Article Calling The Back to City Migration a Myth (metro, suburban, downtown)

[knowledgeiskey]

Does the author have a point?

The Myth of the Back-to-the-City Migration | Newgeography.com

[Chango]

....That the suburbs are still the preferred place to live?

[uptown_urbanist]

I found the article to be a bit muddled when it comes to definitions; are they referring primarily to condos in central business districts/downtowns? For LA, for example, it contrasts the San Gabriel Valley with downtown; referring to the SGV as a whole is pretty misleading, especially as it includes some pretty "urban" areas, as well as some more classic suburban areas. It's not just a decision between downtown and the suburbs, and it's that middle area where I think appeals many people. Here in Minneapolis, where I'm currently living, it would be more difficult for us to live an "urban" lifestyle (in the sense of being able to walk to almost all of our daily essentials and get by without a car) downtown compared to the neighborhoods two miles out. Those neighborhoods might not be downtown, but they're not exactly modern stereotypical suburbia, either.

[nei]

There are also city centers that are doing well. Boston has observed about a 9.5% growth in (2000-2009), DC has grown at 5.2% (2000-2010). Both of those cities have observed in an increase in the non-hispanic white percentage, a rather striking contrast to most of the postwar era. Manhattan, too, increased its white percentage, and grew 9.6% (2000-2008), faster than all other counties in the metro area except Staten Island and a few exurban counties with about a fifth of the population of Manhattan.

Philadelphia has registered its first population increase in over 50 years. And cities known for urban decay such as St. Louis have stopped declining as well. I could keep naming cities, and I'm sure someone else could find exceptions, but in general this suggests that an urban lifestyle is becoming appealing a larger segment of the population. Perhaps still a minority, but a growing minority. While only a small percentage of Americans might have a definitive preference for living in a city, I'm sure there is a larger fraction of Americans that don't have strong opinions on city vs suburban but may happy to live in a big city if it's practical for them.

In any case, the author of the article quotes Wendell Cox, who has a known anti-urban bias, and gives as examples Miami, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas which were all hit hard by the housing crisis. It's not surprising that luxury condos would sell poorly in such a situation, as they are a bit of niche product.

[wburg]

Often there aren't as many housing starts in the central city because a lot of the central city housing is already built--if a couple moves into a newly fixed-up old house (or buys a loft in an adaptively reused old building) it doesn't really count as a new housing start. The growth machine is still rigged for suburban sprawl--that engine will take a while to slow down, let alone reverse.

Obviously the idea that everyone is going to head downtown is incorrect (it's probably more like a third to half of the population that even wants to, which is still a dramatic increase over the status quo, with the balance more interested in rural living or the suburbs)--an article based on the idea that 100% of the population hasn't moved downtown yet is based on a fallacy and won't have much difficulty proving its fallacious point.

[progmac]

A quick summary of the article:

- Condo sales are down more than single family (He trots out Miami and Los Angeles as case studies)
- Surveys show people prefer suburbs
- Immigrants are moving to the suburbs

There isn't a lot there, really and the holes in his arguments will be easy for anyone bothering to rebut to pull apart. For example, his miami condo statistics aren't even specific to the urban core.

[wburg]

Joel Kotkin's stuff tends to be along these lines, and sometimes he says some ridiculous things--like claiming that cities tend to price out poor working people, and using Silicon Valley/San Jose as an example of an entirely "suburban" city that he likes, when Silicon Valley real estate was and is among the priciest in California, despite its supposed suburban affordability--so much so that people making $50K a year sometimes found themselves homeless, and people started building suburbs in Stockton 80 miles away to allow them to commute to the suburban South Bay.

[texdav]

hat siwehy cities have annexed just t keep population and which has brought about even more problerms for them;plus not really changed the trend out of sities . IMO its a natural progression since urban growth was most from necessity not desire in the first palce really.

[wburg]

Postwar suburban growth was from necessity too: almost all new housing in the post WWII era was greenfield auto-centric suburbia, because city properties were considered a high credit risk (due to the presence of nonwhites in the neighborhood.) If the only houses being offered are in the suburbs, you buy there from necessity--the marketing campaign promoting suburban life was secondary.

And what is a "hat siwehy"?

[diablo234]

In most cases the new development in the exurbs have suffered more from the housing bust than the inner cities. For the most part the only reason people even bother to move to the suburbs in the first place is because of the school systems. Once you have an increasing amount of singles and empty nesters they will have other priorities making suburbia less attractive.

In Houston property values for inner city neighborhoods such as Montrose, The Heights, and Midtown are already significantly more than the more suburban neighborhoods for example signaling a change that people are more willing to live closer in.