Give me coffee shops, or give me death!

Ezra takes a crack at explaining why Seattle and Portland are hipster heaven:

Sounds like Portland is a rather nice place to live -- a fact backed up by everybody I know who has ever lived there, despite what Cato says. This has actually puzzled me since I went to Seattle and noticed all the awesome coffee shops and bookstores and generally nice features. Why can't DC have all that. There are, after all, lots of young, computer savvy white people in Mt. Pleasant, but nary a coffee shop to serve them. It's barbaric!

But it actually makes sense: Cities like Portland and Seattle are trying to create a livable city to retain and attract a certain type of resident. Namely, educated, young, white people. Portland's 78% white, Seattle's a bit under 70%. So you structure the city thus that there's lots of educated white people bait, including cafes, bookstores, wireless internet spots, bike trails, etc.

DC, by contrast, has a lot of white people working in it, but is actually only 39% white, and has a city government that does not derive primary political support from transient white voters. So the character of the city actually does more to represent its inhabitants. Which seems rational. Moreover, the white people there basically have to be there. You don't move to DC because it's awesome, you move because it's where your work is. So there's little need to construct an affirmative agenda to attract residents

Here's the primary difference between liberals and libertarians in a nutshell: it would never have occurred to me to assign the city government a dominant role, except perhaps for Portland's greenbelt, which seems like the result of a pretty conventional coalition of environmentalists and property owners whose home values were driven up by the artificial supply restriction.

The DC area, in fact, has a large number of bike trails; I seriously considered biking out to Fairfax for lunch today. (I'm going to bike partway then take the train instead.) It has bike lanes on many of the major streets in Northwest, which I have been greatly enjoying as I tooled around on my new (used) machine. Nor does the government in Seattle operate coffee shops, wireless hotspots, or bookstores that I am aware of. Those things are operated by private actors trying to make a profit--no government intervention required, or as far as I know, offered.

The market supplies those things because the demographic profile of the area demands it. And DC is supplying more and more of those things as the relatively poor black population of Northwest and the areas surrounding Capitol Hill is pushed out to Prince Georges County by rental competition from young white people who like bookstores, cafes, and wireless hotspots. In just six years, between 2000 and 2006, the white population of DC rose from 30.8% of the population to 34.5%, a massive demographic shift. Meanwhile, the black population dropped from 60% to 55.4%.

Services require a certain minimum market to make them viable; there may be a lot of upper-middle class twenty-somethings in Mount Pleasant, but they may not be densely crowded enough to make a viable business yet. (Or they may simply be waiting for some clever entrepreneur to spot the hole and fill it.) But if current trends continue--and as far as I can see, they are only accelerating--the market will eventually fill the niche without any intervention at all from the government.

Comments

Huh? You've heard of zoning, right?

Take a look at Jonathan Levine's Zoned Out. He's an urban planner who actually advocates less regulation, which currently makes dense development difficult. However, he acknowledges that in places like Portland it took a vigorous movement to impose development restrictions that promote density, rather than simply allowing density to happen from low-regulation development.

Density does not create interesting places, but it enables it.

Posted by Dale | September 25, 2007 8:52 AM

Ezra seems to have cause and effect backwards: there are lots of bookstores, coffee shops, etc. in Seattle (and, to a lesser extent, Portland) because there are a lot of affluent, educated whites (and Asians) there. A significant number of these whites and Asians are 'internal migrants' from Southern California, fleeing the declining quality of life there driven by massive illegal immigration. Others are drawn by economic opportunities that appeal to their demographics: a fertile ground for entrepreneurship and small businesses in the Portland area, and high-tech employers seeking high-IQ employees in Seattle (Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, etc.).

I personally don't see the appeal of Portland, which seems dreary to me, but I could live in Seattle. The new football stadium is a perfect example of its livability: you can literally walk to it from downtown, so no need to park. The concession stands are on decks that open up on the outside of the stadium, so you can have a beer during halftime and look out over the city -- a far cry from the dreary indoor concession areas at my local Giants Stadium.

Posted by Fred | September 25, 2007 8:57 AM

As a correlative to what Fred and Megan said, note that the primary reason that DC has lots of black people is not that the city government has implemented a clever development strategy to attract them. It's that DC is one of only two or three major cities surrounded by areas where slavery was legal, i.e., areas that had lots of black people 150 years ago. In contrast, there probably weren't 10 black people within 200 miles of Seattle in 1850. Once the slaves were free, they displayed a strong propensity to migrate to nearby cities like Atlanta and Washington, and very little tendency to move to Seattle.

