Aaron M. Renn

All Things Aaron

Checking In On Columbus

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Fountain in a park, Victorian Village, Columbus, Ohio.I was in Columbus, Ohio for a couple days last week. I hadn't been there since my late 2010 Columbus Metropolitan Club presentation, and so it was good to get to check in and see how they were doing. I once called Columbus "the new Midwestern star," noting that they were one of those Midwest cities that's doing far better than the region's reputation would suggest. It's been growing at a reasonably rapid clip in both population and jobs, beating the US average significantly, though not … [Read more...]

Portrait of a Change Agent

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My friend and occasional Urbanophile contributor Rod Stevens has suggested that communities should create "Dewar's Profiles" of the people in their cities that represent the type of entrepreneur they'd like to attract more of. I think this is a good idea. It's about thinking of the characteristics of people who have achieved success, and chosen to build that success in a particular place. What attributes do those people have? Once you know that, you can go out and find more of them. Some of this is place specific but I want to apply this … [Read more...]

The Rise of the Executive Headquarters

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My latest post is online over at New Geography and is called "The Rise of the Executive Headquarters" in which I take another look at the emerging trend of putting the top executives of majors corporations back in global cities (often downtowns). Here's an excerpt: Headquarters were once a defining characteristic of urban economic power, and indeed today cities that can still brag of the number of entries they boast on the Fortune 500 list of largest American firms. Yet as urban centers increasingly lost headquarters, boosters started to … [Read more...]

On the Riverfront

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Thursday I took a look at my "Cincinnati conundrum," namely how it's possible for a city that has the greatest collection of civic assets of any city its size in America to underperform demographically and economically. In that piece I called out the sprawl angle. But today I want to take a different look at it by panning back the lens to see Cincinnati as simply one example of the river city. There are four major cities laid out on an east-west corridor along the Ohio River: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis (which is not on … [Read more...]

The Urbanophile Interview: Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer

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I recently sat down to talk for about half an hour with Louisville, Kentucky Mayor Greg Fischer. We had a wide ranging discussion that ventured from branding to globalization, regionalism, talent attraction, legacy, and more. If the audio player below doesn't display, click over to listen on Soundcloud. Mayor Greg Fischer. Image via Wikipedia. Here are some edited highlights of our discussion. For those who prefer reading to listening, a complete transcript is available. On an economic development partnership between Louisville and … [Read more...]

The Decline of Work

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Tocqueville's Democracy in America has a chapter entitled "Why Among the Americans All Honest Occupations Are Considered Honorable." In it he noted that because America lacked an aristocratic tradition of leisure, labor had not been stigmatized as something inherently degrading to man: In America no one is degraded because he works, for everyone about him works also; nor is anyone humiliated by the notion of receiving pay, for the President of the United States also works for pay. He is paid for commanding, other men for obeying orders. In the … [Read more...]

In-State vs. Out-of-State Migration

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My recent repost of an article on Columbus, Ohio's brand blew away the all time comment record for this blog, with 271 as of this writing. One the discussions was around the extent to which Columbus and other Ohio cities draw mostly from the state or from a broader area. Obviously with Ohio State University, Columbus has a massive in-state draw. But what about people from out of state? To try quantify this, I used the IRS migration data in my Telestrian system to sort out net migration into that which is with the state of Ohio, and that … [Read more...]

Rebranding Columbus

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This post originally ran on August 15, 2010. Some anachronisms have been left in the piece, so keep the original date in mine. It's no secret I'm a fan of Columbus, Ohio, one of those under the radar cities that's a whole lot better than its external brand image would suggest. That frustrates local civic leaders, who've undertaken a major re-branding effort, as discussed in a recent NYT piece, "There May Be ‘No Better Place,’ but There Is a Better Slogan:" Quick, what do you think about when you hear the words “Columbus, Ohio”? Still … [Read more...]

Why State Economic Development Strategies Should Be Metro-Centric

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Globalization, technology, productivity improvements, and the resulting restructuring of the world economy have led to fundamental changes that have destroyed the old paradigms of doing business. Whether these changes are on the whole good or bad, or who or what is responsible for bringing them into being, they simply are. Most cities, regions, and US states have extremely limited leverage in this marketplace and thus to a great extent are market takers more than market makers. They have to adapt to new realities, but a lack of willingness to … [Read more...]

Blurring the Lines

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"We believed then as we do now, that the sharing economy can democratize access to goods, services, and capital — in fact all the essentials that make for vibrant markets, commons, and neighborhoods. It’s an epoch shaping opportunity for sustainable urban development that can complement the legacy economy. Resource sharing, peer production, and the free market can empower people to self-provision locally much of what they need to thrive. Yet we’ve learned that current U.S. policies often block resource sharing and peer production. - From the … [Read more...]