New Geography

Tag: Washington DC

  • Flocking Elsewhere: The Downtown Growth Story

    The United States Census Bureau has released a report (Patterns of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Population Change: 2000 to 2010.) on metropolitan area growth between 2000 and 2010. The Census Bureau’s the news release highlighted population growth in downtown areas, which it defines as within two miles of the city hall of the largest municipality in each metropolitan area. Predictably, media sources that interpret any improvement in core city fortunes as evidence of people returning to the cities (from which they never came), referred to people "flocking" back to the "city" (See here and here, for example).

    Downtown Population Trends: Make no mistake about it, the central cores of the nation’s largest cities are doing better than at any time in recent history. Much of the credit has to go to successful efforts to make crime infested urban cores suitable for habitation, which started with the strong law enforcement policies of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

    However, to characterize the trend since 2000 as reflective of any "flocking" to the cities is to exaggerate the trend of downtown improvement beyond recognition. Among the 51 major metropolitan areas (those with more than 1 million population), nearly 99 percent of all population growth between 2000 and 2010 was outside the downtown areas (Figure 1).

    There was population growth in 33 downtown areas out of the 51 major metropolitan areas. As is typical for core urban measures, nearly 80 percent of this population growth was concentrated in the six most vibrant downtown areas, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and San Francisco.

    If the next six fastest-growing downtown areas are added to the list (Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, San Diego and Seattle), downtown growth exceeds the national total of 205,000 people, because the other 39 downtown areas had a net population loss. Overall, the average downtown area in the major metropolitan areas grew by 4000 people between 2000 and 2010. That may be a lot of people for a college lacrosse game, but not for a city. While in some cases these increases were substantial in percentage terms, the population base was generally small, which was the result of huge population losses in previous decades as well as the conversion of old disused office buildings, warehouses and factories into residential units.

    Trends in the Larger Urban Cores: The downtown population gains, however, were not sufficient to stem the continuing decline in urban core populations. Among the 51 major metropolitan areas, the aggregate data indicates a loss of population within six miles of city hall. In essence, the oasis of modest downtown growth was more than negated by losses surrounding the downtown areas. Virtually all the population growth in the major metropolitan areas lay outside the six mile radius core, as areas within the historical urban core, including downtown, lost 0.4 percent.

    Even when the radius is expanded to 10 miles, the overwhelming majority of growth remains outside. Approximately 94 percent of the aggregate population growth of the major metropolitan areas occurred more than 10 miles from downtown (Figure 2). Figure 3 shows that more than one-half of the growth occurred 20 miles and further from city hall. Further, the population growth beyond 10 miles (10-15 mile radius, 15-20 miles radius and 20 mile and greater radius) from the core exceeded the (2000) share of population, showing the continuing dispersal of American metropolitan areas (Figure 4).

    Chicago: The Champion? The Census Bureau press release highlights the fact that downtown Chicago experienced the largest gain in the nation. Downtown Chicago accounted for 13 percent of the metropolitan area’s growth with an impressive 48,000 new residents. However, while downtown Chicago was prospering, people were flocking away from the rest of the city. Within a five mile radius of the Loop, there was a net population loss of 12,000 and a net loss of more than 200,000 within 20 miles (Figure 5). Only within the 36th mile radius from city hall is there a net population gain.

    Cleveland: Comeback City and Always Will Be? In view of Cleveland’s demographic decline (down from 915,000 in 1950 to 397,000 in 2010), any progress in downtown Cleveland is welcome. But despite the frequently recurring reports, downtown Cleveland’s population growth was barely 3,000. Despite this gain, the loss within a 6 mile radius was 70,000 and 125,000 within a 12 mile radius. Beyond the 12- mile radius, there was a population increase of nearly 55,000, which insufficient to avoid a metropolitan area population loss.

    Other Metropolitan Areas: A total of 30 major metropolitan areas suffered core population losses, despite the fact that many had downtown population increases.

    • Five major metropolitan areas suffered overall population losses (Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Katrina ravaged New Orleans).
    • St. Louis, with a core city that holds the modern international record for population loss (from 857,000 in 1950 to 319,000 in 2010), experienced a population decline within a 27 mile radius of city hall. Approximately 150 percent of the growth in the St. Louis metropolitan area was outside the 27 mile radius. Even so, there was an increase of nearly 6,000 in the population of downtown St. Louis.
    • There were population losses all the way out to a considerable distance from city halls in Memphis (16 mile radius), Cincinnati (15 mile radius) and Birmingham (14 mile radius). The three corresponding downtown areas also lost population.
    • Despite having one of the strongest downtown population increases (12,000), population declined within a 10 mile radius of the Dallas city hall. This contrasts with nearby Houston, which also experienced a strong downtown increase (10,000) but no losses at any radius of the urban core.
    • Milwaukee experienced a small downtown population increase (2,000), but had a population loss within an11 mile radius.

    The other 21 major metropolitan areas experienced population gains throughout. Even so, most of the growth (77 percent) was outside the 10 mile radius. San Jose had the most concentrated growth, with only 24 percent outside a 10 miles radius from city hall. All of the other metropolitan areas had 60 percent or more of their growth outside a 10 mile radius from city hall.

    As we have observed before, 2000 to 2010 was, unlike the 1970s and other decades, more friendly to the nation’s core cities, although less so than the previous decade. Due to the repurposing of old offices and other structures, sometimes aided by subsidies, small downtown slivers may have done better than at any time since before World War II. But the data is clear. Suburban growth was stronger in the 2000s than in the 1990s. The one percent flocked to downtown and the 99 percent flocked to outside downtown.

    Population Loss Radius: Major Metropolitan Areas
    Miles from City Hall of Historical Core Municipality*
    Major Metropolitan Areas (Over 1,000,000 Population Share of Metropolitan Growth Population Loss Radius (Miles)
    "Outside Downtown" (2- Mile Radius) Outside 5-Mile Radius Outside 10-Mile Radius
    MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS: TOTAL 98.7% 100.4% 93.5% 6
    Atlanta, GA 99.6% 101.1% 99.9% 9
    Austin, TX 98.1% 96.7% 81.9% 0
    Baltimore, MD 106.5% 118.7% 99.5% 9
    Birmingham, AL 104.2% 132.5% 124.9% 14
    Boston, MA-NH 90.8% 76.9% 67.3% 0
    Buffalo, NY Entire Metropolitan Area Loss
    Charlotte, NC-SC 99.1% 97.4% 75.0% 3
    Chicago, IL-IN-WI 86.7% 103.3% 144.6% 35
    Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN 105.1% 126.8% 135.2% 15
    Cleveland, OH Entire Metropolitan Area Loss
    Columbus, OH 100.5% 104.3% 86.9% 7
    Dallas-Fort Worth, TX 99.0% 101.0% 100.7% 10
    Denver, CO 98.0% 100.3% 89.8% 5
    Detroit,  MI Entire Metropolitan Area Loss
    Hartford, CT 99.2% 92.7% 67.2% 0
    Houston, TX 99.2% 99.5% 98.0% 0
    Indianapolis. IN 102.1% 112.1% 89.6% 8
    Jacksonville, FL 100.2% 106.3% 85.3% 8
    Kansas City, MO-KS 99.5% 109.0% 113.3% 12
    Las Vegas, NV 101.4% 98.0% 63.6% 4
    Los Angeles, CA 97.3% 102.2% 97.6% 8
    Louisville, KY-IN 102.5% 108.5% 90.9% 8
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR 101.2% 118.5% 143.5% 16
    Miami, FL 99.4% 93.0% 91.3% 0
    Milwaukee,WI 95.9% 109.0% 107.5% 11
    Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI 97.4% 99.2% 100.1% 7
    Nashville, TN 100.0% 101.4% 92.4% 7
    New Orleans. LA Entire Metropolitan Area Loss
    New York, NY-NJ-PA 93.5% 81.7% 68.9% 0
    Oklahoma City, OK 100.1% 96.8% 83.5% 2
    Orlando, FL 99.7% 99.4% 84.2% 0
    Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD 92.6% 98.8% 96.3% 7
    Phoenix, AZ 100.7% 101.8% 93.6% 6
    Pittsburgh, PA Entire Metropolitan Area Loss
    Portland, OR-WA 95.0% 91.5% 62.7% 0
    Providence, RI-MA 96.2% 91.7% 70.1% 0
    Raleigh, NC 99.6% 93.0% 67.7% 0
    Richmond, VA 95.7% 91.7% 70.2% 0
    Riverside-San Bernardino, CA 99.5% 97.2% 85.8% 0
    Rochester, NY 146.9% 149.3% 82.5% 9
    Sacramento, CA 99.9% 94.4% 79.5% 0
    Salt Lake City, UT 98.9% 95.1% 84.1% 0
    San Antonio, TX 101.1% 102.5% 86.7% 7
    San Diego, CA 96.3% 94.1% 90.1% 0
    San Francisco-Oakland, CA 90.7% 87.6% 82.2% 0
    San Jose, CA 95.1% 79.1% 24.3% 0
    Seattle, WA 96.5% 91.9% 81.4% 0
    St. Louis,, MO-IL 94.8% 119.7% 148.9% 27
    Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL 98.6% 97.8% 83.7% 0
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC 93.1% 90.1% 82.3% 0
    Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV 97.5% 94.5% 87.9% 0
    Calculated from Census Bureau data
    *Except in Virginia Beach-Norfolk, Where Virginia Beach is used

     

    ——-

    Notes:

    Population Weighted Density: In its report, the Census Bureau uses "population-weighted density," rather than average population density to compare metropolitan areas. The Census Bureau justified this use as follows:

    "Overall densities of CBSAs can be heavily affected by the size of the geographic units for which they are calculated. Metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas are delimited using counties as their basic building blocks, and counties vary greatly across the country in terms of their geographic size. With this in mind, one way of measuring actual residential density is to examine the ratio of population to land area at the scale of the census tract, which—of all the geographic units for which decennial census data are tabulated—is typi­cally the closest in scale to urban and subur­ban neighborhoods".

    The Census Bureau rightly points out the problem with comparing metropolitan area density. However, it is a problem of the federal government’s making, by virtue of using metropolitan area building blocks (counties) that are sometimes too large for designation of genuine metropolitan areas. These difficulties have been overcome by the national census authorities in Japan in Canada, for example, where smaller building blocks are used (such as municipalities or local government authorities).

    Further, the Census Bureau already has a means for measuring population density at the census tract level, which is "the closest in scale to urban and suburban neighborhoods." This is the urban area.

    "Population-weighted density" is an interesting concept that can provide an impression of the density that is perceived by the average resident of the metropolitan area. Unfortunately, in its report, the Census Bureau is less than precise with its terminology and repeatedly fails to modify the term density with the important "population-weighted" qualification. This could lead to considerable misunderstanding.

    The Census Bureau did not provide average population densities based for the mileage radii. Because of large bodies of water (such as Lake Michigan in Chicago can reduce land areas, it was not possible to estimate population densities by radius.

    Census Bureau Revision of Incorrect Report: We notified the Census Bureau of errors in its press release and report on September 27. The problems included substitution of San Francisco population data for Salt Lake City as well as metropolitan population in the supporting spreadsheet file. On September 28, the Census Bureau issued a revised press release and report to rectify the errors. Later the erroneous spreadsheet was withdrawn and had not been re-posted as of October 1. We have made corrections to the spreadsheet for this analysis.

    Note: Larger "Downtown" Populations in Smaller Metropolitan Areas: Because of the broad 2-mile radius measure used by the Census Bureau, most of the population increase characterized as relating to downtown occurred outside the major metropolitan areas. This is simply because in smaller metropolitan areas, such an area (12.6 square miles) will necessarily contain a larger share of the metropolitan area. Further, many smaller metropolitan areas are virtually all suburban and had experienced little or no core population losses over the decades that have been so devastating to many large core municipalities. On average, 2.7 percent of the population of major metropolitan areas was within a two-mile radius of city hall in 2010. By comparison, in smaller metropolitan areas, approximately 12.7 percent of the population was within a two mile radius.

    Photograph: Chicago Suburbs: (where nearly all the growth occurred), by author

  • A Look at Commuting Using the Latest Census Data

    Continuing my exploration of the 2011 data from the American Community Survey, I want to look now at some aspects of commuting.

    Public Transit

    Public transit commuting remains overwhelmingly dominated by New York City, with a metro commute mode share for transit of 31.1%. There are an estimated 2,686,406 transit commuters in New York City. All other large metro areas (1M+ population) put together add up to 3,530,932 transit commuters. New York City metro accounts for 39% of all transit commuters in the United States.

    If one were to guess the #2 city for transit commuting, another older, pre-auto, centralized city on the lines of New York (say Chicago) might be the obvious guess. It would also be wrong. It’s actually Washington, DC that has the second highest transit commute share among large metros at 14.8%. Here’s the complete top ten:

    Rank

    Metro Area

    2011

    1

    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA

    2,686,406 (31.1%)

    2

    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

    439,194 (14.8%)

    3

    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

    299,204 (14.6%)

    4

    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI

    503,535 (11.6%)

    5

    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH

    267,568 (11.6%)

    6

    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD

    251,285 (9.3%)

    7

    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

    137,858 (8.1%)

    8

    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA

    66,619 (6.3%)

    9

    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA

    355,811 (6.2%)

    10

    Baltimore-Towson, MD

    80,472 (6.1%)

     

    Not only are New York and Washington top two cities for public transit commuting, they are also the two cities that have been dominant in increasing transit’s market share. Both cities showed material share gains since 2000, over three and a half percentage points each, for transit. Among large cities, Seattle was the only one that managed to post a share gain of even one percent.

    Rank

    Metro Area

    2000

    2011

    Change in % of Workers Age 16 and Over

    1

    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA

    2,181,093 (27.4%)

    2,686,406 (31.1%)

    3.74%

    2

    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

    278,842 (11.2%)

    439,194 (14.8%)

    3.61%

    3

    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

    106,784 (7.0%)

    137,858 (8.1%)

    1.17%

    4

    Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL

    12,601 (1.6%)

    24,901 (2.5%)

    0.91%

    5

    Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT

    15,755 (2.8%)

    21,794 (3.7%)

    0.91%

    6

    Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC

    9,532 (1.4%)

    19,227 (2.3%)

    0.91%

    7

    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

    278,207 (13.8%)

    299,204 (14.6%)

    0.81%

    8

    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA

    287,392 (5.6%)

    355,811 (6.2%)

    0.67%

    9

    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL

    67,685 (3.2%)

    95,536 (3.8%)

    0.61%

    10

    Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN

    5,574 (0.8%)

    10,705 (1.4%)

    0.55%

     

    Vaunted Portland only managed to eke out a share gain of 0.07%, which could be entirely statistical noise. Its performance lagged even auto-centric cities like Charlotte and Nashville.

    Bicycling

    Every city out there seems to be vying to be the bike friendliest city in the world. Yet bicycling has yet to make much of an impact on commuting. Only 7 out of 51 large metros even post 1% mode share for cycling:

    Row

    Geography

    2011

    1

    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA

    23,941 (2.3%)

    2

    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

    38,419 (1.9%)

    3

    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA

    16,013 (1.9%)

    4

    Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA

    15,804 (1.8%)

    5

    Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX

    8,847 (1.0%)

    6

    New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA

    5,307 (1.0%)

    7

    Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ

    18,007 (1.0%)

    8

    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

    15,949 (0.9%)

    9

    Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO

    12,052 (0.9%)

    10

    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA

    50,080 (0.9%)

     

    Portland grew bicycle mode share by 1.51% Perhaps this explains its poor transit performance. Cycling is canabalizing transit growth.

    Walking

    The low level of bicycling can perhaps best be illustrated by comparing it to walking. Even in Portland more people walk to work than ride bikes.


    Rank

    Metro Area

    2011

    1

    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA

    540,733 (6.3%)

    2

    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH

    121,537 (5.3%)

    3

    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

    87,409 (4.3%)

    4

    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD

    101,107 (3.7%)

    5

    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

    62,238 (3.7%)

    6

    Pittsburgh, PA

    36,857 (3.4%)

    7

    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA

    35,242 (3.4%)

    8

    Rochester, NY

    15,573 (3.2%)

    9

    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

    94,698 (3.2%)

    10

    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI

    134,399 (3.1%)

     

    Working from Home

    Looking at telecommuting gives a much different list of top cities, this one dominated by “wired” metros like Austin and Raleigh. The share of telecommuters in these cities is bigger than walking or biking, or even transit in many cities. This is an oft-overlooked part of the green transport agenda. The most green commute possible is the one you never have to make.

