Phoenix

‘American Oasis’ Review: The Lure of the Desert

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Hating the Southwest, particularly its burgeoning cities such as Phoenix, is de rigueur in American media. Jon Stewart has called Arizona “the meth lab of democracy.” Hunter S. Thompson described hell as an “overcrowded version of Phoenix.” Fran Lebowitz, the epitome of New York progressive arrogance, said: “I don’t think anyone needs Arizona. . . . Putin: here take Arizona, leave Ukraine.”

It’s a tendency that Kyle Paoletta rightfully finds annoying. In “American Oasis,” Mr. Paoletta, a journalist and critic, focuses on the region spanning California to Texas and argues that the Southwest, if not a mistake, is poised for ecological and social dislocation.

Having grown up in Albuquerque, N.M., the son of affluent professionals, Mr. Paoletta now questions whether newcomers “who have sought to master the Sonoran Desert with air conditioning and aqueducts” can really call the region home.

Yet these are precisely the people who continue to migrate to this supposedly miserable corner of the continent, building what amounts to a new America. Budding sophistos such as Mr. Paoletta may move to the dank Northeast, but since 2010 Arizona’s population has grown by more than one million—the eighth-fastest growth among U.S. states. More than two-thirds of that growth has been attributable to people moving to Arizona from other states, primarily far-more-temperate California.

The reasons are clear. These migrants are not coming to exploit cattle, cotton or copper but to find opportunities in industries, such as aerospace and semiconductor manufacturing, that were once dominated by California. Exploiting the indigenous population is not high on the agenda of someone moving from Los Angeles or Long Island, N.Y. In most cases, their contact with native peoples is limited to the casinos.

Nor are the newcomers uniformly ignorant or unskilled, as many on the coasts would believe. California and New York may be hemorrhaging recent college graduates, but Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson—once seen as retirement cities—are now attracting more people, especially millennials, who are ready to buy homes and start families.

Mr. Paoletta’s narrative also misses the fact that many people moving to the Southwest are themselves minorities. He only has eyes for the activists and the cultural rebels—the advocates of Chicanismo, for instance, or the National Welfare Rights Organization and Black Lives Matter—who complain about the encroachments of the diverse newcomers. His focus is not on the upwardly mobile minorities but the “Latino and Indian underclass living without utilities along gravel roads.”

It’s not surprising, then, that Mr. Paoletta praises the “sanctuary movement,” even though most Americans, including many Latinos, were not so happy with the Biden open border. Somehow the pushback against unvetted mass migration missed the author except as proof of racism. In his view, the promise of equal rights and opportunities offered by the Statue of Liberty is “illusory” and immigration status should not matter.

In reality, despite the hoary racist past, minorities are moving en masse to Arizona and other Southwestern areas. Most either choose or hope to settle in the suburbs. Rather than fighting “the man,” they are more likely to look into how they can become him and have more in common with their middle- or working-class white neighbors than the professional ethnic progressives.

Typically, Mr. Paoletta despises master-planned communities. But these are the places where many minorities reside or hope to reside. More than 95% of all U.S. suburban growth since 2010, notes Wendell Cox, a demographer, has been driven by people of color — hardly fodder for a woke revolution. Almost half of Latinos in Arizona voted for Donald Trump. As the number of second- or third-generation Southwesterners increase, they could easily move further to the right, as is already happening in Texas.

“American Oasis” quite rightly closes with a discussion of water. As the old saying goes, “whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.” Ever since the Hohokam people settled in Arizona some 2,000 years ago, growth and survival in the Southwest has been about access to water. Droughts are always a threat; one that occurred early in the previous century lasted a decade.

Mr. Paoletta regards the water issue as being related to “climate,” although it’s long been obvious that the region would have to learn to live with less. The author correctly salutes efforts, both in Phoenix and Las Vegas, to curb per capita water consumption, but then denounces dispersed developments and favors density. Never mind that steel-and-glass towers create a heat-island effect, generating more heat than low-rise landscaped development.

Discussions of climate issues have become a distraction, a barrier to addressing the region’s real challenges. Mr. Paoletta, for instance, rejects the idea of desalinization, something that has been impactful in other dry regions, notably the Middle East.

Yet there are reasons to be hopeful. As the region grows, Southwestern culture will evolve. The treatment of ethnic minorities in the past may have been horrendous, but that’s only part of the story. The days of quasiracist politics in these states have largely passed; Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada repeatedly send left-leaning senators to Washington. Mr. Paoletta concedes the region is becoming “a pluralistic society already in full flower.” Today you can find Turkish or Vietnamese food in Tucson, a city once known largely for taco and burger joints.

The Southwest has many problems. But it is also where millions of Americans are forging the nation’s future. Multiracial suburbs are eclipsing ghettos and reservations. New ways of building houses and communities to deal with heat and water conservation are emerging. Rather than sunbaked oddballs or brutal exploiters, the people of the Southwest are creating a new multiethnic society in the desert. For this, they deserve a far more balanced depiction than found in “American Oasis.”

This piece first appeared at: Wall Street Journal.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

America Keeps Moving to High Opportunity Cities

Cullum Clark — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 20:28:58 -0400

Americans migrated in massive numbers to large Sun Belt metro areas and fast-growing suburban cities between 2021 and 2022, according to newly released Census data. These patterns reflect the age-old inclination of Americans to seek out places offering good economic opportunities and affordable quality of life – and run counter to early press reports on the data.

Media reporting on the Census Bureau’s latest release suggests that pandemic-era demographic shifts started to reverse last year, with a return to core cities on the East Coast and elsewhere. The population of Manhattan island grew slightly between July 2021 and July 2022, for instance. But a closer look shows two key demographic trends remain intact: migration from large coastal and Midwest metros to the Sun Belt and movement from core urban areas to suburbs.

Some core counties – like Manhattan’s New York County – eked out modest growth over the past year, but the main reason wasn’t inbound migration from elsewhere in the United States. It was the fact that immigration rebounded from depressed pandemic levels, when emergency restrictions caused a large fall-off in immigrant arrivals.

Booming Sun Belt metros

The top 10 destinations for absolute population growth over the last year are all Sun Belt metros. Four are in Texas: Dallas-Fort Worth (#1), Houston (#2), Austin (#6), and San Antonio (#9). Three are in Florida: Orlando (#5), Tampa (#7), and Jacksonville (#10). Third-ranked Atlanta, Georgia; fourth-ranked Phoenix, Arizona; and eighth-ranked Charlotte, North Carolina, round out the list. All 10 ranked among America’s fastest-growing metros from 2010 to 2020. And all 10 score high in a George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative study of opportunity and economic mobility in U.S. cities.

