Some of you know that I’m originally from Louisville, Kentucky. I grew up in rural Southern Indiana just across the river (inside the Louisville MSA), but also had family in the South End and spent a lot of time as a kid stomping around the neighborhoods near Iroquois Park. I love Louisville and it will always have a special place in my heart. I don’t write about it much these days because as the blog has progressed, I’ve been forced to trim back my reading of local news sites and Louisville web pages were on the cut list. So I’m not as plugged in to what is going on there these days such that I can competently opine upon them.
But researching my four part series on the bridge deal fiasco (see part one, part two, part three, and part four) turned my attention back to the city. So I wanted to do a three part mini-series on Louisville this week.
Today I want to talk about the unpleasant strategic situation Louisville finds itself in in many areas. These are the basic facts on the ground that need to be addressed. Any credible civic development strategy needs to take these into consideration. It’s never easy for local leaders to admit, even privately, when their community is in a tough spot. But in this case we need to highlight three key areas where the data clearly indicates a challenge for Louisville, namely: it is too small, it is in a poor geo-political location, and it has low educational attainment.
Louisville Is Too Small
The first thing we need to address is that the Louisville region is frankly too small to match its aspirations. I normally focus on metro areas in the greater Midwest with more than a million people. With only 1.3 million people, Louisville is by far the smallest. And it lacks the effective population booster enjoyed by some other cities.
Consider some other metro areas on the smaller end of the scale. Say Milwaukee at 1.56 million, Nashville at 1.59 million, and Indianapolis at 1.76 million. These don’t sound that much bigger than Louisville, but consider: Milwaukee is 21% bigger, Nashville is 24% bigger, and Indianapolis is 37% bigger. This makes a lot of difference in terms of supporting region-wide amenities, infrastructure, and initiatives. For example, it explains why Louisville doesn’t have a major league professional sports team while the other cities do.
What’s more, the effective population of those similar cities is sometimes even higher. For example, Indianapolis is ringed by small industrial cities like Muncie, Lafayette, Kokomo, Columbus, etc. that are independent metro areas, but still contribute to Indy in the form of things like Colts fans, airport customers, TV market size, etc. Milwaukee’s metro area population is artificially low because Racine County, with 200,000 people and which actually borders Milwaukee County, is considered its own metro area. Just upriver from Louisville, Cincinnati benefits from being so close to Dayton that in some cases they function as one large metro. Businesses and such that locate in Warren or Butler County can draw from both markets easily.
Louisville, by contrast, is surrounded by mostly very rural, sparsely populated counties. Thus it gets less boost from an extended trade area in terms of population heft. Though in fairness I suppose there is some labor market benefit from this as well. I have read that Louisville has among the highest percentages of exurban commuting. One reason may be that there are so few job opportunities in outlying areas.
Also, while Louisville has healthy population growth and is growing a bit faster than the US average, other similar regional cities are growing too, sometimes faster on a percentage basis and quantity basis. Louisville added 121,000 people in the last decade, But Indianapolis, Columbus, and Nashville all added more than 210,000 people. This means that not only are those cities bigger, but the gap in population grew by more than 100,000 for all of them. That’s the equivalent of a Clark County, Indiana.
Recognizing that you are smaller doesn’t mean you have to mentally classify yourself as some lower tier city. (Debates over tiers of cities seems to be a perennial favorite on message boards). But it does mean you should be careful about trying to play keeping up with the Joneses, especially when it comes to major regional capital investments. Because Louisville simply has fewer bodies to spread the cost across, it needs to be very careful where it chooses to invest. (More on that later). I might also suggest that while growth is good, strategies that are predicated on changing Louisville primarily through quantitative growth are unlikely to ever close the gap versus regional peers, so I would not even have that as a goal.
Louisville Is in a Poor Geo-Political Location
A maximally geo-politically advantaged city might be one that’s centrally located and a clear primate city for the state it is in. Think Minneapolis-St. Paul. It’s as centrally located as you’d want to be in a state like Minnesota. It is the state capital and home to the state’s flagship university. It contains over 50% of the state’s population and is dominant economically. You might say as downsides that it has a twin-city structure, is near a state border, and doesn’t have the Mayo Clinic, but these are minor in comparison to what it has.
But you don’t have to be this dominant to have advantages. Indianapolis, Columbus, and Nashville are centrally located and are state capitals. Columbus has the state’s flagship university and is in an urban-dominated state. Indianapolis is the only large city in the state and thus in a sense has no “domestic” competition.
Louisville by contrast has many geographic disadvantages. It is on the edge of the state of Kentucky, not in the center. It is on a state boundary that is also a major river crossing barrier in an era where water transport is no longer king. It isn’t the state capital. It doesn’t have the state’s flagship university. Kentucky is a rural dominated state that also has a number of severely depressed areas that require significant state investment. Lexington is clearly much smaller and is in a different size class, yet conceives of itself as an equal in some ways (if not superior, especially with the UK presence) and the state often treats it as such. In fact, Lexington can sometimes been seen as a more authentically Kentucky city with its horse farms and whatnot, while Louisville is seen with suspicion.
This puts Louisville in a very tough spot. All major cities are likely net tax exporters to their state, but Louisville sends a truly staggering amount to Frankfort that it never gets back. I think it’s something like $700 million per year out of Jefferson County. The state’s priorities are generally in the rural areas. While I wouldn’t call the state legislature hostile to Louisville exactly, it isn’t really focused on pro-urban policy. As is often the case in bi-state metros, Indiana and Kentucky love to engage in “economic development” by encouraging companies to move back and forth across the Ohio River. Discussion about building bridges across the river takes up lots of leadership time and attention that could be focused on other things.
