Creative Class

Last week President Obama announced that he would provide $8 billion of funds to study and plan high-speed rail systems in the U.S. My state of California received $2 billion to study a high-speed train link between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This is to go with a $10 billion bond issue that state voters approved for feasibility studies and right-of-way acquisition. As an aside, California voters have been approving bond issues for anything and everything for the last two decades, but never considering how the bonds will be paid. Now the state is bankrupt and we are studying and planning a high-speed rail system, while squeezing our universities, releasing criminals (not such a bad idea for those convicted of victimless crimes), chopping existing mass transit, and firing teachers. Go figure.

But this is not what worries me the most. We are studying a high-speed intercity rail system, when all over California and the nation, while dramatically increasing fares and cutting back mass transit service. The Bay Area BART is laying off workers, increasing fares, and will probably have to cut services. The Sacramento area transit system is laying off workers, cutting service, and raising fares. Atlanta’s MARTA is raising fares, curtailing service, and laying off workers. The New York MTA is increasing commuter fares and cutting service. You get the picture.

The bullet trains in Japan are so convenient because of the excellent mass transit when you get to your destination. Mass transit is what makes the northeast corridor trains work.

Does it make sense to pay to plan and study high-speed train lines while the existing energy saver and public amenity that makes cities more livable — mass transit — is being dismantled? Why not support and improve existing mass transit first? How are we going to have great cities without a functional mass transit system?

I recently had the opportunity to visit Milwaukee, WI, for the first time (thank you FUEL Milwaukee!). And visiting cities for the first time, to me, is particularly exciting. Arriving for the first time is a pure and unadulterated experience. First impressions matter and how a city presents itself to a first-time visitor is very important. I learned this from my friend Charles Landry.

Milwaukee Art Museum

I arrived via the airport with the typical location outside of city. My host takes the highway toward the city. As we approach the Hoan Bridge, we pass amid the Port of Milwaukee. On both sides, there are mountains of bulk materials and cranes. While not beautiful, there is the appearance of activity and a muscularity that says “we work here.” As we crest the bridge (with its own very strange design element) I am startled because the city presents itself there in panorama. The city in the hills to the left, the waters of Lake Michigan to the right. And to the right, near the lake, your eye is drawn to the white sails of the Santiago Calatrava masterpiece at the Milwaukee Art Museum.  It looks so different and unexpected in the tableau that one cannot help but to stare. Unexpected because this is the Midwest where modern iconic design is not the norm and that is not a shot; I am originally  from the Midwest!  More photos click here.

While many question the value of “starchitects” and iconic design, I have to say that my impression of Milwaukee was and is shaped in no small part because of that building. It is different and it says something about Milwaukee that no amount of advertising and marketing could equal. It says in a profound way “we are not what you expect” and that Milwaukee is looking to the future and beyond the beer brewery image of its past. The building says it in a visible and demonstrable way that one cannot deny.

Cities that are arguing over the cost/benefits of such iconic architecture should consider the context in which the new building will occur. In starchitect-rich Singapore, one more Calatrava or Libeskind is just keeping up with the crowd. In cities with a dearth of quality architecture (lots of those) or cities that need to redefine themselves in the 21st century, a new building can be a catalyst for new design and a whole host of other values.

In her September 3 blog post, “Creative Florida”, Rana Florida asked for thoughts about Florida tourism. As a resident of St. Petersburg, Florida, I thought I should respond.

Tourism has long been the golden goose in Florida but it is also a double-edged sword. We have no state income tax in large part due to the sales tax revenue that tourism provides. When the tourists come, the coffers fill and all is well. When we have downturns in the economy or other disruptions (such as hurricanes or 9/11) our budgets shrink. This volatility prevents us from having a predictable revenue stream which in turn means less long-term planning.

For better or worse, tourism also defines Florida. For many it is great to have that identity but I know a lot of creative class entrepreneurs in high-tech who lament that they can’t attract talent or VC interest because no one takes Florida seriously as a business environment.

But to me the largest impact of tourism is that it has made us lazy (I say this with love, Florida!). Tourism is easy money and we have coasted on that for too long. When the tourists just arrive with bags of money, why innovate? Why invest in our schools or our infrastructure? Why make the hard tax choices when we can raise the bed tax on hotel rooms or local tax on car rentals? We need to rethink tourism and make it a higher value experience, one that leverages the service economy and makes it more creative and innovative.

