Popular Science ranks them on a cluster of key factors (via Planetizen):
1. Portland, Ore.
2. San Francisco, Calif.
3. Boston, Mass.
4. Oakland, Calif.
5. Eugene, Ore.
6. Cambridge, Mass.
7. Berkeley, Calif.
8. Seattle, Wash.
9. Chicago, Ill.
10. Austin, Tex.
Green cities look a lot like high human capital, creative ones.
February 17th, 2008 at 10:31 am
So what hypotheses can we build here?
Do creative people move where they can walk and breathe?
Do they elect politicians who preserve green spaces because they value them more than low profile industrial parks?
Does green space allow humans to achieve greater potential?
Is there a persistent cultural matrix in these cities which values both creativity and green space?
Is it related to the density of ivy covered academic buildings with green lawns?
And how does this work with the notion that creativity, real estate prices and human density all rise in cities located on the water? (Eugene and Austin are exceptions.)
And does it hold across national boundaries or within other nations?
February 17th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Deferring to Richard and the experts on specifics, I think it can be argued fairly and intuitively that the creative class generally:
(1) thinks and acts responsibly on matters of sane and sensible protection of the environment and promotes approaches that further those interests for both practical and philosophical purposes
(2) has a keen sense of and appreciation for nature and beauty in very much a Henry David Thoreau-esque way
(3) values authentic and artistic creativity of all kinds, and after all, what is more authentic and artistic than that which sprouts from the ground and blossoms vividly and vibrantly for all to see, smell and appreciate
Not surprisingly, then, we see more green initiatives in places that attract, retain and cultivate the creative class.
February 17th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
All American cities again.
I would be wary of formulating hypotheses based solely on American cities.
February 17th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Stephen – At the Prosperity Institute we’ll be trying to build more international data sets of cities and regions. An integrated North American data set will be our first move. We believe we can create matched data sets for North American and European city-regions. But even that will be tough. I remain amazed that none of the international statistical agencies collect data on city-regions at the global scale. But the fact of the matter is that the data do not exist. We have our work cut out for us, but we’ll be trying.
February 17th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Richard, you should probably be collaborating with Hans Rosling and his Gapminder Foundation, as he’s been evangelizing international data collection and dissemination for a while.
You should also talk to Google, who bought the foundation’s Trendalyzer software (so far they don’t seem to have done anything with it, but I don’t think it would be hard to convince them that more data collection would be a good idea).
Have you ever spoken at Google?
February 17th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I like the fact that three out of ten are Bay Area cities!
February 17th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Alison’s item about colleges is interesting. One would think academia would promote greenness and it holds for most of the cities.
Cambridge, Berkeley, Eugene and Austin are absolute college towns.
San Francisco, Seattle, Boston are big cities with significant college influence.
Chicago is so big that the Universities are part of the mix but maybe not major influences(?)
Which leaves Oakland and Portland. Aside from being next door to Berkeley, Oakland is a working town without much college influence, certainly not enough to influence city policy. And Portland is by no means a college town. Reed and Lewis & Clark are too small to have influence. Portland State is just becoming a university at all. Oregon Health & Science University is large, but as a medical school it has little influence on city policies outside of promoting its own growth.
Interesting demographics. Oakland is very racially diverse: 35% Black, 23% white, 15% Asian, 22% Latino. Portland is pretty homogenous: 78% white, 7% Black, 7% Latino, 6% Asian. Both are high on the Gay & Lesbian rankings.
So having a major school(s) is an advantage but not necessary. Neither is having a white and college educated populace.
I don’t have any conclusions. I’m working on my own theories of how Portland made the move from lumber town to creative mecca. The lack of University influence is one of the anomalies.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Obviously, the international data should be collected, one of the first things I noticed when reading “Rise” is how well you cited the data/facts underpinning your conclusions. That said, we could probably guess what cities would score the highest, the hypotheses simply need to be tested and proved for validation purposes. But how they rank would be revealing.
Oakland is an interesting entry on the list. Its proximity to SF probably explains it but it’s still fascinating to see Oakland this high on the list.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Michael, our posts crossed, Portland (and you would know better) is an interesting historical case study but not surprising to see on the list. But Oakland is a little baffling, it really seems to be the oddest entry.
Back to Portland, do you think it became a creative class mecca merely because it’s between Seattle and SF or do you think there’s a more complex explanation?
