Produce and Export

Some cities, like Pittsburgh during the heyday of steel, produce. Other cities, such as no-other-reason-to-exist Las Vegas, are palaces of consumption. Most places are somewhere in between. Better to produce than consume is the idea behind Producer Cities.

As manufacturing employment waned, while output kept growing, legacy producer cities imploded. The Baby Boom 1950s were not forever. Demographic decline would change how we understand economic development:

“Pittsburgh is not a region with a lot of population growth,” said Chris Briem, regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh University Center for Social and Urban Research. “Two-thirds of the economy is made up of jobs providing goods and services to the local population. So comparing Pittsburgh, a place without a lot of demographic growth, to places that are experiencing demographic growth, you’re going to get different pictures—and not a picture that’s saying one region is doing better than another in terms of its fundamental economic competitiveness.”

When children made up the lion's share of population change, job growth is tied at the hip with consumption. But consumption economies are, by definition, local. The geography of wages for local services is small in area and therefore available to anyone living there. The competition for minding the store till is fierce. Paychecks for such a job are low.

Which jobs demand a high paycheck? Careers that provide goods and services outside the regional market. The world competes for your work.

Cities that capture more labor that the world wants is a producer. Cities that capture more labor that the town wants, is a consumer. Producer Cities will bring macro wealth to micro well-being.