Florida had a wake-up call last year when, for the first time since WW2, we had a net outflow of population. That is a seismic shift in the underpinnings of Florida’s economy and I hope that it forces us to look at diversifying our economy and making the harder choices of developing industries beyond the beach and theme park.

Earlier this week Catherine Rampell posted this map over at Economix. It shows the percentages of workers who drove to work alone by state and is based on U.S. Census data.

D.C. has the lowest rate – a fact which was not lost on D.C. blogging circles. NY did well too.  The worst performers were Alabama, Tennessee, and Ohio, where about eight in 10 workers drive alone -  more than double that of D.C.

With the help of my colleague Charlotta Mellander, we took a quick look at some factors that might be associated with this geographic pattern. It’s not an exhaustive list: We examined some key economic factors like income and economic output, human capital and the creative class, and psychological ones like happiness, stress, and personality. We removed D.C. from the analysis because it was such an extreme outlier. We did not develop or run any serious multivariate analysis – just simple correlations, or associations, between variables.

Still the findings point to some reasonably clear patterns.

Income and Economic Output: The richer the state, the less likely people were to drive alone. Driving alone was negatively correlated with state income levels (-.46) and output per capita (-.41).

Class and Human Capital: States with higher percentages of college graduates (-.47) and the creative class (-.43) were less likely to have people driving alone. Driving alone was much more likely in states with large working class concentrations (.62).

Professional and Creative Jobs: Driving alone was less likely in states with high concentrations of virtually every type of professional, knowledge-based and creative jobs. But it was least likely in states with large concentrations of artists, designers, and entertainers (-.63), architects and engineers (-.61), scientists (-.56 ), and lawyers (-.55).

Diversity – Immigrants and Gays: Driving alone was less likely in states with high concentrations of immigrants (-.51) and gays (-.41).

Happiness: Happiness research tells us that commuting is one of life’s least pleasurable activities.  Driving along was negatively associated with state levels of happiness and well-being (-.46) and positively associated with states with higher levels of stress (.29).

Personality: Psychologists identify five main personality types. Driving alone was more likely in states with high levels of three of them: extroverts (.29), conscientiousness (.36), and agreeableness (.44). Interestingly, there was no association between driving alone and the two other types – neurotic and openness to experience, which some might say makes it harder to explain New York.

This map is cool (via Catherine Rampell at Economix and based on Census data).

Yikes: More than 100 million American workers drive to work alone. Rampell, one of my fave economics bloggers, explains:

About three-quarters of American workers drove to their jobs alone in 2008. The least carpool-friendly states appeared to be Alabama, Tennessee and Ohio, where about 83 percent of workers drove alone. The District of Columbia and New York — whose residents are heavily dependent on public transportation — had the lowest rates of solo commuters, at 37.2 percent and 53.7 percent.

Anybody have the stats for Toronto?

The ongoing debate over high-speed rail generates heated passions on all sides. Those opposed see high-speed rail as too costly and the U.S. as lacking the density to make the numbers work. Those in favor argue that high-speed rail is a way to move the U.S. to smarter, more energy-efficient transportation alternatives. My own take is that high-speed rail offers a mechanism to both expand and intensify the use of urban space leading to what geographers call a new “spatial fix” – required, I would add, to spur long-run economic recovery.

Here’s some useful analysis by America 2050 which can help advance the dialogue. Its new  report uses six factors – population, economic output, distance between cities, quality of local transit networks, highway congestion, and mega-region designation – to rank the top 50 routes across the U.S. (via Planetizen and Infrastructurist).

The latest in truly alternative transport, this human-powered party machine is a converted cargo bike built by Portland, OR bike-maker Metrofiets for Hopworks Urban Brewing (h/t Joe Cortright). BikePortland provides full technical details.

