Pittsburgh

Demographia International Housing Affordability – 2025 Edition Released

Wendell Cox — Tue, 13 May 2025 20:28:38 -0400

This annual report assesses housing affordability in 95 major markets across eight nations (Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom and the, United States). The 2025 edition covers the third quarter of 2024.

Key Points

Ratings: The report uses a median price-to-income ratio (“median multiple”) to determine affordability.

Affordability Categories: Housing markets are rated from “affordable” to “impossibly unaffordable” based on their median multiple (Table ES-1).

Geography: Housing markets are labor markets (which are also metropolitan areas or functional urban areas), largely defined by the “commuting shed.” Housing affordability comparisons can be made, (1) between housing markets (such as a comparison between Adelaide and Melbourne) or (2) over time within the same housing market (such as between years in Adelaide).

Variations within Nations: The report emphasizes that affordability often varies significantly between markets within the same country. National averages aren’t always representative.

Housing affordability in 2024 is summarized by nation in Table ES-2.

Details on housing affordability for all 95 markets, displayed by median multiple, are provided in Table 3 and by geography in Table 4 of the full report.

For the fifth year in a row, Pittsburgh (PA), in the United States, was the most affordable market in Demographia International Housing Affordability. This year the Pittsburgh median multiple was 3.2, which is moderately unaffordable.

The least affordable market in Demographia International Housing Affordability in 2024 was Hong Kong, with a median multiple of 14.4, followed by Sydney at 13.8, San Jose, at 12.1, Vancouver at 11.8, Los Angeles at 11.2, Adelaide at 10.9, Honolulu at 10.8, San Francisco at 10.0, Melbourne at 9.7, San Diego and 9.5, Brisbane at 9.3 and Greater London at 9.1. All of these markets are rated impossibly unaffordable.

Existential Threat to Middle-Income Households

Among high-income nations, middle-income homeownership was once widespread, with house prices aligned with incomes. Since the 1990s, however, prices have surged —especially in
markets governed by urban containment strategies early (e.g., San Francisco, Sydney, London)— with homes now costing 9–15 times household income.

This shift is linked to the international planning orthodoxy, which restricts urban expansion through greenbelts, urban growth boundaries (UGBs), rural zoning, and compact city policies. While intended to increase density and sustainability, these policies have severely limited land supply, raising land and housing costs and making housing unaffordable for the middle class.

Nearly all severely unaffordable housing markets follow the urban containment model. The resulting land scarcity inflates prices, particularly near UGBs. This pattern, rooted in the UK’s 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, has spread virtually around the world.

Purpose of Urban Planning: Urban planning is meant to improve lives. As Jane Jacobs said: “If planning helps people, they ought to be better off as a result, not worse off.” Yet urban containment has made many people worse off, by virtue of its association with substantially worsened housing affordability.

Current planning approaches emphasize multifamily housing and other densification while restricting new detached homes at the fringe—strategies that helped create today’s crisis.

Counterurbanization: Middle-income households are increasingly leaving expensive markets for more affordable places—a trend especially visible in Canada and the U.S. These moves reflect long-term structural problems. People are “voting with their feet,” to obtain the housing denied them in markets with deteriorated housing affordability. Without major reform, this migration seems likely to continue.

Elaboration and sources are in the full report. Click here to read and download the full report.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with Unleash Prosperity in Washington and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985), which was a predecessor agency to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro). Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Image and charts are from the report. Charts by the author; cover image for the report from the GPA Archive, Carol M. Highsmith collection and used under CC 2.0 License.

Politicians Finally Embrace Need to Promote Region

Dale Buss — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 20:28:58 -0500

A critical mass of forces finally may be understanding the benefits of what I’ve been advocating for years: that separate political actors in Flyover Country unite to promote our region as a whole, rather than our cities and states always competing with one another for the fruits of economic development and government favor.

The new dynamics are occurring in two key ways in the Upper Midwest, which is as good a place as any to start. We may soon be seeing several of the region’s governors begin to link arms to promote their states collectively to the growing industries behind the manufacturing revitalization of the heartland.

Also, national-level political leadership from here has caught on to fact that Flyover Country has been dealt out of any significant say in the leadership of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. And they want to change that.

