Out-migration cools talk of inner-city resurgences

Out-migration cools talk of inner-city resurgences A few years ago, Chicago was widely touted as the brightest star in the turnaround of many of the USA's big cities. The 2000 Census found that Chicago had gained population during the 1990s, the first decade that had happened in 50 years. Population estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau show three Illinois cities among the top 50 in percentage growth since 2000, but Chicago is not among them. The city's population declined 1.2% between 2000 and 2004 while the suburbs of Joliet, Aurora and Naperville grew by 21.4%, 16.4% and 8.9%, respectively. (Related story: Big cities not booming) The Chicago story exemplifies trends playing out across the nation. The growth that fueled hopes for a long-term urban resurgence has cooled somewhat. (Full lists: Slowest-to-fastest growing | Alphabetical) "The '90s was the best decade for older big cities since the 1940s," says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. "Now, during this decade, it's not going so well. The fastest-growing cities in the country are essentially obscure suburbs. To the rest of the country, these are not national cities." Among them is Port St. Lucie, Fla., whose 12% population increase from July 2003-July 2004 was the highest of the 251 U.S. cities that have more than 100,000 residents. "They are basically kind of suburban places that never have big-city status," says demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution. "But they're the kind of places that people are moving to because they're more affordable." High housing costs in many big cities are driving some people away. Other factors: • "Safety moves" after 9/11. "There was some tendency for people to stay away from the big, dense cities, especially the ones that got named as potential (targets), and even some like those," Frey says. • The economy. The dot-com decline blasted cities such as San Francisco and Boston. Other cities have experienced job losses, and municipal red tape often hinders start-up entrepreneurs, says Joel Kotkin, senior fellow at the New American Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "The notion of the resurgence of the inner city was being overstated," he says. "In Philadelphia, for example, Center City is better than it's ever been. But the rest of the city is losing jobs and population." Among other highlights in the new Census estimates: • The Sun Belt continues to be the USA's growth engine. The 10 fastest-growing cities from July 2003 to July 2004 that have more than 100,000 people are in California (4), Florida (3), Arizona (2) and Nevada (1). Nineteen of the top 25 such cities are in those four states, 10 of them in California. • There was only one change among the USA's 10 most populous cities, with San Jose replacing Detroit at No. 10. Chicago remains the third most populous U.S. city, with 2.86 million residents, but its net out-migration rate has accelerated since the 2000 Census, says Kenneth Johnson, a demographer and professor of sociology at Loyola University Chicago. During the 1990s, 171,000 more people moved out of Chicago than moved in, Johnson says. The overall population increased because there were more births than deaths. From 2000 to 2004, he estimates that 140,000 more people moved out of the city than moved in, and the birthrate has not compensated for it. While black and white residents left the Windy City in the 1990s, that was partly offset by Hispanics moving in, Johnson says. "Whites and blacks are still leaving," he says. "But Hispanics are now leaving more than during the 1990s." It's not just the city, either. Cook County, which includes Chicago, had a net loss of almost 49,000 people between 2000-2004, a pattern being repeated in places such as Detroit and Cleveland, he says. "That's new," Johnson says. "It used to be common for the central city to lose people but the surrounding county would be gaining. Now, for some of these places, it's not just the central city that's losing population but the county that contains the central city." Chicago's population had declined every decade since the 1950s, from a peak of about 3.6 million. It now appears that the gains of the 1990s were a short-term deviation from the long-term trend, Johnson says. Still, he says, "This city still is a viable, lively place. It's just not as dominant as it once was in this metropolitan region.">