Jeffery

^ Yes they are. I added the Hamilton/Middletown MSA (Butler County) to the Cincinnati numbers

This is being considered in Dayton, too. But I like that concept of Chateau Ho. They can market it as "inner city wine for inner city people" or somthing like that.

I posted some graphs on employment for Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati over at the Recession thread. Here is maybe another way to take an economic pulse. Housing permits for single and multi-family units by metro area. The source is the Texas A&M Real Estate Center The aggies have annual permit records going back to 1980, so a good 28 years of data to trace things. So you can get a long term look at one measure of a local economy. Graphing out the 3-Cs and laying in the three recessions of the era (too early for the current one)…the “Double Dip Recession” of the early 1980s, the “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” recession of 1990 that got Clinton elected, and the 9-11 recession, or dot-com bust, of 2001. “Black Monday” stock market bust of 1987 is also shown (maybe it shouldn’t have been). Single Family Permits The later 1980s seem to be pretty good for housing in all three metros, but maybe so more for Cincinnati. The late Robert Bartley of the WSJ editorial page called this era the Seven Fat Years (after the Bible passage), and they seemed to be for awhile in urban Ohio, especially Cincy, spiking around the time of the 1987 stock market crash. Cincinnati was considered a top sprawl place in the US by the Sierra Club during the sprawl debate of the late 1990s, and one can see this was a good era for single family permits (with a few hiccups).. Alan Greenspan referred to the 1990s boom as “Irrational Exuberance”, and you can really see this with Columbus. It seems that the 1990s single family growth trend for the 3-Cs blew right by the 9-11 recession before crashing…really crashing…later in the decade. I think what’s interesting is how deep that crash was. Permitting activity has crashed to the lows of the double dip recession of the early 2000s by 2008. This is really worth remarking on as it wiped out any upward trends…or even low slope plateaus (like for Cleveland) for the past 20-30 years. Multi-Family Permits Permit activity was considerably more spiky, especially for Columbus, with two big spikes corresponding to peak years of the 1980s & 1990s expansions. I guess an interesting line here is for Cleveland, basically a slow decline and dwindling of permit activity after the 1980s expansion. None of these metros had strong numbers for multi-family permits in the 2000s. Anyway, for what its worth. I guess you all can draw additional conclusions for these graphs. I am not that familiar with Columbus and have nearly no familiarity with Cleveland, so maybe others have more knowledge of what might be behind the numbers.

