Cleveland Is Dying

**Note: This post originally appeared at Rust Wire. Thanks to Angie Schmitt for providing me with an opportunity to reach a broader audience.**

Cleveland isn't dying. The city is already dead. You may have read one of a number of obituaries written about Cleveland after the 2010 Census put the final nail in the coffin for a place most famous for a river catching fire. No one can find a pulse in its rotten urban core.

The same has been said about many rural communities, wastelands best left to grazing buffalo. A funny thing happened on the way to restoring the wild grasslands. Someone took a more detailed look at the data:

Long time lurker on your blog. I am a rural and small town researcher. Yes, people in the midwest do hear about brain drain ALL THE TIME - books like Hollowing out the Middle are written without a balanced perspective on the dynamics of population movement, rather they just look at the kids that leave. However, our towns are more proud of the fact they can prepare the kids well for the larger world.

My research shows that people aged 30-45 move to rural areas, and in many cases provide a balance to the kids that leave. I call this the Brain Gain. Yes, we lose kids making $7/hour and have a HS education - yet we gain 30-45 year old people, with life experience, education, and kids (in 4th - 8th grades).

Anyway, thought I would throw a note your way. You can google "brain gain of the newcomers" to find out more.

That "long time lurker" is Ben Winchester. The blog is mine, Burgh Diaspora. The buffalo must wait a while longer before getting their habitat back. You can read about his demographic cohort analysis here.

A bit over a month ago, Richey Piiparinen (whom I know via Rust Wire) contacted me about some research he was doing concerning Cleveland population trends. You can peruse the results of his work at the Urban Institute's MetroTrends website. Like Ben Winchester's conclusions, Richey unearthed the unexpected. Cleveland was not dead. Cleveland wasn't dying. Cleveland was in the midst of revitalizing. Brain gain Cleveland.

Richey and I had a few exchanges about our confidence in the interpretation. Ben's work came to mind. Was there brain gain hiding in Cleveland's urban core? There's a big bump in population for the 25-34 age cohort in Ohio City and Tremont that you would miss if you were only tracking overall numbers. Cleveland has thriving urban neighborhoods that are getting younger.

Positive numbers in downtown, Ohio City, and Tremont don't mean that Cleveland is thriving. Parts of the metro are dying. Some neighborhoods you might consider dead. That's a big problem. It's an overwhelming problem. I recommend that the metro double down on its urban core assets instead of investing in a casino or some other real estate boondoggle.

First, Cleveland (boosters and cranks) must recognize the good going on in the heart of the city. When Global Cleveland commissioned me to study return migration to the metro, I observed the repats liked to settle in the neighborhoods that reminded them most of their big city digs. Ohio City and Tremont are emerging a la Brooklyn. Hello Little Williamsburg on Lake Erie. I've seen the same pattern in other Rust Belt cities such as Scranton.

This development suggests an embrace of progressive urbanist principles, importing what Cleveland expatriates find most alluring about city life elsewhere. Work with the migration flow that is working for Cleveland. Don't spend time and money working against migration by plugging the brain drain. Stop ignoring the success hidden in the lousy population numbers. Talk to the repats as I have. Fix the problems they describe. Take full advantage of the Rust Belt Renaissance that the rest of the world is finally noticing.

Rust Belt Disconnect

Pittsburgh is dying. Don't pay attention to the hype. Livable Pittsburgh is increasingly isolated. Airline deregulation is crushing the renaissance in Southwestern PA:

Pittsburgh is another example of a major city whose culture and economy is increasingly determined not by its underlying fundamentals but by the dictates of an ever more concentrated, yet failing, airline industry. After it lost most of its steel industry in the 1970s, the city did everything the apostles of the so-called new economy said must be done to compete in the emerging global economy. When the city played host to the G-20 Summit in 2009, President Obama hailed Pittsburgh’s transformation “from a city of steel to a center for high-tech innovation—including green technology, education and training, and research and development.” That same year Forbes named Pittsburgh one of America’s best cities for job growth, while the Economist lauded its cosmopolitan cultural amenities, such as the topflight Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Opera.

But Pittsburgh’s renewal as a vibrant, creative, international city is now in doubt, due to the downscaling of its international airport, which now stands largely empty. Pittsburgh International was able to offer more than 600 daily nonstop flights after the city went deeply into debt to turn it into a showcase during the 1990s. But when US Airways merged with America West and concentrated its hub operations in Philadelphia and Charlotte, Pittsburgh service tumbled. US Airways’s daily flights have plunged from 542 to sixty-eight, causing the shuttering of half the gates at the airport as well as sections of two concourses.

