New Geography

Tag: Los Angeles

  • Hollywood Unions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Why Outsiders Have Wound Up Running So Much of L.A.

    When I was young and my brother was a little older, we would be in bed before dark on mid-summer evenings. (The times were different then.) We would lay in our separate beds, but only an arm’s length apart as shadows lengthened up the far wall of our room, until the dial of the Zenith radio on top of the dresser was the only light left. The Dodgers’ game would be on. Vin Scully was calling the plays.

    The consolations in the tenor murmur of that voice came with a price. But my brother and I did not know it. We knew vaguely that the Dodgers had broken Brooklyn hearts, but we believed, as we drifted between the last pitch and sleep, that the Dodgers could never again break other boys’ hearts so deliberately. The Dodgers had come here, to this almost perfect place, to be with us.

    My brother and I were wrong. The Dodgers’ arrival in Los Angeles in 1958 was a historic break in the way sports loyalties worked. Until then, a baseball team and most of its fans expected to share a highly specific sense of place. After that – and with increasing callousness – a team’s connection to a place would lag behind corporate values. My brother and I listened to Vin as a boyhood gift, but his voice was (and is) just another opportunity for branding a commodity. From the beginning, the Dodgers’ arrival in L.A. wasn’t an embrace. It was a deal.

    The sale of the team in 1998 to Fox Entertainment Group, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s Australia-based News Corp., was a $311-million deal Murdoch needed to anchor Fox’s cable sports network. It was equally a deal that team owner Peter O’Malley needed to manage the tax implications of inheriting the Dodgers. When Fox sold the team to Boston parking lot entrepreneurs Frank and Jamie McCourt in 2004 for $420 million, the deal was eagerly blessed by MLB Commissioner Bud Selig as a business favor to Fox, holder of baseball’s television broadcast rights. Apparently, everyone inside baseball knew how much that deal stank, how overleveraged the McCourts really were. By taking the Dodgers into receivership last week, Selig is trying to engineer another deal. That probably won’t have much to do with us or Los Angeles either.

    When I was young, on the morning after a game, over the plate of two fried eggs and four strips of bacon my mother made us every school day, I would read Jim Murray’s column in the sports section of the Los Angeles Times, but not for his thoughts on the Dodgers. I read Murray for the sound of the voice in his columns, the same way I read Matt Weinstock, Jack Smith, Art Seidenbaum, and Charles Champlin in the Times. I learned from all of them the centrality of place in an imaginative life, a hunger for the stories, and the power of having a voice. But those are boyhood values that are gone for deals, too.

    Like the arrival of the Dodgers in Los Angeles, the sale of the Times to the Chicago-based Tribune Company in 2000 was a deal that sounded good to Angeleños. Instead of bitter Chandler family members, real journalists would run the paper, even if nearly all of them were out of town. And like the sale of the Dodgers to the McCourts, which floated on so much borrowed money that the franchise is now $525 million in debt, the leveraged sale of the Tribune Company in 2007 to developer Sam Zell turned out to be a cynical farce. Another fast-talking out-of-towner took control of an iconic L.A. institution for cents on the dollar and with no idea of Los Angeles. What mattered was getting the deals done. The deals had nothing to do with this place or our story.

    The deals still do not. The Delaware bankruptcy court overseeing the dismantling of Zell’s empire of paper is only interested in getting its assets sold. Commissioner Selig’s takeover of the Dodgers was only a last-ditch maneuver to prevent the McCourts from saving their borrowed lifestyle by mortgaging the Dodgers’ future broadcast rights.

    Something narrow and coarse in the imaginations of the McCourts and Zell and Selig and their business partners squeezed out any moral dimension to their deals or any feeling for Los Angeles. But to question how they acquired so much of our place so cheaply is uncomfortable for Angeleños. Better to grumble about indifferent outsiders. Seen from their perspective, Los Angeles has only market value, the sort of value that sold Los Angeles to the world as one of the most successful lifestyle products of the 20th century.

    Not anymore. Too many deals have soured; too much of the city has been taken into receivership. Even our citizenship – already problematic – has been foreclosed. Deals under duress have taken too many of our civic institutions from local control and put them in the hands of monitors and special masters, raising another question we would prefer to duck: Do we have the capacity to govern ourselves?

    In 1992, retired Superior Court Judge James Kolts, picked by the county Board of Supervisors to investigate systemic abuses in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, hired attorney Merrick Bobb to review excessive force complaints against deputies. Bobb continues to monitor the LASD’s performance.

    From 1996 to 2006, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority operated under federal supervision, after religious and civil rights organizations charged the MTA with “transit racism.” A special master was appointed by the federal court to oversee the MTA’s bus service under a consent decree to insure that buses would meet demand in low-income neighborhoods.

    Complaints in the early 1990s that special education students were being systematically underserved by the Los Angeles Unified School District led to a civil rights suit and another consent decree under which an Office of the Independent Monitor evaluates the district’s compliance with court orders and federal law. The OIM was supposed to complete its work by 2006, but the district has yet to meet all twelve of the goals set by the consent decree.

    In the aftermath of the Rampart CRASH scandal, in which members of an anti-gang police unit were charged with widespread corruption and unprovoked violence in late 2000, the Los Angeles Police Department entered into a consent decree that made the federal Department of Justice arbiter of virtually every aspect of the department, its officers, and their interactions with suspects. The consent decree ended in 2009 – after the department was turned around by a police chief imported from New York – but a transition agreement compels the LAPD to continue demonstrating compliance to the DOJ.

    Grudging compliance to special masters and appointed monitors may be the best we have to give in a city fragmented by institutional barriers and so distracted from civic concerns. Few of us want to see Los Angeles as it is or what it should be; we’ve let others do it for us. This city’s unaccountable political structure, its conception of power merely as the means to another deal, and the city’s air of disconnected neutrality have let thugs police its streets, unfeeling technocrats run its services, and the McCourts loot its most-loved institution. And when those faults became intolerable, others – not us – imposed their solutions. We’ve come to expect this – and worse – from Los Angeles and ourselves. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” might as well be the motto on the city seal.

    Los Angeles succeeded once, less as a place and more as a succession of slick real estate deals that have reached the limits of our landscape. Truthfully, we never needed a shared moral imagination until now, when so many desertions from the common good have shown us how little loyalty the once powerful had for this place. And no deal, no special master, no court-ordered monitor can supply what we lack.

    D. J. Waldie is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times and a contributing writer for Los Angeles magazine. He is the author most recently of California Romantica with Diane Keaton. He blogs for KCET TV at http://www.kcet.org/user/profile/djwaldie.

