Urbanist contrarian Joel Kotkin thinks that the real drivers of metropolitan economies are not the hipsters in the core but the families in the burbs. Accordingly, he predicts that family-friendly cities (Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham) will have the strongest job growth.
Those cities favored by young singles (Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle) keep losing productive population in their mid-30s, departing as the kids are about to enter school. Kotkin lays out this theory in a Wall Street Journal essay.
Daily newspapers have long sniped at free papers like Seattle Weekly and The Stranger with "you get what you pay for" smugness. The idea is that paid papers have better content while freebies are what they used to call in the business "throwaways." The Web has changed that. Now growing online readership is one of the few areas that offers hope to the dailies. But that circulation is almost entirely free. Some papers have tried charging for online subscriptions, but in general, it hasn't worked. Even The Wall Street Journal, which has been one of the few to successfully charge for online subscriptions, is reportedly readying to go free. So even though most daily newspapers haven't owned up to it, the fact is most are embracing a free future.
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