 40,000 finance jobs.

    In addition to lower rents in the cities that rank highly on our list, workers come cheaper, too: the average annual salary for securities industry jobs in St. Louis is $102,000, according to the Wall Street Journal, compared with $343,000 in New York.

    This trend is not just limited to the high-profile investment banks and brokerages. Insurance, the quieter and tamer part of the financial services sector (it has roughly the same number of jobs today as it did in 2001 and 2007), has seen an exodus of jobs into these lower-cost regional markets as well. Illinois-based insurance giant State Farm, for example, recently signed mega-leases in Dallas, Phoenix and Atlanta.

    Manufacturing And Energy Drive Changes

    The manufacturing revival in the Rust Belt and the Midwest is creating financial sector jobs in midsized cities (those with overall employment totaling 150,000 to 450,000).  Tops on that list is Ann Arbor, Mich., followed by Green Bay, Wisc., No. 16 Grand-Rapids-Wyoming, Mich., and No. 19 Madison, Wisc. Among small cities, Owensboro, Ky., ranks first, followed by No. 3 Kankakee-Bradley, Ill., No. 5 Clarksville, Tenn.-Ky., No. 11 Bloomington-Normal, Ill., and No. 13 Michigan City-La Porte, Ind. With low commercial and industrial market costs and available workforces, these regions could prove attractive to manufacturers re-shoring U.S. operations.

    The top of the financial services rankings for midsized and small cities is also liberally sprinkled with places where hot energy economies are driving employment in all sectors. The midsized list features Bakersfield-Delano, Calif., in third place, the Texas towns of El Paso and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission in fifth and ninth place, respectively, and No. 10 Lafayette, La. Our small cities ranking includes the Texas towns of Odessa (2nd), Midland (fourth) and Sherman-Denison (10th), and Cheyenne, Wyo. (14th). More economic activity will continue to flow to these regions both as they grow and as their suppliers move closer to reduce costs.

    What The Future Holds

    Historically financial services clustered in big cities, but increasingly cost is leading financial institutions to focus on smaller metropolitan areas. With the connectivity of the Internet and growth of educated workforces in many smaller metros, it has become increasingly possible for financial firms to locate many key functions outside of the traditional money centers.

    Some places can boast advantages beyond just lower costs. Jacksonville, and Miami-Kendall (No. 13 on our big cities list) benefit from the huge demand for financial advisers in Florida. The Sunshine State ranks fourth in the number of financial advisors, and this seems likely to grow as at least some of the expanding ranks of down-shifting boomers — some with decent nest eggs– head down south to retire or start second careers. This demographic trend could also benefit Phoenix, which already hosts substantial operations of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

    Perhaps no low-cost metro area has greater long-term advantages than Salt Lake City, 12th on our list. The unique linguistics skills of the largely Mormon workforce have attracted big financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, who need people capable of conversing in Lithuanian, Chinese or Tagalog. Salt Lake City, with 1,400 employees, is the investment bank’s sixth largest location in the world.

    “We consider Salt Lake a high leverage location,” notes Goldman managing director David W. Lang. “There’s a huge cost differential and you have a huge talent-rich environment.”

    As we saw in manufacturing and information sectors, the financial services industry appears to be undergoing a profound geographic shift. Once identified largely with such storied locales as Wall Street, Chicago’s LaSalle Street or San Francisco’s Montgomery, the financial sector — like much of the economy — is dispersing, perhaps even more rapidly. Over time, this could accelerate the process of economic decentralization that has been occurring, fairly steadily, for the better part of a half century.

    Best Cities for Jobs in Finance Industries

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

    Michael Shires, Ph.D. is a professor at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.

    This piece originally appeared at Forbes.com.

    Downtown Richmond photo by CoredesatChikai.

  • Leaving Portlandia

    There have been two universal reactions to my announcement that I was going to move from Portland to the Midwest: surprise and disbelief. But I also found a number of people who, if given a few moments to find clear and honest footing in the conversation, could see through the self-absorbed mental fog that covers the city in equal measure to the grey rain clouds and tells its inhabitants every day that Portland is the most amazing possible place in this country to live. The amount of media devoted to reinforcing this idea is overwhelming in the sense that I believe it has overwhelmed people’s ability to have their own thoughts and identity in Portland.  Instead they have a Portland identity…because they live in Portland and that is what defines them.