As I told Nolan Finley, editorial-page editor of the Detroit News, for a column he posted recently, “There’s a level at which we are dismissed as a region. It’s true in every endeavor. Washington, D.C., controls the government. New York controls finance and marketing. [Hollywood] controls the culture and Silicon Valley controls Big Tech. We’re ringed by power centers.”

So, we must set up one or a handful of new “power centers” of our own, in a fresh strategy to ensure the economic future of Flyover Country. And the best way to do that in the political realm is for governments in our states and municipalities to band together.

Why Now

The need has long been there, but there’s new urgency for two reasons: the economic opportunities available now if we do this right, and the rather sudden recognition that has arisen in people who are in positions to do something about it.

This is not a new idea. The coasts really never have had to break a sweat to promote themselves regionally, given that they’ve controlled all of the power levers in this country. So, when investors as well as immigrants as well as tourists around the world think of America, their minds dart immediately to California or New York City, Washington, D.C., or Seattle, rather than to Pittsburgh or Omaha, Huntsville or Fargo.

But when Amazon was deciding several years ago where to put its “HQ2” — still the most-pursued economic-development prize in America’s history — the region that eventually won the project may have done so in large part because it took a collective approach to wooing the Seattle-based giant. Metro D.C. secured Amazon’s 20,000 new jobs in and around Arlington, Virginia, partly because a Greater Washington Partnership was able to get political ringleaders in the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and southern Maryland to work together to bring it about.

Read the rest of this piece at Flyover Coalition.

Dale Buss is founder and executive director of The Flyover Coalition, a not-for-profit organization aimed at helping revitalize and promote the economy, companies and people of the region between the Appalachians and Rockies, the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes. He is a long-time author, journalist, and magazine and newspaper editor, and contributor to Chief Executive, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and many other publications. Buss is a Wisconsin native who lives in Michigan and has also lived in Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Graph: courtesy Flyover Coalition.

Immersed in the Work of Art

Kathy M. Newman — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 20:28:58 -0400

This summer, five different immersive Van Gogh opportunities are circulating in dozens of cities around the world, including Detroit, Buenos Aires, and Perth, Australia. If you live in one of the cities that has (or soon will be) hosting one of these exhibits, you have no doubt been bombarded with social media promotions, many involving insufferable “Gogh” puns: “It’s Time to GOGH to see Immersive Van Gogh!” “It’s Safe to Gogh!” “Like Yoga? Try Van Goghga!”

How should this phenomenon be assessed? Popular reactions fall broadly into two categories: 1) excitement about seeing Van Gogh’s work projected, illuminated, animated, and scored or 2) disdain for the flashy, costly exhibits as an Instagram era substitution for genuine art appreciation.

I’m in a third camp; I’m fascinated by the history and appeal of these exhibits, and I also wonder what they can tell us about the relationship between art, social class, and work.

Immersive art exhibits have been around for nearly two decades. The Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, for example, has been showing “Van Gogh Alive” since 2011. In 2017, MOMA offered a hugely popular immersive version of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Beginning in 2021, larger cities like New York, Chicago, and LA had multiple competing immersive Van Gogh exhibits, while in dozens of other cities there was at least one version of immersive Van Gogh. More than 5 million tickets have been sold worldwide, and, with ticket prices averaging $35 a piece, that’s at least 175 million dollars in sales.

The tipping point may have come in early 2020, when home bound Netflix viewers watched as Emily in Paris visited an immersive Van Gogh exhibit. Immersive art exhibits were not designed with the pandemic in mind, but in 2021 immersive Van Gogh became the most profitable form of in-person entertainment in the US.

What makes digital art immersion so popular? Part of it might be the experience of being out in public with a large crowd, especially after so many months of being confined. Josh Jacobs, one of the creators of Immersive Van Gogh, explained that he was inspired by “collective action. And the idea that experiences change based on the people who are going through it together.”

I had my own immersive Van Gogh experience in 2021. During a low point in Pittsburgh’s viral transmission last November, I entered a large hall in a defunct factory on the Southside of Pittsburgh. Van Gogh’s paintings, enlarged to the size of the two-story building, wavered and wafted, appeared and disappeared. Sometimes a cicada or a flock of birds from one of the paintings was animated, flapping their wings toward the ceiling. Iconic songs such as Edith Piaf’s “On, Je Ne Regrette” and more avant-garde works by the Italian composer Luca Longobardi accompanied the images. In a time of doomscrolling and social media distraction, immersive Van Gogh gave me a sense of complete absorbtion, similar to that of an escape room.

