“White Flight: Suburbs Lose Young Whites to Cities,” proclaims the headlines. While whites are moving to the cities, the suburbs are supposedly turning into slums. Horrors! Sounds like a job for Superbiggovernmentman!
A few decades ago, urban planners knew suburbs were evil because they were enclaves of wealthy whites, while downtrodden poor and minorities were left behind in the cities. But a new report (part one and part two — 8 and 16 MB respectively) from the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program reveals that suburbs today include people of all incomes and all races. Instead of viewing this as a cause for celebration, the report’s writers argue that “National policy makers have the unique obligation” to “manage this change.”
One of the report’s co-authors, William Frey, was quoted by the media saying, “What used to be white flight to the suburbs is turning into ‘bright flight’ to cities that have become magnets for aspiring young adults who see access to knowledge-based jobs, public transportation and a new city ambiance as an attraction.” In fact, there are no data in the report to support the claim that suburbs are “losing” young whites or high-income whites to the cities.
A chapter of the report written by Frey himself does say that “Atlanta and a few other cities experienced a . . . gain in the share of population that is white,” but those gains were small and could be as much from minorities moving to the suburbs as whites moving to the cities. Moreover, this happened in only a dozen out of the top 100 metro areas and (says Frey) “is not yet a widespread phenomenon” (p. 62). This is hardly evidence of “bright flight.”
The data behind the report reveal that, from 2000 to 2008, the principle cities of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas grew by 3.2 million people while the suburbs grew by 13.5 million people. So the suburbs are still growing far faster than central cities.
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The report also shows that (after adjusting for inflation) median incomes of both cities and suburbs declined, but suburbs declined a little more so “the gap between city and suburban incomes narrowed slightly” (p. 135). So no bright flight; merely a gradual balancing of incomes.
If the media reports put a erroneous New Urbanist spin on the publication, the Brookings Institution’s own press release is one lengthy argument for big government. Should the trends identified in the report continue, “America in 2025 may have cities that can’t support their aging citizens; transportation infrastructure ill-equipped to meet the needs of young or old, and a gap between rich and poor that could grow with our population.”
These are worrisome problems, but they have practically nothing to do with the form or nature of our metropolitan areas. The reduction in birth rates that followed the baby boom means that, no matter what our cities look like, the number of workers per retired person is going to decline (and the problem is much worse in Japan and many European countries). Though an aging population is an excellent argument for promoting driverless cars, it isn’t clear that New York City’s transportation infrastructure works any better for an aging population than, say, Los Angeles’. The growing gap between rich and poor is due to the premium put on college educations and the failure of our primary and secondary schools in low-income areas.
The big-government actions that Brookings proposes to deal with these problems “include comprehensive immigration reform that better incorporates new Americans into our society and economy; a revamping of transportation and housing policy that reduces energy inefficient sprawl and accommodates seniors; programs to increase post-secondary education for our emerging workforce; and redoubling efforts, like the Earned Income Tax Credit, that help make work pay for working-class families.” Two out of four of these policies make no sense.
I have no problem with immigration reform or educational reforms (which must be focused at the pre-college level) aimed at increasing college educations. But “policy that reduces energy inefficient sprawl” is not going to address any of the problems, and will make some of them worse (especially as sprawl is not particularly energy inefficient). And increasing the “earned income tax credit” (which means taking money from people who earn it in order to give unearned income to people who didn’t earn very much) creates the wrong incentives.
The Brookings report no doubt makes many useful points. But its findings do not justify efforts to curb urban sprawl, build expensive rail transit networks, or otherwise impose more federal programs on metropolitan areas.
