San Francisco

The Export Business in California (People and Jobs)

Wendell Cox — Thu, 10 May 2012 01:38:37 -0400

California Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg countered my Wall Street Journal commentary California Declares War on Suburbia in a letter to the editor (A Bold Plan for Sustainable California Communities) that could be interpreted as suggesting that all is well in the Golden State. The letter suggests that business are not being driven away to other states and that the state is "good at producing high-wage jobs," while pointing to the state's 10 percent growth over the last decade. Senate President Steinberg further notes that the urban planning law he authored (Senate Bill 375) is leading greater housing choices and greater access to transit.

This may be a description of the California past, but not present.

Exporting People

Yes, California continues to grow. California is growing only because there are more births than deaths and the state had a net large influx of international immigration over the past decade. At the same time, the state has been hemorrhaging residents (Figure 1).

Californians are leaving. Between 2000 and 2009 (Note), a net 1.5 million Californians left for other states. Only New York lost more of its residents (1.6 million). California's loss was greater than the population of its second largest municipality, San Diego. More Californians moved away than lived in 12 states at the beginning of the decade. Among the net 6.3 million interstate domestic migrants in the nation, nearly one-quarter fled California for somewhere else.

The bulk of the exodus was from the premier coastal metropolitan areas. Since World War II, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose have been among the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States and the high-income world. Over the last decade, this growth has slowed substantially, as residents have moved to places that, all things being considered, have become their preferences.

More than a net 1.35 million residents left the Los Angeles metropolitan area, or approximately 11 percent of the 2000 population. The San Jose metropolitan area lost 240,000 residents, nearly 14 percent of its 2000 population. These two metropolitan areas ranked among the bottom two of the 51largest metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) in the percentage of lost domestic migrants during the period. The San Francisco metropolitan area lost 340,000 residents, more than 8 percent of its 2000 population and ranked 47th worst in domestic migration (New York placed worse than San Francisco but better than Los Angeles). Each of these three metropolitan areas lost domestic migrants at a rate faster than that of Rust Belt basket cases Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo.

San Diego lost the fewest of the large coastal metropolitan areas (125,000). Even this was double the rate of Rust Belt Pittsburgh.

Exporting Jobs

California is no longer an incubator of high-wage jobs. The state lost 370,000 jobs paying 25 percent or more of the average wage between 2000 and 2008. This compares to a 770,000 increase in the previous 8 years. California is trailing Texas badly and the nation overall in creating criticial STEM jobs and middle skills jobs (Figures 2 & 3) Only two states have higher unemployment rates than California (Nevada and Rhode Island) . California has the second highest underemployment rate (20.8 percent), which includes the number of unemployed, plus those who have given up looking for work ("discouraged" workers) and those who are working only part time because they cannot find full time work. Only Nevada, with its economy that is overly-dependent on California, has a higher underemployment rate.

Business relocation coach Joseph Vranich conducts an annual census of companies moving jobs out of California and found a quickening pace in 2012. Often these are the very kinds of companies capable of creating the high-wage jobs that used to be California's forte. Vranich says that the actual number may be five times as high, which is not surprising, not least because there is no reliable compilation of off-shoring of jobs to places like Bangalore, Manila or Cordoba (Argentina).

To make matters worse, California is becoming less educated. California's share of younger people with college degrees is now about in the middle of the states, while older, now retiring Californians are among the most educated in the nation (Figure 4).

Denying Housing Choice

It is fantasy to believe, as Steinberg claims, that there are enough single family (detached) houses in the state to meet the demand for years to come. More than 80 percent of the new households in the state chose detached housing over the last decade. People's actual choices define the market, not the theories or preferences of planners often contemptuous of the dominant suburban lifestyle.

In contrast, however, the regional plans adopted or under consideration in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego would require nearly all new housing be multi-family, at five to 10 times normal California densities (20 or more units to the acre are being called for). New detached housing on the urban fringe would be virtually outlawed by these plans. And, when Sacramento does not find the regional plans dense enough, state officials (such as the last two state Attorneys General) are quick to sue. If the "enough detached housing" fantasy held any water, state officials and planners would not be seeking its legal prohibition. To call outlawing the revealed choice of the 80 percent (detached housing) would justify the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in Doublespeak.

At the same time by limiting the amount of land on which the state preferred high density housing must be built, land and house prices can be expected to rise even further from their already elevated levels (already largely the result of California's pre-SB 375 regulatory restrictions).

Transit Rhetoric and Reality

Transit is important in some markets. About one-half of commuters to downtown San Francisco use transit. The assumptions of SB 375 might make sense if all of California looked like downtown San Francisco. It doesn't, nor does even most of the San Francisco metropolitan area. Only about 15 percent of employment is downtown, while the 85 percent (and nearly all jobs in the rest of the state) simply cannot be reached by transit in a time that competes with the car. Even in the wealthy San Jose area (Silicon Valley), with its light rail lines and commuter rail line, having a transit stop nearby provides 45 minute transit access to less than 10 percent of jobs in the metropolitan area.

A recent Brookings Institution report showed that the average commuter in the four large coastal metropolitan areas can reach only 6.5 percent of the jobs in a 45 minute transit commute. This is despite the fact that more than 90 percent of residents can walk to transit stops. Even when transit is close, you can't get there from here in most cases in any practical sense (Figure 5).

SB 375 did little to change this. For example, San Diego plans to spend more than 50 percent of its transportation money on transit over the next 40 years. This is 25 times transit's share of travel (which is less than 2 percent). Yet, planners forecast that all of this spending will still leave 7 out of 8 work and higher education trips inaccessible by transit in 30 minutes in 2050. Already 60 to 80 percent of work trips in California are completed by car in 45 minutes and the average travel time is about 25 minutes.

For years, planners have embraced the ideal of balancing jobs and housing, so that people would live near where they work, while minimizing travel distances. This philosophy strongly drives the new SB 375 regional plans. What these plans miss is that people choose where to work from the great array of opportunities available throughout the metropolitan area. These varied employment opportunities that are the very reason that large metropolitan areas exist, according to former World Bank principal planner Alain Bertaud.

People change jobs far more frequently than before and multiple earners in households are likely to work far apart. Similar intentions led to the development up to four decades ago of centers like Tensta in Stockholm, which ended up as concentrated low income areas (Photo). It California, such a concentration would do little to improve transit ridership, even low-income citizens are four to 10 times as likely use cars to get to work than to use transit.

Tensta Transit Oriented Development: Stockholm

All of this means more traffic congestion and more intense local air pollution, because higher population densities are associated with greater traffic congestion. Residents of the new denser housing would face negative health effects because there is more intense air pollution, especially along congested traffic corridors.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

Worst of all, California's radical housing and transportation strategies are unnecessary. The unbalanced and one-dimensional pursuit of an idealized sustainability damages both quality of life and the economy. This is exacerbated by other issues, especially the state's dysfunctional economic and tax policies. It is no wonder California is exporting so many people and jobs. California's urban planning regime under SB 375 is poised to make it worse.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”.

Net Domestic Migration: 2000-2009
Rank	Metropolitan Area	Net Domestic Migration	Compared to 2000 Population
1	Raleigh, NC	194,361	24.2%
2	Las Vegas, NV	311,463	22.4%
3	Charlotte, NC-SC	248,379	18.5%
4	Austin, TX	234,239	18.5%
5	Phoenix, AZ	543,409	16.6%
6	Riverside-San Bernardino, CA	469,093	14.3%
7	Orlando, FL	225,259	13.6%
8	Jacksonville, FL	126,766	11.3%
9	Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL	260,333	10.8%
10	San Antonio, TX	177,447	10.3%
11	Atlanta, GA	428,620	10.0%
12	Nashville, TN	123,199	9.4%
13	Sacramento, CA	141,117	7.8%
14	Richmond, VA	75,886	6.9%
15	Portland, OR-WA	121,957	6.3%
16	Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	317,062	6.1%
17	Houston, TX	243,567	5.1%
18	Indianapolis. IN	72,517	4.7%
19	Oklahoma City, OK	41,082	3.7%
20	Denver, CO	66,269	3.0%
21	Louisville, KY-IN	34,381	3.0%
22	Birmingham, AL	26,934	2.6%
23	Columbus, OH	34,204	2.1%
24	Kansas City, MO-KS	31,747	1.7%
25	Seattle, WA	40,741	1.3%
26	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	(19,731)	-0.7%
27	Memphis, TN-MS-AR	(8,583)	-0.7%
28	Hartford, CT	(9,349)	-0.8%
29	Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN	(17,648)	-0.9%
30	Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	(20,005)	-1.3%
31	Baltimore, MD	(36,407)	-1.4%
32	St. Louis, MO-IL	(43,750)	-1.6%
33	Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD	(115,890)	-2.0%
34	Pittsburgh, PA	(52,028)	-2.1%
35	Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV	(107,305)	-2.2%
36	Providence, RI-MA	(49,168)	-3.1%
37	Salt Lake City, UT	(34,428)	-3.5%
38	Rochester, NY	(40,219)	-3.9%
39	San Diego, CA	(126,860)	-4.5%
40	Buffalo, NY	(55,162)	-4.7%
41	Milwaukee,WI	(74,453)	-5.0%
42	Boston, MA-NH	(235,915)	-5.4%
43	Miami, FL	(287,135)	-5.7%
44	Chicago, IL-IN-WI	(561,670)	-6.2%
45	Cleveland, OH	(136,943)	-6.4%
46	Detroit, MI	(366,790)	-8.2%
47	San Francisco-Oakland, CA	(347,375)	-8.4%
48	New York, NY-NJ-PA	(1,962,055)	-10.7%
49	Los Angeles, CA	(1,365,120)	-11.0%
50	San Jose, CA	(240,012)	-13.8%
51	New Orleans, LA	(301,731)	-22.9%
Data from US Census Bureau

-----

Note: 2000 to 2010 data not available

Lead photo: Largely illegal to build housing under California Senate Bill 375 planning

Megalopolis and its Rivals

Richard Morrill — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:10:13 -0400

Jean Gottman in 1961 coined the term megalopolis (Megalopolis, the Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the Unites States) to describe the massive concentration of population extending from the core of New York north beyond Boston and south encompassing Washington DC. It has been widely studied and mapped, including by me. (Morrill, 2006, Classic Map Revisited, Professional Geographer). The concept has also been extended to describe and compare many other large conurbations around the world.

