Record Wave of Americans Fled Big Cities for Small Ones in 2023

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

With all due respect, you don't live in an apartment.

Yes I do.

Units in a MFH home are still apartments, whether it's a 3-flat or a 50 story residential tower

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by JManc

There's some truth to the rumors; San Francisco is straight up Dawn of the Dead along Market Street and right around the Tenderloin and Civic Center areas...but not necessarily dangerous. I've walked up and down that area many times at night with no worries but it's pretty post apocalyptic. Rest of SF is decent and worth the visit and not at all how Fox portrays it. Oakland is worse anyway but gets nicer as you approach Berkeley.

I work downtown between 1st and 2nd on Mission and it is so much better than a year ago. Sure there are areas (Tenderloin) an areas around 6th and Mission but overall most places downtown feel normal and vibrant again. I come across the occasional walking dead but the city feels so much more busier and alive. So I would say there is a lot less truth to these rumors today than there was a year ago.

[chris08876]

The future of this country is in the suburbs. We will see suburbs increase in density and have growth that is faster than the principal city in which those suburbs surround it. The core limits within the principal city that is.

The limiting factor for a lot of our core cities, within the actual city limits is always lackluster efforts when it comes to transit expansion and naturally housing itself. If we expect our cities to compete with the suburbs, especially cities in which land is scarce or land prices are through the roof, they must heavily drive housing and improve the process from blueprint to shovels in the ground.

The sprawl is here to stay and the best thing to make the sprawl better is to improve upon it. Make it more "city like".

Vibrancy and culture will eventually suffer if our bigger cities become gated communities.

Minus the transit, I can see a lot of our metros manifesting with density patterns similar to Greater London. Increased density around inner ring suburbs as the main nodes are just to expensive. Where the suburbs overtime become an extension of the actual city itself.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by dktshb

I work downtown between 1st and 2nd on Mission and it is so much better than a year ago. Sure there are areas (Tenderloin) an areas around 6th and Mission but overall most places downtown feel normal and vibrant again. I come across the occasional walking dead but the city feels so much more busier and alive. So I would say there is a lot less truth to these rumors today than there was a year ago.

By Salesforce? Yeah, that area further up on Mission seems to have a healthy ratio of living humans to dead ones. Transbay is always seem to be bustling as well.

Originally Posted by chris08876

Minus the transit, I can see a lot of our metros manifesting with density patterns similar to Greater London. Increased density around inner ring suburbs as the main nodes are just to expensive. Where the suburbs overtime become an extension of the actual city itself.

No way. Outside of maybe just LA and maybe NY, there is no suburb anywhere near close to the density and urban fabric of some of the outer rings of London.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mhays

And...you think that means most people never leave? What a bizarre assumption. (I live in a big condo building btw.)

FromSD, great point about car accidents killing more people than crime. That's always been the case even in the US with its huge murder numbers.

Death or injury by car accident is also class agnostic. There's a race and class disparity to murder stats (and even more of a disparity of how the media covers it), but not as much among people that are killed in car crashes.

[meh]

^ no, there's a disparity. and the reasons aren't difficult to wrap one's head around.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/pr...ic-fatalities/

[DCReid]

Originally Posted by chris08876

The future of this country is in the suburbs. We will see suburbs increase in density and have growth that is faster than the principal city in which those suburbs surround it. The core limits within the principal city that is.

The limiting factor for a lot of our core cities, within the actual city limits is always lackluster efforts when it comes to transit expansion and naturally housing itself. If we expect our cities to compete with the suburbs, especially cities in which land is scarce or land prices are through the roof, they must heavily drive housing and improve the process from blueprint to shovels in the ground.

The sprawl is here to stay and the best thing to make the sprawl better is to improve upon it. Make it more "city like".

Vibrancy and culture will eventually suffer if our bigger cities become gated communities.

Minus the transit, I can see a lot of our metros manifesting with density patterns similar to Greater London. Increased density around inner ring suburbs as the main nodes are just to expensive. Where the suburbs overtime become an extension of the actual city itself.

