Brookings: Topics - Florida

Seizing Miami's "Global Moment"

Bruce Katz and Richard M. Daley — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Editor’s Note: The following piece originally was published in the Miami Herald.

The U.S. economy, while technically not in recession, remains fragile. The United States must create more and better jobs at all skill levels to recover from the Great Recession and ensure better opportunities for all Americans.

The solutions are not easy: the U.S. must transition from an economy focused inward and characterized by excessive consumption and debt to one globally engaged and driven by production and innovation. Cities and metropolitan areas can best drive these solutions; some are already on their way.

A recent visit to Miami as part of our joint project, the “Global Cities Initiative”, reinforces our strong belief that this metropolis is well-positioned to meet the post-recession challenge and prosper in a more globally engaged U.S. economy.

Greater Miami is the world in three counties. It has the largest foreign-born share of its population among the top 100 metros (38.8 percent) and remains at the vanguard of attracting and assimilating immigrants.

Miami welcomes the world’s travelers, millions each year. Nearly half of overnight visitors come from abroad — the highest rate in the country — and travel and tourism generates over 25 percent of the region’s exports.

Miami attracts the world’s investment. South Florida’s concentration of foreign banks afford foreign firms and families the dual benefit of access to Latin American markets and the certainty of the U.S. financial, regulatory, and monetary environment.

Miami moves the world’s goods. The region is the gateway for one-third of trade between the U.S. and Latin America. The trade and logistics industry produces over 14 percent of metropolitan GDP, the fourth highest of any region in America. International goods movement firms like LAN Cargo, whose fully automated cold storage facility we toured at Miami International Airport, keep the industry globally competitive.

Metros, like money, never sleep. Miami already faces stiff competition from metros like Houston and Atlanta to be the destination of Latin America’s goods, people and capital. And the real promise of this region — to benefit Florida and the nation — will not be realized unless Miami builds upon its unique assets and location to move up the economic value chain.

So, the stark question: can the Miami region do what it takes both to maintain and extend its unique global position?

There is reason to be optimistic. While Congress dithered on a transportation bill the past several years, the region and state’s leadership stepped up and made three transformative infrastructure investments to meet the opportunities of the widening of the Panama Canal. Each of these upgrades — the Bay Tunnel, the deep dredge project and the Intermodal Rail Reconstruction Project — represent a new breed of bottom-up 21st century infrastructure development and finance that leverages, but is not exclusively reliant on, federal support.

To prosper over the long haul, Miami now needs the same urgency and purpose to diversify and upgrade its regional economy:

First, as the recent Beacon Council’s One Community One Goal report made clear, Miami cannot just be a place through which goods and people flow; it should also be a center for advanced production and services. Evolving from port to production, from tourism to technology, or from airport to aerospace will not just happen. Strategic steps must be taken on special trade zones, commercialization of innovation, career and technical services and local regulation.
Second, Miami should use its global brand to engage international markets beyond Latin America, particularly in Asia. With offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Japan and Taiwan, Enterprise Florida has already made a head start as have the region’s universities. But forging stronger linkages with Asian metros across all business and civic sectors remains critical.
Finally, in addition to continuing to look outward, Miami should re-engage with other parts of the United States. Manufacturing’s resurgence in America’s industrial core may warrant new bonds with markets like Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago on both freight movement and production.

Clearly, these aspirations will require hard choices about where to make local investments. Going forward, Greater Miami and the state should prioritize next economy-shaping investments like advanced research and development, skilled worker training, and sustainable urban development over subsidizing sprawl and stadiums. And as in other metros, the Miami region would benefit if its local governments collaborated, instead of competing against each other.

Smart investments will yield high return. Like Venice in the 15th century, location and migration have made Miami a metropolis especially built for a network of trading cities. Play the hand well and the region will prosper for decades to come.

Authors

Bruce Katz
Richard M. Daley

Publication: The Miami Herald

Image Source: © Carlos Barria / Reuters

Going Global: Boosting Greater Miami's Economic Future

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:30:00 -0400

Event Information

June 19, 2012
8:30 AM - 2:00 PM EDT

Newman Alumni Center at the University of Miami
6200 San Amaro Drive
Coral Gables, FL 33146

The Great Recession stalled the U.S. economy and virtually reset the world economic map with most of the growth concentrated in the rising nations—and the urban and metropolitan areas—of Asia and Latin America. U.S. urban and metropolitan areas need to reorient their economies toward greater engagement in the global marketplace in order to create more and better jobs, spur global demand abroad and attract global talent and capital at home. The Global Cities Initiative—a joint project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase—aims to help leaders in U.S. metropolitan areas reorient their economies toward greater engagement in world markets.

On June 18 and 19, the Metropolitan Policy program at Brookings and JPMorgan Chase hosted a forum at the University of Miami, “Going Global: Boosting Miami’s Economic Future,” the third in a series of domestic and international forums being convened this year by the Global Cities Initiative. The forum explored how metropolitan-led economic growth—including global trade and investment—are important for job creation, and how Miami can leverage its position in the global market.

Speakers and panels provided context on the region’s position in the global marketplace and offered insight into how metropolitan leaders can work together and with international partners to expand world-wide business opportunities and global trade and investment, and enhance the region’s economic prosperity. The Greater Miami metro is a sophisticated global market with a significant export profile. With potential for further economic growth, it is the gateway for one-third of totally U.S./Latin American trade value.

Materials from the event can be downloaded from the upper right side of this page.

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Going Global: Boosting Greater Miami's Economic Future

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Negative Equity Concentrated in a Few States

Ted Gayer — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Yesterday’s release of CoreLogic’s negative equity report showed that in the fourth quarter of last year there were 11.1 million residential properties with a mortgage in negative equity, which is 22.8 percent of mortgage holders. This is slightly higher than the 10.7 million (22.1 percent) from the third quarter. The CoreLogic data show wide variation across states in the percentage of mortgage holders that are underwater. Nevada leads the list with 61 percent of all of its mortgage properties underwater (an increase from 58 percent in the third quarter), followed by Arizona (48 percent), Florida (44 percent), Michigan (35 percent) and Georgia (33 percent).