Posted by y81 | September 25, 2007 9:15 AM

Fred:

Reason # 1 why you are completely out-of-date and not-with-it.

A football stadium? Are you serious? That is what would draw you to a city? Assuming you go to the game, and assuming you tailgate before hand for say 3 hours as well, you are talking about 48 hours TOTAL you would ever even get to enjoy the merits of the facility.

As someone who lives in one of the few great Western urban areas (Denver), trust me, the ranking of impact a football stadium had on the lives of us Denver urbanistas ranks at the same level that new over-priced Museum of Art does.

It is exactly that misunderstanding of urban areas that causes people designing the livability indexes or city rankings to complete miss the boat.

Here is what draws young educated people to an urban environment:

(a) Jobs and School - the city must provide the entry level careers necessary to make it worthwhile to move there.

(b) Other Young/People - especially important is the graduate school population. People always underestimate the importance of post-undergraduate educational opportunities and the students. The reason is that these both provides an outlet for people frustrated with their first career choices as well as providing an additional infusion of young people, still obtaining an additional education.

Too many people do not understand it is not the accountants going to the coffee shops in the middle of a Wednesday. It is not the budding real estate agents which lend a city its intellectual/bohemian nature. It is the graduate student population. In addition, graduate students put off children and families, further increasing the age range of the hipster/20-something crowd. Here in Denver, without the graduate student population from Schools such as CU-Denver, the University of Denver and the CU Health Sciences Center all within a general 4 x 4 mile radius, the city would be much more drab and anti-intellectual.

The rest: bars, coffee shops and nightlife zones come with the above. My education guess about Washington DC is due to both Megan’s claim (Washington D.C still has huge swathes of an underclass, making investment in such institutions as cool coffee houses and hipster bars less likely) as well as the fact that the type of white, educated young person in Washington DC is too busy working on their career’s to hang around a coffee shop. Except for the investment banking world, I have a tough time thinking of a place where more young people are killing themselves at work and kissing butt to try to make contacts and win friends in order to further their careers. You just do not do that hanging around a coffee shop, discussing odd political theories. You do that by running errands for the wealthy lobbyist boss who lives in Fairfax.

Posted by Brad | September 25, 2007 9:28 AM

Wow. That whole quote reeks of elitism and, dare I say it, racism. "young, computer savvy, white people"? As in, black folk are not computer savvy? Are hipsters only white these days as well? "educated white people" are a prerequisite for nice bookstores, coffee shops, bike trails, and wirelss hotspots? Wow.

BTW, I lived in Portland for many years. It was a beautiful city - less so now but still wonderful. IIRC, It and Seattle were also at one time the whitest large cities in America.

Posted by Internet Ronin | September 25, 2007 9:33 AM

I don't know much about Seattle, but in Portland, a lot of this stuff has resulted from government intervention. Basically, Portland has diverted money that used to be spent on buses into light-rail (about a thousand times less efficient), and has heavily subsidized mixed-use development...both of which are a boon for rich white people and hostile to lower-middle-class minorities.

In a lot of western cities (including Houston, where I live now, Dallas, where I used to live, and Los Angeles, which I've only read about) the rich white people complain about the lack of mass transit. And of course, they're the ones with the money and time to devote to political causes, so the first rail lines built are always from the richest whitest suburb to downtown. The only problem is, these require a massive infrastructure investment, and not enough of them use the mass transit to make this investment worthwhile. Meanwhile, resources are diverted from the cities' surprisingly good bus systems, which can adjust much more flexibly to changing population density. But nobody cares about the bus systems, because most of those rich white people wouldn't be caught dead on a city bus.

Buses are a seriously underrated method of reducing carbon emissions, and one that actually makes sense given the American West's lack of rail infrastructure and presence of road infrastructure. And somehow, I think a carbon tax might make bus-riding more palatable, and socially acceptable, for those who now consider it beneath them.

Okay, so this was kind of a response to many posts in one. Oh well.

