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Houston is eventually going to become mature city as it will let more towns incorporate or annex the unincorporated land near them. It is kind of weird how Houston is, Galveston County and SE Harris is filled with incorporated towns while Montgomery, Northwest Harris, Fort Bend and to a lesser extent Brazoria Is filled with unincorporated cities and massive school districts. Northwest Harris County is approaching 2 million living in unincorporated land mostly near the suburbs of Cypress, Klein, Spring and Katy areas.
A core city that has core decay but annexes its surroundings isn't really developing that differently from one not annexing. Kansas City may fall under this. By just looking at core cities, Los Angeles and NYC would fall under the same category. Maybe Los Angeles is a mature city now, but it seems odd to have them together.
I'm not sure about Kansas City, but I know I have read if you compare the core of Indianapolis from prior to Unigov, the level of population decline in the "old urban" zone is pretty much identical to what was seen in other similarly sized cities in the Rust Belt. So it's true that annexation can mask the decline of inner urban neighborhoods.
Of course, the same processes happened earlier in the 20th century as well. Pittsburgh is considered a city with narrow city limits, and its population peaked around 1950 or so. But the small population increases through the 30s and 40s were driven by development of the few remaining undeveloped neighborhoods. A lot of the core urban portions of Pittsburgh had been in steady decline since 1900.
Anyway, I do disagree that city limits being broad or narrow has no effect on the development of a city. Again using Indianapolis as an example, Unigov ensured that Republicans who lived in what elsewhere would be the "suburbs" remained in political control of the city constantly from 1968 through to 2000. As a result, there was a voting majority in the city who were interested in the inner city only as much as it could serve suburban interests - as a location for stadiums, office towers, and plentiful parking. Outside of the U.S. a similar dynamic happened in Toronto, where annexation of its suburbs allowed Rob Ford to rise to power, who then went about trying to do things like eliminate bike lanes.
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Originally Posted by nei
I'll add that high immigration cities tend to have high domestic out-migration. Partly because immigrants displace natives (not necessarily flight, but immigrants tend to be more interested in concentrating in a specific neighborhood or city). Also because if the city is favored by immigrants who have just arrived, some of the new immigrants after a decade or two will move out to elsewhere once they feel more settled. These new immigrants [and maybe their children] become domestic out-migrants.
Hypothetically, if a city had a constant influx of immigrants, 1/2 of them left after 10 years + some had children in the city, it would have a high domestic out-migration even if the non-immigrants stayed put.
Yeah, I was not making a claim that domestic migration outflow can be seen as solely, or even predominantly "white flight." Now that I think about it, I do wonder though if domestic migration outflows (adjusted for population) are greater in dynamic cities with immigration inflow than in rust belt cities. I would presume they are, if for no other reason than cost.
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Originally Posted by Katarina Witt
Omaha may not be considered "sun-belt" but it's pretty sunny, equal to San Antonio, TX and Pensacola, FL. It hasn't annexed anything for about 10 years, and can't annex outside of Douglas County, which it has almost entirely annexed. http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/c...pctposrank.txt
Omaha has room to expand still. Judging by this map it can take in anything still shown in white in its home county.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt
Except for a patch in Adams County, Denver is surrounded by incorporated suburbs, and also prohibited by the Colorado Constitution from annexing w/o the affirmative vote of both the City/County of Denver and the other county.
Denver has been in the process of building out the Stapleton area over the last 15 years, which has undoubtedly contributed to its population growth. Denver also had big increases in its Latino population up until around 2000. Admittedly in the 15 years since then it's likely that similar to a few other western cities it's likely that denser development within the core of the city has been the major driver of population growth.
I'm not sure about Kansas City, but I know I have read if you compare the core of Indianapolis from prior to Unigov, the level of population decline in the "old urban" zone is pretty much identical to what was seen in other similarly sized cities in the Rust Belt. So it's true that annexation can mask the decline of inner urban neighborhoods.
Of course, the same processes happened earlier in the 20th century as well. Pittsburgh is considered a city with narrow city limits, and its population peaked around 1950 or so. But the small population increases through the 30s and 40s were driven by development of the few remaining undeveloped neighborhoods. A lot of the core urban portions of Pittsburgh had been in steady decline since 1900.
