Geography

Geography, Place, and the Making of Citizens

Samuel J Abrams and Isaiah Ellis — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 20:28:32 -0400

Last year, only 34 percent of Americans could locate Ukraine on a map even as Congress debated billions in military aid that would shape global security. This geographic illiteracy isn't just embarrassing; it's dangerous.

In today's schools, students are far more likely to be introduced to coding languages or STEM electives than to a sustained study of geography. This shift may seem natural in an economy powered by technology, but it reflects a profound miscalculation. Geography is not a secondary subject. It is a cornerstone of civic literacy. Our lives, our identities, our communities, our politics are conditioned by place and space. A generation that cannot situate itself in the world risks becoming disoriented, vulnerable to demagoguery, and ill-equipped for democratic self-government.

Human existence is always rooted in place. The environments into which people are born shape opportunities, occupations, and cultural traditions. A desert village produces different forms of resilience than a port city; a farm town fosters different habits than an urban neighborhood. The geographer Yi-Fu Tuan distinguished between space, which conveys openness and possibility, and place, which infuses space with meaning. Indigenous knowledge systems have long recognized this truth: that wisdom itself is place-based, emerging from intimate knowledge of local ecologies and landscapes. To lose sight of geography is to overlook the very conditions that form identity and belonging.

Community life is equally dependent on space. Émile Durkheim underscored how rituals and shared spaces foster solidarity, while Robert Putnam famously demonstrated how the decline of bowling leagues, town halls, and neighborhood associations has weakened American civic life. Geography clarifies that social life is not abstract. Social life is organized through neighborhoods, public squares, and civic institutions embedded in physical landscapes. Where such spaces thrive, trust and civic engagement flourish; where they vanish, isolation and fragmentation follow. The design of a New England town common, with its central green surrounded by church, school, and town hall, embodies democratic ideals in physical form, a lesson lost when we fail to read our landscapes.

Politics, too, is inseparable from geography. Borders define sovereignty, districts shape representation, and natural resources determine both prosperity and conflict. The war in Ukraine cannot be understood without reference to its wheat fields that feed the Middle East and Africa, its Black Sea ports that connect grain to global markets, and its plains that have served as invasion corridors for centuries. Water scarcity in the American West shapes policy as surely as legislation does: seven states now battle over Colorado River allocations that will determine which cities thrive and which farms survive. During COVID-19, we learned that semiconductor shortages in Taiwan could halt American auto production, that a single blocked canal in Egypt could disrupt global commerce, and that the geography of meatpacking plants could determine virus spread across entire regions. How can citizens evaluate trade policy, immigration reform, or climate legislation without understanding the geographic realities that underlie them?

Critics might argue that geography education too often meant rote memorization of capitals and rivers, or that GPS has rendered such knowledge obsolete. These objections miss the point entirely. Geographic literacy isn't about memorizing facts but about understanding systems: how watersheds shape water rights, how mountain ranges influence political boundaries, how proximity to ports determines economic development. GPS can tell you where you are, but it cannot tell you why that place matters, how it came to be, or what forces shape its future.

But geographic literacy is not just about reading a map of the world. It is also about being able to read the environment around you, to understand how the spaces you inhabit are delivering subtle messages about power, priorities, and possibilities. For students arriving at university these weeks, it is worth asking: are your classrooms front-facing, or are they arranged in a circle? Is each student "pointed" at their instructor, or do they have a clear view of their fellow students' faces? What departments and administrative wings are gathered around your university's central quad? Can you accurately guess which buildings came first, and which are newer? Is your campus surrounded by a gate, with only a few ways in? Or can any passerby walk or drive onto it? Are your study spaces enclosed and hidden, or are they surrounded by glass, creating a fishbowl with you at the center? Are your science laboratories housed in buildings that match their surroundings, or do they rise above campus like towering monoliths?

These arrangements of space and architecture speak volumes about institutional values and pedagogical philosophies. A seminar room arranged in a circle models democratic deliberation; a gated campus suggests exclusivity over community engagement; glass-walled study spaces privilege surveillance over solitude. Understanding these spatial messages and questioning them is practice for reading the broader geographic forces that shape political and social life. When students can decode their campus geography, they're better equipped to recognize how gerrymandered districts dilute democratic representation or how highway placement can segregate communities for generations.

Many assume geography no longer matters, with much of our social and learning lives taking place online. We seem to inhabit a borderless world of feeds and streams. This is an illusion. The smartphones and platforms that make such life possible depend on cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lithium extraction in Chile's Atacama Desert, and rare earth processing in China. Data centers consume 200 terawatt hours annually, enough to power Argentina, and cluster near rivers for cooling and cheap hydroelectric power. Even our information has geography: undersea cables carrying 99% of international data follow colonial-era shipping routes, creating vulnerabilities that nations exploit. Social media algorithms create distinct "information geographies," serving different content to users in Bangalore than in Boston, shaping political realities as surely as any border wall.

