Creative Class

Guess who’s helping lead the back to the city movement. No, it’s not the proverbial yuppies, singles and gays, it’s empty-nesters looking for excitement and stimulation.  Quoting William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer, the New York Times highlights the trend of baby-boomers heading back to the city.

“Especially as they reach early retirement, as in ages 50 to 55,” Mr. Frey said,
“baby boomers will be testing out areas like New York for the longer
term.” According to a report issued by Mr. Frey with the
Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington last month, the baby boomers
who do not age in place or, like previous generations, move to sunnier
climes, will be lured into big cities.  “You can’t really
compare baby boomers with previous generations,” Mr. Frey said,
“because boomers are forever young. They also have education levels and
cultural interests that would suggest they might be more likely to find
cities attractive.” The number of older residents moving into
New York and other cities is still smaller than the number who move out
to the suburbs or to places like Florida and Arizona, but demographers, economists and gerontologists say that
“in migration” numbers are sure to grow as baby boomers age.”

Here’s my own take on the matter from the current version of Who’s Your City.

Thankfully, we are way beyond the classic retirement community – god-awful monstrosities with names like “Leisure Village.” With the bulk of the baby-boomers now in their 50s and 60s, this is one of the most rapidly growing “neighborhoods” of
all. And, fortunately, they’re increasing in quality as well as quantity.

From high-end lofts and condos in the city center, Designer Digs
neighborhoods where they can be around art, commerce, and entertainment 24-7 to
college towns and life-long learning, the options are endless.

When it comes to finding a place to live,” the Wall Street Journal’s 2006 Guild to Retirement Planning and Living
wrote, “today’s retirees are looking for something completely different.” For years, the Journal’s report continued,
retirees flocked to the sun, warm climates and abundant golf, tennis and water
sports in places like Florida, California or Arizona. Not so much anymore. Today, while weather and
leisure remain important, retirees are looking for a community “where they can
make friends and connections quickly, whether it’s a small town or walkable
neighborhood in the big city.”

Retirees are also looking for places where that can indulge
“post-work passions,” a second career, a newly adopted sport or be near their
grandkids. As John McIlwain a 62 year old resident fellow for the Urban Land Institute
was quoted in the story as saying:  “Moving to a mixed-used development, a small
town, or seeking an urban experience are all elements of the same thing: it’s a
community where you get to know each other…. You’re walking around, and you get
to know your neighbors you get to know the shopkeepers, because you meet them
on the street.”

A common refrain I hear: “We don’t want to be slaves to our house
anymore.” So it’s time to trade in the 4,000 or 5,000 square foot house in the
suburbs for an upscale condo or townhouse. The wives want social and cultural
stimulation; the husbands a place where they don’t have to worry about the
yard.

You’re five times more likely to be killed by a car in Arkansas or South Carolina than in the UK,  Norway, Switzerland or Massachusetts for that matter  (Hat tip: Neal Takamoto).

How can rural communities adapt and prosper in the era of globalization– that’s  a question I am often asked.  A new report entitled Rural Sourcing: The Migration of Knowledge-Based Jobs to Rural America, by students at the University of Texas at Austin highlights this trend (Hat tip: Steven Pedigo).

“In their research, the students found that not only do companies
move certain service functions to small and mid-sized cities to take
advantage of the lower wage rates and facility costs, but they do it to
avoid the hidden costs associated with offshoring, including travel, communication, security, time schedules and cultural misunderstandings. ” Read more here.

What are your thoughts on this trend?

As cities in the advanced economies “shrink,” those in the emerging economies of the Third World are exploding. According to United Nations projections,  the world will have 22 mega-cities with more than 10 million residents by 2015.  Of these, 18 will be in developing
countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and eastern Europe. According to Australia’s Age:

“The UN estimates 45 cities will grow by a million or more people
in the next decade — 44 of them in developing countries, 10 in
India alone. The only city in the rich world to keep pace with that growth
rate will be New York. As developing countries attempt to house more people with no
more land, by 2030, the UN projects, half of Africa’s population
will be living in mega-cities. This trend will be echoed elsewhere: two-thirds of Indonesians
and 60 per cent of Chinese will be living in cramped urban
centres. For how ever poor their housing, the wages they can earn in the
city far exceed what is available to them in rural and remote
villages.”

