this is crazy. 150,000 networked via facebook.

MORNING UPDATE - in a slightly unrelated context:



click here if the video does not pop up.

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I logged into facebook this evening an it said:

"There are 149,586 people in the Youngstown, OH network."

This is nuts.

There are 80,000 people in the city.
There are 700,000 abouts in our OH-PA region.

However, Facebook networks already exist for Columbiana OH, East Liverpool OH, Ravenna OH, Ashtabula OH, Sharon PA, and New Castle PA. So every direction immediate to Youngstown has its own network. There is, however, no Warren OH network.

So if you then take only Mahoning and Trumbull Counties, by census data there are about 450,000 people. Chop of 20% automatically cause of people older than 65 or younger than 5 years old.

Isn't 150,000 for Youngstown just a really really high number?

interestingly, "there are 324,217 people in the Columbus OH network".

How can it be Youngstown's Network is only half that of Columbus'?

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can we attribute the size of the network to the diaspora?

how large are the networks for other regions? Cleveland? Pittsburgh?

funny, I don't hear a giant sucking sound

I was reading a recent post at Burgh Diaspora last night, and it looked at the top metros that people from the Pittsburgh region choose for relocation.

The data originates from this paper by Christopher Briem at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research. Briem uses addresses from IRS income tax returns to track employees in the years 2000 to 2006. The top 10 areas Pittsburghers move to are:

1. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria (9,009 people)
2. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington (7,708)
3. New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island (6,378)
4. Indiana (PA) (5,093)
5. Youngstown-Warren (4,912)
6. New Castle (4,900)
7. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater (4,157)
8. Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor (3,918)
9. Columbus (3,579)
10. Atlanta (3,451)

Alternatively, the report lists where people are coming from to live in the Pittsburgh region. In this table as well, Youngstown-Warren is ranked 5th, with 4,658 people making the move to the land of the Steelers Nation.

That means in the past six years . . .
4,912 people left Pittsburgh to come to Youngstown, and
4,658 people left Youngstown to come to Pittsburgh.

resulting in a net difference of only 254 people.

Here are my conclusions from this information:

a. Compared to other large metro areas, Youngstown absorbs a relatively high number of people from Pittsburgh. (more than Cleveland surprisingly)

b. Compared to the number of people going between the two metros, the difference between them is relatively small.

c. The economies of both regions, especially when adding New Castle into the mix, shows some interdependencies between regional economies.

d. New people are moving to Youngstown.

This data does not differentiate for the type of job - if someone is an engineer, or bartender, or fireman, etc - so it does not make conclusions on what type of people are making these movements . . . only if they are making these movements.

But within the Pittsburgh region, the population is redistributing. More people are shifting to the Youngstown neighbor counties of Lawrence, Beaver and Butler (home of the technology in Cranberry Township) than leaving.

Even though this is one slice of data from one time period, maybe it provides proof that the local economy is stabilizing and that people don't just leave Youngstown,

they come to Youngstown.

did they leave or did they die?

Today's morbid post develops from an article in today's Plain Dealer about how Cleveland's population is sliding below 400,000 for the first time in a hundred years.

The article goes on to say that "White residents left [Cleveland] in greater numbers, but black residents also moved out" and that Cleveland's population is growing older and poorer in addition to getting smaller.

But are people moving out or dying out?

I calculated a few additional stats for cities around Ohio from the American Community Survey Data. These values are presented in the following manner:

city name:
% of population over 55 - % over 65 - % over 75 - % over 85

Columbus:
16.8% - 8.7% - 4.1% - 1.0%
Cleveland:
20.2% - 11.1% - 5.5% - 1.5%
Cincinnati:
20.3% - 11.3% - 6.3% - 1.3%
Akron:
22.0% - 12.1% - 6.3% - 1.3%
Parma:
26.9% - 16.5% - 9.2% - 1.8%
Youngstown:
27.6% - 17.7% - 10.3% - 2.5%
Mahoning County:
28.4% - 16.6% - 9.1% - 2.2%

Most of these communities are indeed getting older and the truth is, in 25 years many of their citizens in the age brackets above will be dead.

And unless the population will be replaced, these cities and regions will have an excess of housing, infrastructure, and government that will need to be adressed.

Aging populations may also be tied into the sustainability of the local workforce. A story in today's Youngstown Vindicator describes the effort to downsize the number of hourly workers at the Delphi plant in Trumbull County. The original plan was to shrink the workforce from 3,800 workers to a bit over 1,000. But 3,400 hourly works took the buyout, and now union leaders are concerned if they can run the facility with only 400 workers. Is the acceptability of the buyout related to the age of the workforce?

I'm not sure of the answer . . .

But is now the time to discuss regional or state-wide land use planning and housing policies to address population loss and unsustainable sprawl?

City Club strikes again

No sooner than I created this post about the growing movement to insert youth into the board of directors for community organizations, did another fine program from the City Club find its way into my iTunes.

Today's installement was by Gene Krebs, who is the State Director of Greater Ohio, an organization committed to "promoting — through research, public education and grassroots advocacy — public policy to grow our economy and improve our quality of life through intelligent land use." Gene addressed the issue of eminent domain, especially in the sense of what causes these land use struggles to be created in the first place. You can (and should) listen to the entire hour-long presentation here.

a couple of interesting statistics he cited in his presentation:

In the past six years in Ohio . . .
- the poverty rate has increased from 12% to 17% of the population.
- the unemployment rate has increased from 4.3% to 6%
- number of people on Medicade has increased 45%
- number of people using food stamps has increased 29%
- has become the number one state in mortgage foreclosures.

Besides these statistics, he also had two lines in his speech which screamed out to me:

..."they [the growing knowledge-based employee set] carry their manufacturing plants on their head - these are their smokestacks. And they will locate their manufacturing plant where there are good shops, high-speed internet access, in a walkable community that enables a certain quality of life."

"Ohio is still focused on 1970s-style smokestack chasing instead of the strategic marketing of its strengths and pursuit of sustainable economic activity. Now our state and local devleopment agencies act as real estate agents for companies searching for areas with cheaper taxes"

Do you agree with him?

I believe the eminent domain topic is heating up in Youngstown, especially with the issue of the university planning to connect more to the downtown, and the existing proposal to acquire property to create an extension of Hazel Street through mostly blighted, but occasionally inhabited property.

Gene makes the astute remark that politicians hate using the eminent domain option and follows it up with some examples. He continues to elaborate more in his speech on some solutions. Click here to see their well-conceived policy agenda.

Cool. I was really excited to discover this organization today. (Did you know they have a Mahoning Valley representative?) I still want to learn more about this organization. Their spring 2006 briefing can be found here. Maybe you can read it with me, and provide some ideas for future posts on this website.

RECENT UPDATE: Just found this whilel surfing their site: Gene Krebs will be in Youngstown NEXT WEEK on May 18th giving a presentation at the Fellows Riverside Gardens at Milk Creek Park. The event will be a lunch at noon ($10), with policy discussions and breakout sessions to follow. Mayor Jay Williams will also be a presenter. For more information and to register, click here.