Read the rest of this piece at Working Class Perspectives.

Kathy M. Newman is an Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University and author of Radio-Active: Advertising and Activism 1935-1947.

Photo: Two workers in the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit in Pittsburgh, by Kathy M. Newman.

Some Dreamers of the Rusty Dream

Kathy M. Newman — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 20:28:58 -0400

In the new Showtime series, American Rust, set and filmed outside of Pittsburgh, PA, and based on the 2009 novel by Philipp Meyer, we see the aftermath of an industrial collapse so devastating that the fictional town of Buell, PA, looks like it’s been bombed, strafed, and ransacked. In the novel, middle aged seamstress Grace remembers how when steel went belly up, the blast furnaces in the town were destroyed with dynamite. Shortly after that, the World Trade Center was blown up, too. “It wasn’t logical, but the one reminded her of the other.”

Both versions of American Rust follow the stunted dreams of Billy, a washed-up high school football star who inexplicably turns down a college football scholarship to Colgate University, and Isaac, a physics genius, who, rather than trying to get into Yale, as his older sister has done, steals $4,000 from his disabled father and plans to hop a train to California. In both versions Billy and Isaac take refuge in the hollowed out shell of Carrie Furnace, run into some bad dudes, and pretty soon there’s a dead body. Police chief Del Harris wants to protect Billy and Isaac from the law, in part because he’s known them his whole life, but also because he’s sweet on Billy’s mom, Grace.

Jeff Daniels, as Buell Police Chief Del Harris, brings a lot of star power to American Rust. He is wry and taciturn and world weary. He acts according to his own moral code. Maura Tierney, as Del’s erstwhile girlfriend and Billy’s mom, Grace, pops and crackles on the screen.

As someone who studies how working-class people are represented on film and television, and who lives just down the road from Carrie Furnace, I’m thrilled to see a show like this come to prestige cable. American Rust has big stars, a talented cast, good writing, gorgeous production values, and relevant themes.

But American Rust is stuck in the past. It’s not really about the working class of today, but, rather, the shattered dreams of the working class of the 20^th century. Sherry Linkon, in her book The Half-Life of Deindustrialization, explains how masculinity works in novels like American Rust. Linkon argues that young men like Billy and Isaac, deprived of the surefire path of their fathers’ generation in the factory or the mine, are “lacking economic opportunity,” and because of that, they also lack a “clear sense of how to be a man.” She argues that Meyer represents the structural problems Billy and Isaac face, but that his characters mostly blame themselves for their tragic demise. While Billy’s “life chances are clearly constrained . . . by deindustrialization,” Linkon writes, “he interprets those limitations in very personal ways.”

Ironically, perhaps, Meyer wanted his novel to be a critique of this tendency towards self-blame. Towards the end of the novel, Meyer writes, “there was something particularly American about it—blaming yourself for bad luck—that resistance to seeing your life as affected by social forces, a tendency to attribute larger problems to individual behavior. The ugly reverse of the American Dream.”

Showtime’s version of American Rust makes some significant changes to Meyer’s story, but it doubles down on the idea that post-industrial failure is personal. The opening scenes show all the main characters escaping through substances in one way or the other—weighing out prescription opioids, pushing a loved one to take a sleeping pill, drinking a tall Pabst Blue Ribbon out of a can, or crunching ibuprofen, because, Grace explains, she “likes the taste.” These people have given up; they seek relief from pain, above all else. The focus on substance abuse, and, especially, opioids, is one of the ways that Showtime’s American Rust brings the 2009 storyline into the present.

Read the rest of this piece at Working-Class Perspectives.

Kathy M. Newman is an Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University and author of Radio-Active: Advertising and Activism 1935-1947.

Reshoring America: Can the Heartland Lead the Way?

Joel Kotkin - Michael Lind - Dave Shideler — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The COVID-19 pandemic has had overwhelming impacts on our economy, not to mention the impact on lives and personal wellness.

The critical lack of medical equipment to treat and protect those affected highlights the over-reliance of United States manufacturing sector on overseas production. The offshoring issue extends beyond current pandemic concerns, however, reaching far larger and more permanent concerns over industrial supply chains, worker training and even national security.

