The Geography Of Stuck in The Atlantic: The Rust Belt's Unrecocognized Weakness Is Mobility

I've mostly given up on trying to counter all the myths that pass for truth in these parts-many of which have to do with losing people, brain drain etc...

Richard Florida has a good post and map at The Atlantic showing the percent of people living in the state they were born in. Surprise, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia and several other "rust belt" states lead the nation.

Is that a good thing? 70% or more of the people in these states were born in state, yet this is mostly a list of the nation's economic laggards. What should be pretty obvious, is that fairly high numbers of people moving both in and out, correlates pretty strongly with economic growth, with most of the states with healthy economies falling closer to the middle in this category.

Florida guesses that the recent dramatic declines in mobility, don't bode well for the economy. What's so disturbing is that in 80% of the region this isn't even widely recognised as a problem.

Several good reads on this subject.

The Geography of Stuck

America The Stuck

Burgh Diaspora is a blog that mostly focuses on the general subject.

Richard Florida: Creative Class Break

Eeeek here's another video of the slick, arrogant, articulate, know it all, picking on us again by saying the world is going to "reset" around the world's hip "Alpha Regions".

Should we listen? IMHO, Richard is pretty on the ball with his thinking. A nice little video here. Wondering what you think about him. A pretty bitter reaction to Richard broke out on Rust Wire.

His basic idea is that people live in cities because they want to and because they get tangible network benefits from living near other people. This by the way is also a Jane Jacobs view of the world.

To quote Richard in the video, "Place has replaced the corporation as the fundamental building block of our age."

I don’t think at this point this is really debatable anymore. It may very well be that large numbers of Americans still want to live in an isolated nuclear pod family with as little social relation to others as possible. The thing is that it’s now self evident that this just does not work on a basic practical economic level."

Indian Firm: Prime Focus, Playing A Growing Role In Creative Industry

The Indian Film industry hit prime time last year with Slumdog's 8 Oscars. Few know it's more behind the scenes role in the creation of this year's mega money maker, Avatar.

"The firm is steadily climbing the ladder to the top of the visual effects industry. Its staff has increased from four college-age kids to more than 1,200 post-production pros. After selling equity to a couple of top Indian entertainment firms to finance acquisitions, the company now boasts four studios in India, another in London and two more in the United States. And last year, the firm earned 3.67 billion rupees ($80 million) in revenue. But the company's biggest strides have been creative.

Prime Focus played an essential behind-the-scenes role in two of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters of 2009 -- Chris Weitz's "New Moon" and James Cameron's "Avatar." The company established itself as one of the cutting-edge firms in the visual effects business by producing about 10 percent of Mr. Cameron's path-breaking 3-D superhit and a whopping 80 percent of the shots for the second installment of the "Twilight" franchise."

This is where I strongly disagree with Richard Florida, who from what I have read, places almost all his chips on the idea that creativity trumps all and costs don't matter that much.

From what I can tell, costs matter a whole lot in more and more industries and lowering those costs can let one be more creative and take more risks.

A trend that should be good for places like Pittsburgh, which has a large supply of creative people and what should be a sustainable cost advantage. Will we take advantage of this?

Are American Cities Making The Possible Impossible?

It's sort of embarrassing when you read something you really can't add to much. Aaron Renn who has a great blog called Urbanophile was nice enough to allow an extended quote from his post, Impossibility City.

It should be self evident that people live in cities to be near other people and reap all the benefits of human interaction. Officials are starting to understand people conveniently getting to stores, schools and workplaces but often try to limit and control the unexpected interactions that make cities really valuable. Do they still pump in muzak on the T platforms? God forbid you heard a talented neighbor sing. God forbid they met a record producer.

