Job sprawl

Recently, I've become really interested in Richard Florida's work on cities, what makes certain cities successful, and why some are more geared to one's personality than others. I found this article on his blog about the increasing suburbanization of the American work force.

I felt compelled to respond; it would take a lot longer to make a strong, coherent argument, but this is a start:

It’s interesting to note what jobs are moving out of the city centres. Transportation and warehousing, finance and insurance, utilities, and real estate and rental and leasing were mentioned. In some of these cases, there is a real interest in locating out of the centre. Transportation and warehousing is easier out there; not only is there more space, but traffic snarls from attempting to enter urban cores are avoided. The other positions follow people closer to their suburban homes. However, I wonder why positions in other fields have concentrated outside of the city centres, and why mining is the only industry to have concentrated towards the centre of cities. I’m not sure that their position categories capture all relevant forms of employment, and it seems that the most creative industries are less apt to have moved (health, education, arts, information), though professional and management positions have moved more than the average.

I think the authors nail the potential impacts of the increasing suburbanization of jobs on the prospects for economic development:

“The decentralization of employment, by lowering density and interaction among proximate firms and workers, may also lower the rate of innovation. Carlino and colleagues find that across metro areas patenting rates are strongly associated with employment densities in the urbanized portion of those metro areas.″

I don’t believe this bodes well for environmental sustainability, either.

A shift to nodal development, where there are centres of development outside of the city centre that act as clusters for employment, day-to-day needs, etc., that provide increased accessibility without dependence on private transport, could mitigate the environmental impact of the suburbanization of work. But would that be considered the creation of new city centres? Overall, this appears to be a worrying trend.

Those that are against taxes should keep in mind that services need to be paid for somehow. Creative taxation solutions might work better, though. This, however, doesn’t seem like the right forum to discuss taxation solutions to encourage the return to urban centres (and I don’t have the expertise to discuss taxation, either!).