To me this makes me think that Louisville ought to plan on having to go it alone with its own resources in a lot of areas and not count on too much help from others (though obviously it should look for it where it can). We are already seeing this in the bridges project, which it appears will be mostly toll financed by local motorists. But Louisville should work hard to try to close some of the gaps that are clearly addressable. For example, better cooperation between Louisville and Southern Indiana is critical. Also,Louisville should be working to build connections and goodwill throughout the rest of Kentucky where ever possible.
Louisville Is Poorly Educated
As I’ve noted many times, college degree attainment is overwhelmingly dominant in explaining urban success. Harvard economist Ed Glaeser crunched the numbers and found that their historic college degree attainment explained nearly everything about why some Frost Belt cities succeeded and others failed. CEOs for Cities has also quantified a lot this in their Talent Dividend research.
Louisville fares very poorly here. Louisville’s college degree attainment is only 25.8%. This puts it 5th lowest among all 51 metro areas in the United States with over one million people. College town Lexington sits at 31.2% Louisville trails the overall US average of 28.2%. To be blunt, that’s not good.
I’ve always said that Louisville is a quality over quantity town. The core of Louisville has great neighborhoods. Louisville clearly punches above its weight in areas like quality restaurants. And it has had a number of notable cultural successes: the important early recordings of the Louisville Orchestra, many important indie rock performers (e.g., Will Oldham, Slint, Rodan), and items like Actor’s Theater’s Festival of New American Plays. This immediately suggests to me going for a more Madison, Wisconsin type of feel than rather than trying to ape Indy or Nashville. Unfortunately, Madison is the state capital and home to a major Big Ten School, and is smaller such that those make a huge impact there. Louisville lacks those drivers and has such low education attainment that a high end strategy would be tough to pull off except in just a small portion of the old city.
This is really going to inhibit Louisville on the economic development and there isn’t a lot you can do other than focus on blue collar industries in the short term (their huge UPS hub being a prime example of this), with a more selective and focused strategy around high end sectors, while working to boost educational attainment over the longer term. There’s some good news here in that Louisville grew its educational attainment rate by nearly five percentage points in the last decade, 16th among large cities.
Good and Bad Applications
I’d like to highlight a couple examples quickly of how Louisville has excellently and poorly handled its strategic situation.
Let’s start with the good. Mayor Greg Fischer decided to make as one of his initiatives seeking to find better ways to collaborate with Lexington, which is only about 75 miles away. As the Courier-Journal noted, “he envisions Kentucky’s two biggest cities adding jobs as a ‘super region,’ rather than competing over companies, private investment and state money.” I had a previous post on this very topic that includes a video interview with Fisher called “Super-Regionalism in Kentucky.” This is an example of Louisville recognizing that it is too small to go it alone in the marketplace and it would be better to have a partner, plus trying to build bridges to a historic rival. We’ll see how this turn out.
A not so good example is the Ohio River Bridges Project I mentioned earlier and linked to my series about. Here we have a region taking on a huge $2.5 billion capital project that is going to be paid for mostly with local money through tolls. A smallish region like Louisville that isn’t even growing particularly fast does not need to be building this type of gargantuan and expensive infrastructure. That’s why in my series I suggested significantly scaling back the project even further.
Better Benchmarking
On another but related note, I’d also like to highlight how Louisville benchmarks and measures itself against the wrong cities. In the popular press, Louisville is generally compared against Indianapolis and Nashville, and those other cities are often trotted out as a rationale for pursuing some policy. For example, leaders said that Indy and Nashville had city-county mergers. Indy and Nashville were growing much faster than Louisville. Ergo, Louisville needed to merge city and county government if it wanted to catch up.
I’m not saying merger was necessarily wrong. The problem is that Indianapolis and Nashville are nothing like Louisville. They are in the same rough size category (though bigger as I noted) and nearby, but that’s about it. I’m not sure there’s a whole lot Louisville can learn from looking to those places.
On the other hand, a city like Cincinnati is much more similar to Louisville. It’s also a historic major river city in a multi-state metro, on the edge of the state, not the state capital, with rival cities inside Ohio, etc. It also shares the same type of insular culture (maybe even moreso). Yes, it’s bigger, more educated, and home to many corporations in a way Louisville isn’t. But it seems like there’s a lot that could be learned from comparisons there. If I were Louisville, I’d be looking to benchmark against other river cities, not places that are so different. When you look at how many of the historic river cities have fared, you see that most of them have struggled demographically and economically. Comparatively, Louisville actually looks quite good.
However, you rarely see Louisville comparing itself or looking to Cincinnati. Perhaps it’s because Cincy was always the “big city” for people in Louisville. It was perhaps always seen as in a different league than Louisville in a way say Indianapolis was not. Whatever the case, I’d suggest starting with Cincy and expanding to other older river cities.
To illustrate what I’m talking about, just check out this article that talks about Indy being the city Louisville should have been through the lens of the Super Bowl. I love this piece because the article itself and the reactions perfectly illustrate Louisville’s bi-polar nature, vacillating between self-flagellation and smug superiority. In any case, while I appreciate that Louisville being on the border between Indiana and Kentucky spawns some understandable rivalries between states, the comparison to Indy is flawed. I don’t believe Louisville could ever have done with sports what Indy did, even if it tried. That’s not a path for Louisville to regret going down. Nor is the type of downtown-centric development approach of Indianapolis a particularly good fit for Louisville IMO. (I’d tell Indy similarly that they aren’t likely to ever be able to replicate Louisville’s best qualities). I see articles like that one periodically, but rarely any similar articles featuring Cincinnati or another similarly situated city. Louisville needs to take stock of its situation and look for comparison places that more match its own situation.