The bike follows the basic Metrofiets design of a long body, with a cargo carried in the front. The cargo container is a metal keg bucket which holds two full sized kegs and 25 pounds of ice. Beer from the kegs run through a 50 foot cooling coil and then to your glass via two taps (made by Shimano and Chris King) which protrude from a wooden bar inlaid with HUB’s trademark lightning bolt. Tap handles by Shimano and Chris King

A large, square rear rack is designed to fit a stack of pizza boxes. Below the rack is a sound system “pannier” with another lightning bolt inlaid wood panel casing and a speaker. The bike sports HUB’s colors, matte orange and black.

This party is entirely human-powered, with the help of nine gears — any more would allow a rider to go faster than would be entirely wise, explained Ross. Sturdy looking disc brakes and chunky tires with full fenders adorn both wheels.

When fully loaded with pizza, beer, and ice, the bike should just about meet Metrofiets’ 400lb weight limit.

[Photo credit: Elly Blue / BikePortland]

Seeking Alpha comments on why railroads will make us richer:

“Along the northeastern corridor, there are cities that made the jump from industrial to post-industrial economy fairly successfully, namely, those that had developed knowledge-intensive industries like finance or technology even as industry was beginning to leave center cities. In between these successful cities are interspersed others that were heavily reliant on industry, and which didn’t fare nearly as well over the past half century (Baltimore is the best example).

“But where the industrial core in the Midwest has seemingly entered an irreversible decline, rotting industrial hubs along the northeast corridor hit a bottom and began to recover over the past decade. Baltimore continues to lose people, but its economy is fairly stable, and much of the city has seen significant redevelopment.

“The reason for the turnaround is proximity to thriving markets. The ability to take advantage of certain aspects of the Washington metropolitan market has strengthened Baltimore. Similarly, New York has generated economic opportunity for much of the northeastern corridor, touching off redevelopment in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. One of the chief lessons of economic geography is that a good way to get rich is to be near other rich places; remoteness is costly. If we could shift all the cities in the Midwest closer to each other, and then pick them up and move then nearer to the northeastern corridor, we would go a long way toward restoring the economic viability of many Midwestern cities.

“We can’t literally do that, but we can effectively accomplish something similar by improving physical links within the Midwest and between it and other regions. We could decongest highways and airports with congestion charges, for instance, and plow the proceeds into high-speed passenger and freight rail connections among Midwestern cities and between the Midwest and the northeastern corridor (as well as healthy Canadian metropoles. Richard Florida makes the case here).”

Absolutely. Amtrak and its Acela have played important roles in the economic transformation not just of Baltimore but of Philadelphia and, I would argue, Washington, D.C. Not to be overly controversial to my Beltway-area friends and colleagues, but there’s no getting around the fact that better rail connections have (at least in part) enabled the region’s resurgence as in effect a “suburb” of NYC. A whole raft of companies that might have located in the NYC region have been able to locate in greater Washington, D.C. instead, taking advantage of its talent pool, relative lower housing costs, and quality of life. There has been a veritable mass migration of journalistic talent to the region. And my own figures on industry and occupational location show a surge not just in media jobs generally but in broadcasting – specifically, the kinds of jobs which were once more highly clustered in and around NYC. And, of course, the effect of the Metro system on redevelopment in the city and in Arlington is well understood.

So, transportation infrastructure plays a big role in economic development by opening up new spaces and by allowing for the redevelopment of old spaces in more intensive ways. There’s not many transport technologies that promise to do that today for mega-regions straddling major cities except high-speed rail. High-speed rail is a technology that “fits” the geographic scale of mega-regions and can help spur more intensive development of them.

The point about the industrial Midwest and Canada is spot on. Momentum is building in Canada for a high-speed rail link from say Windsor (just above Detroit) through Toronto over to Ottawa and onto Montreal and Quebec City. This would be a way of gluing together Canada’s largest mega-region and spurring in-fill development along its corridors. With greater Toronto growing and immigrants continuing to flood in, it would stretch out the development frontier, while building size and scale across the entire corridor over time.

There are near constant calls to “do something” for the great industrial Midwest that “built America.” High-speed rail is a much better way to go than any auto or other bailout. High-speed rail holds the potential to link declining cities along the Great Lakes corridor and tie them into the more vibrant economies of Chicago and even Toronto. Baltimore has bounced back in part because of its links to and cost advantage over D.C.; The same can be said of Philadelphia and NYC, or Providence and Boston.

