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@@@ In the 200 years or so that New York has held its rank as the nation's preeminent city, its most powerful rivals have changed. Now the stage is set for Houston and San Francisco to move into contention for the top spot, according to Joel Kotkin, writing in the Daily Beast.
Kotkin, an urban studies professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., says the United States is in the process of establishing a new pecking order.
San Francisco is pushing ahead due to its heavy concentration of technology companies, Kotkin said.
"As a lure for the ambitious, Silicon Valley and San Francisco are replacing Wall Street," Kotkin wrote. "Google alone has 1,200 employees who formerly worked for large U.S. investment banks, and migration from the Big Apple to California is now at its highest level since 2006."
Houston, Kotkin acknowledged, "hardly qualifies as one of the most physically attractive or temperate cities." Its power lies in the fact that it controls the energy industry and is home to more than 5,000 energy-related businesses, Kotkin said.
Although New York is still preeminent, it is "profoundly weak" in engineering talent, ranking 78th of 85 metro areas in engineers per capita, Kotkin said.
Houston, by contrast, ranks second in engineers per capita, he said.
By various measures, Houston outpaces San Francisco, in Kotkin's book. The Houston area is the nation's fastest-growing, while the Bay Area population has remained essentially flat, due in large part to inflated real estate prices, he said.
Grist writer Ben Adler, however, said Kotkin was confused, if not just plain wrong.
"Central to Kotkin's thesis is a logical fallacy: that people who want "single-family homes" and "human-scale neighborhoods" necessarily want suburban-style houses," Adler wrote.
Surveys have shown, Adler said, a growing preference for living in dense, walkable cities, especially among the young.
Another factor that Kotkin overlooks, Adler said, is the federal government's subsidy of suburban sprawl through tax policies such as the home mortgage interest deduction.
--Carol Christian, Houston ChronicleRelated Articles:
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