Posted by Amber | September 25, 2007 9:37 AM

I agree that Ezra Klein's explanation is totally weird. But having grown up in DC (back in the stone ages when "coffee shops" were owned by Greeks), I also think there's a matter of cultural capital involved. Washington, DC just doesn't attract very many good lifestyle entrepreneurs. The city has always been laughably short of decent restaurants, and its contributions to American culture basically consist of Fugazi, go-go, and Duke Ellington. (And, I'm told, George Pelecanos -- speaking of Greek diners -- but I haven't read his stuff.) I'm not sure what the feedback loop required for creating a trend like the loungey coffee shop with the stuffed chairs and WiFi where 20- and 30-somethings hang out all day, but it's not surprising to me that DC was not the place where this happened. I would think a David Landes-type explanation would be most appropriate here -- industrialization happened in England partly because the English were potential industrialists, and coffee shops were slow to materialize in DC partly because DCists are not very promising coffee-shop owners.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 25, 2007 9:57 AM

Brad,

I mentioned the football stadium as an example of Seattle's livability; I didn't say it was the city's sole attractive feature.

Internet Ronin,

"Wow. That whole quote reeks of elitism and, dare I say it, racism. "young, computer savvy, white people"? As in, black folk are not computer savvy?"

I'm sure some are, but if Internet savvy roughly correlates with academic prowess, it's reasonable to assume that "black folk" are underrepresented among the Internet savvy too. They aren't exactly well-represented among software engineers.

"Are hipsters only white these days as well?"

No, Asians too.

""educated white people" are a prerequisite for nice bookstores, coffee shops, bike trails, and wirelss hotspots? Wow."

You're "shocked, shocked", right? Sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes because they reflect reality. You are more likely to find an educated white person at a bookshop, on a biking trail or in a Starbucks-type coffee shop than you are to find an average black person.

Posted by Fred | September 25, 2007 10:17 AM

one reason to expect a role for city government is that for the last ten years Richard Florida has made out like a bandit consulting with cities on how to create the sort of amenities which will attract the "creative class" which is basically a euphemism for "young, computer savvy, white people."

Posted by gabriel | September 25, 2007 10:23 AM

Wow. Talk about overlooking the obvious. The answer's climate not demography. A coffee shop has better economic prospects in the Northwest because it's in the Northwest, not because it's partonized by Northwesterners.

Spring and summer temperatures in Portland and Seattle are 10 to 20 degrees cooler than most of the rest of the country. A hot cup of Joe sounds a whole lot tastier on a dry 75 degree summer day in Seattle than on a humid 95 degree summer day in DC.

Posted by SeanH | September 25, 2007 10:24 AM

Right, Fred. That's why Brooklyn and Berkeley have so few independent bookstores and funky coffeeshops, whereas Cobb County, GA is just crawling with such hotspots of intellectual ferment.

Sheesh.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 25, 2007 10:28 AM

No coffee shops in Mt. Pleasant? What about Dos Gringos? Albeit more of a "cafe/restaurant," but still pretty good. Columbia Coffee isn'ttoo far, either.

Austin is cooler than Portland. There are a ton of educated young people in places like Portland and Austin, sure, but they're the ones serving you your coffee and selling you your book, because there are no jobs!

Posted by Kevin Sullivan | September 25, 2007 10:32 AM

It's not just the coffee shops either. You can comfortably spend the afternoon strolling out to a cafe or bookstore or riding a biketrail in Seattle or Portland regardless of the season. Six months of the year in DC and most of the rest of the country it's too dang hot or cold, you just want to stay indoors half the time.

Posted by SeanH | September 25, 2007 10:36 AM

SeanH,

Familiarize yourself with the colder side of coffee: iced coffee, iced quad espressos, iced lattes, etc. Lots of people enjoy these beverages and the complimentary AC while hanging out in their local coffee place.

Brooksfoe,

What point are you trying to make? There are plenty of educated whites and Asians in Berkeley and Brooklyn -- why wouldn't there be coffee shops and bookstores in both places?

Posted by Fred | September 25, 2007 10:42 AM

This would be a good place for my recommendation that anyone interested in microeconomics, read Howard Schultz's

Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Build a Company One Cup at a Time

.

In addition to learning how coffee shop culture came to Seattle, you'll get a good nuts and bolts primer on how businesses are built from the ground up.

Posted by Patrick R. Sullivan | September 25, 2007 12:29 PM

Kevin: Unless they're selling a book or serving coffee as an idle volunteerist pastime, there certainly are "jobs" for such people, as they're performing them to do those tasks.