    Photo by johnwilliamsphd

  • Los Angeles: The MTA’s Bus Stop Strategy

    Those who run the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority evidently believe that, since the Consent Decree that forced it to improve service to its bus riders has expired, they are free to rewrite history to justify Metro’s elimination of nine bus lines, its reductions in service on eleven more, and its overall elimination of four percent of its bus service hours by attempting to show that MTA bus service is little utilized and not cost-effective.

    The Consent Decree followed a decade of reductions in bus service and increases in fares while the majority of transit spending by the major LA transit agencies went to rail. As a result of a Federal Title IX (discrimination in utilization of Federal funding) legal action, Labor/Community Strategy Center v MTA, in 1996, Metro agreed to the CD. It was forced to eliminate the effective doubling of fares that it had imposed, to return to offering the monthly passes that had been highly utilized by low-income transit riders, and to commit to a relief of overcrowded bus service. Those of us who fought for the CD, and who fought Metro to make it live up to its commitments, believed the CD to be an incredible success.

    MTA has always felt otherwise.

    To see how MTA characterizes the CD as a failure, and thus justifies bus service reductions, go to the source… literally. The Source is MTA’s blog:

    “After the late 1990’s, Metro increased bus service by more than one million hours. Although overall Metro ridership has increased over time, bus ridership has fallen or been flat in the past two decades.”

    This is a wonderful example of the creative use of statistics.

    The latest National Transit Database data is for 2009, when there were 386 million bus boardings. In 1989, twenty years earlier, there had been 412 million. So, yes, Metro bus ridership fell over this two decade period.

    However, a more relevant way of looking at this is to compare 1996 – the year before the CD went into effect – to 2009. From 1996 to 2009, mostly as a result of the CD, bus vehicle revenue hours were up 20.2%, miles were up 14.6%, and bus boardings were up 14.5%.

    What the CD was intended to correct, more than anything, was Metro’s history of reducing overall ridership, bus and rail, by an average of 12 million a year in the eleven years that followed its start of major rail construction in ’85. The measure of the CD’s success was the turnaround: Once it went into effect, Metro ridership increased 12 million a year for the next eleven years until it expired.

    Metro did increase bus service substantially after the CD, and utilization of this service increased at right about the same level. Again, from The Source:

    “How full are Metro buses today? Overall, Metro buses are running at an average of 42% capacity.”

    The 42% figure is evidently derived by dividing Metro’s FY09 bus average passenger load – passengers-miles/vehicle revenue miles – by the average number of seats on Metro buses. The figure looks low, doesn’t it? Think about all those empty seats.

    However, unlike an airline flight from LAX to JFK, Metro buses make many stops along their routes to pick up and drop off passengers. Bus scheduling is developed around the maximum carrying capacity of a bus at the peak load point of the route during the peak ridership period. This means that, for much of the day, and for most of even the busiest bus trips, there are a lot of empty seats. That’s the nature of the transit business.

    And compare Metro bus service to its 20 largest peers. For 2009, Metro was had the second highest average passenger load of the group, at 17.1, beaten only by MTA-NYCT, at 17.9. The average of the results of the Top 20 was 11.3. That 42% starts looking pretty good . In fact, a ratio this high actually suggests that a lot of Metro bus lines should be examined for overcrowding.

    “At present, Metro subsidizes about 71 percent of the cost of each passenger’s bus ride, an amount higher than most other large transit agencies.”

    More commonly, this ratio is turned around, as in: Metro has a 29% farebox recovery ratio.

    How does Metro bus rank up against its Top 20 peers? Seventh, and the average of the Top 20 is 27%. However,farebox recovery ratio can be a very misleading metric. Direct subsidy ratios are a more significant indicator, particularly taxpayer subsidy per passenger and per passenger-mile. Metro’s subsidy/passenger was $1.74, third in the Top 20, against the average of its peers of $2.49; its subsidy/passenger mile of $.44 was second best, against the average of $.68.

    So, rather than the bus service financial performance being sub-standard, it is actually outstanding, providing good value for the riders and great value for the taxpayers.

    Instead of Metro telling the world what a great job it is doing, and taking pride in what it has accomplished, why is Metro leadership explaining how wasteful it is, and why service must be cut?

    “As to whether [these] will be the final bus service changes, Leahy said that he wasn’t sure. ‘But, if we don’t do these things, the capital program is not sustainable.’”

    For those not familiar with MetroSpeak, “capital program,” when applied to transit, primarily means building more rail.

    This is the central issue: Metro is in the business of construction of transportation infrastructure, and money wasted on actually moving people takes away from what is available to build new guideway transit corridors.

    As of this writing, Metro has Chatsworth Orange Line extension (BRT) and Expo Light Rail Phase I in construction, Expo Phase II approaching construction, and a design/build procurement for Phase 2A of the Pasadena Gold Line is underway.

    Metro is also in various stages of planning and obtaining funding commitments for East San Fernando Valley North-South BRT lines, Sepulveda Pass Transit Corridor, Westside Subway Extension, Downtown Regional Transit Connector, Crenshaw/LAX Transit Corridor, Eastside Transit Corridor, Green Line LAX Extension, South Bay Green Line Extension, and West Santa Ana Transit Corridor. Plus, it’s the majority partner for the seven Metrolink commuter rail lines.

    Clearly, Metro is so short of operating funds that it is cutting service on a bus system that is the best value to the taxpayers and riders in the nation. It cannot afford to operate its current bus system, and it is attempting to get Congress to front-load massive construction funding against the thirty-year half-cent sales tax passed in 2008. Given Metro’s less than stellar record of bringing in capital projects on budget, and considering its failure to provide for the very large capital renewal and replacement costs of the current rail lines as they age, exactly how does it expect to pay the operating costs of the expanded system it is rushing to construct?

    As Will Rogers said, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

    Tom Rubin has over 35 years in government surface transportation, including founding the transit industry practice of what is now Deloitte & Touche, LLP, and growing it to the largest of its type. He has served well over 100 transit agencies, MPO’s, State DOT’s, the U.S. DOT, and transit industry suppliers and associations. He was the CFO of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, the third largest transit agency in the U.S. and the predecessor of Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

    Photo by biofriendly, Metro Bus Campaign, Los Angeles

  • Cities and the Census: Cities Neither Booming Nor Withering

    For many mayors across the country, including New York City’s Michael Bloomberg, the recently announced results of the 2010 census were a downer. In a host of cities, the population turned out to be substantially lower than the U.S. Census Bureau had estimated for 2010—in New York’s case, by some 250,000 people. Bloomberg immediately called the decade’s meager 2.1 percent growth, less than one-quarter the national average, an “undercount.” Senator Charles Schumer blamed extraterrestrials, accusing the Census Bureau of “living on another planet.” The truth, though, is that the census is very much of this world. It just isn’t the world that mayors, the media, and most urban planners want to see.