Meanwhile, the 10 metros that lost the most people over the past year are all places where population stagnated between 2010 and 2020. These include five on the coasts: New York City, which saw by far the largest decline; Los Angeles; San Francisco; San Jose; and Philadelphia. This group also includes Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and New Orleans.

The same pattern holds for net inbound migration rates from elsewhere in the United States, measured as a percentage of 2021 population. Among America’s 100 largest metros, five of the top 10 for net domestic in-migration rates over the last year are in Florida (North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville); two are in Texas (Austin and San Antonio), two are in other Southeastern states (Knoxville, Tennessee, and Charleston, South Carolina), and one is in the Mountain states (Boise, Idaho). The 10 metros with highest net out-migration rates include New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose.

Contrary to stories emphasizing slowdowns in the Sun Belt, geographic mobility retreated modestly across the country from the extraordinary pace of the first full pandemic year, 2020 to 2021. Existing U.S. home sales, for instance, were down 18% in 2022 compared with 2021, reflecting the surge in mortgage interest rates. It was also inevitable that long-distance moves would diminish somewhat as Americans partly returned to offices from the COVID-19 work-from-home experiment, which untethered millions of workers from traditional workplaces.

Read the rest of this piece at BushCenter.org.

J.H. Cullum Clark is Director, Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at SMU. Within the Economic Growth Initiative, he leads the Bush Institute's work on domestic economic policy and economic growth. Before joining the Bush Institute and SMU, Clark worked in the investment industry for 25 years.

Photo: Yinan Chen via Wikimedia under Public Domain.

Cities of the West: An American Success Story

Cullum Clark — Wed, 31 May 2023 20:28:36 -0400

America’s western cities are booming. The major metropolitan areas of the West—defined as the vast region west of the 98th parallel and east of the Cascade and California Coast Ranges—have far outperformed most other U.S. metros over the last several decades in attracting people and businesses and creating opportunity for their residents.

The continuing growth of America’s western urban civilization is an undertold success story. A unique mix of historical forces has shaped the cities of the West, despite the many differences among them. One central fact is that the West’s cities were late to develop relative to other U.S. cities. Another is that when they did, a distinctively modern form of American capitalism fueled their growth.

But a third force also made a decisive difference in the success of America’s western cities: aggressive federal policies that promoted the region’s economic growth. The policy program that helped build the West reflects a tradition closely associated with the thinking of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln, but which only saw its full flowering in the West in the decades following the Civil War and continuing today.

There are 63 metropolitan areas between the 98th parallel and the Pacific Coast Ranges, based on U.S. Census Bureau definitions. These include seven with more than a million residents: Phoenix, Denver, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Tucson, and Fresno. It also makes sense to include the Fort Worth side of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro, despite its location a fraction of a degree east of the 98th parallel, in view of Fort Worth’s heavy emphasis on its western heritage and its motto, “Where the West Begins.”

Total population in these 64 metros, including the Fort Worth-Arlington metro division but not the eastern side of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, grew 14 percent from 2010 to 2021, compared with 9 percent for America’s 385 metro areas as a whole. But this growth reflects a wide range of experiences, with tepid growth in the struggling metros of California’s Central Valley and the Lower Rio Grande Valley and rapid expansion in the largest urban areas.

In the six largest areas—Phoenix, Denver, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City—plus smaller nearby metros within commuting distance of these places such as Tucson and Provo, Utah, population grew 19 percent between 2010 and 2021. These six areas are home to 24 million of the 37 million people living in the West’s metros, or 7 percent of America’s population.

Read the rest of this piece at The American System.

J. H. Cullum Clark is director of the George W. Bush Institute–Southern Methodist University Economic Growth Initiative and an adjunct profes-sor of economics at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is coauthor of The Texas Triangle: An Emerging Power in the Global Economy (Texas A&M University Press, 2021).

The "Tottering Chicago?" Series – Part 3

Pete Saunders — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 20:28:58 -0400

Here’s part 3 in the “Tottering Chicago?” series. Today I’m discussing the third question I raised after reading William Voegeli’s That Tottering Town, a review of the book What Next, Chicago? Notes of a Pissed Off Native Son. Read Part 1 here. and Part 2 here.

Can a non-Sun Belt city employ a Sun Belt growth model?

Back in late March, I was invited to attend a salon in Houston entitled “Restoring the Middle Class”. Conducted by the Urban Reform Institute, it was a gathering of about 50 urbanists, pundits, economists and others to talk policy about supporting the American middle class.

I left Houston deeply unnerved:

“(A)t this conference, nearly all discussion was shaped by coastal perspectives of American cities, with a healthy dash of how Sun Belt cities, especially Texas ones, offer an affordable alternative. If there was ever any question of whether there’s a strong coastal bias in urbanist discussions, with coastal thinkers and coastal issues controlling the narrative, that notion was quashed…

(W)hen I did raise the issues vexing the Rust Belt, the feedback I got from other participants was, well, not particularly favorable. It was polite but clear – your problems aren’t necessarily our problems. Coastal and Sun Belt cities have moved on from any manufacturing legacy they may have had. If and when Rust Belt cities get their act together, feel free to join us at the grownup table to chime in on urbanism topics; that’s what the Sun Belt cities are doing.”

Easily one word can describe how I felt in Houston – irrelevant. Chicago and Midwest/Rust Belt urban issues seemingly did not have a place at the table when discussing coastal or Sun Belt concerns.

I think there’s a sense among coastal and Sun Belt urbanists that American urbanism has been “solved”. The coastal cities have been transformed by the explosion of the knowledge economy – tech, finance, media and entertainment – and grew beyond their previous economic or social constraints. The Sun Belt cities took advantage of good climate, affordability and low taxes to attract new residents. Sure, there are deep issues of housing affordability, homelessness, and inequality in the coastal cities, and concerns of how to manage demand in Sun Belt cities to avoid having coastal city problems, but reps from both groups agree that they have what Americans want; they just need the right tweaking.

In William Voegeli’s article That Tottering Town, Voegeli touts the merits of the Sun Belt growth model by bringing up Columbus, OH, a city firmly in the Midwest but one that’s adopted a Sun Belt economic and political orientation. He suggests Chicago and other Rust Belt cities should emulate the model. But first, what exactly is a Sun Belt “model” of urbanism?

In my view it’s the same economic forces that produced American suburbia, but realized at a national scale. The suburbs of our metro areas developed as an affordable alternative to city living that provided more space, more and newer amenities, and a more comfortable lifestyle. Suburbs offered a chance to “escape” the three “c’s” that plague cities – costs, crime and congestion. To my mind, the Sun Belt is suburbia writ large; metros like Charlotte, Tampa, Phoenix and Las Vegas are like national-level suburbs, in that they draw people to them based on the same factors that attract people to suburbs at the metro level.

