City Lover

Toronto Life blogger, Douglas Bell, chastises me for a recent "love letter" to Philadelphia, attempting to imply because I have some nice things to say about Philly my affection for Toronto must be insincere, adding that:

All of which is fine, except that don’t all these worthy abstractions — “mega-regions,” “$2 trillion in economic output” — neatly obscure the fundamental problem of North American urban life? I’m speaking of the growing disparity between rich and poor and the diminishing prospects for political engagement between these increasingly polarized classes. Anyone who’s seen even a few episodes of The Wire, David Simon’s brilliant study of urban alienation, knows that it is exactly this sort of high-minded obfuscating that drives us further and further from recognizing this simple truth.

Sometimes it pays to slow down and take a look at someone's work before bashing away at the keyboard. A key theme of Who's Your City? is that the world is spiky, meaning that there is a growing disparity between mega-regions and other places and within mega-regions between rich and poor.  The book argues that today class divisions are increasingly overlayed by location and place.  And Flight of the Creative Class includes an inequality index for all US regions, arguing that mounting inequality and political polarization and disengagement is a huge problem for the US. In fact, I wrote a column on just that kind of polarization for this Saturday's Globe and Mail, and another a while back on the increasing social and economic polarization of the 3 Torontos. Understanding class polarization and growing economic and geographic inequality is at the very core of my work.

And I still really like both Philly and Toronto just fine - and a whole bunch of other cities too.

Who's Your Blogging Head ...

Here's about an hour long interview of me by the fantastic, Will Wilkinson on bloggingheads.tv. Here's what Will has to say about the book:

This is a really fascinating book and I highly recommend it. First of all, it’s really important to help people realize that where you live is important, that it is a choice, and you are responsible for it. Second, the importance of agglomeration to innovation and growth is I think one of the most interesting issues there is, and Florida does a great job of covering this work. But what I found most fascinating is new work Florida reports on that shows the relationship between place and happiness and place and personality. Did you know that extraverts are more likely to live in the midwest? That New York City is the capital of neuroticism? (Of yeah, you did!) That big coastal cities are most likely to be home to people high on openness to experience? Does your personality really fit the place you live? Fascinating stuff.

I read an early version of Who’s Your City about two years ago and told Richard it would be really interesting to see if there is a relationship between place and personality. I was completely blown away reading the finished book to see that there is in fact some good data on this and also by how far Richard is pushing it. I hope the book does well, and I’m betting it does.

The Singles Map

                                          From the book, Who's Your City?

 
This is a new, updated and improved version the singles map (inspired by an earlier map in  National Geographic) published in Sunday's Boston Globe.

                                                           MORE COOL MAPS, here.

Who's Your Philly

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Philadelphia has a secret weapon. Housing everywhere, from the urban core to its terrific suburbs, remains affordable. The biggest challenge in the leading mega-regions of the world is escalating housing prices. Wharton's Joseph Gyourko and colleagues dub this the "superstar-city" phenomenon. Prices in other key parts of Bos-Wash (not just Manhattan, but also Boston and Washington) have skyrocketed, and not even the subprime crisis or the current credit crunch has brought them down to earth. At a recent dinner party in Toronto, we were talking about trying to recruit a high-flying professor from a Philadelphia-area university, when a colleague jumped in: "We'll never get him. He has a mansion outside of Philadelphia for less than what it would take to buy a two-bedroom condo in Toronto." This housing-cost advantage is a huge edge for Philly's future. Philadelphia has plenty of challenges. As in all cities, there's work to do on crime and urban education. But both city and region are well-positioned for the future.

The rest is here.

SanFrooklyn

NY Times' Noam Cohen (of Obama's a Mac, Hillary a PC fame) on the Brooklyn-Bay Area
nexus:

Much the way Hollywood people have shuttled between Los Angeles and Manhattan for decades, or academics commute on the Acela between Morningside Heights and Cambridge, Mass., there is a young, earnest population that is beating a path between artsy, gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn and their counterparts in the Bay Area, especially East Oakland and the area south of Market Street in San Francisco, or SoMa.

Richard Florida, the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class,” which argues that urban renewal is sparked by high concentrations of high-tech workers, artists, gay men and lesbians, ranked San Francisco No. 1 on his “creativity index” and New York City No. 9. Although Mr. Florida did not break out data for Brooklyn, “anecdotally it has a large concentration of creative people who have moved from Manhattan and elsewhere,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I am confident if such data existed, Brooklyn would do very well.”