    Start with the fact that America continues to suburbanize. The country’s metropolitan areas have two major components: core cities (New York City, for example) and suburbs (such as Westchester County, Long Island, northern New Jersey, and even Pike County in Pennsylvania). During the 2000s, the census shows, just 8.6 percent of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than a million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6 percent represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4 percent. The New York metropolitan area was no outlier: though it did better than the national average, with 29 percent of its growth taking place within New York City, that’s still a lot lower than the 46 percent that the center region saw in the 1990s.

    This may be shocking to some. For years, academics, the media, and big-city developers have been suggesting that suburbs were dying and that people were flocking back to the cities that they had fled in the 1970s. The Obama administration has taken this as gospel. “We’ve reached the limits of suburban development,” Housing and Urban Development secretary Shaun Donovan opined in 2010. “People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.” Yet of the 51 metropolitan areas that have more than 1 million residents, only three—Boston, Providence, and Oklahoma City—saw their core cities grow faster than their suburbs. (And both Boston and Providence grew slowly; their suburbs just grew more slowly. Oklahoma City, meanwhile, built suburban-style residences on the plentiful undeveloped land within city limits.)

    All this suburbanization means that the best unit for comparison may not be the core city but the metropolitan area, and the census shows clearly which metropolitan areas are growing and which are not. The top ten population gainers—growing by 20 percent, twice the national average or more—are the metropolitan areas surrounding Las Vegas, Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Riverside–San Bernardino, Orlando, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, and Atlanta. These areas are largely suburban in form. None developed the large, dense core cities that dominated America before the post–World War II suburban boom began. By contrast, many of the metropolitan areas that grew at rates half the national average or less—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, New York—have core areas that are the old, dense variety. Planners and pundits may like density, but people, for the most part, continue to prefer more space.

    If you do look at cities themselves, rather than at larger metropolitan areas, you’ll see that the census reveals three different categories. The most robust cities, with population growth over 15 percent for the decade—Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, and Orlando—were located within the kind of metropolitan area that urbanists tend to dislike: highly suburbanized, dominated by single-family homes, and with few people using public transit. That’s partly because these cities developed along largely suburban lines by annexing undeveloped land and low-density areas. This has been the case in virtually all the fastest-growing cities. Raleigh has expanded its boundaries to become 12 times larger than it was in 1950; Charlotte and Orlando are nine times larger, and Jacksonville an astounding 25 times larger.

    At the opposite end of the spectrum are core cities, mostly in the Midwest and Northeast and often land-constrained, that have continued to shrink. These include longtime disaster zones like Detroit and Cleveland as well as newer ones like Birmingham in the South. They include Pittsburgh, a city much praised for its livability but one that is aging rapidly and whose city government, based disproportionately on revenue from universities and nonprofits, is among the nation’s most fiscally strapped. They even include Chicago, which lost some 200,000 people during the 2000s, its population falling to the lowest level since the 1910 census. The reasons aren’t hard to identify: despite all the hype about Chicago’s recovery and the legacy of Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Windy City is among the most fiscally weak urban areas in the country, its schools are in terrible shape, and its economy is struggling.

    Finally, there are cities that have grown, but not quickly. New York City’s population, for example, inched to a record high in the 2000s, but that growth was less than the national average. The population of Los Angeles grew a mere 97,000—the smallest increase since the 1890s. Many of the slow-growing cities (New York, San Francisco, and Boston, for example) suffer from high housing costs, which inhibit population growth. But they also host high-end industries—finance, technology, and business services—and enough well-paid workers in these industries to afford pricey housing and sustain a small rate of growth. The cities also attract already wealthy people from elsewhere.

    The census provides information on a smaller level, too, telling us not just which cities have grown, but where the growth has taken place within cities. Often, it has been in and around the historic downtowns. This is a trend in many cities that otherwise differ starkly (New York, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles), and it reflects a subtle shift in the role of the downtown. Rather than reasserting themselves as dominant job centers, downtowns are becoming residential and cultural—a change that H. G. Wells predicted when he wrote that by 2000, the center of London would be “essentially a bazaar, a great gallery of shops and places of concourse and rendezvous.” What may have been an office, industrial, or retail zone morphs into a gentrified locale attractive to the migratory global rich, to affluent young people, and to childless households.

    This downtown recovery (which many cities subsidized heavily) was partly why so many urbanists and developers identified a broader back-to-the-city movement; but in reality, the phenomenon was usually limited to a relatively small population and a relatively small area. Since 1950, for example, St. Louis has lost a greater share of its population than any American city ever boasting 500,000 or more residents. The area from downtown to Central West End experienced strong growth during the 2000s, however, adding more people than Portland’s Pearl District, a favorite of urban planners. Yet this gain of 7,000 people was far from enough to offset the loss of 36,000 in the rest of St. Louis.

    It’s also worth noting that in economic terms, downtowns are losing their hold. For example, though the residential population of Chicago’s Loop tripled to 20,000 in the past decade, that famed business district lost almost 65,000 jobs; its share of the metropolitan area’s employment also fell. Los Angeles’s downtown, whose population has likewise grown, lost roughly 200,000 jobs from 1995 to 2005. Manhattan is losing employment share to the other four boroughs, as it has been for decades; but as a recent report from the Center for an Urban Future reveals, the process accelerated over the last ten years. From 2000 to 2009, Manhattan lost a net 41,833 jobs, while other boroughs saw net increases. This employment dispersion is even more evident in the suburbs. Of commuters who live in the inner-ring suburbs (such as Yonkers and East Orange), 60 percent work in their home counties and only 14 percent in Manhattan. Of commuters from such outer-ring suburbs as Haverstraw and Morristown, 73 percent work in their home counties and 6 percent in Manhattan.

    What, in the end, does the census tell us about America’s cities today? Certainly not that they’re dying, as they threatened to do in the 1950s, but equally certainly that they aren’t roaring back. Cities remain a successful niche product for a relatively small percentage of the population. Most people, though, even in the New York metropolitan area, continue to move toward the periphery rather than the core. That said, New York’s continuing growth over the past decade suggests that its recovery will likely prove durable. As for Senator Schumer’s “another planet” allegations, the census is simply confirming the fact that terrestrial Americans continue to disperse, both within and among metropolitan areas. So far, there’s little that planners, policy makers, and urban boosters can do about that.

