Fast Cities

Fast Company on Fast Cities:

To find them, we started with data from Carnegie Mellon assistant professor Kevin Stolarick, the numbers guru behind Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class, which helped define what makes great cities tick. We relied on CEOs for Cities' CityVitals survey, authored by Joseph Cortright of Portland, Oregon--based Impresa Inc.; sustainability data from SustainLane; and insights from the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.

What makes a Fast City? It starts with opportunity. Not just bald economic capacity, but a culture that nurtures creative action and game-changing enterprise. Fast Cities are places where entrepreneurs and employees alike can maximize their potential--where the number of patents filed is high, for instance, or where the high-tech sector is expanding.

The second component: innovation. Fast Cities invest in physical, cultural, and intellectual infrastructure that will sustain growth. "The real forces for change in America and around the world are the mayors and the local communities," says Florida, now a professor of public policy at George Mason University.

Finally, Fast Cities have energy, that ethereal thing that happens when creative people collect in one place. The indicators can seem obscure: number of ethnic restaurants, or the ratio of live-music lovers to cable-TV subscribers. But they point to environments where fresh thinking stimulates action and, by the way, attracts new talent in a virtuous cycle of creativity.

Sifting through the data, we identified 30 Fast Cities around the globe, which we're presenting in nine categories, from Creative-Class Meccas to Green Leaders. We've also noted 20 locales on the verge of Fast City status, plus 5 Slow Cities--and 5 too fast for their own good.

Click here for the Fast Cities list; here for cities on the verge; here for slow cities; here for too-fast cities. Interactive maps here and here And a slide show here.

An Urban World

The UN has just released a major report on world urbanization

In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas. By 2030, this is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. Many of the new urbanites will be poor. Their future, the future of cities in developing countries, the future of humanity itself, all depend very much on decisions made now in preparation for this growth.

While the world’s urban population grew very rapidly (from 220 million to 2.8 billion) over the 20th century, the next few decades will see an unprecedented scale of urban growth in the developing world. This will be particularly notable in Africa and Asia where the urban population will double between 2000 and 2030: That is, the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation. By 2030, the towns and cities of the developing world will make up 81 per cent of urban humanity.

Urbanization—the increase in the urban share of total population—is inevitable, but it can also be positive. The current concentration of poverty, slum growth and social disruption in cities does paint a threatening picture: Yet no country in the industrial age has ever achieved significant economic growth without urbanization. Cities concentrate poverty, but they also represent the best hope of escaping it.

     

 Click here for the report. New York Times coverage is here.

Disneyfication Marches on

$64 billion in Dubailand projects

The suburbanization of New York

By the Numbers: Age Profiles

For this week's By the Numbers, (with the assistance of data whiz Jim Kaminski) we look at national age profiles for those 25-30,  40-45, and 55-60.    For these groups, we have examined average salary, place of employment, educational attainment, and demographics.

Key takeaways:

• Average salary for those 55 to 60 is approximately 58% higher than those 25 to 30.
• 3/4 of those 25 to 30 work in the private sector.
• As workers get older, self-employment identification rises.
• 20% of those 25 to 30 are foreign born -- compared to 12% of those 55 to 60.
• Nearly 69% of those 55 to 60 are married compared to 46% of those 25 to 30.

Average Salary:

Ages (25-30): $29,342
Ages (40-45): $45,475
Ages (55-60): $46,487

Place of Employment:

Private Sector:

Ages (25-30): 76%
Ages (40-45): 66%
Ages (55-60): 56%

Non Profit:

Ages (25-30): 7%
Ages (40-45): 7%
Ages (55-60): 8%

Public Sector:

Ages (25-30): 12%
Ages (40-45): 15%
Ares (55-60):  21%

Self-employed:

Ages (25-30): 5%
Ages (40-45): 12%
Ages (55-60): 15%

Educational Attainment:

Bachelor's Degree:

Ages (25-30): 22%
Ages (40-45): 18%
Ages (55-60): 17%

Advanced Degree:

Ages (25-30): 7%
Ages (40-45): 10%
Ages (55-60): 13%

Demographics:

Foreign Born:

Ages (25-30): 20%
Ages (40-45): 17%
Ages (55-60): 12%

Married:

Ages (25-30): 46%
Ages (40-45): 67%
Ages (55-60): 69%

Any of these demographics differences surprising?