Anyway, I do disagree that city limits being broad or narrow has no effect on the development of a city. Again using Indianapolis as an example, Unigov ensured that Republicans who lived in what elsewhere would be the "suburbs" remained in political control of the city constantly from 1968 through to 2000. As a result, there was a voting majority in the city who were interested in the inner city only as much as it could serve suburban interests - as a location for stadiums, office towers, and plentiful parking. Outside of the U.S. a similar dynamic happened in Toronto, where annexation of its suburbs allowed Rob Ford to rise to power, who then went about trying to do things like eliminate bike lanes.
Yeah, I was not making a claim that domestic migration outflow can be seen as solely, or even predominantly "white flight." Now that I think about it, I do wonder though if domestic migration outflows (adjusted for population) are greater in dynamic cities with immigration inflow than in rust belt cities. I would presume they are, if for no other reason than cost.
Omaha has room to expand still. Judging by this map it can take in anything still shown in white in its home county.
Denver has been in the process of building out the Stapleton area over the last 15 years, which has undoubtedly contributed to its population growth. Denver also had big increases in its Latino population up until around 2000. Admittedly in the 15 years since then it's likely that similar to a few other western cities it's likely that denser development within the core of the city has been the major driver of population growth.
Doing a brief search, I was wrong to say Omaha hasn't annexed anything since it annexed Elkhorn. However, more recent annexations have not been as large.
I'm not sure what your point is with Denver. You guys always like to say Denver is "different" if I point out that it doesn't fit with your predetermined ideas about western cities.
Houston is eventually going to become mature city as it will let more towns incorporate or annex the unincorporated land near them. It is kind of weird how Houston is, Galveston County and SE Harris is filled with incorporated towns while Montgomery, Northwest Harris, Fort Bend and to a lesser extent Brazoria Is filled with unincorporated cities and massive school districts. Northwest Harris County is approaching 2 million living in unincorporated land mostly near the suburbs of Cypress, Klein, Spring and Katy areas.
I honestly wished Houston could de-annex much of the city limits. Especially everything outside Beltway 8. The Texas cities cover too much land tbh.
Anyway, I do disagree that city limits being broad or narrow has no effect on the development of a city.
Hmm. I still don't think they're a great way to compare city development pattterns; not sure what you're trying to compare.
If I were going to make a city categorization system. I would measure by two variables: housing prices and population growth (using metro/urban areas). A spectrum but you could tease out several groups: High housing prices and low population growth are metros where growth is partly constrained by housing supply from zoning and/or geography; somewhat correspond to your "mature cities". Low housing prices and low growth would correspond mostly to "rust belt cities". Low housing prices and high growth would correspond to much of the "sunbelt cities" group. High housing prices and high growth — impossible to have as high growth as sunbelt cities with high housing prices but a few particularly prosperous metros could stand for having both (Bay Area especially, DC and perhaps southern California and Seattle).
DC seems to have a rather low foreign born population (12%), it's still higher than the classic rust belt cities (3-7%) but similar to Philadelphia (11.6%) and lower than Chicago (20.6%) and much lower than classic mature cities like NYC (35.7%), SF (34.1%), LA (39.7%) and Boston (25.1%).
DC doesn't have any room for greenfield growth and it's been that way for a long time, but despite having much fewer immigrants it's a lot more like the classic mature cities than Philadelphia and Chicago which are more of a hybrid of rust belt and mature city.
I think the high immigration rates are more of an effect than a cause of the "success" of the mature cities. These mature cities have certain characteristics that make them desirable, which means people want to move to them, but due to limits on growth, that results in low growth and high prices.
NYC, SF and LA have a long history of immigration with immigrant communities that have deep roots in those cities, which makes them more desirable for new waves of immigration. However because there's no room for much population growth and prices are high, that means other people move out to make way for the immigrants, hence the high domestic outmigration rates.
DC doesn't seem to have as much of a history of immigration but instead has more established African American and White communities. It's still desirable with all the government jobs plus it's a fairly nice vibrant city though, so it probably has more domestic migration instead.
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