    On the surface, Portland has many progressive aspects. Sustainability and the “greening of the city” stand front and foremost as two easily recognized. Curbside recycling and composting, increasing investment in bicycle transportation, native gardening, and urban farming. There is an intense concentration of a wide range of alternative health practitioners. Artisan craftspeople abound, creating specialty foods and other handcrafted products. “Shop local” is the resounding cry to support small businesses, and farmers markets adorn every neighborhood in the summertime.

    Idyllic as this sounds, there is a less appealing aspect to this picture. As Portland concentrates is cultural practices into a few baskets, the proliferation of other ideas diminishes. Ten years ago I would have characterized Portland as a place that had progressive perspectives. Now I would characterize Portland as a place with few ideas, all perpetually reinforced and more deeply ingrained every day.  People regurgitate a handful of versions of the same thoughts in ever narrowing expressions.  Everywhere you look it is repetition of the same ideas, whether it be on politics, design, or social culture. People strive to look the same, to dress the same, and to have the same lifestyle.  It is so pervasive, that women within a 30 to 40 year age range may display similar choices in hair, dress, and accessories.  What began as a city with progressive and forward looking ideas to develop a new urban course has become a closed container of cultural conformity.  There is a new cookie cutter in Portland, and it is young, alterna-hip, and white.

    I grew up in a place like this…it is called Orange County.

    Sweeping shocked gasps aside, this comparison is worth a long pause to consider.  Stripping away the key difference between Multnomah and Orange County of political affiliation, with Orange County being a historic Republican stronghold and Portland staunchly Democrat, these two counties have some key cultural similarities all hinging on a pivotal word used above: conformity. Conformity of dress, thought, and mannerisms, shared ideas and ideals, and a strong attitudinal belief that there is a “right” or “correct” way to be and to appear to others. There is also limited interest or investment in the arts, creative, innovative, or intellectual development. Just because the surface ideals these two places seem extremely different from each other, does not mean that they don’t breed the same obedience to a self-referencing norm within themselves. And by perpetuating their particular cultures and tailoring their environments to fit with a narrow range of ideals, the inhabitants of these areas increasingly live on the margins of reality and instead inhabit a fabricated cocoon of their own self-rewarding design.

    What disturbed me most about Portland in the months leading up to my decision to leave was the increasingly strong social culture of invisibility. I am referring to the tendency of people in Portland to not acknowledge the physical presence of other people around them in close proximity. This can easily be seen by the increasing tendency of people to brush past you without making eye contact or saying “excuse me” and instead being intensely focused on some spot just beyond your left shoulder. But it manifests in countless other ways: letting dogs off leash (and not picking up after them), ignoring red lights and stop signs, allowing children license to act out without discipline in the presence of other adults.

    In this city where conformity to a particular identity is so strong, people no longer see each other as people. People come in and out of your field of vision as an object to be ranked according to usefulness to you, and invariably avoided, ignored and dismissed the majority of the time. It is unpleasant, unsettling and dehumanizing. The countless tiny social interactions we have with other people throughout the day are the glue that hold us together as a community and keep us from being automatons randomly bumping into one another like the balls in a pinball machine. This critical stickiness in Portland is dissolving rapidly. As people lose the ability to engage and connect with one another, there appears to be an increasingly growing level of resentment, frustration and anger brewing under the surface of social interactions. Not just interactions where overt conflict is involved, but all of them. Because it feels like they all contain some level of conflict just by the occurrence of people being together in a place, time and circumstance.

    There is little likelihood that I would ever have been physically assaulted in Portland. But I think there is a pretty strong likelihood that if I were physically assaulted that no one around me would react or get involved or help. Because chances are, I wouldn’t even be seen.

    When confronted with difficult situations or challenging environments, often it is heard “it’s the people that keep me here…keep me working, living, etc. in this place despite its shortcomings”. In Portland, the situation is reversed….the environment is being made increasingly pleasant and comfortable, but it is the people that make it so difficult to live there.

    Read Jennifer Wyatt’s blog about her cross country move at isaymissourah.wordpress.com.

  • The 2013 Best Cities For Job Growth

    The 2013 edition of our list shows many things, but perhaps the most important is which cities have momentum in the job creation sweepstakes. Right now the biggest winners are the metro areas that are adding higher-wage jobs thanks to America’s two big boom sectors: technology and energy.