The average underwater borrower has about $65,000 of negative equity, which yields an aggregate debt overhang of approximately $717 billion nationwide. This aggregate burden varies widely across states. The table below shows state-level data of the number of mortgage properties that are underwater, the average amount of negative equity for these properties, the aggregate negative equity, and the state’s share of the national mortgage debt overhang. While Nevada has the highest proportion of mortgage holders that are underwater, it is the sixth highest state in terms of aggregate negative equity. California has about 2 million mortgaged properties underwater, with an average amount of negative equity across these properties of approximately $92,000. This translates into mortgage debt overhang of about $187 billion, which is the highest among the states and about 26 percent of the total national mortgage debt overhang. Florida has the next highest share of the total national mortgage debt overhang at about 16 percent. The aggregate amount of negative equity in four states (California, Florida, Arizona, and Massachusetts) makes up over 50 percent of the approximately $700 billion of nationwide negative equity overhang.

The administration has recently increased taxpayer-financed incentives to banks to engage in more principal reductions for underwater borrowers, and it has pressured Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to allow principal reductions for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. The distribution of negative equity across states suggests that any serious attempt at wide scale principal reductions would reap benefits to borrowers concentrated in only a few states.

State	Negative Equity Mortgages	Average Negative Equity Amount	Aggregate Negative Equity	Percentage Share of Nationwide Aggregate Negative Equity
Alabama	43,431	$44,526	$1,933,808,856	0.27%
Alaska	6,273	$48,473	$304,071,971	0.04%
Arizona	631,126	$58,704	$37,049,636,573	5.18%
Arkansas	25,676	$71,662	$1,839,983,520	0.26%
California	2,041,276	$91,621	$187,024,071,967	26.14%
Colorado	241,682	$43,488	$10,510,260,953	1.47%
Connecticut	111,140	$112,147	$12,463,982,075	1.74%
Delaware	28,919	$77,112	$2,229,996,542	0.31%
Florida	1,916,082	$57,905	$110,950,170,016	15.51%
Georgia	541,178	$41,147	$22,267,822,137	3.11%
Hawaii	24,118	$97,578	$2,353,394,765	0.33%
Idaho	64,135	$45,393	$2,911,301,900	0.41%
Illinois	489,535	$59,412	$29,084,236,461	4.07%
Indiana	69,123	$36,369	$2,513,963,937	0.35%
Iowa	38,125	$55,444	$2,113,790,975	0.30%
Kansas	32,552	$44,288	$1,441,668,766	0.20%
Kentucky	26,704	$69,100	$1,845,246,383	0.26%
Louisiana	36,546	$144,987	$5,298,693,940	0.74%
Maine	7,662	$58,723	$449,935,894	0.06%
Maryland	331,159	$63,243	$20,943,444,374	2.93%
Massachusetts	240,887	$127,772	$30,778,641,582	4.30%
Michigan	480,075	$40,143	$19,271,670,396	2.69%
Minnesota	109,407	$38,566	$4,219,372,191	0.59%
Mississippi	11,209	$42,347	$474,669,190	0.07%
Missouri	137,177	$41,959	$5,755,815,289	0.80%
Montana	10,754	$66,122	$711,071,659	0.10%
Nebraska	26,140	$57,584	$1,505,239,249	0.21%
Nevada	343,256	$82,435	$28,296,313,698	3.96%
New Hampshire	47,206	$53,056	$2,504,538,822	0.35%
New Jersey	329,780	$78,782	$25,980,883,310	3.63%
New Mexico	36,898	$82,371	$3,039,337,194	0.42%
New York	122,125	$130,341	$15,917,855,328	2.23%
North Carolina	205,764	$54,865	$11,289,339,673	1.58%
North Dakota	3,763	$58,326	$219,478,984	0.03%
Ohio	526,802	$30,878	$16,266,566,980	2.27%
Oklahoma	33,205	$60,754	$2,017,331,352	0.28%
Oregon	131,126	$40,102	$5,258,416,029	0.74%
Pennsylvania	156,376	$71,702	$11,212,482,487	1.57%
Rhode Island	52,286	$78,393	$4,098,877,472	0.57%
South Carolina	99,936	$52,123	$5,208,989,529	0.73%
South Dakota	NA	NA	NA	NA
Tennessee	162,058	$39,203	$6,353,082,233	0.89%
Texas	347,021	$43,374	$15,051,777,345	2.10%
Utah	100,687	$43,879	$4,418,092,031	0.62%
Vermont	NA	NA	NA	NA
Virginia	303,800	$63,596	$19,320,458,450	2.70%
Washington	271,505	$50,279	$13,651,107,650	1.91%
Washington, DC	12,446	$83,987	$1,045,297,365	0.15%
West Virginia	1,225	$76,345	$93,522,139	0.01%
Wisconsin	104,548	$54,206	$5,667,083,140	0.79%
Wyoming	5,056	$44,377	$224,371,648	0.03%

Source: CoreLogic

Authors

Ted Gayer

Image Source: © Mike Segar / Reuters

Remembering Air Florida Flight 90

Stephen Hess — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:43:00 -0500

Thirty years ago today, Washington, D.C. witnessed one of its biggest air disasters in its history. Air Florida flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, killing 78 people. I was interviewing in the Secretary of Transportation’s office at the time, and I recounted the story of our government’s reaction in my book, The Government/Press Connection: Press Officers and Their Offices (Brookings Press, 1984). It is a fascinating story of government response to crisis. Would we do better in today’s world of instant communications? But also note public information officials trying to contain misinformation as families wait for news: How would this now replay on cable TV and through social networking? Here is my account.

"It is almost four in the afternoon, January 13, 1982, and it has been snowing hard for several hours. Government workers were told to go home some time ago, and now the city block that is the Department of Transportation building appears almost deserted. I am about to go home too, putting on my overshoes in Linda Gosden's [director of public affairs for the Department of Transportation] office. We have just returned from [Transportation] Secretary Drew Lewis's senior staff meeting, an hour and a half devoted to a review of management priorities for the coming year. Gosden, as she does almost every day, is apologizing for taking me to a meeting that she thinks I must have found very dull. I tell her again that my study will be largely about 'routine'; it is not necessary for me to observe a crisis. 'Perhaps I'll still catch one at State.' A young man bursts into the room. 'There's a report a plane has crashed into the Fourteenth Street bridge.' Gosden starts to run to Lewis's office, perhaps the length of a football field away. My unbuckled snowshoes are flapping around my ankles as I unsuccessfully try to keep up.