Randall,
I live in Hoboken, NJ, a young-professional paradise so I am on the front line of this “bright flight.” Essentially, most of these hip urban areas work like this: You grow up in the middle class suburbs, as I did. You move to the urban areas for your 20s, as I do (although I am moving back to the suburbs next year)and then you move back out to the suburbs to start a family. Now there has certainly been a mini baby boom in Hoboken over the last few years and you see strollers all over the place. However, you rarely see any couples with children over the age of 8 or so. That’s because its incredibly expensive and really difficult to raise a family of 4 in these old urban areas. All of these families move out to the suburbs when their kids reach first grade. Just go onto Weichert.com and see how many 3 bedroom condos or selling for below $500,000. The only ones that are under $500K are a block from the housing projects.
In fact, there are no data in the report to support the claim that suburbs are “losing†young whites or high-income whites to the cities.
Either Randal has not read the report, or seeks to dissemble away from the fact that there are charts and endnotes with citations in the report.
But of course, this is a standard harrumphing umbrage complaining about something that is inconvenient to a worldview. Such all-too-common plaints almost never contain references to datasets that show how the umbraged report is incorrect. The barely-constrained ululations almost never have links to empirical evidence to support explicit or implicit claims.
And not once in the raiment-rending do we see as much as a single letter that directly addresses the “bright flight”. Sure, we see three paragraphs of hand-waving and misdirection. But flapping of hands doesn’t actually address the topic.
I guess if you want to distract away from “bright flight”, hand-waving, dissembling and head-fakes is a good way to go about it, though…
DS
And BLHackman’s comment brings up another inconvenient issue: housing for life stages. Different life stages have different shelter requirements.
The demand fro SFD is higher for a particular age group, then drops off as the kids leave. Having one housing choice as the gold standard for propping up an ideology is great for a majority of people in one stage of life, but it doesn’t work for all stages.
What is pointed out in demographic analyses is that the demographics are changing, and certain life stages are not occurring at the same % as before. So future demand likely will be changing. Projections for future demand for SFD in a McSuburb don’t look like past performance. And the wild card is what will happen when the floor is USD$100/bbl oil?
That is why Walk Score is being used by more and more freedom-hating Realtors every day. And places like Zillow (soshulizts surely) use the car-hating WalkScore. Now if only we could let The Market(TM) build some housing choices…if only we could embrace The Market(TM) and let The Market(TM) supply goods demanded by a significant segment of The Market(TM) so biniss can make money meeting the demand of that segment The Market(TM)…if only…I wonder who wants to meet that demaaaand…I wonder…I wonderrrrrrrr…..
DS
I’ve had the exact same experience as BLHackman: people move from the dreary suburbs to the thrilling city in their 20s, then back to the suddenly safe and affordable suburbs to raise kids.
Otherwise, here again we see another justification but the same solution: more government, please.
“fro”
“one housing choice as the gold standard for propping up an ideology”
“McSuburb”
“freedom-hating Realtors”
“soshulizts”
“car-hating”
“The Market( TM)” x5
“so biniss can make money”
See? I just discredited you.
Cato employee seeking to make serious public policy proclamations = commenter making fun of small minority argumentation.
Uh-huh.
DS
DS and a few others.
With your posts remember that you are talking to about 350 people from all over the world interested in Randals ideas.
Please inform us of your latest book or papers or presentation but provide something new of interest to the readers.
BLHackman,
Was there a five-year plan in Hoboken to create a hip urban area? Did the city give tax breaks to hip bars and local rock bands? What government agency facilitates young families with finding an affordable house in the suburbs, and who allocates their urban homes to other people? Would young families stay in the urban core if there were grocery stores within walking distance?
Please inform us of your latest book or papers or presentation but provide something new of interest to the readers.
My latest paper is on the Urban Heat Island and the one I’m working on now is about Solar Access Planes, so they are not germane to pointing out the faulty and misleading argumentation in Randal’s assertions.
But Mr Grattan does have a good point in that there is certainly nothing new here wrt either the rhetorical tactics used to further an agenda, nor in pointing out said tactics.
HTH.
DS
People should live how & where the gov says?