    Our rankings are based on short, medium and long-term employment performance, and take into account both growth and momentum — whether growth is slowing or accelerating. (For a detailed description of our methodology, click here.) Consequently, areas that have made the strongest recoveries from deep setbacks often do well. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City metropolitan division, our top-ranked large metro area (urban regions with more than 450,000 jobs). Over the last year, employment in the San Francisco area expanded a remarkable 4.1%, and is up 3.3% since 2008.

    A decade ago, the San Francisco area was reeling from the collapse of the last dot-com bubble; the damage was so deep that today it has only 0.6% more jobs than in 2001. Its sharp recent growth is primarily in the information sector, which has expanded a torrid 21.3% since 2009.

    Much the same can be said about San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, better known as Silicon Valley, which is No. 7 on our large metro area list due to 3.4% job growth last year, and 2.3% growth since 2008; it is also propelled by 25% growth in information jobs since 2007. Yet looking at the longer term, the Valley, like San Francisco, is still rebounding from a deep downturn connected to the dot-com disaster of a decade ago. In fact, the Valley is still down almost 40,000 jobs from 2001.

    Is California Pulling Ahead Of Texas?

    Some East Coast boosters of the Golden State are making this claim, but we don’t see it in this year’s numbers. Besides the tech-rich Bay Area, home to two of our top 10 large metro areas, there are no other major California cities near the top. Most of the state’s big metros are in the poor to middling range over the long term; only Riverside-San Bernardino (45th place on our big cities list) has 10% more jobs than a decade ago. Los Angeles, the state’s dominant urban region, has lost some 120,000 jobs since 2001.

    In contrast, the Texas juggernaut rolls on. Growth there has not only been steady, it’s been widely spread across the state. Texas boasts a remarkable four major metros in our top 10, led by Ft. Worth-Arlington (No. 4), Houston-Sugarland-Baytown (No. 5), Dallas-Plano-Irving (No. 6 ) and Austin-Round Rock, which slips from first place last year to 10th. The state’s other big city, San Antonio, comes in at a very healthy No. 12.

    All these metro areas have more jobs than they did a decade ago — often a lot more. Since 2001, employment in Houston has expanded 20%; in Ft. Worth, it’s up roughly 16%; Dallas; 11%; Austin, a remarkable 26.5%; and San Antonio, 18.4%.

    The Energy Boomtowns

    The unconventional oil and gas boom has helped turn Texas into an economic juggernaut, particularly world energy capital Houston, but growth has also been strong in tech, manufacturing and business services. You see this same kind of blending of energy and other sectors in other strong growth economies elsewhere in the U.S., such as No. 3 Salt Lake City, No. 9 Denver and No. 15 Oklahoma City.

    But the real evidence of energy’s power can be seen in smaller metro areas. Oil-rich Midland, Texas, places first on our list of smaller metro areas (those with less than 150,000 jobs) and also first overall among the country’s 398 metropolitan areas. Nipping at its heels in second place in both categories is Odessa, Texas. On our medium-size cities list, energy towns with strong growth include No. 4 Corpus Christi, Texas; No. 5 Bakersfield, Calif.; and No. 6 Lafayette, La.

    Affordability + Quality of Life = Success

    But you don’t have to be a huge tech hub or energy capital to generate new jobs. The No. 2-ranked place in our big metro ranking, Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tenn., reflects the power of economic diversity coupled with ample cultural amenities, pro-business policies and a mild climate. Nashville’s 3.8% expansion in employment last year, and 7% growth since 2008, has been propelled by business services, education and health. There’s also been a recent recovery in manufacturing, up over 9% last year, as well as retail and wholesale trade. Like the Texas cities, Nashville has registered long-term growth as well, with 112,000 jobs added since 2001, a nice 16.6% increase.

    Much the same can be said about Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, N.C., No. 8 on our big city list, whose job base grew 3.3% last year. Virtually every business sector has been on the rebound since 2009, including financial services, despite Bank of America’s continuing troubles. Overall the local economy has added 100,000 jobs since 2001, up almost 13%.

    Steady, diverse growth can be seen in other low-cost and business-friendly towns such as our No. 11 big metro area, Raleigh Cary, N.C.; No. 13 Columbus, Ohio; and No. 15 Indianapolis. The shift towards stronger growth in areas away from the coasts has continued, at least in the more attractive metro areas.

    Who Doesn’t Have It?

