Graceada Partners has released “Equal Footing: The Inland West and the Southeast”, a research paper that measures the Inland West as a single economy rather than as fragments of 11 states. Defined from the 100th meridian to the coastal ranges, the region has roughly 47 million residents — more than any single state — and includes 10 of the country’s fastest-growing large metros, including Boise, Idaho; Denver; Las Vegas; Phoenix; Sacramento; and Salt Lake City.
The region does not appear in most regional data because it is divided by state lines drawn without regard to how its economy operates. Inland California is averaged into San Francisco; Spokane, Wash., into Seattle. On the affordability, age, migration, and industry measures that drive housing and logistics demand, Fresno, Calif.; Bakersfield, Calif.; and Spokane behave like Boise and Phoenix, not like the coastal metros in which they are reporte