Let’s go back to Voegeli’s example of Columbus and see how it’s surged in growth over the last 30-40 years. Columbus is Ohio’s state capital and home to the state’s flagship university, Ohio State University. Being the home of Ohio state government and a large public university gave Columbus access to educated talent to serve as the foundation for later growth. In that sense Columbus is not unlike Sun Belt cities that I’d say utilized the model – Atlanta, Nashville and Austin come to mind. It’s worked for them.

Read the rest of this piece at Corner Side Yard Blog.

Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. Pete has been the editor/publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. Pete is also an urban affairs contributor to Forbes Magazine's online platform. Pete's writings have been published widely in traditional and internet media outlets, including the feature article in the December 2018 issue of Planning Magazine. Pete has more than twenty years' experience in planning, economic development, and community development, with stops in the public, private and non-profit sectors. He lives in Chicago.

Photo: Houston's growth in physical size is perhaps more impressive than its population growth. In 1950 Houston covered 160 square miles with 596,000 residents. In 2022 Houston covered 672 square miles for its 2.3 million residents. Only two cities in America have a larger physical footprint than Houston. Source: texasmonthly.com

Huge Spike in Domestic Migration from Urban Cores

Wendell Cox — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 20:28:58 -0400

Net domestic migration losses spiked perhaps as never before in the pandemic year of 2021 among urban core counties --- the counties that contain the urban cores (Note 1). This article reviews net domestic migration trend in the major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 residents) based on US Census Bureau data for 2021 and going back to 2010. The analysis is limited to 51 of the 56 major metropolitan areas that have more than one county. Since the Census Bureau does not estimate domestic migration below the county level, urban core versus outlying (or suburban) can only be calculated for metros with more than one county (Note 2). As a result, there are no results for Fresno, Honolulu, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Tucson.

Urban Core Counties

Among these urban core counties there was a net loss of 1,122,000 net domestic migrants in 2021. (see Table) This is a 140% increase from the minus 466,000 in 2020 and nearly 10 times the average net domestic migration loss of 115,000 in the first five years of the decade (2010 to 2015). The peak net domestic migration for these metropolitan areas was in 2012, when there was a loss of about 2,000.

In the second half of the decade (2016 to 2020), the average urban core county net domestic migration loss was 425,000, as there was a pronounced shift of net domestic migration away from the larger metropolitan areas to other areas of the country. This was before the spike in net domestic migration that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of course, it’s likely that the out-migration will slow as the pandemic wanes. But still, central business districts are particularly vulnerable as many of its long-time workforce labor in “laptop economy jobs” to the shift to on-line work.

Outlying (Suburban) Counties

At the same time, the outer (suburban) counties of the major metropolitan areas experienced a net domestic migration gain of 395,000, their largest gain since 2011. Even as urban core domestic migration was plummeting, the outlying counties experienced a more than 50% increase from their 2016 to 2020 average (231,000), and an even stronger gain relative to earlier in the decade (2011 to 2015), when the average gain was 177,000.

Over the decade the suburban counties added net domestic migrants in every year. The outlying counties gained a minimum of 119,000 more net domestic migrants than the urban core counties (2012), which rose to an average of 656,000 in the last half of the decade. In 2021, the outlying counties gained 1,481,000 more net domestic migrants than the urban core counties. The 2021 results are consistent with research indicating substantial movement away from urban cores, to the periphery of metropolitan areas and even beyond.

Metropolitan Area Highlights

The largest net domestic migration loss occurred in the New York metropolitan area at 385,000. The city of New York accounted for 342,000 of this loss, with a much smaller net out migration of 43,000 from the suburbs.

Metro Los Angeles had the second largest net migration loss at 205,000, with a 180,000 loss in core Los Angeles County.

The San Francisco metropolitan area lost 129,000 net domestic migrants, 56,000 of which were from core San Francisco County and 73,000 from the other four counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Mateo counties).

Chicago continued its long-lasting string of net domestic migration losses at a minus 107,000 in the metropolitan area. Most of the loss (98,000) was from core Cook County. The outer counties had a relatively modest loss of 9000 net domestic migrants.

The Washington DC-VA-MD-WV metropolitan area lost 67,000 net domestic migrants. The net domestic migration loss in the core city (county equivalent) of Washington, stood at 23.000, while the outlying counties lost a larger 44,000 (only in San Francisco and Washington was the suburban loss greater than the urban core county loss).

Some metropolitan areas that have had strong net domestic migration fell on much harder times in 2021. Seattle had a net domestic migration loss of 31,000 in 2021, after having gained 147.000 between 2010 and 2020. The 2021 loss was concentrated in core King County which lost 33,000 net domestic migrants, while the other two counties had a net domestic migration gain of more than 1,000.

Portland Oregon lost more than 7,000 net domestic migrants, with a 13,000 loss in core Multnomah County, and a suburban gain of 6,000 net domestic migrants. This is after a 129,000 net domestic migration gain in the 2010s.

Denver had a 2021 net domestic migration loss of 7,000, with a 9,000 loss in the city of Denver (county equivalent) and a small gain in the outlying counties. This is after a 204,000 net domestic migration gain between 2010 and 2020.

In Seattle, Portland and Denver, the strong net domestic migration was strongest early in the decade and fell as the decade was closing.

So, if these stellar performers of the last decade lost migrants, which metros gained?

The largest net domestic migration gainer was Phoenix, with 67,000 net domestic migrants. This included a gain of 47,000 in core Maricopa County and 20,000 gained in the other core county. The Maricopa County gain was the largest of any urban core county.

Dallas Fort Worth gained 54,000 net domestic migrants for the second strongest gain. However, core Dallas County had a loss of 45,000, while the outlying counties gained 99,000 net domestic migrants.

Tampa-St. Petersburg had net domestic migration of 42,000, 10,000 to core Hillsborough County, with 32,000 to outlying counties.

Austin had the fourth largest net domestic migration in 2021. However, the core county, Travis, had a small net domestic migration loss (200), with suburban counties accounting for a 41,000 gain.

The situation was similar in Houston where core Harris County lost 44,000 net domestic migrants while the outer counties gained 64,000 for an overall gain of 19,000.

There is increasing evidence that the increased metropolitan core migration losses could continue given the less than robust return to the jobs in the nation’s largest central business districts (downtowns). In San Francisco, it has been projected that ridership on the regional rail system, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) may not reach pre-pandemic levels for a decade. The hybrid work and remote work arrangements, that have made the five day work week a thing of the past and facilitated the decentralization are being embraced not only by employees but also by corporate leadership.

