The “creatives” are on the move, morphing the socioeconomic map of the nation.
Musicians, software developers, engineers, artists — people who make a living with ideas, creating value with new products, services, or just experiences — are converging on Austin, Texas, say Austin American-Statesman writers Bill Bishop and Mark Lisheron.
Only a few months since Richard Florida thrust the “creative class” into the nation’s lexicon of regional economies, and a little over a year since David Brooks offered up Bobos in Paradise, these journalists are tracking migration of “creatives” in a series of reports, the latest of which appeared Sunday August 4. The Austin region alone gobbled up 57,045 people, who brought net incomes 17 percent higher than the residents who left. That’s a $2.15 billion net annual gain for Austin. Houston and Dallas round out a Texas golden triangle of “cities of ideas.”
This success over just a decade stands in stark contrast with other Texas regions like El Paso. El Paso gained population too, but came out on the losing end of the skills and income race. While both regions can point to San Jose as a source of in-migration, the family incomes of those moving to Austin were nearly $50,000, while those headed for El Paso were $12,796. Like other large Texas cities, San Antonio got a share of migrants from Los Angeles, but they were largely families who earn the lowest wages.
This story’s bigger than Texas. The newspaper’s consultant, Robert Cushing, analyzed IRS migration and incomes data for the past decade in 310 U.S. metro areas. Cushing’s data clearly show these fearlessly footloose “creatives” streaming toward relatively few American regions. Like Austin, they tend to be places with great universities, an atmosphere in which arts flourish, where cultural and recreational opportunities abound, where entrepreneurial behavior is nurtured. Rich Florida claims his “bohemian index” is the best predictor of these movements. (Note the review of Florida’s book by the Alliance for Regional Stewardship).
All this is about incomes — but with immense implications for cities and regions. Historically, rural areas got poorer at the expense of metro centers. Or vast amounts of wealth switched from inner cities to suburbs. Now, by contrast, we’re seeing some metros becoming more affluent, others poorer — a new rich-poor division in America. Those folks congregating in Dallas and Austin came from the Clevelands, the Baltimores, the Kansas Cities of America.
Policy question: if this is the survival-of-the-hippest, do the winner regions have any stake in the struggle of the losers? Will regions left behind pick themselves up? Should states start to consider revenue sharing, tax redistribution, to help out the losing regions (who may, as Texas indicates, represent a big majority of a state’s population?) In the short term, anything dressed up like Robin Hood may be unpopular in legislatures already afflicted by recession-born deficits. But if these disparities deepen, a new politics of interregional conflict may well emerge.