Houston

Texas Is The Future

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 20:28:38 -0400

In 1946, the American author John Gunther described Houston as “mostly ugly and barren, without a single good restaurant and hotels with cockroaches”. The only reasons to live in the city, he claimed, were financial; it was a place “where few people think about anything but money”.

This view was widespread at the time, and has lingered well into the 21st century. Forget Houston. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are the cities most frequently associated with the urban American dream.

Fast forward to today, however, and a new urban renaissance is taking shape — and this time, it’s in the heart of Texas. Never before in American history have two metros in one state — Houston and Dallas-Ft. Worth — been in the nation’s five largest. So much for its cockroaches; at its current rate of growth, Houston could replace Chicago as the nation’s third largest municipality by 2030.

What’s driving this Texan resurgence? Traditionally, American cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, and St. Louis all tried to copy the model set by New York and, to a lesser extent, Chicago, with high-rise offices crowded into central business districts. But Texas urbanism is different. They may wear cowboy boots, drive pickup trucks, and attend rodeos, but Texans have created a new model of American urbanity rooted in the demands of the consumer market — an idea deeply offensive to many planners and retro-urbanists.

Some observers lament the fact that the vast majority of Texas’s metropolitan growth — nearly 100% — has taken place in the suburbs and exurbs. But this has its benefits, not least the fact that its cities haven’t been turned into rabbit warrens that only provide high living standards to the rich. Over the past decade, Texas has built three times as much housing as California. This has allowed its cities, despite massive demographic and economic growth, to keep housing prices significantly lower than in coastal Californian cities such as San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and Los Angeles.

But while affordability has been the secret sauce for Texan cities, its urbanism also thrives by embracing the realities of the marketplace. Over the past decade, Austin and Dallas have created jobs two to three times faster than New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. And this growth is not all at the low end of the job market, as some like the New York Times’s Paul Krugman suggest. Over the past five years, for instance, Austin has displaced San Francisco as the fastest growing tech market. Indeed, Austin is now arguably the strongest rival to Silicon Valley, home to the headquarters of Tesla, and Oracle, as well as Apple’s engineering division and Meta’s latest expansion, 33 floors downtown.

But the most significant expansion has been in professional and business services, the core of the new urban economy. Over the past five years, Austin and Dallas-Ft. Worth have created more than twice as many new business service jobs as San Jose; all four big Texas cities have grown this sector many times the rate of New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. The Dallas metroplex is now home to 24 Fortune 500 company headquarters, trailing only New York and Chicago by a small number; 40 years ago, the region had fewer than five.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: from PxHere under CC 0.0 Public Domain.

For Texans and Australians It's Breezes and Sunshine, Or No Grid At All

Ronald Stein — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 20:28:58 -0400

The Texans’ Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and Australians are constantly being blown away with the growing “nameplate” capacity of wind turbines and solar panels to provide electricity, but electricity from renewables have yet to produce anywhere near their projected capacity due to the intermittency and unreliability of breezes and sunshine.

No country on Earth relies entirely on wind and solar for all their electricity, but Texans and Australians politicians aim to achieve this miracle.

Without subsidies, the so-called wind and solar ‘industries’ for electricity from unreliable breezes and sunshine would disappear in a heartbeat. Two rules that supporters of this made-up industry follow vehemently are:

The first rule about the ‘inevitable’ wind and solar transition to intermittent electricity dependent on weather conditions is that you do not talk about the subsidies.
The second rule about the world’s greatest economic and environmental scam is that you DO NOT talk about the subsidies.

For those of us who focus on the costs and benefits of various kinds of power plants within a grid system, it appears there has been an orchestrated effort through media, advertising, and public relations – even government agencies – to mislead the public about the value proposition of wind and solar. “The duty cycle for intermittent renewable resources, wind and solar, is not operator controlled, but dependent on the weather or solar cycle (that is, sunrise/sunset)..(and so) their levelized costs are not directly comparable to those for other technologies..”

For all the hype and billions of dollars poured into solar and wind electricity, those breezes and sunshine still provide less than 5 per cent of the world’s electricity while oil, gas and coal make up about 80 per cent.

While renewables continue to underperform in the generation of electricity, the innocent bystander of crude oil that is seldom used for electricity, continues to be targeted for elimination along with coal and natural gas. Today, Biden supports allowing banks and investment giants to collude to reshape economies and energy infrastructure with their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) divesting in fossil fuels. ESG is a very dangerous precedent as the American people never voted to give banks this sort of control over our country.

The unintended consequences of ridding the world of crude oil usage would be the elimination of products and fuels manufactured from crude oil that support:

Asphalt for roughly 65 million miles of roads in the world
Tires for the 1.4 billion vehicles in the world
Fertilizers to feed the world on this increasingly resource-stretched and crowded earth.
Medical supplies that are primarily made from oil derivatives
Jets that comprise more than 50,000 for military, commercial, private, and the Presidents Air Force One
Merchant ships that comprise more than 53,000 that move products throughout the world
Vehicles that are mostly made of plastics
Renewables of wind turbines and solar panels that are made from oil derivatives

It seems obvious that the efforts to cease the use of crude oil could be the greatest threat to civilization. Attempting to attain a decarbonized world like the one that existed in the 1800’s and before, would result in Billions of fatalities for the 8 billion on earth from disease, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths, versus the projections of millions of fatalities from changes in climate.

Realistically, there are no silver bullet answers to save the entire 8 billion population of the world.

Texans and Australians must be reminded that crude oil processed at refineries provides societies and economies with the supply chain of oil derivatives, that are the foundation of more than 6,000 products that are the basis of lifestyles, and of manufactured fuels for the many of the heavy-weight and long-range needs of transportation infrastructures such as aircraft, cruise and merchant ships, and the military and space program.

