[kublikhan]

The last few years have seen Americans gradually shift from suburban living to more city living. I was curious what others thought of this trend. City living seems like it would be more PO friendly. More walking/mass transit and less driving for example.

More Americans are moving to cities in the wake of the slight uptick in the economy in recent years, reversing the decades-long trend of settling in the suburbs. New Census Bureau data shows that the American city is experiencing something of a renaissance, driven primarily by migration into the center of the nation’s metropolitan areas. The shift in population to America’s metro areas has been increasing since 2010, when the economic recovery began picking up. The trend in city living is driven primarily by two groups: young professionals and Baby Boomers, who are retiring and moving back to the cities they left when they started families.

Among the cities with the highest “natural increase” are Washington, D.C., and Provo-Orem, Utah. Houston had the largest numeric increase, gaining about 138,000 people between 2012 and 2013. In Philadelphia, the population grew last year by 0.29 percent. Most of the country’s fastest-growing metro areas are in the Midwest, and fueled by job opportunities in energy industries like mining, oil, and gas, according to the Census Bureau. Metro areas with highest growth rates include Odessa, Texas; Fargo, N.D./Minn.; and The Villages, Fla. New Orleans also saw a growth in population. Gordon Russell at The New Orleans Advocate reports that the city saw a 2.5 percent population increase from 2012, but the city’s population remains roughly 20 percent lower than before Katrina struck almost nine years ago.

Increased urban density can also be attributed to significant investment by cities in infrastructure and transportation. Speaking with USA Today, Robert Lang at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, said the U.S. essentially had to “learn how to build cities a second time.”

More Americans Moving to Cities, Reversing the Suburban Exodus

A recent report on the suburb-dotted New York counties of Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk, based on United States census data, found that young people seem to be lingering longer in New York City, sometimes forsaking suburban life entirely.

Since 2000, Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk have experienced a drop in the number of 25- to 44-year-olds, with the declines particularly sharp in more affluent communities. Between 2000 and 2011, Rye, for example, had a 63 percent decrease in 25- to 34-year-old residents and a 16 percent decrease in 35- to 44-year-olds. In three Maryland suburbs outside Washington, Chevy Chase lost 34 percent of its 25- to 34-year-olds, Bethesda 19.2 percent and Potomac 27 percent. The declines were comparable for Kenilworth, Winnetka and Glencoe outside Chicago, and Nantucket, Barnstable and Norfolk Counties outside Boston.

The suburban towns face increasingly tough competition from the city. Meghan Bernhardt, a 29-year-old child psychotherapist, grew up in Roslyn on Long Island and now lives in Brooklyn. She likes her ability to do so much without ever leaving the neighborhood. Younger adults are becoming more drawn to denser, more compact urban environments that offer a number of amenities within walking distance of where they live.

Suburbs Try to Prevent an Exodus as Young Adults Move to Cities and Stay

The latest housing numbers reflect an uptick in Americans abandoning their white-picket fences and two-car garages for a sky-high abode with a downtown view. Americans are experiencing an urban renaissance of unanticipated proportions, as young people graduate college and flock to cities, delaying buying a home and perhaps rejecting the suburban ideal altogether. In 2005, multifamily housing accounted for just 17% of all housing starts. In 2013, multifamily housing accounted for fully 33% of starts. Data released last week on housing starts in March reinforce that trend, with multifamily homes, a good portion of it high-rise apartment buildings, accounting for 40% of all new construction.

That’s because people are moving to cities: net migration was the largest contributor to population growth in all but five of the 50 fastest-growing metro areas. Census data released last month show that metropolitan areas across the country grew at a faster rate last year than the rest of the country, with cities like Austin, Texas and Seattle, Washington growing especially swiftly. Metro areas grew faster than the U.S. as a whole between 2012 and 2013 (0.9 percent compared with 0.7 percent). For millennials today, leaving Levittown for the bright lights of downtown has become a rite of passage.

“There’s been a surge in urban apartment building,” says chief economist for the National Association of Homebuilders, David Crowe. “The 25- to 34-year-old age group is focused on living near their peers. They want be socially engaged and live near work. They want to reduce their automobile use. All of those things aim at high-density, urban-type living.”

Young people are interested in a different kind of life than earlier generations it seems. “Unlike their parents, who calculated their worth in terms of square feet, ultimately inventing the McMansion, […] this generation is more interested in the amenities of the city itself: great public spaces, walkability, diverse people and activities with which they can participate.”

