{"id":1006,"date":"2012-05-09T20:21:13","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T20:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2015-05-08T18:03:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T18:03:58","slug":"the-big-sort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/2012\/05\/the-big-sort\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Sort"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE BIG SORT: FERTILE GROUND FOR\u00a0CULTURE WARS IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT<\/strong><\/h2>\n

James Bishop & the Big Sort combines “the politics of place” with\u00a0“political segregation and polarization” producing some potentially interesting consequences for local economic development.<\/p>\n

\u00a0First, however, let’s put the Big Sort into some sort of context relevant to this article’s purposes. The Big Sort is overtly political in its inspiration and focus as was Patchwork Nation, and for that matter American Nations.\u00a0As with all articles in this Journal category. the Big Sort\u00a0is also concerned with social regions, but makes no bones in defining the boundaries of these regions in terms of politics. For our purposes, the Big Sort picks up a dynamic, introduced in our Patchwork Nation review, and carries that dynamic across the goal line. The dynamic? Population mobility.
\n\"\"Mobility is significant. Some 80mm\u00a0Americans over the next ten years\u00a0are likely to move across state lines. But so what. The nation has always been mobile–Go West Young\u00a0 Man, Oregon Trail, Grapes of Wrath, On the Road, Lord of the Rings, Gulliver’s Travels, rise of the Sunbelt! But Big Sort\u00a0demonstrates that\u00a0your grandfather’s conception of population\u00a0mobility is not the mobility\u00a0we have\u00a0witnessed in the last couple of decade. The Big Sort alleges that things began to change\u00a0somewhere around 1965 and the present-day effects of that change are astounding.Well, again,\u00a0our persistent and tiresome question again rears its ugly head–so what does all that have to do with economic development?<\/p>\n

Well obviously from an economic developer’s perspective, people leave his community because he failed, and people go to another community because the other economic developer is better. Or from the\u00a0policy wonk’s vantage point,\u00a0the business climate of the original state was terrible and the new one had the brilliance to adopt obviously politically-correct programs and policies. End of story. Well no. After all when it’s said and done, population growth and loss matters\u00a0quite a bit\u00a0to our average economic developer, maybe\u00a0even more\u00a0than job creation or losses.So population mobility, either coming or going, is clearly related to the central goals of economic development (usually job creation and tax stabilization). But sadly, that is not our real concern in this review.<\/p>\n

This article is the third in a series of reviews on Local Culture and Politics and our argument thus far is that (1) economic development is not only about economics, economic theory, strategies and tools; (2) economic development also is deeply affected by difficult to measure “softer” variables such as values, attitudes, even historical experiences–something we call local culture. And these non-economic cultural\u00a0forces, sad to say, usually morph into (3) troublesome intrusions, i.e. politics, sand in the gears,\u00a0sabotaging our\u00a0magically rational economic engines of growth unleashed by correct-thinking policies and programs of economic developers. Our quest in this topic is to better understand these disruptive forces because, say what you will, they are real and they are not going away soon.<\/p>\n

“THE UNITED STATES OF THOSE PEOPLE”<\/h2>\n

So how does the Big Sort help out the economic developer?\u00a0The Big Sort\u00a0may provide one of the better rationales for explaining what is going on in the political and cultural lives of our communities–our place-based jurisdictions, if you will. I’ve seen it myself; local politics is not what it was in the 1990’s and even 90’s. Things appear really\u00a0different today and the Big Sort offers some insight as to why. The practice of economic development and the implementation and application of economic development strategies and approaches occurs within the local socio-political cultural milieu.<\/p>\n

Population mobility or “exiting” to an economist is nothing new. For those of us schooled in the Tiebout Model, people move because they do not like where they are at, usually because\u00a0their old residence\u00a0is too expensive or does not contain the mix of costs and benefits desired. The relocation decision is essentially economic. It is also pretty rational; people move to maximize benefits and minimize costs. But is that all there is to it? The Big Sort thinks not.The Big Sort can use economics when it needs to, but for Bishop et al, the older\u00a0socio-political pattern of population mobility, based around decisions involving\u00a0land, family, class, tradition and religious denomination (all of which, I guess, could be crammed into the Tiebout model) has drastically changed with massively huge consequences.<\/p>\n

