Why is everyone leaving the city? (Pittsburgh, Lebanon: chapel, homes, neighborhoods)

[szug-bot]

This forum is not majority "city and only city". There are a COUPLE, or three passionate people leaning to that, sure. I am not one, but I do express a preference for it (centralized living), and an aversion to auto-centric dependency.

I think this topic is very interesting - the millenials have come of age & are having kids, people in general are enjoying cheaper, plentiful gas, etc. All these factors do not make this a surprise.

I was hoping for a long while the to-city trends would continue. A fantasy result of that would be to force PAT to increase options/frequency, and maybe homes and maybe entire streets can (finally) be improved to not look like they are a scene from a D-Day themed WWII era movie.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by charisb

Are people leaving cities because they don't want to live in cities, or because they are getting priced out? Certainly more affluent people have been moving into cities for the past few years since many want to be close to services and take advantage of walkability/public transportation.
Nationality there is more poverty in suburbs than cities now, but I am not sure if that is also the case in Pittsburgh.

Nationally I think it's a bit of all of the above, but more the latter. If you look at national statistics, for example, the 25-34 demographic (prime urban years) is decreasing slightly in urban areas, and increasing slightly in "hyper urban" areas. But this is because of young adults without college educations leaving cities, and young adults with college educations are replacing them. The "comeback of the city" is really just gentrification writ large.

At the same time though, data has suggested that those in early middle age (30s and early 40s) are heading to the suburbs at a faster rate than the 1990s. I haven't seen this broken down by education level - I'm guessing once again that the increase is being driven by early middle aged people without college degrees - but a lot of young professional types still do ultimately settle in suburbia.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by eschaton

At the same time though, data has suggested that those in early middle age (30s and early 40s) are heading to the suburbs at a faster rate than the 1990s.

I wonder if the underlying motivation for this has changed at all? Are more people preferring the suburbs now? Or are more people simply being priced out of the city and into the suburbs?

[prnlvsxy]

Originally Posted by ferraris

I wonder if the underlying motivation for this has changed at all? Are more people preferring the suburbs now? Or are more people simply being priced out of the city and into the suburbs?

Or is it partly because people are having kids at a later age than they used to?

[norcider]

Originally Posted by prnlvsxy

Or is it partly because people are having kids at a later age than they used to?

Or not at all. There was a piece recently in one of the local news outlets, the gist of it was that more people are dying than are being born. Younger generations just aren't having kids. I will look for the story.

[Paul2421]

Originally Posted by ferraris

I wonder if the underlying motivation for this has changed at all? Are more people preferring the suburbs now? Or are more people simply being priced out of the city and into the suburbs?

I'm guessing schools have something to do with it.

[sealie]

Originally Posted by Paul2421

I'm guessing schools have something to do with it.

Jobs. Some years back people were suggesting that you only get the best and brightest by moving downtown and fresh young talent would refuse to move to the burbs and employers would be at their mercy. Mylan had a big Southpointe expansion, they're doing all right.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by Paul2421

I'm guessing schools have something to do with it.

More so than in the 90s?

[Paul2421]

Originally Posted by ferraris

More so than in the 90s?

maybe ability to buy in the more desirable and expensive suburbs has something to do with it whereas lower wage earners would stay in the city with their kids before. i don't really know to be honest.

[eschaton]

It's worth mentioning there's a very strange dynamic going on throughout the Northeast and Midwest in suburban areas with top-ranked schools - school enrollment is decreasing albeit rather slowly. Part of this seems to be due to the falling household size - people of all income levels just have less kids than they used to. But much of also seems to be due to real estate prices. If you're a young family starting out money is tight, and the housing values in the top suburbs are often beyond your reach. Many of these people thus choose to migrate outside of the region entirely - to the South or West where they can buy a cheap "family sized" house with decent local schools. The well-heeled towns end up increasingly dominated by empty nesters who age in place, and when new people do move in, it's more likely to be new empty nesters or childless people, who can more easily afford the mortgages.