New York, in other words, needs London. But what about Bethlehem, Pa.?

December 22, 2017 9:12 AM

What Happens When the Richest U.S. Cities Turn to the World? As the economy has changed, so have the relationships between places, to the disadvantage of smaller cities and rural areas. (SLYNYT)
posted by crazy with stars (6 comments total)

This feeds into my tinfoil hat speculation that the rise of globalization was fostered by the .01% for decades on the left and the right in America, but now that we're looking at cheaper Automation and Machine Learning the Nationalist sentiments have been allowed to grow as powerful cities/countries no longer need to rely on outsourced labor to drive costs down.
posted by CheapB at 9:30 AM on December 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

That's interesting, mostly because I live in Iowa, and I feel like Des Moines and Cedar Rapids are doing ok. Actually, in some ways they've hit a sweet spot with low cost of living, relatively low levels of income inequality, and pretty good quality of life. I guess that you could argue that both cities rely on a relatively small number of major employers, and that could all go away if the big employers decide to move to bigger cities. But right now, they don't feel like places that are losing out in the global economy, and I don't sense a huge amount of resentment of Chicago. Things may be different in smaller cities and rural areas. And there definitely is some resentment of the coasts, but that's a different issue, I think.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:40 AM on December 22, 2017

Google’s digital products don’t have a physical supply chain. Facebook doesn’t have dispersed manufacturers.

This seems... wrong? Both companies build massive data centres which have physical supply chains. They just get less of their supplies from the U.S. There are giant factories in Thailand and Malaysia and China, with long complicated supply chains behind them, which are to Silicon Valley what American suppliers used to be. The role of Bethlehem, PA is now played by Penang.
posted by clawsoon at 11:16 AM on December 22, 2017 [4 favorites]

There are sides to this. On one hand, yes, we should not imagine that the state of the world in 1960 was something special that should be preserved forever. On the other hand, maybe we are at a breaking point right now, where the big cities are becoming unaffordable for young innovators and entrepreneurs, and we will see a surge of growth in rural areas and some smaller cities/towns (not all).
Part of this is that a new generation of manufacturers and food producers is emerging, and they need the space and low costs of rural areas. Wait and see.
Another element are those data centers. They are not being built in dense urban areas, but in ex-urban or small-town sites, where land, energy and taxes are cheap.
posted by mumimor at 11:21 AM on December 22, 2017

How much of the special situation of rural and small-city America after WWII had to do with the fact that so much of the rest of the world had just been blown to bits?
posted by clawsoon at 11:35 AM on December 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

Part of this is that a new generation of manufacturers and food producers is emerging, and they need the space and low costs of rural areas. Wait and see.
Another element are those data centers. They are not being built in dense urban areas, but in ex-urban or small-town sites, where land, energy and taxes are cheap.

These equations vary over time. There are plenty of advantages to locating manufacturing, food production, and even data centers in dense urban areas (look at 350 East Cermak in downtown Chicago). Right now those advantages are often (not always) outweighed by the massive cost difference, but that hasn't always been the case and there's no reason to assume it will always be the case. That cost differential is exacerbated by massive transport subsidies (manufacturers in outlying areas don't need to pay anywhere near the true costs of schlepping their goods to customers in city centers), place-to-place differences in land use regulation that are ripe for arbitrage, and pro-sprawl policies (like parking minimums) that make it geometrically impossible to build things as close to other things as we did when we built the cities that have now become so desirable. None of these things is a law of nature, none has really been around for more than a lifetime or two, and there is no particular reason to imagine that they will remain unchanged in the future.
posted by enn at 11:52 AM on December 22, 2017 [2 favorites]