    Of course, any list has its share of losers as well as winners. Sadly this includes long-suffering old industrial cities such as our last-placed big metro area, Newark-Union, N.J., which is followed, in order, by Saint Louis, MO-IL; Cleveland-Elyria- Mentor, Ohio; and Providence-Fall River-Warwick RI-MA. All but Providence, which stayed about even, slipped from last year’s rankings.

    But not all factory towns are headed in the wrong direction. No.  51 Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn advanced an impressive 11 places from last year’s list. The key here has not been the much talked about attempt to turn downtown Detroit into a cool place, but the resurgence of the auto industry. Manufacturing employment, concentrated in the region’s suburbs, is up over 18% since 2009 after decades of tumultuous losses.

    Also flailing a bit have been many of our largest, and most often celebrated, metros. Believe it or not, Detroit comes in one place ahead of Chicago-Joliet-Naperville ,Ill., which continues to promote itself as one of the nation’s great comeback stories, but in reality has continued to lose ground. You can tell the same tale about No. 46 Philadelphia, Pa., No. 41 Portland-Hillsboro-Vancouver OR-WA, and No. 37 Miami, which dropped a staggering 16 places despite the much celebrated recovery of its condo market. Selling to South America flight capital (legal or otherwise) and sun-deprived Europeans does not seem to be doing enough to revive the region’s overall economic vigor.

    There are also some signs that the big beneficiaries of the Bernanke-Obama-Bush economic policy may be losing some momentum. New York City, the major winner from the “too big to fail” banking bailout, fell seven places from last year to No. 18. Even Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, D.C., the nation’s prime beneficiary of crony capitalism and fiscal bloat, has lost steam, falling 10 places to No. 26 — a big decline from its No. 6 rankings in 2010 and 2011. We are usually loath to celebrate declines, but Washington’s loss, reflecting a slowdown in government growth, may be evidence that some equilibrium between the public and private sectors is slowly being restored.

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

    Michael Shires, Ph.D. is a professor at Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.

    This piece originally appeared at Forbes.com.

  • Enterprising States 2013: Getting Down to Small Business

    The following is an exerpt form a new report, Enterprising States, released this week by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and written by Praxis Strategy Group and Joel Kotkin. Visit this site to download the full pdf version of the report, or check the interactive dashboard to see how your state ranks in economic performance and in the five policy areas studied in the report.

    Nothing better expresses America’s aspirational ideal than the notion of small enterprise as the primary creator of jobs and innovation. Small businesses, defined as companies with fewer than 500 employees, have traditionally driven our economy, particularly after recessions. Yet today, in a manner not seen since the 1950s, the very relevance and vitality of our startup culture is under assault. For the country and the states, this is a matter of the utmost urgency.

    The central motor of the job engine clearly is not firing on all cylinders. Historically, small business has accounted for almost two-thirds of all net new job creation, but recent research shows that the rates of new business startups are at record lows. The “gazelle companies”—fast-growing firms, mostly younger ones—have traditionally made outsized contributions to new job creation. After previous recessions, these businesses drove job growth and, perhaps more important, created innovations that often spread to larger, older, more established firms, which sometimes later acquired them.

    Weak job growth has touched the entire economy. Gross domestic product growth is weak, unemployment remains at nearly 8%, and business sentiment is far from optimal. Despite high stock prices and consistently strong corporate profits, the rate of employment growth remains lower than the rate of the expansion of the workforce. Given the understandable focus of larger firms on boosting productivity and on investing capital into technology, it’s highly unlikely these companies will create enough jobs to dent our huge and growing employment deficit.

    Policymakers ignore small business at their own peril and that of the economy.

    The Changing Nature of Small Business

    Small business may be down, but it is far from out. There have been some small, subtle upward shifts in employment in three of the industries—construction, manufacturing, and retail—that bore the brunt of the recession-driven job losses. Any sustained uptick in growth will further widen the opportunities for small business to expand and perhaps recover something of its past vigor.

    It is critical that states and communities that embrace a pro-enterprise vision address a rapidly changing small business environment. Small business today reflects a host of ethnic, social, and generational changes. Successful programs will need to adapt to these new realities that reflect a far more diverse, and profoundly different, set of players.

    Immigrants constitute a growing and important part of the entrepreneurial landscape. Even in the midst of the recession, newcomers continued to form businesses at a record rate. The number of women-owned firms has grown at one and a half times the rate of other small enterprises over the past 15 years. These companies now account for almost 30% of all enterprises. Finally, there is the issue of generational change. Baby boomers were, on the whole, a profoundly entrepreneurial generation, and by many measurements their Generation X successors have proven even more so. The millennial generation, based on recent assessments, may be somewhat less entrepreneurial than their predecessors.

