The last few years have seen Americans gradually shift from suburban living to more city living. I was curious what others thought of this trend. City living seems like it would be more PO friendly. More walking/mass transit and less driving for example.
More Americans are moving to cities in the wake of the slight uptick in the economy in recent years, reversing the decades-long trend of settling in the suburbs. New Census Bureau data shows that the American city is experiencing something of a renaissance, driven primarily by migration into the center of the nation’s metropolitan areas. The shift in population to America’s metro areas has been increasing since 2010, when the economic recovery began picking up. The trend in city living is driven primarily by two groups: young professionals and Baby Boomers, who are retiring and moving back to the cities they left when they started families.
Among the cities with the highest “natural increase” are Washington, D.C., and Provo-Orem, Utah. Houston had the largest numeric increase, gaining about 138,000 people between 2012 and 2013. In Philadelphia, the population grew last year by 0.29 percent. Most of the country’s fastest-growing metro areas are in the Midwest, and fueled by job opportunities in energy industries like mining, oil, and gas, according to the Census Bureau. Metro areas with highest growth rates include Odessa, Texas; Fargo, N.D./Minn.; and The Villages, Fla. New Orleans also saw a growth in population. Gordon Russell at The New Orleans Advocate reports that the city saw a 2.5 percent population increase from 2012, but the city’s population remains roughly 20 percent lower than before Katrina struck almost nine years ago.
Increased urban density can also be attributed to significant investment by cities in infrastructure and transportation. Speaking with USA Today, Robert Lang at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, said the U.S. essentially had to “learn how to build cities a second time.”
More Americans Moving to Cities, Reversing the Suburban ExodusA recent report on the suburb-dotted New York counties of Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk, based on United States census data, found that young people seem to be lingering longer in New York City, sometimes forsaking suburban life entirely.
Since 2000, Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk have experienced a drop in the number of 25- to 44-year-olds, with the declines particularly sharp in more affluent communities. Between 2000 and 2011, Rye, for example, had a 63 percent decrease in 25- to 34-year-old residents and a 16 percent decrease in 35- to 44-year-olds. In three Maryland suburbs outside Washington, Chevy Chase lost 34 percent of its 25- to 34-year-olds, Bethesda 19.2 percent and Potomac 27 percent. The declines were comparable for Kenilworth, Winnetka and Glencoe outside Chicago, and Nantucket, Barnstable and Norfolk Counties outside Boston.
The suburban towns face increasingly tough competition from the city. Meghan Bernhardt, a 29-year-old child psychotherapist, grew up in Roslyn on Long Island and now lives in Brooklyn. She likes her ability to do so much without ever leaving the neighborhood. Younger adults are becoming more drawn to denser, more compact urban environments that offer a number of amenities within walking distance of where they live.
Suburbs Try to Prevent an Exodus as Young Adults Move to Cities and StayThe latest housing numbers reflect an uptick in Americans abandoning their white-picket fences and two-car garages for a sky-high abode with a downtown view. Americans are experiencing an urban renaissance of unanticipated proportions, as young people graduate college and flock to cities, delaying buying a home and perhaps rejecting the suburban ideal altogether. In 2005, multifamily housing accounted for just 17% of all housing starts. In 2013, multifamily housing accounted for fully 33% of starts. Data released last week on housing starts in March reinforce that trend, with multifamily homes, a good portion of it high-rise apartment buildings, accounting for 40% of all new construction.
That’s because people are moving to cities: net migration was the largest contributor to population growth in all but five of the 50 fastest-growing metro areas. Census data released last month show that metropolitan areas across the country grew at a faster rate last year than the rest of the country, with cities like Austin, Texas and Seattle, Washington growing especially swiftly. Metro areas grew faster than the U.S. as a whole between 2012 and 2013 (0.9 percent compared with 0.7 percent). For millennials today, leaving Levittown for the bright lights of downtown has become a rite of passage.
“There’s been a surge in urban apartment building,” says chief economist for the National Association of Homebuilders, David Crowe. “The 25- to 34-year-old age group is focused on living near their peers. They want be socially engaged and live near work. They want to reduce their automobile use. All of those things aim at high-density, urban-type living.”
Young people are interested in a different kind of life than earlier generations it seems. “Unlike their parents, who calculated their worth in terms of square feet, ultimately inventing the McMansion, […] this generation is more interested in the amenities of the city itself: great public spaces, walkability, diverse people and activities with which they can participate.”
The growth in multi-family residential construction isn’t purely aspirational, however. Many people are delaying buying a home out of sheer necessity. After the easy money of the subprime mortgage market of the mid-2000s led the country to the brink of a depression, banks have tightened their lending standards, making it much more difficult for homebuyers to purchase a property. The Urban Institute estimates that strict credit standards prevented between 300,000 and 1.2 million lenders from taking out mortgages in 2012 alone.
Whether or not the trend will last is a matter of debate, however. “I’m not convinced that this is a permanent change,” says Crowe of the move toward urbanization. For now, however, young people prefer cities. According to the Nielsen Company, 62% of millennials prefer to live in mixed-use communities found in urban centers, closer to shops, restaurants, and the office. And as the number of apartment buildings under construction continues to rise, it appears the exodus to the cities won’t be slowing anytime soon.
The New American Dream Is Living in a City, Not Owning a House in the Suburbs
The oil barrel is half-full.