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« Back to What's New in The New West? main page    Transcript for: What's New in The New West?ANNOUNCER: Brought to you in part by ADM,feeding the world is the biggest challenge of the new century, whichis why ADM promotes satellite technology to help the American farmerbe even more productive. ADM, supermarket to the world.Additional funding is provided by the JohnM. Olin Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry BradleyFoundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg inColorado Springs, Colorado. In the heart of what is called the NewWest. The West is the most rapidly growing region of the country.This growth has brought a prosperity and energy that most residentsenjoy. But, it has also brought changes that many westerners findalarming. Joining Think Tank are Phil Burgess, the president andsenior fellow at the Center for the New West in Denver, Colorado,William Frey of the State University of New York, Albany, and asenior fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, California,and Brad Edmondson, former editor in chief of American Demographics,and a senior fellow at the Center for the New West. The topic beforethis house, what's new in the New West, this week on ThinkTank. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: An influential think tank,the Center for the New West, recently convened a roundtable here tobetter understand some of the powerful trends that are shaping thisarea, that some applaud and some condemn. The western part of Americais growing at about twice the rate of the rest of the country. Mostof the fastest growing counties in America are located in the West,in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. And nine of the top ten fastestgrowing states are in the West. Migrants from all over the nation,particularly from California, are flooding the Pacific Northwest, theRocky Mountains, and the desert states. They seek what most Americansseek, stability, economic opportunity, safety, and a good quality oflife, and often they find it. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Some feel that the veryconditions they left in California, or in the East are now beingreplicated in the West. To find out more we talked to conferenceparticipants at the historic Penrose House, in Colorado Spring. Thestructure is the former home of Spencer Penrose, a mythic westerner,a philanthropist, and the man who helped put together the Kennecot(sp) Copper Company. The conference center is now maintained by theEl Pomar (sp) Foundation. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us at ThinkTank. As I said in the setup piece, the topic before the house is,what's new in the New West. Bill Frey, why don't we start with you, andlet's just go around the room once, and then dig into it. MR. FREY: I think what's new in the New Westis that the West has become independent of California, in a sense. Ithink there was some fear that at the first part of the decade all ofthe growth in the New West, not only its population, but its economywas driven in a large degree by the recession in California, all theearthquakes and everything else that was going on there was feedingthese large migration streams into the West. And now that we'retoward the end of the decade, California is kind of revived a littlebit. There is some disagreement about whether California is actuallylosing or gaining domestic migrants, but it's still -- it's certainlyattracting more people back to the state. Whether that would somehowdampen what was going on in the New West, and therefore the Westwould return to sort of a decline, would not have the economic power.But, I don't see that happening at all. MR. WATTENBERG: Great. Brad? MR. EDMONDSON: Let's say that with therecent flood of migrants into the interior West, the major citieshave sort of reached a critical mass. Denver and Phoenix are bothover 2 million people now. They each have their own baseball team.Las Vegas is around 1.3-1.4 million, headed for who knows where. It'sthe fastest growing place in the country. And what interests me aboutit is how people are reforming those communities very rapidly, andsometimes in really innovative ways. So the communities themselvesare new. And it's really interesting to study how people are copingwith this growth, and particularly how California and other placesinteract. MR. WATTENBERG: Phil? MR. BURGESS: I think the most interestingthing happening here in the West is the gentrification of the West.You know, the West has always been a flyover zone, it's been a placewhere people kind of saw from 40,000 feet. But, in the last 10 yearspeople are moving here in large numbers. And one of the reasons is,because of the telecommunications revolution, moderntelecommunications technology really breaks the tyranny of distance,it reduces the friction of being located