WP: Cities Losing People After '90s Influx, Census Bureau Finds

[DeepModem Mom]

Cities Losing People After '90s Influx, Census Bureau Finds
Jobs, Cheaper Housing in Suburbs Attracting Immigrants

By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 30, 2005; Page A03


After shedding residents for decades, many U.S. cities revived in the 1990s, with immigrants streaming in and gentrification resurrecting downtowns with lofts, coffee bars and trendy restaurants.

But new Census Bureau estimates to be released today show many cities slipping again. More than two dozen large cities that had been growing a decade ago are shrinking. Fast-growing suburbs with service-sector jobs and more affordable housing are attracting thousands of foreign-born residents who in the past would have started out in the city.

The list of former gainers that have lost population since 2000 include Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis and San Francisco....

***

Regionally, the biggest change was in the Midwest, where a third of cities lost population in the 1990s but more than 60 percent did this decade, according to Frey's calculations. The South and West also have more losing cities this decade, including San Francisco and nearby Oakland, where demographers blamed high housing prices and the collapse of the high-tech economy. Frey's analysis also found that expansion slowed in some formerly fast-growing cities.

The only region that has fewer shrinking cities this decade is the Northeast, where some older places such as Newark, N.J., and New Haven, Conn., have rebounded after decades of loss. The estimates found that New York City has kept growing since 2000, and that longtime population-losing older cities such as Cleveland and Philadelphia continued to shrink....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902663.html

[AndyTiedye]

1. I Find It Hard to Believe the Population of San Francisco Went Down

Unless the speculators are turning the properties over so fast
they don't even bother trying to rent them out anymore.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. I think these paragraphs address cities like San Fran --

"In Boston, economist Paul Harrington of Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies said the city was hurt by the collapse of the high-tech economy that also damaged San Francisco and other highflying urban centers of the 1990s. Boston's job base shrank 7 percent from late 2001 to late 2004, he said.

'The job creation in the city and state has just been poor,' he said. 'To see this slowdown and population decline is not surprising in the context of that job performance.'

But demographers emphasize that population growth is not the only measure of a city's success. In Washington, which has been losing population for years, 'its housing market is stronger and its fiscal markets are stronger than it was 100,000 people ago,' said Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Center at Virginia Tech.

Like other cities whose reputations but not populaces are growing, he said, 'if you promote yourself to singles, childless couples, gays, the creative class, that's not going to grow your population, but it's going to grow your municipal budget.'"

[Gormy Cuss]

4. Smaller households may explain it.

There are fewer families with children in SF these days, for whatever reasons. The average number of people per household has decreased and the housing stock is relatively constant so the result would be a modest decrease in the population.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

5. That's the explanation for many cities, I think

I was reading an analysis of Cincinnati in the Enquirer on-line, and the local county statistician said that there are more households in the city than there were a few years ago, just fewer people in each household.

Translation: Families with children are headed out to the burbs. Singles and empty-nesters are moving back downtown.

[MetaTrope]

3. Gentrification continues to grow explosively in Chicago

Where affordable apartments are being replaced with condos EVERYWHERE...I just don't have the slightest idea who's buying all these new units.