"From the cabinet officer's windows we should be able to see the bridge that is the crash scene. We can see only the flashing red lights of emergency vehicles through the snow and darkness. Others also rush to Lewis's office. The television set is on. We keep switching channels, as people do when all stations are covering a crisis and each keeps repeating the same news. Air Florida flight 90 is down in what is apparently the worst disaster in the history of National Airport.

"Gosden organizes a team to monitor the three TV networks and the wires and the relay written summaries to Lewis. All phones are in use. Lewis calls [Defense Secretary] Caspar Weinberger and asks for military helicopters; the request is instantly granted. He then calls the Coast Guard commandant. He wants to know the location of the closest cutter. (It is several hours away in the lower Chesapeake Bay and will start for the site at once.) He calls the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency responsible for determining the cause of the accident, and offers the facilities of his department, including a hangar at National Airport where the bodies can be taken. An official of Air Florida calls, and Lewis offers help in getting the plane out of the Potomac. David Gergen calls from the White House: with Gosden on an extension they compose a statement that the president might wish to make. Edwin Meese calls. He is worried that an aide may be on the plane. (Lewis's office determines that he is not.) FAA Administrator Lynn Helms is about to board a plane at Dulles Airport; Lewis directs his general counsel, John Fowler, to go to FAA headquarters and keep him informed until Helms can get there. A low-level DOT employee who happens to be on the other side of the river is dispatched to the Marriott Hotel, which the National Transportation Safety Board is using as the crash headquarters.

"Eventually it is too dark and too cold to continue the rescue operation. Work is called off until morning. There are no more calls to make or answer. Bone-weary, we are reluctant to leave, to break a bond that has been created by working together through a crisis. We talk quietly. Some wonder how they will get home. Around ten o'clock, Dick Shoenfeld, Gosden's assistant, drives me to my door, and after six hours I finally take off my flapping galoshes.

"Ted Cron, a former FDA press chief, once told me that the delicate balance in government press operations was to give all the information necessary to protect the public and at the same time try not to frighten people unreasonably. This had seemed to be Gosden's concern. Too many people at too many places in government could have been giving out conflicting and unsubstantiated information. Still breathless from her dash to Lewis's office, her first acts were to call the public affairs officers at the Federal Aviation Administration and National Airport, reminding them that all the facts must be verified before being released. There had already been some confusion on TV about whether the plane's destination was Tampa or White Plains. The primary value of Gosden's monitoring of the media was not to learn information but to check for possible misinformation.

"Gosden also had a hidden agenda. Hardly a person in Lewis's office had not initially feared the crash was a result of an air tower mistake. Lewis had been responsible for firing the striking air controllers; if lives had now been lost because of inexperienced or overworked replacements, public reaction against the Reagan administration would be swift and painful. Based on the information on visibility available to him, Lewis, a licensed pilot, concluded that air controllers were not the cause of the crash. Gosden then began a series of quick calls to the networks, whose prime-time news programs were about to go on the air. She did not rule out an error on the part of an air controller; only the National Transportation Safety Board—not an arm of DOT—can determine the cause of an accident. Rather, Gosden gave reporters information that she hoped would allow them to draw a conclusion that the crash could not be blamed on the people in the control tower.

"I had seen a crisis and government's response. It was at first chaotic. Many of the people who were needed were out of contact, stuck in cars or stranded at distant places. Everyone seemed to be trying to reach the same telephone numbers. Then something special happened. Until lines of authority were sorted out, people took on tasks that were above them or beneath them. Some 'important' people performed menial chores; some 'unimportant' people rose to heights beyond their normal abilities or usual responsibilities. Self-protective mechanisms seemed to evaporate. No one said, 'Put it in writing' or 'According to the regulations . . .' After a crisis of this kind there should be lessons to be learned, new designs for how to better anticipate and prepare, revisions of what has to be done, where, by whom, and in what order. But beyond the need for contingency planning, there is also the lesson of how well many people respond in the face of sudden adversity."

— an excerpt from The Government/Press Connection: Press Officers and Their Offices (Brookings Press, 1984)

Authors

Stephen Hess

Image Source: Â© Reuters Photographer / Reuters

Exploring Jobless Recovery in Buffalo, New York and Cape Coral, Florida

Howard Wial — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:55:00 -0400

The nation as a whole seems to be in a tentative, fragile--and jobless--recovery. Although GDP is growing, employment is still falling, and payroll employment in the last quarter of 2009 was still 4.9 percent below its level of the last quarter of 2007, when the Great Recession started. While jobless recoveries are now commonplace, this one isn’t the same old jobless recovery. It’s worse--worse than the recovery from any of the previous three recessions. Two years after the start of the 2001 recession, jobs were down 2 percent since the recession began. Two years after the 1990-91 recession started, they were down by less than 1 percent. Two years after the 1981-82 recession began, they were less than half of 1 percent below their level at the start of the recession.

At the metro level, though, the picture is more varied. In 63 of the 100 largest metro areas, as the latest Brookings MetroMonitor points out, the recovery from the Great Recession has been more jobless at the two-year mark than the recoveries from any of the previous three recessions. But in other metro areas the recovery from the Great Recession, the recovery after two years has been less jobless, sometimes far less so.

Cape Coral (Florida) and Buffalo illustrate just how different the recovery has been in different places. Two years after the beginning of the Great Recession, Cape Coral had 14 percent fewer jobs than it had when the recession began. Two months after each of the three previous recessions, in contrast, it had either recovered almost all the jobs it had at the start of the recession or actually gained jobs. Probably because Cape Coral had not previously suffered an economic shock as severe as its recent housing bust, its current economic recovery is a lot more jobless than its past recoveries.

In Buffalo, in contrast, the current recovery is only slightly jobless, with employment down by only a little over 2 percent from its level of December 2007. This is just barely worse than the recovery two years after the beginning of the 2001 recession and a lot better than the two-year recoveries after the 1991-91 and 1981-82 recessions. Why the improvement? Buffalo’s economy was probably more sensitive to the business cycle in the 1980s and 1990s, when the region had many more steel- and auto-related manufacturing jobs than it does today. The loss of many of those jobs made Buffalo more dependent on less volatile industries, such as higher education, so recessions don’t cost as many jobs as they used to. Losing all those high-paying steel and auto jobs was, on balance, bad for the region, making it poorer, smaller, more unequal, and probably less innovative. But it had a little bit of a silver lining.