For more information about research services, contact David Miller

posted by: Steven 

New York Still #1; Phoenix overtakes Philly

New numbers on the largest cities in the U.S. from the Census Bureau.

New York continued to be the nation’s most populous city, with 8.2 million residents. This was more than twice the population of Los Angeles, which ranked second at 3.8 million.  The estimates reveal that Phoenix moved into fifth place ahead of Philadelphia, the latest evidence of a decades-long population shift. Nearly a century ago, in 1910, each of the 10 most populous cities was within roughly 500 miles of the Canadian border. The 2006 estimates show that seven of the top 10 — and three of the top five — are in states that border Mexico.  Only three of the top 10 from 1910 remained on the list in 2006: New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. Conversely, three of the current top 10 cities (Phoenix; San Jose, Calif.; and San Diego) were not even among the 100 most populous in 1910, while three more (Dallas, Houston and San Antonio) had populations of less than 100,000.  California had seven cities among the 25 fastest growing, leading all states.  Phoenix had the largest population increase of any city between 2005 and 2006, adding more than 43,000 residents to reach 1.5 million. However, Texas dominated the list of the 10 highest numerical gainers, with San Antonio, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and Dallas each making the top 10. North Las Vegas; Miami; Charlotte, N.C.; and San Jose, Calif., rounded out the list of the 10 biggest numerical gainers.  Overall, eight Texas cities were among the 25 biggest numerical gainers to lead all states.  (press release here)

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Numbers on Science & Engineering Graduates

The State Science and Technology Institute has summarized information from the National Science Foundation's Science and Engineering Indicators Project on graduation levels in science and technology by state.

Every year, the National Science Foundation releases Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in S&E, a report filled with detailed statistics about the characteristics of science and engineering graduates enrolled at U.S. institutions. Using the annual report, SSTI has prepared a table showing the total number of graduate students for each year from 2001 to 2005 in each state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Additionally, each state is ranked by the percent change in science and engineering graduate enrollment from 2001 to 2005.  For the U.S. as a whole, the country's science and engineering graduate population increased by 11.5 percent over the five years. Among states, Minnesota experienced the largest increase at 61.8 percent, rising from 6,602 students in 2001 to 10,685 in 2005. North Dakota, Alaska, Idaho and Hawaii rounded out the states with the largest percent increase, all over 30 percent.

Of the states with a total S&E graduate student population over 10,000 in 2001, Ohio, Florida, California and North Carolina experienced increases over 15 percent. The average growth rate among the entities was 13.6 percent. Louisiana experienced the largest drop of S&E graduate enrollment during the five-year period, shrinking by 16.2 percent. Illinois, Michigan, and South Dakota were the only other states to witness a decrease in enrollment from 2001 to 2005. To see how each state ranks, visit SSTI's table at:

http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/062707t.htm

Reports dating back to 1994 from the Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in S&E series are available at:

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/gradpostdoc/

Not included is information on number of Science and Engineering (S&E) graduates per capita (2005 numbers and populations).  Top honors go to the District of Columbia with 16.8 S&E for every 1,000 residents.  Rounding out the top 10:

State	S&E per 1,000 residents
District of Columbia	16.8
Massachusetts	3.66
North Dakota	2.48
New York	2.27
Kansas	2.19
Delaware	2.15
Minnesota	2.14
Maryland	2.06
Connecticut	2.05
Utah	2.01

Bottom honors(?) go to Maine with 0.53 S&E graduates per 1,000 residents

Of course, as we and others find time and time again, simply having them graduate from a college in your state doesn't mean they will stay put. College graduates are the most mobile group.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Looking Inside Google from Inside Microsoft

This is just so cool because it like being in a hall of mirrors.

An email making the rounds at Microsoft that purports to be an HR interview with a former Microsoft employee who ended up at Google and is now back at Microsoft.  So, it's Microsoft takes a look at Google for internal marketing at Microsoft.

If that's not confusing enough, read the whole memo here.

It says a lot about Google but probably says even more about Microsoft in the way that they have chosen to portray Google.  In any case, it's a peek "under the covers" at a couple of major Creative Economy organizations.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Why Cities?

Wendy, a  regular commenter on this site, has another super-insightful post over at her blog, All About Cities, which I strongly recommend as one of the very best city blogs out there.

