'The New York Times' Is Dying

Celebrating brain drain from the New York Times at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Human capital controls and migration.

Subject Article: "Does anyone still work at the ‘New York Times’?"

Other Links: 1. "Fit to sprint: Top talent exits The New York Times."
2. "Editor exodus continues at NYT."
3. "New York as a Gigantic Refinery of the Nation’s Human Capital."
4. "Esquire: Where does the money go?"
5. "In Praise of Brain Drain: Want to help the developing world? Hire away its best minds."
6. "New Canadian teachers head abroad amid tight job market."

Postscript: Assertion:

Britain has a brain drain problem: it's one of the two countries whose inventors are keenest to leave home, according to a study for WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

The :"journalist" continues:

WIPO is interested because of the negative effect on emerging countries of seeing their cleverest people emigrate. Africa and the Caribbean suffer the worst, with skilled scientific and technical graduates seeking more lucrative work in more mature economies.

Emphasis added. From the actual WIPO report:

The international mobility of skilled workers and its economic implications have emerged as important development topics. The project on intellectual property (IP) and brain drain seeks to generate new insights into this topic by exploring the potential of patent data to cast light on a specific category of highly skilled migrants – namely inventors. In particular, by exploiting information on inventor nationality and residence in Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications, it maps the migration of scientists and engineers, thereby establishing a partial geography of high-skilled migration. The present document describes in detail the mobility patterns of inventors over the 1991-2010 period. The underlying analysis is entirely descriptive and, by itself, does not offer evidence on the causes and consequences of skilled migration.

Emphasis added. Upon clicking through to read the report, I expected to find brain drain hysteria. The clamor for a more effective intellectual property regime is the model for concern about brain drain. Talent is the intellectual property of businesses and places. If we do not protect this intellectual property for businesses and places, then they won't invest in talent. To WIPO's credit, it stays above the controversy. The journalist, on the other hand, is promoting a specific agenda.

Portland Is Dying, Revisited

It's the birth rate, stupid at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Economic convergence and migration economies.

Subject Article: "Steve Duin: The sustained mediocrity of Oregon's higher-ed system."

Other Links: 1. "London: people moving out, people moving in."
2. "London Brain Drain."
3. "Check of Portland’s vitals shows signs of life."
4. "'Fastest Dying Cities' Meet for a Lively Talk."
5. "Texas Is Dying."
6. "Chicago Is Dying."
7. "Germany's Ann Arbor Dilemma."
8. "Urban Innovators: University Park Alliance."
9. "Got kids?"
10. "Economist tells Akron group that attracting talent is key to thriving cities."
11. "Talent Attraction Expert Joe Cortright."
12. "Not Dante's Pittsburgh."
13. "Once nearly extinct, U.S. streetcar is back."
14. "Don’t count on future immigrants for economic growth."
15. "Rust Belt chic: Declining Midwest cities make a comeback."
16. "Millennials Flock to Washington After Abandoning City in Recession."
17. "Andrew Zimmern on AZ Canteen, Pharmashilling, and Why Pittsburgh Is Hot"

Postscript: Believe or not, I'm tired of writing about Portland. But then I stumbled into that Steve Duin opinion piece comparing higher education in Oregon with that of North Carolina. It was a good opportunity to clear the air about the Portland-Pittsburgh comparison. Enough of that. Andrew Zimmerman saying nice things about Pittsburgh:

Pittsburgh: You talk about an island in the Darwinian sense. Here's a major American city stuck at the end of a series of river valleys, cut off from the rest of country. It is a Eastern European immigrant city — working class, blue collar — that has reinvented itself over the last 10-20 years with this craftsman approach to life that reminds me of cities like Austin, Portland, OR and Portland, ME. I hate to be one of those people who's like 'Pittsburgh is the next big thing,' but I get around more than most people and I'm telling you, Pittsburgh is like the next big thing. The geography lends itself, it's incredibly lush farmland, and inexpensive city with incredible history. They're renovating 100 year old railroad terminals into city markets. They had chefs who left the city because there was no scene and went to LA, they have the talent to be anywhere in America, and they have come back and can afford to open their own places and do what they want. It's very, very exciting. As a student of these things, there's just enough Fortune 500, sports teams, to feed that group. The art community and food community are kind of leading but there's money following them.

I think people who are in eastern Pennsylvania and it's like: Who can afford a $5 million house on the beach? Why not get a beautiful house on the river? I saw places that are just breathtaking. It's also got the Appalachians running through, so it's got stunning geography. The food scene is cool. Lots of good stuff going on. There are these old bars in these old 'hoods ... It's like today's special is goulash, tomorrow's is stuffed cabbage, huge portions. There's like three grandmas and a grandpa making this from scratch, the best stuffed cabbage I've ever had and I grew up on that.

If you think Zimmerman is gushing about the Burgh here, give this a listen: "Go Fork Yourself: Pittsburgh with Rick Sebak."

Diverging Demography of Baltimore and Africa

Pronatalist Baltimore at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Demographic sabermetrics.

Subject Article: "Commodities: Destination Africa. Trading houses are looking at the vast potential that lies in meeting the continent’s surging consumer demand."

Other Links: 1. "Blighted Cities Prefer Razing to Rebuilding."
2. "Expert: Population Drop Not 'Fatal' Per Se."
3. "Is growth for cities always a good thing?"
4. "Downtown Baltimore population grows despite few immigrants."
5. "London Brain Drain."
6. "London: people moving out, people moving in. There's not much difference between the numbers flowing in to the capital and the numbers flowing out. The explanation for the population boom lies elsewhere."

Postscript: Instead of welcoming immigrants, will the next mayor of Baltimore promote a baby boom? Population growth is a policy end. That's a lousy goal. People follow jobs. Put talent to work instead of fighting brain drain.

Chicago Is Dying

Weighing the good and bad sides of Chicago at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Sabermetric demography.

Subject Article: "Now how do we keep them?"

Other Links: 1. "Will the foreclosure crisis kill Chicago?"
2. "Shrinking City Myths."
3. "Podthoughts by Colin Marshall: Curious City."
4. "'I Wanted to Be Successful, and I Could Do That in Houston.'"

