With all the reports and research that we read, it takes a lot to stagger us.
But that’s exactly what the report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York did when it concluded that our peer cities are Shreveport, Monroe, Hattiesburg, and Spokane.
We wrote about it in the last post but we can’t get it out of our minds. The report means that we not only are not in the same category as Nashville, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Louisville, Birmingham and Raleigh, we are in a group of cities that are considered third or even fourth tier.
We don’t intend to demean the other cities, but we were never aspiring to compete with Shreveport. While we have been outspoken in our concern about the economic trends of Memphis, we’ve concluded previously that our city has no margin for error and that we have to do an awful lot of things right. The report by the New York Federal Reserve staff suggest that we were too optimistic.
Shreveport Isn’t So Bad
For years, the chairman of the Airport Authority has said that without FedEx, we’re Shreveport. Well, it turns out that even with FedEx, we’re in company with Shreveport.
In other words, it’s time to end the sound bites in favor of sound policies, because we’ll need them to climb out of where we are.
We’ve written reams about the importance of skilled, educated workers in a knowledge economy, and the New York report set out to measure “knowledge in cities” and “these knowledge-based clusters help explain the types of regions that have levels of economic development that exceed, or fall short of, other places with similar amounts of college attainment.”
Our grouping with Shreveport calls for a fundamental rethinking of our economic development strategies. Yes, we have a decade of negative trend lines that should have shaken us into action, but this report is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Facing Facts
It also calls for us to face the brutal facts, because they should once and for all motivate us to join hands to turn things around. They should not discourage us but renew our determination to embrace new thinking while rejecting formulaic economic development strategies to turn our attention to the change agents: talent, entrepreneurs, and creativity.
“Many observers have noted that the importance of natural resources, buildings and machinery as the means to produce goods and deliver services has been overshadowed by the primacy of knowledge, skills and creativity,” the report said.
“This study… examine(s) the knowledge economies of U.S. and Canadian metropolitan areas. Our goal in the paper is to identify and analyze a set of metropolitan area clusters that share similar knowledge traits. After joining a large sample of U.S. and Canadian metropolitan areas into eleven distinct clusters based on the types of knowledge used in the workforce, we provide descriptive information about inter-cluster differences in regional gross domestic product (GDP) and earnings per capita.”
Clustered
To determine the city clusters, the researchers used standardized knowledge scores that grouped the 287 U.S. and Canada metro areas into a smaller set of regions with similar knowledge traits.
Here are the city clusters (the report breaks down the descriptions for each):
Making Regions has a workforce characterized by very high knowledge about the subject areas of Mechanical and Production and Processing. These cities in this cluster include Canton, Grand Rapids and Detroit.
Teaching Regions is made up of mostly “college towns” like Athens, Lexington, Bloomington and Champaign-Urbana.
Understanding Regions is also made up of metropolitan areas like Charlottesville, Rochester, Gainesbille and Iowa City that are home to major research universities.
Our So-Called Peer Cities
Thinking Regions includes major U.S. metropolitan areas of New York, Philadelphia and San Diego and smaller places such as Halifax, Nova Scotia; Las Cruces, New Mexico; and Portland, Maine.
Enterprising Regions, which are characterized by high knowledge about commerce, such as, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal and Toronto. This cluster also includes the cities we’ve used as our peers for years: Atlanta, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Louisville, Nashville, St. Louis and Charlotte.
Metropolitan areas such as Anchorage, Mobile and Houston are included in a cluster of Building Regions.
Comforting (Not)
A cluster of Innovating Regions is made up of metropolitan areas such as Austin, Boston, Seattle and Washington D.C. These places are generally regarded as some of the cities with the highest levels of human capital and innovative activity.
High knowledge about IT, commerce and engineering are also defining characteristics of a cluster of Engineering Regions, including Calgary and San Jose.
Comforting (Memphis) and Working Regions (such as Jackson, TN) have less favorable indicators of regional economic development than the other knowledge-based clusters. Working and Comforting Regions have lower levels of economic development.
Our Peer Cities
Here’s the list of our peer cities, according to the report:
* Abilene, TX; Alexandria, LA; Amarillo, TX: Asheville, NC
* Atlantic City, NJ; Buffalo- Chico, CA; Columbus, GA/AL; Spokane, WA
* El Paso, TX; Fayetteville, NC; Hattiesburg, MS; Las Vegas, NV
* Lincoln, NE; Lubbock, TX; Moncton, NB; Monroe, LA
* Niagara Falls, NY; Pueblo, CO; Quebec City, QC; Savannah, GA
* Shreveport, LA; Sioux Falls, SD; Springfield-Holyoke-Chicopee, MA
* Syracuse, NY; Topeka, KS; Utica-Rome, NY; Waco, TX; Winnipeg, MB
No Comfort Here
These are the so-called Comforting Regions, but there’s little reason to be comfortable about being included in this group. It seems reasonable that we should at least set our sights on getting into the Enterprising Regions with the other cities we regularly compare ourselves to.
It’s just impossible to get excited about outcompeting Shreveport.
I would not think that the Memphis ranking is much of a surprise at all. It supports the already known fact that Memphis is not a top tier city in many categories, rather than still an overgrown Mississippi-like cotton trading town. Even Fred Smith was quoted as saying Memphis is not very competitive-He should know.
Importantly, the Federal Reserve is not stafffed with idiots and undereducated analysts for the most part. Memphis has, and still has a very much overblown sense of where the city truly compares or stacks up to a lot of other cities.
@mbmouse
What I believe Memphis metro truly have is an inferiority complex.