K&L Gates, one of the country’s largest law firms, used to hold its firm-wide management meeting near its Pittsburgh headquarters, but after flying in and out of the city became too much trouble, the firm began hosting its meetings outside of New York City and Washington, D.C. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the biggest employer in the region, reports that its researchers and physicians are increasingly choosing to drive to professional conferences whenever they can. Flying between Pittsburgh and New York or Washington can now easily take a whole day, since most flights have to route through Philadelphia or Charlotte. A recent check on Travelocity showed just two direct flights from Pittsburgh to D.C., each leaving shortly before six in the morning and costing (one week in advance) $498 each way, or approximately $2.62 per mile.

Emphasis added. Wow. Where do I start? I picked up on this story via Aaron Renn's Twitter feed. Referencing the above piece, Carol Coletta (ArtPlace) commented: "This is the most serious challenge for mid-size cities in U.S."

If this bit about Pittsburgh is indicative of the troublesome trend, then Coletta's comment comes across as hyperbolic. I would go so far as to call it a red herring.

The authors of the article in The Washington Monthly toil for the New America Foundation. The best thing I can say about the analysis is that it works as a polemic. But the assertion about Pittsburgh's renewal now in doubt is bunk, unsubstantiated.

Back in the world of data-driven analysis, Pittsburgh is enjoying record job growth. Best ever. The regional workforce is hitting historical highs. I'm not about to start wringing my hands over airline deregulation.

Pittsburgh Job Growth

Latest employment data from Pittsburgh Today:

Total nonfarm jobs for January 2012 in the Pittsburgh region was 1,134,000, making it the second-highest January ever. These numbers are even above pre-recession numbers, and the Pittsburgh region had a higher year-over-year increase (1.6%) than all but four of our benchmark regions.

The Pittsburgh region has been performing better than the benchmark average in terms of job growth for the past four years.

Emphasis added. Pittsburgh's success on the job creation front isn't new. This has been the story for quite some time. Phoenix is tanking. Pittsburgh is rising. The Rust Belt is surging past the Sun Belt.

How Cities Fuel Economic Growth

Density doesn't make the world go round. Migration does. Ezra Klein (Washington Post) misses the boat:

The basic driver of remarkable economic growth in China — and India, Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil and pretty much every other developing country — is pretty simple: Migration of people from rural areas, where they’re not very productive, to dense cities, where they are very productive. This is a tried-and-true strategy for making people and countries richer. But it’s not just for developing countries.

Over the past year, three terrific books have come out on the importance of cities in America's economy. In “Triumph of the City,”’ Harvard economist Ed Glaeser details how cities all over the world have supercharged human development and ingenuity. In “The Gated City,” Ryan Avent focuses more narrowly on the role cities play in making Americans better off. And in “The Rent is Too Damn High,” Matt Yglesias focuses on, well, why the rent is so damn high.

Cities attract migrants, from everywhere. Cities that struggle to attract migrants aren't as economically productive as those that do, density be damned. Packing in more people per square mile isn't going to magically spur innovation. However, attracting international migrants will. You don't need density to benefit from immigration.

Without migrants, cities lose the power of place. Isolated urban neighborhoods, no matter how dense, tend to be poor. Where there is churn, there is money. The concentrated wealth in New York City (where the rent is too damn high) is a spillover from migration. What cities do best is manage the problems that come with migration, such as the erosion of social capital.  The basic driver of remarkable growth in China is pretty simple: Migration of people.

America Is Dying

If you follow the debates about Social Security and other entitlements, then you know the United States is rapidly growing older. Yesterday, I discussed declining geographic mobility in the United States. Could the two be linked? From The Atlantic:

Americans are most likely to move long distances when they are (a) young, (b) single, and (c) renters. We have plenty of young people. We have a historic number of singles. With home ownership gutted, rents are rising across the country. So, why aren't we moving more?

Right now, economic and financial turmoil does a good job of explaining that lack of moving. But we still have to contend with long-term trends. To me, the decline looks a lot like the advancing age of the Boomers. America is dying.

Even if Millennials get back with the moving program, the Boomers will still dominate the demographics. The older you are, the less likely you will relocate. That's why I think trying to retain recent college graduates is a waste of time. Young adults are geographically fickle. Meanwhile, the 65+ crowd is swelling in ranks. Could that skew the data?

