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As U.S. 'superstar' cities thrive, weaker ones get left behind
- digitaltrees 7y agoNashville advert!
- futureastronaut 7y agoThat map is confusing, regions are colored grey that are clearly in the top 20 MSA, like the entire urbanized northeast. Also the article's mostly about Nashville, not its title.
- jefftk 7y ago> regions are colored grey that are clearly in the top 20 MSA, like the entire urbanized northeast It's not the 20 MSAs with the most jobs, it's the 20 MSAs with the most job growth, as a percentage, since 1990.
- moate 7y agoThis seems to be the problem people have with the thesis. If you're defining "superstars" as "cities that got highest% bigger since date X" and not "The Biggest Cities" your point and overall concept seem weaker. From the article>>"...40% of the new jobs generated during that time went to the top 20 places, along with a similar share of the additional wages. Those cities represent only about a quarter of the country’s population and are concentrated in the fast-growing southern and coastal states. None were in the northeast, and only two were in the “rust belt” interior - Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a rebounding Detroit." New York City is the capital of Norther American commerce and because of that it really can't expand the way that <mid-tier former manufacturing city anywhere else in the country> can, which weakens the overall point about "slow growth" or "getting left behind". Growth doesn't mean the same thing everywhere.
- hpoe 7y agoSo if I understand the article correctly the cities that succeeded were the ones that allowed for new industries and businesses to flourish whereas the ones lagging are ones that were built on traditional manufacturing industries that have since dried up in the face of foreign competition and automation. Am I missing something? That seems pretty obvious to me that the industries that wouldn't recover jobs from a recession are the ones already on their way out and the ones that would thrive are the ones that were starting to emerge during the same time period.
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- fintechpwmMEdev 7y agoIt would be interesting to find out how much debt these "superstar" cities have taken on and the structure of their "portfolio"s. Almost all revenue generation done by local municipalities is through property taxes so it's very important to evaluate these places by some sort of Sharpe Ratio or else you're just encouraging these places to be the next Detroit.
- bilbo0s 7y agoTrue, but not all of them will fail. A New York, or Boston, or San Fran for instance are in a much different position than, say, a Nashville. But you're right, it's more than just what you see on the surface. No question about that.
- raiyu 7y agoBasically a summary: 1. Focuses mostly on Nashville 1. Cities that have a young urban population with job creation that isn't tied to old industries are thriving. 2. Nashville has no State Income tax, and most cities and states that have no State Income tax are doing well as remote work takes over and tech workers relocate to take advantage. 3. Mention building a convention center for $600MM but no real numbers on what that had to do with the cities expansion. Uncorrelated at best. 4. One major change was the overhaul in zoning regulations that allowed developers to build vertically to accommodate a growing population. Perhaps an parallel to what is happening in San Francisco. ---- Summary: The economic turnaround from the recession has unevenly favored cities that are tied to non failing industries in decline. Seems pretty obvious.
- cwp 7y agoAlas, an overhaul in zoning regulations is decidedly not happening in San Francisco.
- TallGuyShort 7y agoSounds like #3 is cited by entrepreneurs in the article. Not sure that remote work is common enough yet to be having a significant impact, and I'm not sure how remote work would affect it more than other jobs would...
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- elhudy 7y agoIsn't part of the purpose of the article that: in order to "catch up", lagging cities would need federal intervention.
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- maximente 7y agoodd title, the word 'superstar' is used once outside of the title by an MIT economist proposing federal subsidies for cities/towns with research universities. no mention of NYC, Boston, nor do they appear on the infographic. so it seems so called superstar cities aren't really defined as i would expect them to be.
- mbell 7y ago> no mention of NYC, Boston, nor do they appear on the infographic. Yea, the metric used here is rather convoluted, it's ranking cities by how much their share of total national employment increased. This is going to favor cities that experienced population growth and discount cities that are long since 'at capacity' like NY / Boston.
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- throwaway5752 7y agoDon't forget cities that have influxes of young population so have increasing tax receipts but much lower legacy costs (retirees, infrastructure maintenance, stable growth rate education costs per capita). Most of those cities will mismanage the growth and 20-40 years from now you'll be reading about Nashville and how it was gutted when the software jobs dried up. These come in cycles and cities that have some sort of reason to exist (natural ports/harbors, river confluences, trade points, etc) will continue to exist and most of the rest will not.
- pm90 7y agoThis is a bad take. You're assuming that incoming folks won't change the politics of funding decisions of the city. In most cases, they do change them, and change cities for the better.
- appleshore 7y agoDo you have an example of that? Perhaps I’m biased being in LA and SF but those city budgets seem irreplaceable broken. Infinite amounts to pensions while no one can propose viable fixes to problems.
- quaquaqua1 7y agoThis is the correct opinion. What is worse is that the bugs are features. Politicians and their donors deliberately broke cities for their own personal financial gain,
- ajross 7y agoSorry, how is meeting pension obligations "irreplaceable broken"? They hired people for years with the promise of retirement pensions. It's a debt, not a budget item.
- wlesieutre 7y agoDo you not include debt payments in your budget planning?
