In America, no city can survive without a base in family, friendships, and work. The coastal enclave cities are attempting to do just this, while Texas, and the Great American Center are attempting to help family, friendships, and work to thrive. One is failing miserably, the other succeeding splendidly.
"The domestic migration numbers are truly striking. Over the past 15 years, Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth have gained an estimated 1 million domestic migrants, even as New York lost more than 2.4 million net migrants, L.A. bled 1.5 million, and Chicago 800,000. As a percentage of the population, the Texas cities averaged a 1 percent net migration gain annually; Chicago, L.A., New York, and San Francisco have seen strong net losses annually. San Antonio and Austin have also been gaining migrants at a rapid rate. In fact, Austin has attracted more newcomers as a percentage of its population than any major metropolitan area in the country since 2000. Texas Monthly calls it “the city of the eternal boom.'" Why? Mostly because there are good paying jobs in Texas, and reasonably priced land on which to build a home, and family. Americans are all about family, friends, and work, and all three are plentiful in Texas, not so much in the coastal enclaves. "Though some east/west coastal cities—notably, San Francisco—have enjoyed vigorous growth of late, none has been nearly as proficient in creating jobs in the new millennium as Texas’s four leading metros. Overall, Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston have emerged as the nation’s fastest-expanding big-city economies. Between 2000 and 2015, Dallas–Fort Worth boosted its net job numbers by 22.7 percent, and Houston expanded them by an even better 31.2 percent. Smaller Austin (38.2 percent job-base increase) and once-sleepy San Antonio (31.4 percent) have done just as well. New York, by way of comparison, increased its number of jobs in those years by just 10 percent, Los Angeles by 6.5 percent, and San Francisco by 5.2 percent, while Chicago actually lost net employment. And the Texas jobs are not just low-wage employment. Middle-class positions—those paying between 80 percent and 200 percent of the national median wage—have expanded 39 percent in Austin, 26 percent in Houston, and 21 percent in Dallas since 2001. These percentages far outpace the rate of middle-class job creation in San Francisco (6 percent), New York and Los Angeles (little progress), and Chicago (down 3 percent) over the same period." The only way to attract the younger set is to offer attractive jobs, with reasonable land/home prices, and reasonable costs of living. These are the people who either do, or will want family, and soon. They cannot afford to pay the $2 million average house price of areas like Palo Alto, California. They can afford to buy a home in Houston, Dallas, or one of the other Texas cities, and they still can afford the cost of living. "The domestic migrants’ numbers include many blue-collar workers seeking a better future, so the migrants’ average education level falls slightly below that of people moving, say, to Boston or San Francisco. But the Texas metropoles are increasingly attractive to the young, educated workers who often flock to those coastal cities. According to a recent Cleveland Foundation study, three of the four major Texas cities ranked among the top-ten regions nationally in the growth in educated residents aged 25 to 34. The migrants’ imprint is evident in the expanding urban amenities of Texas cities, including a vibrant restaurant scene and innovation in the arts. Affordability is a major draw for these younger newcomers. The ten regions losing the most millennials last year, according to Trulia, include Chicago, New York, Washington, and the area along California’s coast—all much pricier than the Lone Star State. More than 30 percent of millennials still live at home in Los Angeles and New York City, according to Zillow data, more than one-third higher than the rate in Dallas and Houston." And the feel of the localities is different. Texas feels like America in the 1950s, and 1960s with children, and families, living in neighborhoods. The coastal enclaves, especially California, feels like an old folks home, the kids of the 1960s long gone, grown, but unable to afford the neighborhoods. Instead these are filled with old folks who are anchored to their property by huge house prices, and the fact that if they sell and buy anew, they will pay much higher property tax on the new home, frequently taxes so high they cannot afford to move. It is a place where oldsters cannot afford to keep up their homes, or move, they become trapped in amber, while they and their communities slowly die, not so in Texas. "In fast-growing Cinco Ranch, a suburb built on an expanse of Texas prairie 31 miles west of Houston, one in five residents is foreign-born, well above the Texas average. “We have lived in other places since we came to America ten years ago,” says Indian immigrant Pria Kothari, who moved to Cinco with her husband and two children in 2013. “We lived in apartments elsewhere in big cities, but here we found a place where we could put our roots down. It has a community feel. You walk around and see all the families. There’s room for bikes—that’s great for the kids.'" While the Great American Assimilation continues in the center, it has failed on the rocky shoals of high land/home prices, and high cost of living in the coastal enclaves. "In Texas, Hispanics are becoming homeowners, a traditional means of entering the middle class. In New York, barely a quarter of Latino households own their own homes, while in Los Angeles, 38 percent do. In Houston, by contrast, 52 percent of Hispanic households own homes, and in San Antonio, it’s 57 percent—matching the Latino homeownership rate for Texas as a whole. That’s well above the 46 percent national rate for Hispanics—and above the rate for allCalifornia households. (The same encouraging pattern exists for Texas’s African-Americans.)" We failed blacks, and native Americans by failing to encourage the clear, and necessary assimilation into the culture. Native Americans can retain their heritage, just as the Japanese, and some other Asians do, but they must also assimilate. Failure to do so only results in economic decline, and negative consequences. "California and Texas, the nation’s most populous states, are often compared. Both have large Latino populations, for instance, but make no mistake: Texas’s, especially in large urban areas, is doing much better, and not just economically. Texas public schools could certainly be improved, but according to the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress—a high-quality assessment—Texas fourth- and eighth-graders scored equal to or better than California kids, including Hispanics, in math and reading. In Texas, the educational gap between Hispanics and white non-Hispanics was equal to or lower than it was in California in all cases. Though California, with 12 percent of the American population, has more than 35 percent of the nation’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families welfare caseload—with Latinos constituting nearly half the adult rolls in the state—Texas, with under 9 percent of the country’s population, has less than 1 percent of the national welfare caseload. Further, according to the 2014 American Community Survey, Texas Hispanics had a significantly lower rate of out-of-wedlock births and a higher marriage rate than California Hispanics. In California, Latino politics increasingly revolves around ethnic identity and lobbying for government subsidies and benefits. In Texas, the goal is upward mobility through work. “There is more of an accommodationist spirit here,” says Rodrigo Saenz, an expert on Latino demographics and politics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where the student body is 50 percent Hispanic. It’s obvious which model best encourages economic opportunity." The coastal enclaves are progressive, and are little more than zones where wealthy older whites have decided to pull up the ladder. Texas, and the great American middle are more inclusive, less antagonistic to the newcomer, more interested in seeing full, and open opportunity for all, regardless of race, color, creed, or religion. Not what you hear in the media, but true nonetheless. Compare and contrast all of this with Zelda Bronstein's piece: Palo Alto and the Tech Shop of Horrors | Newgeography.com Zelda's piece is little more than a recitation of the horrors of living in a place set on letting the tree sap turn to amber, and, so, dying in place. This is the mindset of many left in the coastal enclaves. What they fear the most is the relaxation of housing prices as that would result in their destitution. But it is the outlandish house prices which are killing the coastal enclaves. Catch-22 reprised. My only advice to the Millennials today is seek your fortune in the Great American Center, avoid the coastal enclaves.
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