Ideas Trump Resources When it Comes to City Growth

The future of plenitude isn't high tech and software-driven, it isn't interactive or knowledge-powered; and it doesn't come from Silicon Valley, San Francisco, or New York City, David Brooks argued in his New York Times column Monday. It comes from old-fashioned, boring extractive industries like mining and oil drilling, and from un-sexy places like the Great Plains, Texas, and the Dakotas.

Brooks cites a recent report by Joel Kotkin, the urban contrarian and an occasional friendly debate partner of mine, that identifies "America's epicenters of economic dynamism." Brooks describes these epicenters as "a giant arc of unfashionableness." He writes, "You start at the Dakotas where unemployment rates are at microscopic levels. You drop straight down through the energy belts of the Great Plains until you hit Texas. Occasionally, you turn to touch the spots where fertilizer output and other manufacturing plants are on the rebound, like the Third Coast areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Northern Florida."