Consider the residents of Newton County, Georgia, whose water taps began to run dry when Meta built a data center nearby, consuming 500,000 gallons daily. Or ask Ireland, where data centers now use more electricity than all rural homes combined. To ignore these realities leaves students unprepared for a world where digital sovereignty depends on server locations, where authoritarian regimes use geographic internet restrictions to control information, and where a single ship stuck in the Suez Canal can trigger a global recession.

The strongest argument for geography education is ultimately humane. Geography restores a sense of orientation in a world that can feel dizzying and fragmented. It cultivates empathy by showing how other people live in relation to their landscapes: why Bangladeshi farmers adapt to seasonal floods, how Swiss villages negotiate avalanche zones, what makes Phoenix's growth possible despite its desert location. It grounds young people, reminding them that life is lived in neighborhoods, nations, and ecosystems, not in abstractions or algorithmic feeds. When students understand how soil quality shapes Midwest voting patterns or how proximity to toxic waste sites correlates with race and income, they become citizens capable of pursuing environmental justice. Geography affirms our shared humanity by situating individuals within a larger, interconnected whole while warning against environmental determinism, the dangerous notion that geography is destiny rather than context.

Educators should treat geography as essential, not optional. Curricula must integrate geography across the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences. States like Texas and Colorado have shown it's possible, implementing standards that connect local landscapes to global systems. Schools should invest in teacher training that emphasizes geographic literacy, and universities without meaningful concentrations of faculty whose research and teaching center around place ought to acquire them as soon as possible. Students should master not just how to read maps but how to analyze border-making practices, watershed management, and the geographic dimensions of inequality. They should use Geographic Information Systems to map food deserts in their communities, track urban heat islands that coincide with redlined neighborhoods, and understand how their congressional districts came to have such peculiar shapes.

Above all, geography must be taught as civic preparation, to ground the rising generation in the world as it is: textured, bounded, and interconnected. At a time of global upheaval and domestic fragmentation, geography is not merely another subject in the curriculum, just as living in and with the dynamics of one's place is something from which not even the most chronically online of us can opt out. It is the map by which Americans can once again find their bearings, not just as consumers in a global economy or users on digital platforms, but as citizens rooted in real places, responsible for real communities, capable of charting democracy's course through an uncertain terrain.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a scholar with the Sutherland Institute.

Isaiah Ellis is a professor of Urban Religions at Southern Methodist University.

Graph: global shipping routes, modified from graphic accessed at Wikimedia, under CC 3.0 License.

The Shifting Geography of US Deep Tech

Nima Sanandaji — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 20:28:38 -0400

A systematic mapping of where the world’s global leading companies in deep tech are located shows a massive lead for the USA – however the leading edge of particularly Santa Clara Valley shows signs of gradual normalization relative to the rest of the world.

The vast majority of globally leading deep tech companies are found in North America. North America has particularly strong dominance in the areas of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotic & communication, quantum & computing and pharmaceuticals. In these five fields of deep tech, around four out of five of the world-leading deep tech companies are found in North America.

In the USA alone, fully 61.6 percent of the globally leading deep tech companies are located. This is the finding of the Deep Tech Index, conducted annually by the European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform (ECEPR) with the support of Nordic Capital, which maps and evaluates the global deep tech landscape.

However, while the latest data from the end of 2024 shows that close to two thirds of the world-leading deep tech companies are located in the USA, this is less than the previous year. At the end of 2023 fully 68.4 percent of the world-leading deep tech companies existed in the USA.

Santa Clara Valley, Los Angeles, Austin and Chicago are the leading robotic & communication tech regions. Santa Clara Valley, Boston as well as Vancouver in Canada are centers for quantum and computing development.

The share of global deep tech companies in North America has fallen by 5 percentage points since last year, representing a normalization process. Particularly the USA but also Canada remain dominant, but competition is on the rise.

Besides Santa Clara Valley, the USA also has numerous other world-leading deep tech companies. In Boston fully 6.4 percent of the world-leading deep tech companies are located. Also New York (6.0 percent), Los Angeles (3.8 percent), Chicago and Seattle (2.2 percent each), and Austin (1.8 percent) each host significant share of the world´s deep tech companies. These regions have more deep tech companies in them than most European countries individually, as comparison.