    This piece originally appeared in City Journal.

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

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

    Photo by caruba

  • California: Club Med Meets Third World?

    On March 25th, the Bureau of Labor statistics released a report that showed that California jobs had increased by 96,000 in February.  The state’s cheerleaders jumped into action. Never mind that the state still has a 12.2 percent unemployment rate, and part of the decline from 12.4 percent is because just under 32,000 discouraged workers left California’s labor force in February. 

    Unfortunately, the cheerleaders are likely to once again be disappointed.  It is unwise to build a case on one data point.  Data are volatile and subject to all sorts of technical issues.  For example, the estimate of California’s job growth is seasonally adjusted data and subject to revision.

    More importantly, even if California did see 96,000 new jobs in February, that pace is unlikely to be maintained.  California’s economy is just too burdened by the State’s DURT: Delay, Uncertainty, Regulation, and Taxes.  Instead of enjoying the truly vibrant recovery one would expect given its climate, location, natural resources, university network, workforce, and natural and manmade amenities, California’s economy will grow far below its potential, burdened by its DURT. 

    People often ask me to identify the most important impediment to California’s economic growth, but there isn’t just one.  Every business is different.  One may be most impacted by regulation, another by taxes.  Instead, it is the total cost of the DURT.

    Taxes are certainly one component of DURT.  The Tax Foundation ranked California 49th in business taxes and Kiplinger ranks California worst in retiree’s taxes, which serves as a good proxy for individual tax burdens.  No doubt, California’s taxes are high, but that alone wouldn’t be too big a problem.  People happily pay to live in California.  Higher taxes and home costs are just the beginning.

    California is in its own class when it comes to regulation; nothing is unimaginable in a state where bulk of the executive leadership comes from the San Francisco-Oakland area.  Today, there are two regulations that are particularly hurting California’s economy, AB32 and SB375.  AB32 is California’s attempt to unilaterally solve the planet’s global warming problem.  It will have serious implications, all of them detrimental to economic activity.  SB375 attempts to advance its global warming  goals through regional planning mandates.  Here’s a sympathetic analysis of SB375 from a smart guy.

    Those are just the most onerous regulations.  California has thousands of regulations and more come daily.  California had 725 new laws come into effect on January 1, 2011, and the state has over 500 constitutional amendments, averaging over four new constitutional amendments a year.

    Which brings us to uncertainty.

    Uncertainty about the future regulatory environment is detrimental to economic activity.  It is extraordinarily difficult to plan when the regulatory environment is in such a state of flux, and nothing is unimaginable.

    Regulatory uncertainty is far from California’s only source of uncertainty.  California’s local governments are notoriously fickle, particularly in the generally affluent coastal areas.  I know of one project that spent four years in planning, only to be denied by the City Council, even though the project was supported by the planning department.  That’s just expensive.  Developers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on architects, engineers, and planning consultants while jumping through the hoops set up by the planning department, neighborhood groups, environmentalists, and other special interest groups.

    This type of story is all too common in Coastal California.  Some California communities, such as Santa Monica, require that prior to building a new house, you must use two by fours, string, and flags to provide the outline of the proposed structure for up to 90 days.  This is to facilitate neighbor complaints before the project is built.

    The previous story also relates to delay.  Delay in California is legendary, a result of regulatory hurdles, demand for studies, and legal action.  California newspapers often describe projects as controversial, but this is redundant.  Every project is controversial in California. 

    Want to rebuild an aging bridge?  Someone will sue you and claim the old bridge is a historical landmark.  Want to put in a solar farm?  Someone will sue you because the land is home to endangered rats, turtles, salamanders, toads, fairy shrimp, or something.  Endangered species are everywhere in California.  Want to put a condominium project in a depressed part of town?  Someone will sue you because it doesn’t match the neighborhood.  Want to build a house?  Someone will sue you because it will block their view.

    All these things and more happen in California.  It’s no surprise that businesses find California a very challenging place to be profitable.  California’s markets are huge.  No doubt about it.  So, some business will operate in the state.  California’s location on the Pacific Rim and it ports also compel some business to be in California, even if costs are high.  California is a fantastic place to live.  So, people who can afford to will live here.  Some business owners will locate businesses where the owner wants to live.  But, most businesses are too competitive to give up profits to live in California.  Many keep their headquarter s here while shipping their new jobs to other states, or abroad.

    Even so, California is unlikely to become Detroit.  It, sadly, is also unlikely to achieve its potential or regain its previous economic vigor.  The cost of California DURT is just too high.  Instead, the place will become increasingly divided.  Coastal regions, for the foreseeable future, will become even more affluent, heavily white and increasingly Asian.  Hosts of unseen, less fortunate people support them, often commuting from more hardscrabble interior locations.

    Considerable poverty will coexist uncomfortably in California’s coastal paradise.  Working class families already crowd into housing units designed for one family, and this will likely only get worse. 

    What Coastal California won’t have is much of a middle class.  Lack of opportunity and high housing costs makes the most pleasant parts of California an unattractive place for people who define quality of life by opportunity and affordable housing, young families.  Domestic migration is likely to continue to be negative.

    For its part, inland California is already depressed, 27 counties have unemployment rates over 15 percent.  Eight have unemployment rates above 20 percent.  Even during the boom, many of California’s inland areas had extraordinarily high unemployment rates.  Central California’s poverty and blight will only get worse.

    All this is courtesy of expensive California DURT.  Because of it, California’s economy will lag.  More importantly, California seems to be morphing into almost a Hollywood caricature.  The self-absorbed hedonistic wealthy live side by side with the poor, like  a combination of a Club Med and Leisure Village in a third-world country.

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

    Photo by chavez25

  • Bus Versus Train: A Dying Debate

    The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s cutbacks on its bus line, eliminating about 12% bus service, illuminate the problems of mass transit in LA, specifically the relative inefficiency of trains in the city. This 12% is a further reduction after the 4% cutbacks six months ago, sparking anger from the Bus Riders Union. Metro Chief Executive Art Leahy says that his decision to decrease spending is a result of the low ridership, yet city trains, which are also underperforming, remain relatively untouched.

    Leahy argues that buses are easier to eliminate, re-route, and reschedule than rail lines are. However, he also says that the cutting back on lesser-used bus lines will free up the resources to enhance the ones in higher demand. Many bus riders feel that they are getting a raw deal seeing as bus lines, which transport 80% of the MTA’s passengers, only get 35% of the operating budget to begin with. This being true, how much is the other 65% really helping the rail lines then?

