Think: Joel Kotkin

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Basically we’re talking about the interior parts of California — the Central Valley, up toward the northern suburbs of Sacramento, all the way down to Riverside and San Bernardino. We didn’t include the far north, the Sierra, and we didn’t cover Imperial (county).

Prosper: What are the commonalities that led to these areas being grouped together in your view?

They’ve all had rapid growth in the last 20, 30 years. Basically these were the backwaters of California 30 or 40 years ago. They have all gone through this growth spurt.

First, you had working-class migrations. Then you started getting more of an educated migration over time. At the same time you started to get immigration, so these places are much more diverse than they had been.

Sacramento is an exception in that it always had a relatively well-educated population, because it’s the state capital.

Prosper: What about the politics of this area? You have said it was closely linked to the success of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

There’s no question. If you had not had the growth in the interior of California in the last 10, 15 years, Arnold Schwarzenegger would not have been elected governor. It’s the one thing that’s provided a balance from California going way off on the Left Coast.

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