It's a snap from a much longer article that deserves a read in terms of asking SC leaders why the state's economic development strategy is so backward. Florida concludes:
The upper right-hand quadrant shows places which have a high level of metro human capital and a high level of central-city human capital. Washington, D.C. is the top performer here, occupying the furthest upper right-hand corner. Raleigh, Seattle, Atlanta, Madison, Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Austin, San Jose, San Diego, and, perhaps surprisingly, Albany all occupy this "win-win" quadrant.
Greater New York is just slightly above the line with a slightly greater level of central-city to metro human capital. Denver and Bridgeport-Stamford are slightly below it.
In the bottom left quadrant of the graph are places where both metro and central-city levels of human capital are low. This space includes Detroit, Youngstown, Cleveland, Allentown, Dayton, Stockton, and Ogden, Utah, among others.
The distribution of human capital across metros areas and central cities is quite uneven. Economists Christopher Berry and Ed Glaeser have documented the growing divergence of human capital across U.S. metro regions - a subject I have written about previously for The Atlantic. But this divergence is, if anything, even greater across cities and urban centers. And since human capital is the key driver of economic prosperity, this means the economic fortunes of American metros and cities are diverging and quite likely to diverge even more in the future. Economic and social inequality is increasingly overlaid with a deepening economic geography of skill and of class. That's a very serious problem - and one that's getting worse.Here's some clues to why SC lags, in an attempt to get Midlands econ dev types on the same page: they can't bear each other (emphasis added):
Chambers of commerce throughout the Midlands are taking the first baby steps to form a coalition that could better compete with the Upstate and Lowcountry in attracting jobs and leveraging political clout.
They concede that cultural and political differences in the region could make the alliance difficult.
But the coalition is needed in the wake Southwest Airlines’ decision to locate in Greenville and Charleston, rather than Columbia, and those regions’ striking gains related to BMW and Boeing.
Midlands mayors, led by new Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, are taking similar steps to align.
Otis Rawl, president of the S.C. Chamber of Commerce and a Lexington County resident, said the Upstate Coalition has united chambers from 10 counties into a powerful political force, and the Lowcountry is organizing a similar group. He urged Midlands officials to do the same.
“It’s important to have a common message and deliver that common message,” Rawl said at Thursday’s gathering at Lexington Medical Center. The Midlands “has lost (influence with the legislature) over the past 10 or 15 years. You have to regain that voice.”
Meeting organizer Randy Halfacre, Lexington’s mayor and chamber president, said that losing Southwest was “a wake-up call” for the Midlands to pull together to compete for political clout and jobs.
“Look at what’s going on in the Upstate, in the Lowcountry, even Rock Hill,” he said. “We’re getting killed. Killed.”
Members agreed to appoint a steering committee and meet again, perhaps in September.
But uniting the members from a region stretching about 150 miles from the Savannah River to Lake Marion with wide political and cultural differences will be difficult, said Ike McLeese, president of the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce.
“The people along I-85 tend to think alike,” he said. “Here we have the No. 1 Republican county in the state right next to one that typically votes Democratic. And there are more racial differences here. But a common threat can unite people quicker than a common opportunity.”
Halfacre added, “Everybody is very suspect. But there is no hidden agenda. We are trying to break down the culture here.”
Some of the differences were evident Thursday:
• Representatives from McCormick County along the Savannah River wondered aloud why they were invited at all.
• A Manning official questioned how many issues the diverse group would have in common.
• And a Blythewood chamber representative was somewhat rebuked when she asked the group to oppose Richland County’s proposed 1 percent sales tax for buses and other transportation — a proposition supported by the Columbia chamber.
“We can’t fight every Lexington/Richland fight,” said David Coleman, president of the Orangeburg County Chamber of Commerce. “The regional issues are going to be rail and interstates, not local buses and things that split delegations.”
Dan Mann, the new executive director of the Columbia Metropolitan Airport, said he is going to apply for a $750,000 federal grant that could assist one of the five existing major airlines in expanding service to compete with Southwest, or attract a low-cost carrier like Air Tran or Jet Blue.
But that grant would need matching funds of at least 10 percent or more, he said after the meeting, money that a regional coalition of chambers could help persuade local governments to provide.
“The larger the local match the more successful the grant application,” he said.
Benjamin said in an interview Friday that the mayors’ alliance would come together with the chamber coalition not only in regional contests, but in national and global competitions as well.
“Occasionally we’ll compete with Greenville and Charleston,” he said. “But more often than not we’ll be competing with Atlanta and Bombay. We have to realize that we are all in this together. Economically we are inextricably intertwined. We have to make sure we’re all moving in the same direction.”
Wyeth Ruthven is a director at Washington-based Qorvis Communications and long-time Democratic operative who worked for both former Gov. Jim Hodges and retired U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings. He said that what the state really needs is strong leadership.
"The messenger is the message," he said.
For "South Carolina expatriates" like himself, Ruthven said he wants to look for a meaning to frame the string of national headlines and put the situation in context.
"It is a matter of digging one level deeper ... to the systemic issues we are facing that have been neglected because of this merry-go-around of political scandals," he said. "I think that South Carolina is being treated as a novelty act right now."
People can view incidents like S.C. Sen. Jake Knotts' "raghead" comments as isolated incidents, Ruthven said. Larger issues like Gov. Mark Sanford traveling to Argentina or former state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel going to jail give economic development interests reason for pause, he said.
"South Carolina has a lot of advantages, the port is an advantage, the technical education system is an advantage, the workforce is an advantage -- we have people ready, willing and able to work -- affordable electricity, all of those things, not only are they being obscured by these punch lines but they lack a forceful advocate of their own," Ruthven said.
"... I think bringing back some adult supervision to state government is needed."
All that's not to say South Carolina's not had a run of good news: the Gamecocks slammed UCLA for this year's college baseball championship, wind turbine technology is being developed on Charleston's coast and perhaps the granddaddy of them all -- Boeing Co. picked North Charleston to expand operations.
Shauna Heathman, owner of Charleston-based Mackenzie Image Consulting, said to build a reputation takes consistency, whether toward the good or the bad. In recent months, one controversy after another has struck, leaving no time for things to settle.
"It is compounding," she said.
Money on a marketing campaign for the state won't be well spent until the state has a plan to fix the issues that generate the negative reputation South Carolina has gained with many, Heathman said.
Clemans, the ad executive from New York City, said South Carolina brims with potential to market itself on the world stage, but folks here need to work together, instead of dragging one another down.
If South Carolina can resolve its internal problems, the jokes will go away, he said. And that goes for the South in general, he adds. "The potential is unbelievable."
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