How The Economic Crisis Will Reshape America

Richard Florida who wrote The Rise of the Creative Class has a lengthy new piece in the Atlantic Monthly that looks at the current economic crisis and speculates as to which areas in the USA will best weather the economic storm and/or arise stronger in its aftermath. Likewise, he looks at which regions are likely to rebound the least or even stay depressed and increasingly outside of the economic mainstream. In the course of the article, Florida looks at various areas of the country and changes in technology and innovation. The prospects while not assured seem to greatly favor areas of high innovation and diversity in thought and higher education. In short, many of the "blue" states appear better postured than "red" states that are not welcoming to change and diversity. Here are few of his concluding highlights:

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[W]e need to encourage growth in the regions and cities that are best positioned to compete in the coming decades: the great mega-regions that already power the economy, and the smaller, talent-attracting innovation centers inside them—places like Silicon Valley, Boulder, Austin, and the North Carolina Research Triangle.

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Whatever our government policies, the coming decades will likely see a further clustering of output, jobs, and innovation in a smaller number of bigger cities and city-regions. But properly shaping that growth will be one of the government’s biggest challenges. In part, we need to ensure that key cities and regions continue to circulate people, goods, and ideas quickly and efficiently. This in itself will be no small task; increasing congestion threatens to slowly sap some of these city-regions of their vitality.

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Just as important, though, we need to make elite cities and key mega-regions more attractive and affordable for all of America’s classes, not just the upper crust. High housing costs in these cities and in the more convenient suburbs around them, along with congested sprawl farther afield, have conspired to drive lower-income Americans away from these places over the past 30 years. This is profoundly unhealthy for our society.

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What will this geography look like? It will likely be sparser in the Midwest and also, ultimately, in those parts of the Southeast that are dependent on manufacturing. Its suburbs will be thinner and its houses, perhaps, smaller. Some of its southwestern cities will grow less quickly. Its great mega-regions will rise farther upward and extend farther outward. It will feature a lower rate of homeownership, and a more mobile population of renters. In short, it will be a more concentrated geography, one that allows more people to mix more freely and interact more efficiently in a discrete number of dense, innovative mega-regions and creative cities. . . . . . But most of all, it will be a landscape that can accommodate and accelerate invention, innovation, and creation—the activities in which the U.S. still holds a big competitive advantage.

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One cannot help but wonder what these economic trends, if correct, will portend for areas like Alabama, Mississippi, portions of the Mid-West and even large parts of Virginia where xenophobia and religious based hostility to diversity and intellectual openness are prevalent. Closed mindedness and hostility towards those who are different may well carry a high price indeed.