7 ms·

I dunno, when I look at migration data over the long term in the US, a few things stand out to me: 1. Weather is a huuuuuge factor. The large, growing populati

by exelius 11y ago

I dunno, when I look at migration data over the long term in the US, a few things stand out to me: 1. Weather is a huuuuuge factor. The large, growing population centers in the US are in warm or mild climates. Nobody wants to live in Buffalo or Minneapolis unless you're from there. 2. Location is far less important to the industries that generate the majority of value today. A lot of industrial jobs (and cities) sprung up in the midwest in the early part of the 20th century thanks to its proximity to raw materials (iron ore, coal, etc) and easily navigable waterways. That's not as important to the economy as a whole anymore, so companies have little reason to start (aka create jobs) in locations that are otherwise undesirable. 3. Given that there are fewer job opportunities that are reliant on proximity to natural resources, and that more of the new job opportunities will be located in cities with milder climates, it's no wonder that rust belt cities are bleeding people. Would you start a new business in Buffalo? Or would you just go to Chicago, New York or Philadelphia instead?

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
>Would you start a new business in Buffalo? It doesn't take much capital to turn a 19th century mansion into an incubator/hacker house. Sure the weather and the Bills suck but inside you'll find a welcoming community spirit at a price you can start a business and raise a family at. Buffalo has also been experiencing a boom in green tech investment (http://mobile.buffalonews.com/?articleRedirect=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buffalonews.com%2Fcity-region%2Fbuffalos-future-looks-very-green-with-states-investment-in-high-tech-facilities-20131121 http://mobile.buffalonews.com/?articleRedirect=1&url=http%3A...) As for Upstate NY in general, I think it's a great place to start a business. At the end of the day, most businessss can be run anywhere (hence the boom in remote work), and, again, putting aside the biblically shitty weather, you have an affordable region with plenty of fresh water and local farms, and isn't at risk for rising tides (NY,FL,CA), earthquakes (Cascadia,CA), droughts (CA, southwest, Midwest when the aquifer runs dry), name it. This is a great region to start a family, and at the end of the day, your best employees are the ones tied to your office and location, not mercenary college grads shopping around every couple years for a raise. In 100 years, Upstate NY can exist without desalinated/pumped life support. Not so sure about the rest...
- HiLo 11y ago
  Not everything can be made into a damn hacker house or incubator. That's not a business model for the economy as a whole. We're going to start seeing startups doing rollups of startups doing shared working spaces for startups making apps and productivity software for startups doing shared working spaces and online advertising.
  - exelius 11y ago
    That's actually a great mental model for a scalable business: "Can I imagine Private Equity coming in and doing a regional rollup of this business model, slapping a slick marketing package on it and returning 10x the value?" If the answer is "no", then it's probably a money-losing business, because that's the exit strategy for a lot of these local delivery businesses.
    - Fomite 11y ago
      "If the answer is "no", then it's probably a money-losing business." There a numerous businesses that make plenty of money that don't fit that scenario. They're just ones that are often dismissed as "lifestyle businesses".
- cachemiss 11y ago