Of course high-speed rail will not magically save declining places. The greater Detroit region for example needs to shift its economic base away from autos and toward the research and technology capabilities of area universities (like the University of Michigan in nearby Ann Arbor and Michigan State in not-too-far-away Lansing); and by leveraging the commercial capabilities of its world-class design and popular music industries:  (How to stem the flow of top commercial talent like Jack White to Nashville?) But it can also be repositioned as a suburb of sorts for Chicago and potentially even Toronto. (My wife, who is from greater Detroit, and I make the drive regularly in under four hours). The Toronto to Windsor link may be the key here; Windsor is across the river from downtown Detroit and can be easily connected via subway.

Milwaukee-Chicago is a no-brainer. Pittsburgh and Cleveland can be tied in too. Perhaps, over time, Pittsburgh could even be connected to greater Washington, D.C. (When I lived in Pittsburgh I made the drive to D.C. in roughly four hours). High-speed rail would make this quite manageable especially in jobs that are flexible and require only intermittent commutes.

Mega-region hubs are becoming more economically central to our spiky world. There’s no getting around this. Chicago has in effect sucked up scads of economic functions that used to be done by other second- and third-tier Midwest cities. On the east coast, Baltimore and Philadelphia and, yes, Washington, D.C. have prospered because of transit connections, including relatively fast rail, which has allowed them to grow by hiving off pieces of economic activity attracted into the world city orbit of New York.

What we are seeing is the further deepening of the spatial division of labor: Suburbia is being stretched in a process of ever more intensive and expansive geographic development.

There’s a lesson there for the industrial Midwest and for other regions of the country, North America, and the world. Those places that positon themselves for this new era of spiky, geographic growth and which have the infrastructure that connects them to major centers will prosper, while those that do not will likely fall behind even further.

The Obama administration recently pledged $8 billion for high-speed rail. While just a fraction of the overall stimulus package and just a drop-in-the-bucket of what is needed to build a real national high-speed rail network, the funds generated considerable hub-bub and, for some, outright jubilation among regionalists, environmentalists, energy efficiency advocates, and those who have long fought for improved U.S. rail transit. It also has encouraged a mad political scramble for funds as regions position for federal monies. In Canada, there is a mounting drumbeat for high-speed rail connecting Windsor, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec cities and also for connecting Vancouver to Seattle.

For starters, here’s a map of proposed U.S. high speed rail projects:

It’s clear that the U.S. and North America lag far behind countries like Japan with its Shinkansen or France with the TGV on high-speed rail connectivity.

But how to base decisions on what routes get funded? How to avoid a purely political outcome and create a framework for investing in high-speed rail that makes the most economic sense?

Here’s a map of North America’s mega-regions:

The largest of North America’s mega-regions is the great “Bos-Wash” mega-region initially identified by the geographer Jean Gottman. It stretches down the east coast corridor encompassing the east coast cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., and is home to more than 50 million people and produces more than $2.2 trillion in economic activity. Its economic output is greater than that of the UK and France and more than double that of India or Canada. The second biggest, which Gottman dubbed “Chi-Pitts,” covers more than 100,000 square miles and is home to 46 million people, producing $1.6 trillion in economic output. Taken together, America’s mega-regions produce more than three-quarters of its economic output and the lion’s share of its innovations (see the table below):

In the main, the proposed routes map pretty well to U.S. mega-regions. Given the fact that megas are dense and interconnected centers of population and economic activity, it makes sense to develop high-speed rail connections within mega-regions first, and later develop connections between contiguous ones, say for example down the east and west coasts or across the Great Lakes region.

The table below, compiled by Patrick Adler at the Martin Prosperity Institute, shows the distance between key cities and then compares the driving times (calculated on Google) to current top high-speed rail speeds (from Transportation Quarterly):

Philadelphia becomes a veritable suburb of NY, its commute time shrinking from nearly two hours to slightly more than a half hour. Washington-NYC and Boston-NYC become hour-and-a-half trips. San Diego becomes a bedroom suburb of Los Angeles. And commute times shrink considerably across Cascadias’ main cities: The time to get from Portland to Seattle shrinks to just over an hour, while travel between Seattle and Vancouver is reduced to less than an hour. It would take just slightly longer than an hour and a half to get from Charlotte to Atlanta. And commutes between Dallas and Houston and Dallas and Austin shrink to an hour and a half or less.

