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Albany is just too small. The thing about Boston being big is true too.
Raleigh may be a little more insulated than Charlotte. Maybe. Both are similar.
I can't imagine the Sacramento being more insulated than larger, more diversified areas.
Albany is a multimodal metro(Schenectady and Troy are also city centers) that is actually bigger than people may realize(58th biggest metro in the country).
State capitals and university towns are most resistant to economic downturns, a double bonus exists if both.
So areas like Columbus, Raleigh, Lansing/East Lansing, Madison, Lincoln, Boise, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Austin, Baton Rouge, Tallahassee, Montgomery, Nashville, Richmond, Dover, Providence, Albany, Frankfort, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, Denver, Boston, Atlanta, Columbia SC, Charleston WV, Hartford, Trenton and perhaps the Jefferson City/Columbia MO area and Annapolis are some that would fit this description. All either have both within city limits or within the metro/region.
What do you think? Do the abundance of government, education, and healthcare jobs help keep state capitals more afloat during periods of economic downturn?
Well, E Lansing may have MSU, but Lansing had the GM Plant and suppliers. A lot of manufacturing. It's really a small town. Not bad, but not necessarily as great as people are making it sound either.
Michigan really wasn't doing too hot before 2008 and then the auto bailouts came. And lots of people still lost their jobs.
Ann Arbor was the Michigan city that did the best during the recession because it doesn't rely on manufacturing jobs as their base. They aren't so dominant in the economy there.
Well, E Lansing may have MSU, but Lansing had the GM Plant and suppliers. A lot of manufacturing. It's really a small town. Not bad, but not necessarily as great as people are making it sound either.
Michigan really wasn't doing too hot before 2008 and then the auto bailouts came. And lots of people still lost their jobs.
Ann Arbor was the Michigan city that did the best during the recession because it doesn't rely on manufacturing jobs as their base. They aren't so dominant in the economy there.
I wasn't saying Lansing wasn't a fine place but that places like Boston and Atlanta only have small parts of their economies based off their state government because a place like Lansing which is 1/10th the size of Boston or Atlanta.
I wasn't saying Lansing wasn't a fine place but that places like Boston and Atlanta only have small parts of their economies based off their state government because a place like Lansing which is 1/10th the size of Boston or Atlanta.
Lansing anchors a bigger state than Boston, and until the last 10 years or so Atlanta as well. Even with it's minute metro size in comparison it still really isn't dominated by the presence of state government. It feels very much like a manufacturing town.
Lansing has the same ingredients that Madison did, being the seat of state government, as well as a major state university that competes on a national level. Michigan State may not have the prestige of the University of Michigan(or Wisconsin for that matter), but it holds its own quite well against other major state research institutions across the country. I've pondered why Madison has surged in recent decades, while Lansing remained fairly flat. The major difference I think being that Lansing was the birthplace of Oldsmobile and became a major GM and supplier manufacturing hub. Whereas Madison developed pretty heavily around more stable and prosperous knowledge based industries.
The state of Michigan became notorious for it's lack of innovation and complacency during the decades that it grew 20-40% consistently. It created a set of cities that were anchored by a largely unskilled workforce, with an industry that had no vested interest in the cores of those cities. When the dynamic of that industry started to shift those cities stagnated, and then flat out declined. The Lansing metro has definitely faired better than some of it's Michigan peers as it's never lost population, and recently has posted accelerated population gains(as has the city itself). I do think this is because of the stability of being the seat of state, along with the giant presence of MSU. This has lead to a rise in more knowledge based industries and the attraction of a more educated workforce helping to stabilize and even out it's more blue collar core.
So areas like Columbus, Raleigh, Lansing/East Lansing, Madison, Lincoln, Boise, Salt Lake City, Phoenix, Austin, Baton Rouge, Tallahassee, Montgomery, Nashville, Richmond, Dover, Providence, Albany, Frankfort, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, Denver, Boston, Atlanta, Columbia SC, Charleston WV, Hartford, Trenton and perhaps the Jefferson City/Columbia MO area and Annapolis are some that would fit this description. All either have both within city limits or within the metro/region.
I think this answer has to do with which way the State is leaning politically. Generally, a liberal State will have greater State government, and thus the capital will be more resistant to economic downturns. Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily saying this a bad or good thing. But the economics tend to play out in these situations. States like California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington tend to have strong State capitals, and I believe a lot of that has to do with the liberal stance these States take.
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