I was honored to speak at a conference in Milwaukee over the summer called Milwaukee’s Future in the Chicago Mega-City. Chicago and Milwaukee are about 90 miles apart on I-94. There’s an Amtrak link that makes the journey in about 90 minutes. The two cities have been sprawling such that there’s now more or less continuous development along the lakefront between the two cities. Milwaukee has been a challenged city economically and demographically. Chicago has had its own serious problems, but has seen its already muscular core boom in terms of residents and investment. High end business seems to be doing well in Chicago, and the city gets pretty good press nationally.
If you are Milwaukee, the idea of somehow tapping into Chicago naturally presents itself. Local leaders clearly see Milwaukee’s future as, if not a giant suburb of Chicago, at least a city for which Chicago’s cachet and prosperous zone somehow provides them with a leg up. As Richard Longworth put it, “Once an independent economic power of its own, Milwaukee now belongs to Greater Chicago.”
The notion that proximity to Chicago or another mega-city* represents an unambiguous good seems nearly universal. While the mechanics and value basis of greater collaboration are often illusive, it’s assumed that such value must be present and such collaboration desirable. Not just Milwaukee, but places like South Bend, Indiana and Grand Rapids, Michigan look towards Chicago as an economic engine for them.
But what if it this is actually backwards? What if proximity to Chicago or another mega-city is actually a curse, not a blessing?
My friend Drew down in Indy has a model of this, clearly targeted as his own city but relevant to the discussion. He says that the Midwest is like a solar system with Chicago as the sun. As he see is it, Indianapolis is Earth – it’s the perfect distance from Chicago. A place like Cleveland is too far away – it doesn’t get enough heat and light. But Milwaukee is like Mercury – it’s too close to the sun and gets burned up.
I suggested at the conference that one reason Milwaukee should want to active engage in shaping the interaction between the two regions is that the natural development could actually be negative. I had in mind here Providence, which is in a similar situation. Providence is 50 miles from Boston – that’s closer than Milwaukee is to Chicago, but Boston is also smaller than Chicago. Like Milwaukee, there’s a rail connection between the cities, with commuter service taking a bit over an hour.
Providence, like Milwaukee, has struggled. In fact, it’s struggled far worse. Sticking with solar system thinking, my immediate gut take here has been that Providence is a brown dwarf of a city. Maybe at one time it generated real economic life force, but today is a shell of a metro region in many ways.
Another similar example is New Haven, Connecticut, which is about 80 miles from NYC, and is a notoriously troubled city. And even being in the same state hasn’t helped Springfield, Mass at 90 miles from Boston. It too has struggled.
Is this actually the pattern? Is proximity a negative indicator not a positive one? Does proximity drain vitality instead of creating it? Let’s consider further.
I believe a lot of the thinking that being close is positive comes from the example of two very successful twin cities: Dallas-Ft. Worth and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Two things jump out at me about these, however. One, in both cases the cities are significantly closer than Milwaukee and Providence are to Chicago and Boston. Dallas is about 35 miles from Ft. Worth. Minneapolis and St. Paul actually abut each other, and the downtown-downtown trip by freeway is 14 miles. These actually are part of the same metro area by any standard.
Two, the cities in these cases are reasonably balanced in size. Dallas is bigger than Ft. Worth and Minneapolis bigger than St. Paul, but it doesn’t have the feel of the vast disparity of say a Chicago vs. Milwaukee. Indeed, the difference is clear in how we compare the cities. With a Chicago and Milwaukee, metro area seems the way to go, but with the others municipal population seems a reasonable proxy.
Another positive example might be Washington-Baltimore. The distance here is about 40 miles. These are separate metros, but overlap considerably and could potentially be combined. Also, Washington is only about twice as big as Baltimore, which is pretty hefty in its own right at 2.7 million people. Contrast Chicago at over six times as big as Milwaukee and Boston at almost three times as big as Providence, a number I think is understated since part of Southern Massachusetts that’s in Providence metro arguably has a strong Boston orientation as well. In any case, while the city of Baltimore remains infamous in many ways, the overall metro area has done well.
So the idea that proximity is a positive could have originated in models that aren’t applicable. Being close works: but only if you are really, really close – say about 40 miles or better – and your size ratio is no more than about 2:1.
Or maybe the latter might not even be necessary. There are a few examples of old industrial cities turned into suburbs in Chicago – Aurora (41 miles), Elgin (42 miles), and Joliet (44 miles) being the prime examples. These were once independent cities of sorts, and now are clearly suburbs. They aren’t nirvana yet, but proximity to Chicago has clearly invigorated them to a certain extent. The size ratio vs. the overall Chicago region or even just the city would obviously be huge. So perhaps the only question is whether you could plausibly be a true suburb.
Interestingly, Detroit and Ann Arbor fit this and are only a bit over 40 miles apart, so also follows this rule. It may seem ludicrous to credit Detroit with injecting life into Ann Arbor, but I don’t think it would be as successful if it were isolated in the middle of the state. (Madison, Wisconsin succeeded on its own, but is a bit bigger and also the state capital).
But it may even be worse than this. Back to my provocation a few paragraphs back, is it possible that not only does anything other than true suburban style proximity not help you, it might even hurt you? The examples of Milwaukee, Providence, New Haven, and Springfield suggest it’s at least possible. Now all of these are post-industrial cities that have clearly struggled for reasons other than proximity to a mega-city. Many similarly situated places (or even more badly troubled ones) are not near a much bigger city. But it’s worth considering the point.