Craig Thomas, economist at Torto Wheaton Research (an investment real estate industry research firm), wrote a great essay a couple weeks ago that reduces a city down to its economic essence.  Here are a few quotes.

So what is a city? What do these metropolitan areas do? They're not there to look pretty, or because they're historical landmarks or because they're cool. Cities are market-makers. ...

To succeed, he insists, cities main role is to provide a dynamic place for human, financial and physical capital to intermingle and flow -- what he calls liquidity.

Firms will form within or relocate to a city if it provides three things: the physical infrastructure that helps firms function, access to capital, and—most important these days—ample suitable labor with which to support production. Labor will come to the city if there is physical infrastructure to occupy, ample choice of vocations and employers, and access to capital. Developers and investors will provide physical and financial capital if there are adequate firms and households to occupy structures, and if there is a sufficient liquidity of capital when it is time to monetize these assets. All parties' motivation is to be as productive as possible, and they will go to the cities that allow them to trade their time and resources at the highest value.

Everything else happening in cities, he argues, is there to support the flow of labor and capital. Creating livable neighbourhoods is about attracting and retaining talent. Building infrastructure is about facilitating the flow of industry (capital) and jobs, as well as making the region function for the residents.

Thomas' approach Sounds more or less like Robert Lucas or Jane Jacobs. Wendy goes on to provide her perspective.

I'd say Thomas' notion of cities as "market-makers" explains about all of what cities have done historically and about half to two-thirds of what cities do in today's knowledge-driven, creative society.  I have lots more to say about this in Who's Your City, but for now let me just add that cities provide a key function by organizing a vibrant mating market - (what's more important to you:  your job or your significant other/ spouse) and also have enormous effects on psychological well-being.  Cities have a clear and important economic function, but they also do more.

Your thoughts?

Rise of the Local

Over at The Globalist (which I strongly recommend), Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach assesses the rise of local interests as backlash to globalization.

On the face of things, the world economy seems to be reaping the fruits of globalization. However, Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, argues that rich countries are beginning to feel squeezed — which could cause the collective interests of globalization to succumb to the self-interests of “localization.”

The full story is here and after the jump. While you're over on the Globalist site, check out this piece by Daniel Griswold on the benefits and costs of immigration. And this one providing a thumbnail history of American immigration

By the Numbers: Working Mothers

For this week's "By the Numbers," we examine the top and bottom regions with the highest percentage of working mothers.  Pulling the data from the U.S. Census (American Community Survey, 2005), we rank the top 10 metros and list the bottom three for each metro classification: large, medium, mid-size, and small.

EX: Washington, DC Metro (68.9%) -  represents the percentage of mothers in the Washington, DC metro who have children younger than 18 and are working.

Here's a look at the top and bottom three for each metro classification:

Large Metros: Over 1 Million

Top three: (Highest Percentage of Working Mothers)

1. Minneapolis, MN  (73.0%)
2. Buffalo, NY (70.7%)
3. St. Louis (70.6%)

Bottom three: (Lowest Percentage of Working Mothers)

1. Riverside, CA (56.5%)
2. San Jose, CA (57.7%)
3. Los Angeles (57.8%)

Medium Metros: 500K to Million

Top three:

1. Des Moines, IA  (79.1%)
2. Madison, WI (75.0%)
3. Columbia, SC (74.2%)

Bottom three:

1. McAllen, TX (47.4%)
2. El Paso, TX (55.4%)
3. Bakersfield, CA (56.6%)

Mid-sized Metros: 250K-500K

Top three:

1. Lincoln, NE (76.3%)
2. Tallahassee, FL (75.8%)
3. Green Bay, WI (75.3%)

Bottom three:

1. Provo, UT (48.9%)
2. Brownsville, TX (51.4%)
3. Visalia, CA (52.1%)

Small Metros (Below 250K)

Top three:

1. Bismark, ND (84.9%)
2. Jefferson City, MO (83.0%)
3. Springfield, IL (81.9%)

Bottom three:

1. Florence, AL (51.3%)
2. Logan, UT (52.0%)
3. Yuma, AZ (53.0%)

To download the top 10 metros for each classification, Click here:Download CCGworkingmothers.pdf  

For more information about CCG research services, contact David Miller.

Thanks to Jim for his assistance with data collection.

posted by steven

CNN's In The Money...

Check out this short article and video clip from CNN this weekend.