The growth in multi-family residential construction isn’t purely aspirational, however. Many people are delaying buying a home out of sheer necessity. After the easy money of the subprime mortgage market of the mid-2000s led the country to the brink of a depression, banks have tightened their lending standards, making it much more difficult for homebuyers to purchase a property. The Urban Institute estimates that strict credit standards prevented between 300,000 and 1.2 million lenders from taking out mortgages in 2012 alone.

Whether or not the trend will last is a matter of debate, however. “I’m not convinced that this is a permanent change,” says Crowe of the move toward urbanization. For now, however, young people prefer cities. According to the Nielsen Company, 62% of millennials prefer to live in mixed-use communities found in urban centers, closer to shops, restaurants, and the office. And as the number of apartment buildings under construction continues to rise, it appears the exodus to the cities won’t be slowing anytime soon.

The New American Dream Is Living in a City, Not Owning a House in the Suburbs

[DesuMaiden]

Yet peak oil means that food production will also peak. How would you grow food in a city?

[ROCKMAN]

“Houston had the largest numeric increase, gaining about 138,000 people between 2012 and 2013”. A tad misleading. First, the city limit of Houston is rather large: 660 sq. miles. Second the extent of the city periodically grows. In Texas we have “annexation”: Houston has the right to extend its boundary to cover any and all unincorporated areas in the suburbs. And has been doing so for decades. The city of Houston now completely surrounds a number of other cities. Even incorporating an area doesn’t save it: Houston can nullify that incorporation up to 10 years after it took effect. In fact Houston can even annex across county lines.

There has been an increase in the inner city population thanks to the expansion of very small but still expensive condos etc. Houston is in Harris County…1,777 sq. miles. Harris County is larger than the state of Rhode Island. There are constant swaths of subdivisions that extend 25+ miles from downtown Houston far out into Harris Country and even extending into neighbouring counties. Even with the higher density the population of the Houston “inner city” is relatively small. And moving down town would make no sense to the majority of the Houston citizens since the bulk of them don’t work down town. Which is another reason why Houston doesn’t have very big mass transit system for its size: not enough folks commuting to the same areas.

Bottom line: the vast majority of folks living in the burgs have no intention of moving in towards the center of the city. In fact the migration via new suburban subdivisions is alive an well down here.

[tom_s2]

Yet peak oil means that food production will also peak.

No! Peak oil does not mean that food will also peak, any more than a 30% reduction in your salary implies a 30% reduction in the calories you will eat. People have considerable discretion about what they will use oil for.

How would you grow food in a city?

You don't need to grow food in the city, even after peak oil.

-Tom S

[dinopello]

Yes, the core of the cities and walkable suburbs are attracting people like never before in recent times. However, the space is limited and the number of such spaces is even more limited therefore it is extremely expensive. Mostly it is wealthy empty nesters and successful childless couples and singles that can afford to live in these places. Lots of development rules and/or attempts at not gentrifyig keep this trend from taking off. Land prices in areas that have walkable plans that allow dense development are through the roof. But, building material prices are still depressed so builders want to build now and are more willing to pay the high land prices.

[kublikhan]

Yet peak oil means that food production will also peak. How would you grow food in a city?

Cities have been around for thousands of years before oil. They will be fed in the same way they always have been.

I predict the opposite: cities will continue to exist and function in a post oil world. Cities were around for a long time before oil and will be around for a long time after. They are centers of commerce, residence, and social functions. The urge to flee to the boonies is the old "fight or flight" response and speaks more about our fears than rational thought. Even in times of dire strife, like the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Great Depression, the cities fared better than those living in rural settings. People migrated to the cities looking for food, jobs, and shelter. City populations increased during these hard times, not decreased. No man is an island. No matter how well prepared you think you are for times of dire strife, you will still need society to function.

As I was thinking about this topic, I was struck by the following realization, counter-intuitive but supported by evidence. The limiting factor in the survival, on both the level of the individual and the community, was not the ability to produce your own products and not even the available resources or lack of them. It was transport and infrastructure - the ability to trade, deliver your surplus elsewhere and from there get other things you need.

This is why rural areas and small towns in Russia took a very hard hit in the 90s, and may never fully recover, as some say. One would think it should be exactly the opposite - people would have gone into the remote villages and live off the land and the woods. However, even in the most self-sufficient household one cannot produce or make everything needed. And being in a remote location makes it difficult to deliver surplus to others in a timely manner for trading or exchange, especially with the roads being as atrocious as they were.