I hypothesize about it in terms of attempting to reboot a high value economy. If you are a high value business – say a biotech startup or some such – looking to locate in New England, why would you ever pick Providence over Boston? You wouldn’t – not unless they paid you a ton of money a la 38 Studios (a Curt Schilling backed video game company that went bankrupt after receiving $100 million in loan guarantees from Rhode Island). Not only is Providence itself an expensive place to live and do business, it’s talent and ecosystem disadvantaged. Why subject yourself to that when you can move 50 miles up the road to one of the world’s premier innovation areas? The kicker is that this applies to business ideas in Providence as well. You can launch your business in Boston and still basically stay where you live.
I’m not a believer in the oft-repeated claim that these tier one cities are sucking all the talent out of smaller places. The numbers don’t back it up. Chicago has the second highest college degree attainment among large Midwest cities, but at 34.2% hardly towers over other regional cities, most of which are at least in the 30s, including Milwaukee. And Chicago’s growth in population with degrees is actually in the bottom half of large Midwest metros.
However, perhaps there is a “dead zone” of sorts around mega-cities. This zone extends from the edge of their suburbs to some unknown outer radius. In that zone, perhaps black hole like, high value functions really are sucked into the mega-city. Or perhaps negative aspects of the mega-city like traffic and pollution act like kryptonite on the economy of cities in this zone. I don’t know for sure. It’s just a hypothesis to consider based on a few observations. I would love to see some research done into this. In the meantime, small cities near a very large one shouldn’t be too quick to celebrate their location as boon.
Update: Somebody mentioned Philadelphia in the comments. I’d forgotten that it was only about 90 miles from New York. I think it’s a great example. I do think some of the uptick in the city of Philadelphia can be attributed to its location on the prime NYC-DC axis, and NYC proximity especially with fairly rapid train service has created a sort of sixth borough effect. But, Philadelphia is basically a mega-city in its own right. It has a large, dense, urban core with great transit, etc. I’d argue that given those assets, Philadelphia has really underperformed peers. If you look at other cities like that – New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco – they have all had a massive transformation of their urban environment and economies. Philadelphia has not. I can’t help but wonder if proximity to New York is part of the reason why. If Philadelphia had switched places geographically with Chicago, where it was the capital of a huge region, I can’t help but think the city would have experienced that massive transformation and would be seen in the public mind like a Chicago is. So perhaps in Philly’s case, proximity has both hurt and helped.
* I use the term “mega-city” loosely to refer to a tier one type American city, not specifically as a region with greater than 10 million residents.
Milwaukee would be foolish to solely define itself in the larger context of Chicago. As we saw earlier (this summer? last summer?) with the Milwaukee tourist campaigns, there’s already some shared similarities. We have brats and Lake Michigan too.
Milwaukee should work on defining and spending time, energy and resources on its OWN strengths – but at the same time, find some key points of potential collaboration with Chicago (and quite frankly, with Madison too – those cities are only 100 or so miles apart but are rarely cohesive or collaborative about the things they do).
If I was promoting Milwaukee, one thing I’d underscore is the fact that you can buy a lakefront condo for substantially less there and be in downtown Chicago in 90 minutes (Amtrak). That’s not much longer than it would take from, say, Geneva to downtown Chicago on Metra.
Patrick, I think what you described in the last paragraph is a part of what Milwaukee is selling. It’s the “get the benefits of the cheaper, smaller city while being easy daytrip (or even commuting) distance from Chicago.”
This is an interesting topic. Though I would probably not use the New Haven / NY example. New Haven is building around their train station in order to capture the Metro-North commuter market, benefiting from being 75 miles from Grand Central. One could also argue that Providence would look more like other dying industrial cities in the Northeast without its easy rail and highway access to Boston.
Still, I would like your input on the Philly – NYC connection.
Some thoughts
The cities are also 90 miles apart and there seems to be a positive impact on the Philadelphia region being this distance to New York. I know many people live in the suburbs in between the two cities for easy access to both. I used to take Amtrak to NY for work and found many Philadelphians using the train everyday to commute to Manhattan. The Philly Metro is much less expensive than the NY Metro making a logical place to live but still have very good access to Manhattan. I think the housing price difference is even greater than Chicago/Milwaukee.
The Philly – New York rail connection is also much stronger than Chicago/Milwaukee connection with not only far more Amtrak service but regional rail service as well.
Maybe this would be a good example of very frequent passenger rail better connecting two semi-close cities for the benefit of both.
If only NJTransit ran express trains from Philadelphia to NYC with limited stops like Trenton, Princeton, New Brunswick, and Newark/Airport. What a difference that would make!
Hey! You missed a city half way between Chicago and Milwaukee. You forgot Waukegan, Illinois. Waukegan is post industrial city of 90,000 people. It is on the Metra line to Chicago and has easy access to MKE. It might fit into your description of a dead-zone. However, since it is a walkable city on Lake Michigan along with a historic urban core, it can be re-stylized as an affordable place to live, work and play while having access to both cities.
I will admit getting a high growth entrepreneurial effort as depicted in “Start Up Communities” will be a challenge.
An intriguing post, but a bit of a mechanistic view, when I think the reality is more complicated.
