Several metropolitan areas that either lost population or experienced a decline in growth when the high-tech bubble burst appear to have recovered in the year ended July 1, new census figures show.
But the Rust Belt and many coastal areas continue to hemorrhage people.
“It’s a tale of two kinds of cities,” said William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution. “Growing and `new economy’ metros that have rebounded from early-decade woes, and large coastal and Rust Belt metros where high housing costs or diminishing employment prospects propel continued out-migration.”
“Among the former,” Frey said, “are a series of high-tech-driven centers like Austin, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Boise, Raleigh and Atlanta, where growth slowdowns were reversed or modest growth has accelerated.”
Katrina effect
Metropolitan Seattle, for instance, which grew by fewer than 20,000 residents from 2002 to 2003, gained more than 55,000 from 2005 to 2006, reaching 3.3 million. In Raleigh, N.C., the increase was 25,000 from 2002 to 2003 but more than 42,000 in the year ended July, for a total of almost 1 million. Metropolitan San Jose, which recorded a population loss from 2001 to 2002, grew 25,000 in the latest period, to 1.8 million.
The South and West accounted for nearly all the metropolitan areas with the fastest-growing populations. The area with the highest rate of growth for both the one-year and six-year periods ending in July was St. George, in southwestern Utah.
The latest analysis of changes in metropolitan areas confirmed the effect of Hurricane Katrina, which swept ashore in August 2005. Metropolitan New Orleans lost more people than any other metropolitan area in the latest one-year survey, 289,000, or 22 percent. The storm’s effect was also reflected in the gains in Houston, where the increase from domestic migration was just 8,700 in 2004-05 but 86,600 in 2005-06. Baton Rouge, La., gained 35,100, or nearly 5 percent, making its rate of growth the second-fastest among large metro areas.
Stockton boom
New York recorded a net loss of 268,000 in domestic migration, and Los Angeles lost 229,000.
Overall, metropolitan New York barely registered a gain, although one outer exurb, Allentown, Pa., recorded among the highest growth rates, 1.3 percent, of any area in the Northeast or the Midwest, as affordable housing made it more appealing to commuters.
The District of Columbia’s net decline of migrants, more than 45,000, placed it sixth in that category.
“In addition,” Frey said, “a series of Midwest, western Pennsylvania and upstate New York metros continue to bleed migrants, led by better employment prospects and amenities, to the South and West. Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Dayton and Detroit show accelerating population declines.”
He attributed the expansion of fast-growing areas like Provo, Utah, and Stockton to “struggling young couples, middle-aged empty nesters and retirees who put a premium on urban settings, but on a smaller scale.”