For Texans and Australians that do not rely on nuclear for a continuous uninterruptable source of zero-emission electricity should be astonished that there are 30 countries where you’ll find nearly 450 nuclear reactors currently operating – including the French, Americans, Canadians, Japanese and Chinese. Another 15 countries are currently building 60 reactors among them. Nuclear power output accounts for over 11 percent of global electricity production.

Read the rest at CFACT.org.

Ron Stein is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics.

Photo: courtesy CFACT

Huge Spike in Domestic Migration from Urban Cores

Wendell Cox — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 20:28:58 -0400

Net domestic migration losses spiked perhaps as never before in the pandemic year of 2021 among urban core counties --- the counties that contain the urban cores (Note 1). This article reviews net domestic migration trend in the major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 residents) based on US Census Bureau data for 2021 and going back to 2010. The analysis is limited to 51 of the 56 major metropolitan areas that have more than one county. Since the Census Bureau does not estimate domestic migration below the county level, urban core versus outlying (or suburban) can only be calculated for metros with more than one county (Note 2). As a result, there are no results for Fresno, Honolulu, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Tucson.

Urban Core Counties

Among these urban core counties there was a net loss of 1,122,000 net domestic migrants in 2021. (see Table) This is a 140% increase from the minus 466,000 in 2020 and nearly 10 times the average net domestic migration loss of 115,000 in the first five years of the decade (2010 to 2015). The peak net domestic migration for these metropolitan areas was in 2012, when there was a loss of about 2,000.

In the second half of the decade (2016 to 2020), the average urban core county net domestic migration loss was 425,000, as there was a pronounced shift of net domestic migration away from the larger metropolitan areas to other areas of the country. This was before the spike in net domestic migration that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of course, it’s likely that the out-migration will slow as the pandemic wanes. But still, central business districts are particularly vulnerable as many of its long-time workforce labor in “laptop economy jobs” to the shift to on-line work.

Outlying (Suburban) Counties

At the same time, the outer (suburban) counties of the major metropolitan areas experienced a net domestic migration gain of 395,000, their largest gain since 2011. Even as urban core domestic migration was plummeting, the outlying counties experienced a more than 50% increase from their 2016 to 2020 average (231,000), and an even stronger gain relative to earlier in the decade (2011 to 2015), when the average gain was 177,000.

Over the decade the suburban counties added net domestic migrants in every year. The outlying counties gained a minimum of 119,000 more net domestic migrants than the urban core counties (2012), which rose to an average of 656,000 in the last half of the decade. In 2021, the outlying counties gained 1,481,000 more net domestic migrants than the urban core counties. The 2021 results are consistent with research indicating substantial movement away from urban cores, to the periphery of metropolitan areas and even beyond.

Metropolitan Area Highlights

The largest net domestic migration loss occurred in the New York metropolitan area at 385,000. The city of New York accounted for 342,000 of this loss, with a much smaller net out migration of 43,000 from the suburbs.

Metro Los Angeles had the second largest net migration loss at 205,000, with a 180,000 loss in core Los Angeles County.

The San Francisco metropolitan area lost 129,000 net domestic migrants, 56,000 of which were from core San Francisco County and 73,000 from the other four counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Mateo counties).

Chicago continued its long-lasting string of net domestic migration losses at a minus 107,000 in the metropolitan area. Most of the loss (98,000) was from core Cook County. The outer counties had a relatively modest loss of 9000 net domestic migrants.

The Washington DC-VA-MD-WV metropolitan area lost 67,000 net domestic migrants. The net domestic migration loss in the core city (county equivalent) of Washington, stood at 23.000, while the outlying counties lost a larger 44,000 (only in San Francisco and Washington was the suburban loss greater than the urban core county loss).

Some metropolitan areas that have had strong net domestic migration fell on much harder times in 2021. Seattle had a net domestic migration loss of 31,000 in 2021, after having gained 147.000 between 2010 and 2020. The 2021 loss was concentrated in core King County which lost 33,000 net domestic migrants, while the other two counties had a net domestic migration gain of more than 1,000.

Portland Oregon lost more than 7,000 net domestic migrants, with a 13,000 loss in core Multnomah County, and a suburban gain of 6,000 net domestic migrants. This is after a 129,000 net domestic migration gain in the 2010s.

Denver had a 2021 net domestic migration loss of 7,000, with a 9,000 loss in the city of Denver (county equivalent) and a small gain in the outlying counties. This is after a 204,000 net domestic migration gain between 2010 and 2020.

In Seattle, Portland and Denver, the strong net domestic migration was strongest early in the decade and fell as the decade was closing.

So, if these stellar performers of the last decade lost migrants, which metros gained?

The largest net domestic migration gainer was Phoenix, with 67,000 net domestic migrants. This included a gain of 47,000 in core Maricopa County and 20,000 gained in the other core county. The Maricopa County gain was the largest of any urban core county.

Dallas Fort Worth gained 54,000 net domestic migrants for the second strongest gain. However, core Dallas County had a loss of 45,000, while the outlying counties gained 99,000 net domestic migrants.

Tampa-St. Petersburg had net domestic migration of 42,000, 10,000 to core Hillsborough County, with 32,000 to outlying counties.

Austin had the fourth largest net domestic migration in 2021. However, the core county, Travis, had a small net domestic migration loss (200), with suburban counties accounting for a 41,000 gain.

The situation was similar in Houston where core Harris County lost 44,000 net domestic migrants while the outer counties gained 64,000 for an overall gain of 19,000.

There is increasing evidence that the increased metropolitan core migration losses could continue given the less than robust return to the jobs in the nation’s largest central business districts (downtowns). In San Francisco, it has been projected that ridership on the regional rail system, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) may not reach pre-pandemic levels for a decade. The hybrid work and remote work arrangements, that have made the five day work week a thing of the past and facilitated the decentralization are being embraced not only by employees but also by corporate leadership.

Note 1: The urban core counties contain the city hall of the historic core municipality in metropolitan areas. In all but one case the historical core municipality is the largest in the metropolitan area (the exception is the city of Norfolk (county equivalent) in Virginia Beach. In the case of New York, there are five urban core counties, all of which comprise the city of New York.