Postscript: I keep coming down on the side of Chicago is dying. I remain unsure if this is the case. Among the most globalized US cities, Chicago is the most affordable. It's a redoubtable talent magnet that also refines human capital for bigger and better things elsewhere. The global city distinction will remain a huge legacy asset. It also boasts perhaps the greatest assortment of Rust Belt legacy assets (e.g. research universities) in the entire country. Yet no place better epitomizes "the gated city."

Texas Is Dying

Texas is drunk on population growth at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Ironic demographics.

Subject Article: "Texas Economy: Miracle or Myth?"

Other Links: 1. "Portland Is Dying."
2. "Tyler Cowen’s 10 Reasons Texas Is Our Future."
3. "‘Big, Hot, Cheap and Right’: Erica Grieder Talks About Texas."
4. "GROWTH WITHOUT GROWTH: AN ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT GOAL FOR METROPOLITAN AREAS."
5. "Do Jobs Follow People or Do People Follow Jobs?"
6. "Minnesota state economist Tom Stinson: The exit interview."
7. "Texas Redistricting: The Effects of Exurbanization."
8. "El Paso County Attorney Tackles Brain Drain By Encouraging Bright Students To Come Back to El Paso."

Postscript: Migration, domestic and international, is more the province of the best educated. Demographic decline impacts much more of the world than Japan and Germany. After decades of diverging, the Innovation Economy is converging. Concerning workforce, size doesn't matter. Productivity does.

When Jobs Follow People

How shitholes such as Seattle attracted talent and revitalized at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Legacy economies.

Subject Article: "Kickstarter co-founder returns to Chicago."

Other Links: 1. "Iconic "will the last person" Seattle billboard bubbles up again."
2. "City of despair."
3. "The New Geography of Jobs (Enrico Moretti)."
4. "Do Jobs Follow People or Do People Follow Jobs?"

Postscript: While I'm not fond of the Lincoln Institute report, the term "legacy city" resonates with me. I'm working with the idea of "legacy urban economy". Demographics at the center, what Akron was is what it will be.

Doubling Down on Start-Up Las Vegas

Las Vegas gambling on jobs following people at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Urban growth and talent migration.

Subject Article: "Las Vegas’ tech sector has come a long way over the past year but still has some maturing to do."

Other Links: 1. "Do Jobs Follow People or Do People Follow Jobs?"
2. "The city startup: Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project."
3. "'Young People in Omaha Are Able to Take Bigger Risks.'"

Postscript: The subject article makes a strong case for people-follow-jobs, demonstrating a disconnect with Tony Hsieh's downtown revitalization efforts. Fair critique or not, I'm still not sure what the people-follow-jobs approach would look like. After reading this recent post from Aaron Renn, I get the same sense of helplessness that Enrico Moretti expresses in his book, "The New Geography of Jobs." What can Las Vegas do in the face of economic divergence? A new post coming soon attempting to answer that question.

Do Jobs Follow People or Do People Follow Jobs?

Battle of the two urban geographic paradigms at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Theories about cities.

Subject Article: "Keys to the City: how economics, institutions, social interaction and politics shape development."

Other Links: 1. "Smart Growth: Education, Skilled Workers, & the Future of Cold-Weather Cities."
2. "THE 'CREATIVE CLASS' IN THE UK: AN INITIAL ANALYSIS."
3. "What Workers Lose By Staying Put."
4. "Stay Put, Young Man."
5. "Failure of Place and Economic Development."
6. "The city startup: Tony Hsieh’s downtown project."
7. "The Interview: Joel Kotkin versus Richard Florida."
8. "Mapping 60 Years of White Flight, Brain Drain and American Migration."
9. "Mobility, Skills, and the Michigan Non-Compete Experiment."
10. "Talent Retention Causes Brain Drain."
11. "Noncompetes Are Lame — Let’s Set the Creators Free."
12. "Q&A With Michael Storper About His New Book."

Postscript: One comment, almost an aside, from Michael Storper's lecture stood out to me. The jobs-follow-people approach does have its place. Storper contends that this theory about cities is effective intra-regionally, but not inter-regionally. That's how I see place-making and place-branding working, changing the psychology of residents and helping with community integration.

Italy Is Dying

Fictions about Italian brain drain at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Demographic decline and brain drain hysteria.

Subject Article: "Italy: The Nation That Crushes Its Young."

Other Links: 1. "What Workers Lose By Staying Put."

Postscript: Italy suffers from too much social capital. Mr. Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam, would say that it is a good thing. It isn't. Most Italian communities lack the capacity to embrace newcomers and thus engage in knowledge transfer. Italy lacks churn, domestic and international. An allegory:

Peter’s café sits on a hillside in Horta, a port city on one of the Azores islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. By the time you reach the docks in the harbour, you can tell that this place is special. Bright, colorful paintings of sailboats and flags line the piers—hundreds and hundreds of them, drawn by visiting captains and crew members from every corner of the globe. Horta is the one place between the Americas and Europe where world-traveling sailors stop to take a break. Some are heading toward Fiji, others to Spain. Some are on their second tour around the world; others are simply resting before the last leg to Brazil. They come from different backgrounds and cultures. And all of them converge upon the rustic-looking Peter’s Café. Here they can pick up year-old letters from other world travelers or just sit and talk over a beer or a glass of Madeira.

When I saw this place for the first time, I realized that the serene environment of the café actually concealed a chaotic universe. The café was filled with ideas and viewpoints from all corners of the world, and these ideas were intermingling and colliding with each other.

“Get this, they don’t use hooks when fishing for marlin in Cuba,” one visitor says.

“So what do they use?” another asks.

“Rags. The lure is covered in rags. When the fish strikes the rag, it wraps around the fish bill and won’t let go because of the friction. The fish don’t get hurt and can be released, no problem.”

“That’s pretty neat. Maybe we could use something like that. . . .”

The people here participate in what seems like an almost random combination of ideas. One conversation leads into another, and it is difficult to guess what idea will come up next. Peter’s Café is a nexus point in the world, one of the most extreme I have ever seen.

Brain drain is good for innovation. Not enough young talent is leaving Italy.

Allentown Is Undead

A growing population isn't what you think it is at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Mesofacts and demography.

Subject Article: "Weak Tax Base Hurts Renewal: After Steep Decline, Allentown Places Hope in Development to Boost Property Values."

Other Links: 1. "Billy Joel never put down Allentown, anyway."
2. "Sun Belt Counties Dying."
3. "If I Ruled The Metro -- Suburban Mergers."