Note 1: The urban core counties contain the city hall of the historic core municipality in metropolitan areas. In all but one case the historical core municipality is the largest in the metropolitan area (the exception is the city of Norfolk (county equivalent) in Virginia Beach. In the case of New York, there are five urban core counties, all of which comprise the city of New York.

Note 2: The use of counties for analyzing decentralization in metropolitan areas is not ideal, since there is such great variation among the urban core counties. Some urban core counties contain vast swaths of suburban development, such as Maricopa (Phoenix), with a 2010 urban density of 3,100 per square mile, King (Seattle), at 3,500, Multnomah (Portland) at 4,400 or Bexar (San Antonio (at 3,100) or Fulton (Atlanta) at 2,200. At the same time other urban core counties have little or no suburban development, such as the five New York City counties at 27,000, San Francisco, at 17,000, and Suffolk (Boston), at 12,600. In some cases, the much higher urban densities extend into adjacent counties, especially in Boston and New York. This lack of more local data on domestic migration limits the precision of the analysis. Factors other than net domestic migration can be assessed using census tract or zip code data (such as our City Sector Model).

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Photo: Phoenix, AZ — Strongest major metropolitan area net domestic migration 2021

Table 1 (back to reference)

Net Domestic Migration: Urban Core and Outlying Counties: 2021
	Total	Urban Core Counties	Suburban (Outlying) Counties	Suburban Migration Compared to Urban Core
Atlanta, GA	19,358	(7,786)	27,144	34,930
Austin, TX	40,264	(172)	40,436	40,608
Baltimore, MD	(5,561)	(6,678)	1,117	7,795
Birmingham, AL	(2)	(5,283)	5,281	10,564
Boston, MA-NH	(48,040)	(28,850)	(19,190)	9,660
Buffalo, NY	(924)	(1,121)	197	1,318
Charlotte, NC-SC	23,970	(4,293)	28,263	32,556
Chicago, IL-IN-WI	(106,897)	(98,205)	(8,692)	89,513
Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN	(213)	(5,268)	5,055	10,323
Cleveland, OH	(6,089)	(10,359)	4,270	14,629
Columbus, OH	2,487	(9,799)	12,286	22,085
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	54,319	(44,650)	98,969	143,619
Denver, CO	(6,507)	(9,115)	2,608	11,723
Detroit, MI	(18,841)	(15,857)	(2,984)	12,873
Grand Rapids, MI	310	(2,472)	2,782	5,254
Hartford, CT	832	(1,161)	1,993	3,154
Houston, TX	19,426	(44,409)	63,835	108,244
Indianapolis, IN	6,732	(10,836)	17,568	28,404
Jacksonville, FL	24,815	646	24,169	23,523
Kansas City, MO-KS	748	(1,732)	2,480	4,212
Los Angeles, CA	(204,776)	(179,757)	(25,019)	154,738
Louisville, KY-IN	(358)	(4,458)	4,100	8,558
Memphis, TN-MS-AR	(3,041)	(6,132)	3,091	9,223
Miami, FL	(55,305)	(44,787)	(10,518)	34,269
Milwaukee,WI	(8,780)	(12,764)	3,984	16,748
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	(15,462)	(18,903)	3,441	22,344
Nashville, TN	12,328	(14,770)	27,098	41,868
New Orleans, LA	(9,824)	(6,699)	(3,125)	3,574
New York, NY-NJ-PA	(385,455)	(342,449)	(43,006)	299,443
Oklahoma City, OK	10,224	(1,277)	11,501	12,778
Orlando, FL	4,019	(16,184)	20,203	36,387
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD	(14,763)	(28,226)	13,463	41,689
Phoenix, AZ	66,850	46,866	19,984	(26,882)
Pittsburgh, PA	(3,993)	(7,635)	3,642	11,277
Portland, OR-WA	(7,441)	(12,983)	5,542	18,525
Providence, RI-MA	2,427	(2,427)	4,854	7,281
Raleigh, NC	21,743	10,518	11,225	707
Richmond, VA	6,788	(887)	7,675	8,562
Riverside-San Bernardino, CA	34,859	3,608	31,251	27,643
Rochester, NY	(2,938)	(3,381)	443	3,824
Sacramento, CA	6,963	(2,639)	9,602	12,241
St. Louis,, MO-IL	(7,277)	(7,577)	300	7,877
Salt Lake City, UT	(4,629)	(7,447)	2,818	10,265
San Antonio, TX	25,660	4,687	20,973	16,286
San Francisco, CA	(128,870)	(55,631)	(73,239)	(17,608)
San Jose, CA	(52,932)	(54,801)	1,869	56,670
Seattle, WA	(31,489)	(32,802)	1,313	34,115
Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL	42,089	9,600	32,489	22,889
Tulsa, OK	6,757	965	5,792	4,827
Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	(321)	(3,540)	3,219	6,759
Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV	(66,811)	(23,030)	(43,781)	(20,751)

TOTAL	(763,571)	(1,122,342)	358,771	1,481,113
Derived from US Census Bureau data
Excludes metropolitan areas with only one county (Fresno, Honolulu, Las Vegas, San Diego & Tucson)

The Battle for Cities

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 20:28:58 -0400

America’s cities face an existential crisis that threatens their future status as centers of culture, politics, and the economy. Many urban advocates continue to delude themselves that U.S. cities are about to experience a massive post-pandemic return to “normal.” But the disruptive technological, demographic, and social changes of recent times are more likely to upend the old geographic hierarchy than to revive it.

A representative New York Times article from July 12 denied that the pandemic has impacted dense urban areas in particular, and blamed negative attitudes toward cities instead on what it called “alluring” anti-urban attitudes. Perhaps urban advocates need to ditch their own attitudes and confront reality (and the statistical evidence): Many key problems facing our core cities—growing social instability, rising crime, out-migration, increasingly radicalized politics, high costs, and tight regulation—predate the pandemic, and are not likely to go away easily. Clever proselytizing by urban media likely won’t be enough to convince Americans liberated by the efficacy of remote work to eventually return.

To survive and thrive, American cities need to reinvent urbanity by returning to a more diverse economy concentrated not in the central districts but in neighborhoods stretched across the city. Such a shift can only take place if the trajectory of urban politics changes. Some cities, notes Seth Barron, author of the newly published The Last Days of New York, have been captured by “an equity oriented social ideology” paid for by real estate interests and public sector unions, and backed by mainstream media and nonprofits, that has proven profoundly self-destructive. Outside New York, political leadership in cities like Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis; Seattle; and San Francisco continue to work assiduously to restrain law enforcement, even in the face of rising crime.