Note 2: The use of counties for analyzing decentralization in metropolitan areas is not ideal, since there is such great variation among the urban core counties. Some urban core counties contain vast swaths of suburban development, such as Maricopa (Phoenix), with a 2010 urban density of 3,100 per square mile, King (Seattle), at 3,500, Multnomah (Portland) at 4,400 or Bexar (San Antonio (at 3,100) or Fulton (Atlanta) at 2,200. At the same time other urban core counties have little or no suburban development, such as the five New York City counties at 27,000, San Francisco, at 17,000, and Suffolk (Boston), at 12,600. In some cases, the much higher urban densities extend into adjacent counties, especially in Boston and New York. This lack of more local data on domestic migration limits the precision of the analysis. Factors other than net domestic migration can be assessed using census tract or zip code data (such as our City Sector Model).

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Photo: Phoenix, AZ — Strongest major metropolitan area net domestic migration 2021

Table 1 (back to reference)

Net Domestic Migration: Urban Core and Outlying Counties: 2021
	Total	Urban Core Counties	Suburban (Outlying) Counties	Suburban Migration Compared to Urban Core
Atlanta, GA	19,358	(7,786)	27,144	34,930
Austin, TX	40,264	(172)	40,436	40,608
Baltimore, MD	(5,561)	(6,678)	1,117	7,795
Birmingham, AL	(2)	(5,283)	5,281	10,564
Boston, MA-NH	(48,040)	(28,850)	(19,190)	9,660
Buffalo, NY	(924)	(1,121)	197	1,318
Charlotte, NC-SC	23,970	(4,293)	28,263	32,556
Chicago, IL-IN-WI	(106,897)	(98,205)	(8,692)	89,513
Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN	(213)	(5,268)	5,055	10,323
Cleveland, OH	(6,089)	(10,359)	4,270	14,629
Columbus, OH	2,487	(9,799)	12,286	22,085
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	54,319	(44,650)	98,969	143,619
Denver, CO	(6,507)	(9,115)	2,608	11,723
Detroit, MI	(18,841)	(15,857)	(2,984)	12,873
Grand Rapids, MI	310	(2,472)	2,782	5,254
Hartford, CT	832	(1,161)	1,993	3,154
Houston, TX	19,426	(44,409)	63,835	108,244
Indianapolis, IN	6,732	(10,836)	17,568	28,404
Jacksonville, FL	24,815	646	24,169	23,523
Kansas City, MO-KS	748	(1,732)	2,480	4,212
Los Angeles, CA	(204,776)	(179,757)	(25,019)	154,738
Louisville, KY-IN	(358)	(4,458)	4,100	8,558
Memphis, TN-MS-AR	(3,041)	(6,132)	3,091	9,223
Miami, FL	(55,305)	(44,787)	(10,518)	34,269
Milwaukee,WI	(8,780)	(12,764)	3,984	16,748
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	(15,462)	(18,903)	3,441	22,344
Nashville, TN	12,328	(14,770)	27,098	41,868
New Orleans, LA	(9,824)	(6,699)	(3,125)	3,574
New York, NY-NJ-PA	(385,455)	(342,449)	(43,006)	299,443
Oklahoma City, OK	10,224	(1,277)	11,501	12,778
Orlando, FL	4,019	(16,184)	20,203	36,387
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD	(14,763)	(28,226)	13,463	41,689
Phoenix, AZ	66,850	46,866	19,984	(26,882)
Pittsburgh, PA	(3,993)	(7,635)	3,642	11,277
Portland, OR-WA	(7,441)	(12,983)	5,542	18,525
Providence, RI-MA	2,427	(2,427)	4,854	7,281
Raleigh, NC	21,743	10,518	11,225	707
Richmond, VA	6,788	(887)	7,675	8,562
Riverside-San Bernardino, CA	34,859	3,608	31,251	27,643
Rochester, NY	(2,938)	(3,381)	443	3,824
Sacramento, CA	6,963	(2,639)	9,602	12,241
St. Louis,, MO-IL	(7,277)	(7,577)	300	7,877
Salt Lake City, UT	(4,629)	(7,447)	2,818	10,265
San Antonio, TX	25,660	4,687	20,973	16,286
San Francisco, CA	(128,870)	(55,631)	(73,239)	(17,608)
San Jose, CA	(52,932)	(54,801)	1,869	56,670
Seattle, WA	(31,489)	(32,802)	1,313	34,115
Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL	42,089	9,600	32,489	22,889
Tulsa, OK	6,757	965	5,792	4,827
Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	(321)	(3,540)	3,219	6,759
Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV	(66,811)	(23,030)	(43,781)	(20,751)

TOTAL	(763,571)	(1,122,342)	358,771	1,481,113
Derived from US Census Bureau data
Excludes metropolitan areas with only one county (Fresno, Honolulu, Las Vegas, San Diego & Tucson)

Can the South Escape its Demons?

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 15:08:23 -0400

Out on the dusty prairie west of Houston, the construction crews have been busy. Gone are the rice fields, cattle ranches and pine forests that once dominated this part of the South. In their place sit new homes and communities. But they are not an eyesore; the homes are affordable and close to attractive town centres, large parks and lakes. These are communities rooted in the individual, the family and a belief in self-governance.

The new American Dream has its heart in the states of the old Confederacy. But its allure does not merely lie in a conservative embrace of lower taxes, less regulation and greater self-reliance, although these surely matter. More important are the opportunities that come from building businesses and owning new homes, not for the privileged few but for an increasingly diverse, and growing, populace.

As Marianne Pina, who came to Dallas as a young adult before founding a five-million-dollar business specialising in minority recruitment and job placement, told me: “The American Dream stereotype still exists here. If you work hard, you can make it. It’s still up to you as an individual.”