    Rank

    Metro Area

    2011

    1

    Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX

    62,593 (7.1%)

    2

    Raleigh-Cary, NC

    37,030 (6.6%)

    3

    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA

    67,223 (6.4%)

    4

    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

    131,029 (6.4%)

    5

    San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA

    89,547 (6.3%)

    6

    Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO

    76,025 (5.9%)

    7

    Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ

    105,570 (5.8%)

    8

    Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA

    52,143 (5.8%)

    9

    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA

    132,979 (5.5%)

    10

    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

    87,839 (5.2%)

     

    Commute Times

    Unsurprisingly, large cities – including New York and Washington again at the top – feature the longest average commute times. Larger cities tend to have worse congestion and feature longer commutes. As transit commutes are generally longer than driving, the high transit mode share helps to drive up commute times in those cities.

    Rank

    Metro Area

    2011

    1

    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA

    34.9

    2

    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

    34.5

    3

    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA

    31.0

    4

    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI

    30.9

    5

    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA

    30.6

    6

    Baltimore-Towson, MD

    30.3

    7

    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH

    29.2

    8

    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA

    29.2

    9

    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA

    28.6

    10

    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD

    28.5

     

    Whether New York might prefer a more auto-oriented layout in order to reduce commute times is a different matter. There’s no precedent for such a huge region having anything less than terrible congestion and commute times. And clearly New York would not be New York with such a radical change. The same forces that drive up commute times in places like New York and Washington are some of the same forces that sustain them as centers of elite economic production.

    Note: An early version of this piece contained an incorrect version of “Working from Home” table.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs and the creator of Telestrian, a data analysis and mapping tool. He writes at The Urbanophile.

    Light trails photo by Bigstock.

  • Facebook’s False Promise: STEM’s Quieter Side Of Tech Offers More Upside For America

    Facebook‘s botched IPO reflects not only the weakness of the stock market, but a systemic misunderstanding of where the true value of technology lies. A website that, due to superior funding and media hype, allows people to do what they were already doing — connecting on the Internet — does not inherently drive broad economic growth, even if it mints a few high-profile billionaires.

    Of course Facebook is a social phenomenon that has affected how people live and interact, but its economic impact — and future level of profitability — is less than clear. This stands in sharp contrast to Apple‘s iTunes, which has become a new distribution platform for small software companies and musicians, not to mention the role of Amazon in the distribution of books and other products.

    From the standpoint of economic development, it’s time to focus on the growing divergence between two different aspects of technology. One is largely an information sector that focuses on such things as information software (think Facebook or Google), publishing and entertainment. For most journalists and urban theoreticians, this is the “sexy” sector, particularly since it tends to employ people just like them: younger, products of elite college educations, often living in “hip and cool” places like San Francisco, Manhattan or west Los Angeles.

    Then there’s a larger, less-heralded group of workers that my colleague Mark Schill at Praxis Strategy Group has focused on: those in STEM (science-, technology-, engineering- and mathematics-related) jobs. These workers perform technology work across a broad array of industries, including but not limited to computers, media and the Internet, representing some 5.3 million jobs in the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas. This compares to roughly 2.2 million jobs classified as in the information sector in these 51 regions.

    These STEM occupations are about harnessing technology to improve productivity in mundane traditional industries and the service sector. STEM workers are as likely, if not more so, to be working for manufacturers, retailers or energy producers as for software firms. These workers epitomize the notion of technology, as the French sociologist Marcel Mauss once put it, as “a traditional action made effective.”

    The information sector may be increasingly important, but it is STEM workers, working in a diverse set of industries (including information), who hold the broader hope for the U.S. economy. Over the past decade, the information sector has created many stars, but about as many flameouts. Overall information employment peaked in 2000 at 3.6 million jobs; by 2011 this number had dropped by almost a million. Things have not much improved even in the current “boom”; between February and May this year, the sector lost over 8,000 jobs.

    Essentially the information sector has created a huge amount of churn, as the nature of its employment changes with shifts in technology. For example, the software sector within information has seen real growth, adding some 10,000 jobs the past two years, while other parts of the information sector have suffered significant drops. These include, sadly for aged scribblers, traditional publishing, such as newspapers and book publishing, which has gone from nearly 1 million jobs in 2002 to under 740,000 in May of this year.

    With Facebook stock in the tank, and other major social media sites languishing, the current “boom” may prove among the shortest-lived in recent memory. Shares of less well-anchored companies — meaning those with only a vague outlook for long-term profits — such as Zynga and Groupon have fallen dramatically. The market for the next round of ultra-hyped IPOs also seems to be dissipating rapidly. The carnage has led at least one analyst to suggest Facebook’s fall could “destroy the U.S. economy.”

    Fortunately the overall picture in technology is more hopeful than you’d understand from reading about social media startups. STEM employment has grown 3% over the past two years, more than twice the national average. In the 51 largest metros areas, 150,000 STEM jobs were added from 2009 through 2011. More important still, this reflects a long-term pattern: Over the past decade, STEM employment — despite a drop during the recession — expanded 5.4%.

    These two different classifications underpin geographical differences between and within regions. Sometimes the “hot” areas don’t look so great when it comes to actual job creation in these generally well-paying fields.

    Silicon Valley’s social media boom, for example, may have propelled it once again, at least temporarily, into the ranks of the fastest-growing employment centers. Yet it’s not seeing the gains in STEM jobs that took place during earlier Valley booms in the ’80s or ’90s that were broader based, encompassing manufacturing and industry-oriented software. Indeed STEM employment in the Valley still has not recovered from the 2001 tech bust — the number of STEM jobs is down 12.6% from 10 years ago.

    Metropolitan STEM Job Growth, Sorted by 10-year Growth
    MSA Name 2001-2011 Growth 2009-2011 Growth 2011 Concentration
    Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 25.5% -3.4% 0.51
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 20.8% 4.4% 2.16
    San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 20.1% 3.0% 0.82
    Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 18.5% 3.1% 0.74
    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 18.3% -1.6% 0.55
    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 18.1% 7.6% 1.95
    Salt Lake City, UT 17.5% 4.5% 1.17
    Jacksonville, FL 17.4% 3.0% 0.88
    Baltimore-Towson, MD 17.2% 3.9% 1.36
    Raleigh-Cary, NC 14.9% 1.4% 1.56
    Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 14.3% 3.6% 1.25
    Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL 14.2% -1.4% 0.90
    San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 13.1% 6.5% 1.38
    Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 8.8% 2.4% 1.75
    Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC 8.1% 2.1% 0.97
    Columbus, OH 7.8% 3.8% 1.32
    Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 7.7% 2.4% 0.96
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 7.5% -3.1% 1.05
    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 7.5% 2.8% 0.73
    Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 7.5% 1.2% 1.06
    Oklahoma City, OK 7.3% 2.9% 0.89
    Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 6.2% 3.7% 1.21
    Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 6.1% 4.6% 1.08
    Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 6.0% -1.6% 1.19
    Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 5.6% 4.3% 0.77
    Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ 5.4% 1.5% 1.00
    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 5.2% 4.2% 1.24
    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 4.8% 4.3% 1.10
    Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO 4.0% 2.8% 1.47
    Richmond, VA 3.8% 0.4% 1.14
    Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA 3.6% 2.4% 0.90
    Pittsburgh, PA 3.1% 3.6% 1.07
    Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT 3.1% 1.2% 1.18
    Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 2.6% 3.1% 1.37
    Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 2.4% 2.0% 0.88
    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 2.2% 0.3% 1.19
    Kansas City, MO-KS 1.9% -2.6% 1.15
    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 1.2% 2.9% 1.00
    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 0.8% 3.7% 1.60
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR 0.0% 0.7% 0.56
    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH 0.0% 4.8% 1.64
    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA -2.2% 1.7% 0.98
    Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI -2.3% 0.2% 1.04
    St. Louis, MO-IL -3.5% -1.4% 1.05
    Birmingham-Hoover, AL -3.9% -3.4% 0.70
    Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH -4.9% 1.2% 0.93
    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI -5.2% 1.1% 0.96
    New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA -6.7% 3.6% 0.71
    Rochester, NY -8.9% 2.1% 1.19
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA -12.6% 4.9% 3.09
    Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI -14.9% 8.8% 1.42
    Total in Top 51 Regions 4.2% 3.0%

    Data source: EMSI Complete Employment, 2012.1. The “2011 Concentration” figure is a location quotient. That’s the local share of jobs that are STEM occupations divided by the national share of jobs that are STEM occupations. A concentration of 1.0 indicates that a region has the same concentration of STEM occupations as the nation.