There appears to be a growing pushback against the progressive urban agenda, whose journalistic promoters often minimize social disorder. Defunding the police has not turned out to be a progressive success; the five cities that reduced their police budgets the most in 2020—Austin, Texas; New York; Minneapolis; Seattle; and Denver—have seen murders spike over the past year, well above the national average. Having partially gone down the path of defunding in 2020, New York, Baltimore, and Oakland, California, have now taken steps to restore some police funding. In ultraliberal San Francisco, the vast majority of city residents want more police; almost half are considering leaving the city, citing social disorder as a key reason. Residents of the fashionable Capitol Hill area in Seattle are erecting barriers to keep out the homeless.

But if the urban gentry are upset, the real shift is further down the social pecking order. The surprising victory of ex-cop Eric Adams as New York’s next mayor took place amid a surge in violent crime, garnering support for his centrist, pro-police platform from the city’s minority voters. My colleague Charles Blain, president of the Urban Reform and Urban Reform Institute in Houston, noted that opposition to “defunding” has come primarily from African American and Latino politicos in his city, while support seems to stem mostly from affluent white liberals.

Political divides within cities increasingly defy traditional definitions of right and left. There’s a growing conflict between those largely dependent on public schools, spaces, and transit, and those free of the need for public services due to their ability to live close to work, send their kids to private schools, or choose not to have kids at all. Much of the base of urban radicalism has shifted from minority communities to the ultrawoke, largely white, educated left.

Yet progressives, due in part to small voter turnouts, still dominate representative bodies like the New York City Council; the newly elected Manhattan district attorney follows the left’s program of low-intensity crime enforcement. In Buffalo and Pittsburgh, recent elections have favored far-left candidates. In Philadelphia, a recent attempt to remove the George Soros-backed District Attorney Larry Krassner failed miserably, despite rising crime.

The current urban trajectory is downwind of demographics. Despite the media hurrahs of a massive “back to the city” movement, Americans have been moving in the opposite direction for most of the past decade. Since 2012, suburbs and exurbs have accounted for about 90% of all metropolitan growth. The rate of growth in America’s biggest and most expensive cities began to decline as early as 2015, and the population shift to suburbs, exurbs, and smaller cities has accelerated, something evident well before the pandemic.

Read the rest of this piece at Tablet Magazine.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: JJ, via Flickr under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 License.

Census Bureau Releases 2020 City Population Estimates

Wendell Cox — Fri, 28 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The US Census Bureau has just released its July 1, 2020 population estimates for the approximately 19,500 incorporated municipalities (principally called cities, towns, villages). This article provides information on the 50 largest municipalities in the nation (Table below).

All of the three largest municipalities, the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, lost population from 2019 to 2020.

Observations on Individual Municipalities

With 8,253,000 residents in 2020, the city of New York had its lowest annual reported population since 2010. Its 90,000 loss in 2019-2020 was the greatest sustained during the decade, while its gain over the entire decade was only 61,000. According to the Census Bureau estimates, New York’s population had peaked at 8,469,000 in 2016 and fallen by more than 200,000 over the past four years.

New York is not the only big city with a declining population. A decade ago, the California Department of Finance announced that second ranked LA city’s population had exceeded that number. But according to the Census Bureau, it never got there. In 2020 the city of Los Angeles population was 3,970,000, down 13,000 from 2019. At no point do Census Bureau estimates show that the 4,000,000 mark was ever met, despite stronger growth earlier in the decade propelled the city’s population upward by 175,000. Meanwhile, Los Angeles County, the most populous in the United States, lost 68,000 since 2010 and fell below 10 million, having lost population four years in a row.

Third ranked Chicago is the largest city to have lost population over the decade (20,000) The city lost most of those residents in the past year, with a 2019-20 loss of 14,000. Chicago lost population in each of the last six years.

Houston ranked fourth and had only a modest gain in the last year. Over the decade, the city gained 10%, to 2,316,000, but grew more slowly with the downturn in energy prices. Houston is one of five Texas municipalities among the nation’s 13 most populous. San Antonio ranked 7th and grew a strong 1.3% over the past year and 17.9% over the decade with a 2020 population of 1,567,000. The city of Dallas ranked ninth, growing little over the past year despite far more rapid growth elsewhere in the metropolitan area, and 12% over the decade to 1,343,000. Austin, will soon be the 11th city in the nation to reach a population of one million had 995,000 residents. Austin grew at a very fast 1.7% rate in the last year and added 23.5% over the past decade. Fort Worth, with 928,000 is the largest “second city” in any US metropolitan area (Dallas-Fort Worth) ranking 12th and posted a nearly 18% growth rate over the decade and 2.1% in the last year.

Phoenix passed Philadelphia during the decade, to become the fifth largest municipality. Phoenix has reached 1,708,000, growing 1.5% in the last year and nearly 18% over the decade.

Sixth ranked Philadelphia has seen its population stabilize, after earlier losses. Philadelphia’s 2020 population was 1,578,000, up 3.3% from 2010, but down 0.3% from 2019.

Eighth ranked San Diego grew about nine percent during the decade, reaching 1,422,000. However, growth stalled, at only 0.2% in the past year.

Tenth ranked San Jose fell 1.3% to 1,027,000 from 2019. Over the decade San Jose grew 6.2%.

Nearby San Francisco, ranked 17th, had 867,000 residents in 2020. This is up 7.6% over the decade, but with a loss of 1,4% over the last year.

Particularly strong population growth over the decade occurred in 14th ranked Columbus (113,000), 15th ranked Charlotte (162,000), 18th ranked Seattle (159,000), 19th ranked Denver (133,000) and 20th Washington (108,000).

Detroit continued to lose population, with 665,000 residents in 2020. This is down 5.6% in the decade and minus 0.75% in the last year.

Top and Bottom Percentage Gains

The largest percentage gain among the top 50 was in Seattle, at 26.0%, followed by Fort Worth (24,0%), Austin (23.0%), Denver (22.0%) and Charlotte (21.9%).

Despite much hopeful reporting of a renaissance, Detroit had the largest percentage loss over the decade among the top 50, at minus 6.4%. Following Detroit were Baltimore, down 5.6%, Long Beach (in the Los Angeles metropolitan area) at minus 1.7%, Milwaukee minus 1.0% while Chicago minus 1.7%.

Over the past year, the largest percentage gains have been in Seattle (2.18%), Fort Worth (2.12%), Mesa, in the Phoenix metropolitan area (1.86%), Austin (1.71%) and Tampa (1.65%).

The largest one-year percentage losses were in Baltimore (minus 1.42%), San Francisco (minus 1.39%), San Jose (minus 1.26%), New York (minus 1.08%) and Long Beach (minus 0.83%).

