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The city that stands out to me in those numbers is Nashville: its growth is surprisingly tepid. It has not hit 1% year over year growth since 2014-2015. It is beaten pretty easily by some geographically smaller, denser cities like DC, Denver, and Seattle, and even Boston is basically neck and neck with Nashville over the last decade.
This really does not line up with the theory that city limit growth is driven by room to expand.
Of course, the GDP growth in Nashville has been fairly significant, so there is something going on there. (Similar to Chicago in that way).
The city that stands out to me in those numbers is Nashville: its growth is surprisingly tepid. It has not hit 1% year over year growth since 2014-2015. It is beaten pretty easily by some geographically smaller, denser cities like DC, Denver, and Seattle, and even Boston is basically neck and neck with Nashville over the last decade.
This really does not line up with the theory that city limit growth is driven by room to expand.
Of course, the GDP growth in Nashville has been fairly significant, so there is something going on there. (Similar to Chicago in that way).
Nashville-Davidson County has limited buildable land due to topography. I think that suburban Williamson County should show some decent increases, that seems to be where the residential boom is. Locals, please correct me if this isn't accurate.
The city that stands out to me in those numbers is Nashville: its growth is surprisingly tepid. It has not hit 1% year over year growth since 2014-2015. It is beaten pretty easily by some geographically smaller, denser cities like DC, Denver, and Seattle, and even Boston is basically neck and neck with Nashville over the last decade.
This really does not line up with the theory that city limit growth is driven by room to expand.
Of course, the GDP growth in Nashville has been fairly significant, so there is something going on there. (Similar to Chicago in that way).
When your buddies tell you they're moving to Nashville, what they actually mean is that they're moving to a suburb of nashville. At least, that's how I've seen it play out with friends and acquaintances.
Convo
"I'm moving to Nashville! To hell with expensive California"
"Isn't Nashville pretty expensive, bro? I don't think you'll be saving much money"
"Actually, I'm moving to (suburb name) and it'll be a 25 minute drive to downtown nashvegas. My house was only was 300k, bro. And I get my own fishing pond near my cul de sac. You jelly"
"No"
Gentrification peaked more so in the early-mid 2010s millennials are all out of college and the oldest are 38/39. They’re having kids and leaving the cities. Gen Z is much smaller and the rents in cities have gotten unattainable. Also expanded delivery, new apartment complexes, technology/social media and increasing diversity have made suburbs less disadvantageous and less dissimilar than cities.
I'm not sure if I see the "return to the suburbs" narrative. Downtown cores around the country have been booming. There is the Yogi Berra fallacy here: if everybody was leaving the city cores rents would not be unattainable. I think there is a swap happening where lower and middle classes are moving to the suburbs, but the professional and upper classes are moving into the city cores.
What you've seen in a few cities is that prices have gotten so high even the highly paid professionals cannot afford them. (eg: SF). But that's less an issue of preferences and more about NIMBY-ism and the world only having so many multi-millionaires.
I'm not sure if I see the "return to the suburbs" narrative. Downtown cores around the country have been booming. There is the Yogi Berra fallacy here: if everybody was leaving the city cores rents would not be unattainable. I think there is a swap happening where lower and middle classes are moving to the suburbs, but the professional and upper classes are moving into the city cores.
What you've seen in a few cities is that prices have gotten so high even the highly paid professionals cannot afford them. (eg: SF). But that's less an issue of preferences and more about NIMBY-ism and the world only having so many multi-millionaires.
In 2019 (Pre COVID), Downtowns were building buildings that were conceived during the boom years. It’s not a”return to the suburbs” it’s just people get older and move to the suburbs for the schools and for space. It’s not like the prior generations but it’s still happening. You need young people to move into the cities and there’s fewer of those early/mid 20s type now than in 2010 and they can’t afford the city.
You said it yourself-even well paid people can’t afford many cities right now. And Suburbia isn’t the suburbia of old, as I said earlier. While much of the first half of the 2010s was all about capitalizing off the depressed real estate market, that time is over now..in the 2020s I think we’ll see much less growth in population in general and it be more evenly distributed amongst suburbs, super cities and mid level cities.
