9 ms·

Why Are America’s Three Biggest Metros Shrinking?

50 points by prostoalex 7y ago

Railsify 7y ago
Because large cities smell, people urinate on the streets, the air quality is very low and to add to those cons, you have to pay more to live there. Suburb living is great, the air smells good, I can't hear my neighbors unless we have a party. I suspect those that are leaving value saving for retirement over renting an overpriced apartment in a chic neighborhood. Also there are no murders in most suburbs in any given year. If you live in NYC /Chicago chances are you are within a mile of a murder at least once per year. https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/ https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/
- cozzyd 7y ago
  If suburb living is so desirable, why does it cost more to live in the city?
  - dilutedh2o 7y ago
    More jobs I guess?
    - xvedejas 7y ago
      Jobs are often desirable. I suppose it's down to the individual to decide whether they care more to 1. optimize for avoiding the most undesirable situations or 2. optimize for total average desirability of where they live. My question would be: which strategy is more common in practice? Is there research on the psychology of deciding to live in a city?
    - mattkrause 7y ago
      This is especially true if you're part of a couple. If one of us finds a job in New York, Boston, or Chicago, there's probably something nearby for the other too. GE had some interesting R&D jobs in Schenectady, but unless they hired both of us, it would be a lot tricker for the other spouse to find something relevant. US universities, which are often located in small towns, sometimes offer "spousal hires", where they either create a new position for one person, or at least give them some preference when hiring. I've never heard of a company doing that, but it would certainly pique our interest (anybody need a neuro/ML guy?)
  - waynesonfire 7y ago
    maybe there is more suburban land available?
  - rhino369 7y ago
    In a metro area like chicago that has 9.5 million people, the "cool and hip" urban areas fit about 300,000 people. Plus jobs and traffic. If I could live in a middle rung suburb and have a 30 min commute, I'd do it.
  - i_am_proteus 7y ago
    There's (literally) exponentially more land available at greater distances from the urban center. The area grows in proportion to radius squared.
    - random_savv 7y ago
      That's not exponential, it's quadratic (still fast).
      - big_chungus 7y ago
        Squaring is raising a number to the power of two, an exponential operation. Growing in proportion to a power of two could be reasonably described as a quadratic rate of growth.
        ajross 7y ago
        The pedantry obviously isn't relevant to the discussion, but just so you're clear why everyone is calling you wrong: "exponential growth" refers to a function of x that goes as C^x for some constant C, not one that goes as x^C. The latter is "polynomial" (of which "quadratic" is the term used when C is 2).
        panda88888 7y ago
        Exponential is a^x. Square is polynomial, i.e. x^a.
  - maxsilver 7y ago
    Because density is inherently more complicated and expensive to build and maintain. This is also why there aren't "cheap" skyscrapers in suburban/rural areas. Because even when it's easy and 100% legal to build by-right, any density above 2-3 stories is still inherently really expensive.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > If suburb living is so desirable, why does it cost more to live in the city? Cities are very good places to live if you are very rich, and you might need to live there for certain work (commuting has a time cost, and doing it with a cushion for a job with long hours and strict on-time requirements can be prohibitive, for instance.) So, there are reasons why cities are desirable for some portion of the population But price isn't just demand, it's the intersection of supply and demand, and the available land in a given radius of a point (say, a city center) goes up with the square of distance. So even if desirability increased with distance, it'd still be possible for price to go down.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    A portion of the wages of the higher paying job you're theoretically commuting to are priced in. Aka "it's what the market will bear" or "supply and demand"
  - Railsify 7y ago
    Supply and demand.
- ChrisLTD 7y ago
  I'll give you that cities like NYC are stinky and expensive. But NYC in particular is a very safe place. We have about 300 murders per year with a population of 8.5 million. Yes, I might live within a mile of a murder, but I also live within a mile of 400,000 people. That's about entire population of Raleigh, NC, where I used to live.
  - monksy 7y ago
    > 300 murders I don't understand. (I live in chicago)
    - stochastic_monk 7y ago
      I live in Baltimore. We have more murders at a population of 600,000.
    - viklove 7y ago
      I think we get 300 murders a month
      - monksy 7y ago
        At least that in the summer and spring time. Not so much during the winter.
  - Railsify 7y ago
    Murder was just the worst example: rape, robbery, assault etc.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  This seems to suggest that the crime gap is shrinking. https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/p66.pdf https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/p66.pd...
  - monksy 7y ago
    I wonder how much this is due to directives to under report. I have had issues where the police refuse to report, and I've heard of many others doing that as well.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      I'd hate to disregard the numbers just because they don't match with my own assumed narrative. Considering this is looking at data from 1990 I'm sure there was plenty of impetus in the 90's to marginalize and ignore whole communities, so I don't know if we can assume that that is a new trend by any means.
bksenior 7y ago
Because the first generation who was essentially denied the ability to comfortably afford housing/living are now having families are having to look elsewhere to commit and start a life. There, I spared you a click.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  It's not just millennials, really successful people are starting to move to smaller metros so they can have big houses and less negatives. There were a series of NY chefs that moved to Minneapolis to start restaurants so they could have a yard, a dog, and an interesting menu customers appreciated.
  - dcolkitt 7y ago
    One underrated factor is that culture spreads so fast nowadays. It used to be that New York or LA were way ahead of the curve in terms of food, fashion, art, music, design, etc. People in the major cities were just cooler. And it took a few years for the vanguard to diffuse, by which time the big city folk had moved on to the wave. It still kind of is. But much less. We're all reading the same subreddits, blogs, and tweets. A hipster coffeeshop in Jacksonville pretty much looks, sounds, feels and tastes the same as its counterpart in Brooklyn.
  - loblollyboy 7y ago
    Kevin Morby moved back to Kansas City
gringoDan 7y ago
This article in one sentence: Housing is too expensive and there are now nice coffeeshops, bars, and restaurants in other cities across the country.
- ijidak 7y ago
  Hahaha. This is a much easier read, and yet, almost equally informative.
InvisibleCities 7y ago
I can’t really speak for NYC or LA, since I have never lived in either one for any appreciable amount of time, but in Chicago, it’s because of vastly unequal access to public transportation. Housing demand is skyrocketing in neighborhoods near L train stations, while the population is dwindling on the west and south sides of the city where train service is virtually non-existent. Nobody wants to commute to work via two 45-minute bus rides, and driving to the loop from those far-flung neighborhoods is cost-prohibitive for all but the wealthiest people (not to mention that it won’t save you much time, even if you can afford it).
- monksy 7y ago
  West/South sides. There is train access there. However, most people don't go because that's where the dangerous areas are. Also, the train gets pretty agressive in those areas. > commute to work via two 45-minute bus rides, That's pretty much what the north side of the city is districted for. It sucks, but the CTA is having budget cuts and the areas don't have that demand, and the politicians fail to understand quality infrastructure. Build a circle line, and I can guarantee you that the city will expand a lot. (Right now businesses/white-collar jobs are primarily locked into loop+west loop)
- kasey_junk 7y ago
  I think the school situation is a big part of it as well. Just anecdotal but almost everyone I know that left it was to go to a better school.
- ghostly_s 7y ago