Postscript: My theme of "X" place is dying satirizes the metric folklore we use to make that determination. The population numbers, up or down, are much ado about nothing.

The Great Gentrification

Switching gears from brain drain to gentrification at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Migration and xenophobia.

Subject Article: "Rockaway worries some outside relief workers are carpetbaggers."

Other Links: 1. "The Word Hoosier."
2. "Chicago’s Hillbilly Problem During the Great Migration."
3. "OKIE MIGRATIONS."
4. "Liz Cheney’s biggest challenge: The carpetbagger label."
5. "CARPETBAGGERS."

Postscript: In terms of talent migration, the primary concern for dying/failing cities is transitioning from brain to gentrification. Hypothetically, let's concede civic efforts to stop brain drain have worked. The flow reversal should boost demand for real estate, amenities, and infrastructure. But instead of staying in the suburbs where they grew up, your college graduates settle in urban neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods, while struggling with decades of sprawl, still have residents who are accustomed to the cheap rents resulting from the city exodus. Suburban-produced affluence collides with the isolation of urban blight. How does a community reconcile this tension? Is gentrification all that it is purported to be? I intend to dig into these questions as I have with brain drain.

Next American Hotspot

Which dying city will be the next big thing at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Talent migration projections.

Subject Article: "Census: Americans are moving again."

Other Links: 1. "DURANGO, COLORADO: Next Big Thing."
2. "HARDWICK, VERMONT: Next Big Thing."
3. "Jobless rate among the lowest."
4. "Demographic Deception."
5. "Go Back To Ohio."
6. "San Antonio Talent Economy: Bubbles and Barriers."
7. "[GENTRIFICATION DIARIES] A Tale of Two Austins."
8. "Are Artists to Blame for Gentrification?"

Postscript: I'm in the process of shifting blog focus from brain drain to gentrification. The two issues occupy the same space in a community's psyche. Locals good. Outsiders bad. However, brain drain is descriptive. Gentrification is predictive. I want to try my hand at being more predictive given my understanding of brain drain.

Celebrating Dying Places

Cheering on brain drain from Israel at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Talent churn and innovation.

Subject Article: "In Boston, Israel’s brain drain becomes a meeting of the minds."

Other Links: 1. "Noncompete Agreements Are The DRM Of Human Capital."
2. "Revenge of the Rabenmutter: No Sex for You."
3. "Israel Is Dying."
4. "Israel's Brain Drain: Why are so many Israelis teaching at American universities?"
5. "Knowledge Creation, Diffusion, and Use in Innovation Networks and Knowledge Clusters."
6. "NerdWallet Book Club: Orly Lobel, ‘Talent Wants to Be Free: Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids and Free Riding.’"
7. "REGIONAL DISADVANTAGE? NON-COMPETE AGREEMENTS AND BRAIN DRAIN."

Postscript: Okay, I started this blog thinking brain drain was a bad thing. Turns out, it is a good thing. Next up, the pejorative "Rust Belt" becomes a point of pride. "Hell with the lid taken off" doesn't mean what most people think it means. Sprawl and shrinking cities are more a function of upward mobility than White Flight. Technological advances that flooded the world with cheap food emptied out rural communities. The success of the Manufacturing Economy led to its own demise. "Bad" metrics stem from positive outcomes.

Revenge of the Rabenmutter: No Sex for You

Rather than deal with the stigma of the working devil mom, Japanese women forswear intimate contact at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Demographic decline.

Subject Article: "Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?"

Other Links: 1. "Global Human Capital: Integrating Education and Population."
2. "United States of Failed Cities."
3. "Rabenmutter: Germany Waging the War for Talent Without Women."
4. "Quoth the Raven: I Bake Cookies, Too."
5. "Popular blog goes drama at Fuji TV’s “Oni Yome Nikki” and more."
6. "Is Japan a dying nation?"

Postscript: The pattern developing is that positive economic outcomes beget "dying" or "failing" cities.

United States of Failed Cities

Carl Schramm fails urban economic geography at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Policy narratives and social science.

Subject Article: "Why Does The World's Richest Country Have So Many Failed Cities?"

Other Links: 1. "Ambush In Mogadishu."
2. "New Tom Hanks movie features Minn. Somali actors."
3. "Urban Myths of Innovation: Density and Serendipity."
4. "Introduction to HNR360 – Failed Cities, Fast Cities."
5. "Post-Soylent Pittsburgh."

Postscript: For my own archival purposes, the year of urban peak for some well-known Rust Belt cities:

They decided that Buffalo’s civic apogee was 1901.  Its industry was diverse.  It received much of the Midwest’s grain in its port, milled it, and transshipped it by rail for export.    Pittsburgh’s best year was 1910; Rochester’s, 1928; Philadelphia’s, 1929; Detroit’s, 1950; and Gary’s, 1953.

Mind you, that's not a population peak. The tell-tale demographic decline comes after the economic decline. For example, Pittsburgh's epic exodus during the 1980s is roughly 75 years after its civic apogee. That's a long time to go without demanding labor from outside the region.

Urban Myths of Innovation: Density and Serendipity

Greater urban diversity and density aren't all that at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Urbanization and innovation.

Subject Article: "I Love You, David Byrne, But You're Wrong."

Other Links: 1. "Jeff Speck: America Has So Many Problems. Walkability Solves Most of Them."
2. "Two Brains Running."
3. "A call for innovation."
4. "The Urban Tech Revolution."
5. "Can you build an intersection?"
6. "Your Knowledge Is Nothing If No One Else Knows You Know It."
7. "The Paperman Official Trailer Disney Short 2013 HD."
8. "The Novel & Movie: The Bridges of Madison County."
9. "Urban Islands of Poverty and Bowling With Strangers."

Postscript: To make an analogous point about the link between erroneous geographic stereotypes and public policy:

People have been afraid of the dark since the dawn of time – and it’s a good instinct to have when you’re part of the food chain. For millions of years, light = safer. So no one complains about light that exposes potential predators.

While the film suggested a connection, ”there is no real, demonstrable correlation between lighting and crime,” Wren said. “(Rather) people feel less afraid of crime in well-lit areas.”

People feel that greater density and diversity fuel innovation. Bring on the innovation district boondoggles.

China's Pittsburgh Moment

Demographic decline informs better policy at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Ironic economic development.

Subject Article: "Where Have All the Workers Gone? China's Labor Shortage and the End of the Panda Boom."

