Data is Free

Richard Florida, writing in The Atlantic, makes a great argument for high speed rail by observing that areas of great density - and mobility - generate economic activity far above people working in relative isolation.

Mega-regions are large-scale economic units of multiple large cities and their surrounding suburbs. My research team and I defined them using satellite images of the world at night to identify contiguous economic areas with more than five million people producing $100 billion or more in economic output. The world's 40 largest mega-regions account for two-thirds of all the global economic activity and 85 percent of the world's technological innovation while housing just 18 percent of its people.

That last bit is an absolutely amazing statistic. 18% of the world's population produces 85% of the world's technological innovation?!

Florida then gets into the details of the US, and which mega-regions are driving the most economic growth. Unsurprisingly, the corridor between Boston and Washington DC generates the greatest amount of overall economic activity. What is fascinating is that, on average, the population of that area is significantly more productive than residents of other mega regions.


When you chart this data some other interesting observations pop out. Turns out that, on a per capita basis, Denver and Phoenix generates slightly more economic activity than Northern California. As a resident of Seattle I was also initially surprised to see that the Cascadia area (Vancouver/Seattle/Portland) is generating FAR less economic activity on a per capita basis than other areas.


But, really, it make a lot of sense. As anyone who has ever sat on a 5 hour+ flight from New York to Seattle can tell you, Seattle is a long way from everywhere. The people who live here may love our isolation, and Vancouver and Seattle are the two most beautiful settings for cities in North America, but our isolation comes at a real cost.

What this means, it seems to me, is that our region must invest far more in high speed rail links. High speed rail, with TGV speeds, would reduce the travel time from Seattle to Portland to just over an hour. The trip to Vancouver would only take 54 minutes. The faster we can move people from Vancouver to Portland, the more ideas we will generate. We'll also encourage more density in the cities while revitalizing the areas between the big urban cores.