It looks like a state capital

Remembering that thread that’s downforum somewhere about the Germans reconstructing their old royal palaces I was reminded of this map that is in an old German pedagogical atlas (I have two of these, one from the 1950s, the other from the 1970s). This is a before and after of Hannover, how the center city was rebuilt after the war. Using Google images and the birds eye feature in Live Search together with the map here’s a thread on how German cities are really not that old due to postwar reconstruction, but also how the reconstruction wasn’t a straightforward replacement or reproduction of what was there before. For comparison purposes Hannover is about 500,000 and the metro area is 1.1 million, so compare that with Ohio cities. Historically it used to be the capital of the Kingdom of Hannover until the 1860s, but really boomed during the “Grunderzeit” (1870s) and the ”Kaiserzeit” or “Second Reich” (1871-1918),. Here is the map. Left is the wartime destruction in gray (orange spots are the few mostly undamaged buildings) and right is the postwar reconstruction, with the map emphasizing “Wide Streets” and “Breakthroughs” (meaning streets were widened and extended to make the city more friendly to automobiles). “Parkplatz” are parking lots. Another feature is that the streetcar system was rationalized during the reconstruction. We’ll look a bit closer at the areas around the Anzieger building and the Aegidienkirch. And this is the neighborhood around the Aegidienkirch before reconstruction. This was part of the pre-modern core. The old core and surrounding areas (about four square miles) was flattened or burned out in just one air raid in 1943. A portion of this area was never rebuilt but reserved for a parking lot. The same area with postwar reconstruction (and perhaps some replacements after reconstruction, too; things from the 1950s replaced with more recent construction). The church ruin was retained as a war memorial The parking area is labeled. As you can see the postwar reconstruction sort of looks old but really isn’t. As an example this block just to the north/northwest of the church. The tile gabled roofs with dormers gives a sort of period look, but one can tell by the windows and balconies that this is new construction. This was reconstructed in the heyday of modernism and functional zoning. But note that’s not what’s done here. Instead of separating out shopping and housing its mixed; ground floor retail and apartments on the upper floors. And, as you can see in the previous pix offices are mixed in, too (and across the street on this pix) This next pix is not that Aegidienkirch neighborhood., but a good representative example from Hannover of postwar streetscapes in reconstructed German cities. Lower pix is a street scene in the pre-modern core. Selected parts of this area was reconstructed as reproduction architecture, copying what was there before. Upper pix is a street leading to the main train station. The area was probably platted after the 1870s, and the original construction would have been late 19th/early 20th century. Most German cities are really not that “old”, expanding around the same time US Midwest cities did….but later than Cincy or St Louis. One can, again, see the modernist design of the replacement buildings. More reconstruction pix. Don’t know who the guys are in the lower pic, but they are admiring the new modern Hannover. In the background, a restored landmark of some sort and postwar reconstruction…pretty typical German streetscape. Hannover has one of the few pre-war high rises in Germany. This is the Anzieger Building. It was built for a newspaper publisher. Believe it or not the Germans were experimenting with these baby skyscrapers before the war. This one was done up in a sort of brick-expressionist style and was topped by an observatory. Before and after pix. The building to the right survived the war, too, but the one to the left did not and was replaced with a modern postwar thing. This building has a bit of media history as it was the first HQ for the postwar German newsweekly Der Spiegel before the mag relocated to Hamburg. The Anzieger Building in context. One can see how the streets here have been widened and made more traffic-friendly and the surrounding replacement buildings are more modern looking than around the Aegidienkirch. Plenty of Free Parking (well, probably not really) It’s interesting to see this sort of humanized commie-block style going on here, mix of flat and sloped roofs, and the widened street heading off to the upper left from the traffic circle and high-rise. Nearly all of this area was wiped out during that air raid and was reconstructed. Finally, Christmas season shopping somewhere in Hannover. Vertical signs are sort of a feature of German commercial design of the Wirschaftswunder (“economic miracle”) era of 1950s/60s. One can see two department store chains here..Kaufhof and Karstadt. Maybe an example of a reconstructed shopping street. Anyway, not Urban Ohio, and not a historical landmark place, but maybe an interesting take on how they didn’t follow modern orthodoxy during the “wiederafubau” (reconstruction), around the same time we in the US were, via urban renewal.

So they are going to tear down even more? Way to go O-hio

If I recall right there was also journalistic talk of 1990s "bubble"...the so-called the dot-com bubble, what Alan Greenspan called "irrational exuberance". However the numbers show this was an era of increasing jobs and low unemployment for Cleveland and Cincinnati...places not usually associated with IT concentrations. I know unemployment in the Dayton MSA, too, fell to 4% during this era. So that 1990s prospertity went well beyond the IT industry and metros with IT concentrations. Im not sure this was really that well reported in the national media.

A quick look at how the 3-Cs entered the recession by using BLS private sector employment numbers. This is different than the unemployment rate, but maybe more interesting as it purports to count jobs in metropolitan economies. Whats’ looked at is monthly employment. Since Columbus is fairly low compared to the Cleveland and Columbus, breaking out the two big metros….(and showing the quarters, so you can focus in on trends a bit) …and Columbus. The weak 2008 and big crash at the end of the year is noticeable. We would have really noticed this in the first and for sure the second quarter of 2008, by the unemployment numbers The Past Decade Now lets look at mid-term trends, starting with the last two good years of the 1990s boom. This is an average of the monthly employment numbers. So its not the spike or the low for any given year, just the average. The 3Cs And looking at the big two Cs. What’s notable is how brutal the “9-11 Recession” was for Cleveland. In fact the Cleveland metro never recovered, staying at an employment plateau and weakening earlier than Cincy and Columbus. In this Cleveland had a similar pattern as the Dayton MSA Urban Ohio came online in 2004, I think, so we never talked about what was going on in that early 2000s period. And here’s Columbus. Sort of similar to Cincinnati. This is just private sector, but running the numbers for the total employment there isn’t much change in the trends here. The BLS has numbers going back into the early 1990s for employment and you don’t want to see those as it was just a steady increase for all these cities, year after year. Those were good times for urban Ohio.

