A bit more insight: the four stars are for four important events in Chicago history. I think it was the fort Dearborn massacre, the Chicago fire, the world’s fair, and mayor Lightfoot telling everyone she had the biggest dick in the city.
I really enjoyed the commodity trading angle you presented. It truly shows why Chicago is one of the largest commodity trading hubs and reinforces how it got there. Thank you!
I have some articles on your theory about the growth of cities and find it interesting. I have a question though, according to this theory shouldn't New Orleans be much bigger?
My father-in-law grew up in St. Louis back when it was a thriving hub city, "The Gateway to the West." Now it's not anymore. I wonder if Chicago and Atlanta divided up the rail and plane traffic that used to go through St. Louis, and I wonder why things changed.
From the little I can tell from looking at other cities, it does look like in the US rails, highways, and air have taken a big market share from water.
But I don’t know if it’s the entire story. If you look into it, I’d love to read what you have to say, and maybe I’ll write about it!
My theory is that when you have multiple metros in the same region built on similar economic bases (as Chicago, StL, and a bunch of similar Rust Belt Midwestern cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, are) and the economy changes (to become more service-based), the biggest one in the region (Chicago) will win out. As an example, look at lawyers in the Midwest. Every other Midwestern city has lost in numbers of lawyers besides Chicago. Probably because many companies have decided that if they are going to maintain a Midwestern hub, they'd probably maintain it in Chicago rather than some other Midwestern city. You'd probably see similar stories in other business support industries like accounting and management consulting. Likewise, outside of a few industries (banking in Charlotte), I expect Atlanta to dominate the Southeast. In TX and CA, energy is driving Houston and tech the SF Bay Area (and in TX, Austin is the tech hub). Otherwise, they would lose out to the DFW Metroplex and LA respectively.
Network effects are a big deal!
IMO, while Houston and DFW are neck-to-neck in size right now, with climate change (Houston is not well-situated for climate change as flooding in recent years has shown) and a big energy transition happening, I'm much more bullish on DFW than Houston.
BTW, StL's best bet is to become the food/ag science hub of the US. It's well-situated for that.
I was going to say that I’m much more bullish on DFW than Houston and Atlanta than Miami due to climate change (I’m more bullish on the central FL agglomeration than Miami for the same reason), though I suppose it may also depend on the relative advantages of air vs sea travel in the TX case.
Still, over the long run, I think Miami is doomed and the major inland metropolises in the US will be Atlanta, Chicago, DFW, and Denver (which will grow to rival the others with growth in the Mountain West).
On Houston (and New Orleans)... Water shipping is just too much cheaper than air for them to disappear. Different needs, unless air transport becomes much cheaper.
True, but cities don't have to be that big to handle a lot of cargo. Savannah and Charleston are a couple of the largest container ports in the US but aren't big cities. And a lot that's shipped out from Houston and the rest of the southern Louisiana/Texas Gulf Coast complex are fossil fuels, which may decrease quite a bit in the future.
And it also shows that one thing is a port, another is a market. If you have a port but don’t develop its corresponding market, you don’t accrue network effects maybe
Interesting stuff, I definitely learned something new! I live in Indianapolis, and we are also a hub in terms of "crossroads of America" and all that jazz. You can ship just about anywhere within 2 business days. Makes sense Chicago is just a super-large version of that with more connections and resources. Pretty cool information, thank you!
Thanks for the analysis. I appreciated learning more about the development of the waterways in particular.
I'd love it if you were able to include more about the role that indigenous people played in settling and developing Chicago and laying the foundation for much of the industrial growth you discuss.
I also think it'd be valuable to discuss The Great Migration and the huge impact it had on Chicago's infrastructure and industry.
More than cultural side-notes, these seem like necessary components of an exploration of Chicago's growth and lines of communication.
Here are a couple starting resources on these topics:
Really good article. A whole book's worth of information in one concise entry! Great use of photos and maps to illustrate, also! Really well done, Tomas!