But lurking in the background, the South’s rebirth remains threatened by its historical demons: racism, white nationalism and overzealous religious fervour. This is partly because, as the political scientist V.O. Key noted, the South remains the only region of America that has been conquered and subjugated. It is, he wrote in 1949, a prisoner of its racial legacy in its politics and social structure; only when that problem has been addressed can the region ascend to its potential. Indeed, the economic consequences of slavery persisted well into the 1960s.

Even today, despite its ascendance, the South still lags somewhat behind the nation both in income and education levels. It is still castigated by progressive academics (increasingly a redundant concept) for being wedded to “racial conservatism”. It was only in 2013 that liberal chief justice Steve Breyer compared the region’s racial climate to “a plant disease”.

Anyone who has spent time outside academia knows this is increasingly no longer the case. Ever since the 1960s, business leaders in the South have worked overtime to embrace racial diversity, if not for moral reasons, but economic ones. Perhaps that explains why people from outside the region are pouring in: the Southern states account for six of the top ten gainers in interstate migration, led by Texas and Florida. In contrast, the biggest losers are the progressive strongholds of New York, Illinois, and California.

Significantly, while the African-American population has declined in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, it is expanding in cities such as Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville. Immigrants, mostly from developing countries and Asia, are also moving in. According to research by demographer Wendell Cox, the fastest growth in a city’s foreign-born population over the past decade was in Nashville, where it exceeded 40%, while those in DFW, Houston and Austin increased by more than 25%. Once seen as a dominant immigrant melting pot, Los Angeles, by contrast, saw their foreign-born populations shrink.

“In the past, you would go to New York, but people have found life was very challenging there,” developer La Lou Davies, who moved to Houston from Nigeria, explains. “It’s hard to find a place to live. By the 1990s, people started going to places like Houston, which have lower entry costs for housing and better business environments. Getting that first apartment, or a lease for a business, is so much easier.”

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Photo credit: Wesley Hetrick via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Mag-Lev May Be Dead; TX HSR on Life Support

Randal OToole — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 20:28:58 -0400

A Maryland circuit court judge >ruled last week that the Baltimore-Washington Rapid Rail Company did not have the >power of eminent domain and could not stop a development on land that the maglev promoter needed to use for its proposed line. The judge rejected the company’s argument that its purchase of a franchise previously granted to the long-defunct >Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway gave it the power to condemn other people’s land.

The maglev promoter didn’t actually have the money to buy the land in question, but it wanted to halt a developer from building a mixed-use development on the property, which would have made condemnation a lot more expensive when and if it has the power and money to do so. The judge said that the company’s argument contained “a lot of factual inaccuracies.”

The prospects for building a maglev in the corridor have been further hurt by announcements from local officials such as >Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and >Prince George’s County executive Angela Alsobrooks that they oppose the project. The mayor’s office suggested that, since the Senate just authorized $2.4 billion to improve the Northeast Corridor, it would be foolish to back a project that threatened to take customers away from Amtrak.

Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away, the Texas Central — which has been granted power of eminent domain by Texas courts — has >admitted that it will not be able to build its proposed Dallas-Houston high-speed rail line unless Congress passes an infrastructure bill that give the Federal Railroad Administration the authority to loan the high-speed rail promoter $12 billion. The railroad had previously claimed that it would be able to finance the project solely with private money.

That $12 billion loan would only cover half the $24 billion cost of the project, but with a federally backed loan, promoters apparently presume they could raise the other half privately. However, where the $24 billion came from is anybody’s guess. Back in 2016, the company was saying it would cost only >$10 billion, but by 2020 estimates rose to as high as >$30 billion. Given the cost overruns experienced after construction began on the California high-speed rail line, $30 billion sounds more likely.

Read the rest of this piece at The Antiplanner.

Randal O’Toole, the Antiplanner, is a policy analyst with nearly 50 years of experience reviewing transportation and land-use plans and the author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future.

Photo credit: California High-Speed Rail Authority via Wikimedia under Public Domain.

International Traffic Congestion Extinguished by Pandemic and Remote Work

Wendell Cox — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The 2020 TomTom Traffic Index reflects a huge drop in worldwide urban traffic congestion levels. Congestion levels (rated by the percentage of additional time required for auto travel during “rush hour”) dropped in 387 urban areas while increasing in only 13. Overall, TomTom rates 416 urban areas in 57 international geographies. The TomTom Traffic Index is produced by TomTom International BV. TomTom is known for its satellite navigation services for drivers and maps.

According to TomTom, “The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the way we live, work and move. Lockdowns, remote working and other restrictions on movement have transformed patterns of movement and reduced traffic congestion in most cities.” Similar results were just reported for many more US urban areas in Record Low Congestion Levels in Seattle, LA & San Francisco: The 2020 Urban Mobility Report, with congestion down by about 50% and greenhouse gas emissions from commuting also down 50%.

TomTom reports that: “This year we witnessed a mass exodus of people from capital cities across Europe. The day before new lockdowns went into force was the most congested day in Athens and London in 2020. Meanwhile in Paris, traffic jams reached record lengths,” where a congestion level of 142% was recorded. This an incredibly high traffic congestion index --- 2.6 times the highest annual congestion level recorded in the most congested urban area (Moscow, at 54%, below) and 4.4 times the Paris 2020 congestion level (Paris had the 42nd highest congestion index out of the 416 urban areas).

Congestion Levels by Nation

The TomTom Traffic Index provides congestion levels for 10 or more urban areas in eight nations (including the European Union).

The United States has the lowest congestion level, at an average of 13.8% (Figure 1). This is not surprising, given the comparatively low densities of US urban areas (Demographia World Urban Areas, Schedule 1, Page 19) and the unparalleled dispersion of employment and the fairly comprehensive limited access expressway system. Canada ranks second, at 17.3%, despite having urban population densities double that of the US, and more limited expressways. Australia has the third best congestion level at 20.2%. The United Kingdom, the European Union and China are bunched from fourth to sixth, within 0.7% of one another. Turkey’s congestion level is at 26.7% while Russia has by far the highest congestion level, at 36.6%.