These traditional socio-political\u00a0decision criteria \u00a0were replaced with a new order based on individual (not group)\u00a0choice (that sounds Tieboutian). People seemingly are making mobility decisions based on individual preferences, not group socialization patterns.But, for the Big Sort,\u00a0the choice decision is not economic\u00a0in its roots. It is almost psychological rooted in notions of individual and personal comfort. Today, when we move\u00a0we seek out\u00a0“our own\u00a0 kind” who pray\u00a0in like-minded churches, sleep in like-minded neighborhoods, and play using\u00a0like-minded\u00a0sources of news and entertainment…. (P.39) Conformity reduces stress and for most of us proximity to those who think and live\u00a0differently creates discomfort. And when we feel most uncomfortable, like the Princess and the Pea, is when someone unlike ourselves enters our emotionally-gated community and lives across the street.<\/p>\n

Why is all this stuff happening? Bishop argues that since 1965 or\u00a0 so we have incrementally evolved into a “post-materialism\u00a0 culture”. Borrowing Robert Inglehart’s provocative set of works, typified\u00a0 by The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles in Advanced\u00a0 Industrial Society (Princeton, 1977) and also,\u00a0Modernization, Cultural Change and\u00a0 Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (Cambridge University Press, 2005),\u00a0the Big Sort believes we left post World War II moderation, characterized by\u00a0a bi-partisan\u00a0consensus, public civility and non ideological decision-making, for the current material mind frame.<\/p>\n

With few aware of, and with nobody’s permission, a new\u00a0kind of politics was gradually formed after 1965. The post-World War II moderate society shattered in the\u00a0 mid-1960’s and the forces that\u00a0remade its replacement culture\u00a0piece by piece,\u00a0created the world we know today. The new politics was molded by\u00a0Inglehart’s post-materialist realities.\u00a0The new\u00a0society was more about personal taste and worldview than attachment of any specific public policy. It was\u00a0 much or more concerned with self-expression, aspirations\u00a0and personal belief\u00a0than with social-economic class issues and perspectives. (P.103-104)<\/p>\n

Just what is this “post-materialist” culture:<\/p>\n

Inglehart hypothesized that when people grew up in relative\u00a0abundance, their social values–what they wanted out of life–changed. People\u00a0who knew that their basic needs were satisfied would gradually adopt different values from those who lived with scarcity. Hungry people cared about\u00a0survival….But those who grew up in abundance would be more concerned with\u00a0self-expression. (P.84) Inglehart borrowed heavily upon\u00a0Maslow’s hierarchy\u00a0of needs and\u00a0he\u00a0held that the booming post\u00a0World War II economic growth\u00a0created a ‘worldview” that with each\u00a0successive generation increasingly replaced the previous, longstanding ‘worldview’ which had\u00a0dominated the parents of the baby boomers (and their parents and grandparents\u00a0as well).<\/p>\n

The relatively easy fulfillment of material needs would\u00a0usually be taken for\u00a0granted, and”education levels would rise along with incomes…. And all that\u00a0 material progress ‘brings unforeseen changes–changes in gender roles, attitudes\u00a0 toward authority, and sexual norms; declining fertility rates, broader\u00a0 political participation; and less easily led public. (P.8) People would lose\u00a0 interest in traditional religion. They would become increasingly involved with\u00a0notions of personal spirituality. Class, economic growth, and military security\u00a0 would decline … replaced by issues of personal freedom, abortion rights, gay\u00a0 rights, and the environment …. People would be less inclined to obey central\u00a0 authority and would lose trust in traditional hierarchical institutions. (P.85)<\/p>\n

