Monday, December 02, 2013

Economic Geography of Eds and Meds

Eds and meds are dying at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Economic divergence of the Talent Economy.

Subject Article: "Where 'Eds and Meds' Industries Could Become a Liability."

Other Links: 1. "The End of the Road for Eds and Meds."
2. "Historic Jobs Factoid II."
3. "Key to job growth, equality is boosting tradable sector of economy."
4. "Colleges deploy marketing pizazz to woo students: New tactics to chase shrinking pool of high school grads."
5. "Pittsburgh campus freshman class bigger, better."

Postscript: I wrote about the economic geography of eds and meds last March. I danced around the heart of the issue: whether or not a sector of an economy is tradable. Only recently have I come to appreciate the importance of the tradable economy for the development of cities. Urban amenities are non-tradable. You have to move to a city in order to benefit. That's the thrust of Richard Florida's model of migration. Jobs follow people. However, the tradable economy drives urban growth and prosperity. People follow jobs. The cool cities game is zero-sum, with most places losing. I'm astonished how many cities and towns pursue this strategy. Pittsburgh is eating their lunch.

1 comment:

Allen said...

Not in today's theme but thought of your writing when I saw this today

http://nypost.com/2013/12/02/new-hipsters-fight-old-hipsters-over-luxury-bushwick-digs/

Meanwhile, “true” Bushwick natives are laughing at both sides.
“It’s funny that the people who complain about it made this area gentrified in the first place,” said Carlos Juarez, 22, a waiter who remembers when his cousins were forced out of Bushwick by the first wave of hipsters in 2000.
“There was no name for them then — now it’s ‘hipster.’
“It was all working-class minorities like me. And then people like those people came in from other parts of the country and then people with more money came. The money washed the people away.”
But when asked if he would move into CastleBraid if there were lower-income options, he didn’t hesitate:
“Absolutely!” he said.