Let’s take New Haven and Providence. The reason both these cities are struggling is that they have not updated their economies since WW II. Both coasted for decades, arguably until the 1960’s, on industries that they had established in the late 19th century. It is hard to imagine that Rhode Island and Connecticut were once two of the most industrial states in the country, each with a “constellation” of cities specializing in things like hat and clock production (costume jewelry in Providence’s case), and that is what made them strong, but when they failed to update those industries, they became glorified service centers, kept strong only by the presence of anchor institutions like Brown and Yale, plus the usual hospitals that go with any major city. Without those, they would have all the prominence of Worcester. Look at Bridgeport: it used to be the machine tool capital of the world, but when GM bought the last major company there and ultimately shut it down, Bridgeport lost its clout and took on the status of Patterson, New Jersey, a shell of its former self.
Let’s bring this back to that sole arbiter of success: talent. If a place doesn’t do something distinctively well, it won’t succeed, no matter how near or far it is from a major city. Arlington, Texas sits smack dab between Dallas and Ft. Worth, less than a 15 minute drive from DFW. You might think it should be doing well, as a kind of Las Collinas wannabe, but because all it really does it warehouse things, with little or no value added, it is not wealthy or powerful or prestigious. Milwaukee used to be a major manufacturing center, a place strong in process controls. Having failed to build on that past, however, it is struggling to compete in the modern world. If it can re-establish a distinctive competence it can win, regardless of how near or far it is from Chicago. Otherwise it will follow the path of Bridgeport.
Rod, I’m not necessarily making a strong claim for this hear, simply pushing back on the prevalent and almost unquestioned idea that proximity to a mega-city is an asset to a community. Given what we see out there of communities like these that do have proximity, we don’t have a lot of reasons to make a positive claim.
As for New Haven and Providence attracting talent, I’m trying to push the explanation further: why haven’t they attracted talent, particularly given their top flight educational institutions and what they bring?
One thing I can contrast with Indianapolis (which has decent though not spectacular degree attainment). Indy has pretty much an state of six million as its catchment area. This allows it to draw educated people from all over the state. Providence and New Haven have very small catchment areas. Partially that’s New England geography. But partially it could be because the catchment area of the nearby mega-city pretty much encloses them.
Lou, Philly is a great city I overlooked. I posted some thoughts in the main article, so please look for the update section at the end of the post.
Aaron,
Having considered a move to Providence and New Haven myself, I can answer on personal terms: there just aren’t enough job opportunities there. I had single opportunities to pursue there, but if those fell through, there were just not enough back-up opportunities. It was considering moving to Bend, Oregon or Durango: great places to live, but who wants to put their career at risk?
I timed the drive from the good neighborhoods of Providence to likely job centers in Boston: easily more than an hour, and probably more, considering that the south side has fewer jobs than the west and north side. Yes, the Acela goes from Providence to Boston, and from New Haven to New York, but it is expensive, it doesn’t save that much time, and there is still a connection to the job centers when you get there.
We’re seeing this play out here in the Seattle area. People want to work close to the job centers, and increasingly this means 15 or 20 minutes away, possibly by bike or walk, and not the “drive till you qualify” distances that made Sacramento a commute satellite of the Bay Area during the 2000s. Today development land in Sacramento is almost worthless, and even the East Bay has yet to get the bounce that is animating places like Redwood City and San Mateo that lie between the job epicenters of SF and Palo Alto.
Ten years ago when I looked for “MBA ready” employers in Rhode Island I could find only a handful: a water heater maker, a gambling machine maker, and a drugstore chain. There was much talk of Providence becoming a center of craft and the arts, playing off a German institute near Brown, but not much seems to have happened with that. At that time ePaper, which eventually gave rise to the paper-white screesn we see today, was just starting up in the northwestern suburbs of Boston. Providence didn’t have the base of large existing companies, and it didn’t grow the new ones. If Providence had stayed strong in its old industry, with companies like Speidel, it would have had a company like Swatch today, or possibly one of those new generation of Internet watches.
Many years ago a consulting friend working in Philadelphia said described the place as a “bonfire that had been big, and there were still a few embers”. Unfortunately, in many of these places the embers are almost cool. The universities are trying to blow on them, along with the government, but neither academia nor government can really make fire themselves. It has to come from entrepreneurs, and if they are getting their start somewhere else, they won’t be living in these towns.
Michael, Waukegan did try to rebrand its downtown just as you describe, and I think the reason that their effort didn’t pay off had mostly to do with timing–coming as it did just before the economic bust. I think the relationship of large cities to smaller ones, as well as to isolated suburban corporate campuses, varies a great deal with the economy.
I agree with Aaron’s point about northeastern geography being a limiting factor for cities like Providence/New Haven/Philly. They are constrained by being sandwiched between NY/DC/Boston and their “best future” is probably to become exurbs to the Big 3.
One advantage of the two positive examples he cites (DFW, MSP) is that they both have large catchment areas. MSP is the dominant metro area for the whole Northern Plains stretching into Montana, and DFW dominates half of TX plus OK and part of AR and LA. To a certain degree, they create a “dead zones” like Aaron describes in these areas, rather than being in another city’s dead zone themselves. I suspect Oklahoma City has a similar relationship with DFW as Milwaukee does with Chicago.
1. Philadelphia MSA is still much larger than Boston MSA, about 30% larger. Only at the regional CSA level does Boston outstrip it due to Philly’s “stuck in the middle” position.
2. Philadelphia is in the same MSA size class as DFW, DC, Houston, and Miami between 5.5-6.5 million. Its CSA is still top 10, with Dallas (larger), Houston and Atlanta (both smaller) in the 5.7-6.9 million range.
3. Philadelphia metro is far larger than any of the small-to-middlin metros that have been “captured” by larger agglomerations. It is “small” only in comparison to NYC; it is not really comparable to Baltimore, Milwaukee, Providence, or New Haven.
4. Its economy is probably more similar to Chicago, a “diverse giant” with no real specialty. It’s a port, a rail city, and oil refiner and shipper, center of a major ag region (south Jersey, Chester, Lancaster, Montgomery and Bucks counties), terminus of a major straight-line east-west highway (I-70/76 connects Philadelphia, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver).
Wonderful article Aaron. You identified the perception of what most people would see as a positive. Proximity is an asset. This is not the case as you demonstrated. I do believe that dead zone exists. Generally speaking I think that 75 – 125 mile range could be considered the dead zone. When you consider what cities exist 125+ miles from Chicago then these areas exist independently of the Mega-City. Look at Grand Rapids, Fort Wayne, Peoria and Rockford. Not all successes but functioning as independent markets, ableit with influnce from Chicago. Though not the dependency of South Bend, Milwaukee, Rockford and other mostly rural areas in the “dead zone”. I believe the municipalities less than 75 miles have a decent shot at makintg a resonable but long commute to Chicago’s CBD. Outside that the influence of Chicago proper fades greatly. Only 1 to 2 percent of commuters in South Bend actually work in Illinois. Where 20 to 25 percent of people in Valparaiso (NW Indiana – approx 45 miles away) work in Illinois. It is definately a function of driving distance. South Bend, Rockford and Milwaukee need to find their niche and become independent. Until these communities are a contiguous urban environment (other than Milwaukee) succees comes from within.
Correction from above. I meant Grand Rapids, Fort Wayne, Peoria and Madison. Rockford should be clumped with Milwaukee and South Bend.
Aaron, this is intersting, but I think the reality is quite a bit more complicated. Look at Stamford, CT. It’s a small city of 120,000, which is 40 miles form NY. It has boomed primarily as a cheaper alternative for financial institutions that want proximity to New York but not the high costs of being in Manhattan.
Each city has a different realationship to its surrounding environs. For example, Springfield MA is 80 miles from Boston, but there’s a lot of mid-MA that is basically empty-its no where near Boston really. New Haven, on the other hand, is on the eastern-most urbanized edge of the NY Metro area, and has direct hourly train service.
This may have hurt New Haven in the past, but recently there has been a boomlet of development around the train station as developers take advantage of the fact that its relatively close still and much cheaper than either New York or Stamford, although still relatively expensive.
Manchester, NH has also become a haven of sorts for Boston companies looking for cheaper land.
My guess is that cities may undergo a loss at first, but over time it may turn into a gain as transportation links become better established and land in the primary city becomes more expensive. BUT, these cities have other factors that also play into the mix, so maybe Providence has some other disadvantage to Mancester, NH.
George,
I like your point, but think Stamford is more like an edge city than a true satellite like Manchester. It had the advantage of being close in Fairfield County and close to Westchester, so a lot of the boss/ decision makers who were previously commuting to Manhattan already lived nearby. Further, as a back office location, there was a plentiful supply of “pink collar” workers. Third, it has excellent transit connections, as well as proximity to White Plains airport and the row of corporate headquarters that moved out to Westchester in the 1980s.
Interesting, the corporate exodus is now slightly reversing itself. For many functions, it is becoming a stronger center because of its increasingly varied downtown. Last year, however, UBS announced that it was moving its trading floor back to Manhattan, mainly because they couldn’t pull the young, single talent to the ‘burbs”. That is going to become increasingly true for more tech-related and very specialized jobs. Call it “the revenge of the city”. If you’re not within 30 or 45 minutes, door to door, you won’t be in the running for these kinds of jobs or the people that commute to them. Call centers, yes; software developers and financial quants no.
In the case of Canadian cities. 2 come to my mind but there might be others in Canada: Hamilton and Oshawa. Both was once the center of major industries: steel in Hamilton and GM autos plants in Oshawa, both are close to Toronto (Oshawa is 31 miles from Toronto while Hamilton is at 44 miles from Toronto) and fell the growth of the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).
George, at 40 miles, Stamford is within the distance where I said you would get benefit from being near the city. So that’s not a counter-example.
Whether proximity to a much larger city is a curse or a blessing depends on a host of factors. Ann Arbor seems to have prospered by its proximity to Detroit. Ann Arbor offered a better university than anything the central city had to offer and this in turn supported development of robotics start ups which served Detroit’s automotive concerns. Ann Arbor prospered even while Detroit went into a death spiral.
Rockford, in contrast, had little Chicago needed. While Rockford does have a first class airport the airport’s location in relation to O’Hare is all wrong for pulling in anything other than dirt cheap vacation flights. In comparison, Milwaukee’s and South Bend’s airports have the opportunity to serve as alternatives to Midway and O’Hare for some Chicago suburbs. Milwaukee’s airport has had some success exploiting its position in this regard.