I am surprised more US cities are not like Canadian ones, with dense areas well outside the core even as the core still thrives. But maybe that will be the trend. Most old traditional cities don't consistently have dense suburbs around transit, although there are pockets in some like NYC. Most Sunbelt cities seem to have pockets of denseness in suburbs but at the expense of the weak central cores, like Dallas with Plano, Irving, and now developing Frisco and its relative weak downtown for the 4th largest US metro. When I see pictures of the Toronto and Vancouver, I see clusters of high rises well outside in the central core in multiple parts of the metro area.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by meh

^ no, there's a disparity. and the reasons aren't difficult to wrap one's head around.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/pr...ic-fatalities/

There is a disparity in traffic related deaths that is likely driven by things like infrastructure and access to safer vehicles, but it is nowhere near as pronounced as murder deaths. According to the link you posted Black Americans are 1.8x more likely to die in car accidents than white Americans, yet the murder rate of Black Americans is over 7x that of white Americans. That said, traffic crashes kill far more people each year than murder, regardless of race. People of all races are more likely to die in car crashes than from murder.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Death or injury by car accident is also class agnostic. There's a race and class disparity to murder stats (and even more of a disparity of how the media covers it), but not as much among people that are killed in car crashes.

For obvious reasons.

One is a violent attack, on purpose, the other is an accident.

If I accidentally bump into you in a store, no harm, but if I bump into you and stare at you with obvious intent, you'll be telling people about that later.

Also, if someone you love dies in a wreck, its horrific, obviously, but it's a risk we take.

If someone you love is murdered, it can destroy you even more due to the senseless and malicious intent.

[meh]

^ Millions of auto-related deaths + serious injuries every fucking year in this country while civilized nations continue to reduce their rates... they're not "accidents". the vast majority involve negligence on the part of at least one driver—if not straight-up reckless behavior—and continuing negligence and calousness from our streets and highways officials. we know how to stop the carnage, we just don't give a shit.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by DCReid

When I see pictures of the Toronto and Vancouver, I see clusters of high rises well outside in the central core in multiple parts of the metro area.

I can't speak to Vancouver, but in Toronto's case, if you look closely around those clusters you will see mile upon mile (kilometer upon kilometer?) of single family home suburbia in the shadows of those towers. Even within the post-amalgamation city proper.

[chicagoguy1]

I lived in Chicago from 2000-2012 (Rogers Park, Edgewater, River North), moved to NYC from 2012-2022, got priced out of NYC and moved back into my condo in Chicago recently in East Rogers Park. Chicago was always my favorite city growing up in a small farm town in central IL, and being fascinated by skyscrapers. Chicago has changed a lot since I have been gone for 10 years and recently moved back in Sept of 2022, and not for the better. My neighborhood in particular has changed dramatically, and just seems super sketchy walking around, increased crime, and just the general feeling of having to watch my back. I no longer take the Redline after 7PM, bought a car after not having a car for 20 years, because the trains here are so bad. I use to take the Redline home late at night when I lived here before, from Michigan Ave to Rogers Park, without any problems. Now the trains here, have 3 people smoking cigarettes in each car, are super filthy, and general do not feel safe. Everytime I go downtown (Michigan Ave, the Loop, etc) I cringe, Michigan Ave use to be this vibrate street, now its more than 30% vacant, people drag racing up and down the street, lots more trash, homeless on every corner. I guess this is just post Covid world we live in, I hope to see things in Chicago change, it is shocking to see the difference of living here for 12 years, and now living here again..

[Crawford]

For whatever reason, the pandemic seemed to hit Chicago harder than NYC. It doesn't really make sense, as NYC was the epicenter of the pandemic, and had unprecedented pandemic-era mass wealth flight, but 2024 era NYC feels pretty much like 2018 era NYC, but Chicago, for whatever reason, doesn't.

Granted, this is my extremely biased observation based on only three trips to Chicago. But something still feels a bit off. It's dirtier, emptier and the swagger isn't back.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

For whatever reason, the pandemic seemed to hit Chicago harder than NYC. It doesn't really make sense, as NYC was the epicenter of the pandemic, and had unprecedented pandemic-era mass wealth flight, but 2024 era NYC feels pretty much like 2018 era NYC, but Chicago, for whatever reason, doesn't.

Granted, this is my extremely biased observation based on only three trips to Chicago. But something still feels a bit off. It's dirtier, emptier and the swagger isn't back.

I think the same can be said of San Francisco. I haven't been to Chicago post COVID, but SF definitely felt a lot emptier post COVID.