February 18th, 2008 at 12:15 am
I dare say that one of the strongest correlations for green cities would be a left-leaning population.
We’ve just completed this year’s update of our Greenest Cities study for Country Home magazine (due out in April), and I’ll do a quick analysis to test this hypothesis.
The Popular Science article is not bad, but a little light in the metrics used, and the number of cities/places (50 largest). We rank all 379 U.S. metro areas, and I’ll compare the rankings with the county-level voting records for the 2004 Presidental election.
I agree with RF about the challenges of acquiring comparable city-level data. The U.N. maintains a pretty nice dataset of country-level statistics. Perhaps they will expand into cities. It will need to be some organization that can set reporting standards or translate diverse data.
February 18th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Hayden,
I think Oakland is reinventing itself, including electing first Jerry Brown then Ron Dellums as mayors. But I’m not close enough to say how it happened.
I think proximity to Seattle actually has relatively little influence on Portland. Most of their high tech is software, most of ours is hardware. But being a 2 hour flight from SF and San Jose and in the same time zone, helped us attract high tech. For example, the majority of both Intel’s American research and its manufacturing happen in Portland suburbs. For non high-tech creatives I think somehow the western “live & let live” attitude morphed into “celebrate diversity”. That’s the piece I’m really working on.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Michael,
Very interesting. I had a conversation yesterday about this, I think places like Oakland and Detroit that have already hit bottom have a greater chance of becoming economic winners by re-inventing themselves than mediocre cities (no need to offend anybody by naming them) that seem reluctant to change because they have not dipped too far below the equilibrium (yet) and poised to suffer slow and tortuous deaths; much like most of rural America I might add.
Thanks for the education on Portland, being on the east coast, I’m learning vicariously.
Hayden
February 18th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
One of the things I’m looking at in Portland is when we hit bottom in the ’80’s when the timber economy collapsed, Georgia Pacific left town, etc. The ’80’s recession was much longer and harder in Oregon than most of the country and it marked the economy’s transition from resource-based to high tech. Good eventually for Portland but hard on the rural parts of the state, and the beginning of the Red-Blue divide. Also when Portland started becoming a real city, not dominated by the rural parts of the state. For example, the rural dominated legislature forbid Portland State from having on-campus housing, enforced an enrollment cap, limited the degrees that could be offered until the ’90’s. The idea was that the big city couldn’t have a major university (was only allowed to have a commuter state college after WWII, when demand for GI BIll vets drove it). This of course benefited #5 Eugene and the U of O.
February 18th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Amazing short-sightedness, absolutely amazing!
Let’s hope that Portland’s story can be replicated on a national level. I don’t that our national economcy is melting-down as much as it’s being grinded and sorted (recycled) into new models and parts. Hopefully the current downturn will force America to do what it has always done best– rapidly transition into something new. The mighty eraser.
Here’s a POSITIVE case in point: WSJ published an article last week describing how we’re experiencing the largest boom in the American railroad industry in more than 100 years with billions of dollars being invested in new rail infrastructure privately and spurred by government via tax credits. Of course, this is more bad news for rural/semi-rural towns that serve more or less as trucking distribution depos. There are small towns across the country whose economies depend heavily on being the places where truckers and commuters stop, fill, eat and sleep. Most of them will find themselves in the losers’ dugouts during the next 10 years. And maybe then they’ll re-invent themselves too.
February 18th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Oakland made the list because it is the “garage” of the Bay Area. There are far more bohemians and artists in Oakland than in San Francisco. Many, many, graduates of Cal have remained in the area, and live in Oakland. In short, it is home to a huge population of people who support greeness.
February 18th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Wil,
You’re right of course. For decades creatives have moved to Oakland for cheaper rent and funkiness. So being close to a major University is more important than hosting one, which would fit Richard’s theory of creative regions.
I love that Oakland scores higher than Berkeley. At least at the city government level, Oakland is much more creative and risktaking. Along with Chicago it gives the lie to the idea that caring about the environment is just a white middle class obsession — although Bert’s probably right about lefties.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:18 am
Michael, another point to consider about Portland is that it’s the cheapest major US city on the west coast. We’ve been seeing a migration of young bands who have been priced out of California and even Seattle. Also, I recall reading that Portland is one of only eight US metros whose age 25-49 portion has grown.