Grand Rapids/Lakeshore urban population stats (Muskegon, Holland: home, buyers, to move)

[mjlo]

So in my typical stats nerd fashion I monitor the population fluxes in the local urban areas. Note these are NOT scientific or based off of official urbanized populations. I just take clusters of more immediate suburbs that contain continuous urbanized development from the core and add them together.

You'll note not so unexpectedly that the areas around Grand Rapids are growing faster than the Lakeshore cities. Grand Rapids western suburbs in Ottawa County are growing twice as fast as the region as a whole. Based on that I believe the commuting numbers between Kent and Ottawa counties are getting stronger. It's unlikely that we'll see the two counties separated again for the 2023 metro realignment.

The areas around Grand Haven are growing faster than Holland and Muskegon. Hollands slower growth surprises me somewhat. I'm wondering if it might have anything to do with Johnson Controls taking it's automotive business and piecing it out. They haven't lost jobs, but those companies have been in a transition state. This slowed growth might also be from the housing crunch forcing new residents and home buyers further out into the rural parts of Ottawa County as well.

Muskegon's growth has actually picked up a little. It is the most stagnant of all areas in the region and more closely resembles other small Michigan post industrial metro areas that are struggling to find their footing. There's been a lot of positive news coming out of Muskegon and the county as a whole seems to be benefiting from new residents looking to find housing further away from Kent/Ottawa Counties and the housing shortage.

Grand Rapids


Holland


Muskegon


Grand haven

[Indentured Servant]

Thanks. I really appreciate your itemizing. You are definitely a bigger demographic nerd than I am....and I thought I had it bad.

[bartonro]

Appreciate the info... does this include the cities of Rockford and Caledonia. I see Caledonia Township but not the city?

[mjlo]

Originally Posted by bartonro

Appreciate the info... does this include the cities of Rockford and Caledonia. I see Caledonia Township but not the city?

I actually forgot to include Caledonia Village which would be 2010 pop. 1511 2017 pop. 1625 an increase of 104 people or 6.88% growth.

I specifically left Rockford out of my methodology because while I do think there's continuous development between Rockford and GR, I feel like I would have needed to add largely rural Algoma and Cannon townships as well, possibly even Courtland township to represent the full Rockford area. Instead I added fast growing Allendale Township which I also think is questionable with the amount of rural space between Allendale and where development picks up again near the Ottawa/Kent line. I suppose I'm being too rigid as a stats nerd, while also using unscientific methodology.

So since Rockford and it's surrounding townships are true suburbs of GR here are adjusted totals below:



The Rockford area is growing almost as fast as the western Ottawa CO. suburbs. When adding the village of Caledonia in, it brings the total to 680,320 residents. I think it's a fairly accurate representation of urbanized GR. Although there is a fair amount of rural area added in, especially in Courtland Twp.

(As a side note I drive myself nuts the more I look at these things, as I find grammatical and formula errors included in the screenshot presentations lol)

[bartonro]

Awesome work! I'm curious if you did this for Allegan county as well. Specifically I'm wondering about the northeast area around Dorr, Wayland and Dutton around 131. Curious to see if enough growth is occurring that could include them in the MSA in the next round of classification.

[mjlo]

Originally Posted by bartonro

Awesome work! I'm curious if you did this for Allegan county as well. Specifically I'm wondering about the northeast area around Dorr, Wayland and Dutton around 131. Curious to see if enough growth is occurring that could include them in the MSA in the next round of classification.

The short answer is it's possible. The northern 131 corridor in Allegan county accounts for about 27% of the total population in Allgegan, but over 42% of the counties total growth.



So theoretically based on the 2010 population if there were 70,000 people in the work force in Allegan county, between 10,500 and 17,500 of them commuted into Kent County. Possibly Ottawa County too, i'm not sure how that works, if it's just the core county that's counted, or if it's the core county and it's feeder counties together that make the commuting threshold.

It depends on how close to that 25% threshold the county was at the time of the alignment. I don't have any of those numbers to make an educated guess. However we are talking a sizeable chunk of residents needing to move in order to commute, or to make a commute shift into Kent County in order for a realignment to happen. With the current numbers it really depends on how close the county was to begin with, to estimate what will happen in 2023. If it was closer to the 15% minimum I don't think their will be enough of a shift to change the alignment.