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Americans moving back to cities

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.
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Re: Americans moving back to cities

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 09 Oct 2014, 15:37:23

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', 'Y')eah I live in the suburbs. I wonder if I will survive peak oil lol.


The problem is if you stay in the suburbs you will struggle with increased cost of living while you are in exile with no community resiliency and having learned little in the way of self sufficiency. This will keep you fearful and you will spend your whole life either kissing your bosses ass or treating those below you with contempt as you try to preserve the few crumbs that will be thrown your way.

Why agree to such terms with such a short life. Look for the warrior within and reject this life.

There I said it. This is what you want to hear. You want validation and I gave it to you. Go off young man and seek your fortune not in gold or silver but in brotherhood with your fellow man and creatures!
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
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Re: Americans moving back to cities

Unread postby dashster » Thu 09 Oct 2014, 20:39:28

Which cities have seen a decline in population over the years such that people are "moving back to"? Our population is increasing all the time and I would bet only a small number of cities have seen population declines due to local conditions, like maybe the auto industry and Detroit.

In the cities that I see, the outlying areas - the suburbs - have filled in. There is no more land to build a small house or a "McMansion" or anything in between. Growth in residential construction is almost all multi-family unless you are so far out that it is questionable if you are even in the same metropolitan area. It is easier to get the people in a city, which is already overcrowded, to accept new multi-unit housing replacing existing development (euphemistically referred to as "infill") than it is for people in the suburbs. So I think a lot of it is that we filled in the suburbs and now we go denser in the city.
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Re: Americans moving back to cities

Unread postby dashster » Thu 09 Oct 2014, 22:45:37

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', 'Y')eah I live in the suburbs. I wonder if I will survive peak oil lol.


The problem is if you stay in the suburbs you will struggle with increased cost of living while you are in exile with no community resiliency and having learned little in the way of self sufficiency.


There are different kinds of suburbs. If you are talking about the suburbs in California or around Portland, of which I am familiar, everything has been developed wall to wall. Their are supermarkets and other stores within walking distance of the vast majority of home, as is bus transportation (which can also be increased if people started using it). If they start taking the bus to work they may have a longer commute than someone in a city (and they may not) but it won't be more expensive. The cost of a monthly pass is the same for everyone. Those people are not "in exile".

What exactly have people living in crowded cities learned about self-sufficiency that people living in houses haven't? Someone in a city is no less dependent on remote farms and factories than someone in the suburbs.

In my experience people living in high density don't get any friendlier with their neighbors than people in houses do with the people on their block. What's the expression - "Good fences make good neighbors".

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')This will keep you fearful and you will spend your whole life either kissing your bosses ass or treating those below you with contempt as you try to preserve the few crumbs that will be thrown your way.


Why does someone in the city have more job security than someone in the suburbs? Your address is not normally considered in your annual review in my experience. Everyone in America has less job security in 2014 thanks to decades of job export, worker import, and automation.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hy agree to such terms with such a short life. Look for the warrior within and reject this life.

There I said it. This is what you want to hear. You want validation and I gave it to you. Go off young man and seek your fortune not in gold or silver but in brotherhood with your fellow man and creatures!


Correct me if I am wrong, but the most crime ridden areas are always in the densest part of the city. It appears that brotherhood breaks down the more people you have per square inch.
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Re: Americans moving back to cities

Unread postby kublikhan » Fri 10 Oct 2014, 14:39:10

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dashster', 'W')hich cities have seen a decline in population over the years such that people are "moving back to"?
Chicago, for one. And that's one of the slower growing cities on the list. There's also Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Rochester, and Minneapolis-St Paul. But we are not just talking about cities that were declining and are now growing. We are also talking about cities growing faster than suburbs. Cities like this inclue New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Columbus. This is a trend reversal from previous decades where suburbs grew faster than cities. Then there are cities who's rapid declines are now tapering off. This includes Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, St Louis, and Cincinnati.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he city of Chicago gained just under 6,000 residents in the year that ended July 1 — better than the decline of the previous decade. The city's population has increased by about 23,000 since the 2010 census, or just under 1 percent. Once high-flying edge cities such as Joliet, Naperville and Aurora saw their population growth slow to a crawl or even decline.

During the decade of the 2000s, Chicago lost about 200,000 residents, and any gain now, however small, is obviously an improvement. One of the effects of the recent recovery nationally is that big cities generally are growing again, and on that count Chicago lags the pack.

In the suburbs, the post-recession pattern of little if any growth continued. Joliet actually lost residents last year and has a population just 350 ahead of where it was in 2010, and Rockford continued its long-term decline.
Is Chicago's population growing again?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Last year, for the first time in more than nine decades the major cities of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas grew faster than their combined suburbs. At least temporarily, this puts the brakes on a longstanding staple of American life—the pervasive suburbanization of its population.

