The three geographies
By Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill
fficials
in both presidential campaigns, as well as analysts such as Michael Barone,
tell us that it is time to “throw out the map.” Yet if we are about to
jettison the broad red and blue markers, perhaps we should explore a very
different geographic matrix for this election.
We believe Americans' political perspective — if not their final voting
behavior — is largely shaped not so much by their state but, rather, by the
type of place they reside in. Defining an area are factors such as how many
people are homeowners, take transit and have children living at home, as
well as the preponderance of middle-class households and the extent of
economic and racial diversity.
We believe the most effective breakdown of how Americans live can be seen
in three basic geographic forms: the urban, suburban and small town/rural.
These geographies, although not uniform across the country, show significant
differences in almost all major characteristics, including voting behavior.
Even when voting for the same party, residents of these different
geographies often do so with different motivations.
[MORE]
For more in-depth
examination of these and other place-related issues, be
sure to visit our new site:
newgeography.com
|
Los Angeles Times - May 4, 2008
Political foreclosure
L.A. is paying a steep price for Villaraigosa's focus on a
real estate-based economy.
ver
since his election in 2005, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been
portrayed as a political comer with a future that possibly included the
governorship. As soon as he entered office, he launched an impressive
succession of "bold" initiatives — among them, to make the Los Angeles
Police Department a 10,000-cop force, to "green" the port of Los
Angeles, to improve the academic scores of some of L.A. Unified's
worst-performing schools. Until the real estate bubble burst, he oversaw
a building boom downtown and elsewhere, casting himself as a visionary
re-creating L.A. as a model of "elegant density."
But when it came to that part of the
city's economy not connected to real estate, Villaraigosa might be
compared to Emperor Nero. As the city has continued to lose thousands of
middle-class jobs in aerospace, manufacturing and high-end business
services since 2005, Villaraigosa has basically stood by and fiddled.
From February 2007 to February 2008, the county suffered the biggest
percentage of job losses — 0.7% — of the 10 largest metropolitan areas
in the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' most
recent report.
The combination of the housing meltdown
and steady job losses in non-real estate sectors means that Los Angeles
is now surpassed only by a handful of the bigger Rust Belt economic
basket cases, like Detroit, for the title of worst big-city economy in
the nation.
[MORE]
The Politico
- May 2, 2008
Whom does economy favor
in Midwest?
here
has been a basic demographic calculus to this prolonged Democratic
nomination fight. In states and areas with high numbers of young,
educated voters, as well as African-Americans, Sen. Barack Obama
generally does well. In areas where the voters are older, less
well-educated and either Hispanic or Anglo, the advantage goes to Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton.
However, another, more overlooked factor lies in attitudes towards
the economy. Relatively robust places – the farm towns and cities of the
Great Plains, or the Connecticut suburbs – have been more susceptible to
Obama’s broad reformer message than Clinton’s focused economic one. By
contrast, in areas hardest hit by the recession, such as Ohio, Florida
and Southern California, the New York senator has enjoyed a clear
advantage.
This pattern has only been interrupted when racial or ethnic factors
have trumped economic concerns. Broadly speaking, for many reasons, Jews
and Hispanics have tilted towards Ms. Clinton; African-Americans clearly
have rallied overwhelmingly to Obama.
[MORE]
The Washington Independent -
April 16, 2008
The Urban Bubble
Downtown Condo Market Goes the Way of the Exurbs
or
many in public-policy organizations, academia and the media, the current
mortgage and credit crisis suggests the impending collapse of the American
suburban dream. The prevailing image is of a wave of foreclosures inundating
the winding culs-de-sac of split-level ranch houses and neo-colonials, built
and bought with cheap money and low interest rates.
One prominent New Urbanist, Chris B. Leinberger, writing in The Atlantic,
is advancing the theory the mortgage crisis reflects a growing trend toward
dense urban living that will leave much of the periphery — both the older,
established suburbs and the newer, edge cities — as what he calls “the next
slum.” He heralds a “structural change under way in the way Americans work
and live,” with people moving back to the central core of cities.
It turns out, however, that urban centers — particularly those promoting
dense condominium developments — are increasingly buckling under the same
credit problems now affecting many housing developments on the suburban
fringe. In some markets, condo sales, a strong indicator of urban fortunes,
are dropping in price more quickly than single-family homes.
