Cities bounce back

Not since the 1940s have so many older cities enjoyed population growth. For most of our major metropolitan areas, the 1970s were a disaster. St. Louis, for example, lost a little more than a quarter of its population. A fifth of the people in Detroit and Buffalo fled to the suburbs or left for opportunities in the Sun Belt. In the 1990s, those particular cities were still shrinking, but at a significantly lower rate. Fresh numbers from the 2000 Census also reveal, however, that in the last decade, New York, Chicago, Boston, Providence, and many other major cities gained population and enjoyed their best decade since the 1950s. An upward trend in population is only one indicator of a city’s health, but as a group, the cities hardest hit by population decline in the last 50 years have experienced a robust rebound, according to a new analysis by the Fannie Mae Foundation. The Urban Turnaround: A Decade-by-Decade Report Card on Postwar Change in Older Industrial Cities, by Patrick Simmons and Robert Lang, looks at population trends in 36 cities, primarily in the Rustbelt. Simmons and Lang identified the 50 most populous cities as of 1950, and then filtered out those that did not have at least two decades of population decline in the postwar period (this eliminated cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Atlanta, which have experienced uninterrupted growth). “We expected the 1990s to be a strong decade, but we didn’t expect it to be the best decade for this group of cities,” Simmons says, adding that the analysis also highlighted exactly how bad the 1970s were for major urban areas. All the selected cities lost population in that decade — on a percentage basis, the loss was typically in the double digits. Ten of them began to grow again in the 1980s, and in the 1990s that number rose to 15. It may not come as a surprise that Western cities such as Portland, Oregon, and Denver grew by 21 percent and 18.6 percent, respectively, during the last decade. More remarkable is the fact Chicago went from losing 360,000 residents during the 1970s to gaining more than 100,000 residents in the 1990s, and that New York City gained almost 700,000 residents in the last decade after losing 800,000 people in the 1970s. None of the 36 cities had their worst decade of population decline in the 1990s and 15 had their best decade. Simmons and Lang ranked the postwar decades for each city and averaged the score into a letter grade. The 1990s merited a B, a significant improvement over the F given for the 1970s. Pinpointing the causes of the trends in population is beyond the scope of Simmons and Lang’s analysis, but they suggest that the strong economy and immigration played important roles in reversing the drain away from major cities. To more accurately assess the status of American cities, future studies must look at the economic characteristics of those who have moved to and from the cities, must determine if increases in population have resulted in greater concentrations of poverty, and must examine job growth, Simmons says. There also may be a correlation between population growth and a vibrant urban environment. Five of the cities that had their best decade in the 1990s — Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, and San Francisco — are among the top “24-hour cities” picked by the 2000 Emerging Trends in Real Estate report as the best bets for investment and development. The authors acknowledge that the majority of the cities in the study are still losing population. However, population declines such as the 4.3 percent in Philadelphia or the 2.5 percent loss in New Orleans should not be cause for alarm, Lang says. “A city that loses 3 or 4 percent is not in decline; the loss is simply household adjustments,” he explains. According to another study, conducted by Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and the Fannie Mae Foundation, downtowns are leading the urban revival. Of 24 medium-size and large cities, all but six had growing downtowns. The population increased in the core of Detroit and Philadelphia, for example, even though the cities lost residents overall. Who’s coming, who’s leaving? Not all interpretations of the census figures are as positive as that of Simmons and Lang. A recent front-page article in the Christian Science Monitor referred to “pockets of revival” but stated that most major US cities continue to lose their white populations as well as wealth. St. Louis, Detroit, and Birmingham, Alabama, were highlighted as examples of this trend. A separate analysis by the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy confirms that the number of non-Hispanic whites in the nation’s 100 largest cities dropped by 8.5 percent in the last decade, and also notes that the cities with increasing white populations grew rapidly, whereas those with shrinking white populations grew slowly. The fiscal implications of this trend remain unclear. The Brookings Institution speculates that cities may loose wealth because the median annual household income in Hispanic household is $14,000 lower than in white households. On the other hand, overall growth in cities could increase the total amount of income, the analysis states. Lang of the Fannie Mae Foundation responds that its very easy to pick weak cities such as St. Louis and Detroit and focus on their problems, but maintains that the overall pattern of growth and arrested loss is a significant improvement. “It’s more than pockets of revival; this trend is too big to be pockets,” he says.