There are also numerous other deep tech companies spread throughout the USA outside the main hubs. Fully 18.8 percent of the world-leading deep tech companies exist in the USA outside of the main urban tech regions.

The share of US-based world-leading deep tech companies that exist in Santa Clara Valley has between the end of 2023 and the end of 2024 fallen from 35 to 33 percent. The share of all world-leading deep tech companies in the USA that are located outside the major urban hubs has also been reduced slightly, from 32 to 31 percent. At the same time the share in the other major urban hubs except Santa Clara Valley (Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and Austin) has grown from 33 to 36 percent.

Two different economic forces are influencing the development. The first is the advantages of specialization. Thomas Edison founded the world’s first industrial innovation laboratory in this valley 150 years ago, and it has since become the most significant region for development of new technologies. The capital, knowledge and entrepreneurship networks needed are in place in Santa Clara Valley, more than any place else in the world. Similarly, the USA is dominant as a nation, compared to the rest of the world.

Yet, the success brings higher costs, for Santa Clara Valley as well as the USA. There are ample talents around the world, at lower prices than the talents of the USA and particularly of the expensive main tech hubs. Current policies relating to trade and international talents is also likely to influence. The trend is that Europe which is second best in deep tech and willing to trade, is catching up somewhat to the USA. Institutional competition will also be significant gradually more from places such as India. Much of globally leading universities in technology and mathematics, as well as global technology firms, are strongly dependent on Indian students and researchers.

The USA retains its dominant leading position, particularly medium-sized regions such as Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle. Yet the global competition is growing, hinting at gradual further normalization. Within the coming years, it is likely that we will pass a milestone where less than half of the global deep tech companies are situated in the USA, while no other single country can catch up all the rest of the world combines will do so within coming years. However, the USA can still remain dominant particularly in specific areas. Deep technology is closely linked to prosperity, lower unemployment and national security. Countries around the world need constructive policies to foster deep tech.

The deep tech index demonstrates that countries with a high density of deep tech firms per million adults typically enjoy robust property rights, low capital gains taxes, strong educational outcomes in PISA tests, and prestigious universities specializing in mathematics and engineering disciplines. Boosting universities remains a key challenge now, given the current development in the USA. It is important to remember that Europe and Asia each already have a higher number of the world´s 100 leading universities in mathematics and engineering, the competition is already underway.

Nima Sanandaji, Director, European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform (ECEPR)

Photo: cover of Deep Tech Index, 2025 edition.

The YIMBY Movement's Twists and Turns

Pete Saunders — Thu, 15 May 2025 20:28:38 -0400

In recent weeks it seems that the progression of the YIMBY movement is reaching some limits on its growth, causing it to make some unexpected twists in the logic of its supporters.

A month ago, New York Times reporter Conor Dougherty wrote a pretty compelling story in favor of sprawl, or the continued outward expansion of our metropolitan areas. In his article, Dougherty marvels at how the Dallas metroplex has been able to accommodate explosive growth while remaining affordable. While touring the Dallas metro area by air with an exec from Hillwood, a development company owned by Ross Perot, Jr., Dougherty sees how Dallas does it:

“The Dallas area has grown by about three million people over the past two decades, and, he predicted, it would continue to push outward for many decades more — 40 miles from downtown, then 50, until the metroplex bulges across the state line into Oklahoma, surpassing the population of the Chicago region and continuing to expand from there. “I told my kids, ‘All you got to do is fill in this map, and you’ll have a pretty good business,’” Perot said.

The executive took me around one of the firm’s projects, quaintly named Pecan Square, which has a faux downtown complete with parks and pickleball courts; a co-working space on the square has been built with exposed ductwork, to give it an industrial vibe. Once finished, Pecan Square will have 3,100 homes, starting around $415,000 for a three-bedroom.”

Relatedly, there’s growing support for the use of publicly-owned land for the development of housing, particularly affordable housing, to reduce costs. Strangely, this idea has found common ground between many YIMBYs and the Trump administration. Who would’ve thought that:

“Federal officials have estimated that 400,000 acres of federal land could potentially be made available for housing development, said Jon Raby, the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management. The estimate, which will continue to be refined, was determined after officials looked at land within 10 miles of cities and towns with a population of 5,000 or more,” he said.

The effort could be most impactful in states like California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho and Colorado, Mr. Raby said. Officials said the lands vary widely and range from deserts and grasslands to mountains and forests. The lands are generally uneconomical or difficult to manage because of their scattered or isolated nature and ‘must meet specific public interest objectives.’ ”

Many supporters of YIMBYism, like I assume Dougherty is, have focused for years on reforming zoning legislation to increase housing production, especially in high-cost housing cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. And they’ve had some high-profile successes, such as the elimination of purely single-family home zoning districts in Minneapolis a few years ago, allowing the construction of 2-4 unit dwellings where none could be built before. California YIMBYs have made great strides statewide in passing legislation making it faster and easier for homeowners to produce accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in single-family zoning districts. YIMBYs have also been successful at implementing transit-oriented development near transit stations in cities like Portland, Denver and Arlington, VA, just outside of Washington, DC.