Other Links: 1. "The Brain Gain: The Rise of San Antonio’s Talent Economy."
2. "Chris Briem, Regional Economist, Urban and Regional Analysis."
3. "Post-Soylent Pittsburgh."
4. "A very brief history of Pittsburgh: The rise, fall and rebirth of the city that built America."
5. "The single biggest change in Pittsburgh since the 1980s......"
6. "Demographic Trends and the City of Pittsburgh."
7. "Maybe I need to issue a press release: City of Pittsburgh now 'younger' than the United States....."
8. "I don't even know how far back you have to go to find the last time that was true."

Postscript: A passage from the Foreign Affairs article about China's labor shortage that I wanted to write about but didn't fit the blog post:

The new generation of migrant workers, by contrast, hardly worked on the farm, if ever at all, and often never saw their parents doing field labor either. Recent studies from Chinese think tanks have shown that these new migrants are less motivated by simple financial opportunities than by their own career advancement and individual interests. Moreover, they tend to put a premium on social justice and fair treatment. These lifestyle considerations make living closer to home, family, friends, and a familiar dialect and culture (which range as much in China as do the modern-day variations of Latin spoken in different corners of Europe) as important as their salary, if not more so in some cases.

Every region in the United States is in the talent attraction and retention game. However, the strategies and tactics employed are divorced from actual studies of migration patterns. What do Millennials want? I sat across from a Columbus, Ohio real estate developer at the International Economic Development Council conference in Philadelphia. The roundtable discussion was titled, "They're Just Not That into You (But They Could Be): Attracting and Retaining Young Professionals." About half of the people there for the chat fit into that category and the real estate developer was keen to know what they wanted. What I heard is that cool amenities didn't matter. Big fish, small pond did. They wanted to make a difference. They would migrate in search of that opportunity. But that qualitative data doesn't fit into a real estate developer's model. Such is the current state of regional talent management in the United States.

Demise of the Global City

Global cities in decline at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Globalization and geographic mobility.

Subject Article: "London’s Great Exodus."

Other Links: 1. "London Is Dying."
2. "What future for Britain’s ‘rustbelt’ towns?"
3. "The San Francisco Exodus."
4. "New York City's Next Williamsburg: Fishtown."
5. "Stay Put, Young Man: Americans used to be exceptional for how often they moved. But that once-powerful source of both efficiency and upward mobility is now in steep decline."
6. "Fortresses of Globalization and Wilmington, Delaware."

Postscript: To put a fine point on the post, I disagree with the analysis that migration patterns indicate economic divergence. I see economic convergence. Talent can have all of New York City in Philadelphia. Go ahead and move back to Des Moines, Iowa instead of sticking it out in sinking Chicago.

Israel Is Dying

Brain drain turning Israel into Somalia at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Networks of global innovation.

Subject Article: "Israeli ex-pats' Nobel win highlights brain drain."

Other Links: 1. "Ireland Is Dying."
2. "Two Israeli scientists who emigrated to U.S. win Nobel Prize in Chemistry."
3. "The World’s Leading Nations for Innovation and Technology."
4. "CBS '60 Minutes' Bob Simon: Detroit reminds me of Mogadishu, Somalia."

Postscript: Occasionally, I come across a legitimate brain drain problem. This story about two expatriate Nobel Prize winners isn't one of them. The Associated Press doesn't bother trying to balance its reporting, buying the hysteria without so much a second thought. Such junk journalism keeps the brain drain myth going.

Fortresses of Globalization and Wilmington, Delaware

Looking at the relationship between economic globalization and urban reinvestment at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Urban planning and globalization.

Subject Article: "City job policies are helping create two different and unequal Chicagos."

Other Links: 1. "Fortress Europe: How the EU Turns Its Back on Refugees."
2. "Migrant boat capsize leaves 27 dead in Mediterranean."
3. "France's troubled suburbs: Rebranding la banlieue."
4. "Mapping America's War on Terrorism: An Aggressive New Strategy."
5. "Rust Belt Allure of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania."
6. "creative change: loma design district gives wilmington identity, redevelopment it longed for."
7. "About the Riverfront Development Corporation."
8. "Recovery Grant Funds Amtrak Renovations."
9. "Michael S. Purzycki, Executive Director."

Postscript: Saskia Sassen's divergent global cities are converging down the urban hierarchy:

The hegemony of Tokyo, London and New York—and advanced economies as a whole—will wane. The MGI expects an additional 7,000 large companies by 2025—and most of the newcomers will be based in developing countries.

The number of headquarters in São Paulo is expected to triple by 2025. Beijing and Istanbul will have twice as many large companies. In 12 years’ time 46% of large companies will be headquartered in emerging markets. About 300 cities could host large companies for the first time by 2025—and more than 150 of these cities will be in the China region. In Western Europe, there will be just three newcomers.

Globalization is on the march, in developing countries and to the forgotten parts of the United States.

Failure of Place and Economic Development

Obsession with the failure of place unleashes a parade of Underpants Gnomes at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Economic development folklore of talent migration.

Subject Article: "Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem."

Other Links: 1. "Gnomes Know Business."
2. "Underpants Gnomes And Talent Migration."

Postscript: Economic developers and planners are working the wrong end of talent migration. It's all push factors, brain drain. Suburban dreams get labeled, "white flight." Migration is more pull than push. A better place won't solve much of anything. I heard it loud and clear at the IEDC annual conference. Places develop, not people.

Casino Economic Redevelopment in Atlantic City

Casinos gone bad at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Two-track urban economic development.

Subject Article: "Can Revel Save Atlantic City?"

Other Links: 1. "Rust Belt Allure of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania."
2. "Atlantic City's Incredibly Bad Gamble on the Revel Casino."
3. "Allentown Lyrics."
4. "Morning Fix: Rust Belt Revival."
5. "A Tale of Two Cities? London’s economic success does not seem to have translated into lower rates of poverty or inequality."
6. "The Rise and Rise of the Global City."

Postscript: This post is more about what is right in Bethlehem than what is wrong in Atlantic City. Without exception, the economic developers I've met at the IEDC conference in Philadelphia feel embattled. Good things happen when different interests can come together and move a city forward.

Rust Belt Allure of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Rust Belt Bethlehem's Ann Arbor Dilemma at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Geographic stereotypes and talent migration.

