America’s economic and social fabric has been remade over time through a series of great migrations: settlers heading west; farmers and new immigrants to great industrial centers; blacks from the rural South to the urban North; the middle class from the urban centers to the suburbs; and more recently, from an ongoing dual migration of the skilled and less skilled I dubbed “the means migration.”
From conquering the Western frontier to the great movement to the suburbs, nothing has been more central to the American experience than mobility—the ability to seek out new places offering better homes, more space, better jobs and more economic opportunity.
The United States is now a nation of singles. Single people make up just over half of all American adults for the first time since statistics have been collected, according to a study reported by Bloomberg last week.
More and more, the US economy is defined by its metropolitan areas, which produce 90% of its output. On an individual level, some of these metros are themselves quite large. The map below lays this out geographically, including a sampling of how ten cities stack up economically against major nations of the world.
The ability to attract skilled workers is a key factor, if not the key factor, in the growth of cities and metro regions. Cities themselves are understandably keen to tout when their populations are growing, but just tracking overall population can mask the underlying trends that will truly shape the future of our metro areas.
Popular music styles are often closely connected to the social situations where they first began. Rock ‘n’ roll grew out of the heady culture of American cities following the Great Migration and World War II, as formerly rural blacks brought rapidly evolving jazz and rhythm and blues into cities. Decades later, the disinvested inner cities of 1980s America helped foster the rap and hip hop that we listen to today.
America’s largest metro areas, which are currently gaining population at impressive rates, are driving much of the population growth across the nation. But that growth is the result of two very different migrations–one coming from the location choices of Americans themselves, the other shaped by where new immigrants from outside the US are heading.
We’ve written a lot about why some cities, metros areas, and states are more violent than others. I even posted a while back comparing gun homicide rates in United States cities to those of the most violent nations in the world. Today, I turn to the question: Why are some nations so much more violent than others?
“The most tangible cornerstone that lies at the heart of the American Dream, at the heart of middle-class life,” Barack Obama declared in a speech this summer, is “the chance to own your own home.”
Venture capitalists are the financiers of high-tech innovation. The unique form of equity financing—which exchanges capital for shares in the enterprises they provide—has fueled the rise of revolutionary companies like Intel in semiconductors, Apple in personal computing, Genentech in biotech, Google in search, and Facebook and Twitter in social media.
Author’s note: Startup companies are a driving force in high-tech innovation and economic growth. Venture capital-backed companies like Intel, Apple, Genentech, Facebook, Google, and Twitter have powered the rise of whole new industries and shaped the way we live and work. Silicon Valley has long been the world’s center for high-tech startups. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be looking at the new geography of venture capital and high-tech startups and the rise of new startup cities in the United States. I’ll be also track to what degree start-up communities are shifting from their traditional locations in the suburbs to urban centers.
In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama said: ”Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing.” He added:
Innovation and entrepreneurship are the engines of economic growth. For decades now, cities and communities across the United States have tried to infuse themselves with those two properties by emulating Silicon Valley, a never-ending quest to become the next Silicon Somewhere.
Silicon Valley is the world’s unquestioned leader in generating high-tech start-ups that launch new technologies that change the way we live and work. Many cities around the world have tried to emulate its success. But until recently, the data has been lacking to calibrate and rank how far they have come.
The 2008 financial crisis set in motion shock waves that are still reverberating through the American, European, and global economies, touching everything from housing to jobs to college tuition.
The economic crisis of 2008 left millions of Americans out of work. Even though the job market has been slowly improving lately, employment levels remain considerably below where they were before the crisis. And the effects of the crisis have fallen unevenly on different kinds of workers and different kinds of places.
New York tops the list of the world’s best “cities of opportunity,” with London second and Toronto third, according to a report (pdf) released this week by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Partnership for New York City.
What is the future of progress? Many believe we are entering a new Dark Age of economic stagnation, having exhausted the frontiers of innovation and progress, held back by a broken and dysfunctional political system.
More than half a century ago, a classic article by the economist Benjamin Chinitz in the American Economic Review, “Contrasts in Agglomeration: New York and Pittsburgh,” sought to answer a vexing question about the mechanisms of regional economic development. He pointed out a connection between a region’s industrial structure and its ability to generate entrepreneurship, innovation, and new growth.