And if certain things (housing, public transit) become too expensive, then the gov has supposed solutions, often involving taking from others.
Gov attempts to solve, usually make conditions worse & have other unintended consequences, such as reducing motivation to earn more money.
Hey Dan,
If this website has nothing new, why did you write 4 out of 10 comments today?
Also, taxpayers are really concerned about your obsession with hand jerking while you are in front of a computer at a government job.
Good points, all, Andy. I’m sure you’ll not get a cogent response. Dan’s 40% is worse than hand flapping; it’s cock strutting.
Dan again appeals to the majority with the trite and tautological phrase small minority. Then there’s the bigoted use of “McSuburb” AGAIN. Talk about argument from repetition. Dan’s a broken record.
I just don’t get how Dan has enough time at work to write a 439-word tripe-fest.
“A few decades ago, urban planners knew suburbs were evil because they were enclaves of wealthy whites, while downtrodden poor and minorities were left behind in the cities.”
And only a few decades before that planners knew that suburbs were the solution the world had been looking for. Don’t ever forget that your beloved suburbs were, and still are, planned by big government from the top down.
That is a good point, bennett.
What continues to astound me about Mr. O’Toole, Scott, and a select few others, is that they are proponents of suburbia and even more so of the “user fee” US highway system. Both of these ideas were initially implemented and administered (and in many cases still are) by the federal government. The conclusion however is the involvement of the federal government (or state and local) is bad.
With antiplanners the conversation never turns to improving processes to better reflect their concerns, but instead eliminating all processes that result in outcomes they don’t like. Government involvement is always looked at unfavorably even though it is mostly responsible for so many of the things they love. I often agree with them on the premies that big gov can screw things up, but one of the main differences between us is that my conclusion is not that all of these aspects in our life should be void of government, but rather that we should continue to evolve the system to better reflect the needs and desires of participants, and step up accountability any way we can.
I think that there is some common ground here, but we’ll never get to it on this blog due to the lightening rod posts and comments. But that’s okay. It’s what makes it so fun.
Is it really useful anymore to talk about cities as “suburbs” and “cities
“And the wild card is what will happen when the floor is USD$100/bbl oil? ?” –DS
In terms of constant dollars? If not, that’ll be the case in 5 or 10 years but it won’t mean oil actually costs more.
And how does fuel effeciency factor in? If oil’s $100/ barrell in 2005 dollars but we’re all getting 40 miles to the gallon, will we care?
Or what if incomes continue to rise? So we have more money available to spend on gas so we’re non-plussed about spending $160 / month on gas instead of $110?
Keep in mind, anarchy is not a goal; less (limited) gov is.
All levels of gov spending are now about 42% of GDP.
That is way too high, taking too much from the private & offering much less value than the comparable amount from the private sector.
Not to long ago, gov was about 1/3 of GDP; around 26% might be a good level.
prk, in case you hadn’t noticed, real wage growth for the lower three quintiles in the last two decades makes your argument problematic.
DS
I pretty much agree with Bennett’s comment #15. Government planning can be very valuable, in fact government without planning would be awful. But government planning can also be very detrimental and wasteful. A planner has to know his limitations.
Government planning should not be bureaucrats predicting the future and then trying to force people into their vision of the future. That approach has a terrible history of oppression and erroneous predictive ability.
I pretty much agree with Bennett’s comment #15.
I just had this conversation in the car today as we passed a development where we did a tree planting – trees were doing great as the residents cared. Back a half-mile or so, few residents cared and the neighborhood was undesirable.
You can’t predict which neighborhood will decline and mandating, say, 30% Section 8 in the midst of or next to somewhere is no guarantee folks will get motivated and lift themselves up. That said, this lower SES demographic also informs us that agents are not always rational utility maximizers, either. When the non-NIMBY publics are telling you it won’t work in a certain place, listen.