Next up, a guest poster will take a visit to downtown Louisville. And I’ll revisit an old idea I had for the city.
More Louisville
Louisville: An Identity Crisis
The Case for 8664
An Examination of City-County Consolidation
Lots of great food for thought. Thank you for this series!
I have a couple thoughts off the bat…
Some believe that as the 21st century progresses, water will become the new oil. So, in that sense, Louisville being next to a wide river gives it a significant new feather in its cap. I’ve lived in several other places around the country, and I can attest that our tap water is superior.
Comparing Louisville to Cincy may present some useful ideas to planners, but these two cities are rather different, and not just in size. In Louisville, we value locally owned enterprises far more than we look up to corporates; Cincy is very corporate in nature. Louisville is moderate yet very union-friendly, and Cincy is conservative, with pro-management interests in clear control. Louisville is a much more Southern town-like city where hospitality is considered a major trait; I never hear of things like this about Cincy.
On the other hand, one area I deeply admire about Cincy and wished Louisville could borrow from is Cincy’s museums and appreciation of history. Cincy has a huge museum dedicated to the city’s history, and Louisville, regrettably, does not. Yet Louisville is so key to United States history (very significant to the Western Theater of the Civil War, for example).
Louisville could also positively emulate Cincy by completing the East End Bridge ASAP.
That’s about all I have for now. I may think of more items later.
Again, great job!
As always – well done Aaron. The truth hurts at times, but it needs to be told – especially with regards to the poor education attainment.
I too think the amount of money that pours out of Louisville into the state is nealry criminal – and bad not only for the city, but the state as well. One can only imagine if the Commonwealth put just a third of that tax revenue back into it’s largest city in the form of higher-education funds, just how many more jobs we’d be creating than using it to build a road to religious theme parks.
Also, keep hammering on the absurdity of the ORBP as it is currently structured. Mayor Fischer (you might want to add the ‘c’) may be doing some things right, but his blind insistence on completing this ill-fated two bridge scheme will never allow me to support him fully.
The article is well done but…the population of Indy when the Colts arrived in 1984 was 1,203,100; Cinci’s population in 1966 was less than the 1,412,000 it had in 1985; Nashville’s metro population in 1998 when the Titans arrived was less than Louisville’s 1.3M.
The arrival of the NFL in those cities may have sparked some of the population growth they have experienced since; please note that Cinci, Indy, Nashville have been able to grow more easily because a) they are in the center of the state with no obstacles (like a mile wide river to cross) or b) they built bridges on their outerbelt (275) in Cinci.
If Louisville had built an East End Bridge (perhaps the other should be built in far southwestern Jefferson) am pretty certain it would have experienced greater population growth than it did; the East End bridge will bring that growth (hopefully River Fields can help ensure it is not the sprawl type growth tath no one really wants).
Anyway, I think the ‘too small’ argument is not correct as measured by the ability to attract a pro sports team.
In regards to ‘benchmarking’. Cincinnnati and Nashville are both ‘river cities’that are similar to Louisville. Another to consider is Austin, TX.
Cinci’s museum (Union Station) is in need of $148M in repairs. Not likely to happen since PBS and GAP are costing Hamilton County taxpayers increasing amounts of money as the years progress.
People move to cities because they have professional sports team? Really? I’ve never considered this idea before,but find it very hard to believe.
Matthew,
That is what those who want to justify pro sports would have you believe. Please note…I said “might have sparked some of the population growth”. I am certain that Indy, Nashville and Cinci could pull out the stats that said a pro team did blah blah blah.
The point is, Louisville is NOT too small for a professional sports team; its population is larger than the populations of Indy and Nashville and likely Cinci when they got thier teams. (the author suggested Louisville is too small for pro sports; he is wrong)
My basic argument is: if we had built the East End Bridge in the 70-80’s…it is likely our population would be equivalent to Nashville and just slightly behind Indy. The East End Bridge will open up a large chunk of Indiana for development not to mention easing cross metro transportation and the benefits/growth that it will bring.
Let’s hear it for a coalition of the River cities, Pittsburgh, cincinnati, louisville, St. Louis, Memphis and even New Orleans.
Thanks for the comments.
Ryder, I think market size explains a lot about why Louisville currently lacks a pro sports franchise. While it may be that it could support something, the NFL most likely thanks to aggressive revenue sharing and a hard salary cap, I think it would be tough and certainly not worth the investment.
Your Cincinnati story basically makes the point why. They structured a deal so that only Hamilton County is paying for the stadiums. Now they are dying under all that debt. Indy used a regional tax to build Lucas Oil Stadium, but $720 million is a huge amount, no two ways about it. The city is also still paying on the demolished Hoosier Dome (on which the city owes more than it cost to build originally), the demolished Market Square Arena, and Conseco Fieldhouse. If you drive around the central city outside of downtown and see the neglected neighborhoods, you’ll see the true cost of the sports strategy, something that was noted in the video I posted earlier.
These types of huge capital investments are tough to pull off even in cities that are bigger than Louisville. So saddling Louisville with the same sorts of huge debts is not a choice I’d want to make. Indeed, we already see the arena bonds not performing well. But I suppose reasonable people can disagree on this.
