The 4 highest adjusted income places on the chart (Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle) are big tech hubs, with lots of college graduates. Makeup of the available jobs probably explains a lot of the variation on that plot, including Minneapolis being high and LA being low.
When you control for education, though, it does make the point about New York even stronger. You would expect to see New York on the high end for adjusted income, given the number of high-paying white collar jobs. But no, people do seem to be tolerating some penalty on adjusted income to live there.
Not shockingly, San Diego also seems popular, and Detroit seems unpopular.
I wonder if London would be so hardline anti-development today if in the post-war period they had to make those hard decisions about knocking down old buildings. Rather than having lots of room to develop over the ruins caused by the bombings
I wonder if London would be so hardline anti-development today if in the post-war period they had to make those hard decisions about knocking down old buildings. Rather than having lots of room to develop over the ruins caused by the bombings
Enjoyed yesterday’s Q&A and met a few SB readers. Call me a giant nerd but I’m still missing a proper Bay Area meetup for serious fans of the Substack tough. I like zoning discussions as much as the next reader but reallly looking for some alternate histories, 2000s (2010s?) music references, and discussions of various past posts.
It was a great event! I had to run at the end so didn't get to mingle but could tell from the questions that this was a good group of people to get to know (other than that one of course).
Skeptical of the largest-cities chart. London was not the world’s largest city for the entire period 1900-2000. Not even close towards the end of that period. Mexico City and cities in China were larger, I believe. And the London figure seems inaccurate. Most comparative population measures now use the population of the continuous urban agglomeration rather than official political boundaries of cities, which are fairly arbitrary and not generally representative of any kind of economic or transportation border
The Washington Football Team need to become the President's Own - a sign of Federal competence and dominance just like Real Madrid is/was the royalist/fascist team in Spain.
>one thing is for certain though, at the moment, the top 3 for both is New York, LA, Chicago<
I don't think that's certain, depending on definitions. I'm not sure we have accurate real time snapshots, but I'd be tempted to think the DC CSA is now larger than Chicagoland.
Wikipedia gives the Baltimore-DC CSA as 9.9M versus 9.8M for Chicagoland, but I'm inclined to look askance at the former definition. Nobody from Baltimore identifies as from DC, and vice versa.
There is a case to merge them. But it’s weaker than the case to merge the San Francisco and San Jose areas, or the Los Angeles and Riverside/San Bernardino areas.
If you want to try for the bank shot, Milwaukee as part of Greater Chicagoland is a colorable argument, by the standard of "would I think about driving to ORD for a cheaper flight".
Wow, Milan leaves and this place goes to heck - missed mailbags, reruns, etc. Yale apparently is the only thing holding American civilization together!
Interesting to reflect on the reasons that cities do not grow more. In DC some is just aesthetic sensibilities of current residents, some the perceived hyperlocal externalities faced by local residents (congestion of street parking, local street traffic, crime(?)), but it really is just NIMBY, no one that I know of opposes the growth in population of DC per se. Which makes the actual effectiveness of anti growth pretty curious.
Typically yes. In most jurisdictions in the US, high earners pay significantly more taxes than their share of the population. If you push them out, you have to raise taxes on the remaining population to make up the loss.
I share this position and I'd be curious to hear the push back to it. Perhaps letting the high housing prices of some cities drive people out is actually the correct way to bring those prices down? I remember when Amazon didn't get the tax breaks it wanted to set up its next headquarters in Queens there were people lamenting the fact that New York had sacrificed a lot of good paying jobs. My thought at the time was "why do we want to pack those jobs and people into New York? Wouldn't it be better to spread them around?
>I share this position and I'd be curious to hear the push back to it.<
In a purely Yglesian system ("if it's safe, you can build as much housing as you want on your property"), the market would largely decide this issue. "We" (society? the government?) wouldn't need to build twenty new cities. Existing cities/metros would be allowed to grow as large as they need to, in response to demand. Perhaps indeed a bunch of micropolitan areas would expand into the 2-3 million range. Or perhaps NYC, LA and others would grow much larger. Or perhaps some combination of these.
