Richard Florida notes in the WSJ that the driving force of our future economy will be the consolidation of "mega-region" economic units -- connected urban metropolises (Judis and Teixeira called them "ideopolises" in 2002). Coincidentally, the electoral tracking site fivethirtyeight.com has settled on an eerily similar regional map of the United States for its own purposes. But if this all feels like deja vu, that's because Joel Garreau drew essentially the same map in the late seventies -- back when the decline of manufacturing in the Rustbelt and rising population of the Sunbelt were newly discernible trends.
There are two forces at work here: one is an economic effect that binds a mega-region together, the other is a cultural effect that makes a region distinct from other regions. The question is whether the economic effect causes the cultural effect or vice versa, or whether they act independently. If we're trending toward differentiated regional economic units then what does that say about the larger forces of economic globalization and their supposed "flattening" effect on the world? Is this how advanced countries experience "backlash?" -- by fortifying their own regional identities? And finally, in light of Obama's reiteration of the Thomas Frank argument, what are the political implications? Are Democrats doomed to not only whistle past Dixie, but also past other large swathes of the country that have been "left behind?"
--Mori Dinauer