This reversal is identified in an analysis of newly released Census Bureau data for 2010-2011 and can be attributed to a number of forces. Some are short- term and related to the post 2007 slowdown of the suburban housing market, coupled with continued high unemployment which has curtailed population mobility, now at a historic low. However, at least some cities may be seeing a population renaissance based on efforts to attract and retain young people, families and professionals.

Using the Brookings definition, core “primary cities” of the nation’s 51 metropolitan areas with populations exceeding one million, grew faster than the suburbs of those areas between July 2010-2011. Cities grew at 1.1 percent while suburbs grew at 0.9 percent. This contrasts with suburban dominated growth in the 2000s, extending the pattern previous decades.

Among the metropolitan areas with sharp sharpest city growth advantages are Washington D.C., Denver and Atlanta, where annual city growth ramped up for 2010-2011 and exceeded suburb growth by about 1 percent. This contrasts with the 2000s decade when suburbs grew substantially faster than the suburbs in all three. As in most of the country, their suburbs disproportionately bore the brunt of the late 2000s housing collapse. However, all three have important urban amenities and economic bases that are attractive to young people and other households now clustering in their cities.

City gains and suburban downturns are evident in all parts of the country, including the Northeast and Midwest. This is the case for New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Columbus. In Chicago, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Rochester, and Minneapolis-St Paul, city declines in the 2000s turned to gains in 2010-2011. At the same time, the city declines of the 2000s lost momentum in 2010-2011 in Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, St Louis, and Cincinnati.
Demographic Reversal: Cities Thrive, Suburbs Sputter

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ince 2010, the trend has nearly reversed, even as the region continued to gain population. Suburban counties kept growing, but at barely a fifth of the annual rate seen in earlier decades. The highest growth rates were in inner ring locations like Bergen, Westchester, and Fairfield counties. In contrast, there were actual population losses in nearly half of the suburban counties, almost entirely on the fringe of the region, including Putnam, Dutchess, Sullivan, and Ulster counties in New York, and Sussex, Warren, and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey.

Growth since 2010 has been concentrated in the core counties, accounting for 69 percent of the region’s total population growth. The gains have been so strong, core counties have added about 30 percent as many people in the past three years as they lost in the 30 years after 1950.

The report says young adults between the ages of 20 and 29 are behind both of these trends. From 1970 to 1980, suburban counties captured 96 percent of the growth in this demographic. From 2010 to 2013, that figure dropped to 56 percent, with the urban core becoming increasingly competitive.

The authors say it is difficult to pinpoint exactly why this demographic shift is happening, but cite quality-of-life improvements in the urban core, generational preferences, the high cost of long commutes, and the lower maintenance needs of denser housing in the urban core.
Peak Sprawl? The Fringes of the New York Region Are Shrinking

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dashster', 'G')rowth in residential construction is almost all multi-family unless you are so far out that it is questionable if you are even in the same metropolitan area. It is easier to get the people in a city, which is already overcrowded, to accept new multi-unit housing replacing existing development (euphemistically referred to as "infill") than it is for people in the suburbs. So I think a lot of it is that we filled in the suburbs and now we go denser in the city.Exactly. Multi-family units are more common in the city than in the burbs. This is one of the points brought up in one of the pieces I linked to. However growing multi-family homes in lieu of single family units represents a departure from the "American Dream" of that single family home with the white picket fence and a trend reversal from previous decades.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n the last year, single-family home starts rose 10.1%. Multi-family home starts (i.e., apartments, duplexes and condominiums) jumped 44.7%. That’s right. Builders are constructing apartments and condos at a rate more than four times faster than single-family homes!

Why is this? The builders I know say they are just following demand. They see three different categories.
* Some people were hurt badly in the recession and either can’t afford to buy a house or can’t qualify for a mortgage.
* Others are working couples who have money, but simply don’t want to deal with home or yard maintenance.
* A third group, mostly younger, wants to live in revitalized urban areas where high-rise apartments and condominiums are the only real option.

The population of traditional suburban homebuyers — married couples with young children — is not growing. The supply of existing suburban homes is more than adequate in most areas. Those folks don’t want or need newly constructed homes, so builders are concentrating their investments elsewhere.

This shift to multi-family construction has implications for the job market, too. It takes much less labor to build 10 apartment units than it does to build 10 small houses.

The Fed sees the housing market much the same way I described above. Here is part of their statement, with some key points in bold.

" Although mortgage rates were still low and housing appeared to be relatively affordable, various factors were seen as restraining demand, including low expected income and high levels of student debt as well as difficulty in obtaining mortgage credit, particularly for younger, first-time homebuyers.

A couple of participants indicated that some demand appeared to have shifted to rental properties. The rising demand for rentals was in part being satisfied by investors buying homes for the rental market; it was also providing support for multifamily construction."

I wrote earlier this year about the number of Americans choosing to rent rather than buy. That trend, combined with the tilt in favor of multifamily housing, seems likely to continue. If so, the housing market as most of us know it could be radically different a few years from now. Housing Goes Multi
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