[MORE]
The Politico -
April 15, 2008
Economic wars could
replace
culture wars
or
most of the election season, from Iowa to Pennsylvania, the American
media have focused relentlessly on the politics of race, culture and
gender. Yet as we look down the next decade, these are likely to become
less important issues as we enter a new era centered instead on issues
related to globalization and its impact on upward mobility and economic
growth.
This shift will test the adaptability of both parties and of
baby-boom-dominated media more comfortable following the rhythms of
identity and racial politics than focusing on economics. Elite
journalists tend to come from the best schools and affluent families,
and they have been shaped, either personally or through their schooling,
by the cultural and racial obsessions of the 1960s. Unlike journalists
and politicians who emerged from the Depression era, they tend to focus
much less on a growing sense of economic drift that cuts across racial
differences, cultural divides and generations.
The emerging new paradigm also reflects some good news. Those who
were around in 1960 may be astounded to see a bracing presidential
campaign waged between a mixed-race senator and a woman long identified
with liberal social causes. And those who grew up during the Depression
might also recognize the issues of class and social mobility that are
now moving to the forefront.
[MORE]
Metropolis - March 2008
Back to Basics
Manufacturing is still more relevant to long-term economic
development than glitzy museums or massive sports stadiums.
ver
the past decade many city leaders have gravitated toward what might be
called an arts-and-culture-led strategy. Even though most cities—including
ballyhooed places such as San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Boston—have
achieved mediocre (or even negative) job growth and continue to lose
middle-class families, they’ve celebrated revivals of their urban cores
based on the migration of largely affluent “hip” residents.
Much of this misplaced focus on culture is related to the decline of
blue-collar jobs in fields like manufacturing and warehousing, a shift that
many experts have long considered all but inevitable. It has been 17 years
since futurist John Naisbitt casually described manufacturing as a
“declining sport” that Americans could easily outsource to Japan and other
Asian countries. Reflecting this widespread belief, a number of mayors began
focusing on glittering new culture and sports palaces, convention centers,
and often pub- licly subsidized luxury-condo developments.
But the limitations of this approach are becoming obvious, particularly
now as the real estate “bubble” begins to deflate. Cities like Las Vegas,
Miami, San Diego, and Los Angeles— formally “hot” urban markets—are being
hammered by falling prices, toughening mortgage criteria, and the exodus of
speculators from the marketplace. These cold realities call for a new
appreciation of some of the basic elements that have sustained cities for
generations: broad-based economic opportunity, investment in infrastructure,
and the cultivation of blue-collar industries such as manufacturing and
warehousing.
[MORE]
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The American - March/April 2008
Lone Star Rising
n
1995, during his senior year at Texas Southern University, a
predominantly black school in Houston, accounting major Al Colbert and
his cousin, Ja Ja Ball, a TSU senior studying business, hatched a plan
to make some money during the January-to-mid-April tax season. They
rented an inexpensive storefront in a low-income neighborhood and
offered tax-preparation services, specializing in electronic filing and
quick refunds for clients. The Colbert/Ball Tax Service handled 270 tax
returns the first year. The two natives of Beaumont, Texas, sensed an
opportunity and kept the fledgling company going after graduation.
“Our goal,” recalls Colbert, now in his early 30s, was to become “the
black H&R Block. We knew that market and felt it would be the right one
for us to serve.” The business quickly took off, doubling the returns it
prepared the next year and increasing to 1,800 in 1997. By then the
company’s main office was in the Astrodome area, with two satellite
offices in the city, still catering to a largely black clientele.
“It’s easier to start with people you know,” says Colbert, the
company’s chief executive. “These are people who stuck with you in the
beginning—they are the base.”
But Colbert and Ball soon realized that Houston’s large Hispanic
population might also be a reservoir of unmet demand. The company began
targeting Hispanics and indeed found a receptive market of working-class
people, often self-employed, making $35,000 to $50,000 a year—just the
sort of clients Colbert/ Ball sought
[MORE]
Los Angeles Times - February 3, 2008
Fighting the phone tax
Are the neighborhood
councils' problems with Proposition S the start of a revolt against City
Hall?
ith
the faltering economy doubling its budget shortfall, the city of Los Angeles
cannot afford to lose any tax revenue, which is why a telephone users
utility tax, Proposition S, will appear on Tuesday's ballot.