Subject Article: "Bethlehem Steel's Redevelopment: Winners and Losers in Public-Private Partnerships."

Other Links: 1. "People Develop, Not Places."
2. "Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: A Moravian Settlement in Colonial America."
3. "Why I Have the Bethlehem Steel Tattooed Across My Back."
4. "Rust Belt Chic Development."
5. "Lena Dunham Wants Brooklyn to Be More Like Chattanooga."
6. "History of ArtsQuest."
7. "The man behind SteelStacks: Decades of risk-taking culminate Friday with opening of $53 million concert and arts complex."
8. "Noncompetes Are Lame — Let’s Set the Creators Free."

Postscript: Cruising the internets for an image of the blast furnaces, I settled on a tattoo:

The Bethlehem Steel, that mass of jumbled metal and heartbeat pumping years of spirit, scrap, and history from the acid banks of the Lehigh River. That keeper of memories, that heroic skyscape jutting up from our sunken valley. It's sacred as a footprint, toxic as the depths of the earth, red as blood, and it sits there idly, reminding. The company that gave life to the Lehigh Valley has been history for me since I was born, despite continued operation through the first 15 years of my life. These were years of billowing smoke, fire in the sky, middle shift and layoffs. Years of great mystery: Will dad find another job soon? Are we poor now?

If you grew up in a Rust Belt town, then you understand.

Racism Is Dying

To best model migration, gender trumps race and class at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: The shifting geography of race and Rust Belt Chic Cleveland.

Subject Article: "River Crossings: The old black-divide is breaking down as young people of all races migrate west."

Other Links: 1. " Bentley Faculty Profiles: Joni K. Seager."
2. "Captive Labor Markets and Migration."

Postscript: Possibly a new migration trend, “What’s going on in Lakewood is you have whites and blacks moving in and meeting together. You have young whites from far-flung suburbs moving and meeting up together.”

The bigger change, in my opinion, is how we look at geography and migration. Globalization neighborhoods are mixing bowls of people who usually have college degrees. It may look more diverse, but everyone shares a lower social capital requirement for community development. That's not to say we've entered a post-racial era. Just that our concept of segregation is woefully outdated.

Your Knowledge Is Nothing If No One Else Knows You Know It

Dan Gilbert's business acumen is the wrong approach for redeveloping Detroit at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Benefits of brain drain and costs of talent retention initiatives.

Subject Article: "Dan Gilbert Defends $300M In Federal Spending For Detroit."

Other Links: 1. "The Talent Dividend."
2. "Want to Kill Innovation? Fight Brain Drain."
3. "The Benefits of Talent Mobility."
4. "German Pork Butchers in Britain."
5. "The Talent Commons: Human Capital and Collective Knowledge Creation."
6. "The Virtues of Leaks, Raids, and Free-Riding: An Interview with Orly Lobel."
7. "Twitter Feed of Mayor Cory Booker."
8. "The Darwin Awards: In Search Of Smart."

Postscript: Three lines of academic discourse are coming together that expose the folly of trying to plug the brain drain. The first is the migration literature putting people in front of place. More recently, I've looked into social networking theory an the problem of inbreeding homophily. More broadly, I'm interested in how knowledge transfer occurs and the impacts of migration on innovation. See pork butchers. Lastly, we have that Silicon Valley magic. Orly Lobel gives the idea of talent churn some academic heft. I think all three streams comprise an economic development strategy based on migration.

Manufacturing Migration: Who Will Move for Low-Skill, Low-Pay Jobs?

Rebirth of American manufacturing faces a migration crisis at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: The shift from least educated to most educated in who migrates.

Subject Article: "A Wave of Sewing Jobs as Orders Pile Up at U.S. Factories."

Other Links: 1. "Displacing Poverty."
2. "Who is afraid of the brain drain? Human capital flight and growth in developing countries."
3. "Federal Largesse: Not by Pork Barrel Politics Alone."
4. "The Great Creative Class Migration."
5. "Mobility Matters: Understanding the New Geography of Jobs."
6. "The Glass-Floor Problem."

Postscript: Even if manufacturing could produce a substantial number of new jobs (highly unlikely), no one will move to fill those positions. One would hope that the openings would occur in regions hit hard by unemployment. What is the economic geography of reshoring? Where do these companies need to locate?

Whole Foods Is the Lewis and Clark of Gentrification

The machinations behind the myth of Whole Foods as gentrifier at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Geography of fear and migration.

Subject Article: "Hip-ification."

Other Links: 1. "Can You Tell an Up-and-Coming Neighborhood by Its ‘Emergent Energy’?"
2. "Brian Williams Mocks NYT Over-Coverage of Brooklyn."
3. "A Walker in the City."
4. "Movie Review: Mean Streets."
5. "Can the Whole Foods Effect Be Repeated?"
6."Talent Migration As Leading Indicator."
7. "Thomas J. Holmes on Wal-Mart's location strategy."
8. "Whole Foods targets low-income market in Chicago’s mean streets."
9. "Editorial: East Liberty advances / A long-distressed area continues to bounce back."
10. "Not Dead Yet: The Infill of Cleveland's Urban Core."
11. "The Brain Gain: The Rise of San Antonio’s Talent Economy."
12."Urban Islands of Poverty and Bowling With Strangers."

Postscript: Concerning migration and economic development, the focus is on negative factors that push people out or away. Conventional wisdom holds that if you fix those problems (i.e. uncool with a lack of talent, tolerance, and technology), then they will come. More importantly, the young and restless won't leave. More people stay than leave. Those who do move, only go a short distance. People are risk averse. For those who do roll the dice, they put up with a bunch of negative factors to make a go of it in Big City. Sure, high rents push plenty of people out of New York City. But it doesn't deter talent from coming. For those with ambition to burn, the Big Apple is on the map. Pittsburgh isn't.

Global Dublin Killing Rural Ireland

Globalization blesses Dublin at the expense of rural Ireland at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: How globalization impacts urbanization and migration.

Subject Article: "Rural Ireland feels the pinch as Dublin bounces back to life."

Other Links: 1. "One Irish person emigrates every six minutes."

Postscript: Big study of Irish emigration released today by the University College Cork. Quote of note:

Sparsely populated rural areas have been disproportionately affected, with 25 per cent of households losing a member to emigration. In commuter belt areas, where residents would be more likely have negative equity mortgages and young children, less than 11 per cent of households had experienced emigration.