Congestion Levels by Urban Area Population

As would be expected, the worst congestion levels are in the largest urban areas (over 5,000,000), at 28.9% (Figure 2). The 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 category has a congestion level of 22.5%, The smallest category (under 1,000,000) has a congestion level of 18.5%. Overall, the average congestion level is 21.2% (urban area population categories are based on data from Demographia World Urban Areas).

The highest and lowest congestion levels are reviewed below, by population category.

Urban Areas Over 5,000,000 Population

Because of ties (urban areas with the same congestion level), 13 urban areas have top ten congestion levels in the largest population category (5,000,000+ population), seven of which are in the United States and four are in China.

The lowest congestion levels were in Dallas-Fort Worth (USA) and Dongguan, China, both at 13% (Figure 3). Dallas-Fort Worth had the lowest congestion level in this population category at least twice before (2017 and 2015). Dongguan is a Pearl River Delta urban area of about 8 million residents, located between two much larger urban areas, Guangzhou-Foshan and Shenzhen.

Rio de Janeiro had the third least congestion, while Madrid and Boston tied for the fourth position. There was a three way tie for 6th place between Suzhou (Jiangsu, China), Houston and Wuhan. Quanzhou (Fuzhou, China), Atlanta, Washington, Chicago and Philadelphia made a five way tie for 10th best congestion level. Quanzhou may be China’s most decentralized urban area, with its “in situ” urbanization (urbanization in place, rather than by expansion from a core) that involves conversion of rural areas in place to urban areas, with agricultural employment being replaced by non-agricultural employment).

The highest congestion levels in the 5,000,000+ population category included six of the highest density urban areas in the world: Bogota, Manila, Bangalore, Delhi, Lima and Pune (all with more than 25,000 per square mile or 10,000 per square kilometer). By comparison, the average world urban area with more than 500,000 population is 10,800 per square mile or 4,200 per square kilometer.

The highest congestion level was in Moscow, at 54% (Figure 4). The next three, Mumbai, Bogota and Manila were in a three way tie for third worst congestion. Each of these three urban areas is very high density, at over 30,000 per square mile (over 12,000 per square kilometer). Istanbul and Bengaluru (Bangalore), India shared the 6th highest congestion levels. Delhi, the world’s third largest urban area had the seventh highest congestion level. Bangkok and St. Petersburg shared 8th position. There was a three way tie for 9th, which included Lima, Pune (India) and Chongqing (China).

Urban Areas 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 Population

There are 12 urban areas with top ten congestion levels in the 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 population category), 11 of which are in the United States and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.

There was a seven way tie between US urban areas for the lowest traffic congestion level (9%) — St. Louis, Cleveland, Richmond, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Kansas City. Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) took 8th place. There was a four way tie at 9th place between Louisville, Memphis, Columbus and Detroit (Figure 5).

There are 11 urban areas with the highest congestion levels in the 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 population category. Four are in Ukraine and two are in Russia.

The worst congestion was in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, at 51%, a higher congestion level than all but six other urban areas of any size (Figure 6), despite a population of less than 3,000,000. Number two Novosibersk (Russia) has an even smaller population, below 2,000,000, but has a congestion level that ranks 9th highest out of the 416 urban areas. Ukraine’s Odessa and Kharkiv rank third and fourth, while Bucharest (Romania) ranks fifth, just ahead of Samara, Russia. Dublin and Dnipro (Ukraine) tied for seventh, followed by a three-way tie for 9th, consisting of Recife (Brazil), Tel Aviv and Changchun (Jilin, China).

Urban Areas Under 1,000,000 Population

There are 14 urban areas with top ten congestion levels in the under 1,000,000 population category, 12 of which are in the United States, along with Cadiz, Spain and Amere in the Netherlands.

Greensboro-High Point (US) had the lowest congestion level, at 7%. A six way tie for second place included Cadiz, Dayton, Little Rock, Akron, Syracuse and Winston-Salem. Worcester (MA) took 8thplace. There was an 8 way tie for 9th place including Buffalo, Albany, Columbia (SC), Omaha, Knoxville, Grand Rapids and Rochester, and Amere (Figure 7).

Among the 13 urban areas with the highest congestion levels in the under 1,000,000 category, five are in Poland. All of the others are in European nations.

The highest congestion level was in Lodz, Poland, at 42%, which was followed by two other Polish urban areas, Krakow and Wroclaw. Edinburgh was fourth, followed by another Polish urban area, Poznan. Sofia, Bulgaria had the sixth worst congestion level, while Palermo (Italy), Gdansk (Poland) and Geneva shared 7th place. Tomsk (Russia), Brighton and Hove, and Hull (United Kingdom) and Limerick (Ireland) were in a four way tie for 9th place (Figure 8).

Changing Traffic Forever?

As has been evident in international traffic congestion indexes before, the United States has dominated low congestion levels. Thirty of the 39 urban areas with top 10 congestion levels were in the United States. China had six of the top 39 urban areas with the lowest congestion levels.

TomTom suggests that “COVID-19 could change traffic forever” and imagines a future more based on remote work, in which “We'll no longer waste hours stuck in traffic as working from home will became the norm for most jobs. Rush hour traffic will all but disappear, making journeys faster and less stressful.” This more environmentally friendly future, with its more enriching lives could well be achievable.

Photograph: Downtown Dallas, Dallas-Fort Worth urban area: Tied with Dongguan (China) for lowest congestion level in 2020 TomTom Traffic Index (by author).

The Next Entrepreneurial Revolution

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The coronavirus pandemic has altered the future of American business. The virus-driven disruption has proved more profound than anything imagined by Silicon Valley, costing more jobs than in any year since the Great Depression. But there’s also good news, as Americans’ instinctive entrepreneurial spirit is driving growth and innovation: 4.4 million new business applications were recorded by census data in 2020, compared with roughly 3.5 million in 2019. Self-employment, pummeled at first, has recovered more rapidly than conventional salaried jobs, as more Americans reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs.