Cape Coral's Quarterly Employment in Four Recessions and Recoveries

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Buffalo's Quarterly Employment in Four Recessions and Recoveries

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Authors

Howard Wial

Publication: The Avenue, The New Republic

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

Migration to Hot Housing Markets Cools Off

William H. Frey — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Migration to America’s fastest-growing areas has tapered off in the last year, newly released Census data show. The slowdown is sharpest in places where growth was fueled in large part by the decade’s hot housing market—Florida, the Mountain West and ex-urban counties.

At the same time, the formerly foot-loose residents of coastal California, Northeast and Midwest cities and inner suburbs are mostly staying put. This “migration correction” is a response to the housing market correction that has kept would-be buyers from locating to previously hot areas, and in many cases, keeping them from selling existing homes in the established locales.

According to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s annual population estimates through July 2007, while the fastest growth continues to occur in the South and West regions, that growth has stalled in the last year. Among the 25 large counties which grew most rapidly since 2000, 23 showed lower growth rates last year than the prior year. (View Table A) Many are located in Florida, which has been particularly hard hit by the recent housing crises, a broader economic downturn and hurricane concerns. The state’s annual in migration plunged to 35,000 in the past year, in comparison to an average 230,000 per year for the previous three years.. And while the slowdown in population gains were most pronounced in counties located in hot markets like Orlando and Tampa, they were pervasive in almost all parts of the state. Metro Fort Lauderdale’s Broward County registered an actual decline in its population for the first time in history and Miami’s growth was reduced to half of the previous year.

The Mountain West, along with interior California, also took significant hits in their earlier high growth rates. (View Chart) While Phoenix’s Maricopa County still led the nation by gaining 101,000 people in the last year, this gain is down from 132, 000 in 2005-6, and 142, 000 the prior year. Noticeable growth cutbacks are evident in Las Vegas’ Clark County, as well as Riverside and San Bernardino counties in California’s “inland empire”. (View Table B) The latter county, a popular destination for San Diegans in search of more affordable housing, registered a net domestic out migration in the past year. The growth in this suburban destination is now totally dependent on immigration and natural increase.

These growth slowdowns are only half of the story. In fact, California illustrates both halves. While the state’s interior San Bernardino and Riverside counties are receiving fewer migrants than in previous years, coastal California counties, San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles – major migration feeder areas for inland empire- lost fewer migrants, and gained more people than before. During each of the bubble years of 2003-06, San Diego lost more than 35,000 migrants. This fell to just 14,000 in 2006-7 as many potential migrants decided to hold tight.

Aside from coastal California, many other counties showed greater gains, or reduced losses between 2005-6 and 2006-7 in a way that is also linked to the fewer housing opportunities. Such is the case for a slew of city or inner suburban counties, including Cook County, Ill, in the Chicago metropolitan area, Middlesex Co, NJ, in the New York metropolitan area, Hennepin County, MN in the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area, and Philadelphia County. (View Table C) At the same time, exurban counties in these and other metropolitan areas, including metro Washington DC, showed reduced growth from previous years as the housing market cooled off.

So we have a year when the extremes are being reined in. Would-be homebuyers in previously hot housing markets are unable to obtain the homes they desire, leaving them in limbo – in many cases stranded from promising opportunities or amenity-rich retirement living. Yet more stagnant or expensive parts of the country, be they northern cities or coastal areas, are enjoying a windfall by retaining more of their residents, including renters, new families andempty nest retirees until at least both the housing and migration markets clear.

View Charts and Tables:
Annual Growth Chart
Table A
Table B
Table C

Authors

William H. Frey

Michigan and Florida Recount Controversy

Thomas E. Mann — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 08:29:28 -0400

Calling for a revote of the Democratic primary elections in Michigan and Florida seems like a perfectly reasonable proposal. The contest between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is unbelievably close; the primaries that were held (with only one major candidate on the ballot in Michigan and no campaign in either) have utterly no legitimacy; and voters in these two key states otherwise would have no opportunity to weigh in on whom the Democrats should offer as their nominee.

But the costs of revotes would outweigh the benefits:

* First is the problem of moral hazard. Bailing out the state officials in Michigan and the compliant Democrats in Florida who brazenly defied national party committee rules governing the scheduling of primaries and caucuses threaten to render toothless the authority of the national parties (affirmed as constitutional by the Supreme Court) to bring some coherence to an increasingly anarchic nominating process.

* Second, with both states refusing to shoulder the responsibility to administer and pay for new primary elections, the burden would fall upon two state Democratic parties that simply are not up to the task. A botched mail-in election in Florida would be the worst possible outcome. A failure to raise the requisite millions of dollars in voluntary contributions could force a disastrous cancellation of any new presidential contest in either Florida or Michigan.

* Third, revotes would directly and transparently affect the prospects of Clinton and Obama. New rules should be crafted under a "veil of ignorance." Why should the candidate harmed by this late rules change lend support to it when both candidates raised no objection to the ruling of the Democratic National Committee not to seat the delegations and agreed not to campaign in either state?

It's just as well the revote plans are dead or dying. Florida and Michigan Democratic leaders will have to face the reality that their actions have consequences. The best they can do now is try to negotiate some roughly equal allocation of a reduced number of delegates between the two candidates.

Authors

Thomas E. Mann

Publication: USA Today

The Benefits of High Density Development and the Implications for Florida

Amy Liu — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Before more than 600 attendees of the American Planning Association's annual Florida state chapter conference, Amy Liu examined the increasing demand for, and benefits of, higher density development in the nation's major metropolitan areas and the implications for the state of Florida.

The metro program hosts and participates in a variety of public forums. To view a complete list of these events, please visit the metro program's Speeches and Events page which provides copies of major speeches, PowerPoint presentations, event transcripts, and event summaries.

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Authors

Amy Liu

Publication: Florida Chapter of the American Planning Association's 2006 Annual Conference

The Haitian Community in Miami-Dade

Rebecca Sohmer — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0400

This report is a supplement to a June 2004 publication entitled, Growing the Middle Class: Connecting All Miami-Dade Residents to Economic Opportunity. The intent of this report is to provide specific information about the Haitian community in Miami-Dade County in order to better describe its challenges.