The lesson from this is that the desire to hide out in the boondocks results from a 'fight or flight' emotional response to a stressful situation, and in the long run is counterproductive. Instead, a survivor should network within the community, stay just close enough to major traffic routes, keep the transportation lines open and have some kind of vehicle at one's disposal. A truck is good if there is reliable fuel available (the rising prices of oil should be considered). A horse too, if things get that bad. It is best to be by a river or another body of water, it is very good to live by the bridge, ferry or a dock on one's property, and a boat.

One thing that is important to mention is that organized crime moved in very quickly to control all the trade and businesses. Mafia and gangs banded together based on location and/or ethnicity. Therefore, one shouldn't be afraid so much of people with guns who come to take your food away, but rather of people who come with guns and demand a regularly paid share of your profit or surplus.

The value of education didn't decrease. On the contrary, it increased, especially for certain professions. In truth the most valuable major in my college ended up being geology and geophysics. It was the easiest to get into but the graduates were snapped up by Russian and foreign corporations in the booming oil and related industry, to do the exploration of natural resources, and have on average done exceedingly well.

USSR Collapse - Russia in the 1990s

As the Depression deepened, cities attracted beaten people from all parts of the country. Farmers whose livelihoods had been foreclosed packed up their families and moved into the cities. Hoboes and other itinerants sought shelter in cities during harsh winters. City dwellers themselves were not immune to the rails of the nation. Thousands of unemployed residents who could not pay their rent or mortgages were evicted into the world of public assistance and bread lines.

At President Hoover's beckoning, charities had stepped in to help ease the burden on municipal resources. Hoover was a firm believer in volunteerism. Feeling that each community was responsible for aiding people in distress, Hoover created programs that bolstered morale and encouraged charity.

In 1930 the International Apple Shippers Association was faced with an oversupply of fruit and came up with a unique solution to a national problem: to clear out their warehouses and give the unemployed a way to make a little money, they sold apples on credit. The ploy worked. Months later a shivering apple vendor could be found standing over a fruit crate on the corner of every major American city. By the end of November there were six thousand people selling apples in New York alone. The trend spread, and suddenly there were pitchmen of all persuasions standing alongside the apple sellers, handling everything from patent medicines to gaudy neckties.

Many people planted subsistence gardens in vacant lots or rooftops to feed themselves when grocery money was really scarce. Twenty thousand of these gardens were reported in Gary, Indiana, alone.

City Life During the Great Depression

Cities completely abandoned in the post-oil world?

[kublikhan]

Yes, the core of the cities and walkable suburbs are attracting people like never before in recent times. However, the space is limited and the number of such spaces is even more limited therefore it is extremely expensive. Mostly it is wealthy empty nesters and successful childless couples and singles that can afford to live in these places. Lots of development rules and/or attempts at not gentrifyig keep this trend from taking off. Land prices in areas that have walkable plans that allow dense development are through the roof. But, building material prices are still depressed so builders want to build now and are more willing to pay the high land prices.

Many of the articles cited the high cost of owning Macmansions vs the cheaper cost of renting an apartment as a core reason many people are choosing to move to the city.

Alexander Roberts, executive director of Community Housing Innovations, an advocacy group for affordable housing that released the report about the New York counties, attributed the declines in Westchester and on Long Island to the increasing cost of houses and the resistance by localities to building apartment buildings with modest rentals. The greatest population losses, he said, were in “the least diverse communities with the most expensive housing, which happen also to be those that have almost no affordable multifamily housing.”

Suburbs Try to Prevent an Exodus as Young Adults Move to Cities and Stay

The growth in multi-family residential construction isn’t purely aspirational, however. Many people are delaying buying a home out of sheer necessity. After the easy money of the subprime mortgage market of the mid-2000s led the country to the brink of a depression, banks have tightened their lending standards, making it much more difficult for homebuyers to purchase a property. The Urban Institute estimates that strict credit standards prevented between 300,000 and 1.2 million lenders from taking out mortgages in 2012 alone.

Coupled with the uncertainty of the job market and the mountain of student loans recent graduates have to pay off, it makes sense that more people are choosing to rent instead of making the colossal investment of buying a home.

The New American Dream Is Living in a City, Not Owning a House in the Suburbs

Housing starts have risen 9.4 percent during the past 12 months. But apartments account for most of the gains, suggesting that more Americans will be renting instead of owning homes. The growth in apartment buildings points to an economy in which more Americans are renting, rather than buying homes. Following the housing bust and recession, Americans have had to deal with relatively flat wages and job insecurity, both obstacles to saving for a down payment. The home ownership rate was 64.8 percent at the start of the year, down from a peak of 69.2 percent in 2004.