     

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

    This piece originally appeared in Forbes.

    Computer engineer photo by BigStockPhoto.com.

  • The Best Cities For Tech Jobs

    With Facebook poised to go public, the attention of the tech world, and Wall Street, is firmly focused on Silicon Valley. Without question, the west side of San Francisco Bay is by far the most prodigious creator of hot companies and has the highest proportion of tech jobs of any region in the country — more than four times the national average.

    Yet Silicon Valley is far from leading the way in expanding science and technology-related employment in the United States.

    To determine which metropolitan areas are adding the most tech-related jobs, my colleague Mark Schill at Praxis Strategy Group developed a ranking system for Forbes that measures employment growth in the sectors most identified with the high-tech economy (including software, data processing and Internet publishing), as well as growth in science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related (STEM) jobs across all sectors. The latter category captures tech employment growth that is increasingly taking place not just in software or electronics firms, but in any industry that needs science and technology workers, from manufacturing to business services to finance. We tallied tech sector and STEM job growth over the past two years and over the past decade for the 51 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. We also factored in the concentration of STEM and tech jobs in those MSAs. (See the end of this piece for a full rundown of our methodology.)

    Anyone who has followed tech over the past 30 years or more understands the cyclical nature of this industry — overheated claims of a “tech-driven jobs boom” often are followed by a painful bust. This is particularly true for Silicon Valley. The remarkable confluence of engineering prowess, marketing savvy and, perhaps most critically, access to startup capital may have created the greatest gold rush of our epoch, but the Valley at the end of 2011 employed 170,000 fewer people than in 2000.

    Most of the job losses came in manufacturing, and business and financial services, sectors with a significant number of STEM workers. Even though the current boom has sparked an impressive 8% expansion in the number of tech jobs in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metropolitan statistical area over the past two years, and 10% over the past decade, the area still has 12.6% fewer STEM jobs than in 2001. Overall, the recent growth and concentration of tech and STEM jobs remains good enough for the San Jose metro area to take seventh place in our ranking of the Best Cities For Tech Jobs. Next-door neighbor San Francisco, ranked 13th, has enjoyed similar tech and STEM growth over the past two years, but over 2001-2011, its total STEM employment inched up only a modest 0.8%.

    The Established Winners

    So which areas offer better long-term, broad-based prospects for tech growth? The most consistent performer over the period we assessed is the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash., metro area, which takes first place on our list. Its 12% tech job growth over the past two years and 7.6% STEM growth beat the Valley’s numbers. More important for potential job-seekers, the Puget Sound regions has grown consistently in good times and bad, boasting a remarkable 43% increase in tech employment over the decade and an 18% expansion in STEM jobs. Seattle withstood both recessions of the past decade better than most regions, particularly the Valley. The presence of such solid tech-oriented companies as Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing — and lower housing costs than the Bay Area — may have much to do with this.

    Our top five includes two government-dominated regions: the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria MSA places second with 20.6% growth in tech employment since 2001 and 20.8% growth in STEM jobs; and Baltimore-Towson, Md., places fifth with 38.8% growth in tech jobs in the same period and 17.2% growth in STEM. Over the past two years, their tech growth has been a steady, if not spectacular 4%. One key to the stability may be the broadness of the tech economy in the greater D.C. area; as the Valley has become dominated by trends in web fashion, the Washington tech complex boasts substantial employment in such fields as computer systems design, custom programming and private-sector research and development.

    Diversity in tech may also explain the success of other tech hotspots around the country. No. 3 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif., has ridden growth in such fields as biotechnology and other life and physical sciences research. Over the past decade, tech employment has grown by almost 30% and STEM jobs by 13% in this idyllic Southern California region, and over the past two years, by 15.7% and 6.5%, respectively. Like San Diego, No. 11 Boston is also a well-established tech star, enjoying 11.3% tech growth over the last decade and nearly 10% over the past two years, with a diversified portfolio that includes strong concentrations in biotechnology, software publishing and Internet publishing. STEM employment, however, has remained flat over the past 10 years though.

    New Tech Hotspots

    Which areas are the likely “up and comers” in the next decade? These are generally places that have been building up their tech capacity over the past several decades, and seem to be reaching critical mass. One place following a strong trajectory is Salt Lake City, No. 4 on our list, which has enjoyed a 31% spurt in tech employment over the past 10 years. Some of this can be traced to large-scale expansion in the area by top Silicon Valley companies such as Adobe, Electronic Arts and Twitter.

    These companies have flocked to Utah for reasons such as lower taxes, a more flexible regulatory environment, a well-educated, multilingual workforce and spectacular nearby natural amenities. Perhaps most critical of all may be housing prices: Three-quarters of Salt Lake area households can afford a median-priced house, compared to 45% in Silicon Valley and about half that in San Francisco.

    Several other top players with above average shares of tech jobs are emerging as powerful alternatives to Silicon Valley. Like Salt Lake City, eighth-place Columbus, Ohio, boasts above-average proportions of tech and STEM jobs in the local economy, and benefits from being both affordable and business friendly. The Ohio state capital has enjoyed 31% growth in tech jobs over the past decade and 9.5% in the past two years. Raleigh-Cary, N.C., ranked ninth, is another relatively low-cost, low-hassle winner, expanding its tech employment a remarkable 32.3% in the past decade and STEM jobs 15%.

    Possible Upstarts

    Several places with historically negligible tech presences have broken into our top 10. One is No. 6 Jacksonville, Fla., which has enjoyed a 72.4% surge in tech employment and 17.4% STEM job growth since 2001, mostly as a result of a boom early in the decade in data centers, computer facilities management, custom programming and systems design. Another surprising hotspot: No. 10 Nashville, Tenn., where growth in data processing and systems design fueled tech industry growth of 43% along with 18.5% STEM employment growth over the past decade.

    Who’s Losing Ground

    Some mega-regions with established tech centers have been falling behind, notably No. 47 St. Louis, No. 45 Chicago, No. 41 Philadelphia and No. 39 Los Angeles. These areas still boast strong concentrations of STEM-based employment and prominent high-tech companies, but have suffered losses in fields such as aerospace and telecommunications. Remarkably despite the social media boom, the country’s two dominant media centers — L.A. and No. 33 New York — have also performed poorly enough that their STEM and tech concentrations have fallen to roughly the national average.

    Valley Uber Alles?

    Silicon Valley may be churning out millionaires like burritos at a Mexican restaurant, but looking into the future, one has to wonder if its dominance will diminish. Limited developable land, an extremely difficult planning environment, high income taxes and impossibly stratospheric housing costs may lead more companies and people to relocate elsewhere, particularly if the big paydays needed to make ends meet wind down. Mark Zuckerberg and company can bask in their big IPO this week, but the Valley may soon need to consider what it must do to compete with the many other regions that are inexorably catching up with it.

    Best Metropolitan Areas for Technology Jobs Rankings

    Region Rank Index Score
    Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 1 76.0
    Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 2 66.4
    San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 3 66.0
    Salt Lake City, UT 4 58.5
    Baltimore-Towson, MD 5 57.7
    Jacksonville, FL 6 57.6
    San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 7 57.2
    Columbus, OH 8 52.9
    Raleigh-Cary, NC 9 51.9
    Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 10 51.7
    Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH 11 51.4
    San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 12 50.7
    San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 13 48.5
    Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 14 47.6
    Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 15 47.4
    Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 16 46.8
    Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 17 46.5
    Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 18 46.3
    Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI 19 46.0
    Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 20 44.2
    Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO 21 42.9
    Pittsburgh, PA 22 42.9
    Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 23 42.3
    Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC 24 42.1
    Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 25 41.5
    Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 26 41.0
    Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA 27 40.5
    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 28 40.1
    Richmond, VA 29 39.1
    Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ 30 38.7
    Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 31 38.6
    New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 32 38.0
    New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 33 37.8
    Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT 34 37.6
    Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 35 36.0
    Oklahoma City, OK 36 35.7
    Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL 37 35.0
    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 38 33.8
    Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 39 33.7
    Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 40 33.4
    Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 41 33.3
    Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 42 33.2
    Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH 43 29.9
    Rochester, NY 44 29.5
    Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI 45 26.0
    Memphis, TN-MS-AR 46 25.8
    St. Louis, MO-IL 47 24.9
    Kansas City, MO-KS 48 24.4
    Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 49 24.3
    Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI 50 24.1
    Birmingham-Hoover, AL 51 11.3

     

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

    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.

     

    Rankings Methodology

    Our Best Cities for Technology Jobs ranking is a weighted index measuring growth and concentration of technology-related employment in the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan regions. The 51 regions are scored against each other on a 1-to-100 scale. The index includes both tech industry employment data and occupation-based employment data. Our technology industry component covers 11 six-digit NAICS sectors covering information industries such as software publishing, Internet publishing, data processing, and tech-related business services such as computer systems design, custom programming, engineering services, and research and development. The technology industry data covers 4.5 million jobs nationally. The occupation-based component includes 95 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations as classified by the federal Standard Occupation Classification system. This covers 8 million STEM workers that could be employed in any industry. Employment data in our analysis is courtesy of EMSI, Inc. and is based upon over 90 federal and state data sources.

    The index comprises four weighted measures: 50% STEM occupation growth, 25% technology industry growth, 12.5% STEM occupation concentration, and 12.5% technology industry concentration. Growth measures are evenly balanced between the 2001-2011 growth rate and the 2009-2011 growth rate, while the concentration measure are job location quotients from 2011.

    Note that there is likely to be some double-counting of STEM workers working in tech industries. The tech industries are also obviously employing others, such as salespeople, managers, janitors, etc.

    Though these types of rankings typically include only industry data, we felt the STEM jobs data captured “tech” more cleanly so we weighted it higher. However we felt it still important to include the data covering the industries that most identify with the high-tech economy.  The heavier weight on STEM helps minimize the effect of a double-counted STEM worker in a tech company.

    Seattle photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com.

  • Smart Growth: The Maryland Example

    This is Part Two of a two-part series.

    Evidence that people just don’t like Smart Growth is revealed in findings from organizations set up to promote Smart Growth. In 2009, the Washington Post reported, “Scholars at the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education found that over a decade, smart growth has not made a dent in Maryland’s war on sprawl.”

    Citing the “most comprehensive review to date” from the same Center, the Baltimore Sun in 2011 argued that Maryland had made “little progress with Smart Growth” despite adopting laws and policies hailed across the country as models for growth management.

    One of the innovative policies was the establishment of Priority Funding Areas (PFAs) where development was to be directed and incentivized with money for cash-strapped jurisdictions. Yet the representative bodies closest to the people continued to permit development outside the PFAs.

    Assessing the failure of incentives to concentrate development, the Center concluded: “As the Maryland experience suggests, without statutory requirements, tools that matter to the state are not always those that matter to local governments.”

    The anti-democratic outlook among Smart Growthers was evident in a comment by Gerrit Knapp, the director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, who said, “What makes incentives so politically attractive is that governments and individuals can choose to ignore them if they wish. Unfortunately, in Maryland over the last decade, that’s exactly what many have been doing.”

    This “unfortunate” behavior by free people is consistent with the conclusion of Robert Bruegmann, author of Sprawl: A Compact History, who found that low density development was “the preferred settlement pattern everywhere in the world where there is a certain measure of affluence and where citizens have some choice in how they live.”

    Deconstructing Density

    Under the new PlanMaryland, Priority Funding Areas essentially become urban growth boundaries. People still can choose to live outside PFAs, but new housing can be built at no greater than one unit per 20 acres, making such dwellings unaffordable to all but the extremely rich. Ninety percent of new development must be inside the PFAs at a minimum density of 3.5 units per acre.

    The impact of increased densities is hard to gauge when presented in this manner, but 3.5 units per acre converts to 2,240 units per square mile. Maryland averages 2.62 people per dwelling unit, so the minimum population density for almost all new development will be on a scale of 5,846 people per square mile, a density higher than Portland or San Francisco, and just shy of Copenhagen, Denmark.

    Furthermore, reviewing previous drafts of PlanMaryland leads one to believe that this minimum density will be the exception to the rule of even higher densities. The earliest draft available for public comment, April 2011, was unapologetic about the need for significantly higher densities, saying this “threshold for new development – a relatively low density of 3.5 units per acre – is not accommodating growth in PFAs as needed to minimize continued impacts on our rural and resource lands and industries.”

    A later draft, September 2011, established ranges for “medium density” (3.5 to 10 units per acre) and “high density” (10+ units per acre) and repeatedly showed a preference for the high density classification, which converts to a scale of at least 16,704 people per square mile.

    For example, on page 18 is the complaint that incentive-based planning “hindered high-density urban development,” and page 35 says there would be dramatic per capita savings “if 25 percent of the low-density development projected to be built from 2000 to 2025 was shifted to high-density development.”

    But a strange thing happened on the road to the final draft: high density was euphemized. The sixteen-page Executive Summary does not once mention density. “Low density” makes numerous appearances in the final draft in the context of wasteful land use patterns, and “high density” appears just once.

    Instead, PlanMaryland relies on the phrase “compact development”. A comparison table, laughably labeled “Low Density versus Compact Development,” steers clear of medium or high density labels even though, when converted to population per square mile, the “compact” living arrangement would be more than seven times Maryland’s current density.

    To discern the density thresholds that Maryland planners have in mind, consider, PlanMaryland claims that “Compact development leads people to drive 20 to 40 percent less, at minimal or reduced cost, while reaping fiscal and health benefits.”

    This appears to be lifted from the influential 2007 Growing Cooler report, sponsored by the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, Smart Growth America, and other advocacy organizations. The authors call on “all housing growth” to be built at an average density of 13 units per acre (21,798 people per square mile), in order to increase the overall metropolitan density to 9 units per acre (15,091 people per square mile) by the year 2025. There’s not a lot of room for detached single family homes in this scenario.

    PlanMaryland’s Best Practices section highlights White Flint in North Bethesda for redeveloping “an auto-dominated suburban strip into an environment where people walk to work, shops and transit.” This project puts 1,400 apartments on 32 acres, for a density of 44 units per acre.

    Hyattsville’s Arts District is recognized because “this mixed-use community features row homes, condominiums, live-work units, shops and a new community center,” but there is no room for detached, single family homes among the 500 dwellings crowded onto 25 acres, or 20 units per acre. Also featured is Carroll Creek Park that has 300 residential units, all multi-family, mixed among commercial and office space along a linear 1.3-mile strip.

    As a “Traditional Neighborhood Development,” Kentlands is closer to the norm, and features some single family housing among its mix of shops, apartments, and condos, but the 1,655 residential units on 352 acres is still 35 percent higher than the “minimum” densities mentioned in PlanMaryland, and thirteen times the state’s current density level.

    These places are architecturally striking and aesthetically attractive, but they are unaffordable to most of the state’s population. Furthermore, the dearth of detached single family housing, the predominance of multi-family dwellings mixed with (not nearby) other uses, and dramatically higher densities are not at all what an overwhelming majority of people want in Maryland or anywhere else.

    The emergence of Smart Growth in Maryland is indicative of the movement in general: For successful implementation, it would be necessary to replace incentives with mandates, and continue to rely on euphemistic language to avoid a candid discussion of density.

    In October, I spoke — along with Wendell Cox and a few others — at a technical forum on PlanMaryland, addressing many areas of concern including density. Signed into law by Governor Martin O’Malley in December 2011, PlanMaryland weakens the authority of local governments, eviscerates property rights, and expresses hope for declining interest in the single family home.

    Defenders will argue that most people support Smart Growth; after all, O’Malley and others like him were popularly elected. Yet these politicians never campaign on the specifics of Smart Growth, such as how many people per square mile they believe is necessary, or what kinds of restrictions they will impose on single family housing in the suburbs, or the impacts on affordability.

    The September draft of PlanMaryland said, “PlanMaryland, we believe, is what the public says it wants and deserves in government.” Tellingly, this statement is missing from the final report. That’s because what planners want and what people prefer are starkly different.

    Photo: New residential smart growth, from the state of Maryland’s, “Smart, Green, and Growing” site.

    Ed Braddy is the executive director of the American Dream Coalition, a non-profit organization promoting freedom, mobility and affordable homeownership. Mr. Braddy often speaks on growth management related issues and their impact on local communities or at ed@americandreamcoalition.org

  • Smart Growth and The New Newspeak

    It’s a given in our representative system that policies adopted into law should have popular support. However, there is a distinction to be made between adopting a policy consistent with what a majority of people want, and pushing a policy while making dubious claims that it harnesses “the will of the people.”
    The former is a valid exercise in democracy; the latter is a logical fallacy. Smart Growth advocates are among the most effective practitioners of Argumentum ad Populum, urging everyone to get on the bandwagon of higher densities, compact mixed-uses, and transit orientation because all the “cool cities” are doing it.

    Smart Growth advocates also claim this is what people prefer, even if it is not how they currently live. The two core features of Smart Growth land use — high densities and multi-family dwellings — are simply not preferred by most Americans in most places, despite the trendy push for Livability, New Urbanism, Resilient Cities, Smart Codes, Traditional Neighborhood Design, Transit Oriented Developments or any other euphemistic, clever name currently in fashion.

    Survey Says!

    In the internal data of the 2011 Community Preference Survey commissioned by the National Association of Realtors, no specific question was asked about density, but 52 percent of respondents said, if given a choice, they would prefer to live in traditional suburbs, small towns or the rural countryside. Another 28 percent chose a suburban setting that allowed for some mixed uses (Question 5). Taken together, this shows an overwhelming preference for low densities. Only 8 percent of the respondents favored a central city environment.

    As for vibrant urbanism, only 7 percent were “very interested” in living in a place “at the center of it all.” Most people wanted to live “away from it all” (Question 17). An astonishing 87 percent said “privacy from neighbors” was important to them in deciding where to live. One can reasonably infer that a majority of this majority would favor low density places with separated uses rather than crowded, noisy mixed use locations that blur the line between public and private.

    When presented with a range of housing choices, 80 percent preferred the “single-family detached house” (Question 6). Only eight percent chose an apartment or condominium. Furthermore, 61 percent preferred a place where “houses are built far apart on larger lots and you have to drive to get to schools, stores, and restaurants” over 37 percent who wanted a place where “houses are built close together on small lots and it is easy to walk to schools, stores and restaurants” (Question 8).

    So — absent the loaded terms and buzzwords that are central to Smart Growth — a large majority of randomly selected people from across the country showed a strong preference for the land use pattern derisively referred to as “sprawl.”

    Yet the press release from the National Association of Realtors proclaimed that “Americans prefer smart growth communities.” This is because on Question 13, respondents were given a description of two communities:

    Community A, a subdivision of only single family homes with nothing around them. Not even sidewalks!

    Community B: lots of amenities all “within a few blocks” of home. Of course, the description neglected to mention the population density and degree of residential stacking required to put all those dwellings in such close proximity to walkable retail. This was a significant omission, since the first housing option offered in Community B was “single family, detached,” on “various sized lots.”

    Community B received 56 percent support.

    So, with just one response to an unrealistic scenario, out of twenty answers that included many aversions to Smart Growth, the myth that people prefer Smart Growth was spread. The National League of Cities released a Municipal Action Guide to thousands of elected and appointed officials declaring the preference for Smart Growth, and the online network Planetizen, among others, uncritically helped spread the news.

    Missing from the triumphalism was this important caveat in the 98-page analysis of the results by the consultants who conducted the survey:

    “Ideally, most Americans would like to live in walkable communities where shops, restaurants, and local businesses are within an easy stroll from their homes and their jobs are a short commute away; as long as those communities can also provide privacy from neighbors and detached, single-family homes. If this ideal is not possible, most prioritize shorter commutes and single-family homes above other considerations.”

    In addition to spinning the results of preference surveys, Smart Growthers also ignore them. Maryland is a case study in how to disregard what people want while claiming the opposite. In drafting a statewide growth management plan that anticipated “increased demand for housing, an aging population, and diverse communities,” Maryland officials ignored a robust 55+ Housing Preference Survey from Montgomery County that specifically addressed this concern.

    The survey showed that most seniors planned to remain in their present homes upon retirement. Only 30 percent planned to move, and, of that group, only a small percentage would consider an apartment or condominium. This should have mattered to Maryland officials trying to gauge housing preferences for their senior population. Instead, the architects of PlanMaryland looked elsewhere to find studies that reinforced their assumptions.

    The Great Conflation

    There is an abundance of examples like these, and the key to understanding how they influence decision-makers lies in the conflation of specific amenities with the overarching concept of Smart Growth. For example, Todd Litman’s Where We Want to Be, published by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, claims that “preference for smart growth is increasing due to demographic, economic and market trends such as aging population, rising future fuel prices, increasing traffic congestion, and increasing health and environmental concerns.”

    Does this mean most seniors – such as those in Maryland – want to live in high density, mixed use, transit-oriented apartments even when they say they don’t? Hardly. Litman concedes that “most Americans prefer single-family homes,” but finds “a growing portion want neighborhood amenities associated with Smart Growth including accessibility, walkability, nearby services, and improved public transport.”

    Those amenities are things like sidewalks, which evidently are now a Smart Growth invention, and shops that are close to (but not mixed into) residential areas. Litman’s clever construction – e.g., sidewalks equal walkability equal Smart Growth policy – is convincing to officials who mistakenly conclude that their constituents must want Smart Growth when, in fact, they do not.

    This has been Part One of a Two-Part Series on Smart Growth by Ed Braddy.

    Photo by W. Cox: Rail station in Evry, a suburb of Paris

    Ed Braddy is the executive director of the American Dream Coalition, a non-profit organization promoting freedom, mobility and affordable homeownership. Mr. Braddy often speaks on growth management related issues and their impact on local communities. He can be reached at ed@americandreamcoalition.org.

  • The Great Reordering of the Urban Hierarchy

    A delegation from Chicago is in Brussels this week to sell the city as a tourist destination in advance of the forthcoming NATO Summit. A Phil Rosenthal column explains that the city has a long way to go:

    "I don’t think most people in the U.K.have any idea where Chicago is," said Rowan Bridge, a BBC Radio producer who last year spent six months based in Washington D.C. "Most people in England think the United States consists of three cities — New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles — because they’re the ones that run the media, they’re the ones where the celebrities hang out, they’re the ones where the politicians are."

    Rosenthal notes that Chicago has long worried about its image, and it has never been a top global tourist destination, but a recent drop in international visitors highlights the challenge even a colossus like Chicago faces in getting its word out in a competitive global economy.

    Reading this, it once again strikes me that the old urban hierarchy is being reordered by globalization and the dramatic expansion of the US federal government, to the disadvantage of Chicago and other cities. This, I believe, helps account for its recent struggle.

    Joel Kotkin has tirelessly documented the remorseless rise of Washington, DC, rain or shine, in a manner defiant of business cycles. Washington, once a sort of commercial backwater, is now becoming much more a national capital of the type other countries have had.

    Meanwhile, back in the "spiky world," the peaks thrive while the valleys suffer. But it is the highest peaks that thrive most of all. Hence we’ve seen the emergence of a robust NYC post-9/11. It seems to have become if anything more the center of the universe, a huge financial center, media center, fashion center, cultural center, etc. – and adding to it new strength such as its emergence as America’s #2 tech startup location after Silicon Valley. New York is at an all time population high and even withing about 60,000 jobs of its all time peak employment.

    So we have New York entrenched as America’s first city, and Washington, DC increasingly its new "Second City." Los Angeles, which seems to have never quite recovered from the early 90s defense draw down, and Chicago with its 2000s malaise, seem to be the victims of DC’s rise. Another loser is Boston, which has seen its status as a financial hub decline and whose Route 128 corridor of tech, having first lost out to Silicon Valley, now appears to be losing out to NYC.

    Second tier cities in developed countries may indeed suffer as globalization proceeds. Zipf’s Law has historically governed the hierarchy of urban population (and thus proxied for overall urban importance) within particular geographies. Richard Florida and his colleagues showed that Zipf’s Law does not apply on a global basis, possibly because of the difficulty of migration between countries.

    But many other migration type barriers have declined over time, and it’s easy to conceptualize that many types of activities that once operated largely in purely domestic hierarchies now complete in global ones. If true, this would suggest that some cities, like LA, Chicago, and Boston, which ranked high in a national hierarchy might be pretty far down the list in a global one. Those cities with the greatest advantages of talent, high end specializations, and the greatest global connections would be best positioned to succeed in making the transition. We can also note the rise of new cities of importance in the BRIC counties, the Middle East, and other parts of the "developing world" that would bring new competition to traditional developed world power players, particularly for those that were already secondary centers in their own country.

    To see this playing out, contrast the differing life histories of Chicago and Hong Kong, which were effectively founded at the same time.

    I would describe this as a mix of observation and hypothesis at this point, but would love to see more formal analysis. And of course we’ll see how the trends play out. Even if true, we may not be at the end of this Great Reordering. With Washington continuing to soar, we are seeing shifts in the balance of power even with New York, such as the increasing importance of Washington as a media center. Though the inexorable mathematical logic of the budget may crimp Washington at some point, it’s certainly not impossible that some time in the future it may take its place as a London-like truly dominant national capital.

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile.

    Photo by Doug Siefken

  • The Expanding Wealth Of Washington

    Throughout the brutal and agonizingly long recession, only one large metropolitan area escaped largely unscathed: Washington, D.C. The city that wreaked economic disasters under two administration last year grew faster in population than any major region in the country, up a remarkable 2.7 percent. The continued steady growth of the Texas cities, which dominated the growth charts over the past decade, pales by comparison.

    Boom times in the capital — particularly amidst a weak recovery elsewhere — are driving this growth. Since 2007, notes Stephen Fuller at George Mason University, the D.C. region’s economy has expanded 14 percent compared to a mere 3 percent for the rest of the country. Washington’s unemployment never scaled over 7 percent, well below the national average, and is now down to around 5.5 percent, about the lowest of any major metropolitan area. Unemployment of course is much higher, reaching 25 percent, in some of the district’s poorer neighborhoods.

    This prosperity is rooted largely in the steady growth of the federal workforce, as federal spending accounts for one-third of the region’s economy. Over the past decade 50,000 bureaucratic jobs have been added in the area while local federal spending grew 166 percent. The D.C. region, with but 5 percent of the nation’s population, garners more than three times that percentage in payroll and more than four times that percentage in procurement dollars.

    This debt-financed gusher has helped expand the economy beyond simply federal workers. You think California is the biggest beneficiary of the current tech boom? Think again. Washington’s tech sector employment , according to an analysis by Economic Modeling Systems Inc., has expanded by over 5 percent since 2009, more than twice the national and California average of barely 2 percent. California may have Facebook, Google and Apple, but Washington tech has federal agencies, the defense establishment, a growing media sector and the lobbying industry to feed upon.

    Washington also ranks fourth in middle-income job growth, with employment in that category expanding at four times the national average over the past two years. The relatively higher salaries — and far better benefits — propel even modestly educated workers into middle incomes. The recession may have been brutal for the middle class, but not those who work for Uncle Sam. Not surprisingly, according to Gallup, Washingtonians are the most optimistic in the country about the improvements in the economy.

    This, of course, did not start with the Obama administration’s relentless expansion of federal power. The Washington region has been growing steadily — well ahead of all major eastern regions — for a generation. The expansion of defense spending under President Ronald Reagan and then again under George W. Bush helped create wealthy suburbs around the city; four of the nation’s five wealthiest counties (the other is in suburban New Jersey) and nine of the top 15 are located in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs around the capital. These counties all enjoy median house incomes over $100,000, twice the national average.

    But the biggest change has occurred in the district itself, which last led the nation in population growth in the early 1940s. The hopelessly dysfunctional, crime-ridden city of the era of four-term Mayor Marion Barry in the 1970s and ‘80s has been left behind like the much-maligned 19th century swamp town that aspired to be the next Paris but was widely regarded by diplomats as a hardship posting. Barely three decades after its founding, the city had “not a single great mercantile house,” a foreign dignitary observed in 1811-12, according to “The Age of Federalism,” by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKittrick, and had “a total absence of all sights, smells, or smells of commerce.”

    Washington may still not be a great center of real commerce, where people make things or risk their livelihoods on ideas. But it thrives as the marketplace for the collusional capitalist state that has been growing for decades and may now be at its apex. Offices fill with well-paid lobbyists and lawyers, and their service help, as they protect the interests of investment banks, real estate interests and unions that are increasingly influenced by Washington. The central area has been revived by new condo, hotel and office developments. It may still not be Paris, or even Chicago’s Gold Coast, but it’s a fair bit better than the drab, dangerous place of 30 years ago.

    No one should ever disparage the success of a region, but there is something disturbing in D.C.’s recent rise. Most expansions of the federal region came to meet a perceived national challenge: the Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War, the Space Race and the Civil Rights movement. Since the Depression, Washington’s “good times” usually have paralleled that of the rest of the country. Only now do we see a “new normal” where Washingtonians, like the pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm, seem “a bit more equal” than the rest of us.

    Will this trend continue? The outcome of the election may prove determinative. In a second Obama term – which should bolster the power of agencies such as the EPA, Energy and Justice – the federal grip on daily life will expand. This could greatly expand the appeal of being close to the capital. When everything from zoning and the location of industrial plants and healthcare is under Washington’s control, the capital could conceivably even emerge as a challenger to New York’s two century reign as the country’s most important city.

    Yet as the Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein points out, this ascendency could be curtailed. Even under a second Obama administration, he notes, “the federal gravy train” could be derailed, with inevitable cuts in spending. Steve Cochrane at Moody Analytics suggests that the Washington as “the leader in terms of job growth and economic strength are really over.”

    The election certainly will determine which part of the Washington ox get gored. If Democrats rule, one can expect these cuts to come in large part at the expense of defense firms, which, after all, now tilt to the Republicans. This could be particularly tough on the suburbs, where many military contractors reside.

    More dangerous still would be a Republican sweep, which would bring a budget-cutting mentality back to the White House, particularly on the social spending and regulatory apparatus dear to many Democrats . These jobs tend to be in the district. Even a renewal of the current balance of power threatens federal expansion since the House still holds the appropriation purse strings. The oxygen that sustains Washington seems likely to be cutback in any case.

    None of this, however, means that D.C. is about to slip back to its dystopian past, much less its swampy roots. The region boasts the nation’s wealthiest and best-educated population. This could give it a leg up on other areas in the tech and business service job markets. Many millennials may find a steady career in the bureaucracy safer, and even more satisfying, than finding places in a slow-growing, hyper-regulated private sector economy.

    Yet the key lies to Washington’s future may lie with the fate of the national economy. Eighty years of relentless federal expansion has created a relentless parasite that knows how to feed on its host. But if that host weakens, so too will the federal state. To sneak an early pick for this scenario, hop a flight to Madrid, Rome or Athens, where being tied to the bureaucracy no longer provides exemption from the vicissitudes of economic struggle.

    This piece originally appeared in Forbes.com.

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

    Washington, DC photo by Bigstockphoto.com.

  • Arlington and Shenzhen: A Tale of Two Cities

    Seven thousand miles separate Arlington, Virginia and Shenzhen, China. Two continents apart, these two cities could not be more different. Yet they are similar, geopolitically and globally. The characteristics of today’s globalization have united and connected cities like Arlington and Shenzhen.

    Arlington sits a stone’s throw from Washington, DC, just across the Potomac River. The city is adjacent to major technology service providers such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin, along with a number of nationally ranked high schools and universities. Arlington is also the home of National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), the association that finances start-up businesses to promote innovation.

    Arlington’s strength also depends on its impact on regional, national, and global markets. According to Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom, private sector industries, particularly those financed by the venture capitalist firms, created 10.4 million jobs in 2007, contributing $2.3 trillion, roughly 18 percent of GDP, to the U.S. economy that year. Further, a combination of low unemployment rate and close proximity to the nation’s capital has made Arlington one of the most lucrative counties in the U.S.

    Cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, and Seattle took nearly 50 years to build, and another 50 to flourish in arts, culture, and finance. According to a New Economist report, the city of Shenzhen, by contrast, took 20 years to become one of the busiest commerce centers in the world. During that time, it built one of the top five seaports in the world. The city today is home to nine million people and the ninth tallest building in the world.

    Once a small fishing town in southern China, Shenzhen gradually has become a city to invest and live in because of its innovative tax and foreign investment policies. During the last 30 years its growth has skyrocketed. Compared with a national average growth of 9.8%, Shenzhen’s economy has grown at a rate of 25%. The city is home to the second largest battery producer in the world, and expects to become a leading global producer of electric cars.

    The idea of a free market in China has contributed to the evolutionary change of Shenzhen. China’s transformation from a one-party ruling country to a democratic one is arguable, but free market-style economies are spreading across cities in China.

    While China’s GDP has grown dramatically, the inequality between the rich and poor has also widened. Easterbrook asserts that China also has managed to reduce its poverty: Twenty years ago 260 million people lived in poverty, but by 2009 that number dropped to 40 million.