Tune in this weekend to CNN's In The Money with Richard Florida, on the effect of gay neighborhoods on cities.

Read more: There Goes The Neighborhood

Posted by Abby.

Cities of the 21st Century

Forbes Magazine has a special issue on cities, with the following stories:

• Mega-cities
• Sprawl
• Global slums
• Future Ghost Cities
• Snitchtown

My favorite bit is the interactive map.

There's also a pretty humorous little on-line poll asking where you would most like to live in: No. 1 is first world mega-city (27%), followed by mid-sized city (17%), small town (8%), farm (7%) and suburbia (3%). My favorites are 8% who want to live in space, 4% in "the past," 3% in their "parent's basement," and 1% who would prefer a "bubble."

Check out this post commemorating the day the Earth went urban...

Google + Bloomberg + YouTube

More Bloomberg. Video piece at YouTube. Google VP Sheryl Sandberg talks with NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg during an Authors@Google event. Topics include talent attraction and retention, technology, and cities. BTW, does your company offer an authors series?

Worldwide Centers of Commerce

Mastercard of all places has come up with a list of its 50 leading centers of world commerce. Here's a quick list of the top twenty.

• London
• New York
• Tokyo
• Chicago
• Hong Kong
• Singapore
• Frankfurt
• Paris
• Seoul
• LA
• Amsterdam
• Toronto
• Boston
• Sydney
• Copenhagen
• Madrid
• Stockholm
• San Francisco
• Zürich
• Atlanta

The Geography of Getting Old

Brookings Bill Frey has a new piece out. Here's the abstract.

Aging baby boomers constitute this decade's fastest growing age group, expanding nearly 50 percent in size from 2000 to 2010. This group-more highly educated, with more professional women, and more diverse than its predecessors-will add new stresses to suburban and Sun Belt locations where they are predominantly "retiring in place" with demands for health, transportation, and other services.

The full report is here. While your on the Brookings site, check out Bruce Katz's super-insightful  remarks on cities, regions and urban policy.

India, China and the Spiky World

New Economist has posts on each summarizing recent World Bank reports. India is growing fast. China is becoming more unequal.

Education, Technology and the Creative Class

Info/Law has a very nice summary of Scott McLeod's CALI Conference keynote on this critical  topic.

Psst... Wanna do some Gerrymandering??

From the USC Game Innovation Lab & Annenberg Center ...

The Redistricting Game is designed to educate, engage, and empower citizens around the issue of political redistricting. Currently, the political system in most states allows the state legislators themselves to draw the lines. This system is subject to a wide range of abuses and manipulations that encourage incumbents to draw districts which protect their seats rather than risk an open contest.

By exploring how the system works, as well as how open it is to abuse, The Redistricting Game allows players to experience the realities of one of the most important (yet least understood) aspects of our political system. The game provides a basic introduction to the redistricting system, allows players to explore the ways in which abuses can undermine the system, and provides info about reform initiatives - including a playable version of the Tanner Reform bill to demonstrate the ways that the system might be made more consistent with tenets of good governance. Beyond playing the game, the web site for The Redistricting Game provides a wealth of information about redistricting in every state as well as providing hands-on opportunities for civic engagement and political action.

Link Here

To change something requires that you first understand it.

posted by Kevin Stolarick

Flight of the Creative Class (Immigration Edition)

Form George Borjas terrific (relatively) new blog:

We always tend to think of the U.S. as a "nation of immigrants." About 12% of the U.S. population today is foreign-born. It is eye-opening to put this number in perspective. Just look at some of the data collected by the U.N.

• Sweden, 12.4%
• United Kingdom, 9.1%
• Greece, 8.8%
• Spain, 11.1%
• Austria, 15.1%
• France, 10.7%
• Germany, 12.3%
• Netherlands, 10.1%
• Switzerland, 22.9%

It's not just the relative size of the immigrant population in these countries that is remarkable. Equally interesting is that these countries became immigrant nations in a very short time--with little prior experience handling large population inflows. Combine this with an explosive mix of ethnic and cultural conflicts, and very generous welfare systems. No wonder the immigration debate in Europe is at least as heated as it is in the United States.

Australia, Canada and New Zealand also rank highly. And India and China are retaining more of their top people and attracting them back from the US and elsewhere. The erosion of the US century-long "immigration advantage" is already upon us. Its effects will be slow to register, as this is a long-term accumulated advantage, but they will be felt.

