by Bill Bishop
The Hartford Institute's David Roozen searched for the secret of church growth in a survey of more than 11,000 Protestant congregations in 2000. He found that churches with a defined "niche" grew faster than those with broader, more general missions. (Segmenting worked with religion as well as with Tide detergent.) Churches with a variety of programs (mass customization) grew faster, too. But the most important feature of growing churches, Roozen found, was an absence of conflict.32 Marketers, ministers, and, soon, politicians learned that people wanted both conformity in interests and agreement in opinions. They wanted the society they lived in to be just like the cars they bought—customized.
In 2003, historian Lizabeth Cohen wrote that at one time, politicians tried to "convince voters of some common good, as Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower all struggled to do." But a new political strategy that applied techniques of market segmentation to politics led the nation away from these ideals, requiring candidates to "at best construct a composite vision out of the specialized interests of their distinct constituencies, and at worst avoid discussing any common good at all." Old-style campaigns with parades, uniforms, and choirs in horse-drawn wagons may have aimed at the lowest common social denominator, but, as Cohen noted, at least they enhanced the democratic notion of commonweal.33
When politicians began to apply one-to-one marketing methods to elections, they abandoned the possibility of a common good. Breaking the country into tiny market segments resulted in the death of consensus—and the possibility that Americans could agree at times to split the difference. "I've been struck in this election," marketer J. Walker Smith told me in the summer of 2004, "in the way that ... this one-to-one business philosophy characterizes what the Democratic and Republican parties are doing." The presidential campaign that year was both loud and omnipresent, but there was little evidence of persuasion. There were no attempts to turn Republicans into Democrats, or Democrats into Republicans. Early on, it seemed, both parties determined that what they cared most about was loyalty. The campaigns cultivated the cocksureness that arises within all like-minded groups. This was going to be an election based on turnout, and confident people vote in higher percentages than do those who feel conflicted. Besides, in this world, who likes, wants, or needs conflict—especially conflicting ideas?
"We're going to market to our own party," Smith said, explaining the strategy. "We're not going to worry about a message that would be broadly inclusive. We're only going to tell Republicans or only tell Democrats what they want to hear. We aren't going to talk to them about things they might not want to hear. And we are going to try to ensure that they feel so loyal that they'll get out and vote. What we're trying to do is drive customer loyalty—and, in marketing terms, drive the average transaction size or improve the likelihood that a registered Republican will get out and vote Republican. That's a business philosophy applied to politics that I think is really dangerous, because it's not about trying to form a consensus, to get people to think about the greater good. That is a business philosophy applied to politics that is all about polarization."
9. LIFESTYLE
"Books, Beer, Bikes, and Birkenstocks"
Specialization is for insects.
—ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, Time Enough for Love
PAUL GUINAN EXPLAINED the unlikely happenstance that brought Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Conan the Barbarian, Catwoman, and the Fantastic Four together in a one-room office on the third floor of a building on SW Fifth Street in downtown Portland, Oregon. "It's like an immigrant finds out a place is okay and then brings his family," Guinan said as he worked away in the middle of Mercury Studio, the office that houses thirteen of the nation's best comic book artists. (At one time or another, these artists have drawn or inked nearly every superhero.) "We're like that. We're like the Irish." Well, not exactly like the Irish. The comic book artists and writers who moved to Portland over the past twenty years weren't fleeing potato blight. They weren't southern field hands or Appalachian coal miners gone to Detroit, Chicago, or Cleveland after being displaced by automated cotton pickers or continuous mining machines. Rather, they came to Portland because this was where they wanted to be, where they could live among their own kind.
The English economist Alfred Marshall examined the agglomeration of industries in nineteenth-century England—textile manufacturers in Manchester and cutlery makers in Sheffield—and observed the economic advantages when industry clustered. Textile manufacturers in Manchester shared knowledge about the latest weaving techniques and markets. Skilled spinners were ready for hire because the business of mills and textiles was part of Manchester. "Great are the advantages which people following the same skilled trade get from near neighborhood to one another," Marshall wrote. "The mysteries of the trade become no mysteries, but are, as it were, in the air, and children learn many of them unconsciously."1 Jeff Parker channeled Marshall when he explained why he had moved to Portland and Mercury Studio from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. "It's the whole idea of why you send your kid to Harvard," Parker told me as he rewrote the story line for a Fantastic Four book. "You see people around here doing it, and it just seems normal. It becomes more normal for you. Seeing the possibilities is important."
The comics business has flourished in Portland partly because of Mike Richardson. Richardson opened a chain of comic book stores in the early 1980s, first in Bend, Oregon, and then in Portland. His stores did well, and before long he wasn't just selling comic books; he was publishing them.2 Richardson hired comic book writers, editors, and artists—so many of them that his Dark Horse Comics became the third-largest comic book publisher in the country, home of Star Wars, Alien, Predator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Terminator3The first comic book migrants who found their way to Portland worked for Dark Horse. Others followed.
