Thursday, April 03, 2014

Cascadia, the (urban) region of the Big Sort

This was a stupid blog post.

In it, I was trying to prove a point. That even though there is from time to time a surge of new people coming in to Cascadia, that the population already settled here is so big, that our regional personality (the Cascadia Calm) wouldn't be usurped by Southern Charm.

I still don't think Southern Charm is going to take over, but I ignored one specific piece of important information in that post. Most of the net migration in Cascadia is going to two places, Portand and Seattle.

So, if you're moving to Cascadia, you're much more likely to move to an urban place or somewhere near an urban place.

So, the question remains, are all those new residents changing the urban areas or Cascadia? Well, sure. But, you have to ask yourself, why are they moving their in the first place? Because they want to change it, or because it is the type of community they like to see themselves in? I'd bet it was the latter.

I'd also argue that Cascadia was particularly well positioned to take advantage of the Big Sort, the drastic demographic shift post 1965. Millions of people uprooted themselves and moved to places like Seattle and Portland, and still do. When the economy is good here, people come flooding in to our cities.

We were well positioned because our regional personality was literally open to it. We're a business friendly crowd, so new ventures are typically seen as a good thing. This goes back to our New Englander capitalists origins. We're also a live and let live sort. This goes back to our Appalachian, Ohio Valley farmer origins.

The data backs this up. When you rate regions by "openness," Cascadia floats to the top. The same study points out that open people (creative, patent pending sorts) migrate to an open area, the effects tend to build on themselves. When the good times roll in Cascadia, more open people show up and "that change may lead to an increase in liberal public opinion and patent production and, thus, to a more open culture."

So, we get even more urban, even more liberal, open and creative cities. Our cities are recruiting people because we're Calm and the Calm builds because we're recruiting more urban people.

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