    The Bus Riders Union thinks that the MTA’s preference for trains over buses is an unfair reflection of class interests. Because rich people do not take the bus, there is no incentive to keep it running. As is becoming increasingly clear, especially with the current high-speed rail discussions, rich people don’t want to ride the train anymore either. This local debate, therefore, is not an argument of whether to cutback on buses or trains; it is an argument about how to deal with the general decline in mass transit.

  • Perspectives on Urban Cores and Suburbs

    Our virtually instant analysis of 2000 census trends in metropolitan areas has the generated wide interest. The principal purpose is to chronicle the change in metropolitan area population and the extent to which that change occurred in the urban core as opposed to suburban areas.

    From a policy perspective, this is especially timely because of the recurring report that suburbanites have been moving to the urban core over the last decade. We have dealt with this issue extensively, noting the lack of data for any such interpretation. As of this writing, with data for more than half of the major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) in, there remains virtually no evidence that people are "moving back to the city" (actually, most suburban growth came from outside metropolitan areas, not from the "cities").

    The Policy Context: Urban Cores and Suburbs

    This discussion is not new, and generally pits anti-automobile interests – including much of the urban planning community – who favor the urban development patterns of prewar America (generally the urban planning community) against those who would prefer allowing people to make their own choices about where they live or work..

    Over the past 60 or more years, the data indicates that consumers have nearly exclusively chosen less dense and more suburban areas. This is not to suggest, however that many of us, including this author, automatically favor suburbs over urban cores. Indeed, I have enjoyed years of alternating between living in suburban America and the urban core of the (inner) ville de Paris (arrondissements I, II, V, VII and XI). But if you have a taste for urban living, that does not mean high-density cities are inherently superior to suburban living. People, after all, have different preferences.

    Urban areas include both urban cores and suburbs. The delineation of urban cores and suburbs is subjective. There was for example a time – say around 1820 – when development to the north of New York’s Houston Street would have been considered suburban. More than two thirds of the present ville de Paris was suburban before the city limits were expanded in the 1860s. Now, no one would consider, for example, Washington Square or Herald Square to be suburban and the suburbs of Paris now extended to more than 80 times the land area of the 1860s ville de Paris.

    One overlooked way to approach the current debate would be to look not at municipal boundaries but forms of development. Around 1950 we began the breakneck expansion of automobile oriented suburbanization which had proceeded more modestly for two or more decades before.

    The Urban Core:

    This analysis defines the urban core consistent with the criteria of the US Bureau of the Census in 1950. Metropolitan areas are organized around urban areas (urbanized areas). We use the "central cities" of the core urban areas in 1950 as the urban core in the analysis. Those portions outside the 1950 urban core are thus considered suburban. Where an urban area did not exist in 1950 (such as in Las Vegas and Tucson), the urban core is the central city of the urban area when it was first established.

    No existing specification of the urban core is ideal, though the present one is appropriate for the policy purpose stated above. Clearly, the urban core would be far better defined at the census tract or even census block level based upon the characteristics of an urban core. This would include factors such as high residential population density, high transit usage, walkability and a high percentage of multiple unit residential buildings.

    Such an ideal definition of the urban core cannot be measured with municipal boundaries. Yet, municipal boundaries have routinely been used by researchers to delineate the urban core, not least because the data is readily available. However there three notable difficulties with the use of municipal boundaries to define the urban core.

    First; some areas with urban core characteristics are outside the core municipalities. As The Infrastructurist notes, municipalities like Jersey City or Hoboken have the characteristics of urban cores. However, since they are not a part of the core municipality (city of New York), they are classified as suburbs in our analysis. It is well to remember that both Hoboken and Jersey City represented suburban development, during their period of greatest growth, before 1930.

    Second, other areas with postwar suburban characteristics are inside the core municipalities. For example, Richmond County (Staten Island), a part of the city of New York is principally suburban. Much of it was developed well after 1950 and consists largely of single family homes. The median construction date of owner occupied housing in Staten Island is 1970, which compares to 1965 in adjacent Middlesex County, New Jersey. It is newer than in Morris County New Jersey (1965), much of which is outside the urban area (all median house construction years from the 2000 census). Major portions of core municipalities such as Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Portland, Seattle, Denver and others are also postwar suburban.

    Third, in a number of core municipalities, there is little, if any urban core, at least from a residential perspective. For example, one would be hard-pressed to identify an urban core in municipalities such as Phoenix or San Jose (despite the fact that the San Jose urban area is more dense than New York urban area). In metropolitan areas such as these, it might be preferable to define virtually all growth as suburban, though our analysis still defines these municipalities as the urban core.

    Based upon the early results from the census it seems that if the more ideal census tract-based urban core definition were used, the urban cores would be shown to be capturing an even smaller share of growth, while suburban areas would be capturing more. But this analysis will have to wait until all the numbers are in.

    Historical Core Municipality

    The term "historical core municipality" is used to denote the urban cores using municipal boundaries.  The term "city" is avoided because of its multiple definitions. Cities can be municipalities (such as in the city of New York), urban areas (such as the New York urban area), metropolitan areas (such as the New York metropolitan area) or multi-county regions or prefectures of countries like China (such as Wuhan or Shenyang).

    This lack of clarity can be routinely seen in media reports that indiscriminately (and without comprehension) make comparisons between cities, using differing definitions. This can even extend even to more technical literature (see pages 12-14 of Urban Transportation Policy Requires Factual Foundations).

    Principal Cities: Starting in 2003, the Census Bureau substituted the term "principal city" for the previous "central city" term. The use of principal city designations and the largest municipality as the principal name of a metropolitan area are appropriate for the purposes intended by the Census Bureau.

    In its State of Metropolitan America, the Brookings Institution uses up to the three largest principal cities (which it calls "primary cities") and consider other parts of metropolitan areas as suburbs.

    Neither approach, however, is appropriate in analyzing postwar suburbanization. Any municipality in a metropolitan area with more than 250,000 population is considered a principal city, regardless of its urban form. Any municipality with more than 50,000 population but which also has more jobs than resident workers is also a principal city, regardless of its actual on the ground reality.

    This leads to a situation in which, for example, Los Angeles has 26 principal cities. Any postwar urban form definition would classify nearly all as suburban (and much of the historical core municipality of Los Angeles, notably the San Fernando Valley, itself is suburban). For example, the suburban city of Cerritos is a principal city, yet was largely filled by dairy farms well into the 1950s and was called Dairy Valley.

