ending the tampa bay creative diaspora (iv)
As long as there are other places to go– places with higher wages, better education, cultural opportunities, a more congenial political environment, a less stultifying built environment– the Tampa Bay area’s creativity drain will probably continue. Accelerating the process may be:
- The inevitable long-term rise in the cost of commuting. It is unlikely that oil prices are going to return to comfortable levels until the majority of our transportation and power generation is running on something other than petroleum. As a full-time bicyclist, I know better than most how difficult life without cheap gas is in auto-centric Tampa Bay. This is the most basic infrastructure problem a city can face– suburban-style land use is apparently impossible to serve with conventional mass transit and alternative (walking is alternative?) transportation.
- Increasingly violent weather. Time will tell whether or not global warming is causing more or stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic, but one good whack can put most of Tampa Bay at least temporarily underwater. It happened in 1848, and it can happen again in a couple of different scenarios. This possibility does little for property value appreciation and a sense of rootedness.
- Political climate. The places where large-scale technical, scientific and cultural innovation erupt in America are inarguably largely politically progressive cities. I’m guessin’ this is no coincidence. As people continue to be more free to live where they feel comfortable, why should bright progressive people choose to live in a hostile, bleak environment?
The Tampa Bay area, like the rest of the Sunbelt, was built in large part in the post-war boom for people whose highest values were lawns, low taxes, white schools and neighborhoods, pleasant weather, and E-Z auto navigation. It is still largely populated by this demographic. As the retirement boom dies off or is overshadowed by younger families, the famous geriatric stats slowly drop, and some generational change appears, but slowly, slowly.
In a post-cheap-oil, increasingly hot and unstable world, I suspect that the Tampa Bay area faces challenges of a similar magnitude to that of the the Rustbelt cities. In the same way that their very reason for existence (manufacturing, shipping) is leaking away, so may Tampa Bay’s.
Bonus question and cool link:
If a regional initiative is your answer, I have a riddle: Since education makes a person more likely to leave your region, how do you justify your investment in human capital?
–Cleveburgh Diaspora
Ed
1 year ago
In the last downturn of 2001/2 HALF the manufacturing jobs in Hillsborugh county went away. They have not come back.
It is the economy in the end and the beginning. No matter how many beaches, days of sunshine, bike trials and silly coktail discussions that never end about what to do that never produce action – if you can’t afford to live here you will not live here.
How many of us have had friends and coworkers take off out of town already? How many left becuase they could not get jobs or one that paid the bills?
I know people who gave the bank their homes and moved out without a job, packing up like a scence out of The Grapes of Wrath in hopes if finding some hope over the horizon.
But do read the article in the SP Times about this where our beloved Chamber said of this “It is just a perception thing”. Hey, 6.6% unemplyment and rising is only perception.
Our leadership are all uncaring and unbothered. We need leadership and action, we need to speak up and demand it from our leaders.
Now our leaders are interested in themselves, maintaining their systems, powers and Bureaucracy becuase we the citizens do not hold them to task!
Now cue Anonymous or some other hack to whine about how this is negative, hateful of Tampa, proof of deviancy or some such whine. Get up here and defend the status quo in hopes you somneday can be part of the shrinking power base in Tampa Bay.
Dave Dragon
1 year ago
I work in the Health-Care Industry here in Tampa and have watched a steady stream of jobs go out the door and come back in via Indian Call Centers.
No end in sight for this either.
Dave
tbpirate
1 year ago
I think the biggest problem is the old power structure. Unless you are part of the “old guard family”, think YMKG or fall in line on the South Tampa pennisula, you are out of luck. Until this thinking changes, this area will be stuck in a decline. I have been seriously think of moving out, perhaps next year once my lease is up. (Image that, can’t afford a home in this market.) Everything is “Tampa” based with every job. If anything successful happens in Polk, Manatee, Pinellas or Pasco,the Tampa Chamber will take credit and thus keeping the old guard happy, making them look good.