Quote:
Originally Posted by BG918
A big reason is while inner city neighborhoods have improved in the past decade, and new condo towers and lofts have been built in downtowns across the country, it doesn't make up for losing families of 4/5/6 that used to live in these areas. Now they are made up largely of older couples or widows/widowers, and more recently, young singles or young couples without children. People are still overwhelmingly leaving the inner city once they have kids. That is what is driving the population decreases even though on the outside it appears the neighborhoods have gotten better, and in many ways they have. That explains population losses in cities like Chicago and St. Louis, and minimal gains in cities like Dallas and Denver, to name a few.
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This is what I think. The same pattern is happening across the country, regardless of city type or location. The difference comes down to how the city limits are drawn...
Harris County
2000: 3,400,578
2010: 4,092,459
City of Houston
2000: 1,953,631
2010: 2,099,451
Houston's Inner Loop
2000: 456,630
2010: 469,051
So after a gain of nearly 700k for the County, and a gain of 145,820 for the city,
the inner loop of Houston only gained 12,421 residents from 2000 to 2010. The area that we would consider to be the most "urban" and the traditional portion of the city didn't gain nearly as many residents as we had once thought. So eventhough the metro has grown at a staggerring rate, the growth is by and large still in the suburbs. Families that formerly lived within the city have either left by choice, or are being priced out by the market. The same pattern that we've seen (so far) in cities like Dallas, St. Louis or even Chicago.
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