Owning an industry doesn’t have network effects. It subjects your to the vagaries of that industry. In that regard, Detroitis not different from mining cities for example. Pittsburgh is interesting, in that it’s halfway between mining (coal, iron) and network node (Allegheny / Monongahela rivers + railways) and its economic woes are halfway between Chicago’s and Detroit’s
Great article, I learned quite a few new things. But it triggered a thought based on something I read a few weeks ago. Isn’t time to build some more great- modernized of course- cities, and where do you think might be great locations?
As a rule of thumb, I would agree with Richard that, for cities, it's probably best to take one that's working and improve it.
For states, it's a different matter, because there would be a huge upside in creating new states. There's only 200 of them (vs hundreds of thousands of cities), and cities are limited in what they can do, whereas states can reinvent everything.
The question becomes: what would be the best places for new states?
I believe that you are both right since you seem to observe this from two different perspectives. Also another detail needs to be clarified regarding the hub model. In that case you actually increase the number of possible locations.
For the point-to-point case it is right that you have 16 connections in total. Let's assume 10 passengers for each flight. Then it will be a total of 160 passengers travelling from LEFT nodes to RIGHT nodes. And let's assume the same for RIGHT to LEFT. A total number of passengers moved is 320 with 32 flights.
For the hub case we assume the samme number of passengers. Each node has reduced it's available options out from 4 to 1 why each connection will carry 4 times as many people as before. That's 40 people for each connection. However, to reach your destination you will need to transfer at the hub (unless the hub is your destination). Since everyone goes to the hub a total of 320 people travel with 8 flights to the hub. However, they need to go from the hub to the final destination, that's an additional 8 flights. In total the hub requires 16 flights to move 320 between LEFT and RIGHT nodes.
With the hub you can move the same people with half as many flights, but you will need 4 times the capacity it seems. But the added bonus is that you get twice as many possible locations to travel to. With the hub included as a final destination, then you have increased available destinations from 4 to 8. And with that perspective one could argue that you would need 4 times as many flights in the point-to-point model to service the same number of possible end destinations.
I am not sure about the correct math behind this. This is just simply how I see it - please correct me if I am wrong 😊
Great article. Love how you mixed in so many images, really made the piece clear. And who knew about the Chicago flag?!
Glad to hear!
I think Chicago’s flag is among the best for cities. Very readable, different
A bit more insight: the four stars are for four important events in Chicago history. I think it was the fort Dearborn massacre, the Chicago fire, the world’s fair, and mayor Lightfoot telling everyone she had the biggest dick in the city.
Well done!🤠
I really enjoyed the commodity trading angle you presented. It truly shows why Chicago is one of the largest commodity trading hubs and reinforces how it got there. Thank you!
Network effects everywhere!
I have some articles on your theory about the growth of cities and find it interesting. I have a question though, according to this theory shouldn't New Orleans be much bigger?
New Orleans is the biggest port in the US.
Also, if you consider New Orleans the metropolitan area that reaches to Baton Rouge, that's over 2M people, which isn't too bad.
That said, yes, there's probably other things that hinder it.
Some guesses:
Hurricanes! Remember that Galveston lost due to this, and Hurrican Katrina has had an obvious impact on the city
Marshland! It's hard and expensive to build up in the area
What else? I assume these have had a big impact, but I don't know how much, and if there are other big factors
My father-in-law grew up in St. Louis back when it was a thriving hub city, "The Gateway to the West." Now it's not anymore. I wonder if Chicago and Atlanta divided up the rail and plane traffic that used to go through St. Louis, and I wonder why things changed.
I don’t know. What do you reckon?
From the little I can tell from looking at other cities, it does look like in the US rails, highways, and air have taken a big market share from water.
But I don’t know if it’s the entire story. If you look into it, I’d love to read what you have to say, and maybe I’ll write about it!