Housing Starts Fall as Consumers Struggle With Costs

[dinopello]

Yes, the core of the cities and walkable suburbs are attracting people like never before in recent times. However, the space is limited and the number of such spaces is even more limited therefore it is extremely expensive. Mostly it is wealthy empty nesters and successful childless couples and singles that can afford to live in these places. Lots of development rules and/or attempts at not gentrifyig keep this trend from taking off. Land prices in areas that have walkable plans that allow dense development are through the roof. But, building material prices are still depressed so builders want to build now and are more willing to pay the high land prices.

Many of the articles cited the high cost of owning Macmansions vs the cheaper cost of renting an apartment as a core reason many people are choosing to move to the city.

Really? I didn't read the articles but that seems a stretch. I know urbanists have made the argument that when you consider ALL the costs of a McMansion in the suburbs vs an apartment in the city the cost is more equal (maintenance, transportation, energy, time etc) but most suburbanites are shocked when they see the cost of a 600 sq ft condo in a nice city. You have to really want the lifestyle. It's funny, I was just talking with someone who transfered from the city to the suburbs for a year for a job. I asked him (who has a wife and baby) how he was liking the slower pace. He was saying it was the opposite - his new life has frazzled his nerves because he finds himself in his car all the time going from place to place alongside other stressed out drivers - where he used to just stroll around his neighborhood to do everything.

[Newfie]

I have lived in the burbs and commuted to the city, OK.

I have lived in the city and commuted to the burbs, OK.

But, to my great surprise I found it really depressing to live AND work in center city. I thought I'd appreciate the walking commute. But I became stressed by the lack of trees and sky.

All available housing spaces are being developed in our neighborhood. It's really getting jam packed. Old factories converted, old hospital grounds developed, small houses ripped down and replaced.

The value of our place is improving, but I don't like living here anymore.

[dissident]

Seems like some sort of gentrification and a yuppy migration to formerly rotten US inner city cores. Hardly a trend reversing the overgrowth of suburbia. But cities are by no means sustainable. They are just as bad as suburbia. What is coming is going to require going back to subsistence farming. There will be no choice and the majority will not survive.

If you think that is doomerism, then look up what happened to various developed societies throughout history. This time around the fall is going to be much harder.

[kublikhan]

Really? I didn't read the articles but that seems a stretch. I know urbanists have made the argument that when you consider ALL the costs of a McMansion in the suburbs vs an apartment in the city the cost is more equal (maintenance, transportation, energy, time etc) but most suburbanites are shocked when they see the cost of a 600 sq ft condo in a nice city.

It's not the high cost cities that are growing fastest, but the cities that have better than avererage affordability.

These days, domestic migrants are increasingly driven by the quest for cheaper housing. The country’s fastest-growing cities are now those where housing is more affordable than average, a decisive reversal from the early years of the millennium, when easy credit allowed cities to grow without regard to housing cost and when the fastest-growing cities had housing that was less affordable than the national average.

From 2000 to 2006, cities with high-cost housing grew more quickly than those with affordable housing. From 2006 to 2012 — years that encompass the housing bust, recession and recovery — that pattern reversed itself, with most low-cost cities growing 2.5 percentage points more than high-cost cities.

Before the real estate market crashed, housing in four of the five fastest-growing metropolitan areas, including Cape Coral, Fla., and Riverside, Calif., was less affordable than in the average American city, judging by the relationship between the median home price and income for each metropolitan area. But from 2008 to 2012, all five of the cities with the most growth were more affordable than average, including Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and the cities of El Paso, San Antonio, Austin and McAllen in Texas.

“A large percentage of Americans had to read ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ ” said Mayor Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City, referring to the John Steinbeck novel that chronicled the flight of Oklahomans to California in search of a better life during the Depression. Now the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those migrants are returning for the same reason. “It’s ‘The Wrath of Grapes,’ ” he said.

Affordable Housing Draws Middle Class to Inland Cities

Seems like some sort of gentrification and a yuppy migration to formerly rotten US inner city cores. Hardly a trend reversing the overgrowth of suburbia. But cities are by no means sustainable. They are just as bad as suburbia. What is coming is going to require going back to subsistence farming. There will be no choice and the majority will not survive.

If you think that is doomerism, then look up what happened to various developed societies throughout history. This time around the fall is going to be much harder.

