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What was grim for Cincy?

Very interesting.  Thanks for posting, Jeffery.

Cincinnati looks good here but it is a slow growth metro compared to Cols and Indy.  The core city is also showing heavy household loss for the 2000-2008 time frame..over 10% decline, if I recall the number right (its buried in the .pdf report)

 

Again, Akron seems to be the model for smaller industrial cities with less of a central place function to transition to maybe a more sustainable economy?

 

 

^Not really slow growth. Cincinnati is larger so the percentage would always be less. Slower would be the actual name of it.

I've started reading the report. I think it is good for looking in interesting ways at the peer cities question we've knocked around a few times.

I was wondering when people were going to start discussing this.  The report is so massive that digesting it will take some time.

 

The killer stat in my view (and I'll admit to taking this from a news report, not the Brookings data directly) is that Cleveland's foreign born population percentage actually declined from 2000-2008.  Wow and double Wow.

 

I actually did a similar sorting of metros into typologies. But rather than using three criteria, I used population only.  However, my rankings and Brookings match extremely well.  The only difference is that I called Grand Rapids "Stable" (equivalent to Brookings Skilled Anchor - Brookings had them as Industrial Core) and Akron (the reverse - I listed as Struggling, and Brookings as Skilled Anchor). 

 

http://www.newgeography.com/content/00811-the-successful-stable-and-struggling-midwest-cities

 

Louisville gets dinged because of its low educational attainment. Its economic performance in my view is consistent with regional Skilled Anchor economies.

 

Columbus ranked 9th in the nation in increase in Latino percentage and in increase in Asian percentage, albeit from a low base.

 

I'm planning a post on this for Sunday, so I'll plan on posting a link when it is done. I clipped a few of their more interesting graphics.

 

Ok, I pulled the data on Cleveland. Only the city proper lost foreign born population, down 12%.  The region added, but not much. Brookings ranked them 95 out of 100 on this metric

I don't understand putting Akron in a separate category from Cleveland, or even making it a separate entry.

Brookings report is based on standard MSA definitions, and Akron is defined as its own MSA by the US government.

 

That's convenient enough, but Brookings is claiming that two different classes of economy exist within 30 miles of each other and share suburbs.  I find this unlikely. 

Brookings report is based on standard MSA definitions, and Akron is defined as its own MSA by the US government.

 

Brookings report is based on standard MSA definitions, and Akron is defined as its own MSA by the US government.

 

I was about to say, don't bring up the issue of Cleveland & Akron being one metro area.  The government has classified these two metro areas (39 miles downtown to downtown) with overlapping suburbs as two different MSA's, and we all know that the government is ALWAYS right, and their decisions should never be questioned.

From these numbers, Columbus has a higher percentage of foreign born residents than Cleveland, though Cleveland doesn't seem to be doing TOO bad on this list (though the city could undoubtedly be doing better).

Here's a Cleveland.com article from last week emphasizing the report's observation that families with children are leaving the City of Cleveland at a particularly high rate: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/05/new_study_reveals_that_family.html

 

I haven't read the report yet, but does anyone see any real value to Brookings' typologies?  I know humans have a need to label, but typologies are often just enablers of oversimplification of complex issues, IMHO.  I suppose they're useful for telling the national story once they're defined, but that pretty much highlights what's wrong with Brookings: the breadth of their analysis often seems to come at the expense of depth.

It isn't surprising to me to see the loss of families in the city.  Cleveland was ground zero for the foreclosure crisis before the country caught on to what was really going on.  I would assume that a high percentage of acutal home owners, no matter where they fit in the socioeconomic make-up of the city, were families which were affected the most.  The city at one point had 14,000 vacant and abandoned structures- which the city targeted demolished much of (that number is down to around 7,000 I think).  That's a lot of potential families lost from the city due to the foreclosure crisis.

 

In my opinion, the foreclosure crisis also accounts for the "spread of poverty" as mentioned in other threads.  It wasn't just the City of Cleveland which was affected, but also the inner-ring and now outer ring suburbs.  As an example, Euclid's housing prices plummeted during the last 5 years, with the highest amount of foreclosures in the county outside of Slavic Village.  This thereby accelerating white flight (some will call it middle-class flight, but "it is what it is").  Black families looking for better neighborhoods who formerly lived in the city have been moving into Euclid in droves.  Euclid during the 2000 census had a black population of around 30%- I would not be surprised to see a DRASTIC change in that percentage when the next census tallys are released.

I know humans have a need to label, but typologies are often just enablers of oversimplification of complex issues, IMHO. I suppose they're useful for telling the national story once they're defined, but that pretty much highlights what's wrong with Brookings: the breadth of their analysis often seems to come at the expense of depth.

 

Agreed.  To me this has about the same value as a Forbes list.

 

 

That's convenient enough, but Brookings is claiming that two different classes of economy exist within 30 miles of each other and share suburbs.  I find this unlikely. 