Maybe it’s time to see how the original has fared? And what has happened to other metropolitan complexes in the US, most notably Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and should we say Florida?

Table 1 summarizes the population of Megalopolis from 1950 to 2010 and Table 2 compares Megalopolis with other US mega-urban complexes. Megalopolis grew fastest in the 1950s and 1960s, with growth rates of 20 and 18.5 percent. The northeast has since been outpaced by the growth in other regions, but growth was still substantial in the last decade. Megalopolis added almost 3 million people, by 6.8 %, to reach an amazing 45.2 million.

Table 1: Growth of Megalopolis 1950-2010
Year	Population	Change	% Change
2010	45,357	2,983	7
2000	42,374	5,794	15.8
1990	36,580	2,215	6.4
1980	34,365	360	1.2
1970	34,005	5,436	18.5
1960	29,441	4,910	20
1950	24,534

From Table 2 I note four major subregions of Megalopolis: Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. New York is still the biggest player, but the locus of growth over time has shifted South. This reflects the increasing world importance of Washington, DC. New York’s almost 20 million may not surprise, but the fact that greater Boston has grown to almost 9.5 million may be more surprising. The Washington-Baltimore area grew by far the fastest at almost 15 percent (not much sign of shrinkage of government!). In contrast New York, Boston and Philadelphia’s growth was relatively paltry.

Table 2: Megalopolis and Its Rivals
Place	2010 Pop	2000 Pop	Change	% change

Megalopolis
New York	19,923	19,209	717	3.7
Boston	9,445	8,967	478	5.3
Philadelphia	8,415	76,781	773	9.5
Baltimore-Washingt	7,403	7,681	960	14.9
All	45,181	42,302	2,888	6.8

Chicago	10,817	10,305	512	5

Los Angeles	12,151	11,789	362	3.1
Central	903	857	46	5.4
North	928	634	294	46
East	2,884	2,105	475	37
South	3,543	3,210	337	10.4
All Los Angeles	20,404	18,599	1,810	9.8

San Francisco-Sacramento
San Francisco	7,330	6,946	384	5.5
Sacramento	3,171	2,604	572	22
All San Francisco-Sacramento	10,501	9,550	951	10

Florida
Miami	6,027	5,311	716	13.5
Tampa	4,818	3,894	974	25.3
Orlando	2,915	2,193	722	33
Jacksonville	1,483	1,191	2,242	24.5
All Florida	15,243	12,544	2,699	21.5

Greater Los Angeles is the second largest conurbation, with some 20.4 million, growing by 1.8 million, and 10 percent from 2000. In the table I distinguish between the core Los Angeles urbanized area and the satellite urbanized areas west, north, south and east. The core LA area grew by only 3 percent, while the spillover areas to the north and east had astonishing growth, at 46 and 37 percent over the decade. These include several places with a fairly long history, such as Riverside and San Bernardino, San Diego and Santa Barbara, but many are rapidly growing large suburbs and exurbs, a spillover of growth from the Los Angeles core. Much of the fastest growth has been in Mission Viejo, Murietta-Temecula, Indio, Lancaster, Santa Clarita and Thousand Oaks.

For greater San Francisco, I distinguish two subregions, the Bay area of San Francisco-San Jose (west) and Sacramento (central valley). Some might consider these totally distinct, but they have become one in a conurbation sense, as evidenced by commuting patterns. Many people live in the less costly Central Valley area but commute to the expensive Bay Area cities. Together, the conurbation is now 10.5 million, up 10 percent from 2000. The central valley (Sacramento) portion grew far more rapidly than San Francisco-San Jose (22 percent compared to 5.5 percent).

Compared to its rivals the Chicago conurbation has grown less rapidly but is still large, with a population of 10.8 million in 2010 , growing 512,000 (5 percent) since 2000. Chicago and Milwaukee are the well-known core cities, but there are also less well known components with far faster growth such as Round Lake-McHenry and West Bend, WI.

Florida

The more interesting and difficult conurbation to try to define is what might be called the Florida archipelago. Greater Miami has long been recognized as a conurbation, but I contend that virtually all the urbanized areas of the state are in effect a complex web of urban settlement, with little clear demarcation. This is in part a reflection of rapid and expansive growth. Nevertheless it makes sense to recognize four sub-regions, centered on Miami, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Orlando and Jacksonville.

Together these areas have reached an astonishing 15.2 million, up 2.7 million or 21.5 percent in one decade. Because settlement is spread across the state in such a web-like fashion with no single dominant center, they constitute a newish form of urban concentration. Besides the well-known centers such as Miami, Tampa-St. Petersburg ), Orlando and Jacksonville, there are many satellite cities, often quite large. These include North Port, Cape Coral encompassing older Ft. Meyers, Bonita Springs, Kissimmee, Palm Bay-Melbourne, Palm Coast-Daytona, and Port St. Lucie. An interesting but hard to answer question is how much of Florida’s phenomenal growth is a result of transfer of people and accumulated wealth from the North (and especially from the original Megalopolis).

The United States is a large and diverse country, with many other giant cities and a vast countryside. But it is important to realize the importance of these megalopolitan areas, with an aggregate population of 102.6 million, one third of the nation’s population.

What’s next? Look for the rise of now just somewhat smaller conurbations such as Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Seattle, Phoenix, and Denver. In terms of numbers and rates of growth Texas is a front runner, but its stars do not coalesce into a megalopolis, at least not yet. The belt of urban growth from Atlanta, through Greenville, SC, Charlotte to Raleigh-Durham is also a likely future conurbation candidate.

Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist).

California Recovery: No, It Is Not East vs. West

Bill Watkins — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:11:21 -0400

Every now and then, some East Coast based publication sends a reporter out to California to see how the West Coast's economy is doing. I think they write these things sitting at a restaurant patio overlooking the Pacific Ocean. That can be seductive, and lulled into a comfortable sense that all is well with the world, the reporter always gets it wrong.

The most recent example is this New York Times article. The second paragraph summarizes the article:

Communities all along the state’s coastline have largely bounced back from the recession, some even prospering with high-tech and export businesses growing and tourism coming back. At the same time, communities from just an hour’s drive inland and stretching all the way to the Nevada and Arizona borders struggle with stubbornly high unemployment and a persistent housing crisis. And the same pattern holds the length of the state, from Oregon to the Mexican frontier.

The next paragraph contains the mandatory quote from California's favorite economic Pollyanna, Steve Levy:

“This is really a tale of two economies,” said Stephen Levy, the director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “The coastal areas are either booming or at least doing well, and the areas that were devastated still have a long way to go. The places that existed just for housing are not going to come back anytime soon.”

The article is accompanied by a photo of a couple driving a red Ferrari convertible. The caption says "Driving through Newport Beach in Orange County. Communities along the coast have largely rebounded from the recession."

This is all nonsense.

There are two reasonable measures of recovery, jobs and real estate values. You can forget the real estate values measure. Values throughout California are down from pre-recession highs. They are down a lot. Only San Francisco and Marin counties, with median home prices down 27.7 percent and 32.3 percent, respectively, have seen net median home price declines of less than 40 percent. Monterey and Madera counties top the state in median home price declines, in excess of 67 percent.

So let's use jobs. An area has recovered if it has as many jobs today as it had at the beginning of the recession, December 2008.

We monitor 37 California MSAs. Combined they represent about 96 percent of California's population. By jobs, only one of California's larger MSAs has recovered, and that county does not fit the story. Not only is Kings County not on the ocean, it doesn't even border or have a naturally occurring year-round piece of water. Kings County, with 37,700 jobs, has about 900 more jobs than it had at the beginning of the recession. Still, Kings County's unemployment rate is 17 percent. Some recovery!

Orange County, which the New York Times article cites as largely rebounded, is down 127,800 jobs from its pre-recession high. That's an 8.5 percent decline. Los Angeles County is down 337,000 or 8.1 percent of jobs. The difference between unemployment rates, 8.0 percent in Orange County versus 12.1 percent in Los Angeles County, reflects different unemployment levels at the beginning of the recession and the high cost of living in Orange County. Most people can't afford to be unemployed long in Orange County. You either find a job, or you leave.

