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Dallas Observer
Blog - June 8, 2007
Dallas, You're an
"Opportunity City"
Urban trends expert Joel Kotkin thinks Dallas has it going on. Houston
too. And Atlanta. Charlotte also. But, still, Dallas, you're awesome.
By Robert Wilonsky
 ou
may have seen this story from the Dallas Business Journal on
Wednesday, in which it says a new study shows that "Dallas, along
with Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., offer America's
most compelling model for urban greatness." Only there's no link,
far as I can tell, to the actual study itself — a pretty fascinating
read from Los Angeles-based global trend temperature-taker Joel
Kotkin, the author of The City: A Global History, which
documents, like, 10,000 years' worth of trends in urban living (or
whatever they called it in Sumeria, which was rechristened Uptown
'bout 10 years ago).
The study — Opportunity Urbanism: An Emerging Paradigm for the
21st Century — was presented Tuesday at a Greater Houston
Partnership luncheon. |
Urban trends expert Joel Kotkin thinks
Dallas has it going on. Houston too. And Atlanta. Charlotte
also. But, still, Dallas, you're awesome.
|
It's a great read (so far, only a few pages into its 43 packed
pages), and it runs $30. In it, Kotkin and his colleagues refer to Dallas
and Phoenix and Houston and a handful of other towns as "opportunity
cities," as in:
We believe that “opportunity cities” represent the predominant
model for America’s urban future, including for some of the more
hard-pressed older, industrial cities. Because of widening differences
in housing and other costs, there has been a decisive demographic tilt
towards cities such as Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Houston.
In a perhaps less-understood phenomenon, these cities are also showing
marked gains in attracting high-wage employers and educated migrants,
including members of the ballyhooed “creative class.” These are, of
course, the very jobs and workers that are widely thought to be
concentrating in more elite places.
You wanna keep reading? You can get the study for free from Kotkin's Web
site, right here. — Robert
Wilonsky
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