    Other principal cities hardly existed in 1950. Virginia Beach has become the largest municipality in its metropolitan area, having displaced Norfolk. Yet, in 1950 Virginia Beach had a population of only 5,400, well below the 50,000 threshold that was required of central cities (smaller than Ponchatoula, Louisiana, doubtless an unfamiliar municipality to most readers). Arlington, Texas, the third municipality in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area, had a population of 7,700 in 1950, again well below the central city threshold. Arlington is not an urban core, it is a suburban jurisdiction.

    Virginia Beach is a good example of a suburban area that has become the largest municipality in a metropolitan area. Its greater size, however, does not make Virginia Beach the urban core. Otherwise, Contra Costa County in California could, by consolidating with its constituent municipalities (God forbid), replace San Francisco as the metropolitan area’s urban core.

    Perhaps the ultimate example of the problem of principal cities being confused with urban cores is Hemet, California, a principal city of the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area that is, in fact an exurb and not in the primary urban area.

    Toward the Future

    An eventual more precise analysis of urban cores and suburban trends will be welcome. Yet, as our analysis of trends in New Jersey indicated, even the growth in more urban core oriented municipalities was minuscule compared to the state’s suburban growth. Further, much of the urban core growth in the nation came from areas that, although formally located within “city limits” actually were on the suburban fringe. This was true, for example, in Kansas City, Oklahoma City and even Portland.  This suggests that the small share of growth reported in urban cores would be even less if it were based on census tract data; and suburbanization, as a way of life, may indeed be even more prevalent than this year’s numbers suggest. 

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

    Photo by urbanfeel

  • California’s Demographic Dilemma: A Class And Culture Clash

    The newly released Census reports reveal that California faces a profound gap between the cities where people are moving to and the cities that hold all the political power. It is a tale that divides the state between its coastal metropolitan regions that dominate the state’s politics — particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, but also Los Angeles — and its still-growing, largely powerless interior regions.

    Indeed, the “progressives” of the coast are fundamentally anti-growth, less concerned with promoting broad-based economic growth — despite 12.5% statewide unemployment — than in preserving the privileges of their sponsors among public sector unions and generally affluent environmentalists. This could breed a big conflict between the coastal idealists and the working class and increasingly Latino residents in the more hardscrabble interior, whose economic realities are largely ignored by the state’s government.

    The Census shows that the Bay Area and Los Angeles are growing at their slowest rate in over 160 years under American rule. Between 2000 and 2010 Los Angeles gained less population than in any decade since the 1890s. Its growth rate was slower than metropolitan Chicago, St. Louis and virtually every region that has reported to date, with the exception of New Orleans.

    This reflects not only the poor economy of the past few years, but also a widely cited drop-off in foreign immigration and continued massive outmigration of residents to other states. One reason for this mass exodus may be soaring house prices — largely the product of strong regulatory restraints — which appear to have contributed to slowing population growth after 2003.

    Yet not all of California is stagnating demographically. The state’s interior region — what I call “The Third California” — is growing steadily. While  Orange County, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose and the Silicon Valley increased their population by only 6% or less over the last decade, inland areas such as Riverside-San Bernardino, Sacramento and the Central Valley saw growth of 20% or more. Overall, the interior counties together gained 2 million residents , roughly twice as many as the combined coastal metropolitan areas.

    The reasons for this growth are not difficult to comprehend. In boom times and hard times, housing prices in the coastal regions tend to equal as much as seven or eight times a median family income. The prices in the interior can be three times or less.

    In addition, during the past two decades, the interior region enjoyed fairly strong economic growth. Pro-business county governments promoted the expansion not only of housing, which boosted construction, but of basic industries such as food processing, manufacturing and warehousing. According to economist John Husing, the Inland Empire alone accounted for over 40% of the state’s total job growth.

    Today, in the wake of the collapsed housing bubble, these interior counties are reeling, with double-digit unemployment (in some cases reaching closer to 20%) and what appear to be diminishing prospects. Five of the nation’s 10 metro areas for foreclosures are located in California’s interior.

    Under normal circumstances, lower housing prices and business costs would lead — as in past recessions — to a spate of new economic growth, but this the radical turn in California government could keep these areas permanently poor.

    Essentially, the Third California has become hostage to the coastal cities and their increasingly bizarre economic policies. Under first Arnold Schwarzenegger and now Jerry Brown, California has embraced a series of radical environmental edicts that spell disaster for the more blue-collar interior. These include dodgy land use policies designed to combat “climate change” but essentially seek to steer middle- and working-class Californians out of their cherished suburban homes and into densely packed urban apartment complexes.

    The last election confirmed the Bay Area’s ascendency in Sacramento. Gov. Jerry Brown was previously mayor of Oakland (a city that actually lost population this decade), while the lieutenant governor, former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and the new attorney general, Kamala Harris, are from the city by the Bay.  The San Francisco area’s population may be about the same as the Inland Empire’s, but its political perspective now dominates the state.

    Husing describes San Francisco as “a bastion of elitist thinking” due to a large “trustifarian” class who have turned the city into favorite spot for green and fashionably “progressive” think tanks. This thinking is increasingly influential as well in a rapidly changing Silicon Valley. In the past the Valley was a manufacturing powerhouse and had to worry about such things as energy prices, water availability and regulatory relief. But the increasingly dominant information companies such as Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google and their wannabes are widely unconnected to industrial production in the region. To be sure, they have created a financial bubble in the area that has made some fantastically rich, but according to researcher Tamara Carleton they have contributed very little in new net job creation, particularly for blue-collar or middle-class workers.

    There’s a bit of a snob factor here. Fashionable urbanistas extol San Francisco as a role model for the nation. The City, as they call it, has adopted the lead on everything from getting rid of plastic bags and Happy Meals is now considering a ban on circumcision. When it comes to everything from gay rights to bike lanes, no place is more consciously “progressive” than San Francisco. So why should that charmed city care about what happens to farmworkers or construction laborers in not-so-pretty Fresno?

    Class and occupational profile also has much to do with this gap between the Californias. Husing notes that the Bay Area has far more people with college degrees  (42%) than either Southern California (30%) or the Central Valley (where the percentage is even lower). Green policies that impact blue-collar workers — restraining the growth of the LA port complex, restricting new single-family home construction or cutting off water supplies to farmers — mean little distress for the heavily white, aging and affluent Bay Area ruling circles.