One specific pushback against the idea of building/establishing a large number of new mid-sized cities is: energy efficiency tends to increase along with size. Metro NYC, I'm pretty sure, is greener than Kansas City. Also, from a sheer resource-use basis, it's probably desirable to see a certain amount of concentrated growth, because not as many services or facilities (such as high capacity airports) need to be duplicated. Moreover, the establishment of lots of new metros would likely eat up more countryside and farmland than the expansion of existing large metros, because the latter (assuming YIMBY policies) is likely to be accompanied by greater density. IOW Greater New York or LA or DC or Chicago could probably see *some* expansion deeper into the surrounding territory, but realistically any large increase in population moving forward would undoubtedly require greater density. If you look at a population density map of the US, you'll note we manage to cram the bulk of the population into a relatively modest share of our total territory, thereby leaving much of America fairly empty. I think think that's a good thing, and I suspect many wild animals agree.
The 4 highest adjusted income places on the chart (Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle) are big tech hubs, with lots of college graduates. Makeup of the available jobs probably explains a lot of the variation on that plot, including Minneapolis being high and LA being low.
When you control for education, though, it does make the point about New York even stronger. You would expect to see New York on the high end for adjusted income, given the number of high-paying white collar jobs. But no, people do seem to be tolerating some penalty on adjusted income to live there.
Not shockingly, San Diego also seems popular, and Detroit seems unpopular.
I wonder if London would be so hardline anti-development today if in the post-war period they had to make those hard decisions about knocking down old buildings. Rather than having lots of room to develop over the ruins caused by the bombings
I wonder if London would be so hardline anti-development today if in the post-war period they had to make those hard decisions about knocking down old buildings. Rather than having lots of room to develop over the ruins caused by the bombings
I’ll be darned - Matt actually DOES think about the Roman Empire.
The absence of comments is sad. This was a great post, and repeating oneself after 18 months is fine
Well, posting the McCarthy-specific thread probably took a lot of wind out of the sails of this one.
If populations are tied to state capacity and administrative centers, what accounts for the DC/DMV's (relatively) low population?
His point was that since industrialization, population has no longer been tied to administrative centers.
Ah you're right – thanks!
Enjoyed yesterday’s Q&A and met a few SB readers. Call me a giant nerd but I’m still missing a proper Bay Area meetup for serious fans of the Substack tough. I like zoning discussions as much as the next reader but reallly looking for some alternate histories, 2000s (2010s?) music references, and discussions of various past posts.
As a Bay Area native I also think this would be super fun!
It was a great event! I had to run at the end so didn't get to mingle but could tell from the questions that this was a good group of people to get to know (other than that one of course).
Skeptical of the largest-cities chart. London was not the world’s largest city for the entire period 1900-2000. Not even close towards the end of that period. Mexico City and cities in China were larger, I believe. And the London figure seems inaccurate. Most comparative population measures now use the population of the continuous urban agglomeration rather than official political boundaries of cities, which are fairly arbitrary and not generally representative of any kind of economic or transportation border
"Maybe our football team getting an actual name will help."
You got something far, far better: a new owner!
And now the only thing left for them to do is to Make The RFK Site Great Again. (Just kidding!)
The Washington Football Team need to become the President's Own - a sign of Federal competence and dominance just like Real Madrid is/was the royalist/fascist team in Spain.
This, I command!
I see what you did there with your last word.
And it's funny that you mention a royalist/fascist team, because the current name so easily just gets shortened to Commies.
You should give Houston it's due as the fourth largest city in the US. Dallas is ninth.
You want to see a couple of Texans start fighting here? Because that’s how you start it.
Maybe he's talking metro areas. Dallas County appears to be 1/2 the land area of Harris County but DFW has more population than Houston metro.
Probably so.
The chart in the article does refer to MSA so that's what I assumed.