Many neighborhood council members across the
city oppose the tax. Their opposition is less about Proposition S than an
inchoate cry in the dark against what many perceive as City Hall's
relentless drive to subsidize dense developments, particularly downtown, and
to provide lavish contracts for city workers while largely ignoring the
needs of neighborhoods and the overall L.A. economy.
The defeat of the telephone tax measure,
which is unlikely, would not end subsidies for developers or force the city
to reopen union contracts. But a grass-roots movement spearheaded by
neighborhood councils could blunt the city's attempts to hand out new
subsidies, or expand existing ones, on top of the hundreds of millions of
dollars it has already given to powerful developers.
[MORE]
Washington
Post - December 30, 2007
Playing That '70s Funk
Again, but Not in a Good Way
he
country is in a funk. Oil prices are at record highs, and the dollar is
plummeting. Foreigners are buying out leading U.S. business assets.
Environmentalists say the world is headed toward an ecological crackup of
biblical proportions.
Today's headlines? Well, yes. But for those of us old enough to remember,
they could just as easily be bulletins from one of the grimmest decades in
recent U.S. history: the '70s.
That decade, when all the promise of the 1960s fizzled into
disappointment, holds up a mirror to our contemporary pessimism. Then as
now, Americans felt uncertain about the present and insecure about the
future. But we found a way out of the gloom — and if that decade is our
guide, we're likely to do it again.
[MORE]
Los Angeles Times - December 2, 2007
Opinion
The gentry liberals
They're more concerned with global warming and gay
rights than with lunch-pail joes.
By Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel
fter
decades on the political sidelines, liberalism is making a comeback. Polls
show plunging support for Republicans and their brand of conservatism among
young, independent voters and Latinos. But what kind of liberalism is
emerging as the dominant voice in the Democratic Party?
Well, it isn't your father's liberalism, the ideology that defended the
interests and values of the middle and working classes. The old liberalism
had its flaws, but it also inspired increased social and economic mobility,
strong protections for unions, the funding of a national highway system and
a network of public parks, and the development of viable public schools. It
also invented Social Security and favored a strong foreign policy.
Today's ascendant liberalism has a much different agenda. Call it "gentry
liberalism." It's not driven by the lunch-pail concerns of those workers
struggling to make it in an increasingly high-tech, information-based,
outsourcing U.S. economy — though it does pay lip service to them.
[MORE]
New America Foundation - November, 2007
Back
to Basics: A Pro-Growth Public Investment Strategy
or
more than a decade, rising asset prices have driven the economy, benefiting
the wealthy but doing relatively little to improve either the economic
status of the majority of Americans or the country’s overall
competitiveness. Rising stock and housing prices created staggering
short-term increases in wealth for some, but did little to bolster the
nation’s preeminence in technology, industry, or agriculture.
In order to retool the economy and generate balanced, robust job growth,
the government should focus on rebuilding and enhancing the nation’s energy,
transportation, and communications infrastructure. Judicious investment in
renewing and creating critical public goods will provide opportunities to
all income classes and help ensure that employment keeps pace with
population growth. We refer to this approach as “back to basics,” a return
to the sort of sensible public agenda that strengthened the economy and
promoted societal well-being in the past.
In contrast, over the past 20 years, while returns to capital and the
incomes of those in certain elite occupations grew rapidly, wages for
lower-income and middle-class workers stagnated. To be sure, most families
spend much less on food than they did in 1960, and the number of people
earning over $100,000 a year has risen by over 13 percent since 1979. Yet,
it has become increasingly difficult for families with two incomes to
maintain a “middle-class lifestyle,” and single-earner households find it
hard to keep pace with the rising costs of education, housing, and health
insurance.