South Bend strikes me as having the right assets. It has a university which has a high profile in Chicago, but one which has to compete with the University of Chicago and Northwestern as an economics incubator. It has an airport which has one terminus for a commuter railroad straight into the heart of downtown Chicago. South Bend’s disadvantages have been its inability to shake off its legacy as an old auto town and some of its former leaderships’ notion that it could thrive as a service center (and bedroom community) for nearby Elkhart’s RV industry.
Paul, oddly for a major national university, Notre Dame seems to be far behind other similarly-situated institutions in its aspiration to make its home city better. There’s some silly stuff: look at the UND website, and the home football games are played in “Notre Dame, IN”. There is no such place, though the university did lobby for the post office/zip code.
This speaks to a tenuous attachment to South Bend (and to Indiana, as the campus is almost on the Michigan state line). Even inside the state, people rattle off IU and Purdue as our major universities…and, “oh yeah, that’s right, Notre Dame is here too.”
I’m not sure that Brown is a whole lot more engaged with Providence. At least it doesn’t get cited as a good example or case study of town-gown cooperation in urban redevelopment circles.
Contrast this with institutions like Penn, Yale, CMU, Pitt, and Chicago which seem to understand that they can invest in (re)building a better neighborhood in a rusty city around their campuses. Out of necessity or guilt, these intitutions have anchored significant redevelopment and made their neighborhoods desirable places again.
Aaron,
This is a very interesting post. It is insightful, yet at the same time, it almost hearkens back to an earlier era when Milwaukee actually DID see Chicago as a threat. In fact, for most of Milwaukee’s existence Chicago (and Illinois) was looked at somewhat disdainfully (from what I’ve heard–I wasn’t around back then).
You still see echoes of it now when older generation Wisconsinites refer to people from Illinois coming up to vacation as FIBs (F$%king Illinois Bastards).
Reality is, Milwaukee’s best bet is to allow itself to be absorbed into the Chicago megaregion, but make itself into a hipper, niche-type neighbor that provides an urban getaway from the big city down the coast. Strengthen rail connections between the cities, develop that streetcar, and continue to develop the lakefront neighborhoods as hip and desirable places to live. Preserve historic streetscapes, focus on livability. Sure, develop a few industries on your own (education, freshwater, some professional services), but for the most part it is better for Milwaukee to give in to a process that is inevitable, and make the best of it.
I was thinking about this the other day. Ann Arbor’s and Flint’s relationship to Detroit are opposite.
Flint is close enough to Detroit that there’s no reason to live or locate your business there. There’s no reason for it to exist. There’s nothing that it can provide that Detroit doesn’t do better, just an hour south. And it’s not far enough away to be the central city of a region of its own.
Ann Arbor on the other hand has the University of Michigan, which for various reasons makes it a good place to live and do business. But it’s close enough to Detroit that it can be connected to it and take advantage of what it has to offer. So Google can locate an office in Ann Arbor and still have access to everything in Detroit. I don’t think the benefits of the university would outweigh the disadvantages of not being near a major city.
As a native Portlander, the comments about the rivalry between Milwaukee and Chicago remind me of how Portland used to regard Seattle. Originally, from 1880 to 1940, Portland was the dominant city of the region, the more polished place. Then, with Boeing, it began to pull ahead. In 1962, the Seattle World’s Fair put the place on the map. In the 1970’s, Nixon consolidated the federal offices to the north. In the 1980’s, Portland went through hell as the timber industry got crushed, even as the suburbs of Seattle began to boom with tech work. This continued into the 1990s, as Portland began to get a new identity, building on its green values as a hip place. During the 2000s Seattle began to have urban problems, began to lose its quality of life, and the center city of Portland began to be an even more interesting place to live. Somewhere along the way, Portland stopped competing with Seattle and decided to be its own place. That took self confidence and new industries to put the bread on the table. Like people, cities just need to be themselves.
Milwaukee is a full 90 miles from Chicago. It won’t be subsumed into Chicagoland in our lifetimes or even our children’s lifetimes.
Keep in mind that Philly is roughly the same distance from NYC (really much closer if you go by city limits; they’re around 55 miles apart by city limits)) and the two cities are still totally distinct, even though NYC and Philly are a much, much bigger pair than Chicago and Milwaukee (with corresponding greater geographic span).
NYC also has huge home price disparaties with Philly (which isn’t the case with Chicago-Milwaukee), yet even that hasn’t been enough to create a single metro. One would think that supercommuting would be driven by home price disparaties. There’s some of that, but not enough to create a single metro.
So maybe NYC-Philly in 30 years or something, and Chicago-Milwaukee in 150 years or something. Too far off to really do any planning.
Chris,
There has been a town/gown problem between Notre Dame and South Bend, but I’ve seen some evidence if recent change in that regard. For example see:
http://president.nd.edu/about-the-office/presidents-biography/
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-09-06/business/ct-biz-0906-bf-tech-park-20110906_1_ignition-park-innovation-park-economic-development
http://eddycommons.com/
It certainly has been far too long in coming.
Matt,
The problem with your NYC-Philly analagy to Chi-Milwaukee is the issue of Philly being a major city of 1.4 million and a large metropolitan area of its own right.
Philly is not a good analogy to Milwaukee. It has its own rail mass transit system, a very dense and walkable downtown with good quality shopping, dining, multiple Universities, tourism (domestic and international), and traditions that go back centuries. This is at least one reason why it has not (nor does it necessarily need to) become part of the New York “megaregion”.