Actually, I think Indy was very lucky to land the Colts. It took a perfect storm of events (a stadium built on a spec, a team that was under threat of eminent domain in its home town, and a league that was a very different place) to get them, and it happened almost 30 years ago in a very different era. If Indy were the odd man out in the NFL today, I doubt very much they’d be able to land a team. Nashville was clearly an emerging Southern growth story and eager to spend big on something splashy to validate its ambitions. I think they were very much betting on the come, and with the 20%+ growth clip – nearly 300,000 new people a decade – that’s not horrible thinking for them given the growth rates being put up by similar sized cities in North Carolina and Texas.
RyderCup2, how can Nashville be both a “river city” and “a city without obstacles”? I’ll agree it’s a river city; despite being on the totally-managed TVA river system, it suffered catastrophic flooding several years ago.
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Aaron’s right, the entire pro sports world is different today. NFL expansion in the US is very unlikely in this decade; the last expansion simply added Charlotte and filled the hole in Cleveland (created by the Colts’ and Browns’ moves). Toronto and Mexico City are the likeliest expansions now, and they are both many times larger than Louisville.
Note that 40 years ago, Louisville had the exact same pro sports profile as Indy: ABA basketball. When the ABA failed, Louisville didn’t make the NBA cut. Their archrival Pacers did. As Aaron points out, being at the center of a region with a dozen small cities an hour or so out reinforces Indy’s area of dominant influence.
Aaron,
I am not advocating that Louisville pursue a pro team, am simply stating that it is large enough to support a team (just as Indy, Nashville and Cinci were found large enough to support a team; ‘a’ team means ONE. (the Pacers and Predators play 2nd fiddle to the NFL respectively and Cinci could not support the Reds without help from the greater region)
Am also suggesting that the construction of an East End bridge is likely to accelerate population growth (and further suggest the construction of that bridge in the 70’s or 80’s likely would have resulted in population growth that would have resulted in a metro population today that is equivalent to Nashville (@1.5M)). Nashville’s growth accelerated with it’s selection by AMR as a hub in 1987 followed by the opening of GM’s Saturn facility in 1990. (neither of which currently operate). The recession has greatly cooled Nashville’s growth.
The East End Bridge (if ever built) + GE/Ford/Amazon announcements could provide the same type of acceleration to Louisville that Nashville ‘enjoyed’ in the 90’s.
I do agree that Louisville is more about quality than quantity and that could put a damper on population growth if ‘sprawl type development is fought/prevented by River Fields etc’.
Chris,
Nashville’s river (the Cumberland) is wholly contained within TN and it is no where near as wide as the Ohio. If you draw a 10 mile radius around Louisville, Nashville, Cinci, Indy you will see that the north east quadrant of Louisville (Utica Indiana) is less developed than any similar quadrant of the other cities; that gets ‘fixed’ with the East End Bridge. (the same could be said for the area across from Valley Station).
I am NOT advocating that Louisville should pursue a pro team…am only saying that size did not limit Indy or Nashville when they got NFL teams as they were the same size or smaller than Louisville currently is when the Colts and Titans located there. Louisville did not move to the NBA because JYBrown did not want to spend the $…a move he later regretted; the Colonels were well supported on par with Indy’s fan support of the Pacers.
In regards to ‘dominate influence’…add E-Town’s 125,000 (MSA) and Lex/Frankfort’s 500,000 (MSA) …both of which are an hour or so away and the population swells to @2M.
Chris, I’ve always heard that the circumstances surrounding the ABA/NBA merger were murky. I’m not sure it was for sure a matter of Louisville “not making the cut.” I’ve heard various stories that John Y. Brown wanted the payout he’d get for folding the team versus paying up to join the NBA. We may never know. In any case, he negotiated a much worse deal than St. Louis, which took a smaller piece of up front cash in return for a cut of TV revenues in perpetuity. That defunct St. Louis franchise might be one of the most valuable teams in pro sports on a cash flow basis. Wikipedia claims they’ve taken in $250M since the merger.
Nashville may have grown up as a riverport, but it was historically a much smaller city than Louisville, Cincinnati, or St. Louis. Louisville was over twice the size of Nashville in 1900, for example. Louisville was once among the largest cities in the country, I believe. The Ohio is a much more complex to bridge. I think Nashville’s built form is similar to Indy’s, but it’s certainly arguable that it’s a better comp to Louisville than Indy is.
Ryder, as I noted, I think it’s a great idea to try to figure out how to collaborate with Lexington. I do think the distance is a bit tough, probably at the outer edge of the range. Plus they are separate media markets, which is key. And Lexington sees itself independently. But there’s certainly room for exploration.
In terms of trade area, I find it useful to look at expanded measures like BEA Economic Areas. Take a look at this data from 2010:
City/MSA/EA/% diff
Cincinnati, 2.1M, 2.3M, 9.9%
Indianapolis, 1.8M, 3.4M, 95.3%
Louisville, 1.3M, 1.6M, 24.8%
Nashville, 1.6M, 2.8M, 79.2%
This is another example of how Louisville is similar to Cincy but unlike Nashville and Indianapolis. The former two have trade areas that aren’t that much bigger than their core MSA while the latter two have much larger trade areas. This doesn’t affect everything, but it does affect things like TV markets. In fact, you see it in the TV market sizes from Neilsen:
#26 Indianapolis, 1.1M households
#29 Nashville, 1.0M households
#35 Cincinnati, 896K households
#48 Louisville, 674K households
Aaron, what you say is consistent with what I have heard about the ABA/NBA merger. It wasn’t so much that the NBA wanted Indy over Louisville, it’s that the Pacers’ ownership was interested in the NBA and the Colonels’ ownership wanted the buyout.