He added that the populations drawn to both areas by alternative art and music scenes, and by a tolerance for diversity, were looking for a “messy urbanism, a clash of different styles that Brooklyn still retains, that the East Bay still retains.”

Other communities across the country also fit this bill, but what Brooklyn and the East Bay share is proximity to more cosmopolitan centers — Manhattan and San Francisco — where the “creative class,” many of whom are freelancers, can earn a living.

More here.

Obama and the Creative Class

My new Globe and Mail column is out.

For the past two weeks, all eyes have focused on Barack Obama and race. A couple of weeks ago, it was Hillary Clinton's gender. A month before that, it was all about the Obama surge among young voters. Pundits on all sides have framed this election - and especially the Democratic primary - as turning on the traditional fault lines of race, gender and generation. The talk shows go on and on about how Mr. Obama is attracting black and young voters and how Ms. Clinton finds her voice among women and baby boomers. But what is seldom discussed and yet most interesting about this election is not any young-vs.-old, black-vs.-white, or male-vs.-female dynamic.

At bottom, both the Democratic primary and the upcoming general election turn on an even deeper economic and social force: class.

In 2002, I defined a new creative class of inventors, entrepreneurs, engineers, artists, musicians, designers and professionals in idea-driven industries. Today, nearly 40 million American workers fit into that group, 35 per cent of the total working population and a good deal more than the 23 per cent who make up the working class. That the creative class drives economic success in cities and nations is undeniable; the "spiky" regions that drive our economic success today - from the Boston-Washington corridor to San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest - are doing so because they are magnets for the entrepreneurial and talented members of this class.

Up to this point, creative-class people have predominantly cast themselves as politically independent or "post-partisan," and their political sympathies have been up for grabs. The traditional Republican platform of individualism, economic opportunity and fiscal responsibility appeals to them; but so, too, do the Democratic values of social liberalism, environmentalism and a progressive track record on gay and women's rights. Democratic candidates such as Bill Bradley and Howard Dean attracted the creative class in the 2000 and 2004 elections. But no one has caught fire with this class like Barack Obama.

I knew it was time for a closer look when MTV called me to comment on the Obama-and-the-creative-class phenomenon. After poring over detailed exit-poll data on race, income and ideological orientation, Chris Bowers, the Netroots blogger, concluded: "When all is said and done, it looks like Obama will ultimately owe his victory to African Americans and his huge, creative-class activist army."

To get a better sense of how this deep this support runs, I asked opinion pollster John Zogby to look into how creative-class people were voting in this primary season. The result: On issue after issue, they preferred Mr. Obama to either Ms. Clinton or Republican John McCain by wide margins.

Asked which presidential candidate would "provide meaningful leadership for the country," 64 per cent of creative-class respondents said Mr. Obama, compared with roughly 21 per cent for Ms. Clinton and 9 per cent for Mr. McCain. On the question of who was best positioned to unify the country, Mr. Obama was chosen by 74 per cent of creative-class voters. The same basic pattern holds across the board: The creative class prefers Mr. Obama on issue after issue, from illegal immigration to the economy and health care. Mr. Obama even bests Ms. Clinton and Mr. McCain substantially on the issue where he is allegedly weakest - "combatting terrorism" - registering 50 per cent of creative-class support compared with 24 per cent for Ms. Clinton and 18 per cent for Mr. McCain.

What we're seeing is not a red-state, blue-state divide, but something much bigger, if more calibrated.Mr. Obama consistently polls strongest in cities and regions with significant creative-class concentrations. Ms. Clinton, on the other hand, has scored better in industrial states with dominant blue-collar towns, where voters are anxious about the economy and job prospects. Ms. Clinton is more popular among voters without college degrees. Meanwhile, Duke University political scientist Brendan Nyhan has crunched numbers that show a college education to be a big predictor for Obama support.

This divergence in the electorate raises an interesting dilemma for campaign strategists. Is a coalition between the creative class and working class even viable? Appealing to them both will prove difficult. The creative class anticipates the future while the working class is, in many senses, seeking protection from it. The creative class does not want someone to fight for it; the us-against-them meme doesn't resonate with them in politics any more than it does in a conference room, film studio or the skunk works of a high-tech start-up.