Milwaukee is just plain different. It has a nice downtown and some cute neighborhoods, as well as a beautiful lakefront. But it simply isn’t anything remotely close to Philadelphia. Its relative paucity of core attractions and functions (see paragraph above) makes it much more liable to fall “victim” to Chicago’s sprawl.
I agree that Philly has enough of its own “gravity” to withstand being totally consumed by the NYC Metro area. However, keep in mind that Jersey is basically one big melding pot of development between the two cities, and so in many ways they are part of a megaopolis-a super-Metro.
I guess you can think of it as a solar system-are you big enough OR far enough away to establish your own orbit, or will you be sucked in by the orbit of a larger planet and become a moon, or will you just crash into that planet and become part of it’s terra?
Does this mean that New Jersey is like an asteroid field? 😉
I agree 100% with TUP re Philly. He said it way better than I did.
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Jersey is odd. One of the most densely-populated US states, yet without an independent large metro of its own. The 1700’s British colonial division into East and West Jersey (the line ran from the NW corner of the state SSE) has morphed into the NYC-Philly division of today.
I think that this discussion is reversing cause and effect. It’s not that Providence is near Boston and therefore it’s struggling. It’s the opposite: Providence is struggling and therefore it’s pulled into the Boston orbit. It doesn’t have enough local economic activity to raise rents to the stratospheric levels of the largest Northeastern cities, so Boston-area workers consider it a cheap alternative to Boston. It doesn’t have many local cultural amenities, so its residents go to Boston a lot, and soon enough people sell the city as “close to Boston.” Most importantly, because of this initial pull into the Boston orbit and the lack of a strong local economy, it becomes easier for employers and city leaders to think of the city as a Boston satellite and try to redevelop and rebrand it as such.
To Alon and others,
It’s hard to determine cause and effect, but taking a lesson from physics, there is always an equal and opposite reaction to everything.
For example, New York strips Philly of some economic activity and of its talent. This process continues until the costs of being in New York outweigh the benefits of moving there. At that point, you hit a tipping point and you have a flow of traffic BACK to Philly as well as TOWARDS New York. That could be viewed as an equilibrium.
What is Chicago & Milwaukee’s equilibrium? Right now, it is too early to say. I think the process of Chicago’s “globalization” has just begun to thaw the iceberg that is the SE Wisconsin mentality. We have a younger generation of Wisconsinites who actually are taking more of an interest in what Chicago has to offer. On the flip side, you have more people in Northeastern Illinois paying attention to SE Wisconin, whether it be day trips to Milwaukee or use of Milwaukee’s ever growing airport.
So perhaps in a few decades we will see how this relationship evolves.
There’s a limit to how much the physics analogy holds up. My thinking of the evolution of these colonial relationships between cities is that once Providence (or Worcester, etc.) becomes fully integrated into the Boston orbit, it loses its independent identity and needs to compete with any other Boston suburb. Providence can sell itself on amenities like being an actual city, but eventually other suburbs can catch up to that.
The issue is that when comparing Providence to (say) Mansfield, Providence has the advantages as well as disadvantages of being fully brownfield. The advantage is that it’s a city, and has a less anti-development mentality than the urban cores of true suburbs. But I think it’s easier for a postwar suburb to adopt the same practices than for Providence to cast away all of its brownfield disadvantages. To put it more bluntly, the other suburbs will put walkable development near their MBTA stations before Providence improves its schools and reduces its pension payments; Attleboro, the oldest suburb on the Providence Line, is already moving in that direction.
Of course Providence still has advantages that Attleboro doesn’t have – as I said, it’s an actual city, and it has Thayer Street, Federal Hill, and Brown/RISD, and walkable surrounding neighborhoods. Brown and RISD are indeed not part of the Boston orbit, but the neighborhood centers can be replicated anywhere given sufficient time and intelligent zoning.
Alon,
You’re right to focus on the institutions, for the older cities themselves make up a minority of the population. When was the last time you heard of an older city with good schools and well-maintained parks? And yet these are the quality-of-life public services that draw in the middle class and especially the young professionals who want to get at least something out of the place they live. Unlike the Eighties and its TGIF culture, the weekend and the public realm now matter far more. For these older places to “win”, they are going to have to quit making excuses and start competing, not by wasting dollars on aquariums and convention centers and other public attractions designed to get the tourist dollar, but on better everyday goods and services that make life in them nice. Somewhere along the way they will have to get rid of the excuse that just because they are the public sector, they can relax their standards. It’s become do or die time for many. The smart cities are beginning to realize that people vote with their feet when it comes to public services, or, if good ones are not available, they will simply go some place else where they don’t have to pay for them.
I have never been to Providence (other than driving through it briefly).
All of this talk makes me curious to visit the place.
Aaron- Interesting article. Thanks. In considering some of the more successful city pairs, I could not help but wonder if one missing aspect of your analysis is how the city pairs in question benefit from being in the same state (or not) where the state government and other economic development bodies have more incentive, and power, to harness the synergies between said areas. On a separate note, what a sad reality for Gary, Indiana to not even warrant any reference in the article or subsequent comments. Shows how much of an afterthought the city has become.
Brian,
Gary’s proximity to Chicago hasn’t benefitted that city much largely because the Chicago metropolitan area really has taken a north/west bent, essentially pulling resources away from the south/east directions.