Read the rest of this piece at The Corner Side Yard.

Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. Pete has been the editor/publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. Pete is also an urban affairs contributor to Forbes Magazine's online platform. Pete's writings have been published widely in traditional and internet media outlets, including the feature article in the December 2018 issue of Planning Magazine. Pete has more than twenty years' experience in planning, economic development, and community development, with stops in the public, private and non-profit sectors. He lives in Chicago.

Photo: aerial view of Dallas suburbs by Alfred Twu, via Wikimedia under CC 1.0 License.

‘American Oasis’ Review: The Lure of the Desert

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Hating the Southwest, particularly its burgeoning cities such as Phoenix, is de rigueur in American media. Jon Stewart has called Arizona “the meth lab of democracy.” Hunter S. Thompson described hell as an “overcrowded version of Phoenix.” Fran Lebowitz, the epitome of New York progressive arrogance, said: “I don’t think anyone needs Arizona. . . . Putin: here take Arizona, leave Ukraine.”

It’s a tendency that Kyle Paoletta rightfully finds annoying. In “American Oasis,” Mr. Paoletta, a journalist and critic, focuses on the region spanning California to Texas and argues that the Southwest, if not a mistake, is poised for ecological and social dislocation.

Having grown up in Albuquerque, N.M., the son of affluent professionals, Mr. Paoletta now questions whether newcomers “who have sought to master the Sonoran Desert with air conditioning and aqueducts” can really call the region home.

Yet these are precisely the people who continue to migrate to this supposedly miserable corner of the continent, building what amounts to a new America. Budding sophistos such as Mr. Paoletta may move to the dank Northeast, but since 2010 Arizona’s population has grown by more than one million—the eighth-fastest growth among U.S. states. More than two-thirds of that growth has been attributable to people moving to Arizona from other states, primarily far-more-temperate California.

The reasons are clear. These migrants are not coming to exploit cattle, cotton or copper but to find opportunities in industries, such as aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing, that were once dominated by California. Exploiting the indigenous population is not high on the agenda of someone moving from Los Angeles or Long Island, N.Y. In most cases, their contact with native peoples is limited to the casinos.

Nor are the newcomers uniformly ignorant or unskilled, as many on the coasts would believe. California and New York may be hemorrhaging recent college graduates, but Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson—once seen as retirement cities—are now attracting more people, especially millennials, who are ready to buy homes and start families.

Mr. Paoletta’s narrative also misses the fact that many people moving to the Southwest are themselves minorities. He only has eyes for the activists and the cultural rebels—the advocates of Chicanismo, for instance, or the National Welfare Rights Organization and Black Lives Matter—who complain about the encroachments of the diverse newcomers. His focus is not on the upwardly mobile minorities but the “Latino and Indian underclass living without utilities along gravel roads.”

It’s not surprising, then, that Mr. Paoletta praises the “sanctuary movement,” even though most Americans, including many Latinos, were not so happy with the Biden open border. Somehow the pushback against unvetted mass migration missed the author except as proof of racism. In his view, the promise of equal rights and opportunities offered by the Statue of Liberty is “illusory” and immigration status should not matter.

In reality, despite the hoary racist past, minorities are moving en masse to Arizona and other Southwestern areas. Most either choose or hope to settle in the suburbs. Rather than fighting “the man,” they are more likely to look into how they can become him and have more in common with their middle- or working-class white neighbors than the professional ethnic progressives.

Typically, Mr. Paoletta despises master-planned communities. But these are the places where many minorities reside or hope to reside. More than 95% of all U.S. suburban growth since 2010, notes Wendell Cox, a demographer, has been driven by people of color — hardly fodder for a woke revolution. Almost half of Latinos in Arizona voted for Donald Trump. As the number of second- or third-generation Southwesterners increase, they could easily move further to the right, as is already happening in Texas.

“American Oasis” quite rightly closes with a discussion of water. As the old saying goes, “whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Ever since the Hohokam people settled in Arizona some 2,000 years ago, growth and survival in the Southwest has been about access to water. Droughts are always a threat; one that occurred early in the previous century lasted a decade.

