Rootless:

For a while I’ve been thinking about moving. Not across town – to a totally different city. It’s not that I’m particularly unhappy where I am; life is pretty easy in fact. It’s a good living, a short commute, lots of stuff around, great neighborhood. It’s just that it’s not very interesting. It’s worth remembering that my original goal for moving to Texas was to explore the uniquely American mode in its purest form. Success - and how. I feel that I’ve got a pretty good handle on the whole thing by now, and find myself wondering how permanent I want to make this deal. Dallas is the archetypal large American city: space, cars, easy circulation, central location, incredible wage-to-cost ratio, large airport, etc. The problem (see assortment below) is that there’s only a vestigial sense of identity. That and I bore pretty easily.

Of course, the big question would be “where?” I’d move to Chicago in a heartbeat, the urban mix is just about right, but the winters – I absolutely couldn’t stand the winters. That off the table, there are only a few other choices. Criterion One: At least as big as Dallas-Fort Worth. That knocks out all but about Seven areas, and with no Chicago that leaves Six. Philadelphia is right out for obvious reasons, and I’m really not into the Washington / Baltimore thing. Down to four. Houston is always a possibility, and something to think about certainly, but not all that appreciably different than the Big D (unless you count Galveston) and lacking a great airport. Of the three remaining choices:

New York. I love NY. It’s just that it would involve a major reduction in space, really poor wage-to-cost ratio, and a substantial increase in all of the little inconveniences of life that I’m so accustomed to being totally without. Something to investigate, surely, but a really big adjustment.

Southern California is gorgeous, and much more of the pattern that I’m used to deal with. While not near as good on the urban experience scale as the big apple, the weather / hills / beach part of the equation is an enormous plus. Still, sitting in traffic for two hours a day and the enormous cost of housing are a little off-putting. Of course, I do have friends there.

That leaves San Francisco, the city with the best overall buzz. I’ve never really investigated it, so I’m at a disadvantage here. Maybe it’s as fantastic as everyone says. There are two things: The wage-to-cost numbers are supposed to be on par with NYC, only without the benefit of living in the capital of the world. That’s even WITHOUT the whole San Jose thing. The second is petty, but I’m not sure I could deal with looks from the extended family if I told them that as an unmarried man I was moving to San Francisco for no apparent reason. Backward, yes, but one doesn’t get to pick one’s family.

All that said, this year has really highlighted the advantages of being relatively close to home. There’s a lot to be said for that. (I think especially the older you get.) That kind of defeats the purpose, though.

Food for rumination.

Rootless:

For a while I’ve been thinking about moving. Not across town – to a totally different city. It’s not that I’m particularly unhappy where I am; life is pretty easy in fact. It’s a good living, a short commute, lots of stuff around, great neighborhood. It’s just that it’s not very interesting. It’s worth remembering that my original goal for moving to Texas was to explore the uniquely American mode in its purest form. Success - and how. I feel that I’ve got a pretty good handle on the whole thing by now, and find myself wondering how permanent I want to make this deal. Dallas is the archetypal large American city: space, cars, easy circulation, central location, incredible wage-to-cost ratio, large airport, etc. The problem (see assortment below) is that there’s only a vestigial sense of identity. That and I bore pretty easily.

Of course, the big question would be “where?” I’d move to Chicago in a heartbeat, the urban mix is just about right, but the winters – I absolutely couldn’t stand the winters. That off the table, there are only a few other choices. Criterion One: At least as big as Dallas-Fort Worth. That knocks out all but about Seven areas, and with no Chicago that leaves Six. Philadelphia is right out for obvious reasons, and I’m really not into the Washington / Baltimore thing. Down to four. Houston is always a possibility, and something to think about certainly, but not all that appreciably different than the Big D (unless you count Galveston) and lacking a great airport. Of the three remaining choices:

New York. I love NY. It’s just that it would involve a major reduction in space, really poor wage-to-cost ratio, and a substantial increase in all of the little inconveniences of life that I’m so accustomed to being totally without. Something to investigate, surely, but a really big adjustment.

Southern California is gorgeous, and much more of the pattern that I’m used to deal with. While not near as good on the urban experience scale as the big apple, the weather / hills / beach part of the equation is an enormous plus. Still, sitting in traffic for two hours a day and the enormous cost of housing are a little off-putting. Of course, I do have friends there.

That leaves San Francisco, the city with the best overall buzz. I’ve never really investigated it, so I’m at a disadvantage here. Maybe it’s as fantastic as everyone says. There are two things: The wage-to-cost numbers are supposed to be on par with NYC, only without the benefit of living in the capital of the world. That’s even WITHOUT the whole San Jose thing. The second is petty, but I’m not sure I could deal with looks from the extended family if I told them that as an unmarried man I was moving to San Francisco for no apparent reason. Backward, yes, but one doesn’t get to pick one’s family.

All that said, this year has really highlighted the advantages of being relatively close to home. There’s a lot to be said for that. (I think especially the older you get.) That kind of defeats the purpose, though.

Food for rumination.

untitled (cognitive assortment)

I’ve been noticing a disturbing confluence lately in a number of things I’m reading. It all started with The Bell Curve and I see it popping up in all kinds of things – most lately in Robert Reich’s The Future of Success. It’s the whole idea of assortment: cognitive assortment, income assortment, racial assortment, social assortment. The basic thesis is as transportation costs and information costs go down, the number of choices increase and the segmentation of the market into the very best you can afford, or at lease tailored to your niche, becomes easy to find. As each person / family drops out at their level of maximum level of input, they no longer have any contact with those in dissimilar circumstances. I see this in my daily life, and especially as a student of urban organization. Every day people seem to get more isolated and more insular, especially in Dallas, where class is becoming almost exclusively divided by language and ethnicity. Increased insularity increases two things: fear of the other (refer to the Los Angeles chapter in Edge City) and in-group-specific narrowing of interests. Already class divisions (at least down here by Mexico) are becoming more strained; rather than understanding the person you’re trying to work with because you see yourself in them, there is a tendency to view people as members of a competing foreign society and both distrust them and refuse to compromise in a misunderstanding. Both political and economic thinking seems less about ideas or goals than about “our kind” versus “their kind,” whether there is a complete understanding of “them” or not. (Richard Reed, anyone?) Maybe things have always been this way, but I wonder if there is enough commonality of interest to create enduring institutions anymore. There’s probably a brilliant regional economics paper on this somewhere.

More about cognitive assortment later.