It will be difficult for Ms. Clinton to win wholehearted endorsement of the creative class, as committed as she is to specific programs. It will also be hard for Mr. Obama's rhetoric of hope and change to resonate with those who are falling farther and farther behind economically. In coming years, it will be vitally important for progressive political leaders to reach out to the working and service classes, and in ways that enable them to connect to the new creative economy. But in the short months remaining until the general election, deep-seated working-class anxiety about economic and social change is not likely to be overcome.

Clearly, neither race, gender, nor age can provide the core support necessary for a sustainable political majority. Just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt forged a new majority on the swelling ranks of blue-collar workers, so must the candidate and party that hope to win this election, and shape the political landscape for years to come, gain the support of today's ascending economic and political force - the creative class.

Richard Florida is the author of Who's Your City? and director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

Who's Your What ...

Over at B-Net, Michael Fitzgerald writes:

Let me just say this straight out: I hate the name of Richard Florida’s new book, “Who’s Your City?” Has he confused his ‘where’ with his ‘who’? Is he anthropomorphizing cities? Is he having a Pedro Martinez moment?

Hmmmm.  Let's just say a heckuva lot of thought went into that title - including the smarts of a young, talented University of Iowa rhetoric major and our entire team.  It's meant to reflect the central theme of the book - how to find the place that bests fits you.

Anybody else out there want to help him out?

Who's Your "Ship" ?

Freedom Ship International has created the layout for the world's first city floating on water.  The ship's design would be home to 40,000 full time residents, 30,000 daily visitors, 10,000 nightly hotel guests, and 20,000 full time crew. This population of 100,000 people will provide a wealth of talent and diversity for the private businesses aboard the ship and to those they visit daily on their adventures ashore.  Over 200 acres of open area are planned for recreation and relaxation.  Freedom Ship also plans the biggest duty free retail shopping mall in the world along with the best education and health care facilities available.

The cost - anywhere from $180,000 to $2.5 million as well as a small number of premium suites currently priced up to (hold your breath!) $44 million.  Check out the on board subway in the second picture.

This truly blends urban planning and cruising in a way we have never really seen.  Price aside, what do you think of the concept? 

Aleem Kanji

Being Herded Like Cattle

NPR ran a story this morning about the trend of airlines charging for inches of leg space.  Any way they can squeeze a nickle or dime out of you, they will.  Jet Blue and United are taking the lead to offer passengers 6-8 inches of extra leg room for $10-$20.  With measures like this, the airline industry is going to crash and burn just like the Big 3 - Rigid Fat Cats of Detroit's automotive industry. 

Rural Schools and the Spiky World

Over at Dangerously Irrelevant, Scott McCleod, a professor at Iowa State University, considers the spiky world of Who's Your City? and asks:

I just moved to Ames, Iowa. The state capital, Des Moines, is a small creative center just 25 minutes away. Given his methodology, I’m guessing that Ames and Iowa State University are included in Dr. Florida’s statistics on the Des Moines region. Of all medium-sized U.S. regions (0.5 to 1 million people), Dr. Florida ranks Des Moines as the #1 ‘Best Buy’ region for families with children and #2 for professionals age 29–44. That’s cool for me and my family and my professional colleagues. But the reality is that we’re surrounded by fields. Over 90% of the state is corn or soybean fields (or hog farms).

So what do I tell the rural school leaders with whom I’ll be working? They’re already in communities that are struggling to survive. Do I tell them that, because they live in Florida’s ‘huge valleys,’ that their schools and communities are basically doomed? Or is there a way for them to still be economically productive and viable?

What do you guys think?

Who's Your Australia?

Here's a podcast of my interview with Richard Aedy of Australia's ABC Radio National - sort of the All Things Considered or Talk of the Nation for Australia.  And here's a blog post Aedy wrote about the book (also after the jump).

Who's Your Chi-Pitts?

Here's an excerpt of an interview where I discuss some of my favorite Midwest cities - from Dayton to Pittsburgh by Tracy Certo of Pop City and Soapbox:

Help me better understand the connection between living in a powerful mega-region like Chi-Pitts but in a city in that region that’s in transition.