Mr. Paoletta regards the water issue as being related to “climate,” although it’s long been obvious that the region would have to learn to live with less. The author correctly salutes efforts, both in Phoenix and Las Vegas, to curb per capita water consumption, but then denounces dispersed developments and favors density. Never mind that steel-and-glass towers create a heat-island effect, generating more heat than low-rise landscaped development.

Discussions of climate issues have become a distraction, a barrier to addressing the region’s real challenges. Mr. Paoletta, for instance, rejects the idea of desalinization, something that has been impactful in other dry regions, notably the Middle East.

Yet there are reasons to be hopeful. As the region grows, Southwestern culture will evolve. The treatment of ethnic minorities in the past may have been horrendous, but that’s only part of the story. The days of quasiracist politics in these states have largely passed; Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada repeatedly send left-leaning senators to Washington. Mr. Paoletta concedes the region is becoming “a pluralistic society already in full flower.” Today you can find Turkish or Vietnamese food in Tucson, a city once known largely for taco and burger joints.

The Southwest has many problems. But it is also where millions of Americans are forging the nation’s future. Multiracial suburbs are eclipsing ghettos and reservations. New ways of building houses and communities to deal with heat and water conservation are emerging. Rather than sunbaked oddballs or brutal exploiters, the people of the Southwest are creating a new multiethnic society in the desert. For this, they deserve a far more balanced depiction than found in “American Oasis.”

This piece first appeared at: Wall Street Journal.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Ignore the Bluster — Donald Trump is Not an Imperialist

Joel Kotkin — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 20:28:39 -0400

US president Donald Trump’s MAGA brand of foreign policy has been treated with contempt and consternation by much of the world. He has incited the ire of neoliberal theorists like Francis Fukuyama, as well as many European intellectuals, who rarely have much positive to say about America anyway. To them, Trump epitomises a destructive American arrogance and imperial delusions.

Whatever he may think of himself, Donald Trump is no Augustan figure, no colossus ready to conquer the known world. He is a phenomenon borne of concern about American decline, ranging from failing education levels and massive debt to frayed national coherence and fading industrial, even military, supremacy. He is driven not by imperial ambitions (despite his absurd claims about acquiring Greenland and Canada), but rather in response to the consequences of recent imperial overreach.

The old US foreign policy, argues secretary of state Marco Rubio, is ‘obsolete’. Attempts to reshape the world through unrestrained globalisation and foreign interventions have not only failed, he says, but are now also a ‘weapon being used against us’.

Even the name of Trump’s movement, MAGA, says it all. Make America Great Again implies that it is not so great now. Trump’s promised ‘golden age’, if it arrives at all, will be forged in a new mercantilist era that has been gradually embraced as well in Europe and supercharged by China’s drive to world preeminence.

Right now, America looks dominant largely because its traditional competitors – like the UK, Japan and the EU – are all suffering markedly worse economic and demographic crises. By 2050, the populations of Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Spain are all expected to drop significantly. Even China suffers from a diminishing workforce, an overreliance on manufactured exports, mass alienation among the young and educated, a massive real-estate collapse and capital flight.

However, other nations’ problems do not make America less vulnerable. The US’s own population growth has also slowed, and recent economic trends have mostly benefitted the affluent and those working for the government. The top 10 per cent of all earners now account for half of all spending. This is well above the roughly one-third of three decades ago. Partially this comes as many of the companies historically tied to high wages – US Steel, General Motors, RCA, Xerox, Intel and Boeing – have either disappeared or markedly declined.

Read the rest of this piece: Spiked.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr under CC0 2.0 License.

The Geography of Generative AI

Pete Saunders — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 20:28:39 -0400

A couple weeks ago, I purchased a new laptop. The laptop has Microsoft Copilot, the Microsoft AI tool launched in 2023. For kicks I thought I’d try it out. I asked Copilot to provide me with a draft on a topic for a future post. Now, I’ve tried ChatGPT in the past, so I had an idea of what to expect. However, I was blown away when Copilot immediately came back with a three-page, almost 1,000-word draft on the topic. The Copilot draft needed work; it was a factual statement rather than an essay, written in a voice that wasn’t targeted toward any particular reader or audience. Still, it formed the foundation for what I would later publish. It was definitely the kind of quick-serve research on a topic that can cut my writing time down significantly. Suddenly I saw the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) in a new light.

AI is moving so fast, it’s challenging everything we think we know about how automation affects work.

With each passing day, the global economy is moving closer to integrating AI into the economic fabric. Broadly, workers understand that it will impact work, just as earlier efforts at automation have impacted work in the past. We also understand that some places will be impacted more than others. Researchers at the Brookings Institution are putting some thought into this, and their findings so far are interesting.