After describing income trends, the report explores some of the reasons behind the low incomes and higher poverty rates of Miami's Haitian population.

The Haitian community in Miami-Dade has gained a lot of ground since the late 1970s—there are now Haitian and Haitian American politicians, organizations, businesses, and middle-class neighborhoods. But the numbers also show that there is still much work to be done to ensure that all groups in the region, including Haitians, have access to economic opportunity.

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Authors

Rebecca Sohmer

Purging the Parasitic Economy in Miami

Bruce Katz and David Jackson — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0400

People often point to Miami's informal economy when trying to explain the city's dismal poverty statistics. And it's true. Miami has its share of cash-only, under-the-table car detailers, landscapers and housekeepers.

But that alone doesn't explain Miami's miserable median income ($23,483 vs. $42,000 nationally) or the paucity of its middle class.

In clear daylight, in storefronts around the city, above-board businesses take their cut right off the top of the wages of those struggling to build assets and join the middle class.

This parasitic economy—the check cashers, payday lenders, tax refund advance firms and envie dinero shops—thrives on low-income customers conventional banks don't pursue and contributing to Miami's weak middle class.

The disconnect between working families without bank accounts and mainstream financial institutions carries a huge price. According to the U.S. Treasury, a worker earning $12,000 annually pays about $250 of that to cash pay checks at a check cashing store, not including additional fees for money orders or wire transfers.

While credit card interest rates range from the mid-single digits to about 20 percent, payday loans carry an average annual percentage rate (APR) of 474 percent.

Four hundred seventy-four percent.

What would be the response to an offer like that in the raft of daily credit card junk mail?

Additionally, with Miami's large immigrant population, steep fees for the overseas transfer of funds cause particular pain.

The high costs of these services also undermine government efforts to reward work and bootstrap families out of poverty.

Brookings Institution research shows that in 2001, $32.4 billion in Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) refunds, designed specifically to aid the working poor, were issued. However, fully $1.9 billion went to loan fees, tax preparation services and filing fees.

Studies have shown that ownership of a bank account directly correlates with access to credit, like mortgage loans. So, the costs of this parasitic economy particularly hinder the key stepping stone to the middle class: homeownership.

For these reasons, the goal of helping low-income families build assets was one of the key policy recommendations of our report "Growing the Middle Class: Connecting All Miami-Dade Residents to Opportunity."

Though these alternative financial service providers are regulated by state and federal government—and federal reforms on such practices are direly needed—there is much that can be done at the local level.

First off, campaigns to increase awareness of programs benefiting working families like the EITC should be expanded. The Greater Miami Prosperity Campaign has made great strides in informing many families who might otherwise miss out on the credit about how to claim it. But nearly two-thirds of EITC filers in Miami-Dade still pay to have their taxes prepared and filed. The campaign needs additional capacity to provide these services for free. Alternatively, local leaders could explore partnering with commercial preparers who charge low-income clients reasonable fees, and who do not sell high-priced refund loans.

There is a role as well for financial and homeownership education. Advice on budgeting could help families maintain small amounts of savings that allow them to avoid predatory payday and tax refund loans. Education could also work to boost consumer credit ratings, expanding the pool of prospective urban homebuyers.

In the end, though, only mainstream financial institutions have the scale to provide these workers with reasonably-priced services and opportunities to build assets over time. The nonprofit community and local government should partner with these institutions on research and development initiatives to create products tailored to the needs of Miami's lower-income families.

Applied holistically, this policy medicine can help purge the parasitic economy, provide working families with more choices and build Miami's middle class.

Authors

Bruce Katz
David Jackson

Battling Battlegrounds

William H. Frey — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Late on Election night in November 2000, NBC TV newsman Tim Russert held up a chalkboard that read, "Florida, Florida, Florida!" Even before the saga of the hanging chads and the recount that followed, Russert harped on the significance of the Sunshine state's electoral votes in deciding that presidential election.

In February 2004, on his "Meet the Press" program, Russert again brandished his chalkboard to draw attention to the state to watch this November. This time it read, "Ohio, Ohio, Ohio!"

Both Florida and the Buckeye state may play decisive roles in who wins the showdown between President George W. Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry. Nonetheless, the two states are hardly demographic twins. Their respective electorates reflect vastly different constituencies drifting inexorably in opposite demographic directions. Their relative clout in future national elections, as a consequence, will be even harder to peg than they are this year.

Florida epitomizes a part of America that is growing rapidly, and not only due to immigration from Latin America and other parts of the world. Florida is also gaining from U.S. domestic migration of white suburbanites, seniors, African Americans, Puerto Ricans and other groups heading to its growing cities and suburbs. This demographic dynamism is changing the nature of the Sunshine state's electorate in ways that both parties are scrambling to understand. No longer are Republican-leaning Cuban Americans the dominant Hispanic group, nor are domestic migrants primarily elderly transplants from the left-leaning Northeast and the moderate Midwest. As the influx of newcomers continues, and a younger and more diverse demographic heads toward the fast-growing I-4 corridor of the state from Tampa, and Orlando to Daytona Beach, old rules and assumptions no longer apply.

Ohio is just the opposite. People are not coming to Ohio, but leaving—especially young college graduates attracted to the Sun Belt or the cosmopolitan coasts of Blue states America. Well-off retirees and suburban families are also heading for the exits in search of lower density, high amenity living or in search of jobs that have left the Buckeye state in substantial numbers over the past three years. What's more, its population trends older and whiter than most other states. Also, thanks to the state's modest appeal to immigrants, Ohio's minorities are mostly city-concentrated African Americans who see better opportunities elsewhere.

In Ohio, political analysts have less trouble identifying demographic subgroups than they have in understanding how to gain their support. More than a third of the state's voting-age population consists of whites over 45 without a college education. For these voters, in the current climate, economic issues loom large. Still, because a swath of the state's population holds socially conservative beliefs, their votes can also shift over party stances on issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and gun control.

Florida's increasingly younger, immigrant voter population tends to prize issues like school quality, affordable housing and small business opportunities. Ohio's older, blue-collar electorate is more concerned with social issues, health care, Social Security and economic survival.