Ulysses Migration

Move to Arizona? Forget it. I'd rather stay in the Rust Belt:

For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and a 3.3 percent rate. Why are young people not crossing borders? “This generation is going through an economic reset,” said John Della Volpe, who directs polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, which surveys thousands of young people each year. He reports that young people want to stay more connected with their hometowns: “I spoke with a kid from Columbus, Ohio, who dreamed of being a high school teacher. When he found out he’d have to move to Arizona or the Sunbelt, he took a job in a Columbus tire factory.”

Emphasis added. There is a growing concern that Americans are less geographically mobile, unwilling to move in order to improve. The decline is measurable and extends back into the past, well beyond the usual hunkering down that goes on during any recession.

Assessing geographic mobility is harder than you might think. One can move without leaving the "area" (however you define it). Usually, relocating long distance is what we mean by geographic mobility. How many miles is that? We are also limited by the data collected. Richard Florida takes a stab at defining the "stuck" problem supposedly rooting Generation Y:

A smaller share of Americans moved last year that at any time on record, as I noted in a previous post. Nearly six in ten Americans live in the state where they were born, according to the U.S. Census bureau. But there is considerable variation from state to state, as [the map] (above) by Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute shows. More than three quarters of the people in Louisiana (78.9 percent), Michigan (76.6 percent) and Ohio (75.1 percent) were born there, as opposed to just 24.3 percent of Nevadans, 35.2 percent of Floridians, 37.2 percent of the residents of Washington, D.C., and 37.7 percent of Arizonans. A high level of home-grown residents is also indicative of a lack of inflow of new people.

Emphasis added. First, I'd note that the unit of geographic analysis is a state. That means moving from Yreka, CA to San Diego, CA (over 700 miles) qualifies as being stuck and not new to San Diego. Whereas switching houses in New Castle, PA for Youngstown, OH (about 20 miles) is a big move, even though you still commute to the same place of employment. Second, return migration isn't a consideration. Why? Because it is notoriously difficult to track.

One can leave Cleveland, OH for New York City. After 20-years in the Big Apple, you go for a job in Cincinnati, OH. You would show up as one of nearly six in ten Americans who live in the state where they were born. You are stuck. Cincinnati lacks an inflow of new people. I hypothesize that Richard Florida's "stuck belt" is flush with Rust Belt refugees returning home. The lack of geographic mobility is overstated.

Rust Belt Sirens

Come hither, urban pioneers and Rust Belt rufugees. Phil Kidd (Defend Youngstown) posted a link this morning that is sure to go viral among shrinking cities boosters. The MSNBC video is a round table about "How young entrepreneurs are reviving the Rust Belt". U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (Ohio) is one of the participants. He puts a slightly different spin on his efforts to plug the brain drain, not that MSNBC noticed. The real buzz concerns an upcoming exposé in Details about the Rust Belt revival. A sneak peek:

I had other friends who'd moved to one of the coasts but didn't find happiness until returning to the Rust Belt. Many ditched paper-pushing jobs for something more fulfilling, or found work in Pittsburgh or Cincinnati that let them have lives outside the office. But the lifestyle isn't the Rust Belt's only appeal: These cities' architecture and infrastructure are genuinely beautiful and a constant reminder that for generations people from around the world have been flocking to the region to make things. Forget the cliches about depression and decay. The spirit that survives in the Rust Belt is marked by the freedom to do whatever you want in the shadow of the industrial past.

James Griffioen is describing a migration archetype that defines the latest globalization epoch in the United States. Talent is returning and others are following, turning the urban hierarchy upside down. The world used to be spiky.

As usual, the press is late to the party. In cities such as Cleveland, the transformation is largely unnoticed. I'll have more to say about that later this week. The trend Griffioen is describing is in full bloom. It is years in the making and finally obvious enough to spillover into a magazine such as Details. The people most surprised by this news are Rust Belt residents who never left. That's because people develop, not places.

Assessing Brain Drain Miami

Not all brain drain is created equal. The economic exodus is bad brain drain. The metro is undergoing a dramatic restructuring. The result is long-term anemic inmigration. Talent won't move to a shrinking city. Good brain drain is negative net migration with strong inmigration. Talent moves in, improves, and then relocates somewhere else. Miami thinks it is suffering bad brain drain:

The steady exodus of young professionals out of South Florida — and into cities such as Seattle, Denver and Houston — has come to be referred to as the region’s “brain drain” problem. And it’s a problem that local economic leaders are deeply concerned about.

