Rustbelt Rebuilding

This has long been a favorite subject of mine. Ryan Avent has some very interesting things to say:

A lot of people have given Hillary the advantage in Pennsylvania, reasoning that Pennsylvania is a lot like Ohio. And indeed, Pennsylvania is a lot like Ohio, except where it isn’t, and where it isn’t is Philadelphia, as the New York Times notes today. There is no city as big, as dense, and as economically successful as Philly in Ohio, and given Obama’s record in economically successful, dense cities with lots of white collar professionals, that’s a pretty important point.

An interesting question to ask, then, is why eastern PA is different from the west. The most obvious answer is that it’s right smack dab in the middle of the northeastern megalopolis, which is the largest, richest, most dynamic region in the nation. Ok, but so what? What is it about that region that has pulled eastern seaboard cities back from the brink and returned them to their status as concentrations of wealth production?

That’s a more difficult question to answer. For Philly, part of the reason is its presence in an area with great market potential. The city has excellent connections to other booming cities, which makes it a natural place for firms and people to locate. It also benefits from being one of the low cost options in its neighborhood. Need a full service city close to the northeast action and can’t afford New York? Head to Philadelphia.

But market potential is just one of the factors at work. Another is the ready-made density. A lot of high-wage professional jobs require close proximity to other firms in similar fields. If you need to pack a lot of professionals together, a big, dense downtown is a great place to do it.

Or, it could be the case that the downtown is attracting the workers and the firms are following. Urban neighborhoods are hot items, providing a dense and diverse collection of cultural and consumption activities, all without the hassle of long commutes and lawns to mow.

In fact, all the above explanations play some role, and once the growth engine is underway, it becomes self-sustaining, the more so because unlike in suburbs, density improves a downtown. It reduces costs through scale economies, increases the consumption options which can be supported, and so on. There’s only so much of this that cities themselves can control, but it should be clear that connectivity is one of the controllable factors. That’s a lesson the Rust Belt should learn.

The Rust Belt has plenty of capable cities, but they’re a lot farther apart than the ones in the northeast. They’re also separated from the northeast juggernaut by a big damn mountain range, which slows the movement of goods and people. If you need a low cost alternative to a big northeastern city, it’s just not feasible to look west of the mountains. And if you need a low cost alternative to Chicago, well, most of the big cities are a long way away. New York to Washington is only 200 miles, between which is a lot of stuff. Chicago to Detroit is closer to 300 miles, and there’s a lot less in between, because so much of the Rust Belt urban geography is clustered along the lake shore. In general, the Rust Belt is a much looser and poorer version of the northeast. If you need a high-powered, high-density location for your firm, then you’ll end up in the northeast. If that’s not that important, well, you may as well move somewhere in the Sun Belt.

So what would I do if I were the midwest? First, I’d work hard to concentrate economic activity in dense downtowns. And second, I’d work hard to develop a high-speed transportation network anchored on Chicago and Toronto. The Sun Belt can afford to plan poorly and develop willy-nilly. The southern economy has performed well, housing is dirt cheap, and local governments don’t have a century’s worth of decrepit infrastructure to support. The midwest doesn’t have those advantages. People aren’t going to flood back.

To rejuvenate the Rust Belt economy, then, governments have to find ways to allow their citizens to punch above their weight. That has to mean improved connections within and across Rust Belt cities. Deep, connected pools of human capital fuel the economy of the northeast, and the midwest has to try to marshal and mobilize its resources by moving them closer together.

I sure wish policy-makers were listening because Avent's nailed it. Stop tearing out downtown neighborhoods to put up corporate towers, or faux malls or gigantic stadium-convention center complexes. Increase density, improve neighborhoods, focus on internal and external connections. Amen! And I'd add: attract immigrants, retain college students, and become more open-minded.

Interesting thing is the great Chi-Pitts mega (46 million people, $1.6 trillion is not a whole lot smaller than Bos-Wash  (54 million people, $2.2 trillion in economic activity).  They're the second and third largest mega-regions in the world. Tor-Buff-Chester (22 million people, $350 billion in economic activity) is no slouch either. But as Avent says, the core cities in Bos-Wash are denser and they are more connected to one another.  Fact of the matter is the old Ch-Pitts metros were long ago more connected than they are today. Old time Pittsburghers would regale me with tales of overnight sleeper train trips between the 'burgh and Chicago. Fast rail between these cities and between these megas is a must. In Pittsburgh I long advocated fast-rail links between it and Chicago, Toronto and DC.  Local leaders countered with a mag-lev to connect downtown to the airport - talk about thinking local. Increasing density and getting away delusion that reallocating population from sprawl as growth is key. And it's high time that state and local governments in the region stop throwing scare resources down the drain with hair-brained revitalization schemes.

Comments

[Richard Dice]

Hi RF,

Isn't Tor-Buf-Chester $530 billion? I think that's what I've read in my readings of your works and it jives better with my intuition (i.e. I don't think that PCI in Tor-Buf-Chester is 46% of that of Chi-Pitts). This looks like a key transposition typo.

Cheers,
- Richard

[Abby Wilson]

Professor Florida,

I am based in Pittsburgh, PA and working on a project called GLUE, the Great Lakes Urban Exchange. We are attempting to unify older industrial cities in the rustbelt by using new media to both a) collect stories about creative and inclusive revitalization efforts and b) build networks amongst city lovers and livers in these oft forgotten or misrepresented "rustbelt" cities. Our full website is in development in Detroit, but the placeholder blog will give you a little insight into what we're trying to do. www.gluespace.org

[Michael R. Bernstein]

In Pittsburgh I long advocated fast-rail links between it and Chicago, Toronto and DC. Local leaders countered with a mag-lev to connect downtown to the airport - talk about thinking local.

Richard, I'm a bit confused. Did you mean that their counter-proposal was better or worse from your POV?

[earlfocht]

There's no such thing as "ChiPitts." You're taking a collection of scattered cities otherwise known as "the Midwest" or "the Great Lakes region" and labeling them as if they're a continuous urban area. Not even close. Corn does not populate a city.

[fester]

Earl --- The lake shore cities are economically similiar for both their initial reason for settlement and with the exception of Chicago, their economic history. The I-76-I-80-I90 corridor does not have the same economic density and interconnectedness that the I-95 corridor has but there is some commonality of experience and economic matrixes.

Mike --- I live in Pittsburgh and MagLev, especially its proposed path was going to be a massively expensive boondoggle with minimal chance of achieving its stated objectives or implicit multiplier effects. It was a dumb proposal seeking to grab a share of restricted federal funding that was tied to MagLev and not general transportation infrastructure.

Abby --- thanks for the intro to the Hafer campaign