Fast-growing vs. slow-growing
Florida and Ohio stand out as examples of two types of "battleground states" with distinctly different demographics. Analysts peg 17 such states as those in which Bush and Gore competed to a near-standoff in the 2000 election, and are projected to be competitive in 2004. At the same time, 22 "Red America" states and 12 "Blue America" states are thought already to be safely in the columns of Bush and Kerry, respectively.

Florida is one of the six fast-growing battlegrounds that have higher rates of population growth than the nation as a whole. In Florida, Nevada and Arizona, rapidly growing immigration and domestic migration are seen as instrumental in potentially shifting them from the Republican column to becoming truly competitive. That is, each of these three shows a strong growth in its Hispanic population along with domestic in-migration from highly congested Blue coastal states. Much of Florida's in-migration comes from New York and New Jersey. California's high cost of living is responsible for substantial in-migration gains in Nevada and Arizona. Hispanic immigrant flows to these states could bring more Democratic votes. What's more, the increasingly low-income, blue-collar flows of whites and minorities from California or the Northeast megalopolis could siphon in more Democratic support into these states.

The 11 slow-growing battlegrounds, while declining in prominence, still make up the majority of electoral votes among the 17 battleground states. Neither candidate could amass the 270 electoral votes needed to win without carrying at least some of these slow-growing areas. Five of these states showed domestic out-migration over the 1995 to 2003 period: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa and West Virginia; and only New Hampshire showed more than modest domestic migration gains. As a group, these states differ from others thanks to their mostly white racial composition. White Baby Boomers comprise one-third of their voting-age populations, compared with only about a quarter of the populations of fast-growing battlegrounds, or of Red and Blue America. Their slow, almost steady growth patterns make the demographic profiles of their "left behind" voting-age populations especially unique.

The demographics of the two camps differs considerably. Slow-growing battlegrounds have especially large numbers of white married women and white non-college graduate men—together accounting for well over half of these states' voting-age populations. Both of these groups are regarded as politically up for grabs. Especially in economically vulnerable states, voters will carefully weigh each candidate's economic policies versus their stances on Iraq and social issues. These groups constitute smaller shares of the fast-growing battlegrounds, although there is about the same proportion of male white college graduates in both groups of states. In fast-growing states, minorities—especially Hispanics—make up much of the difference. While well-off white suburbanites in these areas may lean toward the Republican party, increasing numbers of Democratic-leaning minorities and blue-collar whites make these states more competitive.

Noteworthy, however, is that the Hispanic share of the voting-age population is greater than the actual voting population due to lower rates of citizenship, registration and turnout. In Nevada, for example, Hispanics account for 20 percent of the voting-age population but are expected to amount to only 10 percent of the state's voters. In Arizona, Hispanics are 24 percent of those who are of voting age, but only 12 percent of those expected to turn out at the polls.

The Past vs. The Future
Clearly, Ohio and Florida each fits the demographic pattern typical of their respective battleground groupings. Demographically, Ohio is not typical of the rest of the U.S. with its significant out-migration, and largely white and less-educated senior population. Similarly, Florida is also an atypical state with its fast-growing, highly diverse population and better educated senior citizens. Yet, because of the intensified polarization among the safe "Red" and "Blue" states, Ohio and Florida and their demographic peers will exert disproportionate influence on who gets elected in November.

The population patterns occurring in these two states reflect, at once, new and old directions of national demographic trends. Florida and its sibling fast-growing battleground states represent the future of our increasingly dynamic and diverse national electorate. By 2012, after the next census, their electoral vote count will increase, and their growing second- and third-generation Hispanic populations will constitute significant shares of all voters. Ohio and its contemporary slow-growing battleground states depict America's past. These states lost 5 electoral votes after the 2000 census, and stand to lose even more after 2010. Their populations will also change as younger, "new economy" workers replace those who grew up when heavy industry was king. Still these slow-growing battleground states are currently in the driver's seat. November's election may very well be the last hurrah for the interests of the aging, blue-collar, white America that constitutes much of their electorate.

Additional Resource
Electoral America Map (PDF)

Authors

William H. Frey

Publication: American Demographics

To Build a Middle Class, Improve Quality of Life

Bruce Katz and Rebecca Sohmer — Wed, 16 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Buffalo, St. Louis and Miami. Sounds like a list from the old bit on Sesame Street. One of these things is not like the others, indeed. But which one doesn't belong?

Perhaps if you judge by amenities—Miami's beaches, climate and culture attract more than 10 million visitors annually—South Florida's largest city doesn't deserve to be grouped with beleaguered Buffalo and St. Louis.

But some other numbers place Miami squarely in league with those Rust Belt brethren.

Additional Resources Growing the Middle Class: Connecting All Miami-Dade Residents to Economic Opportunity
PowerPoint Presentation
Living Cities Census Series

Like those two other cities, Miami is poor. Of the 100 biggest U.S. cities, Miami is the poorest. But beyond its poverty problem, Miami has a middle-class problem as well.

Miami has a proportionally smaller middle class than either Buffalo or St. Louis, and a smaller share of its households makes a middle-class income today than 20 years ago.

A new report from the Brookings Institution, "Growing the Middle Class: Connecting All Miami-Dade Residents to Economic Opportunity," details the sweeping ramifications and origins of Miami's meager middle class for both the city and the county.

It is stark reading.

Miami's economy pays lower wages than other cities around the country, while its housing costs, both for renters and buyers, are high.
Miami is less educated than the national average. Only 16.2 percent of residents over 25 have completed higher education, ranking 94th out of the 100 largest U.S. cities. As a whole, Miami-Dade County ranks 85th out of the 100 biggest counties on higher education.

And education is a key ''tell,'' as stockbrokers and card sharks would say, on economic health: It tells business and institutions how and where to bet. The result is jobs and tax revenues and the ripple effect of those investments. (Hint: New $325 million baseball stadiums are generally not part of this equation.)

Many of these bleak trends are all subject to, or products of, policy. The fact is that the city of Miami does create wealth. It is not a statically poor place. Beneath the veneer of the lousy statistics is the churn of immigration, small-business creation and the pursuit of a better life. Though immigration does explain some of the low-income numbers, it doesn't explain the whole story.