    We are also witnessing the rise of a new kind of enterprise that often employs no more than the proprietors but frequently provides quite sophisticated high-level products or services. In many cases, these “jobless entrepreneurs” include corporate executives, technicians, and marketing professionals who, by either choice or necessity, have chosen to strike out in their own micro-enterprises. A large portion of this growing “1099 economy” comes from the growing ranks of boomers who are no longer willing or able to work for a larger enterprise. According to the Census Bureau, small business without payroll makes up more than 70% of America’s 27 million companies, with annual sales of $887 billion.

    The States Get Down to Small Business

    Every state has policies and programs that are intended to encourage entrepreneurship and support small business development and expansion. Many states have introduced legislation or established programs to focus on startup companies, and many states have bolstered policies targeted at helping existing businesses grow and expand their markets. State funding of programs for entrepreneurial development is estimated to have increased by 30% between 2012 and 2013.  

    States vary considerably in the policies, regulations, and taxes that affect small business. Most states have an array of loosely integrated small business programs, although some have a more comprehensive, integrated small business policy and program framework. No state has the “best” tax policy for all entrepreneurs. Instead, different states have tax policies that suit certain types of companies better than others. Consequently, the states that are best for new businesses are not always the most favorable for existing small businesses; the states that are best for one business sector may not be best for another.

    States and cities should consider small business development not as a separate cause, but as a basic building block for economic growth. Even if state governments can do little to promote enterprise and small business development directly, there are things they can do to increase the chances that entrepreneurs will thrive. Smart, pragmatic economic policymaking at the state level can play an instrumental role in fostering startups and growing companies, particularly when programs are effectively deployed right where the businesses are located.

    The following are some new and innovative policy and program approaches that states are employing and/or supporting to create and expand small businesses, often in cooperation with local and regional development organizations:

    • Accelerator initiatives that focus on starting high-growth firms by turning startups into enduring companies.
    • Economic gardening initiatives that focus on expanding existing firms with strong growth potential.
    • Business plan competitions to identify companies with exciting ideas and high potential.
    • Business ecosystem initiatives, often with a regional focus, that take a comprehensive approach to creating an environment that is highly conducive to startups.
    • Workforce development initiatives that help small businesses find and train the talent they need to operate and compete.
    • Seed and venture funds that focus on startups and expanding firms.
    • Networking and collaboration initiatives that bring small businesses and self-employed entrepreneurs together with large companies and universities.
    • International trade programs that help small businesses reach out to new global export markets.
    • Streamlined state administrative processes and regulatory procedures for small business by cleaning up the DURT (delays, uncertainty, regulations, taxes) that impede small business success.
    • Broadband investments that provide small businesses of all types with the online access necessary in the 21st century.

    Governors of states recognize the importance of small businesses and often take the lead in reforming state policy and service delivery to make growth and commerce easier for small business. Governors can offer fast-track access to financial resources and a full slate of state services that help small businesses connect with technical expertise, customers, suppliers, and state agencies that interact with small business as regulators or partners in development.

    State and local chambers of commerce are on the front lines of promoting a pro-business free enterprise agenda and thwarting anti-business legislation, regulations, and rules. Across the country, chambers of commerce lead the way in advocating on behalf of their members for lower costs of doing business, fairer taxes, fairer regulations, and less regulatory paperwork. They work with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, governors, industry, and professional associations to pursue outcomes that are beneficial to all businesses and, thereby, advance America’s free enterprise economy.

    Visit this site to download the full pdf version of the report, or check the interactive dashboard to see how your state ranks in economic performance and in the five policy areas studied in the report.

    Praxis Strategy Group is an economic research, analysis, and strategic planning firm. Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.

  • Genealogy Of Rust Belt Chic

    Some people don’t like the term “Rust Belt”. Others absolutely hate the word “chic”. Please don’t call the shifting mesofacts of dying Great Lakes cities “Rust Belt Chic”. Given the reaction, a lot of it negative, I decided to blog about how I came up with Rust Belt Chic. Way back in 2006, Shittsburgh was associated with a kind of urban chic. The South Side Slopes celebrated in the New York Times:

    “If Pittsburgh’s market were on steroids like New York’s, this would’ve happened a long time ago,” said one developer, Ernie Sota, referring to the recent spark of interest here. “But Pittsburgh’s kind of like an eddy. Things move slowly here.”

