New Report Finds One Demographic is Disproportionately Behind America's Urban Revival
Virtual think-tank City Observatory, run by Strong Towns member Joe Cortright, is one of our favorite places to turn to for data analysis about what's happening in America's cities. This week, City Observatory has released a new report, titled Youth Movement: Accelerating America's Urban Renaissance. You can find the report, as well as an interactive dashboard that lets you examine data for your own metropolitan area, at cityobservatory.org.
City Observatory frequently debunks prominent claims that America, post-Great Recession, has returned to a preference for suburbs over cities. This claim is usually based on a coarse look at county-level data. This is misleading because counties can vary dramatically in their size and character. City Observatory, on the other hand, opts to ignore arbitrary political borders like cities and counties and examine a uniform measure: the 3-mile radius around the center of the Central Business District in each of America's 52 largest metropolitan areas. They call these areas, which tend to be dense, walkable, and mixed-use, "close-in neighborhoods."
Light rail in downtown Phoenix. Image source.
What they find is that the total population of "close-in" neighborhoods in the study grew by 7.5 percent from 2010 to 2018, faster than the 5.8% growth of the country as a whole. The majority of this trend, however, was driven by one particular demographic: 25- to 34-year olds with college degrees. The number of such educated young adults in close-in neighborhoods has grown by a whopping 32 percent in just that eight-year period. And the trend is universal: it happened in every single one of the 52 metros studied.
This is a reversal of a long-term trend, dating to the beginnings of mass suburbanization, of inner-city decline and population loss. It shows that America's urban renaissance is real and not limited to the Bostons and San Franciscos of the world. But it also suggests that, if it doesn't feel real in your experience, it just might be because you're outside that group of educated young people that is predominantly driving it. Not all of America's people are experiencing the same urban revival—even if all of its big cities are to some extent.
The places where this trend is pronounced aren't the ones you might expect. As City Observatory finds:
Three cities recorded double-digit annual growth rates in the number of well-educated young adults in these neighborhoods—Detroit, Nashville and Phoenix. Detroit’s numbers represent a big turnaround after decades of population decline in its close-in urban neighborhoods. Both Detroit and Phoenix are exhibiting large growth rates from a very small base (each had about than 3,000 well-educated young adults in close-in neighborhoods in 2010).
In places where the trend was already more established, though, it continued in large absolute numbers:
Five cities each recorded an increase of 20,000 more well-educated young adults in close-in neighborhoods after 2010: Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington.
The rest of the report also helpfully debunks a number of myths about how to understand the demographics and relative growth of cities. For example.
Myth: Growing numbers of millennials buying suburban homes shows that enthusiasm for urban living is waning.
Reality: It can be misleading to follow a single cohort of people as they age and their life circumstances change—the key is to compare people who are a given age now to people who were the same age in previous years. When you do that, here's what you find:
Millennial homebuyers consistently chose locations closer to central cities when compared to older generations when they were at the same age, suggesting that these young adults are making a longer term commitment that is likely to shape cities for some time (Raymond et al., 2018).
It appears that a preference for urban work, living and leisure is a deeply seated generational shift; the Urban Institute reports that its surveys show that 55 percent of young adults spend time in the principal city of their metro area on a daily basis, rates considerably higher than for older generations (Scott et al., 2020).
Myth: Stagnating or declining populations in places like New York reveal that those cities are losing their appeal.
Reality: A major confounding factor here is America’s “shortage of cities.” It may be housing cost, not any lack of desirability, driving (or keeping) people away:
High and rising property values for central and walkable locations signal both the high value that consumers attach to these attributes, and their relative short supply. One of the principal reasons for rising rents in these neighborhoods is that it has been essentially illegal to build places with these characteristics (high levels of density, a mix of shops and restaurants, a range of housing types, and high levels of walkability) in much of the United States. In addition, because of strict local zoning limits, it’s been difficult to build new housing in some of the most in-demand neighborhoods (Murray & Schuetz, 2019). To the extent we are seeing a slowing of population growth in close-in neighborhoods, it appears to be chiefly a problem of limited housing supply, rather than waning demand to live in America’s most urban places.
Myth: COVID-19 spells the end of urban density.
Reality: Premature predictions that Everything Is Different Now™ accompany every cataclysmic world event:
We were told technology would obviate the need to be in urban locations, because the Internet would "flatten" the world. We were told that the fear of terrorism after 9/11 would prompt people to move out of the city.
While there’s definitely some panicky pandemic punditry predicting people will abandon cities, the best evidence suggests that’s not even close to happening.... In April 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Zillow reports that the market share of searches for urban locations increased nationally, and also rose in 29 of 35 large metro areas (Tucker, 2020). The share of searches for suburban locations declined in every one of these 35 markets—exactly opposite of what you’d expect if the market were turning against cities.
There’s little reason to believe pandemic concerns will blunt the advantages and attractiveness of urban living. One of the most robust decades for central city growth in the United States, the 1920’s, followed directly after the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19. Cities have weathered and adapted in the face of outbreaks of contagious diseases for centuries, and will likely do so again.
You can read the rest of the report at City Observatory.
Cover image of downtown Nashville via Unsplash.
Daniel Herriges has been a regular contributor to Strong Towns since 2015 and is a founding member of the Strong Towns movement. He is the co-author of Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis, with Charles Marohn. Daniel now works as the Policy Director at the Parking Reform Network, an organization which seeks to accelerate the reform of harmful parking policies by educating the public about these policies and serving as a connecting hub for advocates and policy makers. Daniel’s work reflects a lifelong fascination with cities and how they work. When he’s not perusing maps (for work or pleasure), he can be found exploring out-of-the-way neighborhoods on foot or bicycle. Daniel has lived in Northern California and Southwest Florida, and he now resides back in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, along with his wife and two children. Daniel has a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota.