Cities Losing People After '90s Influx

[muon2]

I suspect that the outflow of established families isn't much different than in decades past. I do know that it is much more common to see immigrants now move directly to the suburbs, without the time in the city first. This applies to immigrants from all areas of the world. That leaves smaller households in the central cities, so they are losing population.

[muon2]

I am interested to know if there are any suburbs losing people

Yes. 2005 numbers released by the Washington State goverment show that Seattle suburbs such as Bellevue, Kirkland, and Mercer Island are losing population, but the county still grew by 20,000 people over the last year.

However, it's not that families are leaving, it's that kids are graduating and leaving while their parents stay there and have no more kids. Those cities have no more land left to annex and therefore will have to wait for elderly couples to leave or die so a  new family can replace them.

That's often true. In my city we had a lot of housing built in the 50's through 70's. The original owners became empty nest households. Then, in the early 1990's they gave way to the next generation of families. The result was the sudden need for a new school building in an area that apparently had no new housing.

[muon2]

I am interested to know if there are any suburbs losing people

Yes. 2005 numbers released by the Washington State goverment show that Seattle suburbs such as Bellevue, Kirkland, and Mercer Island are losing population, but the county still grew by 20,000 people over the last year.

However, it's not that families are leaving, it's that kids are graduating and leaving while their parents stay there and have no more kids. Those cities have no more land left to annex and therefore will have to wait for elderly couples to leave or die so a  new family can replace them.

That's often true. In my city we had a lot of housing built in the 50's through 70's. The original owners became empty nest households. Then, in the early 1990's they gave way to the next generation of families. The result was the sudden need for a new school building in an area that apparently had no new housing.

This is happening in the suburbs too. 

What you are saying obscures the reality that middle class families generally don't like to raise kids in cities because of the poor quality of public education.  For the previous generation, the public schools either were not as bad, or the parents sent their kids to (in the past) relatively inexpensive Catholic schools.  Today, the public schools have deteriorated further in cities, and Catholic schools or other private schools have become prohibitively expensive, so today's generation of parents generally opts to get out of the cities when it comes time for their kids to go to school.

In our case the city was built as an exurb 150 years ago for the railrods. It's a suburb now by virtue of the growth around it. And we are now embracing that new growth as well.

In our city we find that our small public school district can be excellent, but is burdened by state mandates to deal with ESL families and parents who don't see the need for investment in their children's education at home. We are fortunate to still have a core of concerned parents to create some excellence despite the factors that would weigh against our local schools.

[muon2]

I don't believe these figures. The census data tends to under-report people in the cities. In the 90's, they estimated much larger losses in hundreds of cities then actually occured, and they estimated a loss in Chicago...which actually gained population.

You're absolutely right. I remember the Census Bureau said that New York City would have about 7.5 million in people in 2000, it ended up with exactly 8 Million! How do you miss 500,000 people?

Their bad judgement extends to Connecticut too. For the entire 1990's they said we were having a population loss, then the numbers in 2000 show that every county gained population, and we had grown by 120,000 (only DC, ND, WV and PA grew at a slower rate though )

I don't expect them to be right all the time, but the Bureau has made some terrible judgements in recent years. Another example- in 1999 they said the USA had 273 million people, the official numbers next year showed 281 million. Thats a spectacular miscalculation.

The 2000 census counted a higher percentage of people than the 1990 census. However, a lot of people weren't counted, and big cities got screwed when the Republicans and Bush adminstration blocked apportionment, redistricting based upon that data, or even releasing the data. I guess they like not counting poor minorities in big cities.

The Supreme Court blocked the use of that data for apportionment on Jan 25, 1999. Bush had nothing to do with it. Don't confuse that with the release of data for states to use for their own districting questions. That was indeed a Census Bureau decision made by April 1, 2001 during Bush's Administration.

[muon2]

I am interested to know if there are any suburbs losing people

Heboken, NJ has far fewer people than the maximum it ever had.  Of course it's an inner suburb. However, if you take a liberal view of what an outer suburb is, you can find some areas thare are declining. Upstate NY would be a good place to look.

Hoboken is NOT a suburb. It is very urban and essentially part of Jersey City. It's also a miserable place to live, as with most of North Jersey.

It is and it isn't. You've hit on an important idea. Our definition of suburb has become dated. Technically it still means any community not contained in the central city. A century ago, as suburbs urbanized, they became annexed to the central city. With a few exceptions (eg. Indianapolis, Louisville), central cities don't annex near suburbs anymore.

Even so, the inner municipalties in many areas were founded over 100 years ago. They have aged to the point where they have many of the same qualities as the adjacent parts of the central city. You could call them "urban suburbs", though "inner ring surburbs" is the usual term.

[muon2]

I am interested to know if there are any suburbs losing people

Heboken, NJ has far fewer people than the maximum it ever had.  Of course it's an inner suburb. However, if you take a liberal view of what an outer suburb is, you can find some areas thare are declining. Upstate NY would be a good place to look.

Hoboken is NOT a suburb. It is very urban and essentially part of Jersey City. It's also a miserable place to live, as with most of North Jersey.

It is and it isn't. You've hit on an important idea. Our definition of suburb has become dated. Technically it still means any community not contained in the central city. A century ago, as suburbs urbanized, they became annexed to the central city. With a few exceptions (eg. Indianapolis, Louisville), central cities don't annex near suburbs anymore.

Even so, the inner municipalties in many areas were founded over 100 years ago. They have aged to the point where they have many of the same qualities as the adjacent parts of the central city. You could call them "urban suburbs", though "inner ring surburbs" is the usual term.

In Hoboken's case, that town is basically as old as New York City is. Same goes for Newark, founded by Puritans in 1660s, and Paterson, the brainchild of Alex Hamilton in 1790-something.

Newark has the advantage of being considered a separate urban center. I've never heard it called a suburb.