    Mr. Sota, 56, is a prolific local developer who is constructing a series of nine ‘green’ town houses, called Windom Hill Place, into a lush hillside here. He was drawn to the Slopes by the views and villagelike feel, which, for him, conjure memories of visits to Prague and Budapest.

    “It’s just kind of quirky, funky and real, more organic, built by Europeans and other immigrants,” he explained. “The only other American cities that I find as geographically interesting are maybe San Francisco and Asheville, N.C.”
    Emphasis added. At the time, I thought of Sota’s sense of Pittsburgh place as unique to the city. I’m not from Pittsburgh. I don’t live in Pittsburgh. I didn’t go to school there. I’m a geographer. Pittsburgh appeals to my sensibilities. Pittsburgh is my Paris.

    The geographic scope of Pittsburgh urban chic became Rust Belt Chic upon meeting Phil Kidd and John Slanina in Erie, PA for a Rust Belt Bloggers summit. They introduced me to Youngstown. I was hooked.

    Rust Belt Chic always will be ironic. People are attracted to shrinking city hellholes. However, the hellhole part is misunderstood. What I mean is seeing opportunity hiding in a community struggling with survival. There’s just something about Youngstown that stirs passion in me. I’m not gawking at ruin porn or glossing over everything that is wrong. I love Rust Belt cities. I love Rust Belt culture. I’m proud to be from the Rust Belt. That’s what Rust Belt Chic now means to me. It’s personal. It’s who I am.

    For Pittsburgh, I could sense the tide turning. I see the same transformation taking place in other Rust Belt cities. A pejorative, Rust Belt-ness is an asset. It’s a starting point for moving forward, not a finish line or a civic booster campaign. Rust Belt Chic is in the same vein as rasquache:

    Rasquache sensibility that has become an important component of Chicana and Chicano art. The word, rasquache can be used in several senses. Its most common use is negative and relates to an attitude that is lower class, impoverished, slapdash and shallow. For this reason Tomás Ybarra Frausto who has written the cogent essay “Rasquachismo: A Chicano Sensibility” begins by stating, “One is never rasquache, it is always someone else, someone of a lower status, who is judged to be outside the demarcators of approved taste and decorum (in Richard Griswold del Castillo and others, Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965-1985. Los Angeles: Wight Gallery, UCLA, 1991, p. 155)

    However, as the case of several other terms and concepts (most notably the term and concept Chicano itself, which traditionally had a negative sense), the Chicano movement has turned the traditional notion of rasquache on its head. This important Chicano cultural sensibility has been particularly used to address, by means of a stance of resistance that is humorous and ironic rather than confrontational or hard-edged, the harrassments of external authorities such as the police, the immigration service, government officials, social services bureaucrats, and others. Chicano art that is rasquache usually expresses an underdog, have-not sensibility that is also resourceful and adaptable and makes use of simple materials including found ones, such as Luján’s cardboard, glue, and loose sand. 

    Rust Belt Chic turns the traditional notion of Rust Belt on its head. The Rust Belt is lower class, impoverished, slapdash, and shallow. At least, that’s how it looks from the coast, in New York City. Rust Belt Chic as a place to be is a form of resistance. It’s also a hot new trend and a threat to those neighborhoods that make my heart beat faster. From San Antonio:

    “I see a lot of progressiveness happening lightning quick now. When I came from Los Angeles as a visitor in 1992, I saw all these magic spaces you could rent for 300 or 400 a month. But I would laugh because there was little or nothing going on. I could get together some event with a friend or two and everybody thought it was so cool and innovative – I was just copping what I had seen in LA.

    San Antonio has gotten a lot more popular with Austin and California types discovering what a jewel this town is. Eclectic little restaurants and coffee places and shops growing up along Broadway and throughout Southtown. We’re being seen by a lot more cutting edge people by being open to contemporary signage and logos and creative design. With that, unfortunately, comes more expensive retail spaces and taxes are going up.

    There is a charm and real-ness to San Antonio I hope we don’t lose in the process. San Antonio is a non-materialistic town; people aren’t looking at your shoes or what kind of car you drive. When I leave San Antonio, it’s that real-ness that brings me back, every time. I left LA, and I left Austin because I got so tired of the trendy-ness. We’re growing fast, we’re drawing an eclectic market that will support artists. However, there will be a compromise. I don’t want to see it get too uptight.”