Here are the Counties that have lost, on net, less than 6 percent of jobs in the recession:

County/MSA	Job gain or Loss	percent change	Unemployment Rate
Imperial	-100	-0.2%	26.7%
Kings	900	2.4%	17.0%
Merced	-2,800	-4.8%	20.0%
Monterey	-5,600	-4.3%	15.3%
San Diego	-66,400	-5.1%	9.3%
San Francisco San Mateo Marin	-33,600	-3.4%	8.0% 7.3% 6.6%
Santa Clara San Benito	-19,900	-2.1%	8.8% 18.3%
San Luis Obispo	-5,900	-5.7%	8.7%
Santa Barbara	-8,200	-4.7%	8.9%
Santa Cruz	-3,800	-4.1%	13.6%
Solano	-6,100	-4.8%	10.9%

It's hard to find real recovery here. Three of the sub-10-percent-unemployment-rate counties (Marin, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara) are home to the wealthy, those who serve them, and a very small middle class. They have not had and will never have anything like robust economies. Think of them as big Leisure Villages for the terminally fashionable.

That leaves San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties as potential vigorous economies. Let's look at these regions' job creation last month. Unfortunately, the data are only available by MSA. San Diego County saw job growth of 1,300 jobs in February, an increase of about 0.11 percent. Santa Clara/San Benito saw job growth of about 4,100, or 0.46 percent. San Francisco/San Mateo/Marin saw growth of about 7,100 jobs, or 0.74 percent.

It looks to me like there is a small island of relative prosperity: San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties, but even these counties have not fully recovered. This island is indeed on the coast, but it represents just a small fraction of the coastal county population.

The idea that there is some sort of Coastal resurgence in California is just absurd. Certainly, the 593,800 still unemployed in Los Angeles --- by far the state’s most populous --- are not likely to agree that “The coastal areas are either booming or at least doing well..."

Bill Watkins is a professor at California Lutheran University and runs the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, which can be found at clucerf.org.

California coast photo by BigStockPhoto.com.

Public Pensions: Reform, Repair, Reboot

Rick Cole — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:38:02 -0500

Ill-informed chatter continues to dominate the airwaves when it comes to California public pensions. It’s a big, complex and critical issue for government at all levels in the Golden State. What makes debate so distorted is that public pensions actually differ from agency to agency — and advocates on the issue often talk past each other. Pension critics often point to outrageous abuses as if they were typical. On the other hand, pension defenders often cite current averages that understate long-term costs. All this fuels the typical partisan gridlock that Californians lament yet seem powerless to change in our state.

Credit Governor Jerry Brown for trying to overcome the polarization. That’s what most California voters want him to do, according to a new Field Poll, one of the leading opinion research firms in California. His 12-point pension package (unveiled in October) is successfully framing the debate — and enjoys encouraging support from voters. I agree with them. While Brown’s plan is far from perfect (as he acknowledged in presenting it as a way to build consensus) it sensibly tackles some of the most challenging areas where reform is needed. Among the key reforms he’s proposed:

Increasing the retirement age from 55 to 67 (with a lower age to be spelled out for public safety workers).
Replacing the current “defined benefit” pensions with a hybrid program that includes a defined benefit component, but also a 401(k)-like defined contribution component
Prohibiting retroactive pension increases.
Requiring all employees to contribute at least 50 percent of the cost of their pensions

These generally follow the surprisingly strong stand taken by the League of California Cities, which was based on recommendations from a committee of City Managers that I served on. Our work was grounded in four core principles:

Public retirement systems are useful in attracting and retaining high-performing public employees to design and deliver vital public services to local communities;
Sustainable and dependable employer-provided defined benefits plans for career employees, supplemented with other retirement options including personal savings, have proven successful over many decades in California;
Public pension costs should be shared by employees and employers (taxpayers) alike; and
Such programs should be portable across all public agencies to sustain a competent cadre of California public servants.

Our goal was to ensure the public pension system is reformed, instead of destroyed. Our reform package mirrors Brown’s calls for a hybrid system, raising retirement ages and increasing the portion of pension costs borne by employees. We also backed his bid to base retirements on the top three highest years of pay, curbing the abuses that often artificially raise final year salaries to “spike” pension pay-outs.

Typical of California’s other challenges, the issue faces long odds in the Legislature and uncertain fate at the ballot box. Partisan Democrats are leery of crossing unions by embracing Brown’s package. Partisan Republicans are demanding more far-reaching changes. Brown hopes to bridge the differences to win majority support by drawing on moderates in both parties. “He hasn’t riled up one side or the other,” noted Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo. “He’s managed to strike the middle ground on a very polarizing issue.” Unfortunately, moderates are hard to find in Sacramento.

That leaves the roll of the dice that comes with ballot initiatives. Since it takes millions to bankroll a successful ballot measure, few sensible measures get far without support from well-heeled interests.

In the eternal game of chicken that goes on in Sacramento, the Legislature keeps one eye on those special interests. About the only hope for reform is if a majority is worried that failure to act might spur an expensive ballot box war and an even worse outcome.

This issue might be the exception, however. Public outrage is real. So is the need for reform. In Ventura, we took an early lead on this issue, first with our Compensation Policies Task Force, then union contracts that established a lower benefit and later retirement age for new hires and increased contributions from all employees of at least 4.5% of their pay. But real reform to level the playing field can only come at the State level.

Before this issue devolves into another ballot box catastrophe that radically oversimplifies the issues to a “yes” or “no” choice on an initiative bankrolled by special interests, legislators in both parties need to come together on sensible reform. The Governor has put such a program on their desks. Reasonable people can differ on the details. But only unreasonable people want all-or-nothing victories. This is an issue that both sides should be willing to compromise on. The only way that will happen is if voters push both parties toward sensible compromise in the year ahead!

Photo by Randy Bayne

Rick Cole is city manager of Ventura, California, and recipient of the Municipal Management Association of Southern California's Excellence in Government Award. He can be reached at RCole@ci.ventura.ca.us

The Best Cities For Technology Jobs

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:59:06 -0500

During tough economic times, technology is often seen as the one bright spot. In the U.S. this past year technology jobs outpaced the overall rate of new employment nearly four times. But if you’re looking for a tech job, you may want to consider searching outside of Silicon Valley. Though the Valley may still be the big enchilada in terms of venture capital and innovation, it hasn’t consistently generated new tech employment.

Take, for example, Seattle. Out of the 51 largest metro areas in the U.S., the Valley’s longtime tech rival has emerged as our No. 1 region for high-tech growth, based on long- and short-term job numbers. Built on a base of such tech powerhouses as Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing, Seattle has enjoyed the steadiest and most sustained tech growth over the past decade. It is followed by Baltimore (No. 2), Columbus, Ohio (No. 3), Raleigh, N.C. (No. 4) and Salt Lake City, Utah (No. 5).

To determine the best cities for high-tech jobs, we looked at the latest high-tech employment data collected by EMSI, an economic modeling firm. The Praxis Strategy Group‘s Mark Schill charted those areas that have gained the most high-tech manufacturing, software and services jobs over the past 10 years, equally weighting the last five years and the last two. We also included measures of concentration of tech employment in order to make sure we were not giving too much credence to relatively insignificant tech regions. Our definition of high tech industries is based on the one used by TechAmerica, the industry’s largest trade association.

Despite the Valley’s remarkable concentration of tech jobs — roughly six times the national average — it ranked a modest No. 17 in our survey. This relatively low ranking reflects the little known fact that, even with the recent last dot-com craze sparking over 5% growth over the past two years, the Valley remains the “biggest loser” among the nation’s tech regions, surrendering roughly one quarter of its high -tech jobs — about 80,000 — in the past decade. Only New York City (No. 44) lost more tech jobs during that time.

In contrast to this pattern of volatility, our top performers have managed to gain jobs steadily in the past decade — and have continued to add new ones in the last two years. In addition to our top five, the only other regions to claim overall tech gains in the last 10 years are Jacksonville, Fla. (No. 6), Washington, D.C. (No. 7), San Bernardino-Riverside, Calif. (No. 9), San Diego, Calif. (No. 9), Indianapolis (No. 11) and Orlando, Fla. (No. 24).

So what accounts for high-tech success, and where will jobs most likely grow in the next decade? Certainly being home to a major research university makes a big difference. Seattle, Columbus, Raleigh and Salt Lake City all boast major educational and research assets.

But it’s one thing to produce scientists and engineers; it’s another to generate employment for them over the long term. Clearly for the San Jose metropolitan region (which is home to Stanford) and the much-hyped No. 29 San Francisco area (home to the University of California Medical Center) academic excellence has not translated into steady growth in tech jobs. Over the past decade the Bay Area has given up 40,000 jobs, or 19% of its tech workforce, including a loss of nearly 6,000 in software publishing.

Or look at the Boston region (ranked No. 22), which arguably boasts the most impressive concentration of research universities in the country. The region did add jobs in research and computer programming, but these were not enough to counter huge losses in telecommunications and electronic component manufacturing. Over the past decade, greater Beantown has given up 18% of its tech jobs, or more than 45,000 positions.

One possible explanation may lie in costs, including very high housing prices, onerous taxes and a draconian regulatory environment. In tech, company headquarters may remain in the Valley, close to other headquarters and venture firms, but new jobs are often sent either out of the country or to more business friendly regions.

