Aaron M. Renn

All Things Aaron

Suburban Migration In Baltimore

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One unique aspect of Baltimore is that it is a so-called "independent city" that is not part of any county. Because of this, migration data from the IRS allows us to look specifically at the city of Baltimore. So I wanted to take a quick look at migration between Baltimore and its suburbs. As you might expect, there's been a net outflow of people from the city for quite some time. From 1990 to 2011 (the most recent year the IRS has released), Baltimore lost almost 151,000 people on a net basis to its suburbs. Here's the chart: You see … [Read more...]

London’s Global City Royal Flush

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A recent article in the Economist about the Rosetta space probe reminded me again of the uniqueness of London on the global stage. The piece notes: In a clean room at the Airbus Defence & Space (ADS) factory north of London, scientists are working on LISA Pathfinder (pictured), a hexagon-shaped satellite due to be launched next year. The aim of the ambitious space mission is to try, for the first time, to find and measure gravitational waves–ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. ... About one-quarter … [Read more...]

Two Chicagos, Defined

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[ Here's another nice piece of analysis about Chicago from Pete Saunders. He originally did this earlier this year - Aaron. ] Chicago skyline.  Source: wikipedia.org Years ago, when I first started working as a planner for the City of Chicago, my primary responsibility was working with community organizations that received Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding for commercial revitalization activities.  This being CDBG funding, our work was constrained to areas of the city where 51% or more of households earned less than the … [Read more...]

The Magic of Microclusters

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This post originally appeared on October 27, 2013. If you look at the list of target industries for any given city or state, you usually find several from the same list of five common items: high technology, life sciences (under various names), green tech, advanced manufacturing, logistics. Take a few from this list, and add a legacy industry if there’s one or two where you are already particularly strong, and there you have it. The problem is that everybody and their brother is now claiming to be a tech or startup “hub”, etc. And there’s … [Read more...]

More On the Midwest vs. the South

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My post on Sunday about SEC vs. Big 10 football produced quite a stir. There are 165 comments and counting, and it even prompted posts by Richard Longworth and Crain's Cleveland Business. Not everyone was critical but the ones that were basically say that it's ludicrous to say that football proves anything. I don't think that it does. But I will make three points: 1. The differing fortunes of the two conference is yet another in an extremely long series of data points and episodes that demonstrate a shift in demographic, economic, and … [Read more...]

How Segregated Is New York City?

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[ I don't know how he comes up with this stuff, but Daniel Hertz has continued to turn out tons of interesting maps and findings on segregation and inequality. In this piece from last April, he looked at the matter of segregation in New York City. For more, check out his web site - Aaron. ] Update to Original Post: I wrote this in the comments, but several people have asked about it and not everyone makes it down there: this post focuses on white-black segregation because that, for various social and historical reasons, has been by far the … [Read more...]

The New Donut

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Former Indianapolis Mayor Bill Hudnut used to like to say that "you can't be a suburb of nowhere." This is the oft-repeated notion has been a rallying cry for investments to revitalize downtowns in America for three decades or so now. The idea being that you can't have a smoking hole in your region where your downtown is supposed to be. This created a mental based on a donut. You can't let downtown become an empty hole. For reason that will become apparent soon, I call this model "the old donut": Filling in the hole became every city's … [Read more...]

Reinventing Higher Education

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It's no secret that the status quo in higher education is facing a lot of pressure from things like skyrocketing tuition, ballooning student loan debt, people questioning the need for higher education, difficulties graduates are getting established in careers, etc. One organization focused on helping universities navigate the transition to a new future and boost higher educational attainment rates in the US is the Lumina Foundation. Lumina is a $1 billion foundation in Indianapolis - no, they don't give out scholarships! - focused on … [Read more...]

Columbus: Getting Fit For the Competition Ahead

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This is the last of my entries prompted by my recent trip to Columbus. I've noted before that Columbus and Indianapolis are twin cities in many ways, though with some important differences. One of those differences is that the civic discussion in Indianapolis today is heavily driven by the urgency of reversing the decline of Marion County as the city of Indianapolis increasingly loses out demographically and economically to its suburbs. In Columbus, by contrast, I didn't sense nearly the same concern about suburban competition. While again I … [Read more...]

Dallas: A City in Transition

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Dallas Skyline. Source: WikipediaI was in Dallas this past week for the New Cities Summit, so it's a good time to post an update on the city. I don't think many of us realize the scale to which Sunbelt mega-boomtowns like Dallas have grown. The Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area is now the fourth largest in the United States with 6.8 million people, and it continues to pile on people and jobs at a fiendish clip. Many urbanists are not fans of DFW, and it's easy to understand why. But I think it's unfair to judge the quality of a city without … [Read more...]