- RosanaAnaDana 7y agoThis probably gonna get me killed but I've got to put it out there. I was so disappointed by the food and music scene in Nashville. Literally every restaurant was some trendy clone of some vaguely hipster cracker barrel (one exception). The music I could find (with one exception) was just sad cover bands doing the same Counting Crows covers over and over again. Redeeming restaurant: Princes hot chicken. Got that shit at a XXX and it melted my face. Wonderful. Redeeming venue: High Watt/ Mercy lounge. I don't remember who I saw but it was great. If you know better places to eat/ find good up-and-coming music in Nashville, please let me know. I want it to live up to what I think it could be.
- selectodude 7y agoNashville is somehow an even more overrated version of Austin don't @ me. edit: sorry, I sometimes forget that humor is unilaterally banned on HN. my mistake.
- Eric_WVGG 7y agoCulture counts. This is probably gonna get me killed, but I would have qualms with starting or moving a business to a city where reproductive rights are under continual attack. The situation is inhumane.
- moate 7y agoPart of the problem with places like Alabama getting left in the dust is opinions voiced by elected officials in Alabama. There's literally nothing that would motivate me to move to a place like that despite extremely low cost of living.
- mud_dauber 7y agoI second this opinion.
- jofer 7y agoSpend some time in Birmingham sometime. It's a fun city. As a whole, AL isn't what you probably think it is.
- baybal2 7y agoI don't see anything special to US in that phenomenon. I'd even say that US is notably better than most of the world in keeping its 2nd tier cities alive economically. Most of Asia had that problem for decades, where only 1st tier cities had market for jobs above the "better than nothing" level. It is either USA becoming more like Asia here, after few decades lag, or it is American second tier cities actually sliding back.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThe mechanism isn't US-specific. The analysis is.
- sbierwagen 7y ago>But interviews with entrepreneurs and officials in Nashville point to a mix of factors behind its success, including some that were out of the city’s control, such as the state’s lack of an income tax, and others associated with its unique local assets. NYC and SF, both big tech hubs, both have income taxes.
- jmastrangelo 7y agoNYC and SF both have tremendous advantages that Nashville doesn't, Nashville needs to compete. I don't know if NYC and SF are examples of good governance, or examples that show great cities can support lots of poor governance as long as they retain the things that make them great.
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- nostrademons 7y agoPerez's Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital makes the point that when a technological revolution occurs, gains are frequently concentrated in a small number of locales that are the first to adopt the new technology and adapt their local industries to the new structure of the economy. This results in significant economic (short term), military (medium term), and geopolitical (long term) power. The changing power balance usually sparks a war and a realignment of the global order. In the industrial revolutions of the 19th and early 20th centuries, though, nation states usually adopted the new technologies en masse, with the whole nation sharing in the gains. So you had rising nations like Britain, America, Prussia, and Japan which could challenge declining empires like Austria-Hungary, Russia, China, and the Ottomans. This technological revolution is different, because you have specific parts of nations that are adapting to the new technologies and thriving, while other parts get left behind and see the power they had wilt away. There's relatively little historical precedent for this; the only ones I can think of might be the decline of the Roman empire (where the Eastern Mediterranean remained up-to-date and civilized, while the Northern European hinterlands disintegrated and broke up) and the American Civil War (where the industrial North conquered the agrarian South). And this pattern isn't just U.S-based: China also has a dramatic disparity in wealth & power between coastal cities and the inland hinterland, as well as one between the high-tech South (centered around Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta) and more politically powerful North (around Beijing). I don't know exactly what it means, but I don't think it bodes well for either of the major global superpowers.
- meesles 7y agoFundamentally, fragmentation. I think the Civil War is a relevant example, honestly. What happens when the disparity between the Silicon Valley elite and the Iowa cattle farmers becomes too much for one side to bear? What's weird this time is the technocrats are pretty spread out on the coasts, and then you have cities like Denver right in the middle. It will be a bit more nuanced than "North vs. South" next time. Personally, I'd keep an eye out for easy scapegoats like immigration and other cultural issues to spark conflict. I'd also pay attention to economic churn rather than physical conflict. I have a hard time imagining our apathetic population going to war with each other in our day and age, but I can easily picture technology folks blacklisting 'undesirable' customers and blocking access to services, and rural folks putting obstacles in place for access to natural resources they largely control.
- taiwanboy 7y agoThere are a few dynamics at play here 1.) even with some declining cities, US cities are still some of the most powerful in the world. According to https://howmuch.net/articles/the-economic-size-of-metro-areas-compared-to-countries https://howmuch.net/articles/the-economic-size-of-metro-area... (2017) Bay Area economy is as large as the entire country of Nigeria, NY area is as largest as Canada, LA is as big as turkey! Even Portland is as big as Qatar! And with the global slowdown in 2018 and 2019, while US is the sole bright spot, the dominance will only be magnified. 2.) demographics is now shifting to where gen z is the biggest generation now. In 5-10 years they will be establishing families and moving to less crowded suburbs and smaller cities. Which means the mega cities will lose some growth and the secondary cities will gain.
- fzeroracer 7y agoThis ties nicely with another HN post just a few days ago [1] where a person heavily involved in civil engineering talks about why he moved away from the free market view of city growth. You have a bunch of struggling cities without any funding for basic services, that spend massive amounts in attempt to attract businesses without a way to recoup losses. Which causes a sort of nasty cycle where people move towards cities which have more resources. Since the word 'taxes' is essentially a forbidden word, the only option is for these cities to receive federal assistance. Or else get left behind even further. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20460509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20460509