in a remote place. And nowcoupled with deregulation of financial services, and deregulation oftransportation and other deregulation activities that are going on,the West has a new lease on life, a new opportunity to participate inthe global economy. MR. WATTENBERG: You are the president of theCenter for the New West, a distinguished organization it is. But, myreading of American history has been that for 500 years now, since1492, people have been moving west. What is so new? MR. BURGESS: The interior West they movedthrough. MR. WATTENBERG: You have already drawn thedistinction between California and non-California in the West. Isthat the critical distinction that we ought to be focusing on? MR. BURGESS: We have a little differentview, Bill and I might have a different view on that. I think, youknow, I was head of the Western Governors here during the energy boomyears, in '73 and '79, the second energy boom. And there was a lot ofantipathy in the interior West to California, the colonization ofCalifornia, of the interior regions and so on. Migration out ofCalifornia has been going on since the '70s. MR. WATTENBERG: The 1970s? MR. BURGESS: The 1970s, and -- MR. WATTENBERG: And that's what is commonlycalled Californication? MR. BURGESS: And sprawl and other thingsthat go with more people. But, one of the things I think governorsand business leaders and other people learned in the '70s focused on,say, coal exports to the Pacific Rim, is that California is the bestfriend the interior West can have. I mean, they have windows to theworld, through some of the greatest ports in the world. The biggestport in the United States is the Port of Los Angeles. The secondlargest is the Port of Long Beach, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle,these are huge windows on the most rapidly growing part of the globe,Asia. And I think that there was a real transformation of thinking ofcivic leaders and political leaders in the interior West during theearly 1980s that continues on today. California is an essential partof the future of the interior region. MR. WATTENBERG: But, a lot of the people youtalk to from this so-called 'interior West' do not like California,Californians, the California way of life. MR. EDMONDSON: It's called the law of thelast man in. MR. WATTENBERG: How does that work? MR. EDMONDSON: Everybody out here -- I mean,the people who were born in Western states are in the minority. Themajority of people who live in the interior West were born somewhereelse. But, it also happens in rapidly growing places like Florida.You get there, you set up, you look around, you say, hey, this isgreat, I'm a native now. And then somebody else shows up and you say,hey, what are you doing, get out of here, this is my place, I loveit, don't change it. It's the last person in closes the door andsays, okay, that's it, I don't want anymore change. It's continualchange. MR. WATTENBERG: They say that when theMayflower people landed they went out on Plymouth Rock and saw thenext ship come in and said, there goes the neighborhood. MR. EDMONDSON: That's right. People alwaysthink it was better before. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Tell me about some of theindustrial-technological growth that's going on here? MR. FREY: Well, there's a lot of high techstuff going on. Some of my colleagues at the Milken Institute aregoing to put out a big study about this. I don't want to take thethunder away from them, but they have -- MR. WATTENBERG: This is Silicon Valley,Microsoft in Seattle, the Utah corridor and much more? MR. FREY: Correct, and they will identifywhat we're to call high tech clusters, which are all over the newWest, which will attract a lot of engineers. MR. WATTENBERG: What are some of theothers? MR. BURGESS: I agree with what Bill issaying, but one of the things that we have to keep in mind is thatCalifornia overwhelms in every one of these areas, whether it'scomputers, software, biotechnology, any of these high tech areas.Computers, California just overwhelms, and so you start comparing thefront range of Colorado or the Wasatch (sp) front, Salt Lake City,Utah, you know, the point is, Ben, I think that great empirescolonize surrounding areas. And I think that that's really what'shappening with California. California is a place that is a source ofpeople and enterprises for the interior west. MR. WATTENBERG: Colonies historicallyrevolt. MR. BURGESS: Well, you know, they revolt -- MR. EDMONDSON: If they're not treated well. MR. WATTENBERG: Just for the record, ifthey're not treated well, right. MR. BURGESS: That's the point. Brad has gotthe point, I think. And I think the really important thing, I think,is that as -- in 1991 and '92 when the recession came in California,and then the recovery, it really wasn't a recovery, it was really arecession that camouflaged a transformation of the Californiaeconomy, because, you