"I was just walking through Murray Hill which is a subdivided portion of Lincoln Village. The architecture is pretty unique and futuristic for suburban homes. The sewer caps say 1958 so I'm assuming it was developed around that time. It's a very clean, well kept neighborhood too. It was featured in Life magazine in the '60s as being a 'wave of the future' neighborhood." I got to check this out. Directions?

Columbus should target some of those neighborhoods and create a buzz. The midwest is behind on this trend, but I think the demographics and stock of 1950's and 60's architecture would make it a perfect place for a Mid-Century belt around the city. This is also the Dayton areas hidden secret. But isnt that retro trend over now?

Thanks, and I corrected the thread header to add those veterans benefits graphs. Looks we are at over $100M in benefits now, due to increases in the 2000s. Sort of an appopriate post since we are getting near Memorial Day.

In the previous post we saw this chart showing the defense payroll for the Dayton MSA But how does this map out? Unfortunately there is no good way of mapping defense-related government workers (or the military). But the census thematic map feature permits us to do this for all government workers. The assumption is that the geography shown will also show civilian defense workers income concentration due to the fairly large workforce here For the Dayton vicinity, a concentration quickly becomes visible between Xenia, Dayton, and Springfield (locations in red for reference only) And here’s a close up of Governmentland, with some percentages for the highest concentrations (and the Wright-Patterson base tracts outlined in red…for base housing). In some places (like the 31.7% tract just west of the base) this represents an overlap between local and federal government workers as this tract is a favored neighborhood for city workers who want to avoid the city school district. But its quite evident Greene County and southwest Clark County have remarkable concentrations of government workers, over 20% per tract in most cases. Yet, I surmise that a portion of the Professional, Scientific and Technical sector is subsidized by defense procurements, working for defense contractors. And here is a graph showing the increase in PS&T employment in Greene County, for establishments based in Greene County . ,,,and what’s noticeable is there is a acceleration in growth in the 2000s compared to the low slope from, say, 1996-2001. Perhaps more tech stuff related to the War on Terror? Mapping the “Nerd Belt”, the higher concentrations of private sector PS&T employment, the base, and the cluster of office parks surrounding it…our own little version of Aerospace Alley or Northern Virginia. . Beavercreek and Sugarcreek Township are the big concentrations by %. Incidentally tract 2104, at 10.46%, has the largest absolute number at 460 techies. Exurban Bath Township and Bourgeois Bohemian Yellow Springs round out the picture. How does this look for income? For near term numbers one can indirectly measure this by using the Brooking Earned Income Tax Credit (or EITC) database, which counts numbers of returns by grouping of adjusted gross income. For Greene County, the trends from 2000-2006 for the top five categories (starting at a notional living wage income of $50K/year) Greene County is becoming an increasingly affluent place. Perhaps due to defense spending and a spinoff technical/professional sector? And a closer look at Beavercreek, an already prosperous place becomes more so during the early and mid 2000s The ultimate result was the Defense Edge City out along I-675, which is intensifying due to spec building in anticipation of the relocations due to BRAC. Veterans Benefits This is not as big an economic player as I expected before I ran the numbers. Veterans have their own geography, and since there are more of them concentrations are spread out more. But it is noticeable that there is an overlap with government workers. One can say that the overlap in geography between vets, government workers, and techies is the Defense Welfare State in its own place. And a close up with percentages. Again we have to include southern Clark County in this mix, along with Huber Heights and Riverside as notable concentrations. One could gin up a second map on top of this one showing the various VFW and Legion halls in the area. The highest concentration is, of course, the 44% at the VA, the old National Soldiers Home Veterans benefits is about half in one program, compensation to veterans for service-connected disability; combat wounds and other injury while in uniform. This cost began to move up to a higher level at the tail end of the Clinton era and continued at a higher rate during the war on terror, really jumping in 2007. Opening up the "other" a bit one is mostly looking at three benefit programs “Veterans Dependency & Indemnity Compensation for Service-Connected Deaths” is the largest, followed by “Pensions for Veterans’ Surviving Spouses and Children” and “Pension for non-Service Connected Disability”. The first one saw a jump in 2007. The smaller other category includes things like vocational rehab, customization of cars and vehicles so disabled vets can drive them (“Automobiles and Adaptive Equipment”),housing modification for disabled vets, educational assistance, and, in the end, “Burial Expenses Allowance for Veterans” “Burial Expenses Allowances” amounted to $126K for 2006, if one wants to put a price on it.