There might not be other jobs they prefer, utilising their English and Women's Studies degrees, admittedly... (at least in Portland, someone with a directly useful education can acquire gainful employment with relative ease. That's what Intel and HP and the rest of the Silicon Forest area companies like, after all.

But such is true everywhere; an academic, non-practical degree is useless for acquiring work that requires specialised knowledge, skills, or experience, even if it signals a certain level of commitment, educability, and intelligence.).

Sean: Well, if one likes riding and walking in the rain, it's true that one can do it in the Northwest regardless of the season. If one likes it dry, however, summer is your best bet.

I like rain, but I have no desire to ride a bike or go for a long walk in it.

Posted by Sigivald | September 25, 2007 1:22 PM

Amber wrote: And somehow, I think a carbon tax might make bus-riding more palatable, and socially acceptable, for those who now consider it beneath them.

Point of fact: Driving your own vehicle allows for levels of convenience, cleanliness, privacy, security, and transport of personal effects that are just not possible on a bus. Many people who can afford cars and look down on bus transport as inferior do so because it actually is -- it would require a downgrade in lifestyle.

Not only do you have to conform to the schedule of the bus, risk the possibility that the passenger who used the seat before you hadn't washed their pants in two months, try to ignore the wierd guy who won't quit staring at your crotch, and make small talk with a nearby rider who is overly chatty and evidently uses cigarettes as a substitute for toothpaste...you also can't run by the Post Office at lunch or stop by the supermarket that's on your way home, and if your wallet fell out on the seat when you weren't looking, good luck getting it back unmolested (if at all).

Not all bus routes are like that, but here in the Denver area at least, many of them can be.

Riding the bus is a trade-off. Some people benefit from it, like my friend who commutes thirty minutes to work from a bus stop at her apartment complex to a bus stop five minutes from her work building, on a bus pass paid for by her job with the state. She hasn't owned a car in over five years because she doesn't have a pressing need for one for any other purpose, and instead puts the money into a slightly better standard of living than a car-owner on her salary would be able to afford. On the other hand, some of us have no reason to make the trade-off, and in fact, would be grossly inconvenienced by it. People who live in dense urban areas often don't "get" this little fact because they are acustomed to crowding and efficient public transportation that runs on 15 minute cycles, but those of us in less dense areas where cars are a useful asset are a bit disappointed at the narrowness of the Carbon Brigade's perspective.

Posted by anony-mouse | September 25, 2007 1:47 PM

Sigivald:

My point is just that in both summer and winter Seattle has much milder weather than most other cities. I'd rather grab an umbrella and walk around in light rain than in cold wind on icy sidewalks. The hipster-type activities Klein lists are either outdoors or the kind of place you stop to hang out in while moseying around town. A person's just much less likely to go out for no particular reason if it's 95 degrees and muggy or 25 degrees and snowy. Seattle almost never has unpleasant weather so they have year-round demand for the leisure-time-about-town businesses Klein's talking about. Even when it rains it's usually just a misty rain that lasts forever and a day.

Posted by SeanH | September 25, 2007 2:43 PM

I disagree on the entire summer heat/coffee house situation. Iced coffee is extremely popular now, and with the advent of Starbucks, most people no longer get just a hot cup 'o Joe.

However, the bohemian lifestyle is relegated more to college towns and areas where it is colder. Unless you live in smaller college towns down South or large cities out west with University presence, intellectual life is not openly displayed. This is because bohemians and students are the only populations that both (a) have the free-time to hang out at coffee shops and (b) enjoy spending free time drinking coffee and reading/surfing internet/art.

I can go to a small mill town with unemployed workers, and their idea of free time is probably going to involve more time drinking other substances and auto/hunting.

So it is one of culture, and then this leads as to why is Washington D.C. lacking this culture.

The reason as I posited before, is because the young population in D.C. disproportionately do NOT have the free time to hang around in coffee shops/bookstores. If they do have free-time, it will likely be spent at bars/nightclubs in the evening (where students/hipsters hang out as well after spending time at the coffee shop).

Posted by Brad | September 25, 2007 3:19 PM

Well, for what it's worth, I live in probably the least dense big city in the industrialized world (Houston), own a car like every other middle-class person here, but take the bus. Yes, it's a mild inconvenience, but it's worth it to me because it reduces my carbon footprint. I know a lot of people don't care about that as much as I do; but if as a society, we decide we need to make people care, then it strikes me that a bus system is, given the sprawl in the vast majority of U.S. cities, a more efficient way to do so than a train system, given the massive infrastructure required.