  This is a bizarre take. Our transit system definitely needs expansion but the W and S sides are both served by train lines. There are large areas that are pretty far from train service but that's the case on the NW side, too. Maybe you're trying to pull a fast one on people who aren't familiar with Chicago, because I'm not sure why else you wouldn't mention that those parts of town are where most of the black people live, who predominantly make up the demographics that have been leaving the city. They are leaving as a result of the legacy of segregation, and yes, inadequate transit service is an aspect of that, but generally limited economic opportunity and high crime are what drive people to move.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Another factor is shrinking household size. A house that before gentrification held a bunch of children, at least one parent, and often some grandparents or members of the extended family now is occupied by DINKs, retirees, or singles. Families with children of course still exist but as a smaller percentage of city households and typically with fewer children. The 2020 Census should yield some very interesting statistics on how much the average household in cities has changed just in the past decade.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
maxsilver 7y ago
Cause major metros are expensive as hell, they usually soft-ban children and parenting, they are openly hostile to quick/reliable transportation, and generally depend on lots of labour from other slightly-poorer non-local people to remain viable. If you carefully curate your life in such a way as to have very few responsibilities or needs, city living can be a lot of fun. I get why people like it, I liked it too. And if you are wealthy, you can buy your way out of a most of these problems. But for regular, average people, making regular average wages, city living is mostly just a long list of painful drawbacks, and most regular people couldn't afford it even if they were willing to put up with all of that.
- mumblemumble 7y ago
  > soft-ban children and parenting Could you elaborate on that? My experience thus far as a parent of small children in one of the 3 metros listed in TFA has only strengthened my resolve to not move to a small city. They're just so far ahead of the smaller cities I've looked into on so many things - activities, parks and playgrounds, free public pre school, ease of locomotion for kids who aren't old and wealthy enough to drive a car. . . I'm pretty sure the only thing other places have on us is the square footage of the house. Which, with so much cool stuff to do out in the world, we don't really end up making too much use of the square footage we have, anyway. We go visit the grandparents in a metro of only half a million people, and by the end of the visit the kids are half crazy from lack of opportunities to get out of the house.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    apartments big enough for a family can easily cost the entire sallary of a middle class person and more, and thats for a 2 bedroom shithole. You could pay less somewhere else and get a really nice house on mortgage instead, and actually have something to show for the 40k a year you are throwing into a black hole
    - magduf 7y ago
      Yea, and now you have to have two cars (car payments, insurance, gas, car tax = $$$), and you have to worry about your kids getting hit by a car when they're outside of the house, even in their front yard. Housing in other parts of the country is absurdly expensive too, unless you go to "low-CoL" locales, but then you run into the problem that there's no jobs there, or the jobs pay peanuts, so unless you banked a bunch of money while you were living in the high-CoL area, you're not going to be able to afford one of those nice houses anyway.
bin0 7y ago
