Bye-Bye, Big Apple. Omaha and Orlando Are Jumping Now

The Washington Post ^ | Sunday, September 7, 2003 | Joel Kotkin

[presidio9]

For more than half a century, New York's boosters have proclaimed their city the "Capital of the World." In good times or bad, they maintained, it would always be preeminent in the global economy. Along with their counterparts in London, Tokyo, San Francisco, Chicago and a handful of would-be "global cities," Gotham's elites see themselves at the apex of a worldwide urban hierarchy that makes their city a unique and irresistible magnet for the ambitious, the wealthy and the talented. "This is still the city where you want to have your company if you want to be successful," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg crowed last year, with typical Gothamite bravado.

Well, fuggedaboudit, Mr. Mayor. I'm here to tell you that that kind of thinking is not only wishful, it's just plain wrong. There is a dramatic shift afoot in urban fortunes, weakening the clout of the biggest cities while spreading power and influence to scores of smaller centers, nowhere more markedly than here in the United States.

Blame 9/11, technology or geographic shifts in the national economy -- or a combination of all three -- but the nation's urban hierarchy is flattening out. A host of smaller players are chopping off chunks of what was once the big boys' exclusive domain. What used to take place almost entirely in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or San Francisco -- whether in high finance, advertising or marketing -- is now happening more and more in unlikely locales such as Omaha, Des Moines, Fargo, N.D., and Columbus, Ohio. "Technology now gives each town the same global footprint," says Rich Nespola, a native New Yorker and president of TMNG, a communications consulting firm headquartered in suburban Kansas City, Kan. "People can work where they are comfortable and where it's most profitable."

This is good news for America's cities -- and for America. For many cities in the South and Midwest, spreading the wealth could signal the dawn of an era of renewed urban development, a new cosmopolitanism and growing cultural, technological and economic influence. For the long-dominant coastal cities, it offers an opportunity to rethink their priorities and where they want to go. For the country as a whole, it means a more vibrant, heterogeneous landscape, more living choices, a livelier cultural and social panorama -- let's face it, a nation that's more vital and more fun.

The notion of a stable hierarchy of globally dominant cities arose in the first decades following World War II. The Allied triumph turned New York and, secondarily, London into unparalleled centers of global commerce and finance. Later, the emergence of Japan as a dominant industrial and banking center added Tokyo to the top tier.

Here at home, the premier centers of finance, fashion, the media and political power -- New York and competitors such as Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles -- chipped away at the influence of once-vibrant regional centers such as Philadelphia, Cleveland and St. Louis, all of which basically dropped off the map. Deriding the so-called "second-tier" cities became something of a local sport, picking up on the spirit of George M. Cohan's suggestion that "After you leave New York, every town is Bridgeport."

Such notions also informed economic decision making. Convinced the world was its oyster, New York believed it could safely leave the production of goods, and even the tedious day-to-day administration of business, to other American cities or to foreign countries. This imperial approach, it is increasingly clear, has not worked out so well for most residents and now threatens the city's long-term future. Strategies devised to promote the "global city" -- including subsidizing large elite firms and elaborate office and residential projects -- pumped up real estate costs and made the city hellish for smaller firms. As Wall Street and big law firms were coddled, less fashionable industries, such as warehousing and manufacturing, were shown the exits.

[presidio9]

Keep dreaming. NYC is still the Capital of the World.

[Tokhtamish]

Financial firms ARE moving out of NYC. Jersey City, directly across the river from the Financial District, is booming.

[Digger]

Watch what happens over the next few years when much of D.C. moves out to Colorado & watch for Omaha with SAC to play a big role. The liberals have ruined the East Coast. It probably will be the arena of the next terrorist act which could be bio or worse yet.

[Fudd]

Extensive interviews with young professionals, corporate executives, human resource workers, post-graduate students and recent immigrants reveal that many are willing to exchange "the bright lights" of the global centers for affordable housing, a sense of community and economic opportunity. "It's gotten very easy to get workers to relocate here," notes Randy Schilling, founder and CEO of Quilogy, a St. Louis-area technology company. "You get a guy here from Chicago, New York and San Francisco, and even if he gets a pay cut, he and his family live better."

This is why I'll never move to the "capitol of the world", or the left coast. Besides, we generally keep the lights on here.

[Husker24]

SAC= STRATCOM now

[presidio9]

This is nothing new. They have been doing this for 25 years. Northern Jersey is an extension of NYC anyway.

[Tokhtamish]

No this is different and picking up.

I am aware that Hudson County has had spillover from Manhattan since the 80's but the pace of construction is accelerating. It will be fed also by that blackout. Were you in NY then ? Power came back relatively soon to NJ. In fact my VCR never even went out. Much of midtown didn't get running water till that Sunday.

It was the sheer powerless and isolation of the blackout. No cell phones. No mass transit. No ATMs so you only had the cash in your wallet.

[=Intervention=]

That attitude is part of the host of reasons for the exodous from NYC.

[presidio9]

Please. People move to NYC every day. Those that leave are generally retirees.

[=Intervention=]

Did you read your own article?

"Between 2000 and 2002, for example, more than 300,000 more Americans left New York City than moved in, among the highest rates of outflow in the nation. (Though the city's population saw a small uptick in 2002, this was due chiefly to immigration and births.)"

This is a trend. People are LEAVING.

[presidio9]

People like yourself have been looking for this "trend" forever. NY Continues to grow as your quote points out, because the people who are moving away are primarily retirees. Those of childbearing years are staying and having kids. Not sure how the uptick in population is unrelated to the so-called trend of people moving away. Where you came from is irrelevant. Either you moved here or you did not.

[bc2]

are you guys ever going to become your own district, seperate from the rest of New York State? This is nothing hateful against you as a person, just the general filth disguised as policy that seeps out of that rotten hell hole every year at an ever increasing rate.

we've had enough, up here.

[presidio9]

NYC is a net positive contributor in the NYS tax rolls.

Translation: We send in less than we get back.

[bc2]

Assault Weapons Ban, Smoking Ban, Pistol Licensing procedures, skewed legislature, Rockafeller drug laws...

This is just 5 seconds of thought. We'd much rather pass on your tax dollars.

[bc2]

"Translation: We send in less than we get back."

did you mean to type that?

[presidio9]

Nope. We gets back less than we sends in.

[bc2]

well, I still say you can feel free to keep your tax dollars AND the policies which have turned New York State into a "Liberty-Free Zone".

[y2k_free_radical]

No wonder it's so foreign

[TC Rider]

Keep dreaming. NYC is still the Capital of the World.

Maybe, but after 5 years of annual vacations in NYC, if Mrs. TC can't smoke in bars and restaurants, and I can't smoke a cigar in the Oak Bar at the Plaza, we'll find another 'world' city to spend our cash in.

Maybe Chicago, or Seattle? Any suggestions fellow Freepers?

[UCANSEE2]

Keep dreaming. NYC is still the Capital of the World.

to those who live in New York, and have never been anywhere else in the world.

Gee..... go to ANTWERP and see what they think.