Suburbs Aren't Growing That Much Faster Than Cities
A few weeks ago, Richard Florida wrote* in the New York Times that the “urban tide has crested.” But it seems to me that he over-interpreted the data in two ways.
A few weeks ago, Richard Florida wrote* in the New York Times that the “urban tide has crested.” But it seems to me that he over-interpreted the data in two ways. First, even the Brookings Institution data he relies on shows that cities have grown almost as rapidly as suburbs: major cities grew by 0.82 percent in 2015-16, while their suburbs grew by 0.89 percent.** The same data shows that among the 53 metro areas with over 1 million people, city populations grew in 40. In the 20 largest metro areas, central cities declined in only three – Chicago, plus the always-declining St. Louis and Detroit.
Second, the Brookings data relies on yearly Census population estimates. But these estimates have not always been very reliable. For example, the 2010 Census showed a 120,000-person gap between the prior year’s estimate of Atlanta’s population and the actual Census count.*** Thus, there is no reason to believe that this year’s Census estimates are accurate enough to show whether any city’s population increased or decreased over the last year.
Michael Lewyn is an associate professor at Touro Law Center in Central Islip, NY. His scholarship can be found at http://works.bepress.com/lewyn , and he recently wrote the book "Government Intervention and Suburban Sprawl: The Case for Market Urbanism."