Mapping America’s Futures (Interactive Map)

[chris08876]

Mapping America’s Futures

Test possible scenarios for how the US population might change by 2020 and 2030. The results will change depending on whether you choose low, average, or high rates for future births, deaths, or migration.

Interactive: How does your metro/city/state change based on the parameters?

Map with data options: http://datatools.urban.org/features/...s-futures/#map

Article (What will America look like in 2030?) : http://datatools.urban.org/features/...tures/#feature


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What will America look like in 2030?

We can already see that the population is aging and becoming more diverse, but how will those trends play out at the local and regional levels? And what if, in the future, we live longer or have more babies? How would those trends affect the population in different cities and states?


These demographic shifts matter a great deal to states and local communities. Las Vegas is scrambling to build enough schools to accommodate the city’s recent population boom. Meanwhile, Detroit is figuring out how to downsize wisely to match a shrinking population that may shrink even more.

To help visualize the future, the Urban Institute developed a tool as part of the “Mapping America’s Futures” series that projects local-level population trends out to 2030 (the button on the right will take you there). Pick low, average, or high rates for birth, death, and migration—the three drivers of population change—and the map changes in response.

The rates are all reasonable assumptions, based on historical trends. In other words, it won’t show a future where no children are born and no one dies, but we could imagine a future where people move around more or birthrates fall by 20 percent. With the tool, people can explore several possible “what-if” scenarios—possible futures—and see how they’ll play out across the country.

A future with more births and longer lives looks very different from one with fewer births and high mortality. And migration—one of the most difficult forces to predict—can change areas rapidly, not just in sheer numbers, but also in terms of an area’s racial and ethnic makeup, its workers and tax base, its demand for housing and for government services, and, arguably, its character.

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Examples Based on Map Parameters and input:

[brickell]

Will have to look into the data, but some of the results looks fishy.

[babybackribs2314]

I love when people extrapolate straight lines and call them "projections"!

[mhays]

Growth factors aren't additive. They can counteract each other.

Stuff like traffic and housing prices tend to like equilibriums. A little less out-migration can create counterwinds for in-migration.

[llamaorama]

Large college towns with relatively impressive but in an absolute sense unspectacular growth really show up strongly on that map.

Bryan-College Station, Charlottesville, etc, adding 100,000 people

Will college student enrollment continue to grow so rapidly in the future when the large millenial generation tapers off and the growth in student loans and tuition costs hit a wall, plus increasing online studying?

[Jonboy1983]

I'm not buying this data. They're showing Pittsburgh will decline between now and 2030 according to average birth, death, and migration rates. What data are they looking at? It's got to be data from 20 years ago maybe, but Pittsburgh's been adding jobs and will only continue to do so. Granted the population declined from 2000 to 2010, but the population I think officially bottomed out in 2007 or 2008; it's been growing steadily since then.

I did realize something; they're adding some central PA counties (Cambria and Indiana) to the Pittsburgh region which I think is skewing the data downward. If they just left it as the official Pittsburgh MSA as defined by the US Census Bureau, Pittsburgh should show overall growth between now and 2030.

Philly looks to grow regardless pretty much. Big shock there...

[Cashville]

While fun to look at, data like that is typically garbage.