Reshoring is the relocation of production facilities to, or the creation of new ones in, the United States. Many domestic and foreign companies are recognizing the strategic advantages of locating in the United States, such as protecting intellectual property, shortening supply chains and shrinking wage differentials1 between the United States, China and other overseas locations. Some estimates suggest that firms fail to accurately estimate the costs of production in other countries by as much as 20 percent. Considering these additional costs, experts suggest that 10-30 percent of projects considering locating production outside of the U.S. would find that it would be cheaper to remain or expand within the country. As a result, jobs stemming from reshoring activity are estimated to have reached over 400,000 in 2019, and that number is expected to grow.

The U.S. Heartland stands to benefit the most from reshoring activity. Because of its historic dependence on manufacturing, there remains a culture, skilled labor pool and training programs, as well as infrastructure to support production facilities. The presence and diversity of existing manufacturing throughout the region also supports reshoring activity, since domestic suppliers are available and proximate. The growth of financial and professional services in the Heartland also make it a desirable place for manufacturers, given the shift within the industry toward out-sourcing these aspects of the business.

Bipartisan support for reshoring has never been stronger in Washington. We have seen that reshoring activity will require more than tariffs and renegotiation of trade agreements. Instead, policies encouraging the behavior will also be needed, so that carrots and sticks are an integral part of the policy framework. To truly be successful, priority should be given to sectors and companies with growth potential, such as critical supply chain gaps that impact national security. Furthermore, infrastructure improvements and enhancements are needed to ensure that the U.S. remains competitive in the broader global economy.

Read the full report at heartlandforward.org.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Michael Lind is an American writer and academic. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in a number of book, beginning with The New Class War (2020). He is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Dave Shideler is the Chief Research Officer at Heartland Forward, oversees research focused on identifying practical tool and policies Heartland communities can use to enhance economic performance and prosperity. Before Heartland Forward, Dave was Professor of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University and Community and Economic Development Specialist with the OSU Extension Service. Those roles focused on entrepreneurship and assisted rural communities with economic development planning and implementation. Dave holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics from The Ohio State University.

Image credit: Heartland Forward, from the report

California and Urban Cores Dominate Overcrowded Housing

Wendell Cox — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 20:29:01 -0500

Concern about overcrowded housing has been heightened by its association with greater COVID-19 infection risk. As a disease transmitted by human proximity, exposure is increased by being in overcrowded and insufficiently ventilated spaces where sufficient social distancing is not possible. Exposure density for a person is intensified by the amount of time spent in such circumstances. In this case, overcrowded housing is a particular worry.

Overcrowded housing is largely an issue of insufficient income. People tend to live in overcrowded housing only when they cannot afford more spacious accommodations.

This article reviews the latest data on housing overcrowding for the 53 major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) in the United States, with data provided for all households, homeowners, and renters. Data is also provided for urban cores, suburbs, and exurbs, using the City Sector Model.

Overcrowding: All Occupied Housing

Out of the 53 major metropolitan areas, the five with the largest share of overcrowded housing are all in California (Figure 1). Los Angeles has by far the worst overcrowding, at 10.7% of households. This is more than 2.5 times the national rate of 3.9% and 30% more severe than San Jose, which has the second most severe overcrowding rate. San Jose, which is the most affluent (median household income) among the 53 metropolitan areas, and an overcrowding rate of 8.3%. San Jose is the core of the world’s leading technology hub, Silicon Valley. The third worst overcrowding is in Riverside-San Bernardino, at 7.8%. San Diego is fourth worst, at 6.8%. San Francisco, which includes the balance of Silicon Valley not in San Jose, has the fifth worst overcrowding, at 6.7%. New York, the sixth worst, is the only other major metropolitan area with a greater than 5% overcrowding rate.

The least overcrowded metropolitan areas were Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis, with the top ten ranging from 0.9% to 1.6% (Figure 2). On average, the ten metropolitan areas with the highest overcrowding rates have about five times the rate endured in the lowest 10 metropolitan areas among all households.