[MORE]
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The Wall Street Journal -
November 27, 2007
VOTING WITH OUR FEET
The Rise of Family-Friendly
Cities
It's lifestyle, not lattés, that our most productive
workers want.
or
much of the past decade, business recruiters, cities and urban developers
have focused on the "young and restless," the "creative class," and the
so-called "yuspie"—the young urban single professional. Cities, they've
said, should capture this so-called "dream demographic" if they wish to
inhabit the top tiers of the economic food chain and enjoy the fastest and
most sustained growth.
This focus—epitomized by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's risible "Cool
Cities" initiative—is less successful than advertised. Cincinnati,
Baltimore, Cleveland, Newark, Detroit and Memphis have danced to the tune of
the hip and the cool, yet largely remain wallflowers in terms of economic
and demographic growth. Instead, an analysis of migration data by my
colleagues at the Praxis Strategy Group shows that the strongest job growth
has consistently taken place in those regions—such as Houston, Dallas,
Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham—with the largest net in-migration of young,
educated families ranging from their mid-20s to mid-40s.
Urban centers that have been traditional favorites for young singles,
such as Chicago, Boston, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have
experienced below-average job and population growth since 2000. San
Francisco and Chicago lost population during that period; even
immigrant-rich New York City and Los Angeles County have shown barely
negligible population growth in the last two years, largely due to a major
out-migration of middle class families.
[MORE]
Wall Street Journal - November 23,
2007
TASTE
Suburban Development
didn't grow up in Levittown, N.Y., the iconic American suburb founded 60
years ago. But you could call North Woodmere, the Long Island town my
parents moved to in 1957, a close relation.
In 1963, poet Richard Wilbur wrote "To an American Poet Just Dead": "In
summer sunk and stupefied/ The suburbs deepen in their sleep of death." Many
of us who were raised in these places would have agreed. Some might even
have cheered the news announced a couple of weeks ago that the Levitt Co.
has gone bankrupt.
The streets of our suburbs were often roughly paved at first; trees were
slim sticks that provided little shade. Everyone was similarly aged and, for
the most part, from one of the three major New York social food groups:
Italians, Irish and Jews. Boredom could be relieved only by a train ride to
Manhattan. In our innocence, we did not know why our parents moved to these
pre-packaged wonderlands. The only times we got an inkling was when visiting
relatives still back in Brooklyn. They lived in apartments on blocks with no
yards and often attended dangerous schools.
[MORE]
Wharton Real Estate Review - Fall, 2007
The
Suburban Archipelago
n
1971 George Mitchell, a Texas oilman, began to imagine what kind of
community he would build on the thousands of acres he had acquired in an
east Texas forest outside of Houston. The son of Greek immigrants, Mitchell
had a clear idea of what he wanted to create and, since he alone controlled
the development for over thirty years, he was able to see it further along
to fruition than most visionaries. He was greatly affected by the failures
of American cities, and concluded that he could not turn around their
problems. Instead, he looked to develop his huge parcel west of Houston into
something that would be environmentally attractive and commercially
successful, and would also reflect the dreams of the 1930s New Dealers: a
community available to a broad range of income groups.
Mitchell was not interested in simply building housing—he
wanted to build a self-sufficient community. Roger Galatas, a close
associate and former CEO of the Woodlands Operating Company, observes
that Mitchell “wanted people to live and work in The Woodlands.” His
original plans contained a “business crescent” designed to attract a
broad diversity of enterprises. Galatas believes it was the atmosphere
in The Woodlands that lured business and entrepreneurs. “The quality of
life has been what has brought business to the area,” he suggests. “Good
public places, good schools, a good quality of life. It’s a place where
you can grow but feel you are in a protected environment.”
[MORE]
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Wall Street Journal -
August 28, 2007
COMMENTARY
Road Work
wo
years ago, as floodwaters overcame the tired defenses of New Orleans,
American cities got a wake-up call about the dangers of inadequate
infrastructure. But most urban leaders went back to sleep. Since then the
occasional disaster, such as the recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis, has
been followed by tut-tutting. But if history is a guide, the rhetoric will
be followed by another tap of the snooze button.
Rather than deal with the expensive and difficult task of retrofitting
the sinews of commerce and communication — bridges, tunnels, roads, rail
lines, ports, sewers, and drainage systems — America's urban powers focus on
the ephemeral and the glitzy. They emphasize not brick and mortar, but
sports stadia, convention centers, arts palaces, dubiously effective new
light-rail lines, hotels and condo projects.