A part of me hopes that the resurgence of downtown once again makes south suburbs more attractive, but the truth is that the vast majority of jobs these days are out in the suburbs and O’Hare remains a long trek for people on the south side, so I suspect this historic axis will remain in place for many years to come.
TUP, I don’t think any city or metro has ever wanted a strong connection between downtown and its smokestack quarter whether it’s in the same state or not.
This, from an Indy resident who lives in a neighborhood wedged between a railyard, a (dead) old coal-coking plant and a foundry on the southeast side of town. If ever there were an “unfavored” quarter…
^^ Sounds like you’re describing the Fountain Square area in Indy — which is being linked into the downtown area with bike and improved transit routes. Parts of the area may still be looked at as the “unfavored quarter” – but it seems to be making steady, positive strides. I think the near SW side is the real “unfavored quarter” of Indy.
I pretty much agree with the analogy of Milwaukee being a little too close to Chicago that it gets a little overlooked. Its location, to the north of Chicago also hurts it because it is not in the main “flow” of travel in the US. Its even worse than the “Mercury” analogy because not only is it too close, but it is on the “wrong side” of Chicago and sits pretty much in the middle of a “dead end alley” (sorry Osh Kosh).
It is out of the way if you are heading from the Twin Cities towards Chicago (traveling I-94 via Madison and Rockford is the direct route). If you are coming from any other direction, you basically have to go through Chicago to get to Milwaukee. A lot of people will likely get sucked in by all of the interesting things to do in Chicago and will ignore the smaller amount of things that are going on 90 miles to the north. Traffic in the Chicago region will also likely hurt people’s desire to get to Milwaukee – as you will have to fight through all of the Chcago traffic in order to get to Milwaukee, from most directions. This is true for people coming via land from the NE, East, Southeast, South, Southwest and West.
And if people or goods are trying to avoid the congestion of Chicago, they cannot really go aound it to the north — they will swing around to the south.
The only “populated” areas to the north of Milwaukee are the “Green Bay, Appleton, Osh Kosh region” and the Upper Peninsula. That whole area of NE WIsconsin and the UP has maybe 1.5 million people. So basically, Milwaukee is only along the main travel thoroughfare from “here to there” if you are coming from those areas directly north of Milwaukee and going to Chicago and beyond. Anyone coming from any other direction will pretty much be heading toward Chicago so they can get around Lake Michigan. This means Milwaukee is not “on the way” for 99% of all travel trips crossing the country. You pretty much only go to Milwaukee if you are planning to go to Milwaukee.
Other cities like Memphis, Kansas City, Columbus, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Dallas, etc are in the direct travel flow for large amounts of traffic. This is a key thing that helps them attract business and grow. The lack of being on the main travel corridors is a key issue that hurts Milwaukee.
(I meant I-90 is the route through Madison and Rockford that is the shortest way to go from the Twin Cities to Chicago — not I-94 – which does go through Milwaukee but adds 15 – 20 miles to the route.)
The devastating stories and optics coming in from Sandy’s aftermath on the East Coast, and especially NYC, are germane to this conversation. If you want to live near a large body of water and continue to do biz relatively uninterrupted by the forces of nature, suddenly the cities of America’s great Third Coast, including Chicago and Milwaukee, don’t look so backwaterish.
I don’t want to underestimate the resilience of NYC, Philadelphia or New Jersey and their ability to recover quickly, or to the resources that will be provided to get them back up and running normally. They will be back. But I also wonder about the degree to which climate change will be a potential game changer regarding future investment in low lying coastal regions. NYC in particular has suffered as severe sock to the solar plexus with the outages to its power and transportation grids. I wish them a very, very speedy recovery.
There are of course damning stories emerging from alt media sources about the “new normal” for coastal cities like NYC — surely it’s a sign to take a deep (but quick) breath and expand the dialogue about what’s going on here. How many more mega storms do we have to endure (snow, rains, hurricanes, tornadoes) before we decide something different is happening (deep breath, deep breath, deep breath).
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature — and She’s clearly pissed off about something.
I have long felt that, through the test of time, Chicago’s location will help it prevail.
Ironically, its location is also what sometimes hinders its success. There is nothing sexy about the midwest. The midwest will never entice people. It is blah. It is the heartland, the breadbasket, of America. “Great Lakes region” sounds a little bit better, of course, but still not as exciting as “east coast” or “west coast” in peoples’ minds.
Either way, cities in the midwest like Chicago probably won’t be battling hurricanes or floods, or (God forbid) tsunamis with anywhere near the severity or frequency of coastal cities, and that means less resources spent preparing for (insurance, increased infrastructure) and alleviating such disasters.
Chicago’s Deep Tunnel project was a wise investment, decades going, and still not completed, if I’m correct. That is a good thing.
Pretty ridiculous and untimely comments, Ziggy and Urban Politican. Who know that Chicago and the Midwest were free from Mother Nature?
I guess if a tornado flattens Chicago, or the long-overdue New Madrid or Olmstead Faults get humming (both within range of destruction from Chicagoland), then the Midwest should all move to the coasts?
Even California, on balance, looks safer than most of the Midwest. Yes, earthquakes, but Illinois and Missouri are equally at risk, and no one in LA has to worry about the deadly annual snowstorms, icestorms and tornados. Remember the diaster on Lake Shore Drive last winter?