    But such moves could have a devastating impact on the increasingly Latino, younger and less well-educated populace of the interior. Outside of the oft-promised green jobs — which Husing calls “more propaganda than economics” — it is these less privileged residents’ employment that is most likely to be exported to other states and countries, places where broad-based economic growth is still considered a worthy thing.  “By our ferocious concentration on the environment, we have created a huge issue of social justice,” Husing points out. “We are telling blue collar workers we don’t want you to have a job.”

    This all presages what could be the greatest issue facing California — and much of the country — in the decades to come. In places where San Francisco-like fantasy politics preside, expect to witness a growing class and ethnic divide, with consequences that could prove catastrophic to the future of our increasingly diverse society.

    This piece originally appeared at Forbes.com

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

    Photo by wstera2

  • Los Angeles: Slowest Growth Since Late 1800s

    Just released 2010 Census data indicates that the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County experienced their smallest numeric population growth since the 1890 to 1900 census period.

    The city of Los Angeles had been expected to top 4,000,000 population by 2010 and the California State Department of Finance had placed the population at nearly 4,100,000 as of January 1, 2010. In fact, however the census count for April 1, 2000 was 3,793,000, up 98,000 from 3,695,000 in 2000. This means that the State Department of Finance estimated four new residents for every one actual new resident between 2000 and 2010 (We had previously questioned the aggressive population projections released by the State Department of Finance in an Orange County Register op-ed,  60 Million Californians: Don’t Bet on It). The lowest number of people added in a previous census period to the population of the city of Los Angeles was 52,000, between 1890 and 1900, with growth from 50,000 to 102,000.

    Los Angeles County, by far the largest in the nation, was expected to top 10,000,000 residents by 2010, and the State Department of Finance had estimated a population of 10,441,000. In fact, the census count for Los Angeles County was 9,819,000, up 300,000 from 2000. According to Bureau of the Census estimates, Los Angeles County grew much more strongly early in the decade, achieving more than three-quarters of its decadal growth by 2003. After that, the population dropped at did not recover to above the 2003 level until 2008. The population growth rate came to a near halt as housing prices escalated during the housing bubble. The State Department of Finance population estimate placed the population increase between 2000 and 2010 at more than double that counted by the Census Bureau. The lowest number of people added in a previous census period to the population of Los Angeles County was 69,000, between 1890 and 1900, with growth from 101,000 to 170,000.

    The other county in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Orange, also experienced record low growth. Orange County grew from 2,846,000 to 3,010,000 residents, adding just 164,000 to its population. Not since the 1940 to 1950 period was growth so slow, when the population rose 75,000, from 131,000 to 216,000.

    Overall, the Los Angeles metropolitan area grew a lethargic 3.7 percent from 2000 to 2010. This is the slowest growth rate among the 26 metropolitan areas for which data has been reported (with the exception of New Orleans, which lost population due to Hurricane Katina). By comparison, Los Angeles metropolitan area growth between 1990 and 2000 was 9.7 percent. Both slow growing St. Louis (4.2 percent) and Chicago (3.9 percent) grew faster than Los Angeles.

    The historic core municipality of Los Angeles attracted 21 percent of the metropolitan area growth, while the suburbs attracted 79 percent of the growth. The suburbs grew 6.2 percent, while the city of Los Angeles grew 2.6 percent.

  • America’s Biggest Brain Magnets

    For a decade now U.S. city planners have obsessively pursued college graduates, adopting policies to make their cities more like dense hot spots such as New York, to which the “brains” allegedly flock.

    But in the past 10 years “hip and cool” places like New York have suffered high levels of domestic outmigration. Some boosters rationalize this by saying the U.S. is undergoing a “bipolar migration”–an argument recently laid out by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. On the one hand the smart “brains” head for cool, coastal cities like New York and Boston, while “families” and “feet”–a term that seems to apply to the less cognitively gifted–trudge to the the nation’s southern tier–a.k.a. the Sun Belt–for cheap prices and warm weather. “College graduates with bachelor’s degrees or higher,” Thompson notes, “have been moving to the coasts, like salmon swimming against the southwesterly current.”

    However, this analysis–no matter how widely accepted in the media–is grossly oversimplified, perhaps even misleading. Indeed, college graduates, for the most part, are heading not to the big cities on the coasts, but to smaller, less dense and quite often Sun Belt cities.

    To come up with our list of the country’s biggest brain magnets, we took the 52 largest metropolitan areas (all those over 1 million population) and ranked them by gains in people with college educations compared to the population over 25 years of age between 2007 and 2009, using the latest data from the American Community Survey provided by demographer Wendell Cox. It turns out that none of the top 10 gainers were large Northeastern cities, but largely Southern or Midwestern. New Orleans; Raleigh, N.C.; Austin, Texas; Nashville; Birmingham, Ala.; Kansas City, Mo.-Kan.; and Columbus, Ohio, all scored high marks. Only one California city, San Diego, made the top 10. Perennial “brain gainers” Denver, Colo., and Seattle round out the top 10.

    Among those metropolitan statistical areas with populations over 5 million, the best ranking went to the Philadelphia region (No. 12 overall), arguably the least glitzy and most affordable of the large northeast cities. The San Francisco metropolitan area, long a leader in its percentage of college-educated adults, held the next spot at No. 13. On the other hand, supposed “brain” magnets Boston and Chicago managed middling rankings, right behind Charlotte, N.C., and just ahead of San Antonio, Texas. Both fell well behind such overlooked “brain gain” areas as Jacksonville, Fla.; St. Louis, Mo.-Ill.; and Indianapolis. New York, the nation’s intellectual capital, ranked a mediocre 29th and Los Angeles an even worse 37th. To put in perspective, Nashville’s rate of college educated migration growth was 3.7%, compared with 1.4% for New York and a measly 0.7% for Los Angeles.

    Rather than following a clear path to the world of the “hip and cool,” college graduates appear influenced by a more nuanced and complex series of factors in terms of their location. New Orleans’ No. 1 ranking, for example, is likely product of the continuing recovery of its shrunken population, where the central city appears to be somewhat more attractive to professionals than before Katrina while the suburban populations have recovered more quickly from the disaster. The strong showing of Birmingham may likely be traced not to changes in the core city itself, but to the rapid growth in its surrounding suburban counties and the rapid expansion of the region’s medical complex.

    This reflects something not often mentioned: the spreading out of intelligence. Conventional theory suggests that the new generation of college graduates will go to the largest, densest places, eschewing, as The Wall Street Journal put it snidely, their parent’s McMansions for small abodes in the inner city. Yet the ACS numbers indicate that, overall, college migrants tend to choose less dense places. In the two years we covered, the growth rate in urban areas with lower urban area densities (2,500 per square mile) boasted a 5% increase in college-educated residents, compared with roughly 3.5% for areas twice as dense.

