Cities boom as young adults shun suburbs

[simms3]

And to point out the complexities of real estate...there is a ~800 ft tower in a shoddy part of Lower Manhattan designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry (same as Disney Concert Hall in LA since it seems you've been to LA).  It's sold out, I believe.  I read somewhere that the average income on the first 50 floors is north of $500K, and on the last ~30 floors it is over $1M.

To top it off, there is a 90 floor building going up in Midtown where units range in price from $2M for a lower 1 BR with no view to well over $100M for upper floor units.  I believe it is mostly financed with equity.  There is another similar tower on Park Ave breaking ground over 1,000 ft high that will be nearly completely financed with equity.

Contrast that to Chicago...Trump Tower.  This thing was completed nearly 4 years ago at this point and it has just taken forever, relatively speaking, to sell the condos, and I hear that the condo portion has generally been a failure.  You're talking the most prime location, most luxurious and best finishes, highest views in Chicago and the top penthouse might go for the $20sM.  This 14,000 SF penthouse would look down, literally, on any penthouse in New York.  River North and Midtown Manhattan are pretty on par in terms of density, but the two markets are worlds apart.

[JFman00]

Walk score and density. I'm not sure what my cutoff would be on either measure, but on those two metrics alone it would be pretty easy to develop an index.

[jcjohnpaint]

very interesting and complicated I see.  Carnegie 57 and Beekman Tower?  Yeah I just left the NE when Beekman was just being completed.  Well thanks so much for the reply.  Amazing knowledge you have about the issue!

[fieldafm]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/06/urban-or-suburban-growth-us-metros/2419/

We already know big cities in the U.S. are growing, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Places like New Orleans, Austin, and Denver saw above-average population growth rates between April 2010 and July 2011.

To add a little context, Brookings Institution demographer William Frey dug through the data to break down this estimated growth in terms of cities and suburbs. According to his analysis of the 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people, the primary cities in those metros grew an average of 1.1 percent, compared with 0.9 percent growth in the suburban areas of those metros. Metros like New Orleans, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. saw their urban populations grow faster than their suburban populations, while metros like Baltimore, Detroit, and Jacksonville saw higher growth in their suburban areas than the central cities.

Metropolitan growth is both urban and suburban. These maps show by how much each metro's urban growth outpaced suburban growth (or negative growth, in Cleveland's case), or vice versa.

Higher Rate of Urban Growth




Higher Rate of Suburban Growth



Interesting to note that according to this Brookings Institute study: Orlando, Tampa and Miami's urban growth is growing faster than suburban growth... which is the exact opposite of Jacksonville. 

I'm going to comb through the numbers over the weekend when I have some time, b/c Detroit and Cleveland have seen significant growth in their urban core neighborhoods... so I want to validate this study with my own numbers on some specific metro areas in the rust belt which has become a more attractive product than in years past in my world.

[fsujax]

Better for commuter rail service! Now we just need a strong, employee dense Downtown.

[CityLife]

I'd be interested to see how they defined Jacksonville's "urban" and "suburban" areas. Are the Jax Beaches defined as suburban even though they are for the most part urban? Is St. Augustine defined as a suburb?

Also it appears that they may be basing Jax figures on city limits vs. St. Johns County, Clay County, etc. If that is the case it could hypothetically be completely inaccurate. For instance, the population of Jacksonville's suburbs within city limits (Mandarin, Arlington, SS, Westside, etc) could be decreasing at a rate of 20%, yet the urban neighborhoods (Riverside/Avondale, San Marco, Northside, DT, Springfield, etc) could be growing at a rate of 15%, thus not painting an accurate picture.

With our consolidated city, the only way to accurately gauge suburban growth vs. urban growth is to break down growth by census tracts or smaller and then add it all up. That would be a very time intensive study for 51 different Metro's and I'd be surprised if they dug that deep.

[simms3]

City Limits appears to play a role...Duval County has not been growing very much, even though it is nearly entirely suburban in nature.  SJC, Clay and Nassau are where the growth has been concentrated.

It's really quite sad because most of Jacksonville even around the core is not very dense at all and there are plenty of sites available for infill.  I recently read a comparison of Austin to Houston, and Travis County is really quite large, but the core of Austin has filled up so quick that there aren't many development sites left and barriers to entry in Austin are significantly higher than in much larger Houston.