 

I think the northern Summit County suburbs have ties as close or closer to Cleveland than Akron even, yet they're in Akron's MSA.  I understand (sort of) why the Census Bureau does it like that, but for exercises like the one that Brookings has undertaken here, it doesn't make sense to look at them as separate areas.  CSAs would most certainly work better for Northeast Ohio.  But on the flip side of the coin, I don't think CSAs would work well for the much larger metropolitan areas where there truly may be multiple classes of economies (thinking about NYC area or Southern California).  So if they were going to use CSAs and MSAs concurrently in their study, I guess they'd have to make a subjective call about which metro areas should use CSA and which should use MSA.  :wink2:

I know humans have a need to label, but typologies are often just enablers of oversimplification of complex issues, IMHO. I suppose they're useful for telling the national story once they're defined, but that pretty much highlights what's wrong with Brookings: the breadth of their analysis often seems to come at the expense of depth.

 

Agreed. To me this has about the same value as a Forbes list.

 

 

 

In fairness, from what I've seen, this report isn't going to far to make valuations about the data--they've simply collected it and presented it.  I don't see a huge problem with the way they've classified the cities, and I do appreciate them at least abstaining from referring to Cleveland and similar cities as the "Rust Belt."

They came awfully close to calling us the "rust belt," even if they didn't use that term.  How else is one to interpret their "industrial core" category?  They put Cleveland in the same boat as Detroit and Youngstown, neither of which contains anything similar to Ohio City or West Park, and neither of which has a mostly-occupied downtown like Cleveland does.  Though they each feature several hospitals and a small state university campus, so does Cleveland... but neither Detroit nor Youngstown contains any approximation of the Cleveland Clinic or Case Western Reserve University.  In more ways than one, Cleveland should have been grouped with Akron.

^I would agree, as even our employment shows that the region (and the city) has finally transferred from manufacturing based to medical.  Cleveland has FINALLY turned a corner, though the rest of the world doesn't notice as of yet.

Cleveland has FINALLY turned a corner, though the rest of the world doesn't notice as of yet.

 

It doesn't help that "respected institutions" spread bad info about us unabated.

 

[EDIT:  This was particulary harsh.  Who's that eatin that nasty food?  Nasty me!]

Go read the d@mn report. It is a fantastic collection of data points. The questions about NEOhio is not even a footnote. If you don't like Akron tweaking the data about Cleveland, take it to the feds.

Brookings is one of the best students about American urban areas.

I'll give it a look.  And I'm sure they have great data points, but we're talking about the typology listed above.  Does the full report disown or contradict this typology in some way?  I've provided concrete reasons why I believe Cleveland was detrimentally mislabeled, and there are several threads here discussing the effect this type of thing has on our community.  I don't care who they are.  And they don't appear to care what Cleveland is.  After reading the report, if I find that I'm off base here, I'll gladly admit it. 

^I don't think Cleveland was mislabeled (at least as they're defined), I just think the labels are a distraction that contributes to sloppy thinking and exaggerates differences and hides commonalities between cities.  To state the obvious, cities are complex ecosystems with many significant trends occurring simultaneously- you simply can't collapse all these things into a clean set of numbers and crank out a single score or classification that means anything useful.

 

Over the years I've come not to think too much of Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program.  It's great at sifting through public data in a systematic way, but the analysis always seems pretty thin or vague and doesn't contain a whole lot of insight, IMHO.  Plenty of questionable methodology in some of their reports too.  They're like a room full of bored grad students with a huge graphics and PR budget.  Maybe I'm expecting too much.  I suppose the fact that their work often reports data for so many places helps focus national policymakers on certain issues, which is good.

As the thread parent I request the mods delete this thread.

 

^Jeffrey, just so there's no confusion, I definitely didn't mean to criticize this thread at all- I think the data and your review of it is definitely interesting and I was happy you posted about it.

Was it something I said?

 

I obviously found this interesting, and similarly appreciated Jeffrey's review of the categories.  I'm still planning on reading the full report this weekend.

 

EDIT:

 

OK I've read the d@mn intro section, which is where most of the typography info seems to appear.  Jeffrey's summation was spot on, and the authors did go out of their way to be even handed.  My criticism was overly harsh.  But aside from the tone, my points stand unchanged.  StrapHanger's more moderate take really nailed it.  Thin and vague, little insight.

 

An example:  "Pittsburgh and St. Louis still specialize in non-auto-related manufacturing sectors that remained relatively steady over the 2000s.  These characteristics have kept Skilled Anchors demographically more vibrant than other parts of the North..."  I'm not sure where they're getting this, and there's no citation to explain it.  What sort of manufacturing do they mean?  Now that would be useful to know.  St. Louis has a huge automotive sector, I know because I've dealt with it. 

 

I guess the best way I can put it is that the report is too ambitious.  It's making points supported by missing data and it's painting in some really broad strokes.  I like a lot of what it's saying, but most of it rehashes stuff we've been talking about here for years.  I shall read on, and maybe the thread stays open long enough for me to eat crow. 

Go read the d@mn report.

 

lol