One of the keys to happiness, leading psychologists say, is to avoid long commutes.   According to the Texas Transportation Institutes’s 2006 Urban Mobility Report, the average commuter in regions with more than one million people spent 47 hours stuck in traffic; 61 hours in regions with more than 3 million.  The 5 cities with the worst commutes are:     Los Angeles where residents average 93 hours stuck in traffic, followed by San Francisco 72 hours, DC 69 hours, Atlanta 67 hours, and Houston 63 hours. Read more here.

Lot’s of discussion about this around the blogosphere.  I’ve avoided commenting up until now. That is until I saw USA Today’s cover story yesterday while traveling from Detroit back to DC. The story is by Haya Al Nassar one of the best reporters covering urban issues around, and covers efforts in Richmond, St. Louis, Detroit, and Youngstown to focus services and improve quality of life while shrinking in population size.

“Slowly, old American cities that have been in a
downward population spiral for a half-century or more are reinventing
themselves as, well, smaller cities. They’re starting to adopt … tenets of the burgeoning,
European-born “Shrinking Cities” movement. The idea: If cities can grow
in a smart way, they can also shrink smartly … It’s a startling admission in a nation that has
always equated growth with success. Cities are downsizing by returning
abandoned neighborhoods to nature and pulling the plug on expensive
services to unpopulated areas. Some have stopped pumping water, running
sewer lines and repaving roads in depopulated neighborhoods. They’re
turning decimated areas into parks, wildlife refuges or bike trails.
They’re tearing down homes no one is living in and concentrating
development where people want to move.”

Let me try to put this whole thing in some perspective.  For one, most cities are shrinking. As urban experts have known for years the only thing holding population up in most cities is immigration.  But the real issue is that the focus on “population” as a measure of growth is misleading and misses the point.   My good friend, Carol Coletta, head of CEOs for Cities,  hits the nail on the head, being quoted in the article as saying: “Cities that measure success by population growth have an outdated view
of what success is all about.”

But there is a bigger issue here. Both our demography and urban and metropolitan structure are undergoing profound transformation.  Cities of a century ago were densely packed with large families, commercial centers and factory complexes.   Of course, since the ’50s our population has decentralized. But in the past 20 years our household structure has changed dramatically as a consequence of the second demographic transformation and related trends we have discussed here. Households are smaller; people are postponing marriage; fewer families have children and more of us are single.  At the same time, rising affluence combined with assorted real estate development trends have enabled households to consume much, much more space not just in the suburbs but in the cities as well.

What irks me about the “shrinking cities” moniker is that it mixes up very different sorts of places.   The issues that face, say,  “shrinking DC” or “shrinking San Francisco”, which are substituting smaller higher income households for large, lower income ones, are quite different than those that face, say, “shrinking Detroit,” or  St. Louis or Youngstown, which continue to lose higher income households not just to surrounding suburbs but to other metros.

It’s not really “shrinking” that’s the issue.  Much more fundamental economic and demographic forces are creating different types of cities.  Some shrink, as they gain new higher end economic functions.  Others shrink as their economies falter and they bleed talent.

The real issue is how to we begin to come to grips with these two very different urban futures.   As I wrote in “The Creative Compact” we need a new urban policy that explicitly recognizes these trends.

Ever since I was a boy I’ve been allowed one Hero per day, and today my Hero is a guy named Roger Moss who sat on a panel with me in Savannah earlier this month. Roger is the Artistic Director for the Savannah Children’s Choir.

The Savannah Children’s Choir sprung out of a coffee-hour conversation at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church between Moss and Managing Director Cuffy Sullivan.  Moss, a baritone, music teacher and actor had originally moved to Savannah to continue in advertising. Savannah provided an environment that allowed  him to leave a career in advertising and pursue his first love, music.  Sullivan had returned to her college town for the quality of life and to raise a family with three musical children. Both discovered there was no community-based children’s choir and saw an unmet community need.