Some recent research conducted by Mark Muro, Shriya Methkupally, and Molly Kinder of the Brookings Institution’s Brookings Metro research center is finding that AI will impact work more deeply and broadly than previously considered. Gains in generative AI are being made at a fantastic rate, with AI compiling and generating content that was once the purview of humans. Whereas earlier automation efforts targeted routine tasks usually handled by low-skilled, low-wage workers, generative AI is showing itself to be well-suited to take on work that relies on cognitive skills today. For example, as the Brookings report says, “think coders, writers, financial analysts, engineers, and lawyers.”

The quote above is immediately followed by this:

“And while generative AI puts at risk the “routine” tasks of customer service and clerical work (often handled by female-staffed call centers, customer service lines, and HR teams, for example), it is currently not equipped to handle the manual work of manufacturing, the skilled trades, construction, and many in-person service industries.”

In other words, generative AI is coming after knowledge workers.

This led to Brookings Metro taking another tack on AI’s economic impact – what exactly will be the geography of generative AI? What metro areas would have the greatest exposure to generative AI, meaning the possible displacement of workers?

The Brookings Metro researchers reviewed occupation-specific “exposure” data supplied by ChatGPT creator OpenAI. They found that AI exposure increases (positively or negatively) as wages increase. The team made it clear that “exposure” doesn’t necessarily mean “worker displacement”. They allow for the fact that some jobs will be “augmented” by generative AI, enhancing the productivity and capability of many workers. Still, there’s a strong correlation that as education levels and the need for cognitive skills rises, so does potential exposure to generative AI.

Read the rest of this piece at The Corner Side Yard.

Photo: A map showing job exposure to generative AI across US counties. Source: Brookings.

More on Rust Belt to Sun Belt Migration

Pete Saunders — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 20:28:38 -0500

Three weeks ago I wrote a piece about the role that a “Rust Belt Diaspora,” or the people who relocated from Rust Belt to Sun Belt states over the last 50 years, could play in Rust Belt revitalization. In that piece I noted that there are many people who seek to maintain a connection with where they (or their parents) used to live, and that’s partly expressed by fan support in major professional sports leagues. I used the example of Detroit Lions fans nearly equaling the number of hometown fans in Phoenix, Houston and San Francisco last season, reckoning that they weren’t all traveling from Michigan to see the Lions.

Also in that piece, I did a back-of-the-napkin estimate of Rust Belt to Sun Belt migration from 1970-2020. My estimate, if accurate, would outpace any significant domestic migration pattern ever seen in the U.S. – dwarfing the Great Migration, Dust Bowl, perhaps even America's westward expansion following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and continuing for the next century.

It’s worth posting here again so you can understand the scope:

_________________________

For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to find research that quantifies Rust Belt to Sun Belt migration. Seems to me there’s an academic or PhD candidate who wrote a paper on the outflow of residents from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and Southwest from, say, 1970-2020, but I haven’t found it. So I decided to make a crude estimate. Let’s see how it works.

I set out to look at population growth figures for all 50 states between 1970-2020. I classified all 50 states by what I determined to be their Rust Belt, Sun Belt and non-Rust/Sun Belt type. Using my judgement I categorized 13 states as Rust Belt, 15 states as Sun Belt, and the remaining 22 as neither. You can see how I designated them on the map below. It’s one version of a Rust Belt/Sun Belt framing at a state level; your map may look different:

My next step was to analyze decennial population growth for the designated Rust Belt and Sun Belt states, and compare their growth rates with the total growth rate of the U.S. over the same period. In this step I found that between 1970-2020 the total population of the U.S. grew by 63%, from 203.4 million to 331.4 million. That works out to a 10.3% increase per decade.

Of course, we know that the nation’s growth wasn’t distributed equally, so I grouped the states by their designated categories and analyzed their growth rates. The Sun Belt-designated states grew by 119% over the same period, averaging a 17% increase per decade. Non-Sun/Rust Belt states grew by 67% over the period. Their growth rate of 10.9% per decade is essentially the same as the 10.3% rate for the U.S. overall. The Rust Belt states? They grew by just under 19% between 1970-2020, or about 3.5% per decade.

Read the rest of this piece at The Corner Side Yard.

Photo: A black swan in Australia, via wikimedia.org Credit: Flagstaffotos, under CC 3.0 License.

Demographia International Housing Affordability – 2024 Edition Released

Wendell Cox — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 20:28:58 -0400

Demographia International Housing Affordability assesses housing affordability in 94 major markets across eight nations (Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom and the, United States). The 2024 edition focuses on data from the third quarter of 2023.

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 2023 is summarized by nation in Table ES-2.