Maybe it's because urban environments aren't really "nice". For all I hear about the joys of urban living, as espoused by others, I haven't enjoyed it much. Public transportation is crowded and smelly. Fat people take half of my seat (not nice to say, but I'm not sure how else to put it). Things are small, which for a taller guy like me, is pretty tough. As in, every thing is tiny. Living spaces, shops, streets. Streets often have trash strewn on them, and don't smell particularly good. I have to keep one hand on my wallet. Sometimes, hobos got aggressive. Not as much as an issue for me, but I'd hate to be a 4'9" lady. Keeping pets is hard. Cooking food is hard. I didn't have kids, but those I knew had a hard time with them. Things are very expensive. It's loud. There's a lot of traffic. Some times (all winter and some times in summer), it's bad weather for walking. I guess I shouldn't be complaining, since I at least didn't see much in the way of human feces. This is not to say there aren't up-sides. I like the food, and there are interesting people. It's also much easier to find certain things; for instance, a few major cities still have serious "maker shops" with tons of electronic components. Smaller ones or sub-urban areas often can't accommodate them, as they are in low enough demand that serious density is required. Maybe this is just NYC. I didn't live there a really long time, and I guess I might have gotten used to it? Still, I like sub-urban living and empty green space. I can hardly blame people for moving out, if it's viable.
- magduf 7y ago
  >Maybe this is just NYC. Yeah, NYC isn't like the rest of the country. DC isn't nearly as bad in many ways. Public transit here is newer and generally nicer, though they really should run the trains more often and expand the system (this is a huge problem with NYC's MTA: it hasn't been expanded or modernized and it's hitting a brick wall). As for stuff being tiny, yeah, I saw that in NYC too: restaurant bathrooms the size of phone booths, for instance. Not in DC, or in other international cities I've been in even. There's hobos here, but I've never seen them be too aggressive. It's not as loud: NYC is special that way, because people are constantly honking their horns, and there's way too many cars. Go across the river to NJ, and you'll immediately notice that people don't honk so much, it's something that's unique to NYC. There's maker shops here too. And the streets aren't as dirty as in NYC. There's tons of people here in DC who moved from NYC, I've found.
gamblor956 7y ago
Huge caveat: "among nonimmigrants." The article is about white flight. LA and NYC's populations have grown over the past 2 decades, and Chicago's population is roughly the same over the last twenty years.
- learc83 7y ago
  It's talking about a recent total population loss including immigrants. The article specifically discusses this.
- SaintGhurka 7y ago
  Where do you get that? "Third, the black population of both New York and Los Angeles peaked in the early 2000s and has since been in steady, and perhaps accelerating, decline." And "Chicago went from 4 percent black in 1920 to nearly 40 percent black by 1990. But this century has seen a “Reverse Great Migration,” as the metro black population is on pace to halve from its peak of 1.2 million by 2030."
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    I literally quoted the linked article. The author has written a number of articles on white flight. He's just couched it in different language for this publication, because the Atlantic is left-leaning and the readership likely wouldn't appreciate that term. Also, on a factual note: every single Google search and a review of Census data and other counts of population show that LA and NYC increased in size during the time period covered by the article, which contradicts the title and summary of the article. The growth rate for both cities has shrunk because there's not much more room for either of them to physically grow, and as the 2 largest metro areas in the US, large %-based growth is extremely difficult. It's very easy for Bumpkin, Idaho to grow by 10% over a decade if it's only starting from 50,000 people. That would be a rounding error in terms of NYC or LA population statistics.
- AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
  It's a very ingenious way of fighting income inequality in the city: make well-off people leave and - bingo, everyone is equally poor!
cmoscoe 7y ago
There are probably also some age-cohort demographics at play. As millennials start to have families, the suburban (or small-urban) lifestyle becomes more appealing. It's a big generation, so they pull the demographics around. Who knows, they might even drag some of their Boomer parents who were living the fun empty-nester-downtown-lifestyle back out of the big metros with them.
vondur 7y ago
Well, those three cities have in thing in common, bad governments. This Results in issues like huge homeless problems, greater taxes, and less services from the taxes.
dmode 7y ago
Let me guess - cost of living ?