Just look at the flow of jobs from Bay Area-based companies to places like the Salt Lake area. In the past two years Valley companies such as Twitter, Adobe, eBay, Electronic Arts and Oracle have all expanded into Utah. This region has many appealing assets for Bay Area companies and workers. Salt Lake City is easily accessible by air from California, possesses a well- educated workforce, has reasonable housing costs and offers world-class skiing and other outdoor activities.

Another huge advantage appears to be closeness to the federal government, which expends hundreds of billions on tech products both hardware and software. This explains why Baltimore, primarily its suburbs, and the D.C. metro area have enjoyed steady tech growth and, under most foreseeable scenarios, likely will continue to do so in the coming years. Both regions have seen large gains in technology services industries, particularly programming, systems design, research, and engineering.

Yet even business climate, while important, may not be enough to drive tech job growth. Texas ranks highly in most business surveys, including our own, but it did not fare so well in this one. Indeed No. 32 Austin, often thought as the most likely candidate for the next Silicon Valley, lost over 19% of its high-tech jobs over the past decade, including more than 17,000 jobs in semiconductor, computer and circuit board manufacturing. No. 18 Houston did far better, although it has also lost 6% of its tech jobs over the same period due to the cutbacks in the engineering service, a big sector there. Even more shocking: No. 46 Dallas, generally a job-creating dynamo, has seen roughly a quarter of its high-tech jobs go away, due primarily to losses in telecommunications carriers and in manufacturing of communications equipment and electronics.

How about other potential up and comers for the coming decade? Two potentially big and somewhat surprising winners. The first: Detroit. Though the Motor City area lost 20% of its tech jobs in the past decade (ranking 40th on our list), it still boasts one of the nation’s largest concentrations of tech workers, nearly 50% above the national average. In the past two years, the region has experienced a solid 7.7% increase in technology jobs, the second highest rate of any metro area.

The Motor City region seems to have some real high-tech mojo. According to the website Dice.com, Detroit has led the nation with the fastest growth in technology job offerings since February — at 101%. This can be traced to the rejuvenated auto industry, which is increasingly dependent on high-tech skills. Manufacturing is increasingly prodigious driver of tech jobs; games and dot-coms are not the only path to technical employment growth. This could mean good news for other Rust Belt cities, such as No. 28 Cincinatti or No. 38 Cleveland, as well as our Midwest standout, Columbus, which could benefit from growth sparked by the local natural gas boom.

Another potential standout is No. 8 New Orleans, whose tech base remains relatively small but has expanded its tech workforce nearly 10% since 2009 — the highest rate of any of the regions studied. With low costs, a friendly business climate and world-class urban amenities, the Crescent City could emerge as a real player, aided by the growing prominence of research and development around Tulane University. There has also been a recent growing presence of the video game industry in the city.

Looking forward, however, it makes sense to be cautious about where tech is heading. By its nature, this is a protean industry; the mix of jobs and favored locales tend to change. If the current boom in social media continues, for example, the Bay Area could recover more of its lost jobs and further extend its primacy. Similarly a surge in manufacturing and energy-related technology could be a boon to tech in Houston, Dallas as well as New Orleans. But based on both historic and recent trends, the surest best for future growth still stands with our top five winners, led by the rain-drenched, but prospering Seattle region.

Best Places for High Tech Growth
Ranking of 2, 5, and 10 year growth, industry concentration, and 5 and 10 year growth momentum
Rank	Metropolitan Area	Rank Score
1	Seattle	82.2
2	Baltimore	75.7
3	Columbus	67.9
4	Raleigh	63.2
5	Salt Lake City	60.0
6	Jacksonville	59.2
7	Washington, DC	58.9
8	New Orleans	58.8
9	Riverside-San Bernardino	58.2
10	San Diego	56.1
11	Indianapolis	55.9
12	Buffalo	55.8
13	San Antonio	54.0
14	Charlotte	53.5
15	St. Louis	51.6
16	Pittsburgh	50.8
17	San Jose	50.5
18	Houston	50.2
19	Hartford	50.0
20	Nashville	49.6
21	Providence	49.2
22	Boston	48.3
23	Minneapolis-St. Paul	48.3
24	Orlando	48.1
25	Portland	48.1
26	Philadelphia	47.4
27	Louisville	47.2
28	Cincinnati	46.6
29	San Francisco	46.6
30	Denver	46.4
31	Richmond	45.6
32	Austin	45.1
33	Atlanta	44.6
34	Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News	42.4
35	Memphis	42.2
36	Milwaukee	41.5
37	Rochester	41.2
38	Cleveland	40.9
39	Phoenix	38.5
40	Detroit	37.7
41	Tampa	37.5
42	Miami	33.2
43	Sacramento	32.1
44	New York	31.4
45	Las Vegas	31.2
46	Dallas-Fort Worth	31.0
47	Chicago	30.2
48	Los Angeles	29.5
49	Oklahoma City	26.7
50	Birmingham	23.5
51	Kansas City	21.6
Rankings measure employment in 45 high technology manufacturing, services, and software industry sectors.

This piece first appeared at Forbes.com.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and an adjunct fellow of the Legatum Institute in London. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.

Mark Schill of Praxis Strategy Group perfomed the economic analysis for this piece.

Seattle photo courtesy of BigStockPhoto.com.

California’s Jobs Engine Broke Down Well Before the Financial Crisis

Wendell Cox — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:40:37 -0500

Everybody knows that California’s economy has struggled mightily since the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession. The state’s current unemployment rate, 12.1 percent, is a full 3 percentage points above the national rate. Liberal pundits and politicians tend to blame this dismal performance entirely on the Great Recession; as Jerry Brown put it while campaigning (successfully) for governor last year, “I’ve seen recessions. They come, they go. California always comes back.”

But a study commissioned by City Journal using the National Establishment Time Series database, which has tracked job creation and migration from 1992 through 2008 (so far) in a way that government statistics can’t, reveals the disturbing truth. California’s economy during the second half of that period—2000 through 2008—was far less vibrant and diverse than it had been during the first. Well before the crisis struck, then, the Golden State was setting itself up for a big fall.

One of the starkest signs of California’s malaise during the first decade of the twenty-first century was its changing job dynamics. Even before the downturn, California had stopped attracting new business investment, whether from within the state or from without.

Economists usually see business start-ups as the most important long-term source of job growth, and California has long had a reputation for nurturing new companies—most famously, in Silicon Valley. As Chart 1 shows, however, this dynamism utterly vanished in the 2000s. From 1992 to 2000, California saw a net gain of 776,500 jobs from start-ups and closures; that is, the state added that many more jobs from start-ups than it lost to closures. But during the first eight years of the new millennium, California had a net loss of 262,200 jobs from start-ups and closures. The difference between the two periods is an astounding 1 million net jobs.

Between 2000 and 2008, California also suffered net job losses of 79,600 to the migration of businesses among states—worse than the net 73,800 jobs that it lost from 1992 through 2000. The leading destination was Texas, with Oregon and North Carolina running second and third (see Chart 2). California managed to add jobs only through the expansion of existing businesses, and even that was at a considerably lower rate than before.

Another dark sign, largely unnoticed at the time: California’s major cities became invalids in the 2000s. Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area had been the engines of California’s economic growth for at least a century. Since World War II, the L.A. metropolitan area, which includes Orange County, has added more people than all but two states (apart from California): Florida and Texas. The Bay Area, which includes the San Francisco and the San Jose metro areas, has been the core of American job growth in information technology and financial services, with San Jose’s Silicon Valley serving as the world’s incubator of information-age technology. During the 1992–2000 period, the L.A. and San Francisco Bay areas added more than 1.1 million new jobs—about half the entire state total. But between 2000 and 2008, as Chart 3 indicates, California’s two big metro areas produced fewer than 70,000 new jobs—a nearly 95 percent drop and a mere 6 percent of job creation in the state. This was a collapse of historic proportions.

Not only did California in the 2000s suffer anemic job growth; the new jobs paid substantially less than before. Chart 4 reveals the sad reversal. From 2000 to 2008, California had a net job loss of more than 270,000 in industries with an average wage higher than the private-sector state average. That marked a turnaround of nearly 1.2 million net jobs from the 1992–2000 period, when 908,900 net jobs were created in above-average-wage industries. Further, during the earlier period, more than 707,000 net jobs were created in the very highest-wage industries—those paying over 150 percent of the private-sector average.

Chart 5, which indicates job growth or decline in selected industries, again suggests that a lopsided amount of California’s economic growth in the 2000s was in below-average-wage fields. It included nearly 590,000 net jobs in “administration and support”—clerical and janitorial jobs, for example, as well as positions in temporary-help services, travel agencies, telemarketing and telephone call centers, and so on. The largest losses in the state during the 2000s were in manufacturing, which traditionally provided above-average wages. After adding a net 64,900 manufacturing jobs from 1992 to 2000, California hemorrhaged a net 403,800 from 2000 to 2008. But information jobs also went into negative territory, while professional, scientific, and technical-services employment experienced far lower growth than in the previous decade.

The chart also shows that California’s growth in the 2000s, such as it was, took place disproportionately in sectors that rode the housing bubble. In fact, 35 percent of the net new jobs in the state were created in construction and real estate. All those jobs have vaporized since 2008, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. They are unlikely to come back any time soon.