The evolution of this post\u00a0materialist culture\u00a0was obviously\u00a0not uniform throughout all segments of the US population. While those\u00a0of each passing generation enjoyed material abundance and were secure in its continuation, would embrace\u00a0various aspects of the post-materialist culture more intensely and pervasively,\u00a0 other segments of the population, however,\u00a0would be more hesitant, even reluctant to embrace the culture.<\/p>\n

To the extent that materialist prosperity was uneven, or was\u00a0disrupted either\u00a0individually or missed by\u00a0entire social-demographic groups (and geographies), the\u00a0 older pre-materialist culture survived, even if\u00a0weakened a bit. Also,\u00a0some individuals or groups did not choose to adhere to the new cultural sea change and instead sought\u00a0to retain the post-World War II traditional culture either as a defense against worsening economic tides, or to\u00a0provide some measure of stability, continuity and meaning\u00a0in\u00a0a rapidly changing world.This unevenness of cultural change and evolution provides the core\u00a0 motivation underlying the Big Sort’s geographical segregation.<\/p>\n

For Bishop and the Big Start, the crucial fault line which divides\u00a0American cultures (and hence geography) is religion. But religion, in so far as\u00a0Bishop treats it, is not a set of doctrines, particular denominations\u00a0or even specific religious practices;\u00a0religion is a\u00a0value system which is\u00a0expressed in choices, behaviors, expectations, and hopes carried forth daily in one’s life. Religion has become\u00a0a synonym for a distinctive\u00a0lifestyles, sense of values and ethics, and how one defines one’s personal and\u00a0political hopes and fears. Religion forms a prism which colors\u00a0how one evaluates events and ideas and which sets one\u00a0apart from other religions or from the secular perspective.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Citing Layman & Carmine, “Cultural Conflict in American\u00a0 Politics: Religious Traditionalism, Post materialism, and U.S. political\u00a0 behavior” Journal of Politics 59, no 3 (Aug 1997) pp751-77), the critical political division in this country wasn’t between regions or classes , it was\u00a0 between people with liberal notions of religion and those with traditional\u00a0 beliefs … religion and values–and it was expressed geographically in residential segregation. (P.108), and politically as the critical distinction between\u00a0 Democratic liberalism and Republican conservatism. (P.110)<\/p>\n

And, for the\u00a0 Curmudgeon’s two cents, in what one watches on TV and how one rears one’s\u00a0children. As will be dealt with later, it also shapes the environment in which\u00a0we conduct local\u00a0economic development. This is the core of the cultural wars.<\/p>\n

On one side was traditional religious concepts, drawing deep into the American past and reflecting consistent and persistent periods of “Awakening”,(shades of Woodward’s Greater Applachia and Midlands)\u00a0and\u00a0arrayed against it was a secular religion or perspective,\u00a0what Martin Marty has\u00a0labelled ‘Private Protestantism’. Those of us who have read our previous review of Woodward’s American Nations may well recognize the Yankee and Left Coast consensus which, while recast in the Big Sort, still stands out as an evolved modern day Puritanism.<\/p>\n

Private Protestants promoted individual salvation and promised\u00a0 that personal morality would be rewarded in the next life. On the other side of\u00a0 that great divide was ‘Public\u00a0 Protestantism’, a conviction that the way to God\u00a0 required the transformation of society…. Private Protestantism considered the\u00a0 consumption of alcohol a personal failing; Public Protestantism looked at\u00a0 drunkenness as a social ill. (P.110) The purpose of the religion was either to save souls or save\u00a0 society–not both.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ironically,\u00a0a significant portion of Bishop’s Chapter 5, outlining the early\u00a0 (1960-1980) emergence of religion as the key dividing line in America, retells\u00a0the story of the Kanawha West Virginia textbook controversy. In relating this tale, he quotes John Egerton’s Progressive magazine article which concluded\u00a0 that:<\/p>\n

the division was a clash between the ‘hillers’ in Charleston and\u00a0 the ‘creekers’ in rural Kanawha County: Charleston is Episcopalian, Methodist\u00a0 and Presbyterian; the churches in the narrow hollows are Free Will-Baptist,\u00a0 Pentecostal, Church of God in Prophesy (P.121)<\/p>\n

