Saturday, July 27, 2013

Texans Didn’t Make Houston Great

Texans aren't worth a damn unless they leave the state at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: The magic of cities is migration.

Subject Article: "Brain Drain Series: 'I Don’t Want To Move Back Without Something Lined Up.'"

Other Links: 1. "Inbreeding Homophily."
2. "Migrant Networks and the Spread of Misinformation."
3. "Ohioans have invaded the Lowcountry... and some folks wish they would leave."
4. "Birthplace Diversity and Economic Prosperity."
5. "Demographic Dynamism and Metropolitan Change: Comparing Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC."
6. "Bowling Alone Urbanism."

Postscript: The poverty of place-based economic development:

One problem emphasized by Edel (1980) is that place-targeting of public programs (such as entitlement zones) is an inaccurate way to target people in need: “[I]nitially ineligible people become beneficiaries by their place of residence, while some intended beneficiaries are excluded for the same reason’’ (178). In high-growth areas, in particular, newcomers often arrive to take advantage of the placetargeted benefits, displacing the original residents for whom the programs were intended. For example, a study in Atlanta found that the benefits of employment programs intended for local black young adults were often intercepted by the high volume of new migrants, many of them also black (Sawicki and Moody 1997).

I contend that urban redevelopment initiatives fail because they are place-centric in approach. Some neighborhoods characterized as distressed are actually quite successful if a researcher traces the experiences of the people who have lived there. That is to say, a neighborhood isn't improving but the lives of residents are. People develop, not places.

Non sequitur alert, “What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.”

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