I think it’s a bit specious of the commenter to say that Louisville would be a candidate for a pro sports franchise because the metro is larger than, say, Cincy was in 1966 or Indy was in 1984. What matter is relative market size, not absolute market size. 1.3 million doesn’t mean as much as it did in 1966 or 1984.
Chris, a minor correction that isn’t really central to your point: the NFL has added 4 franchises over the last two decades: Carolina (Charlotte) and Jacksonville began play in 1995; Browns 2.0 began play in 1999, three years after the original franchise moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens; and Houston was added in 2002, to replace the Oilers franchise, which moved to Tennessee in 1997 and became the Titans in 1999. The 2002 expansion led to the four division realignment. Also, I would add Los Angeles as another expansion candidate, and obviously that metro is many times larger as well.
Certainly, it is true that Indy got lucky with the Colts. The NFL never really wanted to be in Indy, given its size and proximity to established franchises, but the stadium and the total breakdown in Baltimore pretty much forced the hand of the league. They couldn’t exactly make Irsay go back to Maryland when the legislature was trying to seize the team via eminent domain. Still, the size and proximity issues that made Indy a less than ideal candidate in 1984 are true to an even greater degree for Louisville, given its size and proximity to Cincy and Indy.
John M, the other big factor in the Colts relocation was the move of the Raiders from Oakland. Al Davis established the legal precedent that the NFL could not block franchise relocations. This meant the NFL couldn’t stop the Colts from moving to Indy, which they probably would have tried to do if not for the Raiders precedent. (Baseball operates under an anti-trust exemption, which allows them to veto team moves).
This location issue is a big underlying factor in the fates of many cities.
Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland and many other cities were put where they are today because of very specific logistical reasons that are much less relevant today. If one was planning a major city today based on current industrial and communications methods, one would probably choose different places.
Do TV markets matter in the world of the internet? I haven’t watched local tv in years.
I likely shouldn’t talk cause I don’t know these cities well, but my guess is that Chattanooga might be a good comparison.
You here a lot about the little things they have done like the freshwater aquarium to take advantage of unique geographic and locational assets.
All the same, they don’t attempt to be either Atlanta or Nashville. What’s wrong with just being a nice place?
Sorry… I meant, you hear a a lot.
You’re getting closer, John. The trick is to compare Louisville to Louisville with an aim toward self-sufficiency, quality of life, and a more equitable approach to economic development and city planning. All of the above lead to the removal of lifestyle and entrepreneurial barriers on an affordable, small city scale– a micropolitan rather than metropolitan approach.
As much as I hate to reference them, Forbes often lists Chattanooga high on its “bang-for-the-buck” lists. People who have moved to Louisville from elsewhere tend to see that sort of value in the metro area more so than many natives. With some tweaks, Louisville could advance in that arena fairly rapidly. The more that happens, the less plantation style management the city will have to endure.
Unfortunately, that currently means fighting the influence of chambers of commerce on both sides of the river but positive things are happening nonetheless.
Just as a potential tourist, Louisville brings up a number of mental associations that resonate–river City, Churchill Downs, Horse country. Add to that basketball, cause the Cardinals are a pretty big historic brand.
These may be somewhat false impressions but still give one a lot to work with.
So much of the desperation for sports teams comes from a failure to nurture the real attributes of a city. Pittsburgh had a massive brand with the Hill District and blew it off the map.
I’ve written rants on various occasions that Louisville would be better off trying to be a “better Louisville” rather than hanging our head low as we chase an impossible dream to be like another city that’s not like our culture in most ways.
One example from my discussion board is where I said…
“[Louisville’s branding campaign] ‘Possibility City’, I’m afraid, connotes ‘Inferiority Complex City’. The sheer idea that we have to keep looking to possibilities, rather than ‘the goods’ that Louisville actually has, builds a case that the whole town needs to see a shrink, while doing little, if nothing, to convince anyone in the rest of the country that Louisville is anything special (as we all know it to be).”
I’m also especially proud of this topic from nearly exactly four years ago: “‘Actuality City’ – Louisville’s Inferiority Complex Needn’t Be” – http://www.metroissues.com/louisville/viewtopic.php?t=658
Ryder Cup,
Building the east end bridge (or any bridges for that matter) would not have done anything for Louisville’s growth – other than spread the growth it has experienced over the last 40 years – into different geographical regions.
If you think that is the main reason behind Louisville’s under-performance on a regional scale, I feel you missed Aaron’s main points from his article.
One thing is for certain – if we waste the money building what is currently proposed in the ORBP, it will completely screw us from ever attaining the growth required for the city to keep up with our neighbors.
holy crap! i’m just surprised to see mention of Rodan, Slint and Will Oldham!
Adam, Hah! I guess I’m showing my age with those references.
Matthew,
I disagree. It does not take much imagination to think the East End Bridge would have added 150,000-200,000 more people to the metro if built in the 70-80’s. Now, the growth would have been mostly the ugly sprawl type but it would have happened. (Just take a ride out Utica Pike or ride along the river and you will see vast acreage that has not been developed because it is not particularly accessible). Would also say that River Fields could serve a useful purpose by championing ‘good development’ once the bridge is built. Much of the land in Indiana is very beautiful.
The East End Bridge is a necessity.
I think the downtown bridge should be rethought (8664) and either local bridge(s) built downtown and another interstate class bridge down around Valley Station.
The ‘bridge’ (or lack thereof) is similar to the ‘no parallel runways’ (before SDF was expanded) discussions. SDF was actually a finalist for hubs by Eastern Airlines in the late 60’s/early 70’s; Piedmont, American and Delta in the 80’s. Even with the current trend to dismantle hubs (STL, PIT, CVG, MEM) SDF and Louisville would have greatly benefitted had SDF been expanded before it finally (and thankfully) was expanded.