DS
BLHackman: Usually hip urban municipalities that are outside the central city (in your case, NYC) are usually thrown in with Anysuburb, NY/NJ/CT, statistically, because actual urban areas are often not delineated by city limit lines, and vice versa. Examples: parts of White Plains vs. other parts of White Plains, some neighborhoods in Queens vs. other neighborhoods in Queens, Staten Island vs. Brooklyn, etc. Statisticians only seem to break down urban areas by density and predetermined boundaries, be they city limits, census tracts, etc., and not by the design of these places. Hence most of Phoenix being “urban” according to the US Census.
TexanOkie, several things:
(Dan & Highway too)
What’s a “hip urban municipality”?
BTW, it helps communication, to not have one mass paragraph.
I think you’re generalizing. Neighborhoods fitting that description can be found in many UAs (urbanized areas).
As far as an actual UA (density above 1,000) & city limits, the dividing line can actually eliminate some edges of a city, but that is rather immaterial.
Furthermore, there is a dif between UA & metropolitan area (by whole county).
Look at Census definitions for more info.
For “hip,” that most likely will occur before the edge of urbanization. Whatever the heck you are trying to refer to as “hip urban” is more for densities above ~5,000.
What was your point?
Forgive me, but it’s obvious you don’t have much knowledge in these urban issues that we discuss.
Thanx for input though.
Were you looking for “hoods in the corn”?
______
To go on, to another point——> That brings up Dam & Hman:
They have some knowledge of irrelevant [urban] facts or make vague generalities, so its hard to really address whatever the fuck that they are trying to maybe, kinda, sorta, get at, infer, say.
Even so, they still avoid confrontation, refutation, questions.
Pretty cowardly of those guys, huh?
I generally agree with the conclusion that most of the policy recommendations in the Brookings report don’t follow from the actual analysis, but I have a problem with this statement:
And increasing the “earned income tax credit†(which means taking money from people who earn it in order to give unearned income to people who didn’t earn very much) creates the wrong incentives.
On the contrary, it creates exactly the right incentives. It induces more labor supply, which is exactly what is needed at the lower end of the income distribution. It provides more incentive to work. The EITC, which is actually quite similar to the negative income tax championed by Friedman and others, is a far more efficient instrument of redistribution than the many other programs adopted by federal and state governments.
prk, in case you hadn’t noticed, real wage growth for the lower three quintiles in the last two decades makes your argument problematic.
Looking at wage growth alone fails to tell you anything about total compensation, much less standard of living. There are also some rather important measurement issues to consider.
DS, Studies that find “real wage growth” problematic have been problematic.
Either way, talking about the price of gas going up, even in constant dollars, doesn’t mean much without context. Not that it’s likely to happen, thanks to Peak Demand.
Scott:
Thank you for proving my point, which you apparently missed. Urban demographers, especially those at the US Census, define urban areas by density alone, and do not usually take into consideration elements of urban design that make a place an urban landscape rather than just an urban density. So in essence, it is you, and those demographers who define urban by population density alone, who are generalizing here. Hence my observation that true urban areas (by design, not just density) do not follow city limit lines nor fall completely within a central city as the AP’s linked report delineates it’s statistics.
As to the “hip urban municipalities”, the term was more of a description than a term. In BLHackman’s post, he mentioned that he lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. Hoboken has an urban environment (both in terms of density and design), is a desirable area (especially with young, “hip/ster” people), and is, for the most part, gentrified. Yet, it would not be considered a “suburb” as opposed to “city” in the AP-linked report because it is not technically within New York city limits, thereby drawing me to my conclusion in my original post and in my first paragraph above.
Also, Scott, while I realize you may well be a troll since you never really post comments on this blog, I’d like to think I’m pretty well-versed in urban issues considering I’ve lived in large/major metro areas all my life (all with populations at least 1.25 million, though most of my life has been in a metro area with population greater than 5 million), have a degree in urban geography, and have worked for a city planning department for 3 years.