Rural areas are also most likely to feel that emigration has impacted negatively on their community, with householders describing a loss of “vibrancy” associated with younger residents, lack of support for older community members, decimation of local sports teams and clubs, and reduced spending in the local economy.

The rush of the rural to emigrate evokes "Arrival City" by Doug Saunders. However, the Irish pattern is more than a little ironic and perhaps indicative of something altogether new.

Indiana’s Brain Dead Higher Education Policy

The place of Indiana takes priority over the people of Indiana at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Talent management policies.

Subject Article: "Freebies for the Rich."

Other Links: 1. "The Virtuous Circle of Ever-Lasting Expansion of Domestic Demand and Labor Supply Is Broken: Yes, Ireland Really Is Dying."
2. "City ready to tout its quality of life online."
3. "Indiana's average personal income equals that of US - in 1996."
4. "Three Funerals and a Wedding: Resetting the way we work on migration."

Postscript: I thought 24 or more hours would be long enough to calm down enough to write a more level-headed critique of merit scholarships. I was wrong.

Lasting Expansion of Domestic Demand and Labor Supply Is Broken: Yes, Ireland Really Is Dying

Ireland doing the fail, pulling a Pittsburgh at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: "Dying" places and geographic stereotypes.

Subject Article: "Irish Demographic Dividend Reversal."

Other Links: 1. "Ireland Is Dying."
2. "Detroit Postmortem."
3. "Struggling, San Jose Tests a Way to Cut Benefits."
4. "Rust Belt of Silicon Valley: San Jose Is Dying."
5. "A Return to Downtown Birmingham."
6. "The convergence of the twain."
7. "How Mexican Brain Drain Saved Mexico."

Postscript: To slap the label of "dying" on a city such as Portland (Oregon) or Boston is ironic. It's ironic because of preconceived notions and subjective geographies, not rigorous analysis. Our perceptions of place influence economic development outcomes:

Helmreich is a great advocate for the Bronx, which he says could be the next Brooklyn—a target, or perhaps a beneficiary, of gentrification. We walked along Grand Avenue near 180th Street, a cheerful neighborhood of small, squared-off row houses, each with a gated driveway and a neatly kept garden. Many of the houses were flying Puerto Rican flags; more Puerto Ricans live in the Bronx than in any other borough. We passed a shady green park. “Is this a war zone?” Helmreich asked. “Is that a disgusting park in the slums? When people get it into their heads that the Bronx isn’t as dangerous as they think it is, everything’s going to change.”

You go where you know. For now, most people don't know the Bronx. The same used to be true of Brooklyn. Our mental maps shape migration patterns. Whether or not a place is really dying is rather beside the point.

How Mexican Brain Drain Saved Mexico

How Mexico became a magnate for foreign born talent at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Brain drain and economic development.

Subject Article: "For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico."

Other Links: 1. "Pittsburgh, and the Magic of Failure."
2. "Your Casual Acquaintances on Twitter Are Better Than Your Close Friends on Facebook."
3. "Inbreeding Homophily."
4. "The Roots of Rust Belt Chic."

Postscript: I've reached the finish line with the idea that the exodus from Pittsburgh during 1980s could fuel an economic boom in Southwestern PA a few decades later. Mexico is rapidly developing today because of the talent exports of yesterday. The looming question was figuring out how that would happen. Turns out, Robert Putnam has social capital backwards. The weak ties make the world go round and open up a community to economic globalization.

Mobile or Stuck? Two Sides of New York City Gentrification

Gentrification and captive female labor at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Relationship between geographic mobility and prosperity.

Subject Article: "In New York, Having a Job, or 2, Doesn’t Mean Having a Home."

Other Links: 1. "Susan Hanson, Ph.D. Faculty Biography at Clark University."
2. "Geography: A Big Factor In Women`s Job Choices."
3. "Priced out of New York."
4. "Hipster Demography and Gentrification."

Postscript: I find the intersection of gender and geography to have much more explanatory power than the intersection of race and geography. A suburban neighborhood might be well off, statistically speaking. But the isolation and poverty of homemakers are very real. Geographers such as Susan Hanson studying gender have much more to teach us about gentrification and other urban problems than those academics focused on race.

Brain Drain Policy Debate: Doctors Emigrating From Africa

Weighing whether or not we should encourage doctors trained in Africa to stay there at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: People develop, not places.

Subject Article: "Study highlights scale of African doctors ‘brain drain.’"

Other Links: 1. "Tackling Brain Waste: Strategies to Improve the Recognition of Immigrants' Foreign Qualifications."
2. "Physician Emigration from Sub-Saharan Africa to the United States: Analysis of the 2011 AMA Physician Masterfile."
3. "What Do We Know About Skilled Migration and Development?"
4. "People Develop, Not Places."
5. "Eastern European migrants are net contributors – not costs – in the West."
6. "Want to Kill Innovation? Fight Brain Drain."

Postscript: The term "brain drain" aptly describes a dramatic shift in migration patterns from the least educated to the most educated. But it fails to capture the relationship between two places linked by migration.

Good News: Globalization Crushing Family Farms

The costs of fetishizing the local at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Geographic stereotypes.

Subject Article: "Japan's Rice Farmers See Trade Deal As Threat To Tradition."

Other Links: 1. "25 Years Of Aid For Farm Aid."
2. "The Yoeman."
3. "José Bové vs. McDonald's: The Making of a National Hero in the French Anti-Globalization Movement."
4. "Dissimilar Climate, Similar Cuisine."
5. "World History of Food: Rice and Staple Food."

Postscript: This post is my retort to the overdramatization of cultural imperialism and homogenization at the hands of globalization. Benjamin Barber with the ill-defined concern:

The new technology's software is perhaps even more globalizing than its hardware. The information arm of international commerce's sprawling body reaches out and touches distinct nations and parochial cultures, and gives them a common face chiseled in Hollywood, on Madison Avenue, and in Silicon Valley. Throughout the 1980s one of the most-watched television programs in South Africa was The Cosby Show. The demise of apartheid was already in production. Exhibitors at the 1991 Cannes film festival expressed growing anxiety over the "homogenization" and "Americanization" of the global film industry when, for the third year running, American films dominated the awards ceremonies. America has dominated the world's popular culture for much longer, and much more decisively. In November of 1991 Switzerland's once insular culture boasted best-seller lists featuring Terminator 2 as the No. 1 movie, Scarlett as the No. 1 book, and Prince's Diamonds and Pearls as the No. 1 record album. No wonder the Japanese are buying Hollywood film studios even faster than Americans are buying Japanese television sets. This kind of software supremacy may in the long term be far more important than hardware superiority, because culture has become more potent than armaments. What is the power of the Pentagon compared with Disneyland? Can the Sixth Fleet keep up with CNN? McDonald's in Moscow and Coke in China will do more to create a global culture than military colonization ever could. It is less the goods than the brand names that do the work, for they convey life-style images that alter perception and challenge behavior. They make up the seductive software of McWorld's common (at times much too common) soul.