In Woodward’s world, this is but the latest manifestation of the\u00a0 Tidewater and Greater Appalachia conflict which first appears in American history in the 1676 Bacon’s Rebellion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a long nutshell is the essence of the Big Sort’s argument. But all well and good, lets use all this to help us better manage our economic development efforts and understand the socio-political milieu which dominates our communities and shapes the receptivity to various economic development strategies and approaches-approaches and strategies which themselves have been forged by the Big Sort’s culture war.<\/p>\n

Economic Development in the Big Sort USA<\/h2>\n

Chapter 6, “The Economics of the Big Sort”,\u00a0is our starting point for applying all this background\u00a0directly to economic development.\u00a0While the Curmudgeon is concerned with the possibility that the so-called culture wars has permeated into economic development theory and practice, The Big Sort pretty much\u00a0sees our communities sorting themselves into “growing and declining” communities based on the types of people and the lifestyles that dominated each community’s culture.<\/p>\n

First there is the obvious obsession of many with the largest of our cities and even metropolitan areas. Bishop calls attention to “the rise of superstar cities” (probably another\u00a0variation\u00a0in what Brookings presently calls “mega cities” and Glaeser speaks of in the current best seller, The Triumph of the Cities). Smaller size communities are simply off the radar. Importantly,\u00a0 one discovers very quickly\u00a0that Richard Florida (Rise of the Creative Class) and James Bishop are friends\u00a0and that the former has seriously impacted the perspective of the latter. Add\u00a0to the conventional Creative Class approach,\u00a0a considerable dose of \u00a0Paul Romer and\u00a0his technology\/innovation economics (see our Theme on Innovation and Knowledge-Based Economy) and\u00a0we see the Big Sort claims to have discovered\u00a0“a new theory of growth”. (P.144) Say it another way, the Big Sort can play out to separate those cities who can grow from those unable to grow.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This new theory of growth\u00a0departs\u00a0(some say adds to) more consensual Keynesian & Classically derived economic\u00a0theories. These earlier models hold that\u00a0economic growth\u00a0is created by the infusion of additional amounts of capital\u00a0and assets while the new theory (really Romer et al’s theory) posits that not only additional amounts of\u00a0capital and assets create economic growth,\u00a0but rather the clever or creative manipulation and\u00a0arrangement of these assets and capital which\u00a0creates new, innovative productive\u00a0and economically meaningful ideas, products, and services from which growth results<\/span>.<\/p>\n

This last paragraph is fairly conventional innovation economics. Bishop (as many did and\u00a0subsequently have-for instance Michael Porter and also the Brookings Institute) link\u00a0innovation economics to urbanization and, in Glaeser’s new book, to density itself in that cities\/metro areas facilitates greater face-to-face contact which enhances\u00a0the diffusion of these creative ideas et al. Indeed, one senses a belief that large cities are innovation and knowledge diffusion personified.\u00a0Such large, dense “supercities”\u00a0are\u00a0to Bishop (and innovation advocates in general)\u00a0considerably more than mere geographies which hold “accumulated\u00a0 sets of production factors (capital, people, and land)” (doesn’t the\u00a0 reader love the jargon?) (P.148). Say it another way, these large, dense urban areas grow\u00a0because they diffuse knowledge and innovation better than non-dense geographies.\u00a0At this point we see the\u00a0entry of\u00a0the earlier-described residential mobility decisions on which the Big Sort is based.<\/p>\n