    This can be seen in the pattern of migration toward relatively low-density metropolitan areas like Nashville, Columbus, Raleigh or Kansas City as opposed to more packed regions like New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. And wherever these college graduates migrate, they are at least as likely to settle outside the urban core. Another overlooked fact: Most places with the highest percentages of college-educated people are in suburbs. Only two of the 20 most-educated counties in the country are located in the urban core: New York (Manhattan) and San Francisco. Virtually all the rest are suburban.

    Another somewhat surprising statistic revolves around affordability and job growth. The college-educated, particularly in this tepid economy, are not immune to reality. They may want to go one place–for example, ever-alluring New York or sunny Los Angeles–but may soon find they can find neither a good job there nor an affordable place to live in order to stay there. Overall our analysis shows that many end up in places with lower housing prices. Areas with the highest price housing experienced college-educated growth at a rate only 60% of those with more affordable real estate. This is one thing that makes an Austin or Raleigh, even a Columbus or Kansas City, more attractive than a Boston, New York or Los Angeles

    Finally we have to consider employment trends. For the most part college graduates, like most folks, preferred cities with lower unemployment and more job growth. Some top gainers, such as Raleigh, Columbus and Kansas City, all boast lower than average unemployment and appear to be recovering from the recession. But this is not always the case: Some relatively poor performers on the job front, like Portland, Ore., and San Diego, have managed to maintain their appeal–for now.

    As the economy recovers these patterns are likely to accelerate, although they could also shift a bit as regions gain or lose employment momentum. Meanwhile, the best strategy for attracting graduates lies in creating jobs, as well as in offering both affordable housing and a range of housing options, including both reasonably priced urban and lower-density living. Generally speaking an area that is economically vital as well as physically or culturally appealing will do best. In the next decade advantages will also fall to family-friendly regions, particularly as the current crop of millennial-generation graduates starts entering en masse their family-forming years. These factors, more than hipness or dense urbanity, may well be more influential in determining which regions do best in the ongoing war for talent.

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    No. 1: New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, La.

    Grad Gain: 36,666

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 5.42%

    New Orleans’ No. 1 ranking is likely due to former exiles returning after Hurricane Katrina. A recent report from the Census Bureau estimates that area’s population in the past decade has shrunk 29%. Recovery in the urban core has remained patchy, but suburban populations have recovered more quickly from the disaster.

    No. 2: Raleigh-Cary, N.C.

    Grad gain: 28,748

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 4.27%

    Even in hard times Raleigh-Durham–the fastest-growing metro area in the country–has repeatedly performed well on Forbes’ list of the best cities for jobs. The area is a magnet for technology companies fleeing the more expensive, congested and highly regulated northeast corridor. Affordable housing and short commute times are no doubt highly attractive to millennials seeking to start a family. Indeed, a 2010 Portfolio.com/bizjournals survey ranked the city the third-best for young adults.

    No. 3: Austin-Round Rock, Texas

    Grad gain: 42,117

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 4.23%

    Brains are flocking to Austin for good reason. Forbes ranked it the best large urban area for jobs in 2010. Along with Raleigh-Durham, Austin is emerging as the next Silicon Valley, luring lots of brains who would have previously headed toward the West Coast. Austin owes much both to its public-sector institutions (the state government and the main campus of the University of Texas) and its expanding ranks of private companies–including foreign ones–swarming into the city’s surrounding suburban belt. Its vibrant cultural scene certainly helps in attracting college-educated millennials.

    No. 4: Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tenn.

    Grad gain: 36,975

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 3.68%

    A high quality of life, a vibrant cultural and music scene and a diverse population make Nashville a desirable place to live. Low housing costs drive down the cost of living, which is even lower than in other affordable cities like Raleigh, Austin or Indianapolis. Nashville is also home to a growing health care industry: More than 250 health care companies have operations in Nashville, and 56 are headquartered there.

    No. 5: Kansas City, Mo./Kan.

    Grad gain: 38,398

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.96%

    The two-state Kansas City region boasts strong population growth and net in-migration– and for good reason. The city has one of the lowest costs of living, one of the highest personal-income growth rates and one of the healthiest real estate markets in the country. Short commute times also add to the attractiveness of the city for families. The city is the second-largest rail hub in the U.S. and is actively growing its life science and technology sectors.

    No. 6: Birmingham-Hoover, Ala.

    Grad gain: 21,111

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.86%

    Birmingham’s strong showing on this list is likely due to the rapid growth in its surrounding suburban counties. One big development sure to lure brains: the rapid expansion of the University of Alabama’s medical center and surrounding private medical industry.

    No. 7: San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif.

    Grad gain: 51,151

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.71%

    The only MSA from the "hip and cool" state of California to make the top 10, despite high levels of out-migration and a relatively poor performance in the job front. For now, at least, the area’s beautiful beaches and idyllic weather manage to attract plenty of college graduates, but it will need to get out of its slump in order to retain them.

    No. 8: Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, Colo.

    Grad gain: 43,853

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.69%

    A perennial magnet for college graduates, and one of the "hip and cool" cities to make the top of our list, Denver was one of the darlings of the information age, and its suburbs have long incubated tech companies. Its technology sector is still strong, but higher prices and greater regulation have driven companies to regions like Austin and Raleigh, which are more business-friendly and cheaper.

    No. 9: Columbus, Ohio

    Grad gain: 29,515

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.6%

    While the recession has taken a huge toll on the rest of Ohio, Columbus has been thriving, thanks to being home of the state capital, a booming startup culture and the largest college campus in the country–Ohio State University, a major employer and information center. Forbes named the Columbus metropolitan area–home to 1.8 million residents– one of America’s best housing markets, as well as one of the best places for businesses and careers. The city enjoys below-average unemployment and a strong tech presence that includes Battelle Memorial Institute, which oversees laboratories for several federal agencies.

    No. 10: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.

    Grad gain: 53,869

    Gain as a Share of Total 25+ 2007 Population: 2.39%

    Seattle has long been one of the big winners in the brain battle as well. It has some of the country’s most important cutting-edge firms–Microsoft, Costco, Amazon, Starbucks–one of the country’s best arrays of urban and suburban neighborhoods. Housing is no longer cheap, but remains far less expensive than its main rival, the San Francisco Bay Area.

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    Photo by Jeanette Runyon

    This piece originally appeared in Forbes.

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