Suburban growth outpaces city growth for second straight year
Newly released census data for city population growth through 2017 show that what I and others previously heralded as the “decade of the city” may be less valid during the waning years of the 2010s. While most big cities are still gaining population, the rates of that gain are falling off for many of them as the nation’s population shows signs of broad dispersal.
The new numbers for big cities—those with a population of over a quarter million—are telling. Among these 84 cities, 55 of them either grew at lower rates than the previous year or sustained population losses. This growth fall-off further exacerbates a pattern that was suggested last year. The average population growth of this group from 2016 to 2017 was 0.83 percent—down from well over 1 percent for earlier years of the decade and lower than the average annual growth rate among these cities for the 2000 to 2010 decade (see Figure 1).
The Brookings Institute
William H. Frey
Senior Fellow – Metropolitan Policy Program
Tuesday, May 29, 2018