Chicago's growth really sucked up all of the services and headquarters functions and lawyering and financial and accountancy that used to be done in the Detroits, the Pittsburghs, the Cincinnatis, the Akrons, the Toledos. Chicago has become in a way the business and financial center for the Chi-Pitts regions, and it's become extraordinarily expensive.

So, one can make quite a nice life in a Cincinnati if they find ways to connect to that Chi-Pitts mega region. The places in the mega region that are really at an advantage are places like Ann Arbor. So, the college towns in that mega region have a particular advantage.

How can a city in this mega-region, like Cincinnati, Detroit or Pittsburgh, better compete in the global economy? Is it a matter of amenities or mindset or both?

First of all, I think they all have this great advantage, in a nearly 2 trillion dollar mega region which is one of the most innovative on the planet. They’re also close to the second largest mega-region on the planet, the number one in North America which is the Bos-Wash (Boston-Washington). The question is how do they want to compete?

I was just in Cincinnati and in Dayton, another city I love. They’re historical centers of innovation, every one from steel innovation to aluminum innovation, to electronics, to the Wright Brothers, to the car. This is one of the greatest innovative and entrepreneurial centers in the world. They have probably one of the greatest clusters of universities, in the history of the planet. They're producing phenomenal talent, but unfortunately, that talent leaves. So, in Rise of the Creative Class, I said the one thing that it needs to become is more open minded and tolerant. It needs to be more diverse and inclusive.

Some of that's happening in certain parts of the region. More foreign people are moving in, though not enough, in the Cincinnatis and Pittsburghs. They're becoming more open minded to the gay and lesbian population, though by no means, not enough. I don't think it's a question of making jazzier restaurants or hipper bike trails. I think it's a question of being more open-minded.

Another thing the region suffers from is really poor leadership. And I think the reason that is, it really bears the imprint that as the economy is changing to newer things, away from manufacturing, the leadership still reflects that top-down, vertical, 1950s organization mentality so you get these conflicts between old-style democratic political machine and business-led organizations. Those conflicts become very dysfunctional. I think one of the other things is that if older cities could achieve better leadership, leadership that was more in tune with the future.

We were working with 30 community catalysts in greater Dayton a couple weeks ago and I was blown away by what's happened in downtown Dayton. It’s a more interesting and exciting place, filled with arts and restaurants and renovated houses and buildings. But too how these thirty catalysts, black, white, young, old, Hispanic, Latino, how much they cared about making their city better. And I think that's the kind of thing you see in parts of Ohio and Illinois, there's this incredible sense that people care, and I think unleashing that energy in people is really key.

The rest is here.

Flight of the Executives

The New York Times reports (h/t: Alison Kemper):

New York officials have long taken pride in the city’s status as a global gateway. But lately, senior executives of some of the country’s biggest corporations, like Alcoa, have been complaining that American immigration policies are thwarting New York’s ability to compete with other world capitals.

Every big employer in the city, it seems, can cite an example of high-paying jobs that had to be relocated to foreign cities because the people chosen to fill them could not gain entry to the United States.

In Alcoa’s case, one of its chief financial executives, Vanessa Lau, who is from Hong Kong, is working from the company’s offices in Geneva when she should be at headquarters on Park Avenue, according to Alain J. P. Belda, the chairman and chief executive. ... “In a company like ours, we have people moving all over the place all the time,” Mr. Belda said. “This visa situation is causing difficulty.” ...

“New York’s ability to compete with London, which has much more open immigration, or with the emerging financial capitals in Asia and the Middle East, depends on mobility of talent, both in terms of new and current employees,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the [Partnership for New York]. “What people miss is, New York’s standing as an international capital of business and finance depends on the professionals within these companies being able to come to New York to be trained and groomed for leadership positions around the world.” ...

“The whole visa situation was one of the biggest reasons that I took the job,” Mr. Gaur said in a telephone interview from London, where he is a senior project manager for the British bank. “I didn’t want to keep going through this uncertainty — it’s just a nightmare.”

Wasn't Alcoa once a Pittsburgh companny? And didn't somebody once write a book about this, while Times columnists were out extolling the virtues of the wondeful, interconnected, flat world. Hmmmmmm ....

Who's Your (Academic) City?

Dean Dad is an academic and blogger who's just read Who's Your City? He's well-aware of the tradeoffs between the energy of spiky places and the lower living costs and availability of academic jobs in other areas. 