"The seductive software of McWorld's common soul." It was a big change, seeing anger and violence shift from embassies and other state geographies to McDonalds and Starbucks. Didn't occur to me at the time of reading Barber's book (back in the late 1990s) that this was garden variety xenophobia.

Want to Kill Innovation? Fight Brain Drain

Massachusetts pondering the embrace of brain drain at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: How brain drain drives innovation.

Subject Article: "Big shift: Governor Patrick now supports making noncompete agreements unenforceable in Massachusetts."

Other Links: 1. "Historical Migration of the Young, Single, and College Educated: 1965 to 2000."
2. "Boston Is Dying."
3. "Zero-Sum Creative Class."
4. "Interview with Richard Hodgson."
5. "True Innovation."
6. "The Benefits of Talent Mobility."
7. "Innovation at the intersection."
8. "Webcast: San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro's 2013 State of the City Address."

Postscript: Some recent research to support the notion of fostering brain drain:

In a new paper co-authored with Emily Beam and Dean Yang, we report on several years of experiments that try to facilitate more international migration from the Philippines. The Philippines is well-known around the world for its efforts in bilateral facilitation of migration. The government has signed a number of bilateral migration arrangements with different countries, which, coupled with a well-regulated private recruiting industry, has resulted in an annual deployment of about 2 million Filipinos to practically every country in the world.

The Philippines has devised a way to benefit from the export of talent. The interests of community and individual are aligned. Massachusetts is heading in this policy direction.

Hipster Demography and Gentrification

Parochial xenophobes and hating hipsters at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Ironic migration.

Subject Article: "We Found Where The Hipsters Are Coming From."

Other Links: 1. "Nothing to stop skinny-pant set now that anti-gentrification blog is gone."
2. "The Sources Of Brooklyn's 'Hipster' Influx, Revealed."
3. "The Rise of the Cupcake Class."
4. "Scouting Out the ‘Girls’ Hotspots."

Postscript: Using Census data, more (much more) people aged 25-29 are leaving Brooklyn than moving to Brooklyn. Brain drain!

Northern New England Is Dying

Parochial policies killing Northern New England at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Regional talent management policy.

Subject Article: "Maine is getting older and is feeling the squeeze."

Other Links: 1. "Public opinion analysis shows big gap between experts and the public on need to cut Medicare spending."
2. "Charlie Sheen Is Winning."
3. "Urbanophile Aaron Renn knows how to move Indianapolis forward."
4. "Economist says Maine needs to import young, productive workers."
5. "Expecting the Best Yields Results in Massachusetts."
6. "Boston Is Dying."

Postscript: The National Review Online posted about the same article concerning demographic aging:

As a result, in many states, officials are looking to attract younger people. In New Hampshire and Vermont, the Democrats who control the governor’s mansions believe that more government spending for state universities in particular will do the trick. I doubt it. More spending, often means more taxes, which isn’t a good way to keep people. What you need to attract and keep people is jobs.

In Maine, Republican governor Paul LePage’s solution is to lower its tax burden and create a “business-friendly” state. That’s more likely to work. You may remember that one of the main findings in the Mercatus Center’s “Freedom in the Fifty States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom” was that people followed jobs and jobs followed freedom (in particular economic freedom).

Jobs follow freedom. People follow jobs. Ergo, people follow freedom. Why do New Hampshire and Vermont hate freedom? Penetrating analysis.

Portland 2.0: Weaving Myths of Urban Nationalism

Producer city Portland versus consumer city Portland at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Fall of the Creative Class.

Subject Article: "Fast Company's Founding Editor On How Portland Can Become Great: At TechfestNW, Alan Webber asks: How do you overthrow a successful city?"

Other Links: 1. "TechFestNW."
2. "Regional Competitiveness and Quality of Life: The Case of Portland and Stuttgart."
3. "Field Of Dreams Portland."
4. "Rust Belt of Silicon Valley: San Jose Is Dying."
5. "Beyond the High Street: Why our city centres really matter."
6. "Portlandia – Put A Bird On It."

Postscript: Of late, I've noticed the urban amenities model of economic development taking a lot of hits. As a way to understand the tension between the consumer and producer city, I'm following the debate about a streetcar proposal in San Antonio. The streetcar is representative of the consumer city. It's a cool amenity that makes the urban core more attractive to residents and consumers. College graduates wouldn't leave a place with a streetcar, would they? In theory, a streetcar could also serve a producer city. But such projects aren't usually framed that way. Put a bird on the boondoggle.

Rust Belt of Silicon Valley: San Jose Is Dying

Silicon Valley decline at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Convergence of Innovation Economy.

Subject Article: "Danny Rimer: What U.S. startups can learn from Europe."

Other Links: 1. "Silicon Prairie News."
2. "Silicon Roundabout."
3. "Mother of Reinvention: HOW BOSTON’S ECONOMY HAS BOUNCED BACK FROM DECLINE, TIME AND AGAIN."
4. "Facebook and Google Are Gentrifying San Francisco Neighborhoods."
5. "San Francisco split by Silicon Valley's wealth."
6. "Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area."

Postscript: Danny Rimer suggests that the Rust Belt part of Silicon Valley concerns manufacturing, a Bay Area Mon Valley. I'm more interested in the rethinking of San Francisco producer city instead of a consumer city. I think we're seeing the end of the push for urban amenities in the core as an economic development strategy.

Dissimilar Climate, Similar Cuisine

How culinary traditions are tied to people, not places at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: People develop, not places.

Subject Article: "Geography and similarity of regional cuisines in China."