Big Sort, Economic Growth, and a Subliminal Culture War<\/h2>\n

According to the Big sort,\u00a0the Big Sort culture polarization\u00a0plays into economic growth and decline? Bishop hypothesizes that certain culture characteristics\u00a0are more receptive or inhibiting of knowledge diffusion and innovation. Citing Mark Granovetter (“The\u00a0 Strength of Weak Ties”, American Journal of Sociology, 78, No. 6 (May\u00a0 1973), p. 1360-80) Bishop develops the position that\u00a0creative ideas do not start and\u00a0spread in cultures where people “bowl together” but instead flourish where\u00a0people “bowl alone”<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0New ideas do not start in cultures\u00a0“where there were strong, stable social ties…. New behaviors and ideas were transmitted first and fast through\u00a0weak, peripheral relationships…. strong (social) ties between people bottled\u00a0 up information.” (P. 148)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the Big Sort states that the relationship between\u00a0economic growth and innovation and communities with solidly-developed\u00a0social ties, and a tight, integrative, supportive social culture\u00a0permeated with meaningful\u00a0human\u00a0interaction is NEGATIVE. Economic growth occurs best\u00a0where the social\u00a0culture and human interaction is weak and social relationships more or less unstable or at least somewhat superficial. In such communities individuals concentrate upon themselves, their careers, their\u00a0need to compete and get ahead, and money, status and success become the goals of individual action and activities. Knowledge diffusion and innovation, creativity, becomes tools useful in achieving these individual goals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>According to this line of thinking, geographies which are settled\u00a0 in their industries and ways of thinking, reject, if not expel new ideas and\u00a0 industries. This is along the lines developed years ago in David Perry &\u00a0 Alfred Watkins, The Rise of the Sunbelt Cities, Urban Affairs Annual Review and\u00a0 was a persuasive (then) explanation of regional change in the 1980’s. Bishop\u00a0cites\u00a0several supporting\u00a0sources but comes to the conclusion that geographies where social\u00a0ties are strong restrain innovation and diffuse knowledge more than\u00a0geographies oppositely inclined. The Curmudgeon’s sharp sensitivities allow him to infallibly discern a Big Sort unspoken assumption, that one of the cultures we today associate with the culture war, inhibits economic growth and the other fosters it.<\/p>\n

At this point, Bishop’s argument becomes complex, if not outright\u00a0 confusing and contradictory. Starting with economist Anna Lee Saxenian\u00a0 (“Lessons from the Silicon Valley”, Technology Review, 1994, pp\u00a0 42-51), he posits that Silicon Valley added more jobs and created more\u00a0 businesses than the Route 128 high tech cluster because the latter had no\u00a0 institution of human contact similar to the Silicon Valley’s restaurant, the\u00a0 Wagon Wheel (where apparently techs, geeks, vc’s et al gathered over lattes and\u00a0swapped each other’s trade secrets, exchanged proprietary data, financed new start ups,\u00a0and chased new\u00a0job\/investment opportunities). This confuses the Curmudgeon because Bishop’s earlier argument was cultures that lacked institutions yielding meaningful human interaction facilitated innovation and growth. IF the Wagon Wheel is such an institution why did the Silicon Valley do better? We suspect the answer is\u00a0that the type of interaction facilitated by the Wagon Wheel, in Bishop’s mind, was more occupationally-based, individual\u00a0achievement, knowledge-diffusing\u00a0type of interaction than the religious, family and friendship model more\u00a0characteristic to\u00a0“the other culture”.<\/p>\n

Adding an earlier Edward Gleaser publication (City Growth and the\u00a0 2000 Census”, Center of Urban and Metropolitan Policy, Brookings\u00a0 Institution, May 2001) to his already robust litany of post-2000 urban\u00a0 thinkers, Bishop\u00a0extends his notion that human interaction diffuses\u00a0knowledge and innovation. Gleaser,\u00a0trying to answer the question of why some\u00a0 cities grow faster than other cities in the post-1990 period, discovered the then common explanation of\u00a0declining crime rates, did not fully explain why\u00a0some cities revitalized, others didn’t. Glaeser instead suggested\u00a0that resurgent cities<\/p>\n