know, construction didn't come back, aerospacedidn't come back, you didn't have a recovery. What you had was thegrowth of a computer industry that created more jobs during thatthree year period than were lost in aerospace. You also had thegrowth of a multimedia industry in California that created more jobsthan were lost in aerospace. And as those companies expanded and propertygot expensive and things like that, certain spin-offs didn't go downthe road, they went to Utah, they went to Arizona, they came toColorado. Apple Computer builds manufacturing facility right here inColorado Sprints, those kinds of things have been happening all overthe West, and I think that -- I think there's a symbioticrelationship between what's happening in the interior West, andwhat's happening in California. And I think it's healthy for bothsides. (Musical break.) MR. EDMONDSON: You also had a demographictransformation happening, Phil, in California during the recession,which is something that Bill has studied in great detail. MR. FREY: Well, it's the importance ofimmigration, as opposed to domestic migration as the major source ofgrowth for California. And I think part of -- MR. WATTENBERG: This is Latino andHispanic? MR. FREY: Latino, Asian, and from otherparts of the world. MR. EDMONDSON: Palestinians. MR. WATTENBERG: Palestinians. MR. EDMONDSON: We did a study of theCalifornia transformation that occurred earlier in this decade, andthe big numbers are obviously Asians and Latinos, but if you startlooking at where some of the leadership is coming from, if you tookthe 15 most rapidly growing companies in Orange County, 9 were headedby first generation immigrants. I think that's a remarkable kind ofinsight, because one was Latino, one was Asian, but the rest werePalestinians, Russians, one from India. So when you look at thesekinds of -- MR. WATTENBERG: Bill, is California gettingthe immigration, and the interior West getting the migration,domestic, is that basically it? MR. FREY: Yes, I mean, I think that's thelink Brad was alluding t. What happened in the early '90s, asCalifornia continued to be a magnet for all these immigrants fromLatin America and Asia and so forth, at the same time there was thisrecession, more a middle class recession, and there was a domesticout migration from California. Most of those folks wound up in one ofthe Western states. There has always been this relationship betweenCalifornia and the West, but it was fueled very much in terms ofdomestic migration flows accelerating into the West during thisperiod. MR. WATTENBERG: What you described ratherelegantly is described sometimes more muscularly as whiteflight. MR. FREY: Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: Is that what it is, areso-called 'Anglos' picking up and saying, hey, too many Asians, toomany Hispanics, too many blacks, too much crime, particularly inSouthern California, they say, I'm out of here? MR. FREY: Well, it not just race. Race iscertainly part of it. Race was part of the white flight to thesuburbs in the '50s and '60s. But, I think the congestion, the crime,the cost of living and living in the suburbs of Los Angeles and SanFrancisco, people think of those trade-offs between working andliving there and moving into somewhere in Nevada, or Utah, orColorado, and they decide that they can get a better job, a cheaperhouse, live in a more sort of traditional suburban lifestyle, livingthere. MR. WATTENBERG: And they think it's a gooddeal? MR. FREY: Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: That's why they move? MR. FREY: These aren't just the high tech --I mean, this is a different segment of the population than what Iwould call the roving professionals, the people who go off and starttheir own companies and so forth. These are regular blue collar, bluecollar to middle class, would-be suburbanites who are fueling a lotof the movement to the West. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Burgess here is a bigsalesman of the New West, he thinks it's great. You guys seem tothink it's pretty good stuff. I have no problem with it. MR. BURGESS: I'm not a salesman, I just tellthe truth. MR. WATTENBERG: But, I don't live here. Andyou talk to people here and all the things you are describing aswonderful, more people coming in, more population growth, a lot ofpeople, including some of the men working the cameras in thisparticular shoot say, yuck. You know, what are these people doinghere, it takes 45 minutes to commute into Denver, it does this, itdoes that, it's just growing too fast, nobody is planning, you know,get out of my hair. What do you do about that? MR. FREY: Well, there's a lot of open spaceto develop. Not everyone has to live downtown. Not everybody has tolive exactly close to where the main population centers are, and Ithink the West is as much open development space as anywhere else inthe