My theory is that when you have multiple metros in the same region built on similar economic bases (as Chicago, StL, and a bunch of similar Rust Belt Midwestern cities like Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, are) and the economy changes (to become more service-based), the biggest one in the region (Chicago) will win out. As an example, look at lawyers in the Midwest. Every other Midwestern city has lost in numbers of lawyers besides Chicago. Probably because many companies have decided that if they are going to maintain a Midwestern hub, they'd probably maintain it in Chicago rather than some other Midwestern city. You'd probably see similar stories in other business support industries like accounting and management consulting. Likewise, outside of a few industries (banking in Charlotte), I expect Atlanta to dominate the Southeast. In TX and CA, energy is driving Houston and tech the SF Bay Area (and in TX, Austin is the tech hub). Otherwise, they would lose out to the DFW Metroplex and LA respectively.
Network effects are a big deal!
IMO, while Houston and DFW are neck-to-neck in size right now, with climate change (Houston is not well-situated for climate change as flooding in recent years has shown) and a big energy transition happening, I'm much more bullish on DFW than Houston.
BTW, StL's best bet is to become the food/ag science hub of the US. It's well-situated for that.
Did you read this?
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/why-cities-are-fractal
I have now!
I was going to say that I’m much more bullish on DFW than Houston and Atlanta than Miami due to climate change (I’m more bullish on the central FL agglomeration than Miami for the same reason), though I suppose it may also depend on the relative advantages of air vs sea travel in the TX case.
Still, over the long run, I think Miami is doomed and the major inland metropolises in the US will be Atlanta, Chicago, DFW, and Denver (which will grow to rival the others with growth in the Mountain West).
I hear you.
On Houston (and New Orleans)... Water shipping is just too much cheaper than air for them to disappear. Different needs, unless air transport becomes much cheaper.
True, but cities don't have to be that big to handle a lot of cargo. Savannah and Charleston are a couple of the largest container ports in the US but aren't big cities. And a lot that's shipped out from Houston and the rest of the southern Louisiana/Texas Gulf Coast complex are fossil fuels, which may decrease quite a bit in the future.
Good point
Or Anchorage’s airport
True now, probably less so earlier on.
And it also shows that one thing is a port, another is a market. If you have a port but don’t develop its corresponding market, you don’t accrue network effects maybe
As a born and bred Chicagoan, I learned a lot that I didn't know. You might want to take a look at the book The Third Coast, https://www.amazon.com/Third-Coast-Chicago-Built-American/dp/0143125095/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1681505287&sr=8-1.
I had never thought about Chicago in that way before.
Great article and even though I haven't been a Chicago resident for decades, your article brought back a lot of memories.
Interesting stuff, I definitely learned something new! I live in Indianapolis, and we are also a hub in terms of "crossroads of America" and all that jazz. You can ship just about anywhere within 2 business days. Makes sense Chicago is just a super-large version of that with more connections and resources. Pretty cool information, thank you!
Glad to hear!
Anything else about Indianapolis that we should know? Why has it become a hub?
Not sure about it becoming a hub, but one interesting fact is that it was founded as a planned city.
Thanks for the analysis. I appreciated learning more about the development of the waterways in particular.
I'd love it if you were able to include more about the role that indigenous people played in settling and developing Chicago and laying the foundation for much of the industrial growth you discuss.
I also think it'd be valuable to discuss The Great Migration and the huge impact it had on Chicago's infrastructure and industry.
More than cultural side-notes, these seem like necessary components of an exploration of Chicago's growth and lines of communication.
Here are a couple starting resources on these topics:
https://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/545.html
https://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/diversity/chicago-indigenous
Thanks!
I have been given this feedback, and I think it's great. I'm starting to collate notes on this. I expect to write about it in the future. Thank you!
Really good article. A whole book's worth of information in one concise entry! Great use of photos and maps to illustrate, also! Really well done, Tomas!
