For computer programmers like me, there are only a handful of places to work: Austin, Boston, RTP, Silicon Valley, and Seattle. These are not the only places I could find work , but they offer real benefits over other cities because the software jobs are so concentrated. If one job turns sour, there are plenty more in Austin, and I've got enough friends in the same profession to advise me on salaries and working conditions. Neither would apply in Beaumont or St. Louis.
Richard Florida has an article in the October Atlantic on this phenomenon and its effects. He abandons his usual focus on how cities can attract the "creative class" for a look at what happens when they do. There's a fascinating map of college-graduate densities per county in the US, showing that although higher education has expanded from 11% to 24% in the last three decades, all of those graduates have moved to the cities. The stagnating effects on rural areas and the rustbelt are worrisome but at least predictable. On the other hand, the college-graduate meccas are being transformed:
Because the return on colocation among the ablest is so high, and because high-end incomes are rising so fast, it makes sense for these workers to continue to bid up real estate and accept other costs that traditional middle-class workers and families cannot afford. As traditional middle-class households are displaced by smaller, higher-income households, population can decline even as economic growth continues. America's most successful cities may increasingly be inhabited by a core of wealthy workers leading highly priviledged lives, catered to by an underclass of service workers living in far-off suburbs.Posted by Ben Brumfield at October 4, 2006 01:44 PM