John Petro

Tourist Visits = Successful City?

From the Boston Globe:

"In a paper published this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, economists Gerald A. Carlino and Albert Saiz looked at 150 metropolitan areas around the United States and found that those rich in what they called 'consumption amenities' - the things that make a city delightful, such as parks, historic sites, museums, and beaches - 'disproportionally attracted highly educated individuals and experienced faster housing price appreciation.'"

Specifically, the study looked at the relationship between the number of "leisure visits," or tourist visits, and the growth of metropolitan areas during the 1990's. While it is an interesting study, I have reservations about using "growth" to determine a city's success. By looking at growth, older, more developed cities often will get short thrift because they have less room to expand and therefore grow.

The study may also be out of date already, even though it was released in September. It examines growth during the 1990's, a period in which Sunbelt cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix saw extraordinary growth. These cities are now seriously hurting, however, as the housing bubble has led to massive decreases in home prices.

The thing that strikes me the most while reading the study is just how difficult it can be to analyze cities using elaborate mathematical formulas. This study uses metropolitan level data. Consider a metropolitan area like Atlanta, that sprawls over a vast geographic area, with some areas being directly tied to the central city and others nearly independent from it. How can we possibly account for the diversity of land uses and neighborhood types over such a large area?

I still think that these types of studies are useful, but what is a policy analyst, a planner, or an elected official meant to take away from all of this? The authors use the number of leisure visits as a proxy for the attractiveness of a metropolitan area. But what is really important is the idea of "place" and good urban design. No one wants to live in a theme park (well, most people don't). Residents of "destination cities" usually avoid the touristy areas. What is most important to residents is what is happening at the neighborhood level. Street trees, grocery stores, good restaurants, neighborhood parks: these are what attracts residents, not Baltimore's Inner Harbor or D.C.'s National Mall. Invest in neighborhoods, and you will have a happy, healthy, successful city.

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Posted at 1:50 PM, Dec 31, 2008 in
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