These are troubling numbers. Fewer jobs and lower wages do not a robust economy make. A continuation of this trend, even if California’s recession-battered condition improves, would result in a far more unequal economy, shrunken tax revenues, and a likely increase in state public assistance—all at a time when officials are struggling with massive deficits.

A final indicator of California’s growing economic weakness during the 2000–2008 period is that the average size of firms headquartered in the state shrank dramatically. As Chart 6 shows, California had a huge increase over the 1992–2000 period in the number of jobs added by companies employing just a single person or between two and nine people, even as larger firms cut hundreds of thousands of jobs. Many of the single-employee companies may simply be struggling consultancies: if they were doing better, they’d likely have to start hiring at least a few people. While start-ups are indeed crucial to economic growth, small companies are especially vulnerable to economic downturns and often feel the brunt of taxes and regulations more acutely than larger firms do. The awful job numbers for the bigger companies—including a net loss of nearly 450,000 positions for firms with 500 or more employees—suggest the toxicity of California’s business climate. After all, bigger firms have the resources to settle and expand in other locales; in the 2000s, they clearly wanted nothing to do with the Golden State.

What is behind California’s shocking decline—its snuffed-out start-ups, unproductive big cities, poorer jobs, and tinier, weaker, or fleeing companies—during the 2000–2008 period? Steven Malanga’s “Cali to Business: Get Out!” identifies the major villains: suffocating regulations, inflated business taxes and fees, a lawsuit-friendly legal environment, and a political class uninterested in business concerns, if not downright hostile to them. One could add to this list the state’s extraordinarily high cost of living, with housing prices particularly onerous, having skyrocketed in the major metropolitan areas before the downturn—thanks, the research suggests, to overzealous land-use regulation.

One thing is for sure: California will never regain its previous prosperity if it leaves these problems unaddressed. Its profound economic woes aren’t just the result of the Great Recession.

This piece originally appeared in City Journal. City Journal thanks the Hertog/Simon Fund for Policy Analysis for its generous support of this issue’s California jobs package.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

Photo by Altus via Flickr

Back to the City?

Aaron M. Renn — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:38:34 -0400

The 2010 Census results were mostly bleak for cities, especially for those who believed the inflated hype about the resurgence of the city at the expense of the suburbs. Despite claims of an urban renaissance, the 2000s actually turned out to be worse than the 1990s for central cities. The one bright spot was downtowns, which showed strong gains, albeit from a low base. The resurgence of the city story seemed largely fueled by intra-census estimates by the government that proved to be wildly inflated when the actual 2010 count was performed.

But beyond the headline numbers, there is intriguing evidence of a shift in intra-regional population dynamics in the migration numbers. The Internal Revenue Service uses tax return data to track movements of people around the country on a county-to-county and state-to-state basis. These can be used to look at movements of people within a metro area.

Because this data is at the county level, it does not map directly to what we might think of as the “urban core” as most counties that are home to central cities contain large suburban areas as well. There are also areas inside many central cities themselves that are suburban in their built form.

However, there are a limited number of cities that have combined city-county definitions that approximate the urban core. Looking at a few of these – New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC – we see that over the 2000s out-migration from the core to the suburban counties was relatively flat or even declined late in the decade as general mobility declined in the Great Recession. In contrast, migration from the suburban counties to the core stayed flat or actually increased, even late in the decade when again overall migration declined nationally.

It should be stressed that the overall trend is still that of net out-migration from the core to the suburbs. But in searching for any potential inflection point, changes in the dynamics are clearly of interest.

New York City

First let us look at New York City. The city proper consists of five boroughs, each of which is a separate county. Treating the city as a whole as the core reveals these migration trends during the 2000s:

Note: Core defined as the five boroughs of New York City

This chart renders migration as an index, to show changes in in- and out-migration on the same scale. This should not be confused with the total number of people moving, which still shows overall net out-migration, though the trend lines show the same dynamic as above:

Note: Core defined as the five boroughs of New York City

Philadelphia

Perhaps the most dramatic shift in these four cities was in Philadelphia, where the central city actually gained population for the first time since 1950.

Here are the raw migration numbers, which again show net out-migration, but a distinct shift over the decade.

San Francisco

The Bay Area has been divided into two metro areas by the government, San Francisco and San Jose. Therefore, an intra-regional migration analysis looking at San Francisco alone will miss certain migration within the broader Bay Area. With that caveat in mind, we see again the same trend, albeit somewhat less pronounced:

And here are the total migrants:

Washington, DC

Due to its very nature as a government town, Washington’s migration patterns differ from the many other cities. However, it has still experienced the same suburbanization phenomenon as the rest of America, and the same changes in intra-regional migration dynamics as the other cities highlighted here, though we see the shift beginning only in mid-decade:

And the raw values:

Conclusion

Given the overblown triumphalist rhetoric about the urban core that ultimately hasn’t been backed up by the data, we should be cautious about reading too much into this. Again, net migration remains outward towards the suburbs and away from denser cities to smaller, generally less dense ones (from Chicago to Indianapolis or New York to Raleigh). Overall city population figures were disappointing. And the housing crash and the Great Recession have clearly wreaked havoc with migration patterns on a national level.

Still, these are clearly figures that should inspire some at least small-scale optimism in urban advocates. There has clearly been a shift affecting the net migration in these cities. And the same pattern is visible, though less easily attributable to just the urban core, in a large number of other metros around the country. In particular, the fact the in-migration from the suburbs to the core held steady or even increased is a sign of some urban health.

Back to the city as a mass movement? Not yet. But it’s certainly an improvement. These intra-regional migration statistics are key figures to keep an eye on as we look for any sign of a true inflection point in the overall population trends for America’s urban centers. The whole pattern could also shift again --- in one direction or the other --- as the economy, albeit slowly, comes back to life and people once again get back into the housing market.

Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile, where this piece originally appeared. Telestrian was used to analyze data and to create charts for this piece.

Chicago photo by Storm Crypt / Flickr

Major Metropolitan Commuting Trends: 2000-2010

Wendell Cox — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:38:33 -0400

As we indicated in the last article, solo automobile commuting reached an all time record in the United States in 2010, increasing by 7.8 million commuters. At the same time, huge losses were sustained by carpooling, while the largest gain was in working at home, which includes telecommuting. Transit and bicycling also added commuters. This continues many of the basic trends toward more personalized employment access that we have seen since 1960.

Solo Automobile Commuting: Among the nation’s 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1 million population, 38 experienced increases in solo automobile commuting between 2000 and 2010. More than 80% of commuting is by solo automobile in 25 of the 51 largest metropolitan areas, with the highest rates being in Birmingham, Detroit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Kansas City. Another 28 metropolitan areas have single automobile commute shares of between 70% and 80%, with Boston, Washington and San Francisco between 60% and 70%. As would be expected, the lowest solo automobile commute share was in New York at 51%.

Car Pools: The national data also showed a nearly 2.4 million loss in carpool use. The losses were pervasive, occurring in all 51 metropolitan areas. Riverside-San Bernardino had the highest carpool market share at just under 15%, while all other major metropolitan areas were below 12%. Car pools have been losing market share for decades.

Work at Home (Includes Telecommuting): In what we have previously labeled as The Decade of the Telecommute, the nation experienced a 1.7 million increase in working at home over the past decade. The market share gains in working at home were as pervasive as the losses in carpooling, with all 51 metropolitan areas registering increases. Austin had the strongest work-at-home market share, at 7.3%, followed by Portland at 6.5%, San Francisco and Denver at 6.2%, Phoenix at 6.0%, with San Diego, Raleigh and Atlanta above 5.5%. Overall, working at home exceeded transit commuting in 37 major metropolitan areas out of 51 in 2010, up from 27 in 2000. Three metropolitan areas had work at home market shares of less than 3%, including Memphis, New Orleans and last place Buffalo.

Transit: As noted before, transit enjoyed its first 10 year gain since journey to work data was first collected by the Census Bureau 50 years ago. Overall, transit added 900,000 daily commuters, roughly half that for telecommuters. Transit's market share increased in 25 of the top 51 metropolitan areas. It is also notable that in a number of the metropolitan areas with the largest expenditures for new rail systems, there were either losses or commuting gains were concentrated in the more flexible bus services.

New York: As so often has been the case, transit was largely a "New York story." More than one half of the new transit commuters were in the New York metropolitan area, more than 450,000 of the 900,000 increase. New York boasts by far the most extensive transit system in the nation, which serves the second largest central business district in the world and by far the nation’s most important. In 2000, New York had a transit work trip market share of 27.4%. By 2010, New York's transit work trip market share had risen to 30.7%, more than double that of any other metropolitan area. More than 70% of the new transit commuters in the New York area were on its subway (Metro), suburban rail and light rail systems.

San Francisco: San Francisco retained its position as the second strongest transit metropolitan area, with a 14.6% work trip market share in 2010. This is up from 13.8% in 2000.

Washington: Washington was the third strongest transit commuting market, with a 14.0% work trip market share in 2010. This modest increase from 13.4% nonetheless produced the second largest ridership increase in the nation, at more than 130,000. This reflects the strength of Washington's job market over the decade. Rail ridership accounted for 53% of this increase, while buses accounted for the other 47%.