International Housing Affordability in 2023: In the US, the most affordable market was Pittsburgh (PA), with a median multiple of 3.1, followed closely by Rochester (NY) and St. Louis (MO-IL) at 3.4, with Cleveland (OH) at 3.5. Rounding out the most affordable ten markets also includes one Canadian market, Edmonton, plus Buffalo (NY), Detroit (MI), Oklahoma City (OK) at 3.6, Cincinnati (OH-KY-IN) and Louisville (KY-IN) at 3.7. Singapore at 3.8 was also moderately unaffordable, along with, in the UK, Blackpool and Lancashire, and Glasgow at 3.9.

The Housing Affordability Crisis: Causes and a Path Forward

Middle-income households face rapidly escalating housing costs, which is the primary cause of the present cost-of-living crisis. For decades, home prices generally rose at about the same rate as income, and homeownership became more widespread. But affordability is disappearing in high-income nations as housing costs now far outpace income growth. The crisis stems principally from land use policies that artificially restrict housing supply, driving up land prices and making homeownership unattainable for many.

Urban containment policies (greenbelts urban growth boundaries, densification) are designed to limit sprawl and increase density. While well-intentioned, these policies severely constrict the land available for housing. In constrained markets, higher land values translate to dramatically higher house prices.

Economic Dynamics

Land values naturally increase closer to urban centers. Urban containment policies are associated with abrupt value spikes at established boundaries. Research confirms this, finding land prices inside urban containment boundaries can be 8-20 times higher than outside.

New Zealand's Reforms: A Model

New Zealand provides a hopeful path forward. Recognizing the crisis is rooted in high land values, new policies are proposed to open up sufficient land to accommodate demand.

A Focus on People, Not Places

The housing crisis demands prioritizing the well-being of people over abstract planning ideals. The planning orthodoxy, while aimed at improving cities, has worsened affordability. This undermines the economic opportunity essential for thriving middle- and lower-income households.

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 founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with 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 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.

Lead image: Demographia International Housing Affordability — 2024 Edition cover photo from New Matilda used under CC 2.0 License.

Defining Rust Belt Urbanism

Pete Saunders — Mon, 20 May 2024 19:42:31 -0400

Here’s one representation of the Rust Belt. However, just like with definitions of the Midwest overall, people usually identify where they live in the region as the center of it.

The Rust Belt has been given up for dead, at least economically, for the last 50 years. The broad swath of territory that covers the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, centered on the Great Lakes, has seen decades of economic retrenchment, out-migration, unresolved racial tensions, and a growing sense of irrelevance — especially when compared to America’s globally-connected coastal cities and fast-growing Sun Belt cities. There are some who believe the Rust Belt should simply accept its diminished fate and fade into oblivion.

This perception has been internalized by many of the Rust Belt’s own residents. Those who remember the Rust Belt’s halcyon days are mostly senior citizens now. The region’s teeming factories employing thousands of workers have spread to nations across the globe. Productivity gains and automation have further reduced reliance on a low- and mid-skilled workforce. There’s a prevailing sense that, after experiencing so much loss, for so long, the future must also be bleak. And so people yearn for restoration, a return to what once was.

From that, however, an alternative perspective has emerged. A rising number of today’s Rust Belt residents recognize the potential of the region. They embrace the region’s history but see opportunity in an uncertain future. Rather than focusing on the negatives that defined it for a half-century, more people are touting the region’s assets and potential. This group has refused to accept the fate of a lost region. They have given rise to Rust Belt urbanism.

In his introduction to EIG as the new Legacy Cities Fellow, Akron, OH planner Jason Segedy eloquently described the Rust Belt’s former and current position in the hierarchy of American cities:

“Many cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Dayton, Detroit, Erie, Flint, Rochester, South Bend, Toledo, and Youngstown have experienced incredible ups and downs over the last 150 years.

These cities were some of the largest and fastest-growing cities in the nation by World War I. But after World War II, these cities began a painful period of economic and social decline, as three national trends – the decline and outsourcing of manufacturing, regional outmigration to the Sunbelt, and rapid suburbanization – converged on these communities.”

The convergence of those trends created the Rust Belt we know today. Yet in the aftermath, those trends also created a new kind of American urbanism that hasn’t surfaced before. Rust Belt Urbanism was born.

Read the rest of this piece at The Corner Side Yard. (now at Substack)

Photo: courtesy The Corner Side Yard, Source: beltmag.com.

Digital Divide: Bridging the Urban-Rural Connectivity Gap

Amanda Winstead — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 20:28:58 -0400

If you live in an urban area, you may mistakenly believe that everyone has access to reliable Wi-Fi, personal computers, and cellular networks. However, millions of rural Americans live without these increasingly essential amenities.

