Cities in small metros growing

Cities are growing faster than their suburbs for the first time in recent history, and this trend applies to the country’s biggest as well as some of its smallest cities, according to an analysis by Smart Growth America.

US Census data reveals that cities in small metro areas are gaining -- and most are growing faster than their suburbs. “This finding reflects population trends revealed earlier this year in research from the Brookings Institution, which examined growth rates for the country’s 51 largest metropolitan areas. But whereas that report looked only at large metro areas like New York, San Francisco and Chicago, Smart Growth America’s research examines what’s happening in the nation’s slightly smaller ... metro areas,” the organization reports.

Smart Growth America calculated population change between 2010 and 2011 in 171 of the nation’s smaller metropolitan areas based on 2010 Census figures and 2011 Census estimates. Overall, 22 percent of the US population lives in these small metro areas -- more than 69 million people. Of these, 39.3 percent, or 27 million people, lived in the Census-defined cities of the small metro areas in 2011. Eighty-five percent of those cities grew in 2011.

Perhaps more noteworthy is the fact that small metro city population growth is now outpacing growth in the suburbs. In one year, cities in the small metro areas grew in population by 0.89%. In comparison, their suburban counterparts grew by 0.67%,” Smart Growth America reports.

“Small metro areas’ cities are doing just as well, if not better than, big cities,” says Smart Growth America President and CEO Geoffrey Anderson. “The trend in terms of population growth is toward city living, and that’s happening at a greater rate in our smaller metro areas in the middle of the country.”

This data indicate that people are increasingly choosing to live in cities in small metro areas. Notably, this trend is even stronger in small metro areas than large ones: 55 percent of cities in small metro areas grew faster than their suburbs between 2010 and 2011; 52.9 percent of cities in large metro areas did so in the same period, the report says.

The report, called “City versus suburban growth rates in small metro areas,” can be downloaded on the web. Google the name of the report.