Any advice on where he should go - or how to manage these tradeoffs?

Who's Your (Geek) City?

Track Ball of Truth tells of the journey:

How did it end up that I was geeking out around the LucasArts facility in the Presidio in San Francisco rather than working there?

Tell us your story.

Creativity = Freedom

Dave writes:

This blog has covered many topics. It began around ideas of economic development and Richard Florida's creative class. But what it really is about is empowerment. It's not lifehacking or productivity enhancement or even social media technology. It's how we, knowledge workers, more accurately web workers and other members of the creative classexperience to gain a greater degree of influence over our lives, our work, and our communities. I'm not sure how to brand that or define that as enough of a niche to turn this into a blog with thousands of subscribers, but my dream is that my own journey here can serve as a helpful guide to others who may feel that a part of their dissatisfaction in life is that they need to Escape from Cubicle Nation, but don't know where to start or what to do. The journey begins within and is not necessarily an escape, but a discovery.

The prisons of the industrial age can no longer contain us. How do you cope?

"The Fat Lady Bought a Bigger Dress"

London Heathrow opened a new terminal this week.  I love this quote from Saturday's Globe and Mail, "Until now, that is. Heathrow's controversial new Terminal 5, which opens to passengers on Thursday, is supposed to put a shiny gloss on the airport's reputation by relieving some of that congestion. The fat lady hasn't lost weight, but she has bought a bigger dress."

The Queen gave it her official blessing.  Italian Stone Floors, open airy terminal, 4.3 billion pounds on the buildout.  What do you think?

Buckyball Globalization

Zak writes, correctly, that I am not the anti-Friedman:

Many have read Thomas L. Friedman's book, The World is Flat. I'm sure to many, like myself, it was an eye-opener to global competition.  He described how a McDonald's restaurant was outsourcing even the drive-through order taking out of the U.S.  Friedman described how India had taken advantage of the Y2K software refactoring to train its software professionals and compete against the U.S. for future software contracts.  There is much, much, more to the book, all describing outsourcing and global competition.  A new book though, explains there are some buckyballs or spikes to this flat perspective of global competition, and even living.  What does your city say about you? describes the new book, Who's Your City? Richard Florida explains that yes, Friedman is correct that with today's technology, you can live anywhere on the planet and essentially telecommute to your coworkers.  However, despite this flatness, professions have developed critical mass in certain cities.  Nashville - music, Los Angeles - film, New York - finance, and so on.  To have a splash in a profession, you need to be physically located within that critical mass.

Exactly.

Who's Your Denver?

The greater Denver metropolitan area scores highly on a new set of rankings my team and I compiled based on the five major stages of your life. Denver itself ranks in the Top 10 places for young professionals. And Boulder ranks in the Top 5 smaller regions for single college grads, young professionals, familes with children and empty-nesters.

But there is an even bigger economic factor that bodes well for the region's fortunes. With nearly 4 million people and $140 billion in economic activity, it ranks as one of the top dozen mega-regions in the United States. In fact, it's one of the 40 leading mega-regions that power the entire global economy.

The rest is here.

Who's Your Book of the Month

Best Book to Help You "Find Your Happy Place"
An engaging and thoughtful new perspective on the meaning of home in a country that seems to be on a ceaseless quest for upward and onward mobility. --Anne

Who's Your City? by Richard Florida

Just heard that Amazon.com has named Who's Your City? to its Best of the Month list (Seven on the Side) for March (h/t: Sean Ammirati, Bill Bishop).

LGA is Living Hell

Just flying out of one of the nation's richest cities  with the worst airport, LaGaurdia  The amenities are a joke, the airport design is uglier than a bus terminal.  And when I asked the TSA agent his favorite restaurant he smirked and replied, "Not in this dump."  While JFK recently went over a major makeover with celebrity chefs, gourmet markets and martini bars, it's twin sister is in dire  need of a face lift!

Who's Your Google?

We (Me, Richard, Avi from Google, Greg from Basic Books) are off to the Manhattan Googleplex this afternoon for the book launch of Who's Your City?  If you are attending or attended the speech, post your comments or questions here...

Basing location on your career only?

Forbes has released a list of the best cities for business and careers.  Factors that influence this list are business and living costs, education, crime along with job and income growth.  Interestingly, there is some overlap with the list of best cities in   
Who's Your City which examines the best places based on a wider degree of factors.

