The Boston Globe, Sunday, May 1, 2005, Ideas section, Page 5

IT'S THE WEATHER, STUPID

By Drake Bennett

REMEMBER THE URGE to skip town that you felt last winter? Well, you're not alone: Between 1960 and 1990, cities with average January temperatures above 50 degrees Fahrenheit grew three times faster than those with average January temperatures under 30 degrees (Here in Boston, this past January averaged 26.8). And between 1920 and 1980 the country's colder 25 states grew, on average, by 95 percent, while the warmer 25 grew by an average of 309 percent.

Americans, it seems, are seeking the sun, draining southward like run-off from a dwindling snowcap. And since population growth is seen as a leading indicator of economic vitality, such trends are a bit chilling for Boston and its boosters. Last year, in fact, Massachusetts was the only state in the union to lose population.

Harvard economics professor Edward L. Glaeser presented these statistics last Wednesday at a forum titled "Sustaining the Boston Renaissance," hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Harvard's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. Afterward, a panel of executives, scholars, and government officials weighed in. Paul Grogan, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation, mused jokingly that we might be better off with a bit of global warming-though an audience member interjected that that might put the city underwater.

Glaeser's emphasis on temperature hasn't gone uncontested. Other economists point to the fact, for example, that food and housing tend to be cheaper in the South, as does labor-a draw for businesses, which in turn draw more people. Even Glaeser admits to another key factor: education. Over the years, chillier university towns like Seattle, Minneapolis, and Madison (Glaeser calls them "skilled cities") grew faster than equally cold cities like Detroit, Newark, and Milwaukee that boast fewer inhabitants with bachelor's degrees. For Boston, which is 6th among US cities over 250,000 in its percentage of college-graduate inhabitants, this is good news.

Still, Glaeser said after the talk, we might need to console ourselves with the knowledge that "it's really OK to shrink." Many cold-weather metropolises owe their existence to accidents of geography and history: the importance of ports and rivers and the high price of conveyance in the age of sail, barge, and horse. With the invention of air conditioning and the eradication of malaria, some southward migration may have been inevitable. After all, to date even Boston's vaunted tech sector hasn't yet provided much fix for the cold. As Glaeser puts it, cold cities are often "just not attractive places to live. The American Midwest is one of the most inhospitable places in the developed world."