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| by Rachel Bogardus Drew Post-Doctoral Fellow |
Every spring, the Census Bureau publishes estimates of the population as of the prior July 1st at the
sub-county level (i.e., individual municipalities, incorporated places, and
non-incorporated county balances). Recent releases of these estimates suggest
that cities have been expanding faster than their suburbs, with annual average
population growth of 0.91 percent in 2010-2014 in the former, versus 0.77
percent average annual growth in the latter (Figure 1). Non-metropolitan areas, meanwhile, have recently seen
their populations decline, by an average of more than 0.25 percent annually
over the last four years.
Source: JCHS tabulations of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2014 Postcensal Population Estimates.
This recent trend of city populations growing faster than those
of suburbs is a dramatic departure from prior decades, when suburban population
growth significantly outpaced that of cities. Indeed, analyses by the Brookings Institution, using slightly different data and definitions of cities and
suburbs but reaching the same general conclusions, suggest that between 2000
and 2010 the suburbs of large metropolitan areas grew by 1.38 percent per year,
while the primary cities of large metro areas expanded by only 0.42 percent
annually.
Some commentators herald this trend as a long-awaited sign of a grand urban revival,
attributable to the combination of recent market events and long-running
demographic trends. They posit that cities are becoming more popular in the
wake of the late-2000s recession and downturn in housing markets, which exposed
many of the downsides to suburban living. Either unable or unwilling to purchase
homes in suburbs, the argument goes, more households are opting instead to live
in urban neighborhoods with their mix of affordable housing options and
lifestyle amenities. At the same time, some subsets of the population that are
traditionally more likely to live in cities, including young adults,
minorities, and childless households, have been increasing as a share of all
households. Even if all households continued to live in cities and suburbs at
the same rates as in the past, these demographic shifts alone would elevate the
populations of cities more than those of suburbs.
Not everyone agrees with the urban revival hypothesis,
however. Researchers
point out that the suburbs are still home to about half of the U.S. population,
and remain the location of choice for most households, including young families
and retirees. Proponents of this position further argue that the cities that are growing the most do not resemble the dense
cores that urbanists favor, but are instead places with lower densities and
auto-centric commuting patterns more akin to close-in suburbs.
The disparity in these viewpoints exists in part because of
the way that most analysts define cities and suburbs. Figure 1 above, for
example, uses the federal Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB)
classification of metropolitan areas and principal cities, and assumes that a
principal city is effectively the ‘urban’ portion of the metro area, with the
balance comprised only of ‘suburban’ places. This delineation, however, leaves
no room for judgments about individual communities that blur the lines between urban
and suburban areas. Some principal cities are themselves former suburbs that changed
their status by making themselves more appealing to certain residents and/or by
attracting a particularly large employer or industry, but that nonetheless retain
many of their former suburban characteristics, such as neighborhoods with
mostly single-family housing. Some suburbs, meanwhile, have developed dense
centers with walkable amenities akin to cities, giving residents a taste of
urban lifestyles in their small communities. The definitions used by OMB,
however, group such places together with low-density bedroom communities under
the broad umbrella category of suburbs. Indeed, even within a particular
municipality there can be neighborhoods that have a more urban or suburban feel
to them, so that classifying the entire municipality as either a city or suburb
ignores the diversity that attracts residents to it in the first place.
An alternative to the dichotomous definitions of city and
suburb is to categorize places on one or more spectrums that take into account the
different features of each type of community most significant to residents.
These features can include everything from population density to type of
housing stock, transportation usage, presence of retail establishments and
cultural amenities, and walkability. Some researchers have already developed
different classification schemes that take such characteristics into account,
using density and commuting statistics to identify cities that are more or less urban in
their character, or considering the degree of urbanization of suburban counties outside of large cities. Yet even
these approaches still rely on assigned administrative boundaries of cities,
counties, and metro areas that ignore the variations within them. A better
option for those studying population shifts would thus be to see past political
geography in favor of descriptive categories that better capture the diverse qualities
sought by people as they choose where to live; researchers should define a
spectrum of community types that represent this diversity. Such classifications
will not only allow for richer analyses, but will better reflect the reality of
where Americans live – not in cities or suburbs, but places that offer the best
combinations of amenities to meet the needs of modern households.