U.S. Population Growing Less and Dispersing

These data are estimates and are not from the 2020 Census, which has not yet published data below the state level.

These results do not reflect the total impact of the Covid pandemic, since only some three months of that period are included in these findings. Since then, there has been much evidence of population shifts from the largest and densest cities to more dispersed cities, suburbs exurbs and rural areas. For example, US Postal Service change of address data indicates the strongest out-migration in the cities of New York and San Francisco, according to The Wall Street Journal. These are the densest municipalities in the top 50.

The Covid epidemic principally affected the last quarter of the estimation periods --- one of the four 2019-2020 quarters and one of the 40 2010-2020 quarters. Over the decade, six of the top 50 municipalities lost population, while 14 lost population in 2019-2020. The deterioration in losses has multiple causes, such as the accelerating dispersion (domestic migration) from larger metropolitan areas and the generally slowing US population growth rate. At the same time, our previous research has shown that the urban cores have not even maintained their share of metropolitan populations (See: “Latest Data Shows Pre-pandemic suburban/exurban population gains”).

Click here to download a PDF document with the 2020 municipalities data
(document opens in new tab or window).

Photo: City Hall, Philadelphia (by author).

Combined Statistical Areas Lead Continuing Dispersion: 2010-2020

Wendell Cox — Sun, 23 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

A commenter asked about population trends in combined statistical areas (CSA) in response to my article “Demographic Implosion in the San Francisco Bay Area?, posted on May 18. This article deals with CSA population trends in the 88 CSAs with more than 500,000 population.

More Evidence of the Dispersion

The nation’s largest combined statistical areas (over 1,000,000 residents) are showing a substantial decline in population growth and net domestic migration, while middle-sized CSA’s (500,000 to 1,000,000) are showing gains.

From 2010 to 2020, Census Bureau estimates indicate that the 58 CSAs with more than 1,000,000 population gained 9.1 million residents between 2010 and 2015, before dropping more than 30% from 2015 to 2020 to 6.3 million. By comparison, the 30 CSAs with from 500,000 to 1,000,000 population gained 933,000 residents both in the first and second half of the decade. Over the decade, the gross population increase rate was 8.0%, relative to the 2010 population.

Overall, the larger CSAs gained 127,000 net domestic migrants (people moving from into a CSA from another part of the nation) in the first half of the decade, then suffered a net loss of 635,000 in the second half. This represents a gross rate of minus 2.6% relative to the 2010 population. Among the middle-sized CSAs, net domestic migration increased from 121,000 in the first half of the decade to 451,000 in the second half. This calculates to a gross rate over the decade of 2.0% relative to the 2010 population.

This is more critical than simply a response to the pandemic. In reality these trends existed overwhelmingly pre-COVID — a single quarter out of 40 — during which multiple reports say has now increased more.

What is a CSA and How Does it Relate to Metropolitan Areas

A combined statistical area (CSA) is a set of overlapping labor markets (metropolitan and sometimes micropolitan areas) that have a significant interchange of workers (commuters) between homes and employment. There are 384 metropolitan areas in the nation and 543 micropolitan areas. The only difference between metropolitan and micropolitan areas is that metropolitan areas are based on urban areas of at least 50,000 residents, while micropolitan areas are based on urban areas of from 10,000 to 50,000. The 927 Metropolitan and micropolitan areas are collectively referred to as “core based statistical areas.”

There are also 175 CSA’s, made up of 551 complete metropolitan and micropolitan areas.

Observations on the Largest CSAs

Each of the six largest CSAs experienced much worse population growth trends in the second half of the decade (Table).

The 15 largest CSAs are summarized below: A number of metropolitan and micropolitan areas are not in CSAs and are not shown in the table. includes some of the largest metropolitan areas, such as San Diego, Austin, Las Vegas, and Rochester.

New York gained 441,000 from 2010 to 2015, but lost 205,000 in 2015-2020. In the last year New York lost 114,000.
Los Angeles gained 654,000 in the first half and only 99,000 in the second half. The Los Angeles CSA includes the Riverside-San Bernardino metro, which has grown rapidly in the past, but not enough to cancel out the loss in the rest of the CSA, particularly in the core Los Angeles County, which lost 69,000 Among the five counties, only Riverside and San Bernardino counties posted gains. Throughout the whole CSA, there was a 40,000 decline in 2019-2020.
Washington-Baltimore growth dropped from 554,000 in the first half of the decade to 261,000 in the second half and only 28,000 in the last year. Washington-Baltimore (9.865 million) has displaced Chicago (9.770) as the third largest CSA. Washington-Baltimore added 815,000 new residents in the 2010s, while Chicago lost 71,000.
Chicago added 84,000 in the first five years, but lost 155,000 in the last half. There was a loss of 50,000 in the last year. As noted above, Chicago’s CSA dropped from 3rd to 4th, now behind Washington-Baltimore.
The San Francisco Bay CSA, which stretches nearly halfway to Los Angeles (to the Merced County/Fresno County line), added 567,000 from 2010 to 2015, but only 117,000 from 2015 to 2020. In the last year, the Bay Area experienced a 40,000 loss. The San Francisco Bay CSA (San Jose-San Francisco) grew 684,000 to 9.608 million and is challenging Chicago for third place. However, the Bay Area’s strong start in the decade morphed into a loss so at the 2019-2020 rate, it will take the Bay Area 16 years to catch Chicago.
Boston's growth fell from 269,000 to 132,000, with the last year falling to a nominal 5,000.
Dallas-Fort Worth did the best of the top 10, gaining 689,000 in each of the five year periods, and exceeding a 1,000,000 gain for the second decade in a row. The last year gain was 127,000. Dallas-Fort Worth, unlike its more established rivals, has experienced stable growth, with the lowest year in the decade being 110,000 and the highest 159,000.
Houston also added more than 1,000,000 residents for the second decade in a row. In the first five years Houston’s gain was 755,000 — more than Dallas-Fort Worth. However, growth dropped to 486,000 in the last five years during the downturn in the energy industry. Houston added 92,000 in the last year, more than any CSA beside Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix.
Philadelphia's growth dropped from 100,000 in the first five years to 46,000 in the second five. In the last year Philadelphia gained 3,000.
Atlanta, hit very hard by the Great Recession, did not repeat its greater than 1,000,000 growth in this decade. In the first five years, Atlanta gained 429,000 residents, and 455,000 in the second five. Atlanta was the largest CSA to have greater growth in the second half of the decade and gained 68,000 in the last year. Atlanta passed Miami in population in 2020.
Miami grew strongly in the first half of the decade, at 446,000, but fell to 261,000 in the second half. Growth in the last year was 21,000.
For all its population loss reputation, Detroit gained 13,000 residents from 2010 to 2015, but dropped by 13,000 in 2015 to 2020. A 19,000 loss in the last year however suggests the area’s recovery may be limited.
Phoenix had the best second half growth relative to the first half, increasing from 387,000 to 461,000. The 106,000 gain in the last year was second only to Dallas-Fort Worth.
Seattle also gained more in the second half than in the first (345,000 versus 333,000) and added 51,000 in the last year.
Orlando had a strong second half gain of 425,000 compared to its first half gain of 357,000.