Even in New Orleans, federal and local authorities still have not agreed
on a long-term infrastructure plan to protect the city. More disturbing:
Instead of looking to rebuild a diverse economy, the emphasis is on
cultivating tourism and "culture-based" industry. Incredibly, as the Times
Picayune recently reported, "neglect" of the once-vital local energy sector
has actually worsened since Katrina. The long-term exodus of energy firms to
Houston, along with high-paying blue- and white-collar jobs, continues
apace.
[MORE]
Los Angeles Times - August 12, 2007
Why the rush to Manhattanize L.A.?
There seems to be little public debate about the
dramatic remaking of Los Angeles into a left-coast New York.
ast
week, the City Council voted 12 to 0 to approve a sweeping set of zoning
changes that will encourage larger and more dense development downtown.
The new rules are only the latest move toward the Manhattanization of Los
Angeles. There's also the renewed interest in extending the Red Line subway
to the ocean. And there's billionaire Phil Anschutz's plan to create a Times
Square for Los Angeles near Staples Center, as well as billionaire Eli
Broad's aim to duplicate New York's 5th Avenue along Grand Avenue. There's
even talk, in planning circles, of building mini-condos and apartments at —
what else? — Manhhattanite sizes of 250 to 350 square feet.
Los Angeles, the first great modern metropolis with multiple urban cores,
seems determined to remake its urban DNA — and fashion itself, to one degree
or another, in the image of New York City. Bruce B. Brugmann, the populist
publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, coined the term "Manhattanization"
in the 1970s to describe just what we're seeing. Broadly speaking, it refers
to a vertical urbanism in which the entire city serves as a bedroom for a
dominant urban core that is chock-full of cultural attractions. Density is a
premium value in a successfully Manhattanized city, producing economies of
scale, extraordinary concentrations of skills and an entertaining street
scene. Human activities are more important than sunlight, nature or
individual privacy.
[MORE]
Wall Street Journal -
August 6, 2007
COMMENTARY
The Myth of
Deindustrialization
t's
been a quarter-century since author John Naisbitt blithely described
manufacturing as a "declining sport" that Americans could easily offshore to
Asia. Since then obituaries for U.S. manufacturing, both mournful and
enraged, have been written many times.
The reports of death are premature. Many of the most vibrant economic
regions in this country — from the deep South to the Pacific Northwest — are
still making and transporting real goods. The success of America's "material
boys" suggests that the old economy and its blue-collar workers — so often
patronized and pitied — can still more than hold their own in today's global
economy.
The area around Dubuque, Iowa, an old industrial region along the
Mississippi River with a population of 90,000, was a basket case two decades
ago. Manufacturing, agricultural and food processing jobs were vanishing.
Unemployment at one point exceeded 20%. Today, Dubuque has the fastest job
growth rate of any Midwestern city. Unemployment is below 4%, while average
wages have risen steadily over the past five years to over $15.70 from
$13.19 per hour. The workforce is up to around 58,000 (it was 36,000 in
1983).
[MORE]
Money on CNNMoney.com - July 12, 2007
Where We Will Live
Sure, big cities have their charms, but for families the suburbs are here to
stay
n
increasingly trendy theory holds that the ticket to attracting and retaining
the educated and upwardly mobile is a big dose of urban cool: Think open-air
cafes where well-heeled retired boomers and twenty-something professionals
gather after the theater to sip Pinot Grigio while looking out at a skyline
defined by the latest creation of a world-renowned starchitect.
The facts, though, don't bear out the theory. Most of those
twenty-somethings don't stick around. As they get older, according to
research by my colleagues at the Praxis Strategy Group, they tend to leave
the hip urban areas of New York City, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco
for the suburbs or for less glamorous but more affordable markets such as
Phoenix, Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston and their suburbs. And that,
for the most part, is where they'll stay.
[MORE]
Greater Houston Partnership - June, 2007
Opportunity Urbanism
An Emerging Paradigm for the 21st Century
ur
emphasis on a city’s ability to provide opportunity for a broad spectrum
of citizens differs from what some consider the main current of today’s
urban policy thinking. We recognize that concerns about income
inequality have been voiced, even by senior policymakers and analysts.