Boston and Chicago: Boston passed Chicago to become the fourth strongest transit market, at 11.8% in 2010. This is an increase from 11.2% in 2000. Chicago ranked fifth at 11.2%, a small reduction from the 11.3% in 2000.

Los Angeles: Los Angeles had the third largest increase in transit commuting, adding 60,000 daily transit commuters. Approximately 75% of these new commuters were attracted by the region's extensive bus system as opposed to its very expensive but limited rail system. This increase placed Los Angeles in a virtual tie with Portland, with a work trip market share of 6.2%.

Portland: Portland continued to experience its now 30 year transit market share erosion, despite having added three new light rail lines between 2000 and 2010. Portland's transit work trip market share fell to 6.2% from 6.3% and now trails the work at home and telecommute market share of 6.5%.

Seattle:Seattle added 29,000 new transit commuters for the fourth strongest growth in the nation. Approximately 75% of the new commuters were on the metropolitan area's bus system.

Atlanta: Atlanta, which is home to the third largest postwar Metro system in the nation (MARTA) gained nearly 9000 new transit commuters, all of them on the bus, while losing more than 3000 rail commuters.

Miami:Miami added 16,000 new transit commuters, though more than 90% were attracted to the bus system, rather than the rail services.

Rail and Bus in Texas: Other metropolitan areas with new and expanded rail systems did not fare as well. In Dallas-Fort Worth, the light rail system was more than doubled in length, yet there was a reduction of more than 3000 daily transit commuters. The transit work trip market share in Dallas-Fort Worth dropped from 1.8% to 1.4%, approximately one quarter lower than that of any other major metropolitan area with a new light rail or Metro system. Houston, which built its first light rail line during the period, lost nearly 3000 daily transit commuters, with its transit work trip market share dropping by nearly one-third, from 3.2% to 2.3%. By contrast, the third largest metropolitan area in Texas, San Antonio, lost no commuters from its bus only transit system.

Other New Rail Metropolitan Areas: Other metropolitan areas with new rail systems experienced modest ridership increases, with 60 to 70 percent of the increase on the bus systems in Charlotte, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Phoenix. Salt Lake City experienced a small decline in transit commuting.

Below 1 Percent: Four metropolitan areas had transit work trip market shares of less than 1%, including Indianapolis, Raleigh, Birmingham and last place Oklahoma City, with a market share of 0.4%.

Bicycles: It was also a good decade for bicycle commuting, with the national increase of nearly 250,000. The bicycle commuting market share rose in 45 of the 51 largest metropolitan areas. Portland had the highest bicycle market share at 2.2%, with three other metropolitan areas at 1.5% or above, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose. The lowest bicycle commuting market shares were in San Antonio, Cincinnati, Birmingham and Memphis, all at 0.1 percent.

Walking: There was little change in walking among the nations major metropolitan areas. The largest shares were in New York (5.9%) and Boston (5.4%), with the smallest shares in Raleigh (1.1%), Orlando (1.1%) and Birmingham (1.0%).

Drifting Away from Shared Commuting: In some ways, the 2000s were different than previous decades, especially with the reversals in bicycle commuting and transit. However, overall, shared ride commuting (transit and car pools) lost share due to the precipitous decline in car pooling. Longer term share increase trends also continued in single-occupant automobile commuting and working at home. The bottom line: personal employment access (personal mobility plus working at home) continues to carve away at the smallish share still held by shared commuting.

-------------

Data: The 2000 and 2010 commuting market shares by mode are shown in Tables 1 and 2 (2010 metropolitan area boundaries).

------------

Table 1
Work Trip Market Share: 2000
Metropolitan Areas Over 1,000,000 Population in 2010

Metropolitan Area	Car, Truck or Van: Alone	Car/Van Pool	Transit	Bicycle	Walk	Other	Work at Home (Includes Telecommute)

Atlanta	77.0%	13.7%	3.4%	0.1%	1.3%	1.1%	3.5%
Austin	76.5%	13.7%	2.5%	0.6%	2.1%	1.1%	3.6%
Baltimore	75.5%	11.5%	5.9%	0.2%	2.9%	0.9%	3.2%
Birmingham	83.3%	12.0%	0.7%	0.1%	1.2%	0.7%	2.1%
Boston	71.1%	8.6%	11.2%	0.5%	4.6%	0.8%	3.3%
Buffalo	81.7%	9.4%	3.3%	0.2%	2.7%	0.5%	2.1%
Charlotte	80.7%	12.8%	1.4%	0.1%	1.2%	0.8%	2.9%
Chicago	70.4%	11.0%	11.3%	0.3%	3.1%	1.0%	2.9%
Cincinnati	81.3%	10.1%	2.8%	0.1%	2.3%	0.6%	2.7%
Cleveland	81.3%	8.8%	4.1%	0.2%	2.2%	0.6%	2.7%
Columbus	82.1%	9.7%	2.1%	0.2%	2.3%	0.6%	3.0%
Dallas-Fort Worth	78.7%	13.9%	1.8%	0.1%	1.5%	1.0%	3.0%
Denver	76.0%	11.7%	4.4%	0.4%	2.1%	0.8%	4.6%
Detroit	84.7%	9.2%	1.7%	0.1%	1.4%	0.6%	2.2%
Hartford	82.6%	8.7%	2.8%	0.2%	2.5%	0.6%	2.6%
Houston	77.0%	14.3%	3.2%	0.3%	1.6%	1.1%	2.5%
Indianapolis	82.8%	10.4%	1.3%	0.2%	1.7%	0.7%	3.0%
Jacksonville	80.3%	12.6%	1.3%	0.5%	1.7%	1.4%	2.3%
Kansas City	82.6%	10.6%	1.2%	0.1%	1.4%	0.7%	3.5%
Las Vegas	74.6%	14.7%	4.4%	0.5%	2.3%	1.3%	2.3%
Los Angeles	71.9%	14.6%	5.6%	0.7%	2.7%	1.0%	3.5%
Louisville	81.8%	11.2%	2.0%	0.2%	1.7%	0.7%	2.5%
Memphis	80.7%	13.3%	1.6%	0.1%	1.3%	0.9%	2.2%
Miami-West Palm Beach	77.3%	13.1%	3.2%	0.5%	1.7%	1.2%	3.1%
Milwaukee	79.7%	9.9%	4.2%	0.2%	2.9%	0.6%	2.6%
Minneapolis-St. Paul	78.3%	10.0%	4.4%	0.4%	2.4%	0.6%	3.8%
Nashville	80.5%	13.1%	0.8%	0.1%	1.5%	0.8%	3.2%
New Orleans	72.9%	14.6%	5.4%	0.6%	2.7%	1.3%	2.4%
New York	52.7%	9.3%	27.4%	0.3%	6.0%	1.5%	2.9%
Oklahoma City	81.6%	12.1%	0.5%	0.2%	1.7%	1.0%	2.9%
Orlando	80.6%	12.1%	1.6%	0.4%	1.3%	1.1%	2.9%
Philadelphia	73.1%	10.2%	8.9%	0.3%	3.9%	0.7%	2.9%
Phoenix	74.6%	15.3%	1.9%	0.9%	2.1%	1.4%	3.7%
Pittsburgh	77.5%	9.8%	5.9%	0.1%	3.6%	0.6%	2.5%
Portland	73.1%	11.5%	6.3%	0.8%	2.9%	0.8%	4.6%
Providence	80.7%	10.5%	2.4%	0.2%	3.3%	0.8%	2.2%
Raleigh	80.8%	12.1%	0.9%	0.2%	1.6%	1.0%	3.5%
Richmond	81.7%	10.9%	1.9%	0.2%	1.8%	0.8%	2.7%
Riverside-San Bernardino	73.5%	17.6%	1.6%	0.5%	2.2%	1.2%	3.5%
Rochester	81.7%	9.1%	2.0%	0.2%	3.5%	0.6%	2.9%
Sacramento	75.3%	13.5%	2.7%	1.4%	2.2%	0.9%	4.0%
Salt Lake City	76.0%	13.4%	3.3%	0.5%	2.1%	0.7%	4.0%
San Antonio	76.2%	14.9%	2.7%	0.1%	2.4%	1.2%	2.6%
San Diego	73.9%	13.0%	3.3%	0.6%	3.4%	1.4%	4.4%
San Francisco-Oakland	62.8%	12.7%	13.8%	1.1%	3.9%	1.3%	4.3%
San Jose	77.2%	12.4%	3.4%	1.2%	1.8%	0.9%	3.1%
Seattle	71.6%	12.7%	7.0%	0.6%	3.1%	0.8%	4.2%
St. Louis	82.5%	10.0%	2.2%	0.1%	1.7%	0.6%	2.9%
Tampa-St. Petersburg	79.7%	12.4%	1.3%	0.6%	1.7%	1.2%	3.1%
Virginia Beach-Norfolk	78.8%	12.1%	1.7%	0.3%	2.7%	1.6%	2.7%
Washington	67.5%	13.4%	11.2%	0.3%	3.0%	0.9%	3.7%
Top 51 Metropolitan Areas	73.2%	11.8%	7.5%	0.4%	2.9%	1.0%	3.2%

Calculated from Census Bureau data
Metropolitan areas as defined in 2010

Table 2
Work Trip Market Share: 2010
Metropolitan Areas Over 1,000,000 Population in 2010