    –Robert Tatum

    Pittsburgh is Rust Belt Chic Paris. San Antonio is Rasquache Paris. When Richey Piiparinen and I were in San Antonio to do fieldwork, we were both struck by the Rust Belt Chic qualities of the city. At the time, we weren’t familiar with rasquache. We are now. I see a lot of similarities between Pittsburgh and San Antonio, particularly the way both places are under-appreciated. They enjoy a cult following. Hopefully, neither one will become the next Austin or Portland.

    Rasquache is further along, much further, than Rust Belt Chic. In fact, Rust Belt Chic is rasquache:

    This called to mind a passage I’d read in Have You Seen Marie? It’s an unusual book for a writer whose work has been at turns bawdy, avant-garde, and politically trenchant. Entirely autobiographical, Marie is a short, illustrated story with a childlike tone about Cisneros searching the streets of King William for a friend’s lost cat while mourning the loss of her mother, who died in 2010. I read Cisneros the passage I’d thought of: “ ‘King William has the off-beat beauty of a rasquache, and this is what’s uniquely gorgeous about San Antonio as a whole.’ ”

    She smiled. “Rasquache is when you make or repair things with whatever you have at hand. You don’t go to Home Depot. If you have a hole in your roof, you put a hubcap on there. Or you fix your fence with some rope. That’s rasquache. And then there’s ‘high rasquache,’ which is a term the art critic Tomás Ybarra-Frausto coined. He lives here. Danny Lozano knew high rasquache. He’d serve you Church’s fried chicken on beautiful porcelain and use Lalique crystal for flowers he’d cut from an empty lot.”

    “And that was one of the qualities that drew you to King William?”

    “Not just King William but San Antonio. A kind of elegance of found things. San Antonio has that soul. It’s not, ‘We gotta copy what we saw in New York.’ No! It’s going to come out of our own idea of what we think is beautiful.” She stared at me as if to make sure I understood. “But that’s also what’s getting lost. People feel like the city’s got to look like someplace else. Our mayor needs a stylist. He thinks he has to dress like a Republican. Pues, he’s Chicano! He’s got this gorgeous indigenous look, and he would look so cool if Agosto Cuellar, one of our local designers, dressed him, or someone like Franco, or Danny, or John Phillip Santos—he dresses totally San Antonio cool. He should do a style column for Texas Monthly.”

    I allowed that Santos, who is a regular contributor to this magazine, does have singular style (the last time I saw him, in December, he was wearing a horsehair charro tie and ringneck python boots) but joked that there might be a preponderance of leather pants in his fashion advice. Cisneros waved the joke aside.

    “Our problem is that we can’t recognize or celebrate what we have. We have this inferiority complex in Texas that we have to look elsewhere. Well, who knows more about inferiority than Chicanos? We grew up being ashamed because the history that is taught to us makes us ashamed. The whole colonial experience surrounding the Alamo is meant to make you feel ashamed.”

    In writer Sandra Cisneros, I sense a kindred spirit. As a Rust Belt native, Erie no less, I felt ashamed. I come from failure. I have no culture worth celebrating. Anywhere else must be better. That’s why we leave. Brain drain.

    I, too, was drawn to King William while in San Antonio. It is New Orleans (creole) and Pittsburgh (parochial). It’s like nothing I’ve experienced before. I get that boom town vibe of a place that is cool before anyone knows it is cool:

    Russell has seen what’s coming before. “When the buzz starts – when San Antonio embraces the brain gain, goes in the right direction on the talent economy and hipsters start to get wise to the neighborhood assets that are here – once the hipsters get wind of it – you’ll have to beat them away with a stick,” he said.

    I think that’s the concern of Robert Tatum. About a year ago, such a notion was unfathomable to Cleveland. What will the compromise with gentrification look like in Ohio City? Will somebody utter the words, “He dresses totally Cleveland cool”?

    Danny Lozano knew high rasquache. He’d serve you Church’s fried chicken on beautiful porcelain and use Lalique crystal for flowers he’d cut from an empty lot.

    Rust Belt Chic is served.

    Jim Russell is a talent geographer with particular interest in the Rust Belt. Read his blog at Burgh Diaspora, where this piece originally appeared.