Overcrowding: Home Owners

The same five California metropolitan areas have the worst housing overcrowding among homeowners (Figure 3). Los Angeles, again, is the worst, at 5.0% and is followed by adjacent Riverside-San Bernardino at 4.8%. San Jose has considerably less overcrowding among homeowners, at 3.4%, but still ranks third worst. San Diego and San Francisco have overcrowding rates of 3.1% among homeowners.

Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo had the lowest homeowner overcrowding rates, with the top ten ranging from 0.5% to 0.8% (Figure 4). On average, the ten metropolitan areas with the highest overcrowding rates have about five times the rate of the lowest 10 metropolitan areas among owner households.

Overcrowding: Renters

Among renters, the same five California metropolitan areas have the worst overcrowding rates among the major metropolitan areas (Figure 5). Again, Los Angeles has the worst rate, at 16.1%. San Jose is second worst, at 14.7%, followed by Riverside-San Bernardino, at 13.0. San Diego and San Francisco (both at 11.1%) are the only other major metropolitan areas with an overcrowding rate among renters of 10% or more.

The ten lowest renter overcrowding rates range from 1.9% to 3.1%. The lowest overcrowding rates are in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo (Figure 6), On average, the ten metropolitan areas with the highest overcrowding rates have about four times the rate of the lowest 10 metropolitan areas among renter households.

The Demographia City Sector Model

Demographia City Sector Model analysis is now in the seventh year of publication. Improved data from the American Community Survey made it possible to separate demographic data based on lifestyles and functions within metropolitan areas. Before that, nearly all urban, suburban, and exurban analysis within metropolitan areas was based on municipal or county jurisdictions. The problem was, however, that nearly all new development since World War II had been lower density, principally single-family houses, while the automobile quickly replaced much of the commuting that had been previously been on transit or on foot.

The Demographia City Sector Model classifies zip code residents based upon their population density and extent of automobile commuting into four functional classifications, which are indicated in Figure 7. The intent is to separate the pre-World War II city from the very different city that has developed in the intervening three-quarters of a century.

Overcrowding by Metropolitan Sector: All Households

Among the metropolitan area sectors, the highest overall housing overcrowding rate (owners and renters) is in the Urban Core: Inner Ring, that includes the higher density residential areas directly adjacent to the downtowns, at 6.4%. This is nearly two-thirds higher than the overall rate of 3.9%. Overcrowding in the Urban Core: Central Business District (downtown) is a 5.2%, one third above the overall rate. The Earlier Suburbs have an overcrowding rate of 4.6 %, while the Later Suburbs and Exurbs share a 2.6% rate, one third below the overall average (Figure 8).

Overcrowding by Metropolitan Sector: Owners and Renters

Again, the Urban Core: Inner ring has the highest overcrowding among owning households, at 3.2%, two-thirds above the overall rate of 1.8%. The Urban Core: Central Business District overcrowding rate for owners is nearly as high, at 2.9%. The Earlier Suburbs have a rate of 2.1%, approximately 15% higher than the overall rate. The Later Suburbs (1.4%) and the Exurbs (1.5%) have lower owner overcrowding rates than the average (Figure 9).

Among renters, the Urban Core: Inner Ring has the highest overcrowding rate, at 8.5%, nearly 20% above the overall renter rate of 7.2%. The Earlier Suburbs have the second highest overcrowding rate among renters, at 8.1%. The Urban Core: Central Business District has an overcrowding rate of 6.0% among renters, which is well below the overall rate of 7.2%. The Later Suburbs (5.3%) and Exurbs (5.4%) have renter overcrowding rates a quarter below the overall average (Figure 9).

Owning, Renting and Overcrowding

There is a strong relationship between rental housing and higher overcrowding rates. The renter overcrowding rate among the major metropolitan areas is 7.2%, 55% higher than the overall household rate. Among homeowners the overcrowding rate is 1.8%, 55% below the overall household average (Figure 10).

Where Housing Overcrowding is the Greatest

In each of the categories of all occupied housing, owned housing, and rental housing, the five major metropolitan areas with the highest overcrowding rates are in California. This includes the four large coastal metropolitan areas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego, as well as inland Riverside-San Bernardino. Moreover, greater overcrowding is associated with higher population densities, which occur in the Urban Cores.

Overcrowded housing has long been a problem, especially for low-income households. The nation’s “affordable housing” programs established to aid household unable to afford market rate housing costs have routinely fallen far short of political promises. It is a problem that needs to be effectively addressed.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Photograph: aerial view of the urban density of Los Angeles (by author).

