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Book Review


by M.V. Greene mgreene@ccgmag.com


AMERICA IN 2050: DRIVEN BY DIVERSITY, BETTER


THAN BEFORE TIMES ARE CHANGING IN MEANINGFUL WAYS


America is evolving. Such a statement might be the understatement of the millennium.


As Joel Kotkin points out in The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, published by The Penguin Press, America in 2050 will be wholly different than the country we know today. And despite the props given to other regions around the world, such as Asia, where economic growth is robust in China and India, Kotkin contends that it is America that will be a region thriving in four decades–largely because of the nation’s bur- geoning and unique confluence of ethnic diversity.


An urban scholar who teaches at Chapman University in Orange, CA, and writes for Forbes magazine, Kotkin explores in his book how America will evolve as it passes the 400 million mark by 2050 and why the nation will be better for it. One of the core influences on the America of 2050 will Hispanic population growth–a phenomenon already occurring at a robust clip.


The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the Hispanic population in the United States is expected to reach about 30 percent of the popu- lace–132.8 million people. Con- trast that to 22.4 million Hispanics counted during the 1990 Census and 48.4 million as of July 1, 2009– already the nation’s largest ethnic or racial minority.


“By mid-century the United States will be a predominantly ‘white country’ no longer but rather a staggering amalgam of racial, ethnic and religious groups, all participants in the new civi- lization whose roots lie not in any one country or continent but across the entirety of human cultures and racial types,” Kotkin writes.


Kotkin argues that because of immigration and spiraling birth rates among America’s ethnic minorities, this country will surge past rival nations in an aging Europe and Asia in vitality, opportunity and change, asserting that no other advanced nation in the world will have such diversity. For him, these fluxes in the population will lead to an economic upswing,


40 HISPANIC ENGINEER & Information Technology | 2011


since population growth leads to an increased capacity to create wealth, which in turn raises the standards of living. Countries with an aging and relatively homogenous popula- tion may very well find themselves crushed by large-scale pension obligations, without younger workers to help allevi- ate the cost.


Truly, the effect of this explosive diversity dramatically will re- shape and guide how people live and interact, Kotkin writes.


Big urban towns like New York and Chicago no longer will be primary enclaves for diversity, but diversity will show itself throughout America, particularly in its counties and suburbs. Indeed, that is already occurring.


Rural Shelby County, AL, covering about 800 square miles in the center of the state, offers a penetrating illustration. A recent Census report showed that the growth among the Hispanic population in Shelby County increased by more than 300 percent from 2,910 to 11,567 over the decade since 1990. In Alabama statewide the Hispanic population increased 145 percent, according the Census figures.


It is this kind of staggering change in population demographics that will be captured all across America, ac- cording to Kotkin, who describes the suburban and outlying communities of the future as “preindustrial villages” that will be more compact and self- sufficient.


Kotkin delves into a range of topics influenced by America’s impending diversity surge, including the role of cities, work- force and environmental challenges, upward mobility and technology. “The America of 2050 may not stride the world like a hegemonic giant, but it will evolve into the one truly transcendent superpower in terms of society, technology and culture,” he writes.


Kotkin’s optimistic outlook for America’s future reflects the great breadth of innovation that can occur when a truly di- verse array of insights and perspectives become a part of our technology enterprise.


www.hispanicengineer.com


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