Nevertheless, contemporary trends in thought regarding city development
concentrate not on upward mobility, or even on the middle class, but on
what might best be called an “elite” strategy.
In one view, the fate of urban areas—and of cities in general—depends
largely on the area’s ability to attract the wealthiest individuals, the
people with the highest skills, and those who can perform the most
rarefied economic functions. The resulting “superstar cities” cater
largely to the upper classes and to those who serve them; generally,
those cities are becoming too expensive for middle income individuals or
families.
Another popular formulation concludes that to remain vibrant, cities
must lure the so-called “creative class” of skilled workers with urban
amenities, social attitudes, and cultural offerings. The emphasis here
is on the so-called “war for talent.” Cities that win this battle, the
theory goes, emerge as the avant-garde in technology, culture, and the
expanding global economy.
Implicitly, these approaches give short shrift to the need to
accommodate either an expanding population or a wide variety of social
groups. These formulations emphasize “quality” as opposed to “quantity”;
each superstar city should be preoccupied with the struggle to boost its
attractiveness to elites, as opposed to seeking ways to keep the doors
of opportunity and homeownership open to the working and middle classes.
Instead, superstar cities offer what New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
has called “a luxury product.”
A handful of urban regions—San Francisco, Boston, perhaps Seattle and
Portland—could conceivably succeed with
such a strategy. These areas have relatively low percentages of
undereducated people, and boast nested concentrations of
high-end industries. But it is difficult to see how such areas could
accommodate an American population that is expected
to rise from 300 million today to at least 400 million in 2050.
[MORE]
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INC. Magazine - May, 2007
Boom Towns '07
Riverside, Provo, McAllen, Sarasota...
You may be surprised by the places that top our list of the hottest cities
for entrepreneurs
By Joel Kotkin — Rankings by Michael A. Shires
oomtowns
and Texas have often gone hand in hand. Now, buoyed by high energy prices, a
rebounding tech sector, and an influx of educated newcomers from the U.S.
and abroad, the Lone Star State’s economy is booming once again.
Just look
at the big movers on Inc.’s annual survey of the nation’s boomtowns. Among
large cities, Dallas soared 18 spots, to No. 25 among the 65 large cities
measured; Houston climbed 14 places, to No. 17; and Austin shot up 10 spots,
to No. 16. Among small and midsize cities, McAllen, Midland, and Laredo
posted similarly strong gains. “Everything is hitting on all cylinders,”
says Bill Gilmer, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
You
could say the same about all of the municipalities on the upper reaches of
this year’s list. As always, our rankings (compiled by Michael Shires, a
professor of public policy at Pepperdine University) put the focus on job
growth, which we believe is the best measure of economic vitality. Strong
job growth suggests that an economy is expanding—which means plenty of
opportunity.
[MORE]
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Wall Street Journal -
April 19, 2007
Suburban Idyll
o
generation has lauded their revolutionary status more fervently than baby
boomers. In documentaries, articles and books they are portrayed —
by themselves and others — as agents of epochal change who, in the
representative words of American University communications professor Leonard
Steinhorn, have built "the inclusive, tolerant, free and equal America we
have today."
Spoil sports may point out an older generation did the heavy lifting of
surviving a depression, defeating the Nazis, overthrowing communism and
launching the drive for civil rights. And some conservative boomers,
outraged by the flood of self-congratulation, see their own breed as a
scourge, undermining the nation's morality, culture and even their own
children.
Yet on a closer look, the roughly 80-million strong generation born
between 1946 and 1964 could turn out to be a lot more like their parents
than anyone expected — in no arena more so than in their choices of where,
and how, they live. At the time when the generation came of age, there was a
media hype about a "back to the city" coolness (read San Francisco's
Haight-Ashbury or New York's East Village) or "back to nature" lifestyles
(read Oregon or the Berkshires). In fact, relatively few boomers ultimately
settled in edgy city neighborhoods or rural communes. Instead, they followed
their parents into the suburbs — often in bigger houses even further from
the urban core.