	Car, Truck or Van: Alone	Car/Van Pool	Transit	Bicycle	Walk	Other	Work at Home (Includes Telecommute)

Atlanta	77.6%	10.3%	3.4%	0.2%	1.3%	1.5%	5.8%
Austin	75.6%	10.5%	2.3%	0.6%	1.9%	1.8%	7.3%
Baltimore	76.5%	9.6%	6.0%	0.2%	2.6%	1.0%	4.1%
Birmingham	84.8%	10.0%	0.6%	0.1%	1.0%	0.5%	3.1%
Boston	69.5%	7.5%	11.8%	0.7%	5.4%	0.8%	4.4%
Buffalo	82.0%	7.5%	3.8%	0.3%	3.0%	1.1%	2.3%
Charlotte	80.6%	10.0%	2.0%	0.2%	1.5%	0.6%	5.1%
Chicago	71.0%	8.5%	11.2%	0.6%	3.1%	1.0%	4.5%
Cincinnati	84.1%	7.9%	2.1%	0.1%	2.0%	0.4%	3.4%
Cleveland	82.3%	7.2%	3.6%	0.3%	2.2%	0.7%	3.7%
Columbus	82.4%	8.0%	1.7%	0.5%	2.3%	0.6%	4.6%
Dallas-Fort Worth	81.3%	10.1%	1.4%	0.2%	1.2%	1.4%	4.6%
Denver	76.3%	9.6%	4.1%	0.8%	1.9%	1.1%	6.2%
Detroit	84.6%	8.5%	1.5%	0.2%	1.4%	0.8%	3.0%
Hartford	81.5%	7.9%	3.1%	0.3%	3.0%	1.0%	3.2%
Houston	79.4%	11.5%	2.3%	0.3%	1.4%	1.7%	3.4%
Indianapolis	83.9%	8.2%	0.9%	0.3%	1.5%	0.8%	4.3%
Jacksonville	82.5%	8.9%	1.0%	0.5%	1.4%	1.2%	4.5%
Kansas City	83.7%	8.5%	1.2%	0.2%	1.4%	0.9%	4.1%
Las Vegas	78.9%	10.5%	3.8%	0.6%	1.6%	1.3%	3.3%
Los Angeles	73.5%	10.7%	6.2%	0.9%	2.6%	1.2%	5.0%
Louisville	83.5%	9.2%	1.9%	0.2%	1.3%	0.9%	3.1%
Memphis	83.6%	10.3%	1.0%	0.1%	1.5%	0.9%	2.7%
Miami-West Palm Beach	78.8%	9.4%	3.5%	0.6%	2.0%	1.4%	4.4%
Milwaukee	80.1%	9.3%	3.4%	0.5%	2.6%	0.7%	3.4%
Minneapolis-St. Paul	78.3%	7.9%	4.8%	0.7%	2.4%	0.9%	4.9%
Nashville	81.3%	10.7%	1.0%	0.2%	1.2%	1.0%	4.6%
New Orleans	78.1%	11.0%	3.2%	0.7%	2.6%	1.9%	2.5%
New York	50.5%	6.8%	30.7%	0.5%	5.9%	1.6%	3.9%
Oklahoma City	82.7%	10.6%	0.5%	0.3%	1.6%	1.0%	3.4%
Orlando	82.1%	9.2%	1.6%	0.3%	1.1%	1.4%	4.4%
Philadelphia	73.9%	8.0%	9.6%	0.5%	3.5%	0.8%	3.8%
Phoenix	76.7%	11.8%	2.0%	0.6%	1.5%	1.5%	6.0%
Pittsburgh	77.0%	8.9%	5.6%	0.3%	3.7%	0.9%	3.5%
Portland	72.1%	8.8%	6.2%	2.2%	3.3%	0.9%	6.5%
Providence	81.3%	8.3%	2.6%	0.5%	3.2%	0.9%	3.2%
Raleigh	82.0%	8.7%	0.9%	0.3%	1.1%	1.1%	5.9%
Richmond	81.2%	10.1%	1.8%	0.4%	1.2%	0.7%	4.6%
Riverside-San Bernardino	76.1%	14.8%	1.7%	0.4%	1.8%	1.4%	3.8%
Rochester	82.6%	7.1%	1.8%	0.4%	3.9%	0.7%	3.6%
Sacramento	75.6%	11.2%	2.9%	1.7%	1.9%	1.1%	5.5%
Salt Lake City	77.7%	11.3%	2.9%	0.8%	2.3%	1.0%	4.0%
San Antonio	79.5%	11.5%	2.1%	0.1%	2.0%	1.4%	3.3%
San Diego	76.2%	10.1%	3.3%	0.8%	2.8%	1.0%	5.9%
San Francisco-Oakland	61.5%	10.6%	14.6%	1.7%	4.2%	1.2%	6.2%
San Jose	77.5%	10.3%	2.9%	1.6%	1.8%	0.9%	5.1%
Seattle	70.5%	10.2%	8.2%	1.1%	3.5%	1.0%	5.5%
St. Louis	83.0%	7.7%	2.6%	0.2%	1.9%	0.8%	3.7%
Tampa-St. Petersburg	80.3%	9.5%	1.6%	0.8%	1.4%	1.4%	5.0%
Virginia Beach-Norfolk	80.9%	9.4%	1.8%	0.5%	3.3%	0.9%	3.1%
Washington	65.6%	10.6%	14.0%	0.5%	3.5%	1.0%	4.9%
Top 51 Metropolitan Areas	73.7%	9.4%	7.9%	0.6%	2.8%	1.2%	4.4%

Calculated from Census Bureau data
Metropolitan areas as defined in 2010

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

Photo: Manhattan (New York), with the Woolworth Building in the distance (by author)

The Golden State Is Crumbling

Joel Kotkin — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:08:50 -0400

The recent announcement that California's unemployment again nudged up to 12 percent—second worst in the nation behind its evil twin, Nevada—should have come as a surprise but frankly did not. From the beginning of the recession, the Golden State has been stuck bringing up a humbled nation's rear and seems mired in that less-than-illustrious position.

What has happened to my adopted home state of over last decade is a tragedy, both for Californians and for America. For most of the past century, California has been "golden" not only in name but in every kind of superlative—a global leader in agriculture, energy, entertainment, technology, and most important of all, human aspiration.

In its modern origins California was paean to progress in the best sense of the word. In 1872, the second president of the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, said science was "the mother of California." Today, California may worship at the altar of science, but increasingly in the most regressive, hysterical, and reactionary way.

California's dominant ruling class—consisting of public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians—has no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead, the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition, with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.

Nowhere was California's old technological ethos more pronounced than in agriculture, where great Californians such as William Mulholland, creator of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and Pat Brown, who forged the state water project, created the greatest water-delivery system since the Roman Empire. Their effort brought water from the ice-bound Sierra Nevada mountains down to the state's dry but fertile valleys and to the great desert metropolis of Southern California. Now, largely at the behest of greens, California agriculture is being systematically cut down by regulation. In an attempt to protect a small fish called the Delta smelt, upward of 200,000 acres of prime farmland have been idled, according to the state's Department of Conservation. Even in the current "wet" cycle, California's agricultural industry, which exports roughly $14 billion annually, is slowly being decimated. Unemployment in some Central Valley towns tops 30 percent, and in cases even 40 percent.

And now, notes my friend, Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue, green regulators are imposing new groundwater regulations that may force the shutdown of production even in areas like his that have their own ample water supplies.

Salinas was the home town of John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath and great chronicler of Depression-era California. Today for many in hardscrabble, majority-Latino Salinas, home to 150,000 people, The Grapes of Wrath is less lyrical than real. "California," notes Donohue, a lifelong Democrat, "remains intent on job destruction and continued hyper-regulation."

California's pain is not restricted to farming towns. The state's regulatory vigilantes have erected a labyrinth of rules that increasingly makes doing almost anything that might contribute to increased carbon emissions—manufacturing, conventional energy, home construction—extraordinarily onerous. Not surprisingly, the state has not gained middle-skilled jobs (those requiring two years of college or more) for a decade, while the nation boosted them by 5 percent and archrival Texas by a stunning 16 percent over the same time period.

There is little chance that the jobs lost in these fields will ever be recovered under the current regime. As decent blue-collar and midlevel jobs disappear, California has gone from a rate of inequality about the national average in 1970, to among the most unequal in terms of income. The supposed solution to this—Gov. Jerry Brown's promise of 500,000 "green jobs"—is being shown for what it really is, the kind of fantasy you tell young children so they will go to sleep.

Many Californians who aren't slumbering are moving out of the state—and not only the pathetic remains of the old Reaganite majority. According to the most recent census, those leaving the state include old boomers, middle-aged families, and increasingly, many Latinos as well. Outmigration rates from places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area now rival those of such cities as Detroit. In the last decade, California’s population grew only 10 percent, about the national average, largely due to immigrants and their offspring. Population increases in the Bay Area were less than half that rate, while the City of Los Angeles gained fewer new residents—less than 100,000—than in any decade since the turn of the last century!