The same economic forces that Marshall had described in Manchester's cluster of textile mills were at work in the Portland comic book scene—and, in particular, in the warren of artists at Mercury Studio. Mercury serves as a loosely formed business partnership. When an artist at Mercury is up against an impossible deadline, others in the group pitch in, drawing backgrounds or inking. They share ideas and leads on jobs. For publishers, the cluster of Portland artists makes it easier to find workers. (New York executives from big comic book houses such as DC Comics and Marvel make trips to Portland.) The artists at Mercury save money by sharing space, and they keep up a steady rap about industry gossip, current events, and comic book lore as they sketch and ink. When I was there, Drew Johnson claimed that when he drew Wonder Woman, he was "the first guy who actually shrank her boobs." The "mysteries of the trade" were certainly in the air.
An economic magnetism was pulling those interested in the comics business to Portland, but something else was at work, too. The city's way of life was uniquely hospitable to artists, writers, and book publishers. Portland was (and is) a city of books and readers. In the 1990s, it was one of 17 cities, out of 211 media markets, that had both a low rate of television watching and a high rate of reading. The city ranked 5th in the absolute number of used bookstores (after New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle). It ranked nth in the sale of science fiction. Portland was a good home for comics because the people who lived there read books and bought books.4
Portland also was where these comic book artists and writers wanted to be.
The Tiebout Theory of Migration; or "Books, Beer, Bikes, and Birkenstocks"
Comic book people moved to Portland with no particular plan. "They didn't have a job lined up, they didn't have a place to stay, but they had somebody to crash with for a while, and they figured it would work out," explained comic book editor and writer Anina Bennett. The Portland comic book community is filled with those who got there through a lack of planning. Randy Jarrell, one of the founders of the independent Oni Press, was married and hanging around Austin when, "literally, on a Sunday we said, 'Lets move to Portland; I have some friends there.' On Wednesday, we hit the road."
Portla
nd economist Joe Cortright explained that the Portland economy is built on "books, beer, bikes, and Birkenstocks." Sockless footwear is code for liberal politics (Portland's Multnomah County voted seven to three for Kerry in 2004), which means that artists come to Portland for a cultural constellation that includes comics, microbrews, lifestyle, and a Democratic majority. "The reason I moved here wasn't because of comics," said Randy Jarrell. "The reason I moved here is probably the reason everyone else moved here. A lot of it had to do with politics, you know. Portland [has] all the amenities your typical liberal-type person would want. You have a great library system, one of the best in the country. You have great parks. You get public transportation, affordable universities. A lot of that had to do with it."
The three guys who run Oni Press all were raised in the Republican suburbs of the Southwest. They moved to a Democratic city where they didn't always have to drive a car. Jeff Parker, the Fantastic Four writer, said he moved to Portland because it was a "place I could ride my bike. It's like a little Amsterdam." As David Hahn puttered away on a Bite Club book (with a vampire mafia motif) for DC Comics, he explained that he used Portland's many bookstores—particularly the mammoth Powell's Books—as a giant reference library. Steve Lieber (Batman and Swamp Thing) said that his wife is a librarian, whose "life revolves around books." They moved to Portland so that she could work in "the best library system in the country."
In 1956, economist Charles Tiebout theorized that people would pick and choose among communities to find a desirable array of local services at an acceptable level of taxes. People would look for the best deal and then move. There would be millions of "elections," as people cast their votes for communities with moving vans and apartment leases. According to Tiebout, the sorting would mostly be based on economics, as people sought their own balance between services provided and taxes charged. But he also imagined people making their decisions about where to live based on who would be their neighbors. In a footnote to his classic article "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," the economist allowed, "Not only is the consumer-voter concerned with economic patterns, but he desires, for example, to associate with 'nice' people." Whether for low taxes or the right kind of neighbors, people would cast their ballots for a community. They would vote with their feet.5
The Big Sort has been a national manifestation of the economist's theory—a post-materialist Tiebout migration based on these non-economic goods, as people have sought out places that best fit their ways of life, their values, and their politics. Because I've been concentrating on a group of comic book artists who moved to a high-tech city that tipped solidly Democratic in the 1990s, it might be easy to think of the Big Sort as a liberal phenomenon. That would be incorrect. The Big Sort has traveled in several political directions. Not everyone who moved in the 1990s was a liberal trying to escape the suburbs for a city of bikes, dark beer, and a Democratic majority. Many more people were moving in another cultural direction, toward Bible studies, big backyards, and Bass Weejuns.
