Seattle grew by the largest % among the top 50 US cities 2021-22
Seattle's 2.4% was the largest among the top 50 US cities from 7/1/21 to 7/1/22, based on Census estimates. This feels like the obvious "back to the city" after Covid, plus the continued growth we've been seeing on the ground.
Fort Worth, Phoenix, and San Antonio grew by larger numbers. Seattle Times. Census. |
Usual caveat about Census estimates, but encouraging signs for the urban rebound.
For instance, San Francisco was effectively flat: April 2020 Census: 873,959 July 2020 estimate: 870,393 2021 estimate: 811,253 (-6.8% yoy) 2022 estimate: 808,437 (-0.3% yoy) Manhattan, Seattle, DC all grew again, Boston dropped by less than 4k versus 17k in 2021, so on. Hoping for more of a turn around for Chicago or Philadelphia and the outer NYC boroughs remain puzzling (lingering immigration drops from the pandemic?) but again, Census estimates come with a gigantic grain of salt. Edit: Also, Port St. Lucie is now a top 100 city in the US -- and if these trends continue, next year we'll have a newcomer to the top 10, SSP's favorite city. Jacksonville! |
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And I don't mean just getting the number wrong, I'm talking about completely opposite directionalities. The CB's estimate algorithms seem to not have the first fucking clue what to do with big old mostly-stagnant legacy cities, so they just make up a number, despite that fact that it's always wrong. Anyone who actually wants to know the population situation in Chicago will unfortunately have to wait 8 more years because anything between then and now will be worthless garbage, as it has been for the past 3 decades. |
Maybe the counts are also off.
PS from now on I'm going to replace "directions" with directionalities." |
I have no idea what's happening with the Census counts. Either the annual estimates are garbage, or the decennial counts are garbage, bc they aren't remotely close, especially for older, more urban parts of the U.S.
Also, how does one reconcile the annual estimates with the prevailing narratives. During peak Covid, the narrative was that rich people were in the Hamptons and Palm Beach, and digital natives were relocating to cheaper, second tier places. Then we find that cheap urban places like Baltimore had some of the worst population losses and the Hamptons was flat. Even Miami, where supposedly half the planet had moved to, to escape allegedly heavy-handed Covid response, had population loss. Later on, the prevailing narrative was that urban unrest, unrestrained liberalism and remote work would bleed urban centers of the mobile wealthy, leaving cities with the poorest of the poor. But the biggest population losses appear to be in the poorest jurisdictions, and the best population numbers appear to be in wealthier jurisdictions. Also, SF was supposedly the poster child for worst post-pandemic urban outcomes. Tech oriented elites scattered, remote work emptied downtown, and wacky liberalism supposedly allowed bums to go buck-wild. Yet Seattle is the closest analogue to SF (West Coast techie, white-Asian, affluent, heavy remote, outdoorsy, silly expensive, very liberal, lots of homeless) and appears to have the best Census outcomes. What gives? |
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Also I wouldn't count out Philly and NYC exactly just because of this graph and the last year: https://i.imgur.com/N51DkrPh.png We're coming out a once-in-a-century (hopefully) pandemic. There's irregular pent up demand for moving and other live events. Also Portland shrinking has to be a surprise, no? SF gets beat-up all the time in the news these days, but I feel like Portland may actually be suffering more. |
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When I was in SF last year it didn't seem like the hell on earth landscape that certain types have depicted it to be. There were far fewer people downtown than typical and a lot more empty storefronts than normal, but that's been true about every city. This was June 2022, and NYC definitely felt more "recovered" than what I was seeing in SF at the time, but even now NYC isn't fully back to pre-pandemic normal. |
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Portlands downtown is bad news. Its like an economic dirty bomb went off. The east side of the city and urban NW are thriving tho. Ppl are returning to the office but now their office might be in the suburbs. Were going to end up with a rustbelt downtown but all the other fun Oregon stuff people like is doing fine. WFH killed the cbd, the women running the county homeless bureau passed out 25,000 tents to transients with public money and Oregon voters chose to legalize hard drugs. The results are obvious. :( Even with all that crap policy, wfh is the biggest elephant in the room. Highly unionized employees in multiple sectors are refusing to return to the office and some companies simply closed up shop or left the cbd. That being said, there is still a palpable energy. Normal Portlanders seem a little edgier than usual but most people are still friendly.
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pdxtex, are you still thinking of looking into and visiting Buffalo?
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Do you guys need a team from Statistics Canada to come down to Washington and show the US Census Bureau how to properly conduct things? :P |
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My general feeling is that any long term demographic trends apparent within the last 30 years will probably continue in that direction for the foreseeable future. Young people still want dense, exciting cities and many Americans still want to live in a pretty location or someplace that is affordable and safe. The national politically climate is experiencing some trends but trends eventually die and things go back to boring old normal. There are few cities I would outright refuse to live in and that mostly revolves around a lack a bike infrastructure.
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I wonder if rents prices would be a better indicator of population growth.
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Rents can be influenced by taxes, laws and general economic conditions, but people have to live somewhere, and if more houses and units are being built, then there are probably more people around. Just going by housing, Chicago after 2010 would have recorded more downtown construction, declining demolitions, and a falling birth rate. And the safest bet based on housing production would have been a stable population. |
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Do they still go door to door? It seems like you could just use something like vacancy rates or utility hookups to estimate the population. There must be some other identification record available.
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https://apnews.com/article/census-ur...ced6f87f04e63f
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