To be sure, the initial impact of the pandemic favored big chains and accelerated the already dangerous corporate concentration in technology—Amazon tripled its profits in the third quarter of 2020 and the top seven tech firms added $3.4 trillion in value last year. This in turn has made all business, as well as ordinary Americans, subject to manipulation by the handful of “platforms” that control the primary means of communication. Meanwhile, lockdowns drove an estimated 160,000 small businesses out of existence and left those that survived to face “an existential threat,” according to the Harvard Business Review.

Like pandemics of the past, the current one, according to Berkeley economists Laura Tyson and Jan Mischke, has already driven new investments in technology that could reverse the long-term decline in U.S. productivity. Low real estate prices could spark a return to street-level enterprise, even in places like Manhattan that have long been ultra-costly.

But the focus of opportunity is more likely to be found in the suburbs and exurbs, as well as in the middle of the country. The movement of populations away from the big urban centers started before COVID, but a recent study in CityLab notes that it has since accelerated in places like California’s Inland Empire, the Hudson Valley, and the New Jersey suburbs. Overall, according to demographer Wendell Cox, offices on the fringe have recovered far faster than those in the largest urban cores like Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston.

The geography of work has changed as well. Upward of 30% of those who plan to work remotely after the pandemic, notes a recent Upwork survey, plan to do so outside the house: in coffee houses, coworking spaces, or other office environments closer to home. This has created a new market for suburban office spaces, real estate investor Andrew Segal told me. He sees remote offices filling with workers who may be tired of working at home but do not want to go back to their long commutes. Segal has recently purchased properties in the suburban commuter sheds around Chicago, New York, Phoenix, and Colorado Springs. “The problem is called COVID, but it’s really about commuting,” suggested Segal, who is based in Houston. “People now know they can get their work done from somewhere else that’s easier to get to than Manhattan, downtown Houston, Chicago, or Los Angeles.”

Businesses are following the trend. Between September 2019 and September 2020, according to the firm American Communities and based on federal data, inner cities experienced nearly a 10% loss in jobs, while outer suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas fared far better. According to Jay Garner, president of Site Selectors Guild, companies are looking increasingly at smaller cities and even rural locations rather than in the big core cities. Indeed, seven of the top 10 midsize cities preferred for new investments include not just sunbelt boomtowns but heartland cities like Columbus, Des Moines, Indianapolis, and Kansas City.

Analysis by Zen Business this year found that the best places for small businesses in terms of taxes, survivability, and regulation were overwhelmingly in the South, parts of the Great Plains, Utah, and across the Midwest. Places like the Bay Area, New York, and Southern California crowded the bottom of the list. In some cities like San Francisco, even opening an ice cream shop has become subject to unendurable, endless regulatory reviews. Many heartland cities are exploiting this opportunity, with some offering generous bonuses to telecommuters from the coasts.

Read the rest of this piece on Tablet Magazine.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: G. Keith Hall via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.

Census Bureau Releases 2020 City Population Estimates

Wendell Cox — Fri, 28 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The US Census Bureau has just released its July 1, 2020 population estimates for the approximately 19,500 incorporated municipalities (principally called cities, towns, villages). This article provides information on the 50 largest municipalities in the nation (Table below).

All of the three largest municipalities, the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, lost population from 2019 to 2020.

Observations on Individual Municipalities

With 8,253,000 residents in 2020, the city of New York had its lowest annual reported population since 2010. Its 90,000 loss in 2019-2020 was the greatest sustained during the decade, while its gain over the entire decade was only 61,000. According to the Census Bureau estimates, New York’s population had peaked at 8,469,000 in 2016 and fallen by more than 200,000 over the past four years.

New York is not the only big city with a declining population. A decade ago, the California Department of Finance announced that second ranked LA city’s population had exceeded that number. But according to the Census Bureau, it never got there. In 2020 the city of Los Angeles population was 3,970,000, down 13,000 from 2019. At no point do Census Bureau estimates show that the 4,000,000 mark was ever met, despite stronger growth earlier in the decade propelled the city’s population upward by 175,000. Meanwhile, Los Angeles County, the most populous in the United States, lost 68,000 since 2010 and fell below 10 million, having lost population four years in a row.

Third ranked Chicago is the largest city to have lost population over the decade (20,000) The city lost most of those residents in the past year, with a 2019-20 loss of 14,000. Chicago lost population in each of the last six years.

Houston ranked fourth and had only a modest gain in the last year. Over the decade, the city gained 10%, to 2,316,000, but grew more slowly with the downturn in energy prices. Houston is one of five Texas municipalities among the nation’s 13 most populous. San Antonio ranked 7th and grew a strong 1.3% over the past year and 17.9% over the decade with a 2020 population of 1,567,000. The city of Dallas ranked ninth, growing little over the past year despite far more rapid growth elsewhere in the metropolitan area, and 12% over the decade to 1,343,000. Austin, will soon be the 11th city in the nation to reach a population of one million had 995,000 residents. Austin grew at a very fast 1.7% rate in the last year and added 23.5% over the past decade. Fort Worth, with 928,000 is the largest “second city” in any US metropolitan area (Dallas-Fort Worth) ranking 12th and posted a nearly 18% growth rate over the decade and 2.1% in the last year.

Phoenix passed Philadelphia during the decade, to become the fifth largest municipality. Phoenix has reached 1,708,000, growing 1.5% in the last year and nearly 18% over the decade.

Sixth ranked Philadelphia has seen its population stabilize, after earlier losses. Philadelphia’s 2020 population was 1,578,000, up 3.3% from 2010, but down 0.3% from 2019.

Eighth ranked San Diego grew about nine percent during the decade, reaching 1,422,000. However, growth stalled, at only 0.2% in the past year.

Tenth ranked San Jose fell 1.3% to 1,027,000 from 2019. Over the decade San Jose grew 6.2%.