“Remember the diaster on Lake Shore Drive last winter?”
I do actually. It lasted three days. San Francisco, on the other hand, is still rebuilding from Loma Prieta.
And let’s talk about long-overdue faults. Shall we?
I would like to begin with Rogers Creek, Hayward, and Rose Canyon.
SacraTomato, no part of the US is immune from natural disaster, whether it’s flood, fire, ‘quake, tornado, hurricane, or drought/water shortage. But the kind that hit the Midwest simply aren’t as severe, don’t cause the same loss of life, and don’t impact the US economy in the same way as those on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf Coasts.
Tornadoes and “killer snowstorms” don’t cause the kind of lasting impact and expense that big quakes, wildfires or hurricane disasters do. (Just look at any “top 10” list of costliest natural disasters.) Tornadoes have a narrow field of destruction, and by their nature avoid the centers of big cities (urban heat island and local steering winds keep them away). Total destruction by tornado happens to small towns, not to major metros. Snow and ice cause temporary delays and problems but don’t leave seven feet of water in basements, boats beached on roads, and infrastructure erased. Since it happens regularly, people in the Midwest can and do prepare.
It’s simply a difference of scale. Midwestern cities just don’t suffer those huge, all-encompassing natural disasters.
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Interestingly, the center of the storm went right over Philadelphia (also mentioned much further up this post). The impacts were minimal. Yet it’s a port city, close to (but not on) the tidal Atlantic. Compared to the Jersey Shore, NYC and Long Island, the SE PA region hardly suffered; SEPTA’s subway didn’t flood, the bridges reopened quickly, and there was minimal tidal and river flooding.
Totally disagree, Chris and Racaille. Severe ice storms are routine annual events in the Midwest, and cause deaths and billions in damage. The summer droughts, while they don’t kill humans, are economic catstrophes. Illinois and Missouri are severly overdue for a huge earthquake, and have terrible soil for such an event.
The costliest annual disasters are on the coasts because they have greater population, more valuable infrastructure, and the events tend to be more sporadic, and pack more punch. But you’re definitely not less likely to be victimized by some weather event in the Midwest. I’d say it has some of the most severe weather in the U.S.
Some place like Miami has a severe weather system every decade or so, while Chicago is almost guaranteed to have a few horrible snowstorms/icestorms annually, tornados are fairly regular, and a huge earthquake is an eventual certainty. I don’t think most would agree that the Midwest offers relative refuge from Mother Nature.
Also, why is it “interesting” than Philly had less flooding than the NYC area? You realize that Philly isn’t near the ocean, correct? Wind wasn’t the problem; it was the storm surge, and the Delaware River doesn’t even meet tidewater at Philly.
“I don’t think most would agree that the Midwest offers relative refuge from Mother Nature.”
Well of course not.
“But you’re definitely not less likely to be victimized by some weather event in the Midwest. I’d say it has some of the most severe weather in the U.S.”
And that weather is relatively benign compared to a major earthquake or hurricane. Which, btw, occur routinely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_California
“Illinois and Missouri are severly overdue for a huge earthquake, and have terrible soil for such an event.”
Terrible soils? You need to study-up on the geology of the LA basin and the Bay Area before you make a statement such as this.
A note for the record on earthquakes in the Midwest:
The fault in question is the New Madrid Fault (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone) and is on the southeastern edge of MO. While it can certainly produce a major earthquake (and did in 1811-12), it is about half-way between St. Louis and Memphis and about as far from a major city as is possible. It’s impact would be more likely to interrupt Mississippi river shipping than to damage major cities.
I think the weather/natural disaster debate is overblown – all things considered, the long-term differences between major cities in this area is comparatively modest.
This has degenerated into a silly discussion. The basic question here is how cities compete, and whether they are at a disadvantage if they are moderately in the shadow of a more dominant one. The more relevant question is not the comparative risks of natural disasters but if and how to use that proximity to advantage.
And that was my point regarding Philadelphia: the relative protection from the hurricane’s deleterious effects might render an advantage to its port, its refineries, its rail lines, its power grid, and its streets and sewers in relation to NYC.
Chris, of course Philly offers relative protection from storm surge; it isn’t on the ocean. That’s why it’s an odd comment.
Maybe they should put all the refineries in Kansas, just to be extra-sure of storm surge, as if that’s the only weather-related event.
Sacratomato, look at a map. Philadelphia isn’t inland any more than DC, Savannah, or Jacksonville, or any less a coastal city. Philadelphia is a major port for oceangoing vessels, just like every other big East Coast city.
What’s unclear is how much freshwater flooding resulted from Sandy. The storm surge effectively created a dam of saltwater that held back the Hudson and other rivers; at some point they would have gone over their banks too. Again: my point is that didn’t happen in Philadelphia even with two days of rain before the center of the storm hit.
Today there are discussions of a $15 billion seawall across NY Harbor, which would simply move the “dam” way out and protect the city from a repeat of Sandy. Again…Philadelphia has that protection already and doesn’t need years to build it.
Another obvious city “too close to the sun” is San Diego. It overlaps with Los Angeles – or at least Orange County – on it’s north side, where there are boroughs like Carlsbad and Temecula that send commuters in both directions. It also has so much new residential downtown that it is on its way to becoming Vancouver South. And it has a light rail that doesn’t go everywhere, but goes to several useful places.