The Heartland's Revival

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 20:29:01 -0400

For roughly the past half century, the middle swath of America has been widely written off as reactionary, backward, and destined for unceasing decline. CNBC recently ranked the “worst states” to live in, and almost all were in what is typically defined as the Heartland.¹ Paul Krugman of the New York Times sees the region populated by “jobless men in their prime working years, with many suffering ‘deaths of despair’ by drugs, alcohol or suicide.”

Another Times article describes much of the small-town and rural areas as home to “the left behind”—Trumpian knuckle-draggers at war with modernity. This coastal contempt for the interior is nothing new, going back to celebrated figures such as Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken, who dismissed it as hopelessly “backward if not reactionary.”² Two New Jersey academics have even proposed, with the approval of much of the national media, that large parts of the Great Plains be evacuated to make way for an expansive “Buffalo Commons.”³ One progressive publication suggested that the country should send “reparations” to the region, as if it were incapable of devising its own recovery.

Yet in reality, the Heartland—a region of twenty states between the Appalachians and the Rockies—has remained a critical part of our country. In 2016, this area generated nearly $5 trillion in goods and services.⁴ As of 2015, it was also home to nearly 60 percent of the U.S. population,⁵ a percentage that is likely to increase as both the Northeast and coastal California are projected to grow less than the national average between 2010 and 2030.⁶

To be sure, the Midwest and the less urbanized South have lagged behind, but the Heartland now also boasts some of the fastest-growing large metros. This revival reprises the critical role of the vast interior in providing what Japanese political scientist Fuji Kamiya described as sokojikara, or “reserve power,” the unique combination of America’s vast fertility, its openness to change, and innovative spirit.⁷ Throughout its history, America’s continental mass has been a key element of our economic, social, and demographic strength. Abraham Lincoln described it as constituting “the great body of the Republic.”⁸

The New Demography

Those pontificating about Heartland decline from Manhattan, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco might consider looking more closely at demographic trends, which even before the pandemic were working in favor of much of the Heartland. In contrast, the great “urban renaissance” of the first decade of this century had a shorter run time than many anticipated.

New York epitomizes these trends. In the years right after the Great Recession, New York was gaining as much as fifty to eighty thousand people per year. By 2018, it was losing some forty thousand annually. Over the last several years, Chicago and the Los Angeles area have also lost population, both to surrounding suburbs and from people leaving the region entirely, notes Bill Frey of the Brookings Institution.

As both Frey’s research and a recent study from Heartland Forward demonstrate, outside of Florida and the southeast coast, the cities growing fastest have been in the Heartland—Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, Nashville, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Des Moines. More remarkable—or unexpected—has been the demographic resurgence of some even smaller regions, such as the Fayetteville-Bentonville-Rogers-Springdale area in northwestern Arkansas; Fargo, North Dakota; Madison, Wisconsin; and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

These are not entirely new trends. Dispersion of both jobs and people started taking place as early as the 1970s, well before the current upsurge.⁹ Looking back, Frey suggests that the big city growth enjoyed in the period after the Great Recession represented something of “an aberration of historical patterns.” The old demographic normal has simply become the new normal again.

The shift to Heartland cities is driven by the migration of both immigrants and millennials. Today the South and increasingly the Midwest have emerged as primary destinations for immigrants, both directly and from the coasts. Similarly, much of the recent migration from Puerto Rico has been concentrated in the Midwest. Immigrants are particularly prominent as Main Street entrepreneurs; in Ohio, they now constitute one in five small business owners.

Equally critical have been the shifts in millennial migration. It has been widely asserted by urban cheerleaders, such as Neil Irwin of the New York Times, that places like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle would prevail since they have “the best chance of recruiting superstar employees.” The Times described Iowa as a place millennials are leaving, but nearly 15 percent of the population around Des Moines, the state’s capital and largest city, is between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four, ranking it seventh among the fifty-four U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) with between five hundred thousand and one million people. Perhaps more impressive, nearly 53 percent of local millennials have at least a two-year degree, the fourth highest rate among all MSAs in Des Moines’s population category.