Nearby San Francisco, ranked 17th, had 867,000 residents in 2020. This is up 7.6% over the decade, but with a loss of 1,4% over the last year.

Particularly strong population growth over the decade occurred in 14th ranked Columbus (113,000), 15th ranked Charlotte (162,000), 18th ranked Seattle (159,000), 19th ranked Denver (133,000) and 20th Washington (108,000).

Detroit continued to lose population, with 665,000 residents in 2020. This is down 5.6% in the decade and minus 0.75% in the last year.

Top and Bottom Percentage Gains

The largest percentage gain among the top 50 was in Seattle, at 26.0%, followed by Fort Worth (24,0%), Austin (23.0%), Denver (22.0%) and Charlotte (21.9%).

Despite much hopeful reporting of a renaissance, Detroit had the largest percentage loss over the decade among the top 50, at minus 6.4%. Following Detroit were Baltimore, down 5.6%, Long Beach (in the Los Angeles metropolitan area) at minus 1.7%, Milwaukee minus 1.0% while Chicago minus 1.7%.

Over the past year, the largest percentage gains have been in Seattle (2.18%), Fort Worth (2.12%), Mesa, in the Phoenix metropolitan area (1.86%), Austin (1.71%) and Tampa (1.65%).

The largest one-year percentage losses were in Baltimore (minus 1.42%), San Francisco (minus 1.39%), San Jose (minus 1.26%), New York (minus 1.08%) and Long Beach (minus 0.83%).

U.S. Population Growing Less and Dispersing

These data are estimates and are not from the 2020 Census, which has not yet published data below the state level.

These results do not reflect the total impact of the Covid pandemic, since only some three months of that period are included in these findings. Since then, there has been much evidence of population shifts from the largest and densest cities to more dispersed cities, suburbs exurbs and rural areas. For example, US Postal Service change of address data indicates the strongest out-migration in the cities of New York and San Francisco, according to The Wall Street Journal. These are the densest municipalities in the top 50.

The Covid epidemic principally affected the last quarter of the estimation periods --- one of the four 2019-2020 quarters and one of the 40 2010-2020 quarters. Over the decade, six of the top 50 municipalities lost population, while 14 lost population in 2019-2020. The deterioration in losses has multiple causes, such as the accelerating dispersion (domestic migration) from larger metropolitan areas and the generally slowing US population growth rate. At the same time, our previous research has shown that the urban cores have not even maintained their share of metropolitan populations (See: “Latest Data Shows Pre-pandemic suburban/exurban population gains”).

Click here to download a PDF document with the 2020 municipalities data
(document opens in new tab or window).

Photo: City Hall, Philadelphia (by author).

Combined Statistical Areas Lead Continuing Dispersion: 2010-2020

Wendell Cox — Sun, 23 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

A commenter asked about population trends in combined statistical areas (CSA) in response to my article “Demographic Implosion in the San Francisco Bay Area?, posted on May 18. This article deals with CSA population trends in the 88 CSAs with more than 500,000 population.

More Evidence of the Dispersion

The nation’s largest combined statistical areas (over 1,000,000 residents) are showing a substantial decline in population growth and net domestic migration, while middle-sized CSA’s (500,000 to 1,000,000) are showing gains.

From 2010 to 2020, Census Bureau estimates indicate that the 58 CSAs with more than 1,000,000 population gained 9.1 million residents between 2010 and 2015, before dropping more than 30% from 2015 to 2020 to 6.3 million. By comparison, the 30 CSAs with from 500,000 to 1,000,000 population gained 933,000 residents both in the first and second half of the decade. Over the decade, the gross population increase rate was 8.0%, relative to the 2010 population.

Overall, the larger CSAs gained 127,000 net domestic migrants (people moving from into a CSA from another part of the nation) in the first half of the decade, then suffered a net loss of 635,000 in the second half. This represents a gross rate of minus 2.6% relative to the 2010 population. Among the middle-sized CSAs, net domestic migration increased from 121,000 in the first half of the decade to 451,000 in the second half. This calculates to a gross rate over the decade of 2.0% relative to the 2010 population.

This is more critical than simply a response to the pandemic. In reality these trends existed overwhelmingly pre-COVID — a single quarter out of 40 — during which multiple reports say has now increased more.

What is a CSA and How Does it Relate to Metropolitan Areas

A combined statistical area (CSA) is a set of overlapping labor markets (metropolitan and sometimes micropolitan areas) that have a significant interchange of workers (commuters) between homes and employment. There are 384 metropolitan areas in the nation and 543 micropolitan areas. The only difference between metropolitan and micropolitan areas is that metropolitan areas are based on urban areas of at least 50,000 residents, while micropolitan areas are based on urban areas of from 10,000 to 50,000. The 927 Metropolitan and micropolitan areas are collectively referred to as “core based statistical areas.”

There are also 175 CSA’s, made up of 551 complete metropolitan and micropolitan areas.

Observations on the Largest CSAs

Each of the six largest CSAs experienced much worse population growth trends in the second half of the decade (Table).

The 15 largest CSAs are summarized below: A number of metropolitan and micropolitan areas are not in CSAs and are not shown in the table. includes some of the largest metropolitan areas, such as San Diego, Austin, Las Vegas, and Rochester.