Glad to hear!
Great article. Very interesting how Chicago took every opportunity to modernize and not stay in the past. A different road to Detroit
Owning an industry doesn’t have network effects. It subjects your to the vagaries of that industry. In that regard, Detroitis not different from mining cities for example. Pittsburgh is interesting, in that it’s halfway between mining (coal, iron) and network node (Allegheny / Monongahela rivers + railways) and its economic woes are halfway between Chicago’s and Detroit’s
Thanks for replying. Yes, you are making a good point.
Very informative and interesting, Thank you !
Great article, I learned quite a few new things. But it triggered a thought based on something I read a few weeks ago. Isn’t time to build some more great- modernized of course- cities, and where do you think might be great locations?
Seems like a lot of cost and effort for no good reason.
Cities will form and/or grow organically for their own organic reasons. Look at how Charlotte has grown , for instance. Or LV or Phoenix.
This is an amazing question.
As a rule of thumb, I would agree with Richard that, for cities, it's probably best to take one that's working and improve it.
For states, it's a different matter, because there would be a huge upside in creating new states. There's only 200 of them (vs hundreds of thousands of cities), and cities are limited in what they can do, whereas states can reinvent everything.
The question becomes: what would be the best places for new states?
New countries? Wouldn’t they have to form out of old countries? Most of which don’t like having parts split off?
Indeed. That’s why there’s so few in the first place.
Balaji Srinivasan wrote a book recently on the topic, The Network State. It has some good ideas. I hope to explore them further.
I'm looking forward to your article on Quebec.
I had no idea it was so intricately connected to NYC
“The Michigan Lake”
😅
They’re called “Lake Michigan” and “the Chicago Mercantile Exchange”, otherwise known as the CME or the Merc.
Trust me, when this article is read by someone who’s lived in Chicago, the slight wrongness in terminology really feels like nails on chalkboard.
Thank you! Corrected re Lake Michigan (1 in 3 was wrong!).
I don't see the CME error? I see it written as you describe everywhere. Which one did I get wrong?
You called the CME the "Chicago Commodities Exchange" in a couple places.
Correction: you wrote "you want to connect four points with four other points. You need 16 connections."
Actually it's 32, as your graph shows.
It’s 32 nodes but 16 trips
Where did you get the satellite maps from?
Mostly google earth, the rest of sources are usually in the captions
Thank you on the typo! Corrected.
On the stats, I believe you're double-counting. If left is L and right is R, the connection L1-->R1 is the same as R1-->L1
Another way to look at it: just count the arrows.
But maybe I'm wrong.
I believe that you are both right since you seem to observe this from two different perspectives. Also another detail needs to be clarified regarding the hub model. In that case you actually increase the number of possible locations.
For the point-to-point case it is right that you have 16 connections in total. Let's assume 10 passengers for each flight. Then it will be a total of 160 passengers travelling from LEFT nodes to RIGHT nodes. And let's assume the same for RIGHT to LEFT. A total number of passengers moved is 320 with 32 flights.
For the hub case we assume the samme number of passengers. Each node has reduced it's available options out from 4 to 1 why each connection will carry 4 times as many people as before. That's 40 people for each connection. However, to reach your destination you will need to transfer at the hub (unless the hub is your destination). Since everyone goes to the hub a total of 320 people travel with 8 flights to the hub. However, they need to go from the hub to the final destination, that's an additional 8 flights. In total the hub requires 16 flights to move 320 between LEFT and RIGHT nodes.
With the hub you can move the same people with half as many flights, but you will need 4 times the capacity it seems. But the added bonus is that you get twice as many possible locations to travel to. With the hub included as a final destination, then you have increased available destinations from 4 to 8. And with that perspective one could argue that you would need 4 times as many flights in the point-to-point model to service the same number of possible end destinations.
I am not sure about the correct math behind this. This is just simply how I see it - please correct me if I am wrong 😊