How come capital cities grow faster than the suburbs here?
June 20th, 2011 at 1:22 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
Did you know Providence is one of only three large cities in America that grew faster than its surrounding suburbs over the past decade? And Boston is another?
So reports The New York Times (emphasis mine):
[F]or all the buzzy talk of knowledge industry synergy and urban appeal, census figures show that UBS’s return [to New York City from Stamford, Conn.] would be bucking the demographic trends rather than reflecting them and that the suburbs, however unloved by tastemakers and academics, remain where the growth is. …
Joel Kotkin, a writer who specializes in demographic issues, says that the 2010 census figures show that during the past decade just 8.6 percent of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than a million people took place in city cores. The rest took place in the suburbs, which are home to more than 6 in 10 Americans.
The 8.6 percent is even lower than in the 1990s when the figure was 15.1 percent. … Of the 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1 million residents, only three — Boston, Providence, and Oklahoma City — saw their core cities grow faster than their suburbs.
Interesting. What’s up with that?
(h/t: Doug Lane)
Tags: boston, census, development, economic growth, geography, providence, suburbs
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: 
Many cities have seen growth in their downtown cores, while the city overall has seen less growth or negative growth. Even Detroit saw a population rise downtown in the last census.
I would guess that Boston and Providence’s growth is reflective of their size. Cities in the rest of the country tend to grow to consume their suburbs so that large swathes of the city are former suburbs. A city like Lexington, KY may see growth in the urban downtown, but the annexed suburban areas see lower growth than the further out suburbs for reasons such as property taxes and schools (I don’t actually know what Lexington did during the census, just using it as an example).
In Boston and Providence, we don’t annex our suburbs, so we are all (or mostly) urban. While some parts of Providence saw declines, our downtown and other urban environments within the city limits led growth. While Warwick lost population and other areas close in to Providence were stagnant.
Can’t explain OKC though, don’t know anything about it.
[...] Providence and Boston are two of just three U.S. cities that grew faster than their suburbs et [...]