Creative Class

Richard Florida’s on-line radio interview with “Creativity in Play” hosts, Steve Dahlberg and Mary Alice Long on why creativity matters in cities and communities, what the state of today’s economy means for creativity, and where we stand in “The Great Reset.” Listen to the full interview here.

Cities and regions across America and the world have made significant efforts to attract and retain young college graduates over the past decade or so.  This has been driven by growing awareness that the ability to attract human capital, as well the ability to attract companies plays a key role in economic competitiveness. And since young adults are the most mobile members of the population – people in their mid-20s are three to five times more likely to move than middle aged folks – the ability to attract them early in life can pay big, lasting dividends.

A new study by Brookings demographer William Frey examines trends in the migration decisions of young adults and college grads (as separate groups) over the years 2007 – 2009. His findings are especially interesting and relevant, since they cover the period since the onset of the economic crisis and reset.

The economic crisis has caused a significant decline in migration, with the mobility of Americans hitting record lows. Young adults and college graduates have not been excepted, Frey finds, with a growing number of them staying put or moving back with their parents. That said, the mobility of both college grads and young adults remains considerably higher than for Americans as a whole, according to Frey’s analysis.

But where have young adults and college grads been heading since the economic crisis?

To answer this, Frey charts the migration trends of both young adults and college grads across America’s 52 largest MSA’s, those that are home to more than one million people, using newly released Census data for the 2007-2009 period.

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My colleague Derek Thompson takes on Paul Krugman’s contention that the Texas miracle was a mirage in his comment “Is Texas Special?” Challenging Krugman’s notion that the state’s deficit undercuts the advantages it derives from its population and economic growth, Thompson notes that, when it comes to Texas – and you can say this for just about any kind of economy – it is structural factors rather than short-term policy fluctuations that ultimately matter. “Whether or not Texas has cultivated a uniquely successful business environment at the state level,” he notes, “it’s pretty clear that many of Texas’ largest cities are uniquely positioned to withstand the recession. As a general rule, the cities that survived the recession avoided the housing boom and clung to strong government-backed sectors, like health care, higher education, and military.” Six Texas metros number among the country’s 20 best-performing regions, according to research and rankings by the Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, he adds.

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The mass shootings in Tucson over the weekend led to all sorts of exercises in arm-chair psychology. The media was quick to portray the shooter Jared Lee Loughner as unhinged and paranoid, digging up his Internet ravings and probing former friends and classmates for detailed testimonials of his bizarre statements and aggressive behavior. And, following its polarization meme, we were subjected to endless accounts of how America’s heated and “vitriolic” political climate helped to trigger such action.

But what can psychology tell us about the specific ways that regional, locational, and geographic factors can affect gun violence and mass shootings in particular?

I was surprised by what I found out when I asked my colleague Jason Rentfrow, the distinguished social psychologist at Cambridge University, about this. While some continue to attribute gun violence and mass shootings to hot climates in the U.S. and elsewhere – “Living in a hot and uncomfortable climate makes people irritable and rates of violence go up,” as Rentfrow summarizes their thinking – the preponderance of studies focus on a “culture of honor” that is especially pervasive in southern and western states. This is something that pundits and commentators need to take a good deal more seriously because, if it is correct, and a considerable body of research suggests that it is, it suggests that deep-seated regional and cultural factors play a substantial role in mass violence.

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Do gas taxes, tolls, and auto registration fees ensure that America’s highways “pay for themselves?” Not at all.

A new report by U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups, shows the cumulative net subsidy that U.S. taxpayers have paid for the interstate highway system since its inception —a sum that is fast-approaching $700 billion.

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“Beautiful Places: The Role of Perceived Aesthetic Beauty in Community Satisfaction” is a new paper on regional studies that I wrote with my MPI colleagues Charlotta Mellander and Kevin Stolarick.

Here’s the abstract:

This research uses a large survey sample of individuals across United States locations to examine the effects of beauty and aesthetics on community satisfaction. The paper conducts these estimations by ordinary least-squares, ordered logit, and multinomial logit. The findings confirm that beauty is significantly associated with community satisfaction. Other significant factors include economic security, schools, and social interaction. Further, community-level factors are significantly more important than individual demographic characteristics in explaining community satisfaction.

Read the full paper here.

Smart people of the highly educated sort that economists refer to as “human capital” are key engines of economic growth and development. More and more, they have been clustering in a relative handful of big cities. A recent post by Aaron M. Renn, who blogs as The Urbanophile, charts the changing density of college educated people across U.S. metro areas. His analysis builds on an earlier analysis by Rob Pitingolo (I blogged about it here) which introduced a measure of human capital density.

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The U.S. housing market is on track to lose another $1.7 trillion in value this year, according to estimates by the real estate site Zillow.com — 63 percent more than the $1 trillion lost in 2009. All told, the U.S. housing market has lost a staggering $9 trillion in value since its peak in 2006, according to Congressional Research Service estimates.

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The great economic reset we are in the midst of extends even to Americans’ choices of places to live. The popularity of sprawling auto-dependent suburbs is waning. A majority of Americans – six in 10 – say they would prefer to live in walkable neighborhoods, in both cities and suburbs, if they could. Writing in The Wall Street Journal a few months ago, I noted how changes in our economy and demography are altering “the texture of suburban life in favor of denser, more walkable, mixed-use communities.” Christopher Leinberger has shown the positive effects of walkability in cities, towns, and suburbs; the architects Ellen Dunham Jones and June Williamson have detailed ways that older car-oriented suburbs can be retrofitted into more people-friendly, mixed-use, walkable communities. And walkability pays. According to research by Joe Cortright, housing prices have held up better in more walkable communities. (more…)

Just as people with higher levels of education have fared better during the Great Recession, cities and regions with higher levels of human capital have experienced lower rates of unemployment and higher wages. But human capital, which takes into account only the level of a worker’s education, is a crude measure – some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, are college dropouts.

A while back, I wrote about research done by my colleagues at the Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI), that took data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ O*NET Project on actual skills (physical skills of the sort used in manufacturing, analytical or cognitive skills, and social intelligence skills like the ability to direct teams, form entrepreneurial new businesses and organizations, and mobilize people and resources behind common causes and objectives) and charted their relations to the economic performance of cities and regions. (more…)