Care to actually add to the conversation shekel…er, mouse? Same ole same ole. “I don’t like Memphis but I don’t actually have anything interesting to add to the conversation, blah, blah, blah”. I think most of the locals know exactly where the city is situated on the scale and the rest are not shallow enough to be obsessed with the idea.
Something that’s going on here is that our metropolitan region is large (total population of Memphis MSA is 1.3 million compared to Shreveport’s 392,000) and probably very disparate between city and surrounding area. The statistical analysis used data on the rural residents of East Arkansas, North Mississippi and West Tennessee that comprise our MSA. So, yes, clearly, our region, taken as a whole, is poor and uneducated. We’re the capitol of the Delta, a famously impoverished region, but that’s also what gives Memphis its uniquely seductive beauty and mystique that few cities, if any, can compete with (among people to whom that kind of charm matters, and to them I think it’s immeasurable what Memphis offers). I’d like to see how drastic the differences are statistically between city cores and their surrounding MSA’s across the study. My gut tells me another measurement, perhaps comparing surrounding area knowledge wealth to that of the city core, would show something unique, or at least important, to our region – and we may not look so similar to Shreveport afterall. (You can travel thirty minutes from Memphis and it seems a lifetime away.)
One thing the study makes clear, again, in terms of policy is that the Memphis MSA needs to conceive of itself regionally.
Imitation might be the most sincere form of flattery, but I would appreicate it if you would create your own pen name Urbanut 5:52.
Please refer to the recent post at http://www.smartcitymemphis.com/2011/01/mapping-competitive-advantage-college-educated-workers/ which displays a national map identifying the percentage of the population that has obtained a bachelor’s degree on a county basis. You will see that we actually share similarities with Shreveport, it’s MSA and the surrounding region where college education attainment is concerned. A relatively educated central county (urban area) which rapidly transitions into lower attainment levels in the surrounding rural areas. This is similar to every other southern urban area. Once one ventures beyond Nashville’s substantial urban sprawl, you will find bachelor’s degrees at rates even lower than anything found in the Memphis region. Houston County near Nashville has a rate of only 7% compared to Lee County, AR at 8.42%. What seems to differentiate Shelby and Bossier Counties from these other areas is not the pattern but the base percentages and raw numbers. We simply have fewer college graduates in both our central urban areas and surrounding metropolitan areas as both raw population and as a percentage of the metropolitan area.
I agree that few overall regions can match the “soul” and “personality” of the delta. As with any individual seeking employment, charm might allow for an interview but in order to secure employment and income talent, skills and experience are required. The delta remains a mostly undeveloped draw as a tourist destination and the relatively rich soils may still be developed as a bio-ag gold mine. Tourism is a service oriented industry and tends to provide lower wages and requires little in the way of continued education while the agricultural business continues to need fewer and fewer employees to staff its ranks.
I tend to waver on this issue, but I am becoming increasingly convinced that the growth and evolution of Memphis will not occur because of the region, but will occur despite the region.
Memphis TN might be served well to focus on k-12 first, because generally speaking,the college attainment might take care of itself after a few cycles. Memphis hasn’t grown between the ears enough to figure that simple problem out. The mindset has and still is, whether my lily white child might be sitting next too in elementary school and high school. I would be interested to understand how many new college graduates from other regions of the US actually choose to relo to Memphis, TN (versus other areas such as ATL , DAL, BNA, etc), and how many actually stay in Memphis.
Over the past 18 months, Memphis has been awarded approximately $163,000,000 in education funding. It is a phenomenal opportunity for our community, one which I certainly thought would never come. As the children who stand to benefit from these investments begin to graduate, they will make the critical decision of whether to stay in Memphis. Today’s young professionals (the single most important asset necessary to actually compete in the modern, global economy)are the most mobile generation in history, and 2/3 of YPs move for the city first, then find a job. YPs want to live in cities with other YPs; they want a city that is clean, green, safe, educated, and diverse. While ‘our children are our future,’ we need to be working with the talent we have here NOW in order to build a city that will appeal to today’s children when they graduate. Unless the community begins to invest in its current YP population, our phenomenal education investment will result in a generation of “export products” rather than a robust, prepared knowledge workforce. Our investment will be another city’s gain.
Well said Gwyn. Thus the need for assets such as the greenline, healthy and livable neighborhoods, and a diverse range of cultural and entertainment focused events.
Urbanut, just catching up on the conversation now. I agree, it would be informative to see those cities that are net exporters of college graduates and those that are net importers. The map and correlating NYFRB study are really revealing and for me this information is something new to think about. If we could see migratory patterns, I wonder if we would see the lower-educated migrating into the city from the surrounding MSA and college graduates emigrating out. I’m sure.
We may be lacking the education infrastructure in some respects to make an educational achievement leap. Other “peer” cities have excellent graduate universities around which local education economies are built, attracting students and to some extent keep them in the region. In terms of retaining, or attracting, the highly educated, the most immediately available option is probably to build a community, through the built environment, that is a uniquely attractive place to live. What if in 10-15 years, Memphis was the most dense, most walkable, most sustainable urban core in the South?
Pearl, you are obviously not a young educated professional. Perhaps you should do some research on the topic. There is an abundant amount of information on the topic in the public domain.
Perhaps you could spend more time researching the topic and less time inventing new posting names.
hmmm YOU STATE
“”Facing Facts
It also calls for us to face the brutal facts, because they should once and for all motivate us to join hands to turn things around””
Well, from my point of view, the brutal facts indicate Memphis is not even a second tier city ! some other folks like to pretend it’s great just by reading the blogs.
Johnny your inappropriate use of the “!” in the last sentence is a dead giveaway that links you to shekel, pearl and mouse. I look forward to your next attempt.