How the Financial Crisis May Not Be So Bad for New York
We just got around to reading the cover story of the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly called How the Crash Will Reshape America. One of the article’s central points is that while hubs of intellectual and creative capital like New York will surely suffer in the economic crisis, they will suffer a lot less…
We just got around to reading the cover story of the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly called How the Crash Will Reshape America. One of the article’s central points is that while hubs of intellectual and creative capital like New York will surely suffer in the economic crisis, they will suffer a lot less than second-tier cities, the suburbs or industrial areas and therefore benefit on a relative basis. While there has been much hand-wringing about New York’s reliance upon the finance industry, many other smaller cities, it turns out, are much more reliant: Hartford, Des Moines and Charlotte, to name a few. Rather, New York is an incredibly diverse place which should be well-positioned to reinvent itself faster and more efficiently than other places:
New York is much, much more than a financial center…It is home to a diverse and innovative economy built around a broad range of creative industries, from media to design to arts and entertainment. It is home to high-tech companies like Bloomberg, and boasts a thriving Google outpost in its Chelsea neighborhood… New York is more of a mecca for fashion designers, musicians, film directors, artists, and—yes—psychiatrists than for financial professionals…The financial crisis may ultimately help New York by reenergizing its creative economy…Place still matters in the modern economy—and the competitive advantage of the world’s most successful city-regions seems to be growing, not shrinking…Talent-rich ecosystems are not easy to replicate, and to realize their full economic value, talented and ambitious people increasingly need to live within them…Economic crises tend to reinforce and accelerate the underlying, long-term trends within an economy [like the map of per capita patent creation above]… In this case, the economy is shifting away from manufacturing and toward idea-driven creative industries—and that, too, favors America’s talent-rich, fast-metabolizing places.
Sounds good so far, right? Here’s how the trends will play out on the American landscape, according to the author Richard Florida:
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. Serendipitously, it will be a landscape suited to a world in which petroleum is no longer cheap by any measure. 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.
Sounds like we’re sitting pretty, huh?
How the Crash Will Reshape America [The Atlantic]
I optimistically think we have only just begun to invent and create. It’s not only about consumer goods, or ways to make our digitally enhanced lives better. Perhaps now that we have hit a wall in regards to bigger and better toys, many of the truly inventive and creative will go in other directions, inventing things and ways to feed people, or communicate in rural areas, or exchange information and technology faster and cheaper to far flung parts of the world. We need writers of non-fiction and fiction to educate us, we need educators, period, and we need to take a good look at our place on the planet and work towards having a liveable planet for the future. I’m not just talking about touchy-feely eco-products, but innovations in, well, everything.
There is so much to do. New York will always be a mecca for this, and it will need the thinkers, the dreamers and the doers, and those that support them.
Rob – no one is saying that your lack of intellectual curiosity about the City and the world around you and how it works means you have to leave town. We are saying that it means that we don’t really value your uninformed opinions very much, and maybe you should comment a little less about things you clearly know nothing about.
most of my friends hate yankees and are staying in the south.
11217 knows, all his friends from atlanta to park slope last week!
*r*
“Many cities such as Orlando, Atlanta are becoming a LOT more urban than they were 10 years ago”
Doesn’t sound like you’ve been to Atlanta recently.
It is a sprawling, gridlocked metropolis where everyone has 2-3 cars and the downtown is still quite scary and almost deserted after 7pm.
“omg 11217 is there EVER a thread that you dont talk about youre “friends”?!? my friends this my friends that everyone wants to move to nyc. especially park slope. the center of the free-thinking world. it’s getting pretty old.”
ditto, wannabe at its finest. Newbie nyc transplant talking smack…
I think this article frankly overstates the importance of it’s point a LOT.
Firstly, all these creative people already live in NYC if they are creative enough to get a good job. It’s not like there are tons of artists out there in Des Moines just waiting for rent to drop 20% to move to nyc.
Secondly, yes, the oil price issue will force people to live more urbanly, however, nyc does not corner the market on that. It’s true it has the biggest and ‘best’ public transport in the nation yes (if you don’t mind waiting in dank disgusting hot stations to get on disgusting packed trains), but many other cities have been getting increasingly urban and working on public transportation for years now and will probably accelerate this with the coming stimulus package, transport that will be new, clean, nicer.
New York may always be the place for the ‘elite’, but this is not many people and there is no reason to think the % will grow. Most people still care more about living in nice weather and affordably, able to have a car, etc.
Many cities such as Orlando, Atlanta are becoming a LOT more urban than they were 10 years ago with many new developments and walkable live/work neighborhoods, at 1/3 (or less?) the price of NYC. Those are the places I expect to benefit from this trend, not NYC.
Sorry. Yes if NYC prices drop 50% to Orlando/Atlanta levels okay, maybe so, but that isn’t exactly ‘good’ for you guys..
For example, in Orlando, yes your salary is less, maybe 50%, but for that you can get a beautiful huge 2 BR condo in the best building in the city, in the center of the best and most beautiful urban district of town, one of the most in the country frankly, overlooking a park and lake for $400,000, and pay no income taxes! And most people prefer the weather to NYC, though I do not.
And prices are dropping there too. This country is just too big, you can’t expect everyone to just move to NYC, no matter how much they want to.
Flying home to take care of your parents is still going to get more and more expensive as they get older and sicker, for example. Haven’t seen any solar plane proposals yet.
Also, oil prices are still hitting new lows and are not likely to be a real shock again for many more years.
I’d rather hear about people’s friends than peacocks, horses and hello kitty.
hmmm…author still thinks it’s only about the banks and their employees? How quaint…