Increasingly, as urban pundit Richard Florida has noted, the new growth of the “creative class”—the well-educated millennials critical to the urban renaissance—is “shifting away from superstar cities.” Large Heartland metropolitan areas like Nashville, Austin, Detroit, San Antonio, Grand Rapids, and Dallas–Fort Worth are all gaining educated millennials far more rapidly than coastal “magnets” like New York, Los Angeles, or even the Bay Area.

Read the rest of this piece at American Affairs Journal.

Notes

¹Scott Cohn, “These Are the Worst Places to Live in America in 2019,” CNBC, July 10, 2019.

² Jon K. Lauck, From Warm Center to Ragged Edge: The Erosion of Midwestern Literary and Historical Realism: 1920-1965 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2017), 51–57.

³ Richard Rubin, “Not Far from Forsaken,” New York Times, April 9, 2006; Deborah Epstein Popper and Frank J. Popper, “The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust,” Planning Magazine (December 1987).

⁴ Michael Lind and Joel Kotkin, The New American Heartland (Center for Opportunity Urbanism, 2017).

⁵ United States Census Bureau, “United States Population Growth by Region,” 2015.

⁶ Rolf Pendall et al., “Scenarios for Regional Growth from 2010 to 2030,” Mapping America’s Futures, Brief 1, Urban Institute, January 2015, 9. California analysis based on population projections from: State of California Department of Finance, “Projections,” January 10, 2020.

⁷ “2005 Nen Wa Nihon No Tagagore,” Shokun, February 2007.

⁸ Lauck, From Warm Center to Ragged Edge, 1.

⁹John Herbers, The New Heartland: America’s Flight Beyond the Suburbs and How It Is Changing Our Future (New York: Crown, 1986), 3–9.

¹⁰ Derek Thompson, “The Feedback Loop That Will Makes America’s Richest Cities Even Richer,” Atlantic, March 26, 2015; Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 2000), 2–4, 15, 61.

The Twilight of Great American Cities is Here. Can We Stop It?

Joel Kotkin — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 20:29:01 -0400

The dreadful death of George Floyd lit a fire that threatens to burn down America’s cities. Already losing population before the pandemic, our major urban centers have provided ideal kindling for conflagration with massive unemployment, closed businesses and already rising crime rates.

The forms of disintegration vary. In overwhelmingly white cities like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis, violence has featured white radicals endorsing the extreme agenda of the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter. In more diverse cities, such as Chicago and New York, protests have devolved into basic thuggery as law enforcement has been curtailed and large portions of the prison population have been released.

The pandemic has shaken the once confident ranks of new urbanists. At a time when even The New York Times is suggesting that density and packed transit lines worsened the contagion, some still embrace theology over data, with some advocating ever greater density, more crowding in cities, and mass transit. Fortunately, people tend to be less theological about their locational choices. According to The New York Times, 420,000 people left New York City between March 1 and May 1. This nearly equals the city’s total population increase from 1950 to 2019, according to demographer Wendell Cox.

Pandemic Impacts

The impact of dense conditions on the pandemic is clear. Overall, high-density locations have suffered three times the COVID-19 fatality rate of less dense, generally suburban areas and eight times those of more rural environments. Cities’ vulnerability comes not simply by calculating people per square mile, but by “exposure density” brought on continued contact with people, particularly in crowded, unventilated places like subways, small apartments, elevators and offices. After all, the New York area, the epitome of dense, transit-oriented urbanization, still accounts for roughly one-third of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths.

Even as the pandemic has spread to other parts of the country — notably meat packing plants, border towns and Native American reservations — the correlation is simply impossible to ignore. High rates of poverty and overcrowding, clearly factors in COVID-19 infections, can occur anywhere but seem most devastating in places where poverty meets density. The Brooklyn and Bronx boroughs, with higher rates of poverty than fashionable Manhattan, have endured a fatality rate 7.5 times the national average.

Urban planners, real estate speculators and their flacks may ignore these numbers, but people take their own health, and that of their families, more seriously. A recent Harris poll suggested that upwards of two in five urban residents are considering a move to less crowded places. More people, notes the National Association of Realtors, are seeking out single family houses with yards and workspaces.

Read the rest of this piece at Daily Caller.

Photo credit: ED Yourdon via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

The Vital Midwest

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 20:29:01 -0500

John Austin at the Michigan Economic Center is a long time commentator on Midwest economic issues, going back to at least his 2006 Brookings Institute report “The Vital Center.”