Anyway, the airport is fine now and the construction of the East End Bridge will bring similar(if not greater) benefits to he region
Sounds pretty sad if that’s the only growth the area can get.
Having relatively unspoiled areas near a city are a huge selling point for places like San Francisco. My guess is that Chattanooga has that advantage with a national military park across the river.
Meanwhile, the symbolism of keeping a waterfront highway that blocks the river makes a huge statement about the city.
“Meanwhile, the symbolism of keeping a waterfront highway that blocks the river makes a huge statement about the city.”
See my comment above about fighting the chambers of commerce. They’re the Ohio River Bridges Project’s biggest cheerleaders, replete with population and job projections so jacked up that that none of the people in the aforementioned bands have ever been that high.
Chattanooga is a fine place but it is significantly smaller than Louisville.
I am not speaking for anyone other than myself. Louisville needs the East End Bridge. Period. Any other bridges are open to debate. I personally agree with 8664.
My support for the East End Bridge is for improved transporation/access in the northeastern quadrant of the metro area. It will increase economic development and opportunities for all residents of the metro area. The challenge is to focus on development that is good for the the area.
Marin County, CA lies at the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge…it is home to some of most expensive real estate in the US; the other end is the Presidio. With imagination the same type of development/results can occur with the East End Bridge.
Here’s a personal answer to the sports question: I did not move to Indy for sports. In the late 70’s/early 80’s it was the heart of a dominant, diversified manufacturing region (auto parts and consumer electronics and appliances) and that’s where I was professionally.
But I have STAYED in Indy, even as the manufacturing left. (In fact, I daily drive by the old, dead RCA factory where I first worked decades ago.) One reason to stay has been the oft-derided “good place to raise a family”. The other has been the sports climate: I’ve only missed a few Colts games since their arrival here and don’t want to give up my seats. I love the hoopla when the Final Four is in town. The Pacers’ run of the 90’s was great stuff. And the collection of indie, non-chain eating and drinking places that first started to pop up downtown (and have spread through the nea-downtown neighborhoods) makes it possible to know absolutely nothing about the latest, greatest upscale suburban dining concepts.
This raises the central question. Even before attracting new talent, a city must figure out how (aside from family roots) it will keep more of its homegrown talent. What will interest people in staying and innovating there? How do you attract new talent if the place doesn’t hold the interest of some of the “cool kids” who come of age there?
This is a “hard fact”, and I suspect I’ve jumped the gun on a subsequent part of Aaron’s series. Louisville hasn’t quite moved past its smokestacks; GE and Ford have reinvested there, unlike in Indy.
You can’t do 8664 without the East End bridge. Whatever you think of what it would do for growth, I think there is near unanimity that the East End bridge is needed.
Any long-term, sustainable economic strategy for any sizable city must include more localized manufacturing and/or physical production, though not on the scale on which we tend to currently view it. The idea that we’re going to continue to import almost every single item we use on a daily basis from hundreds or thousands of miles away is untenable. Figuring out how to be less dependent on the current “ship everything everywhere” model is paramount. In many ways, food systems are a logical place to start and Louisville is very well positioned to do that with prime farmland 10 miles or less from city center.
If anything, Louisville needs to start shifting away from its logistics fascination, particularly air-based shipping, the least efficient. We have a great opportunity to develop two substantial, multimodal nodes (road, rail, and river) – one in Indiana on the northeast side and one in Kentucky on the southwest side – that could well cover the city’s needs in those areas. Beyond that, internal mobility and access should be prioritized.
Ryder,
I don’t mean to belabor the point, but building the east-end bridge 30 years ago would not have been akin to an Oklahoma Land Rush resulting in 200,000 outsiders coming in to stake their claim, build their little McMansion and then set about creating jobs for themselves.
You might see at most a quarter of that number of people living in that portion of Southern Indiana, but they would mostly be composed of ex-urbanites who settled in Oldham and Shelby counties in Kentucky and Scott and Washington counties in Indiana, in addition to a few more folks from Louisville, Jefferson county and the urban areas of Southern Indiana.
You don’t get population growth by opening up cheap land for development without a regional economy producing jobs. Instead, what you get is population dispersal, which is what you are describing.
Louisville has made tactical mistakes over the last 50 years that have put them in the position in which it currently finds itself. While a lot of the blame should go to Frankfort for bleeding the city dry of it’s un-reimbursed tax revenues, Louisville has done a terrible job of educating a majority of it’s young people and retaining those few that have managed to overcome that liability.
Until the Commonwealth starts pumping the tax money Louisivlle earns back into the city, it’s pretty much screwed IMO.
Amazing that a so called fiscally conservative Republican Governor is rabid for this kind of crap development give away. Well, not really.
“I have read that Louisville has among the highest percentages of exurban commuting. One reason may be that there are so few job opportunities in outlying areas.”
If that quote from Aaron is accurate it points to the strength the city has to potentially get a much higher percent of people to move into the city.
NYC, DC and now Pittsburgh, all had a very large chunk of the regional job base, before they started to see major residential revival.
The sad thing is how all the regional powers seem to be dead set against that.
Interesting points, Aaron. From my admittedly brief time in Louisville, my sense was that it’s a city with good bones-historic neighborhoods, great river vistas, a good sense of history, but with its challenges.
Perhaps taking some of the strategies from a few cities would be good. Cinci is another river city, but as the first poster pointed out, Cinci has a much different and more corporate flavor.
