Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

The Job Sprawl Stalls

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

The decentralization of jobs areas that characterized metropolitan growth and development in the early 2000s stalled after the Great Recession, according to a new report, “The Job Sprawl Stalls,” by the Brookings Institution. But the concentration of jobs in the urban core still declined when measured across the decade. Only the Washington region, which experienced a slight uptick in urban-core jobs, proved an exception to the national rule.

One reason for the geographic change in employment patterns is that construction and manufacturing, the most likely to be decentralized, were among the hardest hit during the recession, writes Elizabeth Kneebone.

Kneebone tracked the change in employment in the urban core (within three miles of a Central Business District), between 3 and 10 miles, and between 10 and 35 miles. Viewed over the decade, the urban core of most regions saw a decline in their percentage share of jobs. Here are the numbers for Virginia’s major metros:


Judging from these numbers, the scatteration of jobs was most pronounced in the Richmond region and least pronounced in the Washington region.

A few thoughts… The numbers are somewhat interesting but Kneebone’s decision (perhaps forced by the way the data was collected) to track the change in jobs between 2000 and 2010 may obscure more than it reveals. A little incident called the Great Recession, which brought with it the collapse of the real estate boomed fueled by Wall Street mortgage securitization, marked what some observers believe to be a major inflection point in growth and development.

The first seven years of the decade saw a dramatic shift of jobs toward the urban periphery. The Great Recession and the real estate crash halted or reversed that trend in the last three three years. How marked was that reversal? The data don’t tell us. What has happened in the three years since 2010? The data doesn’t tell us.

Another problem is Kneebone’s choice to impose a standard measure of distance on metropolitan regions of vastly different sizes. Thirty-five miles may be a reasonable radius for the Washington metro. For Richmond, the radius extends halfway to Charlottesville, encompassing a lot of very sparsely populated territory.

I report this data because it’s getting a lot of play in media reports, but I’m really not sure how useful it is.

— JAB

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3 responses to “The Job Sprawl Stalls”

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I must not be reading carefully enough. I thought it sounded like the premise was that only the periphery got the bad mortgages… when I had heard previously that it was the bad-credit poor in the urban redlined neighborhoods.

    😉

    I’m just curious anyhow – how the urban core ended up with a lower mortgage default rate than the suburbs?

    then we have the idea that manufacturing died and caused stagnation.

    was manufacturing in the urban cores?

    I always though manufacturing was now out from the core – and died.

    there is a lot of confusion and confusing claims with the core vs exurban sprawl issue and I’m not convinced that some of the “facts” are being ‘teased” to fit the narrative.

    I’m not saying it’s easy to figure out – only that it’s also easy to “arrange” data to support one theory or another.

  2. Darrell Avatar
    Darrell

    Maybe they should have provided maps of the MSAs. Down here VAB was the primary CBD, not downtown Norfolk. A bunch of meaningless stuff anyway.

    Drawing back to an earlier discussion that actually addresses this topic.

    “sounds like the NoVa beltway scramble…..”

    That is exactly what goes on down here for all jobs. Not just contractors.

    “what do you think needs to be done in terms of infrastructure and how it would be paid for?”

    Answer: Nothing! The problem isn’t so much the infrastructure, it’s the quality and quantity of the jobs. Yeah, there are some issues like the 264/64 interchange death traps. But the biggest problem with infrastructure is the fact that everyone is driving to the same places at the same time for many jobs that don’t pay enough to put up with the aggravation.

    Ports and Naval Stations compete with the Downtown offices and retail. The shipyards go sight seeing on the bridges with container trucks and the better paying Peninsula jobs. Yes, there is a ‘bridge tax’ on south side salaries. (The north side is closer to Richmond)

    The No Access HOV lanes are empty because while everyone works in the same places, they don’t live together or do the same job. Tear the HOVs down or make em bus only cuz when there’s a wreck in those lanes the whole interstate comes to a halt.

    The retired Officer with the 8 AM appointment at Portsmouth actually won in the Tricare lottery system, because after 8:30 there is no parking available until around 3 pm. It’s not as if you can just call up and say, “I’d like the 8AM please.” Most have to get a referral from their assigned civilian doctor, with a robocall telling them where and when to show up. How you get there is not their problem. Now multiply that one event times the millions of other unrelated decisions that are made every day that will unexpectedly impact transportation.

    Here’s an idea. Let’s make a worker required to report to the office in Va Beach from their home in Chesapeake before traveling to a site in Norfolk or Newport News. And then return to the office before going home at the end of the shift. Pretty stupid Right? Now imagine a Hampton worker of that company doing the very same thing. So the worker crosses the bridge to drive to the beach to get to the office to get his work authorizations so he can cross the bridge to go to work. And then crosses the bridge to go to the office so he can document and sign his DoD work authorized contracted time sheet so he can cross the bridge to drive home. Or he wouldn’t get paid. That really happened. He quit and moved to NoVa.

  3. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    more succinct views from Darrell!

    re: beltway scramble

    Darrell thinks businesses locate NOT NECESSARILY where people live!

    agree!

    you put a beltway around a CBD or criss-cross a place lik e Hampton/VB with tunnels and bridges – and businesses are choosing locations relative to their own agenda which ASSUMES that workers will drive from wherever they are – to get the job – and in these days and times – they are totally correct.

    I don’t have a real answer to the rest of Darrells comments but they are not imaginary and it is true that the Navy, contractor, and other employers expect their workers to do what-ever is necessary for the business to work and that includes driving tunnels in both directions at rush hour.

    However, I do wonder what will change once dynamic tolls are in place.

    will it cause workers to re-think where they live? will it cause employers to re-think how they would like to do business?

    One still presumes that in the current environment this is “no choice” than to incur the current ‘costs’ including congestion – that has to affect employers like the Navy when a bunch of sailors due for muster are caught up in an incident – which seems to be almost a daily event according to the Hampton/VB newspapers with Twitter feeds.

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