Austin is back with a new report, which could perhaps be seen as an update of sorts, called “A Vital Midwest: The Path to a New Prosperity,” released by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

In a region with a lot of naysayers, Austin has been a consistently optimistic voice about the future of the region. This report continues in that tradition. I think he always does a great job of identifying and highlighting the assets that are present in the region.

Some highlights:

A lot has changed since the Midwest served as the birthing ground of the great industries—processed food, retail commerce, aviation, cars, chemicals, steel, electronics, machinery, consumer durables, and many more—that powered 20th-century America.

Much has also changed since a generation ago, when globalization and new industrial rivals diminished the region’s economic primacy, shuttered hometown employers’ doors, and left many communities struggling. This collective transition earned the region its “Rust Belt” moniker.

Over recent years, the forces of technological disruption, new lifestyle and work preferences of young and mobile talent, changing demographics, and media in an increasingly wired world have continued to alter the dynamics of the global marketplace, the shape of communities, and the economic position and possibilities for the residents of the region.

Today the Midwest is neither an economic monolith nor, despite lingering popular misconceptions, a “Rust Belt.” Many Midwest communities, large and small, have successfully evolved from their industrial and farming roots and are winning in today’s globalized, tech-based, and knowledge-driven economy. Most of the region’s major metros—from the Twin Cities in the west to Indianapolis at the nation’s crossroads to Pittsburgh in the east—are diverse, thriving hothouses of knowledge work.

What’s more, all of the communities anchored by one of the region’s numerous top-flight research universities (such as Iowa City, Ann Arbor, and State College) are thriving in an economic era in which talent and innovation dominate.

Many other Midwest communities that are neither major metros nor home to top research universities have also found paths to new success by embracing the forces of economic change and building on their particular assets to create a new era of economic vitality.

These include cities such as Columbus, Indiana; Midland, Michigan; and Rochester, Minnesota—cities that are thriving as their anchor employers stay on the cutting edge of innovation in emerging sectors.

Click over to read the whole piece.

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker, and writer on a mission to help America’s cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century. He also regularly contributes to and is cited by national and global media outlets, and his work has appeared in the The Guardian (UK), The New York Times, and The Washington Post, along with many others. Renn was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute from 2015-2019 and is a Contributing Editor at its quarterly magazine City Journal.

Jews Could Swing the 2020 Election — and Why That's Not a Good Thing

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 11:15:06 -0500

In our selfie-defined culture, it’s usually considered a good thing to get attention, the more the better. But it may not be the case for Jews, or for Israel, to be caught in the firestorm that is burning through American politics in ways not seen since the Second World War. “That Israel is becoming a wedge issue in American politics,” notes author Daniel Gordis, “ bodes very badly for Israel’s future security.”

Jews have been prominent in U.S. political life for generations but have never previously been considered a “wedge issue” as, for example, African Americans were in the past, or Latinos and Muslim Americans more recently. Yet, both sides of the political divide, along with each party’s Jewish allies, now seek to use the threat of rising anti-Semitism to either keep Jews inside the Democratic Party or pressure them to defect to the Republicans.

The 2020 presidential election is likely to make this all worse. As Republicans try to pry Jewish votes away from their traditional stronghold in the Democratic Party, they will emphasize the most divisive political issues that they wager are able to get people passionate enough to switch party loyalties—namely: Israel and anti-Semitism. This is most evident in the Orthodox community where support for Trump has manifested itself in awards to two Florida lawyers who are accused of being Rudy Giuliani’s alleged Ukrainian fixers.

At the same time, conservatives and Trump operatives point to rising anti-Israel sentiment on the left, as well as to signs of overt anti-Semitism becoming normalized in progressive politics even apart from the debate over Israel, as was the case with the former leadership of the Women’s March. For the people driving the wedge from the right, any Jews who don’t back Trump are “disloyal” to Israel and Jewish survival...

Read the rest of this piece at Tablet Magazine.

Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. He authored The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, published in 2016 by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He is executive director of NewGeography.com and lives in Orange County, CA. His next book, “The Coming Of Neo-Feudalism,” will be out this spring.

Photo credit: Mark Dixon via Flickr under CC 2.0License.