“produced ideas” by facilitating “human interaction … face to\u00a0 face interaction … A certain group of cities had a culture and a way of life\u00a0 that supported this kind\u00a0 knowledge and innovation diffusion) of economy.\u00a0 (P.150)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To still further reinforce his point that cities and the appropriate culture produce innovation and growth,\u00a0Bishop wanders into the long-standing, cherished, always cited, standby proxy for knowledge and\u00a0 innovation–patents. Skipping through a variety of more or less anecdotal\u00a0 comments by noted VC and Tech Leaders, Bishop stress the importance of\u00a0 “proximity”, i.e. nearness, as an explanation of why patents cluster\u00a0 in a few areas and not others. For Bishop simple proximity seems to explain the human interaction prevalent in knowledge-diffusion geographies—not social\u00a0 relationships.<\/span>\u00a0And as icing on the cake, he quotes demographer William Frey (p. 151,\u00a0 2007)\u00a0\u00a0that contemporary growth is a “tale of two cities: those producing patents and\u00a0 technology” and “older cities that made things (Buffalo and Great\u00a0 Lakes cities).” (P.151)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It must be something in the water or in the air in those growth\u00a0 cities. Why do some cities develop human interaction without social ties in a tightly bounded\u00a0 geographic area and others evolve the rather retarded, non growth culture (these words are, obviously those of the Curmudgeon). The Curmudgeon has issues on several levels\u00a0with this non-traditional, superficial, self-seeking, career-focused\u00a0human\u00a0interaction culture as the model for innovation, creativity, knowledge-diffusion\u00a0and urban growth. If Bishop is indeed\u00a0arguing that social\u00a0interaction characterized by trust, shared religious values, joint worship,\u00a0 recreational, intellectual and family interaction among friends and folks is hostile to innovation and knowledge\u00a0 diffusion and patent filing than this Big Sort will inevitably lead to a rather bitter choice between hollow, competitive, self-absorbed lifestyle with growth and affluence and a humanly meaningful, satisfying, secure and predictable world of decline and, logically poverty.<\/p>\n

We want to be fair to the Big Sort and we strongly suspect that phased as in the sentence above, Bishop would not agree that is what\u00a0he is trying to say.\u00a0 Rather the Curmudgeon\u00a0believes Bishop is describing a particular class of upwardly mobile,\u00a0relatively highly educated folk who gravitate into communities not\u00a0because they have churches and bowling alleys, but\u00a0Starbucks and museums. The Curmudgeon thinks it more fair to say folks in this lifestyle are prone to knowledge-diffusion, and being upwardly mobile, competitive, and well-educated, are in position to uncover ideas, recognize creativity and the opportunity it creates, and run with the ball so to speak to\u00a0transform ideas into\u00a0products and\u00a0businesses. This perspective may be true or not true, but does it suggest creativity, innovation, and\u00a0its transformation into products and corporation is more or less exclusive to this culture, or\u00a0at least\u00a0that its\u00a0antithetical\u00a0culture is disadvantaged?<\/p>\n

More subtle, but really infuriating, may be that Bishop, (and he undoubtedly would deny this next assertion,) is treading awful close into an elite versus masses frame of mind. Except in Lake Wobegon, we are not all above average, highly competitive, and well educated. Most of us are not. Possibly most of us do not define our lives solely in terms of self actualization or career and monetary success. Many, the Curmudgeon expects most, want to be members of families that are not dysfunctional, have friends, hobbies and some\u00a0naive few may even believe in some sort of a higher existence. Frankly, it would not shock the Curmudgeon that many, maybe even most, of those who gravitate to these highly innovative, weak social interaction communities actually want these things also. In essence, the Curmudgeon does not think the linkage of weak socially interactive communities with innovation and growth holds very well.<\/p>\n

Innovation can occur in a garage in Cambridge Mass; but it can also occur in Bentonville Arkansas.<\/p>\n

