What will America look like once we’ve finally escaped the last vestiges of the recession?

Posted by SIMON OWENS, Guest Voice Columnist in Business, Economy.
Jul 31st, 2011 | 6 responses

6 Responses to “What will America look like once we’ve finally escaped the last vestiges of the recession?”

1. RON BEASLEY says:

   July 31, 2011 at 3:23 pm

   Things are going to change alright but it’s going to have less to do with the preferences of a group of people and more to do with the increasing cost and scarcity of liquid fuel(oil). Long haul trucking will become a memory. The areas that thrive will be those that have plenty of water, temperate summer temperatures and are able to feed themselves. That would include the Vancouver BC, Seattle, Portland, Eugene corridor. Others will shrivel and die – think Phoenix.
2. DLS says:

   July 31, 2011 at 3:34 pm

   Simon, your article is propitious, for I encountered the following a while ago, and it’s relevant to what you’re writing about.

   25-34-year-olds get older and move from cities to suburbs. Cities have typically been shrinking substantially.

   I’d not concentrate on affluent 25-34-year-olds alone, but the general population, and in the future it’s going to become an older population. Many of the elderly who “rediscover” central cities may be occasional visitors, not residents, and others, who can’t afford drivers, will not be like the young affluent stereotype.

   No telling yet how any future jobless and job-reduced economy will affect the young affluent stereotype, either. Also it’s highly remote, but there someday could be metro area unification (what liberals have sought), i.e., the central city annexes its suburbs (and its tax base and revenues).

   The author notes that the 25-34s ten years ago are older and more mature now as 35-44s. Where does this cohort live now?

   (See reader remarks, too.)

   For well over a decade urban boosters have heralded the shift among young Americans from suburban living and toward dense cities. As one Wall Street Journal report suggests, young people will abandon their parents’ McMansions for urban settings, bringing about the high-density city revival so fervently prayed for by urban developers, architects and planners.

   Some demographers claim that “white flight” from the city is declining, replaced by a “bright flight” to the urban core from the suburbs. “Suburbs lose young whites to cities,” crowed one Associated Press headline last year.

   Yet evidence from the last Census show the opposite: a marked acceleration of movement not into cities but toward suburban and exurban locations. [...]

   These findings should inform the actions of those who run cities. Cities may still appeal to the “young and restless,” but they can’t hold millennials captive forever. Even relatively successful cities have turned into giant college towns and “post-graduate” havens — temporary way stations before people migrate somewhere else. This process redefines cities from enduring places to temporary resorts.

   Rather than place all their bets on attracting 20-somethings cities must focus on why early middle-age couples are leaving. Some good candidates include weak job creation, poor schools, high taxes and suffocating regulatory environments. Addressing these issues won’t keep all young adults in urban settings, but it might improve the chances of keeping a larger number. [...]

   Rather than blindly accept the vision of a mass movement back to the urban centers, developers might focus instead on what kind of housing, and community, addresses the needs and affordability concerns of millennials as they move into full adulthood. Over the next ten years, the number of millennials entering their mid-30s will expand by over 40 million – a population larger than those of elderly residents who will be old enough to give up their homes.

   This large group is also most likely to continue moving to the lower-density, more affordable South and West. These areas already boast disproportionate percentages of millennials, Hais and Winograd report.

   It’s time for developers and planners to look more closely at how young adults as they enter their 30s vote with their feet. Unless there has been a mind-numbing change in attitude or an unexpected return to good governance in cities, young adults entering middle age will continue their shift toward suburban and lower-density areas in the decade ahead, upending the predictions of most pundits, planners and development experts.

   http://blogs.forbes.com/joelkotkin/2011/07/20/why-americas-young-and-restless-will-abandon-cities-for-suburbs/

   Food for thought.
3. DLS says:

   July 31, 2011 at 3:37 pm

   Well, Ron (and Simon), in all fairness I have thought ahead to the water shortages in the Sunbelt and even conceived a “retraction” (or “retrenchment”) scenario for the Southwest. (It would be affected by any choice by authorities to change to a market-style pricing system for water, and for electricity for running air conditioners, too, notably peak pricing.) Not a catastrophe, but a “withering,” perhaps.

   (Don’t forget all the present and future snowbirds in winter!
4. ProfElwood says:

   July 31, 2011 at 7:33 pm

   A. I don’t think we’re going to “escape”. For a while, this is the good part.
   B. Our financial system is bloated and teetering. I don’t know when it will fall, or what will trigger it (more likely, when will the trigger finally get too big to cover up), but it must collapse.

   Hopefully, people are more sober and realistic after that.
5. RON BEASLEY says:

   July 31, 2011 at 11:20 pm

   DLS
   The snow birds have to be able to get south which will become increasingly difficult.
6. DLS says:

   August 1, 2011 at 3:32 am

   Physically difficult, Ron? Only for those who can’t drive and can’t afford a substitute driver, at least to get to and from each airport. Fuel prices will rise, of course, but fuel won’t be unavailable — it’s not a Peak Oil Ends All Transport nightmare.

   Probably more expensive, Ron. (The West Coast and Florida, too.)

   With all that migration south and west, of full-time residents, plus the snowbirds, it’s going to get more expensive even without the water scarcity (see below — reinforcing what you already know). Now consider the normal desire for less density, but at the same time, motor vehicle fuel prices rising and it’s the big squeeze we’ll see everywhere. But in addition, there’s that water scarcity, plus the need for new electrical generation (conservation helps, but never has been a complete solution, and never will), to run those air conditioners. Boosting supply is imperative, but can’t necessarily be relied on, and repricing water and perhaps electricity, too (notably with peak pricing for use of electricity). RAND studied supply situations in New York City and Los Angeles in the early 1960s and concluded that market pricing of water would reduce much need to increase supply.* Obviously that will be more true than ever from the 2020s.

   (Distributed to parties throughout the West)

   http://biodiversity.ca.gov/Meetings/archive/water03/water2025.pdf

   I’ll add, if you don’t mind, and you likely approve (noting), that this applies to the South (the Southeast), too. All those retirees there need their air conditioning. Look someday at cooling degree-day maps. In the southernmost spots, what I call the “Blister Belt,” so hot that the cooling degree-days exceed the heating degree-days somewhere around the low-mid 2000s. Florida has a well-known “hot season”: it’s considered tropical (climate) at the tip of Southern Florida, and up the peninsula (south of the Southern pine forest) it’s tropical wet-dry, with tropical summers. That means a need for a lot of air conditioning. What few realize is that there are water shortages at times in the Southeast already, such as that “water war” involving Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. What in the future?

   (dated, but interesting and relevant)

   http://www.itt.com/waterbook/atlanta.asp

   * * *

   * BONUS: I got my own hard copy of RAND’s early 1960s study at a used bookstore here in Albuquerque last year. You readers can see a writeup-portion of it (abstract and introduction) here.

   Note that this isn’t the 1960s now, and now and even more so after 2020 there’s no way there even is the money to be had for “grandiose schemes,” not with our situation and with our public now and later. (That’s one reason I believe in a “retrenchment” scenario for the Southwest and elsewhere in the West possibly.)

   It is strongly suggested that the correct application of economic principles to the distribution of our present water supplies, especially proper pricing in relation to cost, will so extend these supplies through the reduction of waste that many of the grandiose schemes for increasing our supplies can be put off for the future.

   http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2009/P2694.pdf