This sentiment is echoed by data collected by the Pew Research Center. Researchers discovered that, despite recent gains, roughly three in 10 rural households do not have broadband. Similarly, 20% of the rural population do not own a smartphone, and 28% do not have a laptop or PC.

The idea of living without smartphones or the internet may sound romantic at first, but the reality of living without connectivity can be harsh. In today’s digital age, those who do not have access to the web are at risk of being left behind. That’s because folks with access to the web cannot utilize telehealth, have limited access to educational resources, and may miss out on employment opportunities due to poor connectivity. This means that addressing the digital divide is crucial for today’s policymakers.

Healthcare

The pandemic forced many healthcare providers to invest in their telehealth services. Telehealth appointments increased by 766% in the first 3 months of the pandemic alone, and 40% of physicians now use some form of telemedicine in their day-to-day practices. This is great news for providers and patients alike, who can give and receive medical attention from the comfort of their home or office.

However, rural patients are at risk of being left behind. This is a serious issue, as people who live in rural locations already tend to be sicker than their urban peers. This is largely due to healthcare access disparities that are exacerbated by economic status and poor transportation access.

Addressing the connectivity gap can help rural people receive the help they need and significantly improve their quality of life. This is particularly important for rural folks who experience acute illnesses or injuries like broken teeth or abscesses. Rural people who are connected via reliable Wi-Fi can access virtual care via teledentistry. Dentists and hygienists can then perform remote triage to ensure that remote patients are able to see a specialist at a time that works for them.

Education

Addressing the rural-urban education gap should be a priority for today’s policymakers. Today, 13% of rural graduates left school without a high school diploma, while just 21% went on to receive a bachelor's degree. By comparison, only 11% of urban graduates left school without a diploma and 36% received a bachelor's degree or higher. This underlines the gap in educational access between rural and urban learners.

Closing educational attainment may be possible if we invest in connectivity. Students who can connect to reliable internet access are in a much stronger position to access resources and attend remote classes. This is key, as many universities and higher learning institutions now offer a blend of in-person, hybrid, and remote courses.

Of course, it may be that more rural students do not want to seek further education at a university. While this is understandable, those who do want to pursue higher education should be empowered to do so with consistent access to digital educational materials.

Energy

Addressing the connectivity gap won’t just improve access to the internet in the US; it will empower rural populations around the world to take control of their energy production, too. This is important since energy colonialism threatens to worsen the global urban-rural divide.

Bridging the connectivity gap can help more rural homeowners make the switch to smart meters and renewable energy systems. These high-tech solutions rely on a stable Wi-Fi connection and are typically connected to a wider grid via Wi-Fi. Making the switch can save homeowners money and help them build a more resilient home energy supply. This is particularly important for folks who live in areas with high sunlight hours, and who may be able to take advantage of solar panel installation.

Currently, rural families who are weighing the costs and benefits of solar energy may be put off due to limited internet access. While internet access isn’t necessary for panels to work, it does allow folks to monitor the output of their panels and their energy savings in real time. This can encourage solar energy adoption since effective solar panels enable rural residents to save $20,000 to $90,000 in energy bills.

By closing the connectivity gap, rural homeowners can take control of their energy production and reduce energy waste. This is crucial, as many rural homes are in prime position for solar panel installation and would qualify for incentives like federal solar credits, rebates, low-interest loans, and business tax benefits. This saves homeowners money and insulates them against the rising cost of nonrenewable energy.

Bridging the Gap

Connecting rural households to reliable broadband can improve healthcare outcomes, increase access to education, and undo the damage caused by energy colonialism. However, bridging the gap is no easy feat.

That’s why the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently stepped up efforts to gather connectivity data. Using this data, the FCC plans to update the “Fabric” of broadband across the country and improve bulk availability by the end of 2024. This plan is bold and multifaceted but may result in lasting change for millions of rural Americans.

As ever, it’s worth noting that many rural Americans have a higher quality of life and may not want to connect their homes to a wider Wi-Fi network. The point of bridging the gap, therefore, is not to force folks to start surfing the Web but to ensure that it is an option for all Americans.

Conclusion

Bridging the urban-rural connectivity gap can significantly improve rural people’s quality of life. By addressing connectivity disparities, we can improve access to telehealth providers and ensure that all Americans have access to high-quality educational materials. Improving broadband access can democratize energy supply and help more people take advantage of renewable energy systems like solar power.

Amanda Winstead is a freelance writer and blogger, covering political and economic trends. Follow Amanda on Twitter @AmandaWinsteadd.

Photo: NASA via Unsplash.