country. MR. BURGESS: One of the things that ishappening, I agree with Bill on that, is that number one, lots ofdowntown areas are becoming more heavily populated, Denver, Portland,Seattle, other places in the West. A second thing, Ben, that's reallyinteresting, I think, is what we at the center have called leapfrogcounties, what we're beginning to see now, if you look at the mostrapidly growing counties in the in the United States, many are in theWest, and many of those in the West and outside the West are onecounty removed from the center city. For example -- MR. WATTENBERG: Nigh (sp) County,Nevada. MR. BURGESS: Yes, Nigh County, Nevada, orHoward County in Maryland, two counties out from Baltimore, orMcHenry County in Illinois, two counties out from Cook County, orDouglas County here in Colorado, two counties out from Denver. Soonce again, that's a technology issue, because people now know-- MR. WATTENBERG: That's what yields what oneof you called a rural renaissance, which happens to be a phrasethat's been around this country also for about 200 years. But, isthat's what you're seeing now, a rural renaissance? MR. FREY: Yes, I think that both because ofthis kind of movement, that Phil was talking about, but also gettingback to these would-be suburbanites, they're also fueling a lot ofthis kind of rural renaissance, in a smaller -- in sort of, again,less high profile places, but also establishing communities, in asense, in places that wouldn't have that sense of community before.And I think that's another part of the picture that's not just at thehigh end of the economic spectrum of folks moving in, but sort ofplain middle class folks moving in. MR. EDMONDSON: I have a somewhat darker viewof this growth than my friends do. MR. WATTENBERG: Your ex-friends. MR. EDMONDSON: They're still my friends, wecan disagree. It seems to me that one of the main reasons people movehere now is that it's such a great place to be, it's a great place tolive, great place to play. And one of the laws of migration ismigration is like sinning, if you do it once you're more likely to doit again. And so I think there's a real possibility that unlesswestern communities manage their growth well, and keep their qualityof life high through this growth process, particularly the one thatwas fueled by the California recession in the '90s, it's not going tobe such a great place anymore, and the migration stream might slowdown. This is a particularly key issue for small towns, ski towns,resort towns, places which really don't have very much to sell excepttheir intrinsic beauty, that's the most valuable resource they have.And if they wreck it, they don't have anything else to sell. MR. WATTENBERG: And you know, there'ssomething, I've been looking through some of your literature. You aresaying that the West is now sort of overtaking the South. And I guessthe growth rate is surely faster in the West than any of the otherthree regions. But, the South is probably growing second fastest, andstill has by far the greatest number of people of any of the fourregions, which are the Northwest, Midwest, West, and South. The Southis still the plurality area of this country. MR. FREY: Yes, it was only 10 years ago thatJoe Garot (sp) called this region the great empty quarter. So it'sfilling up, but it's filling up slowly. MR. WATTENBERG: It's filling up slowly, butat a fast rate? MR. FREY: Yes, but at a faster rate than theSouth. But, I think the other point here is, what's the quality, orthe character of the growth. And I think, just to give one little fixon that, about two years ago the San Francisco Federal Reserve did astudy of the diversification of the U.S. economy by state, Californiawas number one, Illinois was number two, Colorado was number three. Imean, that is a profound change over what would have been found in1960 or 1950, or even by 1975. MR. WATTENBERG: Where it would have beenenergy and minerals and skiing, period. MR. FREY: Yes, and so the domination of thispart of the country by natural resource industries, as my colleagueshave also pointed out, you know, has really changed right before oureyes. And so that's where the kind of growth that we see now has avery solid diversified base. (Commercial break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Is this New West a newpolitics, or is it still the same old Western politics with newfaces? MR. FREY: I believe that the so-called NewWest politics is a myth largely. I think that the voting data showthat. MR. WATTENBERG: What do they show? MR. FREY: The voting data show that peoplein the interior West are continuing to vote fairly conservatively,mostly Republican, the way they did before the influx of people fromCalifornia. The idea that the urban throngs coming in from Californiawould be more liberal, more green, more pro government, and more probig government programs has proven not to be