People even took their segregated communities with them on vacation. The Catskills resorts in Sullivan County, New York, displayed a special kind of sorting by lifestyle and religion. Beginning in the late 1800s, Jewish immigrants vacationed in the hotels upstate from New York City.* As that market diminished, in the 1970s the old hotels attracted a more mixed group of patrons: Jews, Italians, and Irish. The re-sorts integrated socially and ethnically. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, the Sullivan County tourist trade segregated again, only this time into communities of interests and values. The Foundation for A Course in Miracles occupied one lake house. There were Hasidic retreats, Hindu retreats, and Christian retreats. One Sullivan County resident told the New York Times that the community had come "full circle." Exclusively Jewish resorts had been replaced by a mixture of people, and now, with the faith-based resorts, "it seems like we're back to segregation."6
Living in the Niche
Bicyclists and public transportation have an extremely strong political constituency in Portland. A new mayor met with an organization of riders before he sat down with the local business establishment.7 More than 10,000 bikes cross the four Willamette River bridges each workday, and when RE I held a grand opening for a new store downtown, the outdoor equipment company provided valet parking ... for bicycles.8 The word got out, and because of Portland's policy decision to promote bicycle riding and public transportation as alternatives to automobiles, the city began attracting a certain type of citizen. Portland's public transportation authority found in a survey that, unlike the situation in most cities, young, college-educated people in Portland are more likely to ride the city's trains or buses than were their peers with less schooling. In Portland, the probability that a young resident will hop aboard a bus or train rises with years of education. Those who have recently moved to Portland, regardless of age, are more likely to take the train or bus than are natives. Portland economist Joe Cortright's conclusion is that "people who value transit are much more likely to move here than, say, to Phoenix." In Portland, Cortright found, young people with a college degree are more apt to live downtown than in the suburbs. In Phoenix, they have exactly the opposite way of life: they buy houses outside the city and drive in.*
That is the Big Sort. People who move to Portland want good public transportation and city life. People who don't give a hoot about those things migrate to Phoenix, suburban Dallas, south of Minneapolis, or north of Austin. But people don't move to Portland just because of bike trails and metro stops. They are looking for an array of things that make them feel at home. They want to be able to buy certain books, see certain kinds of movies, and listen to particular styles of live music.
Of course, in a strict sense, place no longer limits the availability of goods. People can rent obscure movies through Netflix and buy books at Amazon.com that their local stores can't afford to stock.")† Digital technology and cheap transportation have given everyone access to nearly everything, no matter where they live. In the geography of niche markets, however, people can best fill their lives with the stuff or experiences they want only if they live around others with the same tastes. Those interested in seeing a recently released foreign film or the new documentary on Townes Van Zandt on the big screen need to live in a community that can fill the theater. Similarly, someone who wants to participate in a specialized sport, worship in a less than mainstream church, or catch the latest alt-country acts will be drawn to certain locations. The appeal of the Big Sort is powerful because consumers, believers, and citizens all benefit from living in homogeneous communities.
In an economy of extreme niche markets, location itself becomes a commodity. "There [is] more cultural stuff [in Portland] that I [like] than in Houston, the fourth-largest city in the U.S.," explained Randy Jarrell. "I have access to more bands coming through town, better movie theaters, better bookstores, all that cultural stuff. We get way more limited-release films than if we lived in a comparable-size city in the Midwest." There are also political components to these consumer choices. If a person wants a public job in a town that provides health benefits to domestic partners or schools that teach creation science, he or she will move to a jurisdiction where a majority of the residents favor those kinds of public expenditures. Given these consumer/political demands, Charles Tiebout wouldn't have been at all surprised by the migration of the Big Sort. In the 1990s, people began moving to the places where they could find the amenities—and the politics—that they wanted.
The Density of Division
The picture of exurban America most of us conjure is sunny, hot, and southern. The only thing southern about Scott County, Minnesota, however, is its relationship to Minneapolis. The Sun Belt doesn't have a monopoly on the combination of fast-growing counties and Republican politics. Scott County grew 55 percent in the 1990s. In the first four years of the new century, it was the twelfth-fastest-growing county in the United States and one of seven counties around the Twin Cities that were among the nation's top 100 in growth
. After the 2004 presidential election, Ronald Brownstein and Richard Rainey of the Los Angeles Times reported that 97 of those counties voted for George W. Bush.9 Robert Thibodeaux is a young Republican leader in the Scott County town of Savage. Thibodeaux joked that the Bush campaign would ask its volunteers in Savage to identify voters as Republican or Democrat. The flow of people into Scott County was so politically one-sided, the task seemed silly: if you moved to Scott, you were a Republican. Thibodeaux told me, "We'd say, 'Okay, if you live in Scott County, I'm through with voter I.D.'"
People weren't deliberately moving to Scott County or to the exurban counties west of Houston or north of Atlanta because these places had Republican majorities. When you talk to people in Scott County, they describe a kind of longing for space, for countryside, for something manifestly not urban. No one says it—and probably few think about it so starkly—but they also were looking for a white community. Since the 1970s, white people have been moving in disproportionate numbers to the counties that in 2004 voted overwhelmingly for Bush. Scott is whiter than most. Tom Gillespie, Minnesota's state demographer, ticked through the ethnic backgrounds claimed by Scott County residents—Irish, German, Norwegian, English—and before long he tallied 94 percent of the population claiming to have come from Caucasian stock. Even in white Minnesota, Gillespie said, "those are overwhelming numbers."