Over at the New York Times' Economix blog, Edward Glaeser attempts to get to the bottom of why Seattle has continued to grow and thrive while other cities have shrunk. The short version? Seattle is better educated---and denser---than declining cities like St. Louis and Detroit, leading skilled workers to move and stay here.

Skilled people have often chosen to come to already educated cities, and the share of Seattle adults with college degrees has risen to 56 percent from an already high 47 percent in 2000.

Today, Seattle is one of the wealthier and most productive metropolitan areas in the United States. Per-capita personal income is 25 percent above the United States average. Per-capita productivity is 37 percent above the metropolitan average in the United States. That productivity explains why Seattle has grown so robustly over the last decade.

Seattle has also helped itself by permitting taller structures. That density enables ideas to flow freely. Building up is also an environmentally sensitive alternative to building out, and Seattle’s height helps the city maintain a relatively high level of public transportation use and a relatively low level of carbon emissions.

Noting that Florida-style "Sun Belt sprawl isn’t the only model of modern metropolitan success," Glaeser concludes that densifying, well-educated cities like Seattle are the areas that are most likely to grow in the future; read his whole essay here.