Aside from smaller towns with large bases no metro area with as big a presence as Wright-Patterson. There are places with large military contractor presences, like Grumman on Long Island and Pratt and Whitney in the Hartford area. One place would be Rock Island with its Army arsenal and maybe Crane, Indiana (Bloomington/Beford), for the Navy.

Working with that Consolidated Federal Funds Report I realized I could actually measure the “Defense Welfare State” in Dayton. As in that Starship Troopers movie, “service guarantees citizenship” in the Defense Welfare State. In other words one has to a) be in the military or a veteran, b) be a civilian worker (which can mean being a veteran or retired military, or c) a defense contractor. to be a ‘citizen’ in the Defense Welfare State. And being a citizen one gets the benefits. Which are a living wage (and then some if one is a professional), retirement benefits, and medical care. And, for veterans, access to the VA medical system. And then there is that defense contractor community. Here is a measure of military related spending. The consolidated funds report “defense-related” category understates this so I did some adjustments to include veterans benefits and civilian retirement (this is an estimate of the defense-related retired civilian workforce figure, derived via a comparison with Toledo and Akron MSA). I call this additional “Defense +”. Numbers are for 2007 So , a 3 billion dollar input into the Dayton MSA for 2007. This is Darke, Greene, Miami, Montgomery, and Preble counties combined into one number. Slicing the Dayton MSA defense pie by grouping expenditures into various categories, payroll, retirement, procurement, veterans benefits, and a misc. category. One can see the significance of procurement, and retirements, too. This raises the issue on how much other non-defense pensions contribute to the local economy. And a time series. I was a bit leery of this as these numbers are not adjusted for inflation. But there is a noticeable pattern of growth during the Bush/War on Terror era and stagnation, with a end-of-term trough during the Clinton years. Taking a look at two defense-related programs that don’t fit well anywhere else. Impact Aid is aid to school districts with large numbers of children of military and civilian defense workers. AVFEA is apparently an education aid program for military members. One can see how AVFEA bumped up during the Clinton years, but really grew during the Bush era, A good example of how the GOP takes care of the military. Also included in the “other” category are grants for R&D. This number is a combination of two research grant programs, and there is a noticeable growth during the era of Mike Turner as congressman. Correlation does not equal causation, but it’s a darn good hint. Turner is an aggressive ear marker, and may have earmarked in these categories, hence their growth in the recent past. Another area where earmarks would play is “procurement”, which is goods and services. Beyond the obvious like supplies and construction, there are services like engineering, consulting, research, programming, and even some manufacturing. So this is one way that defense spending would indirectly influence employment and payroll in the private sector …one can see a phase shift from $1B as ceiling during the Clinton years to $1B as floor in regional defense procurement during the Bush/War on Terror era. For direct payments via payroll here is military + civilian, 1993-2007. Again, this is not adjusted for inflation, which makes the drop during the 1990s even more notable. These real declines overriding the masking effect of cost of living increases. Declines due to end-of-Cold War downsizing and the closure of the largish Defense Electronic Supply Center in Kettering. Fortunately these were prosperous times in the Dayton era, so the laid-off government and separated military were able to find work, maybe. Comparing 2006 civilian + military defense payroll with other sectors of the Dayton economy (from County Business Patterns), one can see how manufacturing and health care dominate, but also the defense payroll ranks at # 4, and a close #4 if the non-defense Federal payroll is combined. Yet, there is that $1.B + annual procurement flowing into the economy, too. If this is mostly for professional, scientific and technical services (PS&T), some portion of this PS&T sector is subsidized by defense spending. And since a large part of what happens in the local defense payroll are various types of technological things, one can “add” the defense payroll to PS&T to actually equal the manufacturing sector. Equal and perhaps surpass as mass-production unionized manufacturing, with its large payrolls, fades from the scene. An interesting concept is to think about this as a shift in the economic base. The economic base would be the sectors bringing money into the regional economy (and supporting sectors like FIRE, retail trade, construction, etc) . We are in a shift from manufacturing to this mix (or overlapping) PS&T and Defense sectors (assuming firms in the PS&T sector ares marketing outside the region, which they are). And these may indirectly subsidizing health care, too, since this is a service that is usually not “exported” . So more evidence of the changing character of the Dayton region. Next, a look at Veterans Benefits and some geography.