    Cities like Arlington and Shenzhen have become global centers by virtue of their strategic importance and adaptive capabilities. Resources, both human and technological, have converged, localized, and united to create a common global identity.

    Both Arlington and Shenzhen had much smaller populations 20 years ago; both cities thrived under the development of public transportation infrastructure. In Arlington, the “smart development” in transportation depended on its metro stations. Shenzhen thrived under the development of one of the largest ports in the world, which brings in commerce and supplies fuel for economic activities to the city.

    Technology was at the core of these developments, which brought people to the cities in search of employment and to build communities. Lewis Mumford, the renowned historian and political scientist, said that in order for cities to thrive an energetic mass of people must be assembled under a strong leadership “for regimenting men and mastering nature, directing the community itself to the service of the good.”

    Parag Khanna, a renowned author on urban issues, describes the effect of technology and globalization this way: “The world is getting both bigger and smaller: more people, more countries, more money, but also faster speeds, shorter distances, and less time to react. It is plain to see that no one is actually in control.”

    The 2008 recession hit cities across the world. But Arlington and Shenzhen weathered the ill effects grew, by virtue of their technology, and investment. With its energy efficient transportation system, nationally ranked educational institutions, and human capital, Arlington remained a robust city. It also has one of the most diverse and educated populations in the U.S. The residents of Arlington come from 125 different countries; 35% of its population, the highest in the country, hold graduate degrees.

    Arlington and Shenzhen are not two cities divided by their geographical boundaries. The confluence of innovation, technology, and competition has connected their two continents – Asia and North America.This interconnectivity redefines the nature of global relationships. According to Khanna, this new relationship is called “inter-imperial relations – not international or inter-civilizational,” and it is these relationships that shape the world.

    The two cities hold more similarities than differences. Both are thriving as a result of technological innovation, free market activities, and growth of their human capital. And both cities are now united under a common banner of globalization which promotes growth and prosperity. For cities across the globe to prosper, they must embrace innovative technologies. The adaptation requires continued investments in high-caliber educational institutions and a diverse population.

    Photo by Paul Keller – a billboard in Shenzhen.

    Iqbal Ahmed is a public policy graduate student at George Mason University, Arlington, VA. He studies global policies on technology, economy, politics, and social reform. He completed a study abroad program at Oxford University, UK in summer 2011 on European Union (EU) policies, and has written for Centre for Research and Globalization, Foreign Policy Journal, Journal of Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy in Focus, Global Politician, Eurasia Review, and NPR’s “This I Believe.”

  • Who Stands The Most To Win – And Lose – From A Second Obama Term

    As the probability of President Barack Obama’s reelection grows, state and local officials across the country are tallying up the potential ramifications of a second term. For the most part, the biggest concerns lie with energy-producing states, which fear stricter environmental regulations, and those places most dependent on military or space spending, which are both likely to decrease under a second Obama administration.

    On the other hand, several states, and particularly the District of Columbia, have reasons to look forward to another four years. Under Obama the federal workforce has expanded — even as state and localities have cut their government jobs. The growing concentration of power has also swelled the ranks of Washington‘s parasitical enablers, from high-end lobbyists to expense-account restaurants. While much of urban America is struggling, currently Washington is experiencing something of a golden age.

    So what states have the most to lose from a second Obama term? The most obvious is Texas, the fastest-growing of the nation’s big states. Used to owning the inside track in Washington during the long years of Bush family rule, the Lone Star state now has less clout in Congress and the White House than in recent memory. Texans are particularly worried about restrictions on fossil fuel energy development, which is largely responsible for robust growth throughout the state.

    “Obama now wants to take credit for the increased production that has happened, but [increased production] has been opposed in every corner by the administration,” says John Hofmeister, founder of the Houston-based Citizens for Affordable Energy and former CEO of Shell USA. Hofmeister fears that in a second term, with no concern for reelection, Obama could exert even greater controls on fossil fuel development. This would have dramatic, negative implications not only for Texas but for the entire national energy grid, which includes North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Alaska and Louisiana. These states fear that the nation’s recent energy boom, which has generated some of the nation’s strongest job and income growth, could implode in Obama’s second term.

    Take Louisiana, which is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the BP oil spill in 2010. The administration’s moratorium on offshore drilling, sparked by the spill, has had a deleterious effect on the state’s energy economy, according to a recent study, with half offshore oil and service companies  shifting their operations to other regions and laying off employees.

    Once the moratorium was lifted in 2010, companies have faced long delays for new wells, growing from 60-day delays in 2008 to more than 109 last year  .  “The energy states feel they are being persecuted for their good deeds,” says Eric Smith, director of the Tulane Energy Institute in New Orleans. “There is a sense there are people in the administration who would like this whole industry to go away.”

    Many of these same states also worry about the administration’s proposed downsizing of the military. Obama’s move to cut roughly towards $500 billion in defense spending may make sense, but it  threatens places with large military presences such as Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina and New Mexico.

    The D.C. metro area might also be hit by defense cuts, but overall the it has many reasons to genuflect toward the Obama Administration. Federal wages, salaries and procurement account for 40% of the district’s economic activity, roughly four times the percentage of any state. Expanding regulation on energy, health care and financial services has sparked a steady job boom in lobbying, think tanks and other facets of the persuasion industry — including among Republicans –at a time when employment growth has been sluggish elsewhere.

    D.C. partisans hail their city as the leader of a national urban boom. The district clearly benefits from diminished job opportunities in more market-based economies, particularly for educated 20-somethings.

    No place has flourished as much as the capital, but a second term would be favorable to states such as Maryland, which depend heavily on research spending directed from Washington and where federal spending accounts for fifteen percent of the local economy, over seven times the national average. Maryland agencies such as the National Institutes for Health will likely expand under an increasingly federalized health care system — particularly if Democrats gain more seats in Congress with an Obama win.

    Other big states that may benefit from a second term include New York, California and Illinois. New York benefits largely from the administration’s Wall Street leanings, despite the president’s recent attacks on financial elite. Even for the non-conspiracy theorists, the administration’s ties to Goldman Sachs appear unusually intimate. Powerful allies like Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, D.C.’s greatest Wall Street booster, suggest big money has little to fear from a second term.

    Overall the administration’s basic policy approach has favored the financial giants. Support for bailouts, seemingly permanent low interest rates, few prosecutions for miscreant investment bankers, the institutionalization of “too big to fail” and easy loans for renewable fuel firms all have benefited the big Wall Street players.

    Of course, a Republican victory would not be a disaster for these worthies. Companies like Goldman Sachs are hedging their bets by sending loads of cash to the likely Republican choice, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

    But other New York interests, such as mass transit funding, would benefit from the current administration’s  generally pro-urban, green sensibilities. Tight regulations on carbon emissions — increasing the price of fossil fuels — may help the competitive position of New York City, which has little industry left and relatively low carbon emissions per capita, in part due to a greater reliance on hydroelectric and nuclear power.

    California also has reasons to root for an Obama victory. Although among the richest states in fossil fuels, particularly oil, the Golden State has become a bastion of both climate change alarmism and renewable energy subsidization. It adamantly won’t develop traditional its energy resources — which would help boost the state’s still weak economy — and Silicon Valley venture firms have eagerly grabbed subsidies and loans for start-ups from Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s seemingly bottomless cornucopia.

    Furthermore,  more powerful EPA would make California’s current “go it alone” energy and environmental problems less disadvantageous compared to more fossil-fuel-friendly states, leveling what is now a tortuous economic playing field.

    Similarly, attempts to push the state’s troubled high-speed rail line — recently described in Mother Jones as “jaw-droppingly shameless” –  will succeed only with strong backing by the federal government. Under a Republican administration and Congress, Brown’s beloved high-speed line would depend entirely on state and private funding, likely terminating the project.

    But no state needs an Obama victory more than his adopted home state of Illinois. To be sure, having a native son in the White House has not prevented the Land of Lincoln from suffering one of the weakest economies in the nation. The state has one of the highest rates of out-migration in the country, according to recent United Van Lines data and Census results.

    Even worse, the Land of Lincoln faces a fiscal crisis so great that it makes California look well-managed.  Without a good friend in the White House, and allies in Congress, Illinois could end up replacing long-struggling, now-improving Michigan as the Great Lakes’ new leading basket case. Count Illinois 20 electoral votes in the Obama column.

    This piece originally appeared in Forbes.com.

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

    Photo from BigStockPhoto.com.