Cities were around long before we used fossil fuels and will be around long after. Likewise with the collapse of empires: cities remained.

[dinopello]

But, to my great surprise I found it really depressing to live AND work in center city. I thought I'd appreciate the walking commute. But I became stressed by the lack of trees and sky.

Yes, lack of trees in a city - particularly in the USA, is lame and dreary. But that's a bad city. In the US the trees hide the sign and distract from all the cars



Many European cities, despite being without trees and usually many times denser than the densest US city find a ay to be pleasant. In greece and italy I've seen a lot of vegetative adornment on the buildings



Other places have other natural and man-made beauty to distract from the lack of trees

[dashster]

Yet peak oil means that food production will also peak. How would you grow food in a city?

It is ironic that an entirely (except for a few public spots) concrete paved overcrowded mass of land is considered "green" at this point in time. And putting more people on it is considered to be making it even greener.

[Newfie]

It's a human centric view ignoring the larger consequences.

It strikes me that over 90% of humans are effected with this fixed viewpoint.

[Ibon]

Seems like some sort of gentrification and a yuppy migration to formerly rotten US inner city cores. Hardly a trend reversing the overgrowth of suburbia. But cities are by no means sustainable. They are just as bad as suburbia. What is coming is going to require going back to subsistence farming. There will be no choice and the majority will not survive.

If you think that is doomerism, then look up what happened to various developed societies throughout history. This time around the fall is going to be much harder.

We have to remind ourselves that as fossil fuels decline what goes first is all the discretionary use. What remains becomes more and more a precious commodity used for the basics. Culturally we then start to align ourselves with the basics instead of the excesses. We start to see the seeds of these cultural shifts today in segments of the young generation choosing to move to urban areas instead of the suburbs. More sharing of transport, housing, stuff. And when you ask young people about their preferences they will tell you it is more than just not having the money to own a car or a home in the burbs, it is about a cultural alignment with shared values with peers.

Parallel to this will be a movement similarly in rural areas as more and more agricultural practices will become less industrial and less dependent on the fossil fuel infrastructure of big machines, petro chemicals and fuel. That will create tighter communities in rural areas with a higher percentage of the population dedicating themselves to subsistence agriculture. This bring back a richer rural social life as we can perhaps recall from our grandfathers stories.

I usually post pretty dreary stuff about embracing the predators that will take us down to a sustainable number which is surely part of the process here but we shouldn't forget that the cultural adaptations on the way down will bring some unintended consequences which will be quite positive. We could very well eventually end up with virbrant rural areas linked with public transportation to vibrant urban areas where the main thing lost was suburbia because the only suburban areas that would remain would be those areas with adequate rainfall and good soils that would permit a conversion of sorts in this living arrangement.

It is at times good to remind everyone that this painful correction of overshoot does lay down the foundation of a more sustainable culture and that the pathway is not all negative.

[Pops]

I think one of the very best mitigations is mixed-use planning. It can happen in very high population areas all the way down to little burgs.

[dinopello]

I think one of the very best mitigations is mixed-use planning. It can happen in very high population areas all the way down to little burgs.

I really enjoy living in such a place. Everything I need and do is within a quarter mile (very pleasant ) walk. But, you must like people. And, you must like or at least tolerate running into your neighbors wherever you go - and some of them like to TALK! And some like to get up in your business - "who was that new girl I saw you with at Liberty Tavern last Wednesday?".

The main impediment to retrofit is those existing resident who resist the change. They primarily worry about about traffic and others parking on "their" streets. Not suprisingly, these are the same people that can't imagine how someone could live without driving everywhere for everything all the time, much less live entirely without a car.

The market is there so developers sometimes will build complete new "town centers" rather than infill an existing run down strip center with mixed use that is already in the middle of a neighborhood. This is unfortunate.

[Newfie]

Some places, which used to be more or less self sufficient, are now almost entirely reliant upon imported food simply because industrial food and its transport is so cheap, subsidized by cheap fossil fuel calories.

It is this large scale industrialization of the food chain that makes large cities, and even large populations in remote areas, possible. I guess that might even include Kansas, for all its grain I bet it imports a bunch of other food stuff.

As that winds down it is inevitable the populations will wind down as well.

The exact nature of this great unwinding is anyone's guess. But I do think that for most of us it is more our kids problem than ours.

Spoken as a true boomer.

[DesuMaiden]

Yeah I live in the suburbs. I wonder if I will survive peak oil lol.