Quick relativity:

1. Jacksonville 747 Sq. Mi. 821,784 1,100ppsm 0.6% SUBURB
2. Oklahoma City 606 Sq. Mi. 579,999 957 ppsm 0.2% URBAN
3. Houston 600 Sq. Mi. 2,099,451 3,499 ppsm 0.1% SUBURB
4. Phoenix 517 Sq. Mi. 1,445,632 2,796 ppsm 0.4% URBAN
5. Nashville 475 Sq. Mi. 601,222 1,266 ppsm 0.3% SUBURB
6. Los Angeles 469 Sq. Mi. 3,792,621 8,087 ppsm 0.1% SUBURB
7. San Antonio 461 Sq. Mi. 1,327,407 2,879 ppsm not on
8. Indianapolis 361 Sq. Mi. 820,445 2,273 ppsm 0.6% SUBURB
9. Dallas 341 Sq. Mi. 1,197,816 3,513 ppsm 0.3% SUBURB
10. Fort Worth 340 Sq. Mi. 741,206 2,180 ppsm not on
11. Louisville 325 Sq. Mi. 597,337 1,838 ppsm 0.2% SUBURB
12. San Diego 325 Sq. Mi. 1,307,402 4,023 ppsm not on
13. Memphis 315 Sq. Mi. 646,889 2,054 ppsm 0.2% URBAN

[fieldafm]

Austin's suburbs are actually growing faster than the urban area(according to my numbers by more than double) for a variety of reasons... by far the most important of which is land use policies that severly limit what a developer can do in Austin's downtown area and the historic in-town areas to the south and west of downtown.

Now Austin is a unique situation whereas the urban area has had one of the most impressive growth spurts in terms of adding residents to it's urban core and in-town neighborhoods in the nation over the past decade.  But the burbs are still growing immensly faster.  Austin's new growth plan is addressing things like encouraging higher density growth (one thing they are finally considering is adjusting height limits and going to zero parking requirements) in the historic core and looking at a suggestive kind of form based code in certain surburban areas (something the Southside of Jax could benefit highly from IMO).

[Tacachale]

It appears the Atlantic Cities figures aren't taking into account consolidation, since Jax, Indy, Lousiville, and Nashville are all show as having faster suburban growth.

It also appears to depend on how you parse the information. By my counting the City of Orlando is growing at a slower rate than the rest of Orange County and Osceola County. Additionally, it looks to me that the counties surrounding Tampa and St. Pete are growing much faster than either of those cities. And while downtown Miami is growing quickly, what are they counting as "suburbs"? Suburban/exurban Palm Beach, Martin, and St. Lucie counties are growing rapidly.

[CityLife]

And while downtown Miami is growing quickly, what are they counting as "suburbs"? Suburban/exurban Palm Beach, Martin, and St. Lucie counties are growing rapidly.

The Miami metro area doesn't include Martin and St. Lucie Counties. Coincidentally, that is possibly part of the reason that the city of Miami is growing faster than the suburbs in its Metro area (because the growth is happening just outside the MSA). A lot of people have left Broward and Palm Beach for Martin and St. Lucie, and a lot of growth that in the past would have gone in Palm Beach is happening in Martin/St. Lucie.

Miami is having somewhat of an urban renaissance, but I suspect a lot of the recent downtown residential growth is due to the ridiculous deals people are getting on highrise condos.

[simms3]

I think it makes perfect sense that "suburbs" would still be growing faster than "urban" areas.  Suburbs are where most people live, where there is more room to build/grow, and where most people still wish to live.  Not to mention the poor and lower middle class are being priced out of cities and moving to the burbs.

In Jax I don't think virtually any net "growth" is occuring in the core.  There is no new construction, some gentrification (which actually lowers population without constructing higher density units), etc.  All the new garden apartments and low density SFR communities are still going up on the SS and in outlying counties.

Raleigh is growing more rapidly in its burbs (not surprising), but seriously it has TONS of infill UC right now.  It probably has a higher proportion of urban growth than nearly any other city relative to what it already has.

Atlanta is seen as an urban growth city (tops actually), but frankly there are other things going on here.  The city itself has stayed relatively flat in terms of population, yet anyone who visited 10 years ago and came back today wouldn't recognize the place with all the new contruction.  The difference is the projects have all been torn down and sorry to say it, but poor blacks have been priced out and are up and leaving while wealthier whites are moving in...to larger condos and apartments.  One year doesn't tell the whole story there and by the end of this decade Atlanta will still probably be within a similar population range it was in 2010 and 2000, but it will be majority white (it is actually I think a tad more white now than black, first time in generations), and slightly older demographically than 1990/2000 (getting to be too expensive for all 20somethings).

Finally, the thread/article title suggests that it is some phenomenon that young adults seek out cities.  This is definitely nothing new.  Perhaps there was a small point in time (1990-2000) where young adults found jobs in suburbs.  However, pre-1990 anyone who went to college then moved to one of 5 cities in America to find a job (NYC, Chicago, SF, LA, Boston).  Now it's one of 25 cities.  That's the only difference.  The jobs for the creative class and the college grads have ALWAYS been in the cities, but now more cities have been able to sprout the same jobs that could at one point only be found in NYC.