I also wasn’t aware that an 11-line paragraph is considered a “mass paragraph”, though I do admit it wasn’t as well organized as it could have been due to the brevity in its construction.
P.S. What the heck is “hoods in the corn”?
Correction: Scott rarely posts comments on this blog in entries where I also comment.
MJ, the reason that the HCR was such a big deal was prices were rising fast enough that wages couldn’t keep up and we had ~30M citizens that couldn’t afford health care. I hardly think that is an indicator for ‘rising living standards’ for the lower 3 quintiles. We are talking about the poor – middle class being better served by the augh-toe, after all. And purchasing shiny consumer goods as an indicator of rising standards of living? Come now. Rising willingness to go further into debt to purchase shiny consumer goods.
And prk, evidenceless statements that assert studies that find “real wage growth†problematic have been problematic are problematic.
DS
Hey TexanOkie,
It’s still unclear what you are referring to for UAs. Sorry, I have missed your whole point–actually it doesn’t seem “whole”, but just partial.
You seem to be hung-up on density & administrative boundaries.
How many core cities or suburbs have rural areas?
The suburbs on the edge will have some, on the opposite side of the core city.
You might be thinking of low density pockets or transition areas on edges of UAs. An UA & a metropolitan area have big differences (the former is within the latter), and each are continuous. Please read up to learn more.
As for your focus on urban design & landscape, rather than density, those don’t really exist in very low densities (non-urban). How is density generalizing?
I did mentioned previously that what you are referring to for urban neighborhoods (& hipness; ???), those are most likely in areas that are well above the minimum density to be considered urbanized.
BTW, most “suburbs” are cities; also included can be towns, villages & CDPs (unincorporated). Not sure on what you are trying to differentiate on about a “core city” (NYC) & the 1st ring & 2nd ring cities/suburbs.
Not sure what you mean about trollness. I comment here often. I try to have intellectual discussion. Sometimes my occasional sarcasm is missed. What particular did you see a being a troll? To be honest, I get disgusted sometimes when posters are short on some fairly basic urban knowledge; that can be akin on a person, w/out much expertise, giving advice to a mechanic on how to fix a car.
Just living in a large UA, does not give one extensive knowledge on urban issues. For that, one needs graduate school &/or much other reading. Similar to just living in the US does not give one much info on capitalism; or working for a company knowledge on its details.
My “hoods in the corn†comment was in reference to rural areas, which you seem to be combining with an UA.
“And prk, evidenceless statements that assert studies that find “real wage growth†problematic have been problematic are problematic.”
-DS
Come on, only I get to be vague! 🙂 I’m kidding. That’s fair enough; a good point on your part.
Scott:
I have no idea what you’re reading. I am not, and have not been, talking about rural areas and urban areas in their Census definitions, nor municipal boundaries. I am talking about principles of urban design and geography (i.e. building disposition & configuration, mixed land uses, A- and B-grid street networks, etc.) that make a place urban rather than or in addition to density alone. So if I am “hung up” on density, it is only in that density alone does not make a place urban. The only time I referenced municipal boundaries was to say that such urban areas (design + density) do not fit neatly into them, as the data in the AP-linked report was broken down as. In fact, urban areas, regardless of how we define it, not fitting neatly into city limit lines seems to be a point we are in complete agreement on.
When I mentioned suburbs, I was talking about exactly what you said – incorporated municipalities, unincorporated towns/villages/etc. within a metropolitan area that are outside the core city – only that some cities have an urban design aspect that make them as attractive as similar urban design areas in central cities to particular demographics. Again, case in point: Hoboken, New Jersey. The linked report would not make this distinction, and thus the results of the study may be skewed.
