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

[DCReid]

Score a victory for Mayberry. America’s small towns, like the iconic setting of television’s The Andy Griffith Show from the 1960s, saw more in-migration in 2023 than larger areas for the first time in decades...

An estimated 291,400 people last year migrated from other areas into America’s small towns and rural areas, which Lombard defines as metropolitan areas with 250,000 people or fewer.

That number exceeded net migration into larger areas for the first time since at least the 1970s,...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/recor...192243203.html

[eschaton]

I absolutely do not believe the census. I think the ACS estimates are full of garbage right now.

COVID-era migration has ended, and urban crime is dropping rapidly. There's absolutely no reason why big cities should be seeing an outflux of people right now.

[jbermingham123]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I absolutely do not believe the census. I think the ACS estimates are full of garbage right now.

COVID-era migration has ended, and urban crime is dropping rapidly. There's absolutely no reason why big cities should be seeing an outflux of people right now.

perceptions do not care about reality. If you ask ~50% of americans about crime in the cities, they'll say its never been worse and society is collapsing. Nothing we can do about that unfortunately. Haters gonna hate, leavers gonna leave.

Regardless, for the most part, the people leaving cities are retiring boomers and working class millennials who want to start families in cheaper places. We are in the full-fledged boomer retirement wave at this point so we should expect several hundred thousand boomers to be moving to smaller places every year for the next 5 years

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I absolutely do not believe the census. I think the ACS estimates are full of garbage right now.

COVID-era migration has ended, and urban crime is dropping rapidly. There's absolutely no reason why big cities should be seeing an outflux of people right now.

Its also a dumb headline. 291,000 isnt alot for one and doesnt mean they all came from cities either.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by jbermingham123

perceptions do not care about reality. If you ask ~50% of americans about crime in the cities, they'll say its never been worse and society is collapsing. Nothing we can do about that unfortunately. Haters gonna hate, leavers gonna leave.

Regardless, for the most part, the people leaving cities are retiring boomers and working class millennials who want to start families in cheaper places. We are in the full-fledged boomer retirement wave at this point so we should expect several hundred thousand boomers to be moving to smaller places every year for the next 5 years

Why would a boomer want to live in the middle of nowhere?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown

Why would a boomer want to live in the middle of nowhere?

Smaller places =/= nowhere. Living in a big city doesn't just hit the same way as you get older.

[Comrade]

The only thing I can think that would drive this would be cost of living and cheaper homes in Wichita, Kansas than Denver, Colorado.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by JManc

Living in a big city doesn't just hit the same way as you get older.

That's sounds like an individual thing.

My parents are approaching 80 and they live in Chicago

All 4 of my grandparents died in Chicago.

All 8 of my great grandparents died in Chicago.

And so forth.....


This notion of moving away from your family and friends once you are no longer tied to a job is a profoundly foreign one to me.

I doubt I will ever grasp it.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

That's sounds like an individual thing.

My parents are approaching 80 and they live in Chicago

All 4 of my grandparents died in Chicago.

All 8 of my great grandparents died in Chicago.

And so forth.....


This notion of moving away from your family and friends once you are no longer tied to a job is a profoundly foreign one to me.

I doubt I will ever grasp it.

This also sounds like an individual thing, though. People do different stuff .

Having all 4 of your grandparents dying in Chicago and your parents living there as well basically signals that... you're from an older part of the country and... you're getting old. Like me

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

That's sounds like an individual thing.

My parents are approaching 80 and they live in Chicago

All 4 of my grandparents died in Chicago.

All 8 of my great grandparents died in Chicago.

And so forth.....


This notion of moving away from your family and friends once you are no longer tied to a job is a profoundly foreign one to me.

I doubt I will ever grasp it.

Me too as all my grandparents/ great grandparents lived and died in my hometown and most of my living relatives are still there. but it happens all the time and more often than not, people who do move do so to be closer to family. There are a lot of "half backs"; people originally from NY or NE who moved to FL or TX moved halfway back to the Carolinas to be between family in both places.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by JManc

Smaller places =/= nowhere. Living in a big city doesn't just hit the same way as you get older.

if the US was serious about enforcing driving competence among older people...

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by pj3000

This also sounds like an individual thing, though.

Well yeah.

That goes without saying.

It was literally the first sentence of my post that you quoted.

Originally Posted by JManc

but it happens all the time.

I'm aware that some people do move around after they retire.

I was just pushing back against your initial assertion that "living in a big city doesn't hit the same way as you get older".

The way your statement was worded made it sound like you were making a blanket universal observation about big cities and aging, as opposed to an individual one, that's all.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by jbermingham123

perceptions do not care about reality. If you ask ~50% of americans about crime in the cities, they'll say its never been worse and society is collapsing. Nothing we can do about that unfortunately. Haters gonna hate, leavers gonna leave.

Regardless, for the most part, the people leaving cities are retiring boomers and working class millennials who want to start families in cheaper places. We are in the full-fledged boomer retirement wave at this point so we should expect several hundred thousand boomers to be moving to smaller places every year for the next 5 years

If we were seeing a record outflux from urban cores, then real estate prices would be collapsing in metro areas.

