Portland is expecting 780,000 new residents between now and 2040. OKC isn't even hoping for half that many.

Any chance you have sources for those numbers? (At OKC's recent growth rate of about 1.5% per year, it would expect to add almost 700,000 new residents between now and 2040 (well over half of 780,000). And considering that Portland is currently nearly twice the size of OKC, the Richard Florida/Nick Roberts theory sort of falls flat. (Even if we use OKC's somewhat slower overall growth rate for the nine years from 2000-2009, OKC should expect to add over 500,000 residents between now and 2040, again well over half of 780,000, not bad for a city slightly less than 1/2 the size of Portland)

And more to the point, even if you actually have a credible source showing that Portland's growth rate is expected to far exceed OKC's, that hardly proves the Richard Florida theory. It takes more than one example to prove a theory.

The Yankees are coming!
The Yankees are coming!

Click on Wake County in NC, depressing.

Some people from other areas can be a good thing - a much needed thing at times. Mass migration such that happens from northern states into coastal southern states is ruining many great places.

Any chance you have sources for those numbers? (At OKC's recent growth rate of about 1.5% per year, it would expect to add almost 700,000 new residents between now and 2040 (well over half of 780,000). And considering that Portland is currently nearly twice the size of OKC, the Richard Florida/Nick Roberts theory sort of falls flat. (Even if we use OKC's somewhat slower overall growth rate for the nine years from 2000-2009, OKC should expect to add over 500,000 residents between now and 2040, again well over half of 780,000, not bad for a city slightly less than 1/2 the size of Portland)

And more to the point, even if you actually have a credible source showing that Portland's growth rate is expected to far exceed OKC's, that hardly proves the Richard Florida theory. It takes more than one example to prove a theory.

I don't know if his numbers are correct but I do know Portland is hot for a lot of folks in the Big Apple whose jobs have gone away in the past two years. A few years ago it was Atlanta but now Portland keeps coming up.

I don't know if his numbers are correct but I do know Portland is hot for a lot of folks in the Big Apple whose jobs have gone away in the past two years. A few years ago it was Atlanta but now Portland keeps coming up.

Which then creates problems in Portland when all these people show up for a relatively small number of jobs. Portland does not have the gigantic corporate headquarters and offices that Dallas or Atlanta, or even Seattle, have. Unemployment is high there in all sectors, and if you're a new college grad good luck finding anything meaningful there. Austin is beginning to have the same problems. I left Denver right as the recession hit and it's a good thing I did as I would probably have been laid off if I had stayed.

The Yankees are coming!
The Yankees are coming!

Click on Wake County in NC, depressing.

Some people from other areas can be a good thing - a much needed thing at times. Mass migration such that happens from northern states into coastal southern states is ruining many great places.

OMG get over it!The South lost The Civil War over 150 Years ago!!!!!!!!!We are all Americans!!!!

Which then creates problems in Portland when all these people show up for a relatively small number of jobs. Portland does not have the gigantic corporate headquarters and offices that Dallas or Atlanta, or even Seattle, have. Unemployment is high there in all sectors, and if you're a new college grad good luck finding anything meaningful there. Austin is beginning to have the same problems. I left Denver right as the recession hit and it's a good thing I did as I would probably have been laid off if I had stayed.

This is sadly very true. For all of the bemoaning on here about people leaving OKC for "cooler" places, I've found that many of those cities are starting to become victims of their own hype. In Austin, they have a lot of "PhD waiters" because people from all over have been so lured by the city's lifestyle they have dropped everything and moved there. Sadly they forgot about that little "line a job" thing.

I saw it happen to my mother's hometown of Charleston SC. Its always been a fashionable little town, but this past decade people from NYC and Boston found out about it. Now, you have starter homes at $300-400K and up in a county with no large headquarters and where 1 in 6 live at or under the poverty level. Sadly, it won't stop. Rents and home prices will continue to go up and salaries will go down becuase real estate agents and employers know there's a steady line of chumps who will allow themselves to be taken advantage of to get into the city they "love."

For all of the bemoaning on here about people leaving OKC for "cooler" places, I've found that many of those cities are starting to become victims of their own hype. In Austin, they have a lot of "PhD waiters" because people from all over have been so lured by the city's lifestyle they have dropped everything and moved there. Sadly they forgot about that little "line a job" thing.

Whether the presence of "a lot" of "PhD waiters" is real or merely imagined, it could partially be because as the rest of the country sheds high-tech jobs, Austin (and other cities in Texas) continues to gain them, so unemployed, PhD-holding individuals would perhaps be inclined to seek out strong markets like Austin.

Austin has certainly been hurt by the slow decline of semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. (since peaking in the late 1990s), too, but has more than made up for it with growth in other high-tech fields and a steady stream of new tech startups. Manufacturing certainly isn't dead, either--as an example, Samsung announced a $3.6 billion fab expansion with new 500 jobs just a couple of weeks ago.

That's not to say the city hasn't fallen victim to its hype in other ways--for instance, I firmly believe Austin's transportation infrastructure is beyond critical mass. But I don't think the job situation in Austin is quite what you're insinuating, based on seemingly invented, or perhaps anecdotal, "evidence."