5 ms·

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

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.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Feedback loop is a good way of putting it. Yeah, I remember when the area beyond Tech Square or so was basically "there be dragons here." There was a lot of, shall we say, underutilized land from Cambridge's day as an eastern Detroit a fair chunk of which MIT owned but hadn't developed. I would walk to Kendall when I was an undergrad but I thought of that as being totally disconnected from where the long-gone Lechmere was.
    - jghn 11y ago
      Yeah, my memory goes back to the late 90s where there was kendall sq proper (area around the T stop), Cambridge Center, 1 Kendall and the Galleria and not a whole lot in between any of them. Tech Sq was there too although no one ever went there except if they had to go to tech square. Even though the distances are all the same everything seems so much closer now just because it's almost a single contiguous entity now instead of 5 min walks through parking lots and empty space just to get to the next building.
Retric 11y ago
AC made a huge difference is what was desirable weather. NYC population in 1950: 7,891,957, vs 8,175,133 in 2010. Houston, Tex. population in 1950: 596,163 vs 2,016,582 in 2010. PS: Without AC, even NYC get's unpleasantly hot in the summer so there are clear tradeoffs on the east coast.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  The NYC metro population is over 20 million.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Both those numbers seem to be accurate for the city limits. Wikipedia says the population of NYC was 8.5 million in 2014. City limits are, of course, a somewhat arbitrary concept and NYC's environs are more crowded than Houston's. I'm not sure what your point is however. There are a variety of historical and other reasons why the South doesn't have cities as large as the North and the West Coast.
deleted 11y ago
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exelius 11y ago
Well, New York is a special case in that its climate is within a certain "sweet spot" (warm but not hot in the summer, not too far below freezing in the winter) and the fact that its emergence as a major financial center is a historical relic of the fact that it has been the "gateway to America" for over 150 years. Buffalo and Pittsburgh are experiencing a resurgence only because when you fall as far as those cities have, there has to be a bottom somewhere. But residents of places like that are looking at a lot of problems in the future: they have less than half the population they did 50 years ago, so there is a lot of urban blight (and the other problems that come along with it) to clean up and a very small tax base to pay for it. So while they may see a resurgence, they're still not out of the woods yet.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Detroit may be an even more pronounced example. Apparently the core down by the river is actually gentrifying. But large portions of the city are seriously blighted. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/05/detroit-city-collapsing-gentrifying http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/05/detroit-city-c...
  - exelius 11y ago
    That's exactly what happened to Pittsburgh as well. There are some areas near downtown and the university areas that are finally getting better, but not less than 2 miles from those areas are entire neighborhoods and small towns that have been abandoned for decades. Pittsburgh's decline predates the fall of Detroit by a decade or two (most of the steel mills shut down in the early 70s) but the parallels are striking.

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.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Feedback loop is a good way of putting it. Yeah, I remember when the area beyond Tech Square or so was basically "there be dragons here." There was a lot of, shall we say, underutilized land from Cambridge's day as an eastern Detroit a fair chunk of which MIT owned but hadn't developed. I would walk to Kendall when I was an undergrad but I thought of that as being totally disconnected from where the long-gone Lechmere was.
  - jghn 11y ago
    Yeah, my memory goes back to the late 90s where there was kendall sq proper (area around the T stop), Cambridge Center, 1 Kendall and the Galleria and not a whole lot in between any of them. Tech Sq was there too although no one ever went there except if they had to go to tech square. Even though the distances are all the same everything seems so much closer now just because it's almost a single contiguous entity now instead of 5 min walks through parking lots and empty space just to get to the next building.

Retric 11y ago

AC made a huge difference is what was desirable weather. NYC population in 1950: 7,891,957, vs 8,175,133 in 2010. Houston, Tex. population in 1950: 596,163 vs 2,016,582 in 2010. PS: Without AC, even NYC get's unpleasantly hot in the summer so there are clear tradeoffs on the east coast.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
The NYC metro population is over 20 million.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Both those numbers seem to be accurate for the city limits. Wikipedia says the population of NYC was 8.5 million in 2014. City limits are, of course, a somewhat arbitrary concept and NYC's environs are more crowded than Houston's. I'm not sure what your point is however. There are a variety of historical and other reasons why the South doesn't have cities as large as the North and the West Coast.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

exelius 11y ago

Well, New York is a special case in that its climate is within a certain "sweet spot" (warm but not hot in the summer, not too far below freezing in the winter) and the fact that its emergence as a major financial center is a historical relic of the fact that it has been the "gateway to America" for over 150 years. Buffalo and Pittsburgh are experiencing a resurgence only because when you fall as far as those cities have, there has to be a bottom somewhere. But residents of places like that are looking at a lot of problems in the future: they have less than half the population they did 50 years ago, so there is a lot of urban blight (and the other problems that come along with it) to clean up and a very small tax base to pay for it. So while they may see a resurgence, they're still not out of the woods yet.

ghaff 11y ago
Detroit may be an even more pronounced example. Apparently the core down by the river is actually gentrifying. But large portions of the city are seriously blighted. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/05/detroit-city-collapsing-gentrifying http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/05/detroit-city-c...
- exelius 11y ago
  That's exactly what happened to Pittsburgh as well. There are some areas near downtown and the university areas that are finally getting better, but not less than 2 miles from those areas are entire neighborhoods and small towns that have been abandoned for decades. Pittsburgh's decline predates the fall of Detroit by a decade or two (most of the steel mills shut down in the early 70s) but the parallels are striking.