Bishop is a Democrat and much of the Big Sort describes the partisan differences between the cultures of the segregated community-types. One does sense that Bishop has his preferences as to which type of community and lifestyle he prefers but this is not sufficient to reject his main thesis. His central\u00a0point, which we basically agree, is that we have since the 1960’s,\u00a0and\u00a0 still are,\u00a0separating ourselves into communities of competing lifestyles.\u00a0Because of our common\u00a0desire to live\u00a0among those who reflect our values and lifestyle,\u00a0we have evolved into a politics characterized by\u00a0political polarization strongly etched in our geography and our individual communities — and this alone has serious implications for an economic developer. But\u00a0the Curmudgeon\u00a0does reject the link between these cultural communities and\u00a0innovation and economic growth. And the Curmudgeon is also uncomfortable with an earlier discussed\u00a0linkage\u00a0of city\u00a0size and density\u00a0with innovation and growth, but he reserves the right to come back to that topic in another review.<\/p>\n

The Big Sort and Clusters<\/h2>\n

But we are not yet done with Bishop and the Big Sort.<\/p>\n

Bishop spends a chapter describing\u00a0 how, in the eighties and early nineties, Portland Ore (following Albert\u00a0 Marshall’s agglomeration theory) developed what many economic developers would\u00a0 call a cluster– in of all things: comic book writing and publication, Bishop\u00a0draws from\u00a0interviews with\u00a0key (I guess) Portland-based\u00a0comic book editors and writers.<\/p>\n

“Comic book\u00a0 people moved to Portland with no particular plan. “They didn’t have a job\u00a0 line up, they didn’t have a place to stay, but they had somebody to crash with\u00a0 for a while, and they figured it would work out”. ” One, a founder of\u00a0 a comic book printing firm literally got the idea to move from Austin TX (a\u00a0Florida-like creative city if memory serves) on a Sunday, talked to his wife that night, and\u00a0moved to Portland on Wednesday. Bishop draws the conclusion that these folk were attracted\u00a0 by Portland’s love of reading, micro beers, biking and comics last of all. “Portland had all the amenities that your typical liberal-type person\u00a0would want”. (P.198)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is meant to be an example of how “people” were sorting themselves out among cities on the basis of lifestyle. But to an economic developer, it offers a bit more insight on the Big Sort and economic development.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dragging out a tired old, ignored and kinda conservative economic\u00a0 theorist, Charles Tiebout, Bishop proceeds to turn him upside down (as did Marx to Hegel,\u00a0some claim). It is the Curmudgeon’s understanding Tiebout argued that people choose communities on the\u00a0best balance of taxes and services that suits their individual preference\u00a0orderings. If a jurisdiction violates this balance, than the individual is\u00a0 inclined to “exit” and find another community\u00a0closer to\u00a0the balance. Tiebout’s approach has long served as the principal theoretical defense of\u00a0individual jurisdictions utilizing tax abatement and “deal-making”\u00a0to attract private firms and for legitimizing the free for all competition between cities and jurisdictions for taxes and jobs. For this reason (and some studies which\u00a0 question his approach), he has been practically written out of the current\u00a0 literature and textbooks.<\/p>\n

Bishop’s explanation for the development of a\u00a0cluster is NOT that of Michael Porter. While there can be some overlap between the Big Sort and Porter’s cluster economics, the root driver of Porter’s\u00a0cluster formation and evolution is not culture and lifestyle of the entrepreneurs and innovators, it is the economic attributes of a geography; in particular, the cost minimization assets a particular geography creates or takes advantage of. For Bishop, Portland has no particular geographically-related economic assets and strengths which led to its development of a comic book cluster–it was the lifestyle preferences of entrepreneurs peculiar to that industry. To a thinking economic developer, this suggests an entirely different set of policies and initiatives.<\/p>\n

Finally, to close our discussion of Bishop and Tiebout! For Tiebout people sort themselves out into jurisdictions based on\u00a0economics and rational balancing of\u00a0antagonistic economic goals. Bishop, however, substitutes culture, life-style, and a personal comfort ability induced by the\u00a0 perception of a more or less homogeneous community for economics. In essence, hearkening back to my earlier reference to Marx and Hegel, if Marx turned Hegel on his head, Bishop is restoring Hegel to his proper place. This is a tangent to an economic developer, but is a rather inadequate attempt on the Curmudgeon’s part to link this review–and the topic of culture, politics and economic development– to a larger, more philosophical dialogue. Potentially of more interest to an academic, and precious few of those, the role of culture (and its ideas)\u00a0and economics as\u00a0the prime\u00a0force behind politics and change is a contested and hopefully unresolved discussion.<\/p>\n