The table (image and PDF link below) also contains net domestic migration data.

A Dispersing Country

Despite America’s increasing diversity, the dispersion that has generally waxed but less frequently waned since 1920.An acceleration among all CBSAs toward greater dispersion, which was covered in “Domestic Migration to Dispersion Accelerates Even Before COVID”, is the reality, even if the media, pundits and planners continue in denial.

Click here to download a PDF document with the CSA data (opens in new tab or window).

Photo: Virginia suburbs in the Washington-Baltimore CSA, with Potomac River and Maryland in the background (by author).

California and Urban Cores Dominate Overcrowded Housing

Wendell Cox — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 20:29:01 -0500

Concern about overcrowded housing has been heightened by its association with greater COVID-19 infection risk. As a disease transmitted by human proximity, exposure is increased by being in overcrowded and insufficiently ventilated spaces where sufficient social distancing is not possible. Exposure density for a person is intensified by the amount of time spent in such circumstances. In this case, overcrowded housing is a particular worry.

Overcrowded housing is largely an issue of insufficient income. People tend to live in overcrowded housing only when they cannot afford more spacious accommodations.

This article reviews the latest data on housing overcrowding for the 53 major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) in the United States, with data provided for all households, homeowners, and renters. Data is also provided for urban cores, suburbs, and exurbs, using the City Sector Model.

Overcrowding: All Occupied Housing

Out of the 53 major metropolitan areas, the five with the largest share of overcrowded housing are all in California (Figure 1). Los Angeles has by far the worst overcrowding, at 10.7% of households. This is more than 2.5 times the national rate of 3.9% and 30% more severe than San Jose, which has the second most severe overcrowding rate. San Jose, which is the most affluent (median household income) among the 53 metropolitan areas, and an overcrowding rate of 8.3%. San Jose is the core of the world’s leading technology hub, Silicon Valley. The third worst overcrowding is in Riverside-San Bernardino, at 7.8%. San Diego is fourth worst, at 6.8%. San Francisco, which includes the balance of Silicon Valley not in San Jose, has the fifth worst overcrowding, at 6.7%. New York, the sixth worst, is the only other major metropolitan area with a greater than 5% overcrowding rate.

The least overcrowded metropolitan areas were Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis, with the top ten ranging from 0.9% to 1.6% (Figure 2). On average, the ten metropolitan areas with the highest overcrowding rates have about five times the rate endured in the lowest 10 metropolitan areas among all households.

Overcrowding: Home Owners

The same five California metropolitan areas have the worst housing overcrowding among homeowners (Figure 3). Los Angeles, again, is the worst, at 5.0% and is followed by adjacent Riverside-San Bernardino at 4.8%. San Jose has considerably less overcrowding among homeowners, at 3.4%, but still ranks third worst. San Diego and San Francisco have overcrowding rates of 3.1% among homeowners.

Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo had the lowest homeowner overcrowding rates, with the top ten ranging from 0.5% to 0.8% (Figure 4). On average, the ten metropolitan areas with the highest overcrowding rates have about five times the rate of the lowest 10 metropolitan areas among owner households.

Overcrowding: Renters

Among renters, the same five California metropolitan areas have the worst overcrowding rates among the major metropolitan areas (Figure 5). Again, Los Angeles has the worst rate, at 16.1%. San Jose is second worst, at 14.7%, followed by Riverside-San Bernardino, at 13.0. San Diego and San Francisco (both at 11.1%) are the only other major metropolitan areas with an overcrowding rate among renters of 10% or more.

The ten lowest renter overcrowding rates range from 1.9% to 3.1%. The lowest overcrowding rates are in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo (Figure 6), On average, the ten metropolitan areas with the highest overcrowding rates have about four times the rate of the lowest 10 metropolitan areas among renter households.

The Demographia City Sector Model

Demographia City Sector Model analysis is now in the seventh year of publication. Improved data from the American Community Survey made it possible to separate demographic data based on lifestyles and functions within metropolitan areas. Before that, nearly all urban, suburban, and exurban analysis within metropolitan areas was based on municipal or county jurisdictions. The problem was, however, that nearly all new development since World War II had been lower density, principally single-family houses, while the automobile quickly replaced much of the commuting that had been previously been on transit or on foot.

The Demographia City Sector Model classifies zip code residents based upon their population density and extent of automobile commuting into four functional classifications, which are indicated in Figure 7. The intent is to separate the pre-World War II city from the very different city that has developed in the intervening three-quarters of a century.

Overcrowding by Metropolitan Sector: All Households

Among the metropolitan area sectors, the highest overall housing overcrowding rate (owners and renters) is in the Urban Core: Inner Ring, that includes the higher density residential areas directly adjacent to the downtowns, at 6.4%. This is nearly two-thirds higher than the overall rate of 3.9%. Overcrowding in the Urban Core: Central Business District (downtown) is a 5.2%, one third above the overall rate. The Earlier Suburbs have an overcrowding rate of 4.6 %, while the Later Suburbs and Exurbs share a 2.6% rate, one third below the overall average (Figure 8).

Overcrowding by Metropolitan Sector: Owners and Renters

Again, the Urban Core: Inner ring has the highest overcrowding among owning households, at 3.2%, two-thirds above the overall rate of 1.8%. The Urban Core: Central Business District overcrowding rate for owners is nearly as high, at 2.9%. The Earlier Suburbs have a rate of 2.1%, approximately 15% higher than the overall rate. The Later Suburbs (1.4%) and the Exurbs (1.5%) have lower owner overcrowding rates than the average (Figure 9).

Among renters, the Urban Core: Inner Ring has the highest overcrowding rate, at 8.5%, nearly 20% above the overall renter rate of 7.2%. The Earlier Suburbs have the second highest overcrowding rate among renters, at 8.1%. The Urban Core: Central Business District has an overcrowding rate of 6.0% among renters, which is well below the overall rate of 7.2%. The Later Suburbs (5.3%) and Exurbs (5.4%) have renter overcrowding rates a quarter below the overall average (Figure 9).