Bloomberg on America

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is on the front-lines of the global talent wars. He is all too well aware of how London is pummeling New York in the competition for financial talent and in global financial markets.  To counteract this, he has been on a mission to make NYC more family friendly, improve its schools, make it greener and more sustainable.  Now he sets his sights on our national "dysfunction" as this New York Times article (sub req) reports.

In unusually stark terms, Mr. Bloomberg expressed his frustration with the state of the nation, touching on campaign-style issues like the war in Iraq, immigration, education, health care and crime before a crowd of more than 1,000 employees at the Google campus here.

“Whoever out of those 20 becomes president I think has to do something about a country that I think is really in trouble,” Mr. Bloomberg said, referring to the current crop of candidates. “There’s the war, there is our relationships around the world.”

“Our reputation has been hurt very badly in the last few years,” he continued, criticizing what he called a “go-it-alone mentality” in an increasingly interconnected world. ...

Arguing that people have a much greater chance of being killed by street crime than by a terror attack, he said: “Yet every press conference, they all beat their chests and say, ‘I can protect this country better from terrorism.’ Well, what about protecting them out in the streets every day?” ...

He ended the day in Los Angeles, where he assailed what he called the “swamp of dysfunction” in Washington.

Update: Check out the video of Bloomberg's remarks at google's new public policy blog.

Children of the Market

Writing in today's Guardian, Jeremy Seabrook provides a penetrating analysis of today's youth and youth culture.

Parenting has come to mean, increasingly, supplying the money to provide children with all the good things for which global markets kindle an implacable desire. What is sometimes described, rather benignly, as "pester-power" is recognition of this.

A generation has grown, formed within, by and for the market rather than by and for society. Many unpleasant developments over which the government seeks to reassert its declining control - binge-drinking, the "normalisation" of drugs, the cult of celebrity, the supremacy of what money can buy, incivility, absence of respect, obesity, the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases - are by-products of childhoods upon which a major determinant has been a market whose values have been championed above dull politics, and which have, accordingly, captivated the heart and imagination. (The obsession with "hearts and minds" abroad ought, perhaps, to be directed to the multiple alienations of home.)

My thoughts and the rest of the article after the jump.

This is Why I Wrote Rise

Check out this Wall Street Journal story on Pennsylvania's efforts to stem its brain drain:

The common refrain in Pennsylvania is that the state is a "net importer" of college students, but a "net exporter" of college graduates. ... But many students take their diplomas and run, leaving Pennsylvania with the third-oldest population in the nation as measured by the number of people 65 and older. The result: The state is struggling to attract the type of cutting-edge companies that would make it a major participant in the "knowledge-based" economy -- one driven by highly skilled workers and industries like technology, science and health care. The state is on a mission to change that.

Now read this from the Post-Gazette:

A local startup that last year got off the ground with help from a venture capital firm that received money from the state is moving to Boston.Logical Therapeutics Inc. officials said they are making the move to tap into a deeper pool of talent that they hope will help their firm get their promising painkiller out of the lab and into the commercial marketplace....Logical's co-founders and sole employees, former University of Pittsburgh official Carolyn E. Green and Dr. Mitchell Fink, Pitt's chief of critical care medicine, in recent months visited roughly 30 investment firms around the country that, "almost without exception, asked if we'd be willing to relocate,'' said Ms. Green, the company's chief operating officer.

The Wall Street Journal article goes on and on about how the key is to create tech jobs. But then the jobs also move away. So much for those chickens and eggs. Hmmmmm....
Your thoughts?

Diversity and Social Capital

Writing in today's NYT Magazine, Erica Goode summarizes Robert Putnam's recent research on diversity and social capital:

What if, at least in the short term, living in a highly diverse city or town led residents to distrust pretty much everybody, even people who looked like them? What if it made people withdraw into themselves, form fewer close friendships, feel unhappy and powerless and stay home watching television in the evening instead of attending a neighborhood barbecue or joining a community project?

This is the unsettling picture that emerges from a huge nationwide telephone survey by the famed Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and his colleagues. “Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation,” Putnam writes in the June issue of the journal Scandinavian Political Studies. “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ — that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

The full story after the jump.

