Mountain Megas

An interesting new report has been released this weekend by Brookings called Mountain Megas (you can read the Deseret News article about the report here). America’s Intermountain West is experiencing some of the highest rates of population growth and economic/demographic change in the country. The region—consisting of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah—has grown nearly three times faster than the United States as a whole over the past two decades. The entire state of Utah has been impacted by this incredible growth, from Cache County to Washington County. The report “describes and assesses the new supersized reality of the Intermountain West.”

The region [Intermountain West] is growing up, flexing its muscles, and distancing itself from California, which historically has had an outsized impact on the West’s development.

The lead author for this report is Dr. Robert Lang, a Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution and co-Director of the Virginia Tech Metropolitan Institute. Dr. Lang spoke at a ULCT sponsored forum last April, his presentation was followed up by an interesting panel discussion including Soren Simonson (Salt Lake City), Rick Horst (South Jordan), and Mike Coulam (Sandy City).

Not everything is rosy for the Megapolitan regions however. Dr. Lang points out that local leaders have enormous pressure to maintain and keep up with infrastructure demands. This highlights the point that we have talked about before…population growth creates a lot positives, but also creates a lot of costs to local government. Dr. Lang advocates a partnership between federal, state, and municipal officials to address this situation.  With regard to the infrastructure pressure Dr Lang says:

We think the country is so deteriorating in terms of quality of its infrastructure — that they’re so behind — that there will be a moment of shock when the country understands this under-investment will jeopardize its economic development. You would hope that there would be enough at stake that the federal government would gain a recognition of this and realize that this pattern that we’re on is at the nation’s peril.

Robert Lang Forum – April 17th, 2008

Mountain Megas — Executive Summary

Mountain Megas — Wasatch Front Profile

 

Boomburbs Forum

Did you know that Mesa, Arizona is now larger than Miami or St. Louis? Or another suburb of Phoenix, Peoria, is now larger than Peoria IL? The population growth in America throughout the last few decades has largely occurred in the suburbs, or the “Boomburbs” according to Dr. Robert Lang.  Lang was in Salt Lake City yesterday to present his research regarding the trend of boomburbs across the nation and the population growth of the west. Recently Lang’s book Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidential Citieswas published by Brookings (I blogged about the book a year ago: here).  Lang’s afternoon lecture at the U of U and evening forum at the SLC Library raised a number of important questions related to our growth here in Utah. A few issues were especially relevant:

• How does a city transition from it’s “cowboy” or country heritage to an urbanized environment? Meaning if we are going to add 1 million more residents to the Wasatch Front (by 2060 Salt Lake County is projected to be over 2 million in population) how will this increased density reshape our notion of community in the suburbs? We are beginning to see this already with sleepy suburban communities now growing to over 100,000 in population.
• How can cities incentivize significant economic development? How important is transportation infrastructure? Or a walkable space that residents enjoy? These are few issues addressed by Lang.

In addition to the presentation from Dr. Lang the evening forum also included the perspective of three panelists: Soren Simonson (Salt Lake City councilman), Rick Horst (South Jordan city manager) and Mike Coulam (Sandy City community development director). These three officials all contributed to an interesting discussion. Thanks again to Dr. Lang and our panelists (and KCPW for broadcasting the forum).

You can listen to the KCPW podcast here: Dr. Robert Lang Forum

 

The causes of suburban growth

What has spurred the incredible growth in American suburbs over the last few decades? A Fannie Mae Foundation commissioned survey (of urban scholars) identified these top five contributing factors:

1. The 1956 Interstate Highway Act and the dominance of the automobile
2. Federal Housing Administration mortgage financing and subdivision regulation
3. Deindustrialization of central cities
4. Urban renewal: downtown redevelopment and public housing projects (1949 Housing Act)
5. Levittown (the mass-produced suburban tract house)

You can read the full paper here: The American Metropolis at Century’s End

I bring this topic up in light of a current debate on the Economist’s Free Exchange blog. Monday there was an interesting post titled the Density of Nations this post argued: America systematically starved and disassembled its public transportation and rail infrastructure and spent rather extravagantly on highways, both within and between cities. While Europeans also increased their spending on roadways, they nonetheless maintained strong national commitments to rail and public transit. Megan McArdle of the Atlantic disagrees with some of this reasoning, you can read here opinion here.

So what is the answer? Why are European cities more dense? I’m inclined to think that it has more to the American obsession with the status of a large home, a large yard, and a two car garage–which is usually pursued with suburban property.

 

St. George Fastest Growing Metro Area

Many of you maybe saw the news last week from the U.S. Census Bureau announcing St. George City as the fastest growing metro area in the nation. St. George area great by 39.8% between 2000 and 2006, this rate is almost 9% higher than the second metro area (Greeley Colorado at 31%). St. George is not the only Utah metro area to make this list…Provo-Orem metro area grew by 26% since 2000, ranking them 6th nationally. You can read and watch the KSL news story here or read the Census Bureau press release here.

On another note I’m looking forward to spending this coming week in the fastest growing metro area in nation for our 2007 Midyear Conference.

 

2007 Economic Report to the Governor

The Council of Economic Advisors to Governor Huntsman recently released the 2007 Economic Report to the Governor. We all know the economy in Utah has been good in 2006…but just how good? This report provides important data and details regarding demographic changes, tourism, jobs and wages, and overall growth in Utah. If you don’t have time to read the full 226 page report I at least recommend a review of the 4 page Executive Summary. Here are a few highlights.

• 5.2% — job growth in 2006 (compared to 1.4% nationally)
• 2.7% — population growth (67,714 new residents = a city the size of St. George)
• 18.1% — construction job growth led all other sectors in 2006
• 5.4% — non agricultural wages increase exceeded inflation for the 3rd consecutive year
• 5.4 million residents are expected to live in Utah by 2050…doubling our population in the next 44 years.

 

300 Million Americans — 2.42 Million Utahns

America reached a milestone at the end of October, 300 million Americans. TIME magazine provided a recent breakdown of America “by the numbers.” Their data provided some interesting descriptions on who we are today as Americans. For example FOR EVERY 1000 AMERICANS…

• 568 live in the state they were born
• 455 are employed
• 341 drive to work alone
• 173 speak a language other than English at home
• 126 live in poverty
• 122 are 65 and older
• 1 are in kindergarten

But what about here in Utah? FOR EVERY 1000 UTAHNS…

• 900 are white
• 630 were born in Utah
• 140 speak a language other than English at home
• 100 live in poverty
• 80 are over the age of 65
• 2 are in kindergarten