On Thursday, Florida International University’s Metropolitan Center put on its collective thinking caps in hopes of coming up with some solutions. At a lunchtime forum, Metropolitan Center Associate Director Edward Murray was joined by two speakers, one of whom fits the yuppie demographic himself, and another who spearheads a volunteer organization that mentors local youth.

All in all, the presenters identified some areas that Miami can pride itself on, and others that could certainly benefit from improvement. The bright spots include the emergence of Brickell and Wynwood as hip, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods with a distinctly big-city feel. It’s neighborhoods like that that often attract the well-educated young professionals who are increasingly important in today’s economy.

Attraction gets conflated with attraction. Amenities migration is a panacea. Cool Miami will fix everything. But if you ask Richard Florida, Miami is already cool:

Miami's resurgence is being driven more by global than local forces. Miami is a hot spot for buyers from Latin America, Europe, and Asia who are drawn to its comparatively low prices as well from big U.S. metros like New York, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. ...

... This is facilitated by its global connectivity. In contrast to many other resort cities, Miami is connected by direct flights to a wide variety of global cities in Europe, Latin America, and around the world.

Read the entire post in The Atlantic. The analysis is more nuanced and even-handed than the above quote would indicate. The bad brain drain narrative is at odds with the global city narrative. Miami can't retain talent. Miami is a talent magnet.

No doubt, there is "brain drain" from Miami. Is it good or bad? Stamen Design produced a data visualization tool that allows a user to answer the question quickly.  Is your county an "exporter"? Then you have good brain drain:

"By using the IRS figures and mapping them out on U.S. highways with open-source technology provided by OpenStreetMap, they've created a roadmap of the parts of America that are losing and gaining, and the results are surprising. "We realized that if you look at the biggest 'losers,' essentially what you're looking at are the biggest cities in the U.S.," Migurski says. One of those losers: New York county, which lost $1,306,548,000 and 15,100 people. "But does that actually mean New York is a big loser?" Migurski asks. "One of our ideas was that, you're not a loser if you're losing money. You're an exporter." The sort of exporter, he says, that boosts the rest of the U.S. economy.

Indeed, Miami-Dade is an exporter. The county bleeds people and income. However, the same is true for Cuyahoga County, Ohio (Cleveland). A bit more parsing is needed. How well does each place develop people? Moving into Cleveland, the average household makes $42k. The average household moving out makes about 20 percent more. Cleveland, in my estimation, is a talent exporter. Cleveland, the place, develops people. On the other hand, households leaving Miami make $2k less than households moving in. Miami is a talent importer.

Miami is suffering from bad brain drain. But Cool Miami won't fix that problem. People develop, not places.

Mississippi Rust Belt

Out with "rust belt" and in with "legacy cities". Dying cities are really living cities. Water belt, tech belt, there is rebranding taking off in a million different directions. Before you throw another million dollars at a new marketing campaign, take a gander at what is going on in Mississippi:

These women, along with Alexe van Beuren, 28, B.T.C.’s owner, are emblematic of a new wave of business and house owners, many of them female, who are revitalizing this small town of just under 4,000.

They are drawn here by the low commercial rents and inexpensive housing stock: a 25-foot-wide storefront on Main Street can rent for less than $600; a century-old clapboard house might cost $85,000. (Ms. van Beuren’s was $6,000, though it was a total wreck, and she and her husband, Kagan Coughlin, who works in mortgage technology in nearby Oxford, Miss., paid an extra $1,000 to the squatters living there to get them to leave.)

What is especially appealing about Water Valley, besides its proximity to Oxford, home to the University of Mississippi and a 25-minute drive away, is that properties haven’t been altered much since the lion’s share of them were built between 1885 and the 1920s.

To be sure, a fair amount of shag carpeting, dropped ceilings and fake wood paneling has accumulated, but such things can be removed. (See demolition, above.)

Many of these houses have changed hands only once or twice. That’s because economic stasis or outright depression can result in a population that plateaus, as Mickey Howley, an affable New Orleans transplant and the director of the Water Valley Main Street Association, pointed out, which means the existing structures have been able to handle the housing, retail and commercial needs of the place.