50 points by prostoalex 7y ago

Because large cities smell, people urinate on the streets, the air quality is very low and to add to those cons, you have to pay more to live there. Suburb living is great, the air smells good, I can't hear my neighbors unless we have a party. I suspect those that are leaving value saving for retirement over renting an overpriced apartment in a chic neighborhood. Also there are no murders in most suburbs in any given year. If you live in NYC /Chicago chances are you are within a mile of a murder at least once per year. https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/ https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/

cozzyd 7y ago
If suburb living is so desirable, why does it cost more to live in the city?
- dilutedh2o 7y ago
  More jobs I guess?
  - xvedejas 7y ago
    Jobs are often desirable. I suppose it's down to the individual to decide whether they care more to 1. optimize for avoiding the most undesirable situations or 2. optimize for total average desirability of where they live. My question would be: which strategy is more common in practice? Is there research on the psychology of deciding to live in a city?
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    This is especially true if you're part of a couple. If one of us finds a job in New York, Boston, or Chicago, there's probably something nearby for the other too. GE had some interesting R&D jobs in Schenectady, but unless they hired both of us, it would be a lot tricker for the other spouse to find something relevant. US universities, which are often located in small towns, sometimes offer "spousal hires", where they either create a new position for one person, or at least give them some preference when hiring. I've never heard of a company doing that, but it would certainly pique our interest (anybody need a neuro/ML guy?)
- waynesonfire 7y ago
  maybe there is more suburban land available?
- rhino369 7y ago
  In a metro area like chicago that has 9.5 million people, the "cool and hip" urban areas fit about 300,000 people. Plus jobs and traffic. If I could live in a middle rung suburb and have a 30 min commute, I'd do it.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  There's (literally) exponentially more land available at greater distances from the urban center. The area grows in proportion to radius squared.
  - random_savv 7y ago
    That's not exponential, it's quadratic (still fast).
    - big_chungus 7y ago
      Squaring is raising a number to the power of two, an exponential operation. Growing in proportion to a power of two could be reasonably described as a quadratic rate of growth.
      - ajross 7y ago
        The pedantry obviously isn't relevant to the discussion, but just so you're clear why everyone is calling you wrong: "exponential growth" refers to a function of x that goes as C^x for some constant C, not one that goes as x^C. The latter is "polynomial" (of which "quadratic" is the term used when C is 2).
      - panda88888 7y ago
        Exponential is a^x. Square is polynomial, i.e. x^a.
- maxsilver 7y ago
  Because density is inherently more complicated and expensive to build and maintain. This is also why there aren't "cheap" skyscrapers in suburban/rural areas. Because even when it's easy and 100% legal to build by-right, any density above 2-3 stories is still inherently really expensive.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > If suburb living is so desirable, why does it cost more to live in the city? Cities are very good places to live if you are very rich, and you might need to live there for certain work (commuting has a time cost, and doing it with a cushion for a job with long hours and strict on-time requirements can be prohibitive, for instance.) So, there are reasons why cities are desirable for some portion of the population But price isn't just demand, it's the intersection of supply and demand, and the available land in a given radius of a point (say, a city center) goes up with the square of distance. So even if desirability increased with distance, it'd still be possible for price to go down.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  A portion of the wages of the higher paying job you're theoretically commuting to are priced in. Aka "it's what the market will bear" or "supply and demand"
- Railsify 7y ago
  Supply and demand.
ChrisLTD 7y ago
I'll give you that cities like NYC are stinky and expensive. But NYC in particular is a very safe place. We have about 300 murders per year with a population of 8.5 million. Yes, I might live within a mile of a murder, but I also live within a mile of 400,000 people. That's about entire population of Raleigh, NC, where I used to live.
- monksy 7y ago
  > 300 murders I don't understand. (I live in chicago)
  - stochastic_monk 7y ago
    I live in Baltimore. We have more murders at a population of 600,000.
  - viklove 7y ago
    I think we get 300 murders a month
    - monksy 7y ago
      At least that in the summer and spring time. Not so much during the winter.
- Railsify 7y ago
  Murder was just the worst example: rape, robbery, assault etc.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
This seems to suggest that the crime gap is shrinking. https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/p66.pdf https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/p66.pd...
- monksy 7y ago
  I wonder how much this is due to directives to under report. I have had issues where the police refuse to report, and I've heard of many others doing that as well.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    I'd hate to disregard the numbers just because they don't match with my own assumed narrative. Considering this is looking at data from 1990 I'm sure there was plenty of impetus in the 90's to marginalize and ignore whole communities, so I don't know if we can assume that that is a new trend by any means.

bksenior 7y ago

Because the first generation who was essentially denied the ability to comfortably afford housing/living are now having families are having to look elsewhere to commit and start a life. There, I spared you a click.

colechristensen 7y ago
It's not just millennials, really successful people are starting to move to smaller metros so they can have big houses and less negatives. There were a series of NY chefs that moved to Minneapolis to start restaurants so they could have a yard, a dog, and an interesting menu customers appreciated.
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  One underrated factor is that culture spreads so fast nowadays. It used to be that New York or LA were way ahead of the curve in terms of food, fashion, art, music, design, etc. People in the major cities were just cooler. And it took a few years for the vanguard to diffuse, by which time the big city folk had moved on to the wave. It still kind of is. But much less. We're all reading the same subreddits, blogs, and tweets. A hipster coffeeshop in Jacksonville pretty much looks, sounds, feels and tastes the same as its counterpart in Brooklyn.
- loblollyboy 7y ago
  Kevin Morby moved back to Kansas City

gringoDan 7y ago

This article in one sentence: Housing is too expensive and there are now nice coffeeshops, bars, and restaurants in other cities across the country.

ijidak 7y ago
Hahaha. This is a much easier read, and yet, almost equally informative.

