WA Ping
Posted on 04/13/2013 7:28:43 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
America’s urban landscape is changing, but in ways not always predicted or much admired by our media, planners, and pundits. The real trend-setters of the future—judged by both population and job growth—are not in the oft-praised great “legacy” cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, but a crop of newer, more sprawling urban regions primarily located in the Sun Belt and, surprisingly, the resurgent Great Plains.
While Gotham and the Windy City have experienced modest growth and significant net domestic out-migration, burgeoning if often disdained urban regions such as Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Charlotte, and Oklahoma City have expanded rapidly. These low-density, car-dominated, heavily suburbanized areas with small central cores likely represent the next wave of great American cities.
There’s a whole industry led by the likes of Harvard’s Ed Glaeser, my occasional sparring partner Richard Florida and developer-funded groups like CEOs for Cities, who advocate for old-style, high-density cities, and insist that they represent the inevitable future.
But the numbers tell a different story: the most rapid urban growth is occurring outside of the great, dense, highly developed and vastly expensive old American metropolises.
An aspirational city, by definition, is one that people and industries migrate to improve their economic prospects and achieve a better relative quality of life. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, this aspirational spirit was epitomized by cities such as New York and Chicago and then in the decades after World War Two by Los Angeles, which for many years was the fastest-growing big city in the high-income world.
Until the 1970s, the country’s established big cities were synonymous with aspiration—where the jobs and opportunities for broad portions of the population abounded....
(Excerpt) Read more at newgeography.com ...
So, Man IS a territorial organism after all. The Founders knew better than the collectivists, after all.
Man is not evolved for life in the Urban Collective Hive.
Amazing!
We are missing one key future issue. There will come the 2020 and 2030 Census.
We can already gauge that California, New York, and at least four rust-belt states will show a loss of population by 2020. Even the more wealthy of Americans will come to agree that neither New York or California are worth all the hassle and taxation. Who gains? Florida, Georgia, Texas. Figure ten more Representatives going to those three and maybe another five southern states. You can guess the loser of the states.
But the trend is in full-gear...so the 2030 Census....a good seventeen years away, will end becoming a fascinating and huge change for the nation. California will be lucky to have forty (presently at 53), and New York will have to fight to keep at least twenty. Texas ought to be bumping up against forty-five (presently at 32).
All of this means that the needy states, that bankrupted themselves over and over, will be fairly desperate for federal programs to cover their promises. The southern states in power by 2030...won’t agree to that. Figure some massive anger and hostility across California, and a increasing number of New Yorkers finally deciding to leave and find a safe lifestyle in the south.
Those of us around still in 2030 will be amused by the changes, and laughing over idiot political pits that various communities have fallen into. Companies were drawn like magnets....to cheaper lifestyles in the southern states, with fewer taxes, and common sense values.
Cities rise and cities fall, just faster here. The old metropolitan giants are collapsing under the weight of their own expenses. They’re too complicated and too old, requiring costly maintenance, with a legacy underclass still provided for very generously, although the boom times that made that seem reasonable and right have moved on to other locales.
Some old, expensive cities soldier on and remain relevant. London springs to mind. New York City will likely be another. But Chicago? Their reason for being is in question. Better find some new ones or turn into a giant Buffalo, or even worse, Detroit.
It pains me to say that because I’ve loved Chicago in the past. The architecture, the food, the unpretentious, industrious people. Those people, if they’re still there, are all out in the collar counties and burbs now. The city populace has taken a turn for the feral.
Too bad, it’s a beautiful place or once was. Then again, so was Detroit.
Atlanta as a new urban magnet is beginning to show some old city cracks in the facade. I suspect Georgia will begin to slow as a result. I do know that the Raleigh metro area in NC is projected to gain a million in population over the next decade or so, and it’s not just Chamber Of Commerce pap either. Driving through there is like time travel back to 2007 for us in the Greensboro area. Construction galore, new houses, new shopping complexes, new highways. Suburban Apex and certainly Cary are almost unrecognizable.
Georgia has one major issue...water supply for Atlanta. If they don’t straighten this out within a decade...it’ll halt the city’s growth. I think all of these major towns ought to be planning right now...major expansion and prepare for a fifty-percent growth over the next forty years. And cities in California...ought to plan on a fifty-percent loss over the next forty years.
NYC has just hit an all-time population high. It is rusted out Upstate NY that can’t handle the taxes that the state’s liberal voters have strapped it with.
Houston is dog ugly. It’s hot, humid, has zero natural beauty and has very poor recreational areas. You live here to earn a living; that’s pretty much it. I AM grateful for the employment opportunities it provides and nice people. Just being realistic about the cities lack of “curb appeal”. If I won the lottery or save enough for an early retirement... I’m outta here..
Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston are growing in part due to the low-tax climate and in part due to the fact that Texas lets people drill for natural gas and oil.
There are a few reason the growth in the Sun Belt is continuing to flabbergast the density experts.
First, the Sun Belt offers a pro business environment, and a “can do” attitude.
Second, organized labor is practically a non factor in these right to work states.
Third, low taxes or in some cases no state income taxes, mind you there are taxes but they are levied differently.
Forth, family and hospitality is still popular in the South, and ya,ll come on down and witness some of it.
Fifth, lower crime, there is still crime but for the most part criminals have no idea who is armed and who is not.
I have lived in Houston Texas since 1974 and while the summers are hotter than a three dollar pistol, and there is hardly any seasons, we have summer, still summer, almost summer and kind of winter, the climate is a trade off to the and a half months of brutal winter (I’m from Chicago).
If you noticed four of the cities listed Dallas/Ft Worth, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston all are from Texas which has the fifth largest economy in the world. If Texas left the Union the Progressives would be screwed. Texas will continue to lead the way with the rest of the South until the greenie weenies, progressives, and the rest of the leech class figure out how to cripple its growth.
Yep you’re right it is the arm pit of the state as my friend, a native Houstoian, calls it he lives in Denton a D/FW suburb
Austin is the a-hole of the state
Houston is the arm pit with the smelly fog
;p
Sounds good!
Hard to believe that now Denton is considered a “suburb” of Dallas.
The DFW metroplex just keeps expanding....pretty soon Waco is going to be a “suburb”.
AZ added two seats this time around and both went to Democrats. FL is now a purple state and will go blue. Demography is destiny.
U.N Agenda 21 has crept into every facet of our society and although many more people are being educated about the evils of this attempt to control the world, the fight is getting harder.
The insidious nature of the U.N. plan is that they have developed it all in nice sounding warm and fuzzy catch phrases and well intentioned ideas to lure in good hearted people who don't take the time to learn more about unintended consequences. More than once I've brought up the point of Agenda 21 at community meetings only to hear people call me a conspiracy theorist and I want to say "forgive them for they know not what they do".
It is up to all of us to speak out against this garbage when ever we can. Sadly, many people think they can't do much by themselves. That's not true.
Here in Washington State one woman named Paula Baruffi has taken it upon herself to create an organization to stop locally enforced Agenda 21 rules and has purchased enough copies of Rosa Koire's book, Behind the Green Mask" to send to every state legislator. This was in response to many elected officials trying to say they've never heard of Agenda 21. Her efforts will have the ability to educate legislative reps and grow public interest at the same time.
WA Ping
Sounds like you want to live in Disneyland.
I visited my mom in Dallas this past weekend. There was construction everywhere. It’s changed so much since i left. I live in San Jose, and there is nothing going on here.
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