While Columbus may be a bad comparison in some ways, I think that it had some of the “good bones” analogy. It’s downtown is finally coming around, but its neighborhoods were flourishing 20 years ago. Indianapolis, on the other hand, is very downtown-centric, and has only recently started stretching out to redevelop other neighborhoods. Focus on your strengths, and Louisville’s seem to be neighborhood-based, like Columbus. Plus, it appears to have preserved its architectural heritage better than Columbus did.
Another interesting comparison could be Akron. It is a samller metro than Lousiville, but has taken its big product, rubber, and built a new polymer industry on it. I’m not sure what Louisville’s historic industries are besides being a river city, but maybe they can capitalize on them to grow new industries. The Derby is a marquee event and has some heft-can they build something off of that?
I find it interesting you call it a Midwestern city, as I alwasy thought of it as more borderline southern. For some cities, being on a border like this is a good thing. For others, it’s bad. I think in Louisville’s case it’s bad, because it’s out of the loop of the main transit paths between the areas.
Right, it’s out of the loop. It’s likely just not logistically placed to be a big city, which is fine-it can be a really nice city.
Places like Louisville and many of the other older heavy industry type cities Buffalo, Cleveland tend to pose this big problem. How much should the governement do to counteract or try to adjust for basic logistical attributes.
Is it America’s obligation to make sure all cities that were once big, remain big?
It’s interesting that George raises the issue of both heritage industries and transit paths, as the Louisville/Southern Indiana metro grew up around being a hub for both river and rail travel and hauling.
A relatively straight, metro-aimed line from Chicago to the Gulf runs through the city as does an east-west one from DC to San Francisco. As both the city and the country gave those up for less efficient means, Louisville’s fortunes have fallen accordingly. What that means, however, is that it’s fairly well placed to perform its previous role as we come to our transportation senses nationally.
A first step in that is for regional leaders to recognize the foolishness of their own transportation plans (which aren’t supported by a majority of the public in the region anyway). Geographically, Louisville is pretty good, hence the UPS presence among others here. But, as Aaron points out, geo-politically, not so much.
I should probably add that location plays out culturally as well. Is it really surprising that a metro roughly equidistant from Chicago and Nashville would historically have a thriving independent music scene? No, not really.
I just think that Louisville’s inferiority complex holds it back from any meaningful success.
Places like Indianapolis have a can-do attitude, and that is the real difference, in my mind.
But one also need a rational idea of what and where you are and what you can do.
Indy is a flat and very centrally located city, well suited to the kind of maufacturing base it seems to have.
Being confident really doesn’t have a whole lot to do with this. Chattanooga, for example seems to show some confidence and self respect but it’s much more reality based. No amount of cheerleading could make it a good idea for Chatanooga to copy Atlanta.
I’m going to agree with Barry White (lol). The woe-is-me attitude will not get the ball rolling in cities like Louisville and Cincinnati. Cities generally are in control of their own destiny, barring unforeseen events like natural disasters and such. New York is the way it is by design.
Being proactive about things is more helpful than seeing what other cities are doing and then playing catch-up later.
Also, landing professional sports in 2012 is different than it was 30 years ago. Factors like TV markets and per-capita income did not factor as strongly into the equation back in the 1980s, and a metro area 1.3 million people had more significance in those days.
Right, New York made rational decisions about where it was and created a good design.
Robert Moses showed lots of confidence too but his ideas were not based in reality.
Clearly, Louisville has done some dumb stuff, like loading the downtown with empty parking lots and garages and expecting it to bring vibrancy. Doing dumb stuff creates bad results and undermines your confidence.
@ John Morris
You’re missing the point: finding a way to address and capitalize on the city’s challenges and turn them into opportunities is what sets Louisville apart from these other cities.
For example, its position on the edge of Kentucky is a detriment to parts of Kentucky farthest away from the city, but a potential asset to nearby Southern Indiana. Perhaps Louisville could market itself more strongly to places to Evansville, which considers Indianapolis to be the “big city” in spite of Indianapolis’s being further away and more focused towards the northern half of Indiana.
Road, rail and river? I am at a loss to see what the area needs to develop for ‘road, rail & river’ (other than a bridge or two)that will help ‘localized manufacturing’ (aka custom built everything I presume?)
UPS and logistics is a very good thing for this city and will continue to be in a world economy. It is the modern day waterway/railroad and only MEM has what SDF has in the entire USA. It should be capitalized upon further.
Please DO NOT suggest high speed rail…
I do think that rapid transit of some sort between dtwn and the airport is worth exploring. A key driver is to tie convention facilities/hotels together. The convention/tradeshow business is something Louisville should also focus upon…because they already have the infrastructure; ways to better tie it together are important
I’m a fan of UPS in Louisville. Especially since the airline HQ is there along with a lot of IT and other white collar jobs that don’t get noticed.
But I can’t help but wonder if the airport led development model, for freight at least, is all it’s cracked up to be. Louisville and Memphis have both been laggards in many ways. Having Fed Ex sure didn’t prevent Nashville from taking off while Memphis stagnated. I wrote about this in my review of the book Aerotropolis:
http://www.urbanophile.com/2011/10/02/globalization-and-the-airport/
@Jeff (not trying to pick on your comments)
“metro roughly equidistant from Chicago and Nashville”
What?? Louisville is roughly equidistant from Chicago and Atlanta; Nashville and Indy; St. Louis and DC; Detroit and Memphis (roughly)
@Aaron,
Am sure that neither MEM or SDF would trade their FEDEX/UPS hubs because they have provided lots of jobs in both communities…and at MEM is coupled with a DL passenger hub (albeit likely to be dismantled). Education attainment or lack thereof is similar and neither benefit from the presence of the state capital.