The congregation, with a history of supporting and launching new organizations, agreed to assist the choir’s start-up.  Moss and Sullivan assembled a broad-based board and launched with a week-long summer choir camp that attracted fifty-two children from across the region.  Soon, almost one hundred children from every socio-economic and racial background were auditioning for the forty positions in the choir.  The choir now consists of children ages 6 -14 from a diverse array of backgrounds.

The Savannah Children’s Choir teaches the children more than music.  Academic excellence is stressed, and each child must maintain a B or better average.  To help achieve this, choir members can choose to participate in free weekly tutorials provided by volunteer teachers.  This reporting period,  100% of SCC members had a B average or better — 23% had B averages and 77% had A averages.

Respect and teamwork are also emphasized.  The children work as a team in tackling a variety of music and languages; their debut concert featured songs in Latin, Spanish, Hebrew and English.  Long-term plans include a two-week music camp in summer 2007 and choir tours in and outside of the United States as ambassadors of Savannah.

Hopefully some of our major foundations and civic leaders will look at the Savannah Children’s Choir and initiatives like it as models for use around the country.

posted by Rod

Steven Pedigo, manager of research at GWI, sent us a note over the holiday regarding the new state population estimates from the Census Bureau. According to the Census press release, Arizona (3.6%)  nudged past Nevada (3.5%) as the fastest growing state over the past year and the South and the West continue to dominate the list of growing states.

From the Census Bureau,

Meanwhile, Arizona was the nation’s fastest-growing state over the period, breaking Nevada’s grip on the title, with its population rising 3.6 percent.  Nevada ranked second this time,as its population climbed by 3.5 percent, followed by Idaho (2.6 percent), Georgia (2.6 percent) and Texas (2.5 percent). (See Table A below.) The South and West again monopolized the list of fastest-growing states with Utah, North Carolina, Colorado, Florida and South Carolina rounding out the top 10. Colorado and South Carolina replaced Delaware and Oregon on the list this year.

According to the estimates, California remains the most populous state with a population of 36.5 million on July 1, 2006. Rounding out the top five states were Texas (23.5 million), New York (19.3 million), Florida (18.1 million) and Illinois (12.8 million).

Other highlights:

• North Carolina replaced New Jersey as the 10th most populous state.
• The Northeast region grew by only 62,000 people. In contrast, the South grew by 1.5 million and the West by 1 million. The Midwest added 281,000 people.
• The West was the fastest-growing region, with its population climbing by 1.5 percent. The South followed (1.4 percent), with the Midwest third (0.4 percent) and the Northeast fourth (0.1 percent).
• The South now accounts for 36 percent of the nation’s total population, with the West comprising 23 percent, the Midwest 22 percent and the Northeast 18 percent.
• The population estimate for Puerto Rico for July 1, 2006, was 3.9 million, up about 16,000 since July 1, 2005. Puerto Rico’s rate of increase was 0.4 percent.

Table A. Leading 10 States/Equivalents by Population Changes: July
1, 2005 to July 1, 2006

posted by David

While cruising around Wendy Water’s All About Cities blog I came across a website/blog (The Cascadia Report) that covers the Cascadia Mega-Region that Richard often highlights  as an example of a leading global mega-region. (Our friends out in Tacoma-Pierce County are part of the binational Cascadia Region.)

Does your mega have a blog like the Cascadia Report? Do the people, political/civic leaders, and businesses of your mega have any sense of cohesion or even a passing awareness of the economic/cultural unit they are part of? If there is an awareness of the the greater region, who leads the discussion? Where does it take place?

posted by David

According to a recent story by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee over at Information Week, the IT job market is going to be pretty tight in the coming year. The article reports that "Hiring plans for the first quarter are the strongest they’ve been in
five years, according to a survey of 1,400 CIOs by staffing firm Robert
Half Technology. Sixteen percent of CIOs say they’ll be hiring in the
quarter, while only 2% anticipate cutbacks."

The piece goes on to report that talented IT professionals will see income gains next year with CIO types reporting average pay increases near 4% or 5% and top performers receiving increases of 8% to 10%.

As the chart highlights, the IT market for Q1 2007 appears pretty thick as well, with demand for skills and workers coming from large and diverse segments of the US economy.

posted by David