Manhattan fell pretty hard too but it seemed like it was all hands on deck to stabilize the situation. Midtown, SoHo, downtown, etc., had an enormous amount of abandoned storefronts in 2022, but a lot of it has bounced back already.

[skysoar]

Originally Posted by chicagoguy1

I lived in Chicago from 2000-2012 (Rogers Park, Edgewater, River North), moved to NYC from 2012-2022, got priced out of NYC and moved back into my condo in Chicago recently in East Rogers Park. Chicago was always my favorite city growing up in a small farm town in central IL, and being fascinated by skyscrapers. Chicago has changed a lot since I have been gone for 10 years and recently moved back in Sept of 2022, and not for the better. My neighborhood in particular has changed dramatically, and just seems super sketchy walking around, increased crime, and just the general feeling of having to watch my back. I no longer take the Redline after 7PM, bought a car after not having a car for 20 years, because the trains here are so bad. I use to take the Redline home late at night when I lived here before, from Michigan Ave to Rogers Park, without any problems. Now the trains here, have 3 people smoking cigarettes in each car, are super filthy, and general do not feel safe. Everytime I go downtown (Michigan Ave, the Loop, etc) I cringe, Michigan Ave use to be this vibrate street, now its more than 30% vacant, people drag racing up and down the street, lots more trash, homeless on every corner. I guess this is just post Covid world we live in, I hope to see things in Chicago change, it is shocking to see the difference of living here for 12 years, and now living here again..

Wow, my last visit to the city of Chicago where my wife owns properties in Hyde Park and on the Southside was just the opposite of your experiences. The streets and lawns were surprisingly cleaner, and trash removed from many of the off-ramps of the Dan Ryan. Obviously, it's been a while since you were on the Mag mile and Michigan avenue because the vacancy rate was 14.1 percent the second quarter of 2023 per TREPP. I agree it's not quite where it was previously, but there is much incremental progress being made in Chicago. And to be honest after the pandemic, crime wise it is difficult to feel comfortable in any city in the U.S large or small outside of downtown.

[3rd&Brown]

I don't get the crime paranoia. For sure, 2021 and 2022 were awful for violent crime in particular but do ya'll really feel unsafe walking around in what are most likely some of the nicest urban neighborhoods in your respective cities?

I don't feel unsafe walking around Philly AT. ALL. Crime is plummeting again and services are sorta back to normal. I think the only thing that hasn't completely normalized is transit...but I'm not sure it's that it's less safe so much so as it looks less safe, because you're more likely to notice the dubious people and behaviors that were always there but you didn't see it because there were so many more (normal) people present at the same time.

[moorhosj1]

Originally Posted by chicagoguy1

Everytime I go downtown (Michigan Ave, the Loop, etc) I cringe, Michigan Ave use to be this vibrate street, now its more than 30% vacant, people drag racing up and down the street, lots more trash, homeless on every corner. I guess this is just post Covid world we live in, I hope to see things in Chicago change, it is shocking to see the difference of living here for 12 years, and now living here again..

This has not been my experience on Michigan Ave. The last time we were there, my wife and I even joked about how everyone talks about it dying, meanwhile it was very vibrant and full of people shopping. Just like it was 5 years ago.

There is definitely an increase in panhandling, which I assume is from the 40,000 migrants who can’t get work permits. Increased homeless seems to be happening in every city post-COVID. We could certainly use better leadership, but my experience isn’t as dire.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by moorhosj1

This has not been my experience on Michigan Ave. The last time we were there, my wife and I even joked about how everyone talks about it dying, meanwhile it was very vibrant and full of people shopping. Just like it was 5 years ago.

There is definitely an increase in panhandling, which I assume is from the 40,000 migrants who can’t get work permits. Increased homeless seems to be happening in every city post-COVID. We could certainly use better leadership, but my experience isn’t as dire.

This.

x1,000,000

[craigs]

Also, given the mass wave of suburbanization the country went through between the 1950s and 1980s, is there really a "record wave of Americans" fleeing big cities?

[mhays]

Originally Posted by skysoar

...And to be honest after the pandemic, crime wise it is difficult to feel comfortable in any city in the U.S large or small outside of downtown.

We live in very different worlds. I'm a guy though.