The Urban Renaissance Does Not Exist

Perhaps what we are calling the renaissance, particularly of American cities, is not necessarilly referring to the number of people living in the city but the changing demographics of the people choosing to live in the cities. It appears to me that the recent traditon of the poorer inhabitants living in the "urban ghetto" are being forced out due to rising property values as the well healed are choosing to move in.
The large, poor families are moving toward the larger homes of the older suburbs of the 40s and 50s as the white flight continues to the exurbs. They are being replaced by the more affluent singles, empty nesters, and young couples. The renaissance is not the numbers but the tax base. The new inhabitants tend to be more cosmopolitan and have more disposable income to spend at restaurants and shops and $5 coffees. As the center city of places like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Columbus and Pittsburgh are building multiple residential towers where few existed before. The cramped little century old townhouses that housed large minority families are becoming "roomy" charming expensive little urban dwellings.
The numbers of population may not be rising but the tax base is. The crime ridden ghettos and the, formerly commercial only downtowns of the past are slowly becoming liveable vibrant neighborhoods. They will continue to attract more inhabitants, but with smaller households. The suburbs still seem to hold the keys to the family minivan tho.

It seems to me that it is a mistake to make any conclusions about cities' population at this moment when we are as far as possible from a census.

Speaking purely locally, Minneapolis-Saint Paul's regional planning agency, the Met Council, has its own 2004 population estimate-- and its only 9,000 people off from the Census' estimate. The Met Council's estimate shows only a 350 person decrease from 2000 to 2004, which is statistically negligible.

So whom to believe? I'm inclined to go with the Met Council because of its better knowledge of the locality, although I couldn't find an explanation of their method of estimation (not that I could understand it anyway). Does anyone have any comparable experience, where you've found a wide discrepancy between Census and local agencies' estimates and counts? Any demographers want to talk about methodological differences?

This is Joel Kotkin's dumbest article to date.

The populations of Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Chicago are going down because national demographic trends are making average household size smaller at the same time as these cities are adding relatively few new housing units. Multiply the household size by the number of units, and you get a smaller population today than in 2000.

Kotkin admits that housing prices in these cities are going up rapidly. He complains that nimbyism is driving up prices by restricting supply. But the doesn't draw the obvious conclusion: if housing supply in these cities is increasing slowly, and prices are soaring, this implies that demand is increasing rapidly.

I don't know how Kotkin passes himself off as an expert when he ignores these very obvious demographic and economic facts.

Charles Siegel

I'm not sure what about Mr. Kotkin's past has made him such a city-hater, but his unabashed suburban bias is growing ever tiresome. Maybe Mr. Kotkin should visit Atlanta, which gained population for the first time in decades, and has more cranes dotting the skyline than any city outside China. I do not disagree that data would show that FAMILIES are moving out of cities, but there are statistically more other types of residents moving in - not only in Atlanta, but numerous U.S. cities. Perhaps - eventually - the young professionals moving intown will have kids and stay. Who knows. But I will be tremendously excited to be one of the many who will happily celebrate when Mr. Kotkin's fatuous rants are proven once and for all to be the confused drivel that they truly are.

I don't think anyone has suggested that cities becoming more healthy has occurred (or will occur, for the most part) at the expense of their suburbs. Rather, it appears that circumstances are approaching an equilibrium where a whole range of densities and arrangements are available and marketable to various segments of the population.

Cities are no longer 'dying,' quite simply. They can now share in the economic health and vitaility of their larger metropolitan areas.

In Kotkin's Philadelphia example, he's right that the city as a whole continues to slowly lose population and jobs, and that the surrounding suburbs (for the most part) continue to gain in both. But in the city's core, certainly population (and I believe jobs) have been steadily increasing and are forecast to continue to increase. Further, the core's residential success has spilt over to many adjacent neighborhoods which have gentrified or are in the process of doing so (with associated positive and negative outcomes). In many cases, this gentrification has been associated with continued population loss due to smaller households. This, combined with the continued untenability of other sections of the city which appear 'beyond reach,' generates the continued population loss. In the case of Philly, however, Kotkin's point about the need to reduce the business tax burden and provide improved services to round out the residential experience (i.e. SCHOOLS) absolutely rings true.

It's also worth noting that while Kotkin decries housing price increases in northeastern cities as being artificially buoyed by speculators, it's worth noting that the sun belt cities he cites - Vegas and Phoenix, for example - are often viewed as the most artificially inflated markets, and the most vulnerable to a market deflation.