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I was thinking about how to compare desirability between metro areas. I'm sure there are probably endless ways to try to compare but I wanted to focus on two.
Growth rate can show desirability since it reflects the desire of people to uproot their lives and relocate somewhere else for a better life.
Housing prices show desirability in that it reflects how much people are willing to pay to live in certain metro area. Higher prices couldn't be sustained if people didn't feel it was worth it.
I recognize there are endless ways to try to measure how desirable a place is but if you had to pick from these two options and choose only one, what would you pick?
Neither. No single statistic shows even 1/5 of the picture.
For example, housing prices in a growing city tend to reflect development cost. Why? Because not much gets built until prices reach the necessary levels. House prices have a lot of factors that vary dramatically from one city to the next.
Likewise does everyone who moves to a place doing so for desirability? Or are they putting up with the location only because a job is there? Are you including desirability by companies?
Desirability by any metric is also hugely different depending on what you're counting. For population growth, the answer will be very different among different age/career/income groups (retirees, 20-something college grads, post-docs, mid-career people, and so on). Same with company locations, where some will do anything to be in NY or SF and others care more about cost.
It has to be a mix of both but I lean towards population growth. Outside of maybe the Bay Area, people can still live in most American cities with low paying or mediocre jobs. Thing is, though, there is more to desirability than weather, urbanity, and diversity; at the core it is usually affordability, wells paying jobs, and family that people desire the most. A person looking for greener pastures can look at two different cities, one that is very urban, great weather, and amazing reputation, but prices that eat away more at their income, or one that is more suburban, overcast and gloomy, and considered boring, but with good incomes and affordable housing and goods. Which one that person chooses will have a lot to do with which positives the individual considers more important and desirable, not usually based on what that individual thinks, correctly or not, other people consider desirable. It seems that, for the US, people tend to prefer the second choice.
Though, it is unfair, in my opinion, to include natural population growth since that varies between states, and it unfairly gives an advantage to states like Utah and Texas, both of which have low death rates and high birth rates for American or developed standards. Instead, I look solely at growth from migration to get some grasp on desirability. I also agree that it is true that housing prices can only remain high so long as there are some people willing to pay that price.
Also, housing prices are very dependent on development. The Bay Area would be expensive regardless, but it is obvious that part of the reason it is so expensive now is the relative lack of new housing. I guarantee you that if the Bay Area built houses at the same pace as Houston or DFW, it would be much more affordable for people. The Bay Area is still a US metro, after all, so there are plenty of places it can build more houses or densify (looking at Seoul, which is a very livable city & metro despite being much denser).
I was thinking about how to compare desirability between metro areas. I'm sure there are probably endless ways to try to compare but I wanted to focus on two.
Growth rate can show desirability since it reflects the desire of people to uproot their lives and relocate somewhere else for a better life.
Housing prices show desirability in that it reflects how much people are willing to pay to live in certain metro area. Higher prices couldn't be sustained if people didn't feel it was worth it.
I recognize there are endless ways to try to measure how desirable a place is but if you had to pick from these two options and choose only one, what would you pick?
Growth rate can be a multitude of circumstances.. i.e. NYC/SF/Seattle/DC strong growth rates and it's not because its cheap but location, location, location whereareas other cities people move to because it's affordable and has a decent amount of jobs..and usually they are more or less from local/regional areas or didn't make enough to stay in the more "desirable" and "hip" cities.
Growth rate can be a multitude of circumstances.. i.e. NYC/SF/Seattle/DC strong growth rates and it's not because its cheap but location, location, location whereareas other cities people move to because it's affordable and has a decent amount of jobs..and usually they are more or less from local/regional areas or didn't make enough to stay in the more "desirable" and "hip" cities.
Or because of a perception of a better life via warmer weather and amusement parks visited while on vacation at Mickey World in the instance of Orlando for example, where many find via lack of homework that everyday life isn't an ongoing replication of that dream vacation.
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