[MORE]
The Arizona Republic - April 1,
2007
Hollywood, Wall Street and
Silicon Valley: The new influence brokers in American politics
he
collapse of the Bush administration may be seen by some on the left as a
triumph of the popular will. But its main result may more accurately be read
as a handover of control from one oligarchy to another. A new, more
"enlightened" group may be rising to power, but it's still unclear what this
will mean to the vast majority of Americans.
Power in America is shifting from George Bush's Sun Belt mafia — with its
roots in post-1950s aerospace, energy and development — to a new political
triad. This new triad draws its power from three key post-industrial power
centers: technology, entertainment and finance. Its geographic orientation
is different, as well. Rather than having its primary bases in boomtowns
like Houston, Dallas, Charlotte or Phoenix, the new elite clusters mostly in
the more established, refined reaches of the Silicon Valley, Hollywood and
Manhattan.
Nowhere is this shift more notable than in the extraordinary
attention given to these power centers by the leading presidential
candidates, particularly among the ascendant Democrats. A generation ago
or even less, Democratic presidential hopefuls spent their time
soliciting union bosses, African-American dignitaries, urban machine
politicians and others who, for all their faults, had close personal
ties to the party's electoral base.
[MORE]
The Brookings Institution - March, 2007
The Third California: The Golden State’s New Frontier
By Joel Kotkin and William H. Frey
or
most Americans, California evokes coastal images, the sunny beaches of south
or the spectacular urban vistas of San Francisco Bay. Yet within California
itself, the state’s focus is shifting increasingly beyond the narrow strip
of land between the coastline and its first line of mountain ranges.
This interior region—which we define as “the Third California”—extends
from the outer suburbs of greater Los Angeles to the foothills of the high
mountains of Northern California. It covers a vast and diverse series of
places, from urbanized areas like Sacramento to great suburban regions to
some of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world.
To a large extent, what defines the Third California is how it contrasts
with the increasingly congested, expensive, and physically hemmed in coastal
region. Virtually all the fast-growing regions of the state, from
Riverside-San Bernardino to the south to the burgeoning suburbs around
Sacramento are located in this area.
Yet not much public commentary about the Third California is positive. To
some this region of California represents an increasingly failed geography,
a place of rising poverty, environmental, and aesthetic ugliness. The
Central Valley, for example, has been described as a product of “malign
neglect”, shifting from an agricultural cornucopia into “an almost unbroken
chain of smog-choked cities and suburbs.” Local media descriptions of the
Inland Empire are rarely any more charitable. “Activists,” reported the Los Angeles Times, ”believe the Inland Empire is evolving into an
ecological catastrophe.”
[MORE]
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Wall Street Journal -
February 13, 2007
COMMENTARY
The Myth of 'Superstar
Cities'
"If New York City is a business, it isn't Wal-Mart — it isn't trying
to be the lowest-priced product in the market. It's a high-end product,
maybe even a luxury product. New York offers tremendous value, but only for
those companies able to capitalize on it."
— Mayor Michael Bloomberg, January 2003
hese
seem the best of times for America's elite cities. Wall Street's 2006
megabonuses created thousands of instant millionaires, and, with their
venture-fund soulmates in places like San Francisco, Boston and Greenwich,
the best people are prowling for Ferraris, planes, multimillion-dollar
condos, the newest $200 lunch place and the latest in high fashion. In some
markets, office prices and rents are breaking all-time records.
The bluest of the blue cities can also celebrate their rise to the top of
the congressional pole. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, Finance
Chairman Barney Frank of suburban Boston and Ways and Means Chairman Charles
Rangel of Manhattan all represent something of an economic coup for the
"good rich" such as dot-com billionaires, subsidized downtown real-estate
developers and "enlightened" investment bankers. The new notables most
likely won't find fault with their constituents' windfalls as they have with
those of the oil companies, the pharmaceutical firms or Wal-Mart.
[MORE]
The American
Interest Magazine - March- April,
2007
here's looking at us
Little Start-up on the Prairie
n
the rolling countryside of eastern Nebraska, the town of Aurora, population
4,500, resembles a small urban outcropping amid the spreading wheat,
cornfields and cattle ranches America’s midsection. With its neat town
square and red-brick civic buildings, it suggests a reflection of America’s
bucolic past. Yet it may also represent an oblique looking-glass glimpse
into America’s future. In the first half of the 21st century, as the nation
grows from 300 toward 400 million people, Aurora and other places in the
American Heartland will provide a critical outlet for the restless energies
and entrepreneurial passions of its people. In some senses, such a trend
represents a reprise of the region’s role in the evolution of the country
and the shaping of its national identity.