Am not convinced that Nashville will be the next CLT (much less ATL)…based on what? Country Music? (CLT has banking and ATL has DL)
All I’m saying that airport development does not in itself lead to urban dynamism. (In any case, I personally think Louisville should have built a greenfield airport in southern Jefferson County, but in a pre-merger city, Jerry was never going to let anything happen outside the city limits)
Nashville may not become the next Charlotte or Atlanta, but they have similar ambition levels. At 20% population growth per decade, they are starting to join to top ranks in that metric. They have no sales taxes, cheap TVA electricity, and a very pro-business climate. There’s no guarantees of course, bu they seem to be on the right track and even if they stay to the current trajectory, that’s probably A-ok in the grand scheme of things.
Thank you, Aaron. I’m not decrying the UPS presence in Louisville. It’s simply a matter of looking forward and preparing for inevitable changes in distribution models.
If handled wisely, Louisville can continue or perhaps even increase its share of that market over the long-term without significantly damaging quality of life a la riverfront destruction, poorly located airport expansions, and an unsustainable reliance on inefficient fossil fuel use. Air and road freight were the “new” waterway and rail fifty years ago. Louisville leadership still thinks it is and, as you say, has lagged instead of lead in terms of urban dynamism.
Given its geographically derived heritage and future prospects, regional leadership would do well to position itself in the center of alternative modes advocacy and development. Instead, they’ve expended myriad resources advocating for the exact opposite. Even when the federal government very publicly announced strong funding preference for alternatives (including related housing funding), they pitched a decades old model as “innovative” and acted somewhat surprised when passed over multiple times, leaving many of us to say “I told you so”. If anachronism is the thing, they’d actually do better in preparing for the future by looking 100 years back instead of 50. Our regional transportation system was more appropriately balanced then.
@RyderCup2: No, I’m not talking about purely custom manufacturing. You’ll note that I mentioned starting with increased localization of our food system. Tiny little Floyd County,IN alone exports millions in food related revenue each year in pursuit of lesser quality food than what’s readily grown and deliverable within a relatively small radius. All the while, regional farmers struggle with volatile pricing, poor wholesale relationships, and/or are heavily subsidized while desperately trying to maintain farms at a scale that damages soil and water quality and destroys much needed biodiversity. That’s not only unnecessary, it’s just plain dumb.
There are stable jobs to be had in food related start-up industries as well, not to mention tie-ins with our already well-known independent foodie scene.
Otherwise, we start looking at other commonly used items, create local investment instruments for capital development, and start producing and selling them on a reasonable scale. If no one else, craft brewers in the area have shown us the way– and there’s another foodie market tie-in and another agricultural connection. Purdue and other ag schools around the country are engaged in hops research as we type.
To the extent one buys into them, all of the above also fit pretty neatly into the usual creative class talent attraction and retention models as well. Imagine a comparatively affordable, well located neighborhood with at least minimal transit access in that mix and the “nice place to live” almost starts seeming real.
Regarding the music connection, you can argue exact mileages if you wish but that’s not the point. Louisville sits on the direct path between two of the country’s historic music centers with distinctly different styles. Musicians that play in both markets have overlapped, lived here, and sometimes grown up here for decades. That their respective styles blend and come out as something noteworthy in a metro so located isn’t altogether surprising. The bands Aaron mentioned developed somewhat differently from that in terms of aesthetics, but it’s been interesting to see a lot of them more fully embrace and reinterpret those more traditional forms over the years.
Tourism/conventions can be a part of the puzzle as well. What is it that we have to sell to them beyond an every-city meeting space? On which markets do we focus our “come hither” efforts?
Mass transit between the airport and downtown makes sense but southern Hoosiers account for what, somewhere around 50,000 river crossings per work day? Do you really think near total reliance on single occupancy vehicles is the best way to handle that?
Louisville, like too many other cities, freaks itself out worrying how in the world it’s ever going to fit into a massive, globalized mechanism without ever paying much attention to underlying assumptions. That’s a whole other conversation, but one the sum total of regional leadership needs to have.
What puzzles me about Louisville is that it seems to have all the hallmarks of being more of a talent-driven city. Cool neighborhoods. a “Keep Louisville Weird” ethic (at least in pockets). Major university. Stable economy with strong healthcare sector and a base of HQs (Humana, Yum, UPS hub) to provide good entry level work for B-school grads. And yet its educational attainment is so piss-poor that it is clearly not an attractor for educated talent. Or maybe the issue is that it doesn’t raise up its own; aren’t its schools notoriously underperforming and its minority poverty rates staggeringly high? Regardless, Louisville has always seem like a city that should be more prominent that it is. Maybe it all comes back to leadership. The fact that the ORBP is supported by the power structure while 8864 gets short shrift is incredibly telling. In the “cities of tomorrow” (Portland, SF, OKC, Denver, MSP, etc.) I can’t imagine such a no-brainer opportunity being squandered.
So what are Louisville’s cool neighborhoods? I know I can google, but I’d like to hear more about them.
I have a big issue with the whole idea that a city has to depend on the downtown to “carry the brand”.
When one thinks of Columbus, one thinks of The Short North. Pittsburgh’s brand for years was carried by The South Side and perhaps the Strip. Cleveland is getting lots of buzz from the West Side neighborhoods of Ohio City, Tremont and Detroit Shoreway which are doing a lot more to change perceptions of the city than many of the downtown “attractions”.