  The issue is the taxes and the brain drain. It's impossible to keep people there (I'm a native of upstate NY and have recruited developers). We kept losing people to NYC and West Coast based companies before we could even offer. Anyone we did get who wa sworthwhile moved west as well (I did too). Upstate has a lot of advantages (its a great place to raise a family), but has some massive disadvantages as well (the weather is one of them). There isn't enough tech to keep developers, because they know if your company tanks or fires them, the market isn't very good.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    > There isn't enough tech to keep developers, because they know if your company tanks or fires them, the market isn't very good. That's the big one. I moved from a "small town" with a single tech employer to the SF Bay Area to reduce the risk of unemployment. It was not a financially great decision (+50% salary, +300% cost of living) but here, if things go south, I can more easily find another employer. This is not true for most of the country. I'd gladly move back to small town America--I like backyards and big houses--but not if it means my life is at the whim of one or two local employers.
linkregister 11y ago
1. New York City has less warm/mild weather than any coastal city southern to it along the East Coast. Yet it has the highest per-capita income of any of them. I don't know your location but this unfounded weather-as-a-migration-driver theory seems to be propagated by Californians and Coloradans. 2. Agreed, network effects are what drive these headquartering decisions now. 3. It's interesting that you're choosing Buffalo as an example. It's currently experiencing a resurgence [1] [2], as is Pittsburgh [3] [4]. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/business/energy-environment/the-wind-and-sun-are-bringing-the-shine-back-to-buffalo.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/business/energy-environmen... [2] http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/Home/Leadership/City_Comptroller/economy http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/Home/Leadership/City_Comptroller... [3] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/02/an-urban-revival-in-the-rust-belt http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/02/an-urban-revi... [4] http://www.economist.com/node/14460542 http://www.economist.com/node/14460542
- ghaff 11y ago
  There's a lot of history, even if sometimes accidental history, in why certain industries are so concentrated where they are. But there does seem to be a natural tendency to concentrate in many cases. For example, the Kendall Square area of Cambridge is pretty much non-stop pharma/biotech construction. MIT is part of the reason in that case but I'm sure it's not the only one. Of course, there are often Tier 2 locales for a given industry that have less of a concentration but still have a reasonable hiring pool and/or people willing to relocate there (plus remotes). They may not be as in-demand as the center of the given industry, but they can be a lot cheaper or attractive in other ways. In tech, the housing pains of the Bay area are arguably the perfect storm of historical happenstance, a great climate for the most part, and constrained geography.
  - jghn 11y ago
    The pharma/biotech is driven by both the MIT/Harvard connection but also the local cluster of medical research institutions. You don't have to go back too far to get to a point where real estate in Kendall/Central/East Cambridge was relatively cheap. The confluence of these things is what started the feedback loop there.
Apocryphon 11y ago
I'm quite curious about how this applies to Canada, where the weather is generally always colder than it is in the U.S., just the degree of cold.
rayiner 11y ago
The counterexample to that theory is that cities with warm climates and good economies, like Houston and Atlanta, are falling behind in terms of average income relative to places like New York.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- exelius 11y ago
  > The counterexample to that theory is that cities with warm climates and good economies, like Houston and Atlanta, are falling behind in terms of average income relative to places like New York. I would actually attribute the income disparity to the powerful political opposition to labor unions in both Georgia and Texas. Unions have far more protection under New York law than in either of those states.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  Can I get a citation on that? Houston has both a low cost of living and a high immigration rate (including undocumented immigrants), neither of which are really germane to the conversation. I'd like to see if those numbers take those things into account and, if not, how everything looks when taken together.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    It's in the article.