Better high-speed rail connections promise considerable economic efficiency gains. And they also promise to relieve the psychological burdens of commuting by car. Research by behavioral economists like Nobel prize-winner Daniel Kahneman finds that long car commutes are among the things that most adversely affect our happiness.

But there is an even bigger and more fundamental reason to connect our mega-regions through high-speed rail. As I recently argued in The Atlantic, our current economic crisis promises to powerfully reshape America’s geography. There will be winners and losers, and a new economic geography will emerge in time.

Geographic expansion, as I noted there, is a fundamental axis of economic recovery and development. Recovery after the Long Depression of the 1870s was in part powered by the rise of the large-scale industrial city that grew up around raw materials, ports, and railroads, expanding outward along its early street-car lines. While many see the rise of Keynesian spending (particularly World War II spending) as key to U.S. recovery from the Great Depression of the 1930s, post-war recovery was propelled by the rise of another era of geographic expansion - the rise of the Sunbelt and the massive growth of auto-oriented suburbia. Demand for cars surged to move workers between home and work. And suburban houses all had to be filled with the refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, television sets, and consumer appliances rolling off America’s assembly lines. This post-war auto-oriented “fordist” development model worked to ensure that mass production and mass consumption could grow together fueling the expansion of America’s great golden era.

But fordism has come smack up against its limits. It’s cheaper to produce many industrial goods off-shore, and the geography of post-war suburbia stretched to its breaking point. It may well be impossible for sustained recovery to come from breathing life back into the banks, auto companies, and suburban-oriented development model. A new period of geographic expansion – or what geographers term a “new spatial fix” – may well be needed to spur a renewed era of economic growth and development.

The history of capitalist development is the history of the more expansive and intensive use of space. Post-war suburbs, the rise of larger metropolitan areas, the development of multi-nodal regions with edge cities as well as downtown cores are part and parcel of this process of geographic development. It’s a mistake to consider suburban sprawl a backward step (as some do), and to see only more compact urban style back-to-the-city development as a path to the future. The rise of the mega-region is the cornerstone of a new, more intensive and more expansive use of space.

New periods of geographic expansion require new systems of infrastructure. Ever since the days of the canals, the early railroad, and streetcar suburbs, we’ve seen how infrastructure and transportation systems work to spur new patterns economic and regional development. The streetcar expanded the boundaries of the late 19th and early 20th century city, while the railroad moved goods and people between them. The automobile enabled workers to move to the suburbs and undertake far greater commutes, expanding the geographic landscape still further.

Mega-regions, if they are to function as integrated economic units, require better, more effective, and faster ways move goods, people, and ideas. High-speed rail accomplishes that, and it also provides a framework for future in-fill development along its corridors. Just as development filled in along the early street-car lines and the post-war highways, high-speed rail will encourage denser, more compact, and concentrated development with growth filling in along its routes over time. Spain’s new high-speed rail link between Barcelona and Madrid not only massively reduced commuting times between these two great Spanish cities, according to a recent New York Times report, it has also helped revitalize several declining locations along the line.

It’s time to start thinking of our transit and infrastructure projects less in political terms and more as a set of strategic investments that are fundamental to the speed and scope of our economic recovery and to the emerging shape of the economy, society, and communities of the future.

Portland got word yesterday that the Feds will provide $75 million for expansion of our central city streetcar line to the East Side. Doubly good news here because it will provide orders for the new United Streetcar company, a subsidiary of Oregon Iron Works in Portland’s suburbs. The only U.S. streetcar manufacturer, United, is hoping for orders from around the country.

I thought I’d see if I could find other new rail transit announcements in other cities and didn’t find much, just one announcement of funding for light rail in Phoenix. But I expect there will be others soon, between the Stimulus and the new budget. I did find this list of current projects.

The Portland Streetcar announcement didn’t show up in my Google search, nor in the current projects list, nor on the U.S. Department of Transportation. So there may have been other local announcements. Does anyone know of new projects in your town?