Of course a bus is less clean and more unpredictable than a personal car. But is it really less clean and more unpredictable than a train? In my experience with both, it isn't, but all the rich white people who have taken neither seem to think the train is more dignified, or something.

Posted by Amber | September 25, 2007 3:50 PM

My experience with DC is that the intellectual class has little to no interest in the city itself, for obvious reasons. Everyone there I've ever met works for the federal government, a national publication, or a nonprofit, so they're interested in national/global issues or the local issues of the people they work/lobby for, and ambivalent about the history, politics, and artistic culture of the actual city.

It's important to emphasize that there are so many national publications in DC. If you're a writer/reporter/critic in Portland/Austin/Seattle/Chicago/etc, you have to help nurture local artistic culture to put bread on the table. In DC, practically all the jobs for people like that are nationally oriented. So the people who would otherwise be inclined to support a local scene are discouraged from doing so.

Without an interest in the city as a culture, the city isn't going to have a local culture.

Posted by whetstone | September 25, 2007 4:23 PM

It would seem to me another problem with DC is the fact that it likely has one of the most transient proportion of young people of any city in the United States. How many young people are there because of a job, that at the most, has an expected period of only a few years of employment?

Posted by Brad | September 25, 2007 4:26 PM

Kevin Sullivan's right on the mark...if you want coffee etc in MTP, you go to Dos Gringos or Columbia Heights Coffee or Mayorga Cafe or any other little cafe. Methinks Ezra Klein et al haven't been in MTP much recently.

Posted by JA | September 25, 2007 6:17 PM

I live in Houston and I think we have some "hipster" "creative" types... they hang out in certain neighborhoods. I'm not sure why it matters whether we have them or not. I guess everyone on this list is a hipster or whatever?

I'll second what Amber said... our first light rail line was built to serve the various sports arenas and runs through the museum district and medical center on it's way from the Football stadiums and convention center do downtown (where the baseball and basketball arenas are). It is pretty useless as a commuter line. Anyone who would take it only has a 5-10 minute drive downtown anyway. It does save them parking money, though, I guess.

The light rail line is great if you work downtown and need to go to a museum, sports event, or a hospital. But it's not so good for going home...

Houston has incredibly good restaurants. I'm not quite sure why, though. The restaurants are good everywhere, too, not just in the "hipster" neighborhoods. We don't have a lot of coffee shops, more bars and clubs.

EI

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | September 25, 2007 7:05 PM

I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to DC eight years ago. I just went back and spent a week in Berkeley and San Francisco. I spent the week eating great, inexpensive food; browsing bookstores with comprehensive collections of grade A literature in any genre; seeing films; and hanging out in cafes and bars with a lot of other educated, cultured folks of all ages and races doing just the same thing. And as I was doing all this, the question kept nagging me: why isn't this happening in DC?

Hyper professionalism: the original post was right with the respect to why people live in DC. They get a job there. It's basically a city of organization jockeys, politicos, social causistes, litigators and legislators. These folks tend to be busy, networky, newsy, wonky. They're not the type to enjoy or promote the above. The women end up jogging behind 3-wheel strollers in Del Rey.

Food in DC: fastfood or chef-owned, little in between, and a very sparse offering of authentic ethnic foods. Real Italian food is impossible in DC. In New York and San Francisco it's commonplace. Same applies to Asian food. Same applies to South American food. Sole proprietorship for immigrants is difficult. Fresh ingredients are hard to obtain. And the patrons tend not to know trendy food from authentic food.

Culture in DC: free museums but no art culture. The most successful contemporary artists live in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The boho scene in DC is downright provincial and amateurish.

Music: Ellington, Fugazi, Minor Threat, and Henry Rollins, who lives in LA. Ah, but let us not forget bluegrass: The Country Gentlemen, Hi-Lo Brown, Buzz Busby, The Seldom Scene... Well, DC has got bluegrass, but it's rarely played in DC. Got to go to VA or MD for that.

Summary: "You don't move to DC because it's awesome, you move because it's where your work is."

Posted by Jan | November 30, 2007 6:42 PM

No good ethnic food in DC? Somebody needs to cross the river more often, or read Tyler Cowen's guide! ;)

Posted by Ronald | December 5, 2007 10:54 PM