"On the second front, I don’t think people truly get the link between a broad vision of what a city is, a large sphere in which individuals can pursue divergent activities and goals, and economic success. As Sam Jacob of FAT put it, “Cities are not about the perfect vision; they are not about a singular idea. They are about a collision of all kinds of incompatible demands.” The life of the small town or the suburb are rigidly circumscribed. They might not be about a single vision, but they are about a more narrow and defined view of what life should be. They demand conformity. A place like that, no matter how large or even how successful, is not a true city.

A collision of incompatible demands. What a great way to put it. It is in containing that collision within a geographical, political, social, and culture context that a city creates its meaning. Cities can resolve the paradox, reconcile the incompatible into something new and powerful. It isn’t always pretty. The results are sometimes messy or unpleasant. But its in that resolution process that we create the energy and innovation that moves the city forward and allows its residents, business, and institutions to reinvent themselves and their lives if they so choose.

Let’s put it in terms that are broadly understood, by considering this in the framework of Richard Florida’s “Creative Class”. I don’t think this is the end all, be all by any means. But clearly, in a nation pinning its hopes on an innovation economy to replace the jobs lost by productivity gains and offshoring in traditional sectors, and to power the economic growth of the future, you need to both have the talent and the catalyst to make innovation happen.

Florida’s simplified thesis is that successful cities are about talent, technology, and tolerance. The last point is usually taken to mean a tolerance for gays and various “bohemian” types. But tolerance isn’t about non-discrimination ordinances and it isn’t about gays. Tolerance is a mindset.

The dictionary definition of tolerance is “sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own”. From this is clear that most advocates for “progressive” policies of the type advocated by Florida really aren’t tolerating anything. They might be about allowing differences, but it is seldom about allowing views or actions that are in actual conflict with their own values. Indeed, progressives can be as intolerant as anyone for beliefs or actions that differ from their orthodoxy.

We need tolerance properly so-called. We need an environment where we are willing to put up with things we don’t like in return for the same freedom for ourselves. We need cities where “live and let live” is the motto. Rules that stifle this in order to produce a perpetual suburban style family friendly or least common denominator view of what a city should be are ultimately counter-productive. They sap the city of its animating power.

This isn’t just an obscure philosophical point. It’s real and tangibly important. George Bernard Shaw famously said that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man”. Innovation requires non-conformity with existing ways of doing things. This requires not just the idea, but the mental fortitude to break away not just from our own patterns of doing things, but from the social pressure to conform. In a sense, all innovation depends on the outcast."

Another Jane Jacobs Video

Jane Jacobs: Parting Words (2007) from Kevin Balmer on Vimeo.

Too lazy a disorganised today to post much or tie thoughts together. Here's another video, about Jane Jacobs. It's not nearly long enough.

In a more rational world all of this Jane stuff would get pretty stale, lame, and redundant. After all this should be just common sense. However, in the fragile world of Pittsburgh and America today, the first step in making the world a "better place", is to keep the ignorant and powerful from making it worse.

I like that the video draws the link between a lot of Richard Florida's ideas and their obvious roots in Jane's writing.

Richard Florida's Google Talk

I finally got around to watching Richard Florida's Google talk about his new book, Who's Your City. Florida was a longtime CMU professor and his 57 minute talk is well worth watching. I might get back with some thoughts when I can on this.

Score One for Richard Florida

One of the things that supports Pittsburgh reputation as a provincial backwater is it's tendency to ignore and ostracize people with new ideas. Richard Florida was a long time CMU professor with a way of looking at things that cut straight against the way things are done here. His Breakthrough book openly used Pittsburgh as an example of how not to do economic development.

His theory was that we were in a new age in which employers and capital chased skilled, creative people and placed issues of culture, openness, diversity and quality of life at the forefront of economic development discussion rather than government subsidies, backroom deals and sports stadiums.

One of his concepts is that regions are increasingly looked at by people as job and talent pools. Growing a new drug company would be easiest in an area with a large base of qualified researchers, investors and managers knowledgeable about the field etc.. Well anyway, here is another real life example of why he might be right.