We aren't seeing that at all.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by JManc

Smaller places =/= nowhere. Living in a big city doesn't just hit the same way as you get older.

As some one who is suddenly dealing with a very sick parent for the first time in my life, and ushering them to 4-6 doctor's appointments a week to figure out a cancer treatment plan, I can't imagine not living in a major city with access to a robust healthcare system.

I'd argue having access to big city amenities is more important as an elderly person than it is at any point in one's life. On top of that, your mobility decreases as you get older. Imagine being in the last decade of your life in a place where you're stuck in a house all alone because you need a car to get everywhere and you can no longer drive.

[eschaton]

Yeah, it might be a class thing, but none of my family, going back through the generations, did anything other than aging in place or moving closer to children to either be around their grandkids or have help as they aged.

I think people who retire to somewhere out-of-the-way tend to either not have kids, or have distant relationships with them. I also think that unless they're wealthy and retiring early, there's some level of self-delusion going on about how well they can make it long-term on their own.

I should note here that while the idea of retiring to Florida doesn't appeal to me, I don't think it's the same thing. Florida is pretty well urbanized now (in the Census sense of the term) and there's a robust healthcare industry built around catering to the old population, so there's plenty of institutional support, if not family support.

[Tuckerman]

This is mostly nonsense to interpret. The reality is that demographics are and always have been dynamic. There is a solid literature analyzing "movers and stayers", e.g the sociologist James Coleman at Hopkins in the 60s and 70s. There are excellent statistical analyses of how many people stay in an area in which they were born and how many are so-called "outsiders." Obviously a "newer" fast growing city like Atlanta is dominated by movers (there are nearly 4,000,000 more people here than in 1990!). Nonetheless one still discovers Atlanta families that have been here for decades and would not live anywhere else. It is also quite apparent from current and recent data that smaller towns (<10,000 pop.) across the US (of course there are exceptions) are declining in population unless they are near a major MSA and in transition. In addition, it is unlikely that the small declines in MSA populations among some big cities (notably, Chicago, NY, LA, SF etc.) indicates that they are dying or declining; rather, they are more likely to have stabilized at a functional size.

[Crawford]

The Census has to be getting even worse with the annual estimates this decade. It doesn't make sense.

NYC has, by far, the lowest vacancy rate in recorded history. It also has growing school enrollment, after years of declines. I was just in Boston, and the housing crisis is epic. There's nothing. DC is really bad. The big West Coast metros are even worse.

Census even shows Miami area with population declines. Do people really believe that? The inflation in South Florida, not just with housing, is epic. How is that possible in conjunction with emptying population?

I guess you could have plummeting household sizes, in conjunction with soaring rents and miniscule vacancy, but that would be really odd. Housing unaffordability leads to doubling-up, not singles taking on more housing.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by JManc

Smaller places =/= nowhere. Living in a big city doesn't just hit the same way as you get older.

But this article isn't about "living in a big city". It claims that people are fleeing metros. So fleeing McMansions for small town living. Fleeing Houston for Bumkisville, TX.

You'd think boomers would want medical care. Small towns don't have comprehensive healthcare.

Also, it sure doesn't seem to be true where my parents have a cottage. RE values haven't changed much since the 1990's. Even the Dollar General closed.

[mrnyc]

behold the reality aka the complete opposite of fled ...




New York YIMBY’s Q1 2024 Construction Report Tallies Record-Breaking 19,819 Residential And Hotel Units

BY: VITALI OGORODNIKOV 8:00 AM ON MAY 8, 2024


New York YIMBY has tallied the records for new building permit filings for the first quarter of 2024, and the results are one for the record books. According to data compiled from permit filings submitted to the Department of Buildings, during the three-month period from January through March, builders throughout the city filed a combined total of 19,819 residential and hotel units, the highest total for any three-month period since YIMBY started tracking the statistic in 2020. Similarly, the combined filed-for square footage of 26 million is also the highest quarterly tally for the decade so far.

Of the 1,044 new building permits, 57 were filed for high-rise buildings standing ten stories and higher, which will boost the skyline and contribute much-needed density in some of the city’s most pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented communities. Below we break down the data via a series of charts and analyses that track the city’s development trends during the year’s first quarter.


more:
https://newyorkyimby.com/2024/05/new...es-record.html

[jtown,man]

This isn't rocket science, and I see a lot of people are emotionally invested in this topic.

What is the point of living in a city? Most city dwellers don't even leave their apartments, as their jobs are online and they order food and everything else, avoiding leaving their apartment as if their lives depend on it.

Our public transportation system is in crisis mode, with most not even coming close to pre-pandemic numbers (which were already sad for the vast majority of cities). Crime is an issue. Just because crime is lower than 2021 doesn't mean its low. Thats like saying "racism is less of an issue today than in 1950, so we are good!" No, an issue is an issue, even when it becomes less of an issue.

So why pay so much to live in a crime-infested place where you don't actually take advantage of what the city offers?