“The 1920s were the high point here,” Mr. Howley said wryly.

Like many small Southern towns, Water Valley was a railroad hub and a business center for the surrounding agricultural community. When the railroad left for good midcentury, and agriculture became more mechanized or focused on timber, a crop that “takes patience but not many people,” said Ted Ownby, the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, Water Valley stopped growing.

“All through Mississippi there are these beautiful little towns,” Mr. Ownby said, “and too many of them, sadly, are empty storefronts and decaying housing. A few of them, like Water Valley, have had a revival because of a good idea or a few good ideas. Artists moving in is one option.”

Emphasis added. Call it Southern Rust Belt Chic. It's a national trend that is happening despite rebranding efforts. Ironically, the demographic distress helped to create an attractive place. The recent economic restructuring is making these comeback communities viable.

The transformation is a matter of taste, a different aesthetic. We don't need to rebrand Rust Belt. We need to sell Rust Belt. But first we must figure out why some of those forgotten beautiful little towns in Mississippi turn it around and others do not.

Great Reset Migration Winners

How did the recent financial crisis reshape America's talent economic geography? If a metro was a winner before and after the recession, then the beneficial migration isn't news. Forbes with a useful analysis of what has changed:

Migration patterns reversed during the recession in many parts of the country. [Click the image above to see a larger map.]

Pittsburgh and Phoenix are the archetypes of diverging changing fortunes. Phoenix is in decline. Pittsburgh is ascendant. The top-10 "comeback cities" are as follows:

1. New Orleans
2. Denver
3. Pittsburgh
4. Boston
5. Philadelphia
6. Washington, DC
7. El Paso
8. Minneapolis
9. Milwaukee
10. Arlington

If you are looking to catch the next wave of globalization in the United States, move to one of the above cities. The restructured global economy favors these places, while punishing others such as Phoenix. Pittsburgh in particular is heating up fast:

For owner Nick Danko, who grew up in Plum and attended University of Pittsburgh before transferring to USC, the move is bringing him home at an opportune time.  Danko has opened one studio and plans to locate a second office downtown as he begins attracting local work.

"I'm aware this is completely backwards," says Danko. "This city has always been home for me. I wanted to bring a sense of Hollywood and the production values and quality to the region. It's a crowded space in LA. Pittsburgh offers more opportunities."

"I've been closely following the region's explosion in entertainment," says Danko. "It seemed like a perfect time to become a part of that and bring our Hollywood experience to the area."

Emphasis added. This is another fine example of the restructuring going on in the urban hierarchy. Pittsburgh is a greenfield for film production. L.A. is the Rust Belt, the establishment brownfield. Welcome to the age of return migration, the revenge of the gamma cities.

Providence Lost

Rust Belt cities cycle through initiatives designed to stop the brain drain and rebranding campaigns. Taking the long view, I don't see much innovation. Metros try the same gambit again and again. The sad tale of Providence, Rhode Island:

RustWire’s Nicholas Cataldo takes a look at Providence, Rhode Island’s history of revamps, and he starts way back. When you look at the gusto in the city’s almost decade-by-decade makeovers, it makes you wonder; what works? ...

... In true ironic American fashion, Providence was founded on the Narragansett Indian’s land by religious dissident Roger Williams in the name of religious freedom and free thought. Williams was the first to be noted for promoting the separation of religion and government. Dissidents and persecuted groups flocked to the area. This early identity still runs through the heart of the city today - in fact the whole state still celebrates the flavor of “Rogue’s Island”.

While the straight trajectory of this ideological fervor doesn’t mirror the economic history of this Rust Belt city, hopefully we’ll have some nails left by the time Providence’s newest rebranding battle ends… at least, for the next ten or so years.

In the here and now, Providence is revving up the revitalization engines. Historically, nothing has changed. What's different this time around?

Providence needs to discover its own redevelopment narrative. The Creative Capitol ship has already sailed to Pittsburgh. Cataldo inadvertently touches on Providence's unique competitive advantage:

Situated nicely between Boston and New York City, it is pretty hard for Providence to get positive attention. Any reference of Providence as part of a top ten list, will more than likely lead to bad publicity. So, in lieu of innovation, the city has taken principles that have worked for other places in similar predicaments and is attempting to implement them here.

Other cities should be so lucky. Providence should figure out how to leverage this proximity asset. Want access to both major markets on the cheap? (See Scranton) Move to Providence. It's divine.