InvisibleCities 7y ago

I can’t really speak for NYC or LA, since I have never lived in either one for any appreciable amount of time, but in Chicago, it’s because of vastly unequal access to public transportation. Housing demand is skyrocketing in neighborhoods near L train stations, while the population is dwindling on the west and south sides of the city where train service is virtually non-existent. Nobody wants to commute to work via two 45-minute bus rides, and driving to the loop from those far-flung neighborhoods is cost-prohibitive for all but the wealthiest people (not to mention that it won’t save you much time, even if you can afford it).

monksy 7y ago
West/South sides. There is train access there. However, most people don't go because that's where the dangerous areas are. Also, the train gets pretty agressive in those areas. > commute to work via two 45-minute bus rides, That's pretty much what the north side of the city is districted for. It sucks, but the CTA is having budget cuts and the areas don't have that demand, and the politicians fail to understand quality infrastructure. Build a circle line, and I can guarantee you that the city will expand a lot. (Right now businesses/white-collar jobs are primarily locked into loop+west loop)
kasey_junk 7y ago
I think the school situation is a big part of it as well. Just anecdotal but almost everyone I know that left it was to go to a better school.
ghostly_s 7y ago
This is a bizarre take. Our transit system definitely needs expansion but the W and S sides are both served by train lines. There are large areas that are pretty far from train service but that's the case on the NW side, too. Maybe you're trying to pull a fast one on people who aren't familiar with Chicago, because I'm not sure why else you wouldn't mention that those parts of town are where most of the black people live, who predominantly make up the demographics that have been leaving the city. They are leaving as a result of the legacy of segregation, and yes, inadequate transit service is an aspect of that, but generally limited economic opportunity and high crime are what drive people to move.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Another factor is shrinking household size. A house that before gentrification held a bunch of children, at least one parent, and often some grandparents or members of the extended family now is occupied by DINKs, retirees, or singles. Families with children of course still exist but as a smaller percentage of city households and typically with fewer children. The 2020 Census should yield some very interesting statistics on how much the average household in cities has changed just in the past decade.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

maxsilver 7y ago

Cause major metros are expensive as hell, they usually soft-ban children and parenting, they are openly hostile to quick/reliable transportation, and generally depend on lots of labour from other slightly-poorer non-local people to remain viable. If you carefully curate your life in such a way as to have very few responsibilities or needs, city living can be a lot of fun. I get why people like it, I liked it too. And if you are wealthy, you can buy your way out of a most of these problems. But for regular, average people, making regular average wages, city living is mostly just a long list of painful drawbacks, and most regular people couldn't afford it even if they were willing to put up with all of that.

mumblemumble 7y ago
> soft-ban children and parenting Could you elaborate on that? My experience thus far as a parent of small children in one of the 3 metros listed in TFA has only strengthened my resolve to not move to a small city. They're just so far ahead of the smaller cities I've looked into on so many things - activities, parks and playgrounds, free public pre school, ease of locomotion for kids who aren't old and wealthy enough to drive a car. . . I'm pretty sure the only thing other places have on us is the square footage of the house. Which, with so much cool stuff to do out in the world, we don't really end up making too much use of the square footage we have, anyway. We go visit the grandparents in a metro of only half a million people, and by the end of the visit the kids are half crazy from lack of opportunities to get out of the house.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  apartments big enough for a family can easily cost the entire sallary of a middle class person and more, and thats for a 2 bedroom shithole. You could pay less somewhere else and get a really nice house on mortgage instead, and actually have something to show for the 40k a year you are throwing into a black hole
  - magduf 7y ago
    Yea, and now you have to have two cars (car payments, insurance, gas, car tax = $$$), and you have to worry about your kids getting hit by a car when they're outside of the house, even in their front yard. Housing in other parts of the country is absurdly expensive too, unless you go to "low-CoL" locales, but then you run into the problem that there's no jobs there, or the jobs pay peanuts, so unless you banked a bunch of money while you were living in the high-CoL area, you're not going to be able to afford one of those nice houses anyway.

