Welcome, Atlantic CITIES!

The Atlantic – a longtime favorite source of news, politics and cultural commentary – last week embarked on a new journey that we are really excited about. With Sommer Mathis and Richard Florida at the helm, The Atlantic Cities is a new portal for people to explore all-things-city.

The site serves four purposes, according to Mathis:

1)      A place to tell stories about where cities are today, where they’ve been and where they’re headed;

2)      A forum to deliver latest news and events happening in cities across the globe;

3)      A site for the smartest thinkers and researchers in urbanism to facilitate a bigger-picture, ideas-based conversation with readers; and

4)      A new media outlet to tell these stories.

Why the focus on cities?

As part of the launch, Richard Florida wrote a piece called “Why Cities Matter.”  Here’s a teaser of Florida’s article:

Our species is well on its way to becoming Homo urbanus. Consider that just two centuries ago, only 3 percent of the world's population lived in cities. At the dawn of the 20th century, it was just 14 percent. Today, it’s exploded to more than half the world’s population. And by the year 2030, more than five billion people (six out of every ten human beings) will live in cities and urban centers.

Cities are our greatest invention. They generate wealth and improve living standards while providing the density, interaction, and networks that make us more creative and productive. They are the key social and economic organizing units of our time, bringing together people, jobs, and all the inputs required for economic growth. The great Jane Jacobs was perhaps to first to note that in and of themselves cities are engines of innovation; their concentrations of talented and creative people promote and accelerate economic growth. This year in fact marks the 50^th anniversary of Jacobs’ classic Death and Life of Great American Cities—one of the many things we’ll be discussing on this site.  

We’re a metropolitan nation, as Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution reminds us: when we say “cities,” we really mean “metropolitan areas.” A “metro” or metropolitan area encompasses not just a center city but its suburban rings. (My colleague Nate Berg has a great piece describing the different ways we define and measure cities.) Nearly 85 percent of Americans live in metro areas, which produce 90 percent of the U.S.’s total economic output and 85 percent of its jobs. Across the world, metros with populations of more than one million people account for more than half  the world’s economic output, while housing roughly one in five of its people.

As they grow bigger, many of these metros are morphing into mega-regions. Decades ago, the geographer Jean Gottman predicted the rise of the megalopolis, as great cities and metropolitan areas grew together into something even bigger, like the one he dubbed Bos-Wash running from Boston through New York to Washington, D.C. on the eastern seaboard. While many commentators like to talk about the new global competition among nation states and the rise of the so-called BRICs economies—Brazil, Russia, India and China—their rise has been shaped and defined by their cities and mega-regions—the Sao Paolo-Rio corridor, the greater Moscow region, the Bangalore-Mumbai axis and the great mega-region that stretches from Shanghai to Beijing. The world’s 40 largest mega-regions house 18 percent of its people, produce two-thirds of its economic output, and nine in ten of its innovations.

If our cities are our most powerful engines of growth, they are also greener and more environmentally efficient than suburbs and small towns, as David Owen and others have shown. Multi-family dwellings that share walls are easier to heat than detached single family houses; density discourages car use and promotes mass transit and walking. Our cities are safer, too. Crime is down to its lowest level in 40 years, especially in America's biggest cities. Part of the reason lies in better policing, but much of it lies in their growing diversity and improving conditions.

The text of the entire article can be found here.

Meanwhile, Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution has written a piece for The Atlantic Cities called “The Metropolitan Moment,” highlighting the importance of our metro regions to the global economy. Metros, he writes, are important for a variety of reasons, but specifically:

1)      Metros are innovating locally to engineer the shift from an economy characterized by debt, consumption and income inequalities to one driven by exports, powered by low carbon, fueled by innovation and rich with opportunity;

2)      U.S. metros are advocating nationally to enlist the help and support of their states and the federal government; and

3)      U.S. metros are networking globally to broaden the possibilities of trade and exchange.

Cities and metros are vital to the economy; that is clear. What is less clear in these pieces is where the role of our inner cities comes in. Inner cities are critically important to both cities and metros for several reasons, including: they offer a diversified workforce, excellent access to public transit, and inexpensive housing, office and retail space.  America’s inner cities are also home to more than 800,000 small and midsize businesses. We here at ICIC know that inner cities offer hold a competitive advantage, but must be supported in order to do so. As such, we look forward to working with The Atlantic Cities to shed light on the assets and promise of our nation’s inner cities neighborhoods.

In the meantime, we will continue to explore the new site—and encourage others to do the same!

BY Amanda Maher on September 19th, 2011

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