What do you think?  Is your location of choice grounded on your business/career prospects exclusively?  Or do you consider other factors such as accessibility to cultural amenities, architecture, community openness?

Aside, in a sign that the mortgage mess is truly underway, Forbes also has a list of the best places to pick up a foreclosed home

Aleem Kanji

Splitsville

The Economist reports on the Democratic divide:

A famous political distinction exists between “wine-track” and “beer-track” Democrats ...Obamaworld is a universe of liberal professionals and young people—plus blacks from all economic segments. Hillaryland, by contrast, is a place of working-class voters, particularly working-class women, and the old. These are people who occupy not just different economies but also different cultures ...

These groups could hardly have a more different view of politics. Mr Obama's supporters are, mostly, the liberal version of “values voters”. They are intensely worried about America's past sins and its current woeful image in the world. They regard Mr Obama as a “transformational” leader—a man who can, with one sweep of his hand, wipe away the sins of the Bush years and summon up the best in their country.

Mrs Clinton's supporters, by contrast, are kitchen-table voters. They wear jackets emblazoned with the logos of their unions. They work with their hands or stand on their feet all day. They have seen their living standards stagnate for years, and they are worried about paying their bills rather than saving their political souls.

The battle for the Democratic Party is so bitter because it is a battle over culture. Mrs Clinton's supporters look at Mr Obama's and see latte-drinking elitists. Mr Obama's supporters look at Mrs Clinton's and smell all sorts of ancestral sins, not least racism. The two groups neither like nor respect each other.

I've been working the data and will have more to say soon.

Is Homeownership a Bad Thing?

New Yorker economics writer James Surowiecki:

Americans may disagree about nearly everything, but few contest the idea that owning your home is a good thing. ...

To recover from recession, economies need prices to fall until they reflect genuine supply and demand. With certain kinds of assets, like stocks, these adjustments take place quickly, sometimes viciously so. Buying and selling houses, though, is a far slower process. The good thing about this is that housing prices never suffer crashes on the scale that you sometimes see in the stock market. The bad thing is that it can take a long time for housing prices to reflect reality. Homeowners, as economists have shown, tend to remain unreasonably optimistic about the value of their homes, and they hate to drop their asking price. As a result, existing-home sales in the U.S. are now at a nine-year low.

Homeownership also impedes the economy’s readjustment by tying people down. From a social point of view, it’s beneficial that homeownership encourages commitment to a given town or city. But, from an economic point of view, it’s good for people to be able to leave places where there’s less work and move to places where there’s more. Homeowners are much less likely to move than renters, especially during a downturn, when they aren’t willing (or can’t afford) to sell at market prices. As a result, they often stay in towns even after the jobs leave.  And reluctance to move not only keeps unemployment high in struggling areas but makes it hard for businesses elsewhere to attract the workers they need to grow.

This doesn’t mean that the U.S. should become a nation of renters—even if both New York City and Switzerland show that high rates of renting are compatible with great prosperity. With the bursting of the housing bubble, though, it’s time not just to scrutinize the excesses of our home-buying process but to recognize the risks and costs inherent in owning a home. Sometimes the price—for the home buyer and for the economy as a whole—is too high to pay.

Housing tenure is not a given. It is associated with particular modes of production. Homeownership was a critical cog in the fordist economy - stimulating purchases of everything from cars and washing machines, spurring the large-scale development of infrastructure. But it is a significant institutional impediment to the flexibility, adjustment and mobility the creative economy requires. NYC and London will derive even greater benefits over time from high rates of renters.  My hunch, which I outline in Who's Your City and Atlantic writer Matt YgIesias picks up on, is that sooner or later housing tenure types will adjust.

Courage, Honesty, Character

After traveling all day, I watched the core of Barack Obama's speech. It is plain and simple the most moving message I have ever heard from an American politician. Interesting thing is I was reading Shelby Steele's oped in the Wall Street Journal on the plane.   

Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable ...

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?

But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.

No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity. His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself.

He more than "became himself" today. He took on race, he took on identity and he did in a way that is both personal and unifying. He seemed very much like a "whole" person to me - fully in touch with his own identity, his "bi-racial" background, the "black" and "white" sides of his identity. He addressed it at, and walked away from nothing.  He gave us a vision of a future where we can come to grips with race, understand differences, and respect them.  At times, I felt Obama was talking directly to Steele. And what was particularly poignant was how he transcended and reframed every one of the issues Steele says mires him - and us - down.