by exelius 11y ago

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

>Would you start a new business in Buffalo? It doesn't take much capital to turn a 19th century mansion into an incubator/hacker house. Sure the weather and the Bills suck but inside you'll find a welcoming community spirit at a price you can start a business and raise a family at. Buffalo has also been experiencing a boom in green tech investment (http://mobile.buffalonews.com/?articleRedirect=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buffalonews.com%2Fcity-region%2Fbuffalos-future-looks-very-green-with-states-investment-in-high-tech-facilities-20131121 http://mobile.buffalonews.com/?articleRedirect=1&url=http%3A...) As for Upstate NY in general, I think it's a great place to start a business. At the end of the day, most businessss can be run anywhere (hence the boom in remote work), and, again, putting aside the biblically shitty weather, you have an affordable region with plenty of fresh water and local farms, and isn't at risk for rising tides (NY,FL,CA), earthquakes (Cascadia,CA), droughts (CA, southwest, Midwest when the aquifer runs dry), name it. This is a great region to start a family, and at the end of the day, your best employees are the ones tied to your office and location, not mercenary college grads shopping around every couple years for a raise. In 100 years, Upstate NY can exist without desalinated/pumped life support. Not so sure about the rest...

HiLo 11y ago
Not everything can be made into a damn hacker house or incubator. That's not a business model for the economy as a whole. We're going to start seeing startups doing rollups of startups doing shared working spaces for startups making apps and productivity software for startups doing shared working spaces and online advertising.
- exelius 11y ago
  That's actually a great mental model for a scalable business: "Can I imagine Private Equity coming in and doing a regional rollup of this business model, slapping a slick marketing package on it and returning 10x the value?" If the answer is "no", then it's probably a money-losing business, because that's the exit strategy for a lot of these local delivery businesses.
  - Fomite 11y ago
    "If the answer is "no", then it's probably a money-losing business." There a numerous businesses that make plenty of money that don't fit that scenario. They're just ones that are often dismissed as "lifestyle businesses".
cachemiss 11y ago
The issue is the taxes and the brain drain. It's impossible to keep people there (I'm a native of upstate NY and have recruited developers). We kept losing people to NYC and West Coast based companies before we could even offer. Anyone we did get who wa sworthwhile moved west as well (I did too). Upstate has a lot of advantages (its a great place to raise a family), but has some massive disadvantages as well (the weather is one of them). There isn't enough tech to keep developers, because they know if your company tanks or fires them, the market isn't very good.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  > There isn't enough tech to keep developers, because they know if your company tanks or fires them, the market isn't very good. That's the big one. I moved from a "small town" with a single tech employer to the SF Bay Area to reduce the risk of unemployment. It was not a financially great decision (+50% salary, +300% cost of living) but here, if things go south, I can more easily find another employer. This is not true for most of the country. I'd gladly move back to small town America--I like backyards and big houses--but not if it means my life is at the whim of one or two local employers.

linkregister 11y ago

1. New York City has less warm/mild weather than any coastal city southern to it along the East Coast. Yet it has the highest per-capita income of any of them. I don't know your location but this unfounded weather-as-a-migration-driver theory seems to be propagated by Californians and Coloradans. 2. Agreed, network effects are what drive these headquartering decisions now. 3. It's interesting that you're choosing Buffalo as an example. It's currently experiencing a resurgence [1] [2], as is Pittsburgh [3] [4]. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/business/energy-environment/the-wind-and-sun-are-bringing-the-shine-back-to-buffalo.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/business/energy-environmen... [2] http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/Home/Leadership/City_Comptroller/economy http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/Home/Leadership/City_Comptroller... [3] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/02/an-urban-revival-in-the-rust-belt http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/02/an-urban-revi... [4] http://www.economist.com/node/14460542 http://www.economist.com/node/14460542

ghaff 11y ago
There's a lot of history, even if sometimes accidental history, in why certain industries are so concentrated where they are. But there does seem to be a natural tendency to concentrate in many cases. For example, the Kendall Square area of Cambridge is pretty much non-stop pharma/biotech construction. MIT is part of the reason in that case but I'm sure it's not the only one. Of course, there are often Tier 2 locales for a given industry that have less of a concentration but still have a reasonable hiring pool and/or people willing to relocate there (plus remotes). They may not be as in-demand as the center of the given industry, but they can be a lot cheaper or attractive in other ways. In tech, the housing pains of the Bay area are arguably the perfect storm of historical happenstance, a great climate for the most part, and constrained geography.
- jghn 11y ago
  The pharma/biotech is driven by both the MIT/Harvard connection but also the local cluster of medical research institutions. You don't have to go back too far to get to a point where real estate in Kendall/Central/East Cambridge was relatively cheap. The confluence of these things is what started the feedback loop there.

Apocryphon 11y ago

I'm quite curious about how this applies to Canada, where the weather is generally always colder than it is in the U.S., just the degree of cold.

rayiner 11y ago

The counterexample to that theory is that cities with warm climates and good economies, like Houston and Atlanta, are falling behind in terms of average income relative to places like New York.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
exelius 11y ago
> The counterexample to that theory is that cities with warm climates and good economies, like Houston and Atlanta, are falling behind in terms of average income relative to places like New York. I would actually attribute the income disparity to the powerful political opposition to labor unions in both Georgia and Texas. Unions have far more protection under New York law than in either of those states.
humanrebar 11y ago
Can I get a citation on that? Houston has both a low cost of living and a high immigration rate (including undocumented immigrants), neither of which are really germane to the conversation. I'd like to see if those numbers take those things into account and, if not, how everything looks when taken together.
- rayiner 11y ago
  It's in the article.