X nails it exactley, as does Daytonatti, about cyclists' attitudes.

The BLS press release is here More in-depth than the news article.

..this was the case with Dayton for employment. The metro area didnt really recover from the "9-11 Recession". @@@ On a lighter note. Recession may End in June May 6 (Bloomberg) -- A peak in the number of jobless claims signals the worst U.S. recession in half a century may end in June, according to Thomas Lam, an economist at United Overseas Bank Ltd. in Singapore. As the CHART OF THE DAY illustrates, the previous three recessions all ended within weeks after the number of applications for unemployment benefits started to wane. In his calculations, Lam smoothes the weekly claims figures using a proprietary weighted-average formula that more closely correlates with economic turning points. The graph shows the smoothed figures reached a high of 664,000 in the week ended April 4 (blue circle), indicating the economic slump will probably end by next month (dashed blue vertical line), he said. With 95 percent confidence, the model signals the recession will be over at the latest by the end of September, he said. ...

..this was the case with Dayton for employment. The metro area didnt really recover from the "9-11 Recession". @@@

And yeah I agree, 327 made a great point, as did that WSJ article on housing costs vis a vis income.

Its not just raw population. It is also new households. Households, or the rate of new household formation would be the driver for housing demand. It's possible to have a stagnant or even declining population and still see some increase in new households.

^' do the stats seem plausible to you? @@@@@ Comparing the OTR tract numbers over 20 years using the census and HUD/USPS numbers. The census numbers seem lower, or imply a lower increase in vacancies if you project a trend line, compared to the last number from HUD. …and total units. This is more plausible, showing a steady decrease in number of units, either due to demolitions or combining units, since we are mostly talking about apartments here?

I think that is Tract 10? Between Vine and Sycamore?

^ 9 and 16 are outlined in red.

How does this account for teardowns or this simply vacancy of a building still standing? Teardowns dont count as vacant from what I recall as the address goes away. Which leads to an interesting phenomenon of a tract made up of vacant lots and a few hold-outs would, technically, not have much vacant housing since what's left is ocuppied. I guess there is a continuum going on: Mostly occuipied--->inreasing vacancy---->40%-50% vacant and teardowns start---->mostly empty land & a few hold-outs. So I guess for these high-vacancy tracts they are in "stage 3". An alternative scenario is what happened in parts of West Dayton, where houses were torn down, but replaced with new houses. In some cases entire blocks of new houses. So addressess that appeared as vacant "disappeared" as the abandoned stuff was torn down....but then reappeared as the new units went up.

Here is an exceprt from todays Dayton Daily News article on the topic: The analysis also identified a census tract in northwest Dayton that was more than 40 percent vacant — making it the fourth emptiest neighborhood in Ohio and ninth in the nation. Of the 1,739 residential units in the neighborhood, 705 were vacant in the first quarter of 2009. Link to story....and dont forget to visit the always entertaining readers comments section.