Americans began the 20th Century bound to choosing their homes around the source of a square meal. They ended the century free to choose homes like breakfast cereal.
With ever-thinning ties to factories and farms, Americans of all races have an unprecedented freedom of choice on where to live, work and play, and they have exercised those choices nationwide in ways broadly reflected by the 2000 census.
Generations weaned on the taste test and drive-through have crowned new boomtowns, mostly in the West and South, based on convenience and comfort. Those selling points have boosted one-time suburbs into full-fledged cities while continuing to drain less user-friendly industrial centers in the Northeast and Midwest.
Legions of suburbanites also have voted for convenience by moving back to the long-suffering downtowns of many cities, stemming population declines there. And in the opposite direction, African-Americans and Hispanics have settled in growing numbers in suburbs once overwhelmingly white, reducing levels of segregation across much of the country.
“The big thing is that the jobs now follow where the people feel like moving,” said Robert Lang, who studies population trends for the Fannie Mae Foundation. “It used to be the other way around.”
So with all these choices, what is the formula for becoming the hot spot of the next century? No single recipe applies–though one ingredient stands out.
“By and large, the places doing well today are the ones that are the most pleasant to live,” said Edward Glaeser, a Harvard University economics professor who has studied urban demographics as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “In 1900, urban growth was dictated by the productive capacity of cities, and that meant manufacturing and natural resources that made us rich. Not true today.”
The Bliss Belt
In other words, natural resources are still a draw, but less for mining and trade than for skiing and boating. The Rust Belt has given way to the Bliss Belt, dotted by sprawling desert metropolises such as Las Vegas and Mesa, Ariz., where empty-nesters settled in search of broad lawns and favorable climes.
In fact, one of the best predictors for current population patterns is the thermometer. Cities with an average daily temperature in January of more than 50 degrees grew more than 15 percent between 1981 and 1990, while those under 30 degrees managed less than 5 percent growth, Glaeser found.
Little wonder that North Dakota officials have mounted a campaign to drop the unmarketable “North” from its name.
In this culture of choice, the biggest losers have proved to be the coldest, driest parts of the country. The Great Plains have emptied out to such an extent that nine counties in that swath of the country have slipped below the government’s definition of the “frontier”–six people or fewer per square mile.
Most of those people it seems are heading west over the Continental Divide. Among big cities nationwide, Western cities grew fastest during the 1990s, at an average of 19 percent, followed by Southern cities at about half that rate. Big Midwestern cities grew at about 3 percent, while the Northeast saw its cities decline.
But being an air-conditioned confection is not the only way to win.
Other cities earned big gains not by offering space and vistas, but with a brainier resume of educational resources. College towns, including Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wis., grew more than 8 percent, a rate greater than that of the regions around them.
What seemed a far unlikelier scenario has driven the revival of other cities, where once-blighted downtowns have become a new destination for couples and yuppies choosing city life over suburbia.
Downtowns, defined generally as a city’s historic heart and home to its priciest commercial real estate, grew in 18 of the 24 cities Lang studied with researcher Rebecca Sohmer.
New downtown concept
Nowhere is the term “inner city” more out of date than in the downtowns of Seattle, Chicago and Houston, which saw the greatest growth in downtown density. As with the rest of the newly revived downtowns, whites have represented the greatest portion of that growth.
While those cities have succeeded by marketing a new, more stylish conception of city life, another way to win is to be the non-city city. Instead of skyscrapers, look for office parks and Applebee’s restaurants as the skyline of these new boomtowns, which now have populations that surpass many old-line cities.
Examples of what Lang calls “boomburbs” are Santa Ana, Calif., and Arlington, Texas, whose populations of 337,977 and 332,969 respectively have surpassed those of Cincinnati and Buffalo respectively. Like many others in this generation of new boomtowns, Glaeser notes, these one-time bedroom communities have mushroomed despite limited public transit or manufacturing bases.
Ultimately, the most meaningful reflection of these new liberties may be their effect on long-standing segregation patterns.
The suburbs were long reserved for white residents, but minorities made up the bulk of suburban growth in 65 of the country’s largest 102 metropolitan areas, according to a Brookings study. Minorities, accounting for fewer than 1 in 5 suburban residents a decade ago, now make up more than one-quarter. Moreover, in the 33 largest metro areas, black-and-white segregation declined in every area except two (Miami and New York).
Among the many measures of individual choice from the 2000 census, that may be the one with the most meaningful legacy of all.