[MORE]
The Arizona Republic - January 21, 2007
North America needs an
energy alliance
3-nation strategy would balance needs, ecology
By Joel Kotkin and Robert Hertzberg
n
the opening decades of the 21st century, virtually all of America's most
critical problems — political, environmental and economic — will be wrapped
up within the issue of energy. Energy fuels our deadliest enemies, threatens
our environment, and poses a direct challenge to our long-term economic
viability.
What is needed now is a coherent strategy that deals directly with our
fundamental geopolitical dilemma: how to grow our economy while reducing our
dependence on imported energy and, over time, carbon-emitting fuels.
We believe there is such a workable strategy. It centers on the creation
of a powerful energy alliance among the three great nations of North
America: the United States, Canada and Mexico.
[MORE]
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
- November 11, 2006
The Diaspora may be moving,
but it isn't going away any time soon
By Joel Kotkin and Zina Klapper
hen
Howard Grossman moved to the northeastern Pennsylvania town of Wilkes-Barre
35 years ago, it was a thriving industrial city with a substantial,
long-established Jewish community. Today, anyone who visits Wilkes-Barre
cannot help but come away with the impression that this town of 43,000 has
seen better days, and will perhaps see not too grand a future.
Along with the decline of the city's industry, there's been another loss:
a massive reduction in its Jewish population. The community that numbered
some 8,000 Jews in the 1920s has now shrunk to barely 2,100, a far more
precipitous drop than the 40 percent decline experienced by the city at
large.
Wilkes-Barre Jews, Grossman recalls, were prominent among the store
owners of its bright and busy shops. But hard times for everyone had an even
greater effect on the Jewish community. Today many Wilkes-Barre stores are
empty while others have been replaced by low-end retail chains. The children
of the original store owners, and of local garment manufacturers, teachers
and professionals have, for the most part, decamped.
[MORE]
A New America Foundation Report
Rebuilding America’s
Productive Economy
A Heartland Development Strategy
|
By |
Joel Kotkin, Senior Fellow, New
America Foundation
Delore Zimmerman, President, CEO Praxis, Inc. |
recent article in the The New York Times described North Dakota as
“not far from forsaken.” The image conveyed by the article was of a state in
“irresistible decline”—of dying towns and aging populations, a place to
visit before it turned to dust. This is how the media all too often portrays
the Heartland, and it is a view shared by many academics and policymakers.
But the picture is out of date and out of focus.
Over the past two years, North Dakota has in fact gained population,
while Massachusetts, which few would describe as “forsaken,” was the only
state to lose people. More to the point, although some parts of the Great
Plains are experiencing a decline in population, other parts are seeing an
increase in jobs, population, and income—in some cases exhibiting higher
growth rates than urban coastal America. Fargo, North Dakota, for example,
grew by over 20 percent between 1990 and 2000.
Increasingly, skilled individuals and businesses are recognizing that the
Heartland possesses many underutilized assets. These include low housing
costs, a relatively good business climate, quality schools, a reasonably
educated and productive workforce, and available land and other resources
for expansion.
[MORE]
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A Report by the Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation
Supported by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation
rawing
upon the inspiration of urbanists and historians, Kotkin (senior
fellow, New America Foundation) attempts to define the city
throughout human history and into the future. This brief, readable
volume is based on a wide variety of scholarly English-language
studies of world cities from the earliest times to the present.
Though historical in organization, nearly half of the book is
devoted to the recent past and near future. Moving beyond the city's
functional aspects of politics, security, and economics, Kotkin
focuses on his theme of the city as a powerful moral and spiritual
ethos to explain the rise and fall of particular urban cultures. By
focusing on the city's cultural and ethical dimension, Kotkin gives
readers a powerful lens for understanding the lifespan of historical
cities and urban cultures, and perhaps a tool to forecast the city
of the future. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General and
undergraduate collections." 