true. And I'm not sayingthat as an ideological statement, just as an observation. I think thevoting data show that, and every other kind of survey data orobservation we can make. MR. WATTENBERG: I wonder if that's one ofthe reasons why California, having been sort of traditionallyborderline, leaning Republican, is now pretty -- regarded as prettysolidly Democratic, is because you've taken out the potentialRepublican vote? MR. EDMONDSON: That's the corollary. Peopleare migrating to a place where they perceive that there are peoplewho share their views. And so I believe the West, the interior Westis becoming more conservative. MR. WATTENBERG: All right. MR. BURGESS: It's the white flight. Youdon't like to use that term, but I think that's part of what'sfueling it, both in California, and in the West. MR. FREY: Is it just like the pioneers werewhite flight? It's not a helpful term, that's all. It's a convenientterm, especially for Eastern media, the only trouble is it doesn'tdescribe anything. MR. WATTENBERG: Are you describing me asEastern media? Just finally, to wrap up, is this what we'reseeing here in this sort of vibrant, explosive growth, California andparticularly the interior West, is this in some ways a model forAmerica? MR. FREY: Well, there is a similarity, wewere talking about growth in the South. And we see the parts of theSouth that are growing up are really in the Southeast, Tennessee,North and South Carolina, parts of Georgia, which are not all thatdifferent from a lot of the New West, in terms of diversifying theireconomy, being more entrepreneurial, bringing more high tech industrythere, and attracting people from the New York suburbs. MR. WATTENBERG: The reason I asked that isbecause this model, while it seems sort of parochial to this area,and it's certainly more intense here is, as you say, it's kind ofhappening everywhere. What Garot calls the edge cities, people movingout, moving into rural, semi-rural, telecommuting sorts of things. Imean, this is -- is this the next century? MR. FREY: People are looking for suburbiathe way it used to be defined, is part of it. And they're now able todo it, because of the telecommunications and computer, and there's aStarbucks no matter where you are, and all of this. And I think thatto the extent this can occur, it will occur, and the places wherethere are great potentials for it are the New West and a large partof the Southeast part of the country, which is also growing veryfast. MR. EDMONDSON: I think what's going on, Ben,is in our culture, that's reflected very strongly here in the West,is an increasing take charge mentality, where people are takingcharge of their lives, in ways they haven't since the middle of thelast century, since the industrial revolution. And I think thatpeople are tired of being beat up by big institutions. And so we seethat in the growth of small businesses, especially micro-businesses.We see it -- MR. WATTENBERG: Becoming big businesses,which people will then flee from. MR. EDMONDSON: We see it in the smalloffice, home office movement, 43 million people now work at homesometime during the week, 15 million people work at home full time,that number has doubled since 1989. I mean, there are some profoundchanges going on in how people think about how they live and how theyrelate to the workplace, and they now have the tools at theirdisposal, especially telecommunications, to take charge of theirlives and they're doing it. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. We started out withthe question, what's new in the New West, and it seems to me we'reending with what's new in the New West may well be new in the rest ofAmerica in the next century. Thank you, Bill Burgess, Brad Edmondson,Phil Frey, and thank you. For Think Tank, I'm Ben Wattenberg. We appreciate the email that we receive fromour viewers, it helps us shape and direct this program. Please keepit coming. Thank you. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend on yourviews to make our show better. Please send your questions andcomments to New River Media, 1150 Seventeenth Street, Northwest,Washington, D.C. 20036, or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learnmore about Think Tank, visit PBS Online at www.pbs.org. And pleaselet us know where you watch Think Tank. This has been a production of BJW,Incorporated, in association with New River Media, which are solelyresponsible for its content. Brought to you in part by ADM, feeding theworld is the biggest challenge of the new century, which is why ADMpromotes satellite technology to help the American farmer be evenmore productive. ADM, supermarket to the world. Additional funding is provided by the JohnM. Olin Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry BradleyFoundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (End of program.) 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