>one thing is for certain though, at the moment, the top 3 for both is New York, LA, Chicago<
I don't think that's certain, depending on definitions. I'm not sure we have accurate real time snapshots, but I'd be tempted to think the DC CSA is now larger than Chicagoland.
Wikipedia gives the Baltimore-DC CSA as 9.9M versus 9.8M for Chicagoland, but I'm inclined to look askance at the former definition. Nobody from Baltimore identifies as from DC, and vice versa.
There's commuter rail between Baltimore and DC and they share an airport. I think it's pretty clearly the same metro area.
There is a case to merge them. But it’s weaker than the case to merge the San Francisco and San Jose areas, or the Los Angeles and Riverside/San Bernardino areas.
If you want to try for the bank shot, Milwaukee as part of Greater Chicagoland is a colorable argument, by the standard of "would I think about driving to ORD for a cheaper flight".
"Share", to the extent that Matt's *third*-closest international airport is probably BWI.
They have different football teams and baseball teams, ergo different metro areas. Those are the rules, I didn't make the rules.
BWI is the second closest airport to people in large sections of DC, being only a 45 minute drive from
NW DC.
Also, the NY metro area has multiple football, baseball, hockey, and soccer teams in an area that is definitely one CSA
Wow, Milan leaves and this place goes to heck - missed mailbags, reruns, etc. Yale apparently is the only thing holding American civilization together!
It's the magic touch of that gentlemanly club life!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX-k66VrmQo
I require a community big enough to support an active courthouse and a critical mass of 3.5 pickleball players.
3.5 is a skill level
I *was* wondering what one does with half a pickleball player!
Interesting to reflect on the reasons that cities do not grow more. In DC some is just aesthetic sensibilities of current residents, some the perceived hyperlocal externalities faced by local residents (congestion of street parking, local street traffic, crime(?)), but it really is just NIMBY, no one that I know of opposes the growth in population of DC per se. Which makes the actual effectiveness of anti growth pretty curious.
For subscribers, if you want to see the original comments from when this was posted the first time, they are at: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-past-and-future-of-the-city
Typically yes. In most jurisdictions in the US, high earners pay significantly more taxes than their share of the population. If you push them out, you have to raise taxes on the remaining population to make up the loss.
What possible levers could we pull to affect this one way or the other? Where would a visit from Matt be maximally effective?
I share this position and I'd be curious to hear the push back to it. Perhaps letting the high housing prices of some cities drive people out is actually the correct way to bring those prices down? I remember when Amazon didn't get the tax breaks it wanted to set up its next headquarters in Queens there were people lamenting the fact that New York had sacrificed a lot of good paying jobs. My thought at the time was "why do we want to pack those jobs and people into New York? Wouldn't it be better to spread them around?
>I share this position and I'd be curious to hear the push back to it.<
In a purely Yglesian system ("if it's safe, you can build as much housing as you want on your property"), the market would largely decide this issue. "We" (society? the government?) wouldn't need to build twenty new cities. Existing cities/metros would be allowed to grow as large as they need to, in response to demand. Perhaps indeed a bunch of micropolitan areas would expand into the 2-3 million range. Or perhaps NYC, LA and others would grow much larger. Or perhaps some combination of these.
One specific pushback against the idea of building/establishing a large number of new mid-sized cities is: energy efficiency tends to increase along with size. Metro NYC, I'm pretty sure, is greener than Kansas City. Also, from a sheer resource-use basis, it's probably desirable to see a certain amount of concentrated growth, because not as many services or facilities (such as high capacity airports) need to be duplicated. Moreover, the establishment of lots of new metros would likely eat up more countryside and farmland than the expansion of existing large metros, because the latter (assuming YIMBY policies) is likely to be accompanied by greater density. IOW Greater New York or LA or DC or Chicago could probably see *some* expansion deeper into the surrounding territory, but realistically any large increase in population moving forward would undoubtedly require greater density. If you look at a population density map of the US, you'll note we manage to cram the bulk of the population into a relatively modest share of our total territory, thereby leaving much of America fairly empty. I think think that's a good thing, and I suspect many wild animals agree.