Exodus from city slows to a trickle (Pittsburgh, Akron: houses, unemployment rate)

[Heit]

Exodus from city slows to trickle

[BrianTH]

As I have noted before, I think there is decent reason to believe the City's population is higher than the Census estimate methodology would suggest, and may well be growing. But it is nice to know that even given the Census methodology, the population has essentially leveled off.

[PeterRabbit]

I think a big reason for the population decline starting in the 1950s was because families started having 2 kids instead of 7 as in previous generations. Possibly the same amount or even more houses are occupied now except with less people than back then. Boomers continued the trend of not having tons of kids and as a result their parents, WWII generation and older, were dying at a rate faster than were being born even if nobody ever left town. If we want a high pop. again we need to start rearing more kids.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by PeterRabbit

I think a big reason for the population decline starting in the 1950s was because families started having 2 kids instead of 7 as in previous generations. Possibly the same amount or even more houses are occupied now except with less people than back then. Boomers continued the trend of not having tons of kids and as a result their parents, WWII generation and older, were dying at a rate faster than were being born even if nobody ever left town. If we want a high pop. again we need to start rearing more kids.

It is definitely true there are fewer persons per household today on average, which is a function both of lower fertility rates and also increased longevity (more people living longer, healthier lives means more household with only one or two people on the back end of the typical life cycle).

Nonetheless, the City was down about 25,000 occupied housing units from 1960 to 2000. Moreover, changes in the nature of the economy have made available many "brownfield" sites and vacant building spaces in the City where additional residential units could be developed. And that is part of how otherwise similar but recently growing cities have dealt with the issue of declining persons per household (adding more residential units in sites and spaces previously used for commercial purposes).

Looking forward, I think the City is likely already in the midst of a bit of a persons per household recovery, as younger families are starting to replace the remainder of the steel era population. After that, we have room to grow at least by replacing those 25,000 fewer units, plus likely tens of thousands more units in brownfields, upper-floor conversions, and so on. After that--well, after that it gets interesting, but that is likely decades in the future at best.

[Geeo]

It feels like we've been on the tipping point of starting to grow again in the last few years. Lots of factors involved: pretty decent economy compared with other parts of the country, starting to reverse the effects of the young people exodus of the 80s, people moving here for the eds and meds jobs, and a good quality of life. Once the births start to outnumber deaths, we'll start to have a natural population increase again.

[RockLobster]

But Toledo, yeh that Toledo leap frogged the burgh in city population and they are even boasting about it. Uggghhh. Will be nice when the growth starts in truth and the negative media on out migration comes to an end, long last !

[PreservationPioneer]

Other good news for our region -- Wheeling, WV (which has had a long history of population decline since the 1930s) only lost 50 or so residents last year. So it looks like that city might be leveling off, too.

[BrianTH]

Just an aside, but central city population comparisons aren't very meaningful. For example, Toledo contains 80.6 square miles of land, to Pittsburgh's 55.5. About 44% of the population of the Toledo Metropolitan Area is included in the City of Toledo, whereas the City of Pittsburgh includes only about 13% of the Pittsburgh Metro. The urbanized-area population (think central city and major suburbs) of Pittsburgh is around 1.75 million, to Toledo's about 500,000. And so on.

In other words, if you drew the City of Pittsburgh's boundaries to the same relative scale as the City of Toledo's boundaries, then as expected, the City of Pittsburgh would be a lot more populous.

[youngabe]

I don't want to get into a pissing contest with cities, but when I read that about Toledo, I majorly laughed and actually did some research about Toledo. My ignorance was telling me that Toledo was on the size of an Akron / Canton like city! But BrianTH has an excellent point regarding the surrounding areas of our much more superior city! (Couldn't resist throwing that one in there!)

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by RockLobster

But Toledo, yeh that Toledo leap frogged the burgh in city population and they are even boasting about it. Uggghhh. Will be nice when the growth starts in truth and the negative media on out migration comes to an end, long last !

I'm originally from Toledo, I haven't heard anybody boast about it. For most people that I mentioned it to, it was news to them. I'm just curious if you saw an article or a post someplace boasting about it? Toledo in general has some major self-esteem issues, so if anything, I would think Toledoans would focus more on the loss in population in general, rather than "hey we lost less than Pittsburgh, that city with decent unemployment rates, multiple corporate headquarters, and that even played host to an international summit last year"

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Just an aside, but central city population comparisons aren't very meaningful. For example, Toledo contains 80.6 square miles of land, to Pittsburgh's 55.5. About 44% of the population of the Toledo Metropolitan Area is included in the City of Toledo, whereas the City of Pittsburgh includes only about 13% of the Pittsburgh Metro. The urbanized-area population (think central city and major suburbs) of Pittsburgh is around 1.75 million, to Toledo's about 500,000. And so on.

In other words, if you drew the City of Pittsburgh's boundaries to the same relative scale as the City of Toledo's boundaries, then as expected, the City of Pittsburgh would be a lot more populous.

On that same note, the Metropolitan Statistical Areas are vastly different in size, too. Toledo's is 1,619 squre miles while Pittsburgh's is 5,706 square miles. Of course, I think this is unavoidable with a city like Toledo, where it literally borders another state and is within an hour of much larger city like Detroit, which would have a legitimate claim to most of the nearby areas of Michigan. I wonder what the methodology for determining the "Urban Areas" is, I feel like that is much more representative (as in, Pittsburgh feels about 3 times the size of Toledo to me, not 8)

Not that it makes much difference. Population size is not the only deciding factor and it would be pretty ridiculous for Toledo to even try to compare itself to Pittsburgh in most areas. The only things I can think of that you could possibly argue Toledo is comparable to or better than Pittsburgh on is housing costs and general location (Round-trip one day drives are possible to Chicago, Indy, Detroit, Cincy, Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo)...but that would be pretty much it. If I were making the opposite list, giving areas where I think Pittsburgh bests Toledo, we'd be here all day. They aren't even in the same league, if you ask me.