While I won't quibble that these cities offer a nice quality of life at a relatively affordable price (I lived in Dallas from 2003 - 2013), I would respectfully disagree with your assessment that they show no sign of slowing down. In fact, the data suggests that over the past two years, there was a significant slowdown in Dallas & Houston. Dallas actually turned negative in one of the years.
Now, we know that the suburbs continue to expand in these areas, but the cities themselves (as sprawling geographically as they are) will at some point become built out like the more dense coastal cities. There will be some infill projects of course, but my guess is that they will come down off of the "boom decades" growth that we've seen since the turn of the century.
I don't know the circumstances, but considering that Dallas' population only grew a cumulative 0.8% from 2000-2010, it's definitely conceivable that it could have minimal growth again. It has happened before (and recently).
I'm also skeptical of the long-term demand of density/infill in many sunbelt regions' primary cities. The infrastructure is just not in place for non-auto living and people don't move to cheaper regions to live in smaller living conditions. I think growth will ultimately be in the suburbs, which will make the region develop more suburban activity nodes. So while the regions' population may boom, the primary cities' will not.
I do think that suburbs are becoming more attractive places once again for a number of reasons. The most interesting one to me is that the suburbs have really invested in building up their dilapidate town centers to offer a semi-urban environment. Then, of course, there are the traditional reasons like housing cost/size, schools, etc.
I don't know about your regions, but San Diego suburbs have invested heavily in their Main Streets and downtowns to make them hip and attractive to young people. Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista, Escondido, La Mesa, San Marcos, Chula Vista, etc. are either sprucing up their existing urban areas (Vista, Oceanside) or literally building entirely new ones (SM, Chula Vista). They've done a great job at offering the best of both worlds.
Bear in mind that Dallas is virtually at full build out, unless it starts building upward. So there isn't much room to absorb too many people. It's a big difference from say Phoenix or San Antonio, which both still have plenty of undeveloped land within their borders.
That said, I hate threads like this because they give a misleading picture of the growth the city's experiencing. With Dallas, because the city proper and inner ring suburbs are fully built out, development is rapidly sprawling north and eastward to places like Prosper, Rockwall and Melissa. On a metro level, it still remains the fastest growing region in the country by far, almost mimicking the insane growth rates LA experienced in the 70s and 80s (with no signs of a slow down).
Bear in mind that Dallas is virtually at full build out, unless it starts building upward. So there isn't much room to absorb too many people. It's a big difference from say Phoenix or San Antonio, which both still have plenty of undeveloped land within their borders.
That said, I hate threads like this because they give a misleading picture of the growth the city's experiencing. With Dallas, because the city proper and inner ring suburbs are fully built out, development is rapidly sprawling north and eastward to places like Prosper, Rockwall and Melissa. On a metro level, it still remains the fastest growing region in the country by far, almost mimicking the insane growth rates LA experienced in the 70s and 80s (with no signs of a slow down).
While I agree it is an incomplete picture of a region's growth and a comparison of arbitrary city boundaries, I think it can be a helpful to understand how and where regions are growing (e.g. primary city vs. suburbs). Also, many of the primary cities on the list are built out, so it's helpful to compare infill growth.
I posted this to a city-related forum, so if anyone finds this "misleading" and are unable to distinguish city vs. region, perhaps they should find a different forum.
Gentrification peaked more so in the early-mid 2010s millennials are all out of college and the oldest are 38/39. They’re having kids and leaving the cities. Gen Z is much smaller and the rents in cities have gotten unattainable. Also expanded delivery, new apartment complexes, technology/social media and increasing diversity have made suburbs less disadvantageous and less dissimilar than cities.
I think for urban cities like Boston, NYC and Seattle growth was driven by immigration. That immigration dried up significantly.
In less urban cities like there is no point in living in the City of Dallas vs Irvine or Arlington. Same built environment outside a few neighborhoods.
Like Atlanta has more urban amenities than Nashville, Dallas or Houston and is growing more strongly than those center cities because there is more neighborhoods that you can live car-lite take MARTA and such.
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