Once immigrants establish themselves in Miami, grabbing a rung on the ladder to the middle class, they often leave. Between 1995 and 2000, more than 300,000 people left Miami-Dade County. Adjacent Broward County was the most popular destination for these movers. Those who moved to Broward, about 90,000 people, were diverse both racially and by country of birth, more highly educated than average and tended to be in the top half of the income distribution of the entire Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area.

In essence, middle-class people are moving from Miami-Dade to Broward. The question for the city of Miami, and the county, is how to keep them and build upon them. In that regard, the Brookings report outlines some key policy directions.

Already, the Greater Miami Prosperity Campaign is working to better connect working families with existing benefits—the Earned Income Tax Credit, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, etc.—to give them a boost upward. Miami Dade College, too, serves as a stepping-stone for many, graduating more associate degree holders than any other community college in the nation.

These efforts must be maintained and expanded upon, creating a concerted policy for enlarging the middle class. For example, increasing access to mainstream financial institutions, such as banks and credit unions instead of check-cashing stores, helps build wealth and frees workers from exorbitantly high fees.

Because of the sheer geographic size of the region, more attention has to be paid to transportation so that people and jobs can connect more easily.

By working on the ''push factors'' that lead to relocation and building quality neighborhoods that keep people in place, Miami and Miami-Dade can retain and grow their middle class, birthing a place where more people truly belong.

Authors

Bruce Katz
Rebecca Sohmer

Publication: The Miami Herald

Presentation of Growing the Middle Class

Bruce Katz — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400

In this presentation to the Community Prosperity Initiative in Miami, Bruce Katz outlined the latest urban center report, Growing the Middle Class: Connecting All Miami-Dade County Residents to Economic Opportunity. Much attention has been focused on Miami's poverty rates, but the region's wide gap between rich and poor has another dimension. Miami-Dade County, and in particular the city of Miami, has a small middle class. Miami-Dade is failing to retain residents, including immigrants, who have successfully moved up the income ladder, and build its middle class from within. Addressing this failure may be the single most critical intervention the region can take to improve its future.

The urban center hosts and participates in a variety of public forums. To view a complete list of these events, please visit the urban center's Speeches and Events page which provides copies of major speeches, powerpoint presentations, event transcripts, and event summaries.

Authors

Bruce Katz

Publication: Community Prosperity Initiative

Growing the Middle Class: Connecting All Miami-Dade County Residents to Economic Opportunity

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Miami-Dade—with its famed beaches, weather, and culture—attracts over 10 million overnight visitors per year. The setting for numerous movies and TV shows, the region is a magnet for the rich and famous, and conventioneers and vacationers follow.

But Miami has another identity. Beyond the spotlights, the fun in the sun, and the world of international business lie some sobering statistics about what the plurality of people in Miami-Dade County and Miami City experience. Miami's split personality—its wide gap between rich and poor—points to an underlying problem. The region, and in particular the city, has a small middle class. Miami-Dade is failing to retain residents, including immigrants, who have successfully moved up the income ladder, and build its middle class from within. Addressing this failure may be the single most critical intervention the region can take to improve its future.

Miami-Dade's Income Statistics Are Troubling

Miami-Dade's incomes are low and poverty is high. Miami-Dade County's median household income is $35,966, far below the national median income of $41,994. The city of Miami's median household income is even lower at $23,483.

Miami's middle class is small. While 20 percent of the nation's households make between $34,000 and $51,000, only 15 percent of Miami's households are in that income bracket.

Blacks and Hispanics are less likely to be middle class than whites. In Miami-Dade County, the white median household income is at least $20,000 more than the black, Puerto Rican, Nicaraguan, and Haitian median household income.

Several Factors Contribute to Miami's Small Middle Class

Miami faces several challenges that contribute to the region's troubling income trends and inhibit its ability to retain and build the middle class.

The level of educational attainment in the region is low. Only 22 percent of the county's adult population has at least a bachelor's degree. And only 16 percent of the city of Miami's adult population has at least a bachelor's.

The regional economy is a low-wage economy. Most jobs in Miami-Dade are in industry sectors, such as service and retail, paying lower wages. Additionally, wages, regardless of industry sector or occupation type, are lower in Miami-Dade than elsewhere.

Miami-Dade is exporting middle-class residents. During the 1990s, almost 160,000 more people left Miami-Dade than moved in from other parts of the country, many moving to neighboring Broward County. While the group of Dade-to-Broward movers was racially diverse, they were primarily middle class.

Low-Income Residents Face Additional Challenges that Hinder Their Ability to Join the Middle Class

Miami's decentralized growth patterns isolate low-income residents from opportunity.

Basic necessities consume a large portion of poor residents' income.

Limited use of mainstream financial institutions and government support programs impedes the wealth-building capacity of low-income households.

Miami Can Build a Different Future by Investing in Growing the Middle Class

The region should focus on five policy interventions that help grow the middle class:

Develop an educated, skilled workforce
Improve access to quality jobs
Make work pay
Help families build assets
Build quality neighborhoods

Miami-Dade is a vibrant place—a large urban market, an international gateway, a tourist destination, and an engine for entrepreneurial activity. By formulating strategies to grow and retain the middle class Miami-Dade will not only be better able to connect all its residents to economic prosperity, but it will realize a new level of regional competitiveness.

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Miami in Focus: A Profile from Census 2000

Sat, 01 Nov 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Executive Summary

Miami is unique among American cities, and Census 2000 highlights that distinctiveness.

Miami maintains one of the largest Hispanic populations of any city in the U.S., owing not only to significant Cuban immigration in the 1960s, but also to more recent arrivals of Caribbean and Central American populations. The city, like Florida in general, also houses a much larger elderly population than most. Yet in some respects, the city is quite young: Twenty-five to 34-year-olds are among Miami's largest age groups.

Miami and its residents also face unique economic challenges, as this databook reveals. Compared to other cities, Miami's adults possess low education levels, are often absent from the labor force, and must provide for relatively large households. City residents further confront a rapidly decentralizing regional economy, in which the gap between inner-city workers and jobs is widening. As the economic strength of the urban core dissipates, too many Miami families make do with low incomes, and struggle to pay for housing and the necessities of life.

Along these lines and others, then, Miami in Focus: A Profile from Census 2000 concludes that:

Population in Miami-Dade County is decentralizing rapidly. The population of the city of Miami grew modestly over the past two decades, but its metro area ballooned in size. Today, only one in six residents of Miami-Dade County lives in the central city. Miami's downtown, which grew very rapidly in the 1990s, is itself surrounded by neighborhoods where population declined.