Other Links: 1. "Talent Retention And Displacement."
2. "Tacografia."
3. "Do You Know These Regional Pizza Styles?"
4. "Restaurant Review: Deliciousness Squared at Gem City Pizza."
5. "Trolio's Book Expands History of Brier Hill, Birth of Its Pizza."
6. "Go Back To Ohio."

Postscript: Never thought of this until now, we terroritorialize knowledge. Like recipes, innovation grows out of local terrain. Workforce development and incubators are of this mindset. Places develop, not people. Bizarre.

Facebook and Google Are Gentrifying San Francisco Neighborhoods

What, not who, is responsible for gentrification in San Francisco at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Globalization and new geographic patterns of gentrification.

Subject Article: "Mapping Silicon Valley’s Gentrification Problem Through Corporate Shuttle Routes."

Other Links: 1. "Why Today's Start-Ups Are Choosing Urban Lofts Over Suburban Office Parks."
2. "Rust-Belt Cities Exhibit Reverse Gentrification, Says Cleveland Fed Researcher."
3. "Portland Is Dying."
4. "Why Isn’t Silicon Valley in San Francisco?"
5. "The End Of Density."

Postscript: The times they are a changing:

The workers that used to live in residential suburbs while commuting to work in the city are now living in the city, while the largest technology companies are based in the suburbs and increasingly draw their labor supply from dense urban neighborhoods.

How does industry clustering impact gentrification?

London Hosts the Olympics: How Success for People Is a Failure of Place

Place outcomes trump people outcomes at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: People develop, not places.

Subject Article: "Population churn and its impact on socio-economic convergence in the five London 2012 host boroughs."

Other Links: 1. "The ‘escalator region’ hypothesis and the regional cities of England: a research agenda."
2. "People Develop, Not Places."

Postscript: I'm still working my way through this paper, "Global Neighborhoods: New Pathways to Diversity and Separation." The main point is relevant to this post. Conventional concepts don't mesh well with new migration patterns. Gentrification is one such outdated concept with its historical narrative of white flight and government mandated sprawl, as if economic globalization wouldn't make one lick of a difference.

New York City’s Next Williamsburg: Fishtown

The Talent Economy between NYC and Philadelphia at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Talent churn and economic development.

Subject Article: "Leaving Town: Metro New York hemorrhaged $49 billion during the 2000s as residents sought opportunity elsewhere."

Other Links: 1. "City as Suburb."
2. "Boston Is Dying."
3. "INTERVIEW: Keeping the Focus on People, Not Places, With Jim Russell."
4. "New York as a Gigantic Refinery of the Nation’s Human Capital."
5. "Lena Dunham Wants Brooklyn to Be More Like Chattanooga."
6. "Why New Yorkers Are Moving to Philly and What It Means for Our City."
7. "Gentrification Is Not About Race and Class, but Fear of Outsiders."
8. "How Many Gentrification Critics Are Actually Gentrifiers Themselves?"
9. "Globalization and World Cities Research Network."

Postscript: A link that didn't make the final cut, "Middle Class Flees New York. Who Needs ‘Em?"

As much as I would like to confirm my conviction that New York’s Blue State governance philosophy is an economic-development train wreck, I’m not sure there’s a huge problem here. New York is not losing its most productive citizens. Hint No. 1: $49 billion in lost income sounds like a lot of money but when it’s spread over two million people, it amounts to an average income of only $24,500 per person — just a tad more than the region’s 1999 per capita income of $22,000. Hint No. 2: The two top destinations are Miami and Orlando, both retirement destinations.

In other words, NYC is not losing its creative class — its wealth creators — who continue to place a premium on the ability to interact with others like themselves. It appears that the city is leaching away its middle class, particularly its retirees.

Emphasis added. Mining the American Community Survey data for 2000-2010, the NYC metro region gained over 900,000 college graduates. LA is number 2 in the rankings with +559,904. The critique of New York's economic development is a train wreck.

Vagabonds Will Revitalize Detroit

A Korean parable and Saskia Sassen at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Migration and innovation.

Subject Article: "Big Dreams, but Little Consensus, for a New Detroit."

Other Links: 1. "Inbreeding Homophily."
2. "What Makes the Bywater So Hipster?"
3. "The Magic of Cities."
4. "Look to the Gem Within: A Harvard PhD’s Views on Korea’s Potential."
5. "A New Magazine Takes on Old Rust Belt Stereotypes."
6. "How Green Was My Port Clinton."
7. "Unlike Detroit, Chicago’s diversified industrial base has helped it to successfully switch from a material to a knowledge economy."
8. "Talent Retention And Displacement."
9. "Migrant Networks and the Spread of Misinformation."

Postscript: Saskia Sassen's piece deserves a second look. I've heard it said, on many occasions, that Chicago's boon was its economic diversity. I thought that meant other than manufacturing, which didn't make sense because Chicago was more dependent on manufacturing than other Rust Belt cities that didn't globalize. The diversity lauded is within the manufacturing sector. Sassen makes this point clear and notes that Detroit similarly benefits. Then why the divergent paths? A few large firms dominated the economic landscape in Detroit. Whereas smaller independent firms in Chicago handled the specialization. This line of argument strikes me as a stretch. However, Edward Glaeser invoking the ghost of Benjamin Chinitz with a fates comparison of Pittsburgh and New York City says otherwise. "Smaller, non-integrated firms" helped Silicon Valley beat out Boston. But that doesn't preclude my own theory of migration and knowledge networks from explaining things. I'll chalk it up for now to covariance.

City as Suburb

Mega commuters mega gentrifying Rust Belt cities at Pacific Standard magazine.

Theme: Economic convergence of innovation and the rise of the flat world class.

Subject Article: "Paris: the affordable London suburb."

Other Links: 1. "Megacommuters: 600,000 in U.S. Travel 90 Minutes and 50 Miles to Work, and 10.8 Million Travel an Hour Each Way, Census Bureau Reports."
2. "Mega Commuters in the U.S.: Time and Distance in Defining the Long Commute using the American Community Survey."
3. "Geographic Arbitrage: Telecommuting."
4. "Why New Yorkers Are Moving to Philly and What It Means for Our City."
5. "Decline Of Chicago."

Postscript: I've seen ample evidence of NYC mega gentrifying urban neighborhoods in other metros. Wondering if Chicago is having a similar effect in that neck of the woods. St. Louis? Indianapolis? Des Moines? Milwaukee? Minneapolis?