A tale of two cities: Portland and Chicago

Lots of "city" news especially the last couple of days.

First, it turns out that Chicago's up and down ride the roller-coaster of economics and demographics continues:

A larger-than-expected exodus over the past 10 years reduced the population of Chicago to a level not seen in nearly a century.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that during the decade ended in 2010, Chicago's population fell 6.9% to 2,695,598 people, fewer than the 2.7 million reported back in 1920.
After peaking at 3.62 million people in 1950, Chicago underwent a half century of decline that ended only when the 1990s boom years produced a small gain in the 2000 count. At that time, the city loudly celebrated its comeback.
But the recent recession accelerated a migration both to the metropolitan area's farthest suburbs and to the Southern U.S. Chicago nonetheless is expected to remain the nation's third-largest city, behind New York and Los Angeles and just ahead of Houston, for which final census numbers aren't in yet.
The exodus took a big chunk out of the city's black population in particular, shrinking it to 887,608 from 1,065,009, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

Second, and in contrast to Chicago, it turns out that cities like Portland attract youth from all over, even when they are fully aware of the rather bleak economic conditions there.  Not entirely news to us, but, more evidence of the continuing trend.

Twenty years ago, the percent of people with college degrees in Portland was lower than the national average. Now, it's more than 10 points higher — about 40 percent. And Cortright says the grads aren't just coming for high-tech jobs. ...
Oregon economist Christian Kaylor says he can think of only one explanation for the migration into Portland: the quality of life.
Kaylor says wages there are sometimes 20 percent lower than in Seattle or San Francisco. But people keep coming. In fact, Portland's appeal is part of why the city's unemployment rate tends to be about a point higher than the national average.
"In recessions, Portland tends to see population growth, even as we lose jobs," Kaylor says. "So one of the reasons we have that higher unemployment rate is because people do continue to move here even as jobs disappear."

So, what is it about cities, right? 

Ed Glaeser was on the Daily Show last night talking about cities, which is what his latest book is about.  I have seen him up close and personal at a conference--it was last year at the AAG Annual Meeting, and I was in the front row!  I was particularly looking forward to seeing him in live action after having read a lengthy profile ...  Glaeser is one non-stop bullet train from the time he begins to speak, and boy does he cover a lot of intellectual territory above and beyond economics itself.  One can easily see why he is a Ivy-Leaguer :)

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

David Brooks apparently liked Glaeser's book and arguments a lot, and writes:

Cities magnify people’s strengths, Glaeser argues, because ideas spread more easily in dense environments. If you want to compete in a global marketplace it really helps to be near a downtown. Companies that are near the geographic center of their industry are more productive. Year by year, workers in cities see their wages grow faster than workers outside of cities because their skills grow faster. Inventors disproportionately cite ideas from others who live physically close to them.

But, does that mean that Glaeser is right?  I am not so sure.  Hi-tech has equally made it possible for dispersal of population.  So, the city might not necessarily be the kind of a 19th, or even 20th century city where one found dense urban cores for employment or residence or both.  The 21st century city might not have that much in common with the old model, when it comes to that "physically close" that Brooks and Glaeser write about.  As the Chicago and Portland stories tell us, city growth and decline in the 21st century might have dynamics that are very different from our old stories.