03.16.08
| connected
The Big Sort
I am reading Bill Bishop's fabulous new book, "The Big Sort." Scheduled for release in May, the book documents the increasing geographic divisions among Americans of different political beliefs, values, religions and expectations. Like-minded people increasingly tend to live near like-minded people, thus amplifying the beliefs people hold. (It's the same effect church-related schools have had on their students.)
From the 1950s through the mid-1970s U.S. communities were growing more politically integrated. People with college degrees were evenly distributed. But by 1980, places stopped becoming more alike and began to diverge. The economic landscape, indeed, became spikier as the relationship between education and city growth strengthened. The cities that grew the fastest and the richest were the ones where people with college degrees congregated.
And contrary to the obvious conclusion of Robert Putnam's social capital theory, the cities with generally low social capital became the most prosperous.
Bill is a featured speaker at the upcoming CEOs for Cities national meeting in Pittsburgh May 13-14. We'll be writing much more about his observations here.