Here's what Alan Wolfe has to say:

What I heard today, though, was not a political speech in the sense we have gotten used to in this country. I heard instead a speech that, as much as it was about Obama and Wright, was also about us. Our politics does not quite know how to handle such a thing; campaigns are meant to tell people what they can expect to receive, not to ask them to understand, forgive, and reach out.

We have been asked to reflect in the most serious of ways about the role that race plays in the life of our country. I cannot recall any leader or potential leader in the last two or three decades asking us to do that. I hope we are up to the challenge. I do not believe--nor, from his speech, do I think that Obama believes--that to think seriously about race we have to vote for him ... Agree or disagree with Obama, I ask people who are less inspired by him that I am, but at least acknowledge that in this presidential candidate, we have a man of honor--and an honest man.

Amen.

MIA - Don't Leave Home Without It...

Guest Blogger -Rana

If you're flying out of Miami International Airport, pack your brown bag and a sandwich.  This airport leaves much to be desired on the culinary front.  Concourse C & D have a greasy cafeteria style Cuban restaurant and Concourse E - has a CPK asap, Chili's Too, Au Bon Pain and Burger King.  Thank GAWD for Starbucks in those concourses.  For the full gastronomically delightful list click here

How Many People Actually Move?

With "Who's Your City?" due any day now, this seems most appropriate.

So, a colleague asks:

I'm working on my dissertation proposal and I'm thinking about what brings people to places versus what happens once they are there.

My work will focus on this latter part, not on the "moving" part. It's always hard to have large scale data on "moving decisions", you know.

But I was thiking: how many people actually move in or out a city every year? Do you have at hand average numbers about this mobility?

Even rough estimates? I'd be very very curious to see them.

My point is: we are always so obsessed by what "moves" people to one place to another, but after all most people (don't look at us!) never even leave or if they do, they do very few times in a lifetime. Isn't that the case?

Response after break.

X Factor

Taste is always subjective and fame fleeting, but I could not agree more with NPR's  Carrie Brownstein on this:

This afternoon I went to the Spin party to see X. The band played all of the hits, from 'Los Angeles' to 'We're Desperate'. John Doe, always the storyteller, told the audience that 'Nausea' was how we'd feel after the amount of beer we'd all been drinking and that 'Motel Room In My Bed' is where we'd be when we woke up feeling sick ... Before X were Vampire Weekend, who I saw yesterday at The Parish. It's a shame so many people left after Vampire Weekend and missed X's show.

To my ears, X were one of the very best bands of their era.  Doe is a terrific lyricist and the male-female vocals as good as any this side of Jefferson Airplane.

Surrealist Map

(Via the fantastic Strange Maps).

Rise of the Super-Mayor

The Economist reports:

Mayors are forming alliances with nearby settlements mostly because they have to. Few cities can now expect to dominate their hinterlands simply by virtue of being big. Across America suburbs are strongly competing for people, offices and cultural centres. Many mayors quietly worry that their cities will turn into nightmarish Detroits, with a rotten core and a choice collection of the region's most troubled residents.

The article points to regional organizations, alliances and initiatives forged by mayors Rich Daley of Chicago; John Hickenlooper, Denver; Jerry Abramson, Louisville; and Bob Walkup, Tuscon - all mayors we know well, we admire, and with whom we have worked. Mayors - from both parties - are becoming the innovative force in politics and policy around the world. Makes sense, actually, since that world is increasingly spiky.

Incompetence, American-style

If you think this headline is about politics, you're wrong. Slate's Dan Gross reports on the incompetence of American business management:

Dissing American financial management is an affront to national pride tantamount to standing in Rome and asking, loudly, if Italians are able to make pasta. The United States invented the concept and practice of running large, complex systems. Along with baseball and deep-frying, management is one of our great national pastimes ... Americans' ability to manage complex systems has been the ultimate competitive advantage. It has allowed the United States to enjoy high growth and low inflation—a record we haven't hesitated to lord over our foreign friends. ...

But now, thanks to widespread incompetence, American management is on its way to becoming an international laughingstock. Faith in American financial sobriety has been widely underm