New York gained 441,000 from 2010 to 2015, but lost 205,000 in 2015-2020. In the last year New York lost 114,000.
Los Angeles gained 654,000 in the first half and only 99,000 in the second half. The Los Angeles CSA includes the Riverside-San Bernardino metro, which has grown rapidly in the past, but not enough to cancel out the loss in the rest of the CSA, particularly in the core Los Angeles County, which lost 69,000 Among the five counties, only Riverside and San Bernardino counties posted gains. Throughout the whole CSA, there was a 40,000 decline in 2019-2020.
Washington-Baltimore growth dropped from 554,000 in the first half of the decade to 261,000 in the second half and only 28,000 in the last year. Washington-Baltimore (9.865 million) has displaced Chicago (9.770) as the third largest CSA. Washington-Baltimore added 815,000 new residents in the 2010s, while Chicago lost 71,000.
Chicago added 84,000 in the first five years, but lost 155,000 in the last half. There was a loss of 50,000 in the last year. As noted above, Chicago’s CSA dropped from 3rd to 4th, now behind Washington-Baltimore.
The San Francisco Bay CSA, which stretches nearly halfway to Los Angeles (to the Merced County/Fresno County line), added 567,000 from 2010 to 2015, but only 117,000 from 2015 to 2020. In the last year, the Bay Area experienced a 40,000 loss. The San Francisco Bay CSA (San Jose-San Francisco) grew 684,000 to 9.608 million and is challenging Chicago for third place. However, the Bay Area’s strong start in the decade morphed into a loss so at the 2019-2020 rate, it will take the Bay Area 16 years to catch Chicago.
Boston's growth fell from 269,000 to 132,000, with the last year falling to a nominal 5,000.
Dallas-Fort Worth did the best of the top 10, gaining 689,000 in each of the five year periods, and exceeding a 1,000,000 gain for the second decade in a row. The last year gain was 127,000. Dallas-Fort Worth, unlike its more established rivals, has experienced stable growth, with the lowest year in the decade being 110,000 and the highest 159,000.
Houston also added more than 1,000,000 residents for the second decade in a row. In the first five years Houston’s gain was 755,000 — more than Dallas-Fort Worth. However, growth dropped to 486,000 in the last five years during the downturn in the energy industry. Houston added 92,000 in the last year, more than any CSA beside Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix.
Philadelphia's growth dropped from 100,000 in the first five years to 46,000 in the second five. In the last year Philadelphia gained 3,000.
Atlanta, hit very hard by the Great Recession, did not repeat its greater than 1,000,000 growth in this decade. In the first five years, Atlanta gained 429,000 residents, and 455,000 in the second five. Atlanta was the largest CSA to have greater growth in the second half of the decade and gained 68,000 in the last year. Atlanta passed Miami in population in 2020.
Miami grew strongly in the first half of the decade, at 446,000, but fell to 261,000 in the second half. Growth in the last year was 21,000.
For all its population loss reputation, Detroit gained 13,000 residents from 2010 to 2015, but dropped by 13,000 in 2015 to 2020. A 19,000 loss in the last year however suggests the area’s recovery may be limited.
Phoenix had the best second half growth relative to the first half, increasing from 387,000 to 461,000. The 106,000 gain in the last year was second only to Dallas-Fort Worth.
Seattle also gained more in the second half than in the first (345,000 versus 333,000) and added 51,000 in the last year.
Orlando had a strong second half gain of 425,000 compared to its first half gain of 357,000.

The table (image and PDF link below) also contains net domestic migration data.

A Dispersing Country

Despite America’s increasing diversity, the dispersion that has generally waxed but less frequently waned since 1920.An acceleration among all CBSAs toward greater dispersion, which was covered in “Domestic Migration to Dispersion Accelerates Even Before COVID”, is the reality, even if the media, pundits and planners continue in denial.

Click here to download a PDF document with the CSA data (opens in new tab or window).

Photo: Virginia suburbs in the Washington-Baltimore CSA, with Potomac River and Maryland in the background (by author).

Reshoring America: Can the Heartland Lead the Way?

Joel Kotkin - Michael Lind - Dave Shideler — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The COVID-19 pandemic has had overwhelming impacts on our economy, not to mention the impact on lives and personal wellness.

The critical lack of medical equipment to treat and protect those affected highlights the over-reliance of United States manufacturing sector on overseas production. The offshoring issue extends beyond current pandemic concerns, however, reaching far larger and more permanent concerns over industrial supply chains, worker training and even national security.

Reshoring is the relocation of production facilities to, or the creation of new ones in, the United States. Many domestic and foreign companies are recognizing the strategic advantages of locating in the United States, such as protecting intellectual property, shortening supply chains and shrinking wage differentials1 between the United States, China and other overseas locations. Some estimates suggest that firms fail to accurately estimate the costs of production in other countries by as much as 20 percent. Considering these additional costs, experts suggest that 10-30 percent of projects considering locating production outside of the U.S. would find that it would be cheaper to remain or expand within the country. As a result, jobs stemming from reshoring activity are estimated to have reached over 400,000 in 2019, and that number is expected to grow.

The U.S. Heartland stands to benefit the most from reshoring activity. Because of its historic dependence on manufacturing, there remains a culture, skilled labor pool and training programs, as well as infrastructure to support production facilities. The presence and diversity of existing manufacturing throughout the region also supports reshoring activity, since domestic suppliers are available and proximate. The growth of financial and professional services in the Heartland also make it a desirable place for manufacturers, given the shift within the industry toward out-sourcing these aspects of the business.

Bipartisan support for reshoring has never been stronger in Washington. We have seen that reshoring activity will require more than tariffs and renegotiation of trade agreements. Instead, policies encouraging the behavior will also be needed, so that carrots and sticks are an integral part of the policy framework. To truly be successful, priority should be given to sectors and companies with growth potential, such as critical supply chain gaps that impact national security. Furthermore, infrastructure improvements and enhancements are needed to ensure that the U.S. remains competitive in the broader global economy.

Read the full report at heartlandforward.org.

Michael Lind is an American writer and academic. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in a number of book, beginning with The New Class War (2020). He is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dave Shideler is the Chief Research Officer at Heartland Forward, oversees research focused on identifying practical tool and policies Heartland communities can use to enhance economic performance and prosperity. Before Heartland Forward, Dave was Professor of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University and Community and Economic Development Specialist with the OSU Extension Service. Those roles focused on entrepreneurship and assisted rural communities with economic development planning and implementation. Dave holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics from The Ohio State University.

Image credit: Heartland Forward, from the report