Some Thoughts on City v. Suburban Growth

Source: WSJ (Linked below)
Lots of media outlets are picking up the story first reported in the Wall Street Journal that cities are growing faster than suburbs. See here, here, and here for samples. A few things about these data that suggest we should interpret the results with caution. First, these are growth rates, not absolute numbers. Because central cities make up a minority share of regional population most population growth--by a lot--is happening in the suburbs. Consider Atlanta, the second fastest growing city compared with its suburbs according to the chart at top. Atlanta has 432,427 people as of July 2011 and grew at 2.4%. The suburbs have 4,926,778 in July 2011 and grew at 1.3%. Here is the data source. This means that the metro growth was 73,361 for the year, 10,135 settled in Atlanta and 63,226 settled in the suburbs. In percentage terms, 14% of the growth happened in the central city and 86% happened in the suburbs. That doesn't suggest a sea change in attitude.

For most of the metros, the difference between city growth and suburban growth is so small I'm not sure that the difference is statistically meaningful (see the table at the data source above). 2011 are estimated data, and there is an error term associated. Perhaps all of the differences in growth rates are significant, but they have not been tested yet.

There are also large variations by region of the country and metropolitan area, and there does not seem to be any obvious and coherent trend. The headline claim is that more than half of metro areas saw one year growth rates in central cities higher than for suburbs. That means about half saw central city growth lower than suburban growth. In addition, many of the faster growing central cities are growing at essentially the same rate as their suburbs for the one year period in question.

There very well may be a shift in preferences and behaviors happening, and I suspect there is because preferences and behaviors are always changing. I just don't see that the stories highlighted here provide strong evidence that a large shift happened in 2010-11.

Lastly, let's look at how some central cities that have received nice press about robust growth fared. Here is my post from May 4 titled "Can We Exaggerate the Significance of Cleveland's Downtown Population Gains?" and, yes, we can exaggerate the importance of a few people moving to downtown Cleveland. Cleveland shrunk by a rate (-.6%)greater than the rate its suburbs shrunk (-.3%). Cincinnati has also been celebrated recently (see here and here and here for a few examples). That's going so well that the city is declining while the suburbs are growing (see above graphic). I'm happy that many cities are doing well and growing. I hope the trend (if there is one) continues and expands. I'm just not sure there is any evidence of a broad trend yet.


***This post was updated to correct typos in the Atlanta data in the first paragraph.

Can We Exaggerate the Significance of Cleveland's Downtown Population Gains?

Richard Florida has a nice post at the Atlantic Cities about Cleveland's downtown population gains. Here is the meat of the post, which references a new report out of Case Western:

America certainly appears to be in the early stages of a back-to-the-city movement. While the bulk of population and economic growth took place in the suburbs and exurbs over the past several decades, the 2010 Census provided evidence of a subtle shift back toward the urban core, both in center cities and in more urban first- and second-ring suburbs.

This is not just happening in America’s largest, most cosmopolitan metros like New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, but in the archetypal Rust Belt as well.

Consider Cleveland. A recent report from Case Western's Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, entitled Not Dead Yet: The Infilling of Cleveland’s Inner Core, provides evidence of a shift in population back to the urban core:

Over the last two decades, the neighborhood's population grew 96%, with residential totals increasing from 4,651 to 9,098. It was the single largest spike of any neighborhood, suburb, or county measured for the two decades under study. Downtown residential occupancy rates now stand over 95% and developers are eagerly looking to meet residential demand.

And here is how Florida concludes:

The significance of Cleveland’s population shift cannot be exaggerated. As Jim Russell puts it: “the urban core is a net importer of young adults and a net exporter of old adults. That's the antithesis of a dying city."

I'm happy for Cleveland, but I think you can pretty easily exaggerate the significance of Cleveland's population shift, especially if you view this as unambiguously good. Downtown Cleveland now has about two percent of the city's population and .04 percent of the metro population, and the rest of the city is shedding people at a sharp clip (17 percent decline from 2000 to 2010). Nine thousand people isn't really enough to support a great deal of amenities, and certainly not enough to support schools and other services that families want. Perhaps downtown will continue to grow. Let's hope.

However, there are two associated problems that deserve attention through policy research and planning. These are general concerns not specific to Cleveland. The first is that because the city is still declining the tax base is still declining. It's arguably better for the city to concentrate population and employment is smaller areas in order to provide services more cost effectively, but Cleveland isn't able to do that. A small increase in population in one area is not offset by declines elsewhere. Now it seems that the city has a 2.75 percent sales tax, so increase entertainment and retail sales does help the bottom line, but as long as the city is declining it will be difficult to maintain public services that make downtown attractive in the first place. The sustainability of downtown resurgences and the financial implications of such is an area that needs serious research.

The second problem area has to do with the relationship between poverty, public transit and employment. Ed Glaeser, Matt Kahn and Jordan Rappaport argue that the poverty is (or was) concentrated in central cities in large part because of access to public transit and governmental policies that favor the poor. From their abstract:

More than 17 percent of households in American central cities live in poverty; in American suburbs, just 7.4 percent of households live in poverty. The income elasticity of demand for land is too low for urban poverty to be the result of wealthy individuals' wanting to live where land is cheap (the traditional urban economics explanation of urban poverty). Instead, the urbanization of poverty appears to be the result of better access to public transportation in central cities, and central city governments favoring the poor (relative to suburban governments).

Poverty has suburbanized, but a potential issue here is that gentrifying downtowns are driving poor households out and away from areas of relatively high transit access. As poor households are priced out of downtown housing they also lose access to employment opportunities accessible by transit. This creates a vicious cycle from which poor household can't escape, nor are there easy policy interventions to compensate.

By promoting luxury living in downtown USA we may be displacing people away from dense transit networks and reasonable access to employment. The way for poor households to improve their income is to then buy a car in order to access jobs. This potentially shifts low income transit riders away from transit while higher income people are able to choose to live car free. If this is the case--and again I'm arguing for research and planning rather than making dubious claims--then transit planning and policy are affected on environmental justice and equity grounds. We can't ignore the social welfare justification for maintaining high quality transit access. Of course, it is also plausible that by increasing transit ridership by educated, wealthier people the constituency for transit improves which will eventually result in better service. I'm not sure the New York City experience bears this scenario out, but maybe.

So I argue that it is possible to exaggerate the significance of 4,500 people moving into downtown Cleveland. There are still many unresolved concerns, and new ones that might come up. I will say that you can't exaggerate the significance of these issues for those of us in planning research!