Increasingly, California no longer beckons ambitious newcomers, except for a handful of the most affluent, best educated, and well connected. Through the 1980s and even through the late '90s, the aspirational classes came to California. Now they head to other, more opportunity-friendly places like Austin, Houston, Dallas, Raleigh-Durham, even former “dust bowl” burghs like Des Moines, Omaha, and Oklahoma City. Meanwhile, Golden California, particularly its expensive, ultragreen coast, gets older and older. Marin County, the onetime home of the Grateful Dead and countless former hippies, is now one of the grayest urban counties in the country, with a median age of 44.

Of course, the self-described "progressive" mafia that runs California will point to Silicon Valley and its impressive array of startups. But for the most part, firms like Google, Twitter, and Facebook employ only a small cadre of highly educated workers. Overall, during the past decade the state's high-tech employment fell by almost 4 percent, while Texas's science-based employment grew by a healthy 11 percent. The sad reality is that turning T-shirt-wearing kids like Mark Zuckerberg into multibillionaires doesn't do much to reduce unemployment, which even in San Jose—the largely blue-collar "capital" of Silicon Valley—now hovers around 10 percent.

Magazine cover stories and movies cannot obscure the fact that entrepreneurial growth—the state’s most critical economic asset—has now stalled. In fact, according to a study by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc., last year the Golden State ranked 50th among the states in creating new businesses.

California remains rich in promise, home to spectacular scenery; a great Pacific location; leading firms like Apple and Disney; and a still-impressive residue of talented, diverse, entrepreneurial, and ingenious people. But the state will never return until the success of the current crop of puerile billionaires can be extended to enrich the wider citizenry. Until the current regime is toppled, California's decline—in moral as well as economic terms—will continue, to the consternation of those of us who embraced it as our home for so many years.

This piece originally appeared at The Daily Beast.

Photo by wstera2.

Moving from the Coast

Wendell Cox — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:52:59 -0400

For years both government and media have been advancing the notion that America's coastal counties are obtaining most of the population growth at the expense of interior counties. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in the 1990s: Coastal areas are crowded and becoming more so every day. More than 139 million people–about 53% of the national total–reside along the narrow coastal fringes.

NOAA went on to say that the population of the coastal counties is expected to increase by an average of 3600 people per day and noted further that the coastal counties were growing faster than the nation as a whole. NOAA has designated 673 counties on four coasts (Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific and Great Lakes) in the contiguous United States, Hawaii and Alaska as coastal counties.

Population Growth: In fact, coastal counties are not growing faster than the nation as a whole and were not when NOOA issued the 1990s report. For most of the last 40 years, the nation's interior counties have been adding more population. From 1970 to 2010, interior counties added 55.7 million new residents, compared to 49.7 million new residents in coastal counties. This is a reversal from 1940 to 1970, when two thirds of the nation's population growth was in the coastal counties.

The trends today actually have become more favorable for the interior than at any time in a century. From 2000 to 2010, the interior counties captured more of the nation's growth than in any decade since 1900 (Table). From 2000 to 2010, the interior counties added 16.0 million residents, 59.6 percent of the nation's growth compared to 11.4 million new residents in the coastal counties.


Coastal and Interior Population: Counties
1900-2010

	Coastal Counties			Interior Counties			United States
Year	Population	Share	Change	Population	Share	Change	Population	Change
1900	30.2	39.7%		46.0	60.3%		76.2
1910	38.2	41.4%	8.0	54.0	58.6%	8.0	92.2	16.0
1920	46.2	43.6%	8.0	59.8	56.4%	5.8	106.0	13.8
1930	57.4	46.6%	11.2	65.8	53.4%	6.0	123.2	17.2
1940	62.3	47.1%	4.9	69.8	52.9%	4.0	132.2	9.0
1950	75.2	49.9%	12.9	75.5	50.1%	5.7	150.7	18.5
1960	94.4	52.6%	19.2	85.0	47.4%	9.5	179.3	28.6
1970	109.9	54.0%	15.6	93.5	46.0%	8.5	203.4	24.1
1980	119.8	52.9%	9.9	106.7	47.1%	13.2	226.5	23.2
1990	133.4	53.6%	13.6	115.3	46.4%	8.6	248.7	22.2
2000	148.2	52.7%	14.9	133.2	47.3%	17.9	281.4	32.7
2010	159.6	51.7%	11.4	149.1	48.3%	16.0	308.7	27.3
Population in Millions
Calculated from US Census Bureau Data
Coastal counties designated by NOAA (673 counties)
Totals may vary due to rounding

As of 2010, the coastal counties have 51.7 percent of the nation's population, having dropped from 52.7 percent in 2000 and a peak of 54.0 percent in 1970 (Figure 1). Rather than adding 3600 new people every day, coastal counties added 3100 people per day, while interior counties added 4400 per day during the 2000s. A smaller sample of 559 counties that was examined by economists Jordan Rapaport and Jeffrey Sachs in the early 2000s experienced an even more pronounced movement away from the coasts between 2000 and 2010, with more than 60 percent of the nation's growth taking place in the interior counties.

There may also be some concern about density in coastal counties. Yet Malthusian fears need not grip coastal residents. With a population density of approximately 315 per square mile (120 per square kilometer), the coastal counties of the contiguous United States have only a slightly higher density than the post-enlargement 27-nation European Union. The coastal counties have a density one-half that of Germany. In contrast, the interior counties are far less dense, at 60 persons per square mile.

There has also been significant change in coastal population trends since the middle 1990s. The largest Pacific Coast metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose and Seattle have seen their growth slow considerably. In the 1990s, NOAA was projecting huge population increases for Los Angeles and San Diego counties. It appears likely that these 2015 projections will fall at least 600,000 short in both counties. Even Seattle, arguably the healthiest economically among the west coast metropolitan areas, is now growing more slowly than former laggards Oklahoma City, Indianapolis and Columbus in the interior.

Regional Population Growth: There was significant variation in growth among the varied regions of the country. In the Northeast, there was much stronger growth on the coast, which added 1.6 million people, compared to a gain of less than 150,000 in the interior. In the Midwest, the coastal counties (along the Great Lakes) lost 120,000 people, while the interior counties gained 2.7 million. In the South, the interior grew more, at 8.1 million, slightly more than 6.3 million in coastal counties. In the West, interior counties gained 5.1 million people, while the coastal counties gained 3.7 million (Figure 2). This drop in coastal growth was a principal reason why the West grew less quickly than the South, which experienced the most robust coastal growth. For this reason, the West failed to be the nation's fastest growing region for the first time since 1900.

Personal Income: Rappaport and Sachs noted in their early 2000s work that the density of economic activity was far greater in the coastal counties. Of course this is to be expected, due to their greater population density. However the data with respect to the distribution of personal income is less clear. Since 1969, coastal and interior counties have been alternating leadership in personal income growth per capita. During the 2000s, interior counties experienced average personal income growth slightly less than that of the coastal counties (Figure 3). However, average per capita income since 1970 has risen 81 percent, compared to a lower 75 percent in the coastal counties (adjusted for inflation). Overall, the share of income in the interior counties has been growing modestly (Figure 4).

Domestic Migration: The most important factor in the growth of the interior counties in the 2000s lies with net domestic migration, with more residents moving from the coastal counties to the interior counties. Between 2000 and 2009, 4.5 million people moved to the interior counties, while 4.5 million people moved away from the coastal counties, according to Census Bureau estimates (Figure 5).

Rappaport and Sachs had theorized that the greater concentration of population and economic activity in the coastal counties could be reflective of a more attractive quality of life. The domestic migration data would suggest that, at least over the last decade, people are opting for the interior, perhaps sensing that the coastal quality of life may not be as affordable and accessible as in the past.

Cost of Living: The key here lies with the cost of living, which has become far higher on the coasts then in the interior. The most significant cost of living differences for households are in the cost of housing.

From 2000 to 2009, housing affordability deteriorated markedly in the coastal counties. Census Bureau data indicates that the Median Multiple (median house founded divided by median household income) rose from 3.6 to 5.4 in the coastal counties (population weighted). By contrast, housing affordability worsened far less in the interior counties, where the Median Multiple rose from 2.5 to 3.1. Thus, the median household saw owned housing increase 22 months worth of income in value in coastal counties, compared to seven months worth of income in interior counties (Figure 6). At the same time, these higher coastal house prices developed as demand for housing was dropping substantially, with 4.5 million people moving away from coastal counties (above).

Many of the coastal counties have strong land use regulation (smart growth or urban containment regulation), especially in California, Oregon, Washington, Florida and the metropolitan areas of Boston, New York and Washington. A considerable body of research, both econometric and descriptive, has associated more restrictive land use regulation (called smart growth, urban consolidation or urban containment) with higher house price increases, reaching back at least to the seminal 1970s work by Sir Peter Hall and his associates in the United Kingdom. It thus seems likely that the deterioration of housing affordability in coastal counties is materially associated with their less robust growth. The quality of life on the coasts may simply have become too expensive.

The Future? It is unclear whether the recent higher population growth rates, stronger migration trends and improved economic performance of the interior will continue into the future. The 1940 to 1970 dominance of the coastal counties surged as coastal metropolitan areas, especially in Florida and California, grew much more quickly. Now that pattern has been reversed. More favorable trends over the past 40 years in the interior counties seem likely continue, unless coastal house prices and the cost of living begin to swing back toward the national norm.

----

Note: Complete county data is at County Coastal Population (also attached to this article)

Photograph: San Diego, which experienced greater domestic outmigration than Pittsburgh in the 2000s.