Putnam's new work is more complex than previously, showing evidence of clear benefits from diversity. And there is overlap between his notion of bridging social capital and my team's work on diversity, which he clearly notes: "Diversity has clear benefits, Putnam says, among them economic growth and enhanced creativity — more top-flight scientists, more entrepreneurs, more artists. But difference is also disconcerting, he maintains, “and people like me, who are in favor of diversity, don’t do ourselves any favors by denying that it takes time to become comfortable,” Putnam says.

There are lots of reasons which could account for this association between places with high levels of diversity and high levels of social isolation. One that reflects recent work of my team is that places with high levels of diversity also have high levels of migration. High levels of migration make it harder to forge trust.  Moreover, our hunch is that migrants reflect particular kinds of personality types which are more likely to seek out new experiences and less likely to be rooted in personal relationships.

What do you think?

Flight of the Creative Class (Chinese Cooks Edition)

It's not just scientists and entrepreneurs we're locking out, it's Chinese cooks. Writing in today's NYT, the Zagats point out that immigration restrictions are hurting Chinese food in America.

[T]he principal obstacle to improving Chinese fare here is the difficulty of getting visas for skilled workers since 9/11. Michael Tong, head of the Shun Lee restaurant group in New York, has said that opening a major Chinese restaurant in America is next to impossible because it can take years to get a team of chefs from China. Chinese restaurateur Alan Yau planned to open his first New York City restaurant last year but was derailed because he was unable to get visas for his chefs. If Henry Kissinger could practice “Ping-Pong diplomacy,” perhaps Condoleezza Rice could try her hand at “dumpling diplomacy”?

Teenage Entrepreneurs

In today's NYT, my colleague Tyler Cowen writes:

Michael S. Dell (of Dell Inc.) sold stamps to collectors when he was 12 and Bill Gates founded Microsoft when he was 19. Facebook, the social networking site, was the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University sophomore at the time. A study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor showed that the United States was unusual among developed countries in having a higher business start-up rate among its 18- to 24-year-olds than its 35- to 44-year-olds.

But why has America produced so many successful young entrepreneurs? Ben Casnocha, 19, author of the new book “My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young C.E.O. Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley,” offers clues.

Tyler's right. And do read Ben's terrific book.

Blame the Workers

The Wall Street Journal (sub req) quotes a Big Three executive:

"We need to eliminate most, if not all...like 80%" of the gap, says a senior automotive executive involved in labor planning. "It has to be gone by the end of the contract, or doing business in the United States is unsustainable." All three domestic auto makers "will move investment in plants and people outside the country" if they don't bring U.S. labor costs in line with those of Toyota and the other foreign auto makers, the executive said.

How do they get away with this BS. This guy shouldn't be managing a 7-11. The Big Three are not failing because of labor costs. They are failing because their product is crap. The problem is the worst management since the US steel industry - whiners, cry-babies and incompetents.  They keep churning out stuff no one wants. The SUVs which were carrying them have now collapsed and they are being crushed with the move to more fuel efficient cars and hybrids. This is one of the greatest stories in gross mismanagement in world industrial history. It is hard to imagine how anyone could squander the kind of lead and assets they had, but they did. It boggles the mind, actually. When Martin Kenney and I studied Japanese investment in the auto industry during the 1980s and 1990s we were shocked and appalled by what we saw. Factories in total disrepair.  Crap everywhere. Workers treated like sub-humans. Read Rivethead sometime if you have a chance. So were the Japanese. They never even imagined the US auto and related industries could be in the shape they were in.  When in doubt remember this:  Those Camrys and Accords that are tearing up the US market? No, they're not made in Japan or some low labor cost country. They're made right smack here in the US, using American workers. And Japanese and German workers are not exactly cheap labor. It's not American workers that are the problem- it's management.

By the Numbers: How We Get to Work!

For this week’s "By the Numbers," we take a spin off of a U.S. Census press release from yesterday that highlights how Americans commute to work.    The Census found:

“Driving to work was the favored means of commute of nearly nine out of 10 workers (87.7 percent), with most people (77 percent) driving alone.  In contrast, 4.7 percent of commuters used public transportation to travel to work in 2005, an increase of about 0.1 percent over 2000 levels.”

In the press release, the Census also presents interesting data about which U.S. cities had the highest percentage workers taking public transportation, biking and walking to work and telecommuters.   The Census used the principle city as the unit of measurement.   

You can see the full Census press release and downlo