Owning, Renting and Overcrowding

There is a strong relationship between rental housing and higher overcrowding rates. The renter overcrowding rate among the major metropolitan areas is 7.2%, 55% higher than the overall household rate. Among homeowners the overcrowding rate is 1.8%, 55% below the overall household average (Figure 10).

Where Housing Overcrowding is the Greatest

In each of the categories of all occupied housing, owned housing, and rental housing, the five major metropolitan areas with the highest overcrowding rates are in California. This includes the four large coastal metropolitan areas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego, as well as inland Riverside-San Bernardino. Moreover, greater overcrowding is associated with higher population densities, which occur in the Urban Cores.

Overcrowded housing has long been a problem, especially for low-income households. The nation’s “affordable housing” programs established to aid household unable to afford market rate housing costs have routinely fallen far short of political promises. It is a problem that needs to be effectively addressed.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Photograph: aerial view of the urban density of Los Angeles (by author).

San Jose: Largest % Migration Loss Outside New Orleans

Wendell Cox — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 20:29:01 -0400

This article expands on the 2000 to 2019 state net domestic migration data from last week, covering the 110 metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 residents (Note). The big surprise may be that the largest proportional outflow of net domestic migrants, outside Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans was San Jose, the nation’s most affluent metropolitan area and perhaps the wealthiest in the world. In both cases, many more people left in the first 10 years than since 2010. The San Jose migration loss since 2010 was one-half that of 2000-2010, however New Orleans gained back about five percent of its previous loss.

Top Domestic Migration Population Gainers

Seven of the metros with the largest actual number of net domestic migrants were in the South, while three were in the West (Figure 1). Phoenix added 940,000 net domestic migrants over the period. This is equal to nearly one-fifth of the population, which was nearing 5,000,000 according to the 2019 estimate. By comparison, this is more than 12 times the 330,000 who inhabited the metropolitan area in 1950. Now Phoenix is the nation’s 10th largest metropolitan area, having passed Boston, San Francisco and Riverside-San Bernardino in the last decade.

Dallas-Fort Worth added 770,000 net domestic migrants, second only to Phoenix. Dallas-Fort Worth is now the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States. Atlanta, which has grown faster than any of the top ten metropolitan areas in the last 50 years, added 680,000 net domestic migrants in the last two decades.

Six metropolitan areas added between 500,000 and 600,000 net domestic migrants, including Riverside-San Bernardino, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Austin, Charlotte, Houston and Las Vegas. Orland added the 10th most, at 410,000.

All of the top gainers in terms of total numbers, not surprisingly, were among the 53 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population.

Top Proportional Gainers

Six of the 10 metros gaining the largest percentage of net domestic migrants relative to their 2000s populations have between 500,000 and 1,000,000 population. Four of the top proportional gainers were in Florida.

Retiree attracting Cape Coral, Florida gained the most, at 56.9% of its 2000 population (Figure 2). Raleigh gained the second largest percentage, at 42.8%, followed closely by Austin, at 42.2% and Sarasota, at 40.8%. Daytona Beach, Boise, Las Vegas, Fayetteville (Arkansas) and Lakeland (FL). Lakeland is located just east of Tampa-St. Petersburg and just west of Orlando, which placed 5th and 10th in total net domestic migration gains. Charlotte placed 10th in its proportional gain, at 29.9%.

Largest Net Domestic Migration Losses

New York, the largest metropolitan area, suffered by far the largest net domestic migration loss over the last two decades (Figure 3). More than a net 3.4 million New Yorkers moved away. This is more people than live in 20 states, the largest of which is Utah (3.3 million). It is more people than live in all but 16 metropolitan areas, the largest of which is San Diego.

Los Angeles, the second largest metropolitan area had the second largest net domestic migration loss, at 2.1 million. Third ranked Chicago sustained the third largest net domestic migration loss, at 1.2 million. Detroit lost more than 500,000 net domestic migrants, while Miami lost nearly as many. San Francisco, San Jose, Boston, New Orleans and Philadelphia each lost between 290,000 and 400,000 net domestic migrants.

Largest Proportional Losses

New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in the middle 2000s, suffered the largest proportional net domestic migration loss relative to its 2000 population, at 21.5% (Figure 4). San Jose nearly equaled New Orleans, with a net domestic migration loss of 21% since 2000. New York lost 18.6% of its population to net domestic migration, while Los Angeles lost 17.0%. El Paso, Honolulu, Bridgeport-Stamford, Chicago, Detroit and Syracuse more people moved out at rates from 10.3% to 15.1%.

Prospects

The prospects could be even more negative for the metropolitan areas with the denser urban cores --- especially New York, where the exodus from New York City has been estimated to be as much as the entire population gain from 1950 (as a result of the COVID-19 virus). People are going out of their way to avoid the overcrowding that is endemic to higher urban residential and employment densities. Yet not all of the COVID related migration will involve inter-metropolitan moves. In the metropolitan areas with transit legacy cities, there could be substantial moves from the dense urban cores to more spacious suburban and exurban environments, where there is considerably less overcrowding, as well as larger houses for living and working along with yards for the kids.

Even so, the strongly developing trend, even before COVID-19 was of migration away from the larger metropolitan areas --- those over one million residents, to smaller areas, especially to the 57 with populations between 500,000 and 1,000,000 and the 275 with populations from 100,000 to 500,000 (Figure 5). Households have plenty of options for 21st century lifestyles

The new world of “Zoom” meetings, along with the threat of illness (or worse) and economic loss from lockdowns could conceivably result in demographic shifts to rival the acceleration of suburban growth following World War II. It could change significantly the role of core municipalities --- large and small --- and accelerate the dispersion that has been the primary trend for the last half century.

Note 1: The Census Bureau estimates net domestic migration trends, which are released with the annual population estimates. In both the 2000s and 2010s, data is provided from April (the decennial census date) of the “00” year through June of the “09” year (the end of the annual “estimate year”). As a result, no data is available for January through March 2000, July 2009 through March 2010 and June 2019 through December 2019.

Note 2: The new Office of Management and Budget metropolitan area delineations (used in this article) have added a second “Fayetteville” to the list of those over 500,000. The new, larger Fayetteville, North Carolina is rated as the 108th largest metropolitan area, with 527,000 residents in 2019. Fayetteville, Arkansas (longer name: Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers), previously shown with more than 500,000, is ranked just above Fayetteville, NC, at 107th, with a population of 535,000. The Arkansas metropolitan areas, however, is growing about twice as fast as the one in North Carolina, so some distance in ranking between the two is likely to result in the years to com.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Photograph: Phoenix, largest metropolitan area net domestic migration gain since 2000 (by author).