Miami's suburbs are growing even more diverse as population shifts outwards. The City of Miami is home to the largest Hispanic population share among the 23 Living Cities—two-thirds of residents were of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity in 2000. Yet suburban Miami's Hispanic population grew more than 20 times faster than the city's. Meanwhile, the city's black population declined, but rose significantly in the suburbs. This reflects that many new immigrants to the Miami area are settling in the suburbs upon arrival in the U.S. For every one foreign-born individual added to the City of Miami's population in the 1990s, suburban Miami-Dade County added 150.

Fewer Miamians work in the city. To be precise, only half of the City of Miami's working residents are employed within the city—lower than the share in all but two of the 23 Living Cities. Today, moreover, a majority of commutes in the Miami metro area begin and end in the suburbs, and city residents are driving to work in greater numbers. Miami's black residents, in particular, may be especially disconnected from the growing suburban job market, as more than 40 percent do not have access to an automobile.

Miami residents participate only weakly in the labor market. Only half of working-age adults in Miami were employed or looking for work in 2000—the lowest percentage among the 100 largest cities in the U.S. As a result, more than one in four Miami children lives in a family with no workers. These low levels of work may reflect not only a growing distance between inner-city Miami residents and suburban job opportunities, but also the low education levels of Miami's population. Though this improved in the 1990s, the share of Miami's adults with at least a four-year college degree remains just 16 percent. Only about half of Miamians hold a high-school degree or more—the lowest such share among the 23 Living Cities.

Household incomes in Miami rose slightly in the 1990s, but remain among the lowest in the nation—and the middle class shrank. Low- and high-income households increased in number in Miami during the 1990s, but the number of middle-income households declined slightly in the 1990s. As a result, the city's median household income rose only slightly over the decade, and ranked last among the 100 largest cities in the U.S. in 2000. In several neighborhoods, more than 40 percent of all residents live in poverty. Half of Miami's families with children have incomes below or near the poverty line.

Miami's renters face great difficulties in paying for housing. Miami's low income levels make housing relatively less affordable for families there. To be sure, rents in the city grew only modestly in the 1990s. But nearly 50 percent of renter households pay more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing—the highest share among the 23 Living Cities. Moderate-income families fare somewhat better, with a smaller share facing rental cost burdens than the national average. Yet the opportunity for those families to move into homeownership is constrained by the city's housing stock, which is heavily tilted towards multifamily buildings.

By presenting the indicators on the following pages, Miami in Focus: A Profile from Census 2000 seeks to give readers a better sense of where the city of Miami and its residents stand in relation to their peers, and how the 1990s shaped the city, its neighborhoods, and the region. Living Cities and the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy hope that this information will prompt a fruitful dialogue among city and community leaders about the direction Miami should take in the coming decade.

Miami Data Book Series 1
Miami Data Book Series 2

Economic and Racial Segregation in Greater Miami's Elementary Schools: Trends Shaping Metropolitan Growth

Anne Discher, Myron Orfield and Tom Luce — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Findings

An analysis of race and poverty trends in Miami-area elementary schools between 1993 and 2001 reveals that:

The elementary school student population in the Miami metropolitan area is growing rapidly, but the growth is very unbalanced. Regionwide, enrollment increased by 22 percent between 1993 and 2001. Miami-Dade County's elementary enrollment grew by 15 percent, while Broward County's enrollment grew by 35 percent. But some outlying communities in the region saw much faster growth—in some cases as high as 85 percent.

The region's two school districts became poorer over this period, and the degree of income segregation worsened. The number of low-income students in the Miami region grew 33 percent between 1993 and 2001. By 2001, 51 percent of the region's total elementary students were eligible for free lunches, up from 47 percent in 1993. Poor students were also more likely to attend school with other poor students at the end of the period. The share of students who would have had to change schools to achieve an identical mix of poor and non-poor students in each building edged up two percentage points, to 51 percent.

As the region's schools became more diverse, racial segregation eased slightly but remained severe. Miami-area students became a more diverse group between 1993 and 2001. Hispanic enrollment grew by 57 percent and black enrollment grew by 17 percent, while white enrollment decreased by 10 percent. Growth patterns contributed to lingering segregation. Approximately two-thirds of the growth in Hispanic enrollment was in Miami-Dade County schools, while nearly all of the growth in black enrollment took place in Broward County. The number of white students held steady in Broward and declined 29 percent in Miami-Dade.

The region's most dramatic social changes are taking place in the suburbs. While still at alarming levels, poverty and segregation rates in the central city are stabilizing. The most dramatic social changes are taking place in inner suburban communities, which often must address growing need with dwindling fiscal resources.

The concentration of poor and minority students in a particular school can fuel the flight of middle-class families from the surrounding neighborhood. These changes contribute to a vicious cycle of sprawl and disinvestment from existing communities. To help reverse some of these patterns, state and local leaders should explore reforms in land use, taxes, and regional governance.

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Authors

Anne Discher
Myron Orfield
Tom Luce

Beyond Edge City: Office Sprawl in South Florida

Robert E. Lang — Sat, 01 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0500

Findings

An analysis of office development in South Florida between 1987 and 2002 finds that:

Of 13 large U.S. office markets studied, South Florida had the lowest percentage of its office space in its major downtown, Miami, in 1999. Only 13 percent of South Florida's office space is located in its central business district (CBD), compared to a median of nearly 30 percent for all 13 markets.
Virtually all office growth in Miami-Dade County in the past 15 years occurred outside of Miami's downtown. From 1987 to 2002, Miami-Dade's non-CBD market grew 60.3 percent to include nearly 30 million square feet of office space.

In contrast, office space in Miami's CBD increased just 4.7 percent over this time period.
Out of 13 office markets, South Florida has the largest percentage of its office space located "Edgeless Cities"--a form of small-scale and scattered office development that never reaches the critical mass of an Edge City. In 1999, two-thirds (66 percent) of South Florida's current office space could be found in Edgeless Cities. In Philadelphia--the only other predominantly "edgeless" market of the 13--Edgeless Cities contain just 54 percent of the market's office space.

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Authors

Robert E. Lang