Educated class flocks to urban environments
Posted December 7, 2010 in Living Sustainably
One of my favorite bloggers, Aaron Renn (The Urbanophile), has a new post analyzing migration patterns of college graduates in the last decade, 2000-2009. In particular, he reports on changes in what might be called educated density, expressed as college grads per square mile.
Here are the US counties that added the most graduates per square mile in the last ten years:
Not one is suburban in character. Hudson County, New Jersey, which includes Jersey City, is that state’s densest. Kings County in New York is basically Brooklyn. Suffolk County in Massachusetts includes Boston. In the Washington area, Arlington and Alexandria are technically suburbs, but they are both really urban and the closest jurisdictions to DC on the Virginia side of the Potomac.
Here’s another of Aaron’s graphs, this time showing the increase in college grads as a percentage of the overall population increase in these places:
Note that, in most cases, the number is higher than 100 percent, meaning that there has been a bigger gain in college grads than there has been in overall population. The number of non-graduates in those 100-percent-plus jurisdictions actually shrank. While this perhaps suggests a troubling threat to (or indicator of) affordable housing in inner cities, it also strongly reinforces what so many of us have been saying for the last couple of years: urban environments have become much more attractive to people who have choices about where to live. Think about what a reversal this is from most of the late 20th century, when the basic paradigm was that the affluent were fleeing central cities for new suburbs. (It also reinforces my assertion from yesterday’s post that circumstances have changed since the basic smart growth agenda was assembled.)
Go here for the rest of Aaron’s analysis, including some additional interesting graphs.
Move your cursor over the images for credit information.
Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.
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Comments
amanda lee — Dec 7 2010 01:05 PM
Thanks for this - really drives the point home. I grew up in Kentucky and moved to New York after college for 3 yrs; since then, I've spent two yrs in a smaller midwestern city that I don't like. It's cheap to live here, but public transit is dysfunctional to nonexistent, and sprawl means I spend way more time in the car than I would like to. In January, I'm moving to Chicago, because I'm tired of waiting for my city to become something it's never going to become.
However, I'm wondering how long these grads stay. I saw a lot of people in NYC who came and stayed for a couple of years before moving to smaller towns to start careers/families. Any thoughts on that?
Alex — Dec 7 2010 03:30 PM
Nice numbers, but no maps?
Kaid @ NRDC — Dec 7 2010 03:59 PM
Aaron didn't do any maps in his post from which this is taken, and I'm not sure the findings in the graphs lend themselves to it. But if you come up with anything good I'll be happy to run it.
Payton — Dec 7 2010 04:13 PM
An interesting data point from the recent Brookings "State of Metropolitan America" is that the best educated parts of America are the dense suburbs -- what Claritas, the demographics firm, calls "Money & Brains." The least educated part of America's metros, with half as many college grads, are the exurbs -- now riddled with foreclosures, but once key to Karl Rove's 2004 realignment.
Oh, and my favored way of explaining away Arl+Alex is that they were both part of DC once upon a time. "Deannexed from the center city" is about as inner-ring suburban as you can get.
Crystal — Dec 8 2010 06:31 PM
Obviously the pattern has to do with jobs. I have found so many great jobs in DC and San Fran but I don't want to live in either. I've just reached the point in my life, after 10 years in Chicago, that I'm done with the density and crime (and cold). Telecommuting is hardly for everyone. I wish good jobs could be found everywhere.
E M RISSE — Dec 9 2010 06:26 AM
Mr. Chung said:
“An interesting data point from the recent Brookings "State of Metropolitan America" is that the best educated parts of America are the dense suburbs -- what Claritas, the demographics firm, calls "Money & Brains." The least educated part of America's metros, with half as many college grads, are the exurbs -- now riddled with foreclosures, but once key to Karl Rove's 2004 realignment.”
Mr. Chung: You have your finger near the pulse!
Almost all ‘smart growth’ discussion and now ‘sustainability’ discussion is mired in municipal data, MSA data (using outdated borders for the components) and the use of zip code and census data is opaque without a comprehensive Conceptual Framework.
All this falls into place with Radial Analysis.
The picture is FAR different than most now believe. Some Big Enterprises that have used Radial Analysis for their marketing see the light – that is one reason they are not hiring.
Some Enterprises (CVS, CostCo, et. al. and the larger developers and builders living on OPIUM - other peoples money) are still dreaming of a ‘normal business cycle.’ They are starring at the wrong numbers.
As to Arlington and Alexandria:
The census defines them both as part of the ‘Washington Metropolitan Area Central City” and they are both inside Radius = 8 Miles along with the Federal District. (A good reason to never use ‘city’ uncapitalized.)
For the National Capital SubRegion, the logical location of The Clear Edge is between R = 21 and R = 30. The Village scale places with the “money and brains” are inside R = 20 / most are inside R = 12 in the National Capital SubRegion except for ‘Outliers’ like Reston.
The statement:
“In the Washington area, Arlington and Alexandria are technically suburbs, but they are both really urban and the closest jurisdictions to DC on the Virginia side of the Potomac.”
is a perfect example of why use of the Core Confusing Words like “suburbs” are ‘confusing.’
Keep up the good work, abandon the rest. No one can do it all.
EMR