I've had this headline rattling around in my brain since January and I finally wrote it. Been hearing too many people in the startup world buying into the neoractionary nonsense that maybe a little light fascism is good for silicon valley. It's not. It's very, very bad.

Good article: We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

"Vietnam and Cambodia will now face punitive tariffs of 46 and 49 percent on exports to the American market. This is a profound shock since these sales account for around a third of their GDPs."

Forget Office Conversions. Cities Are Turning Old Hospitals Into Residential Housing. www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

x X has ~18m daily USA users. @bsky.app, ~1.5m. Is it worth 20 MINS a day to proactively recruit and bring your friends, neighbors,relatives, businesses, anyone who is or could be a user, to @bsky.app? If Bluesky ends up with more users than the others, you destabilize musk, zuck, trump.

"Detroit’s business-district transformation offers lessons to other cities that are struggling to revive their empty downtowns and avoid being sucked into a debilitating doom loop." www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

A thread on my paper with @masseconomics.bsky.social published earlier this year in @edqjournal.bsky.social: "Beyond Local and Traded: Evidence for a Third Industry Market Area Type and Implications for Regional Economic Development" #urbanism #sociology #geog journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

For decades, planners, geographers, and economists have categorized industries by the geographic areas they serve. "Local" industries serve nearby customers. They include grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, etc. Local industries are present pretty much everywhere to some level.

“Traded” industries, on the other hand, serve customers around the country or the globe: cars from Detroit, movies from Hollywood, pharmaceuticals from Boston.

Because they serve global markets, traded industries tend to be spatially concentrated. This map of auto manufacturing, for example, shows how it has a major presence in about 10 US metros, a minor presence in 15 or so more, and no presence at all in most metros

Local and traded industries play different roles in metropolitan economies: traded industries bring money into the metro from the outside, while local industries provide the bulk of employment.

Because of this, economic development strategies often focus on attracting or developing traded industries. Here's an example from work @masseconomics.bsky.social did with the Memphis Chamber of Commerce blog.memphischamber.com/cluster-grow...

In our paper, we show that the local-traded distinction isn’t exhaustive. Specifically, we identify a third type: “regional” industries, which are present in almost every metro--but are spatially concentrated *within* each metro.

For example, here are maps showing the spatial profile of Grocery Wholesalers, a regional industry. At the metro scale, wholesalers have a moderate presence pretty much everywhere. That makes sense--food distribution is a universal need

But at the *county* level, you see much more spatial concentration: in most metros, grocery wholesalers are concentrated into 1-2 districts, from which they supply the whole metropolitan area

Compare that to the maps for auto manufacturing above, or to these maps of grocery stores, a true local industry. At the metro level, Grocery Wholesalers look like local industries. But at the county level, they look like traded ones

You see the same pattern across lots of industries: if you look simultaneously at metro and county-level Location Quotients, they fall into 3 main groups: high/high (Local industries), low/low (Traded), and high/low (Regional).

Quintessential regional industries are support activities for other businesses: facilities maintenance, logistics, printing services. Construction and some kinds of manufacturing (craft beer, for example) are also prominent.

Regional industries are massive: they accounted for 30% of US employment in 2017--36 million jobs, almost twice as many as traded industries. And they’re growing fast: employment in regional industries grew by 21% from 2001 to 2021, compared to 12% in the rest of the economy

Moreover, jobs in regional industries pay well: average earnings were $70k, almost as high as traded industries and 75% more than local industries.

They're also important spaces for entrepreneurship: there are 3x as many privately held companies in regional industries as in traded ones, and average sales are 2x local industries

The combo of *more* jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities than traded industries, but *better* jobs than local industries, makes regional industries a sweet spot for widespread access to economic opportunity—something planners and policymakers can foster thehubdetroit.com/d2d-program-...

To dig deeper into regional industries, you can download our full categorization of NAICS 6-digit industries from my website robertmanduca.com/publications/

An ungated version of the paper is online here: robertmanduca.com/projects/lrt...

detroit in the snow

Technology + outsourcing a threat to LA jobs: studios outsource "asset and shot work to partner studios in tax advantaged/lower cost geographies” www.fastcompany.com/91241292/dis...