Doing Economic Development in a Polarized Community: Wrapping Up<\/h2>\n

The Big Sort is a sort of reversal in the economist’s\u00a0 (Tiebout & Romer and everyone in between) consensus that economic-related forces and programs\u00a0are the near-exclusive determinant of economic growth. If the Big Sort is anywhere near descriptive of what is going on out there, economic-rationality-based models and approaches will not explain everything we need to understand in our pursuit of economic revitalization.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Big Sort\u00a0can be described minimally as\u00a0a post materialist, non-Tiebout migration pattern,\u00a0driven by\u00a0non-economic, cultural forces– people have sought out places that best fit their aspired lifestyle, perceived shared values, their consumer\/residential preferences–and indirectly their political affiliations. We don’t think for a moment that all migrants fit into the Big Sort framework and it really does not seem to adequately describe those folk who move, but stay close to their original home. The impact of residential housing costs and affordability has, it would seem to the Curmudgeon, to play a meaningful role. In short, there is more to population mobility in the USA than the Big Sort.<\/p>\n

But….!<\/p>\n

To the extent the Big Sort has captured at least part of what’s going on, the relevant question would be “how does the Big Sort\u00a0affect local economic development”?<\/p>\n

The obvious, but still important consequence of the Big Sort, is that more and more economic developers will be working in communities which are culturally homogeneous and ideologically partisan. In one sense this is nothing new. In the 1990’s the Curmudgeon worked in a Democratic county–but a county which had\u00a0never elected a Democrat to be County Executive for over one hundred and fifty years. In the 2000’s, the Curmudgeon worked in a Republican county (which the year he left voted a Democratic legislature). Both counties, however, had workable two party systems. The politics of the Big Sort, however, is a world of one party communities–with the opposition party a very distant minority.<\/p>\n

In a community where one party wins in a landslide decade after decade, there has to be some consequences for the practice of economic development. Intra party politics will certainly become more relevant and personalities more important. Any insulation of economic development policy-making and program implementation may be very difficult indeed when there is little likelihood of exposure by a viable opposing political party. With partisan checks and balances minimal, the economic developer may well have no leeway, no visible means of alternate support for programs and strategies not supported by the dominant majority.<\/p>\n

And in these days of conflict between opposing cultures, it is quite likely the economic developer will be pulled into the morass. Communities which are formed around lifestyle and culture are not likely to escape the current delightful atmosphere of blame, posturing, symbolic and ideologically correct policy, programs and fiscal priorities. Polarized communities are one thing, but if many communities are becoming one culture\/political party dominant the range of programs, strategies and tools available to an economic developer has to be more or less limited to what the residents, tax payers and elected officials of that community will accept.<\/p>\n

Joel Kotkin recently wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal (Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2012). His position is that the state of California (and its communities) are driving themselves into an economic destruction caused by dysfunctional “progressive” politics and economic development strategies. His article would fall very neatly into our “business climate” theme but it is also very relevant to our present cultural theme. It is not too far a leap for us to suggest there may be emerging a Republican way to manage economic development and a Democratic way. Each has their own mentality, favored programs, definition of what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed–and each hates the other. Academics will almost certainly sooner or later prove definitively with powerful and compelling statistical methodologies that one is superior to the other (Progressives will win that fight for sure).<\/p>\n

If this pessimistic outlook is more or less accurate, the Big Sort promises to be a book every economic developer need to\u00a0read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Big Sort may be one of the most underappreciated books applicable to local economic development. Dealing with how the culture wars emerged in our cities and towns over the last serveral decades, the Big Sort provides some valuable perspective about the links between culture, politics and local economic development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3554,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/3554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.c2er.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}