I took your comment to be a troll when you decided to go personal. In fact, you again questioned my knowledge in your latest post. I don’t have a problem with using credibility arguments in debate – it can be a very effective tactic. However, it’s only effective when there’s an actual problem with someone’s credibility. You seem to latch on to the fact that I used my life experience (the study of my surroundings and built environment is what pushed me into my profession) to back my credibility while completely ignoring that I also told you I have a degree in urban geography and have been an urban planner for 3 years. So I fail to see where I’m short on urban knowledge, unless you mean I’m short on knowledge you’re familiar with. In which case a similar argument could be made that you’re short on knowledge on urban design, which in my education and career is an extremely important part of urban study. Lack of knowledge on either of our accounts doesn’t make either of us short on urban knowledge, however. It just shows that we both have different specializations in a wide subject. I am not a transportation planner, demographer, or community/economic development planner. I am, however, an urban designer, land use planner, and historic preservation specialist. In other words, your disgust at my comment was unfounded. That’s all.
You are making your own definition of “urban”.
When making your own perception of accepted terminology, it makes discussion more difficult.
You didn’t touch on urban aspects & hipness, which was your main point, right? For “urban stuff” that will be at even higher densities for a minimum density (500-1000, varies in context).
Yes, I am disagreeing, in general, about defining “urban” by density alone. I am well aware of the accepted definitions of “urban”, “Urban Area”, “Urban Cluster”, etc., that the US Census uses. I believe that design considerations should be included before you define an area as urban. My quip about most of Phoenix, Arizona being classified as urban was supposed to have illustrated this – very little of Phoenix has a true urban form, though it does have urban densities.
However, that was not my main point – it was merely alluded to. My main point was the statement that we’re in agreement on: urban (in design) areas (and Urban Areas, for that matter) generally do not fall into neat little municipal or census tract boundaries. Therefore, the idea that suburbs aren’t losing population to the core cities may be true, as the AP-linked article claims, but the idea that suburban (in design) areas are not losing population to urban (in design) areas is still unproven.
Sounds like you like a concrete jungle for “urban”.
If there are parks, fields, yards & other non-built stuff, then it is not urban. You don’t like that each urbanized area is one continuous polygon of Census tracts above density of 1,000? The tracts are not very large.
Maybe you can change the definition/classification of urban, to make it really confusing. Write to the Census & the APA.
Scott (*sigh*):
I understand and appreciate the value of the Census’ definitions of “urban” – it’s invaluable to statistical analysis that assists in providing necessary services and market analyses, etc.
In an earlier post, you mentioned that my making my own definitions of accepted terms makes the intellectual discussion you claim to crave difficult. Well, so does making wild, unfounded assumptions about what others think or believe. It shows lack of interest and intent to understand positions not aligned with your own, and often times it patronizes and overly simplifies what may be complex ideas that are very prevalent to the conversation. In your case, it tends to even come out as combative.
In any case, I’m not going to continue to debate the nature of good urban design principles to a brick wall. I’ll just end by saying that your understanding of urban design is very limited, and I would encourage you to explore the subject, because several of your comments and assumptions may be reversed in the process.
With that, I’m out.
So the discussion was suppose to be about urban design, regardless of what an urban area is?
When a person makes their own definitions & assumes that others are on the same page, there can be lack of communication.
I didn’t notice any attempts to elaborate of what makes urban form.
See post #33 – esp. the second paragraph.
You haven’t made any descriptions of urban forms, just saying that Phoenix is lacking.
I would have to disagree with that (I’ve been there often). It’s pretty hard to have over 1.5 million people on almost 500 sq. mi., & not have urban design. There’s even a new, wasteful LRT, as well as many bus routes. Phoenix also has some of the newest construction.
It’s form seems very urban–having a huge street grid pattern & extensive freeways, etc.
Regarding you earlier statement that I don’t know much about design–that cannot be determined; I did not type about that.
You seem to be alluding to “built stuff”–in your own design, without any giving any details.
Should urbanized areas be only above 2,000 ppl/sq.mi or some number higher than current?
Are you saying that there can ~1,200/sq.mi, but no urban form?