bin0 7y ago

Maybe it's because urban environments aren't really "nice". For all I hear about the joys of urban living, as espoused by others, I haven't enjoyed it much. Public transportation is crowded and smelly. Fat people take half of my seat (not nice to say, but I'm not sure how else to put it). Things are small, which for a taller guy like me, is pretty tough. As in, every thing is tiny. Living spaces, shops, streets. Streets often have trash strewn on them, and don't smell particularly good. I have to keep one hand on my wallet. Sometimes, hobos got aggressive. Not as much as an issue for me, but I'd hate to be a 4'9" lady. Keeping pets is hard. Cooking food is hard. I didn't have kids, but those I knew had a hard time with them. Things are very expensive. It's loud. There's a lot of traffic. Some times (all winter and some times in summer), it's bad weather for walking. I guess I shouldn't be complaining, since I at least didn't see much in the way of human feces. This is not to say there aren't up-sides. I like the food, and there are interesting people. It's also much easier to find certain things; for instance, a few major cities still have serious "maker shops" with tons of electronic components. Smaller ones or sub-urban areas often can't accommodate them, as they are in low enough demand that serious density is required. Maybe this is just NYC. I didn't live there a really long time, and I guess I might have gotten used to it? Still, I like sub-urban living and empty green space. I can hardly blame people for moving out, if it's viable.

magduf 7y ago
>Maybe this is just NYC. Yeah, NYC isn't like the rest of the country. DC isn't nearly as bad in many ways. Public transit here is newer and generally nicer, though they really should run the trains more often and expand the system (this is a huge problem with NYC's MTA: it hasn't been expanded or modernized and it's hitting a brick wall). As for stuff being tiny, yeah, I saw that in NYC too: restaurant bathrooms the size of phone booths, for instance. Not in DC, or in other international cities I've been in even. There's hobos here, but I've never seen them be too aggressive. It's not as loud: NYC is special that way, because people are constantly honking their horns, and there's way too many cars. Go across the river to NJ, and you'll immediately notice that people don't honk so much, it's something that's unique to NYC. There's maker shops here too. And the streets aren't as dirty as in NYC. There's tons of people here in DC who moved from NYC, I've found.

gamblor956 7y ago

Huge caveat: "among nonimmigrants." The article is about white flight. LA and NYC's populations have grown over the past 2 decades, and Chicago's population is roughly the same over the last twenty years.

learc83 7y ago
It's talking about a recent total population loss including immigrants. The article specifically discusses this.
SaintGhurka 7y ago
Where do you get that? "Third, the black population of both New York and Los Angeles peaked in the early 2000s and has since been in steady, and perhaps accelerating, decline." And "Chicago went from 4 percent black in 1920 to nearly 40 percent black by 1990. But this century has seen a “Reverse Great Migration,” as the metro black population is on pace to halve from its peak of 1.2 million by 2030."
- gamblor956 7y ago
  I literally quoted the linked article. The author has written a number of articles on white flight. He's just couched it in different language for this publication, because the Atlantic is left-leaning and the readership likely wouldn't appreciate that term. Also, on a factual note: every single Google search and a review of Census data and other counts of population show that LA and NYC increased in size during the time period covered by the article, which contradicts the title and summary of the article. The growth rate for both cities has shrunk because there's not much more room for either of them to physically grow, and as the 2 largest metro areas in the US, large %-based growth is extremely difficult. It's very easy for Bumpkin, Idaho to grow by 10% over a decade if it's only starting from 50,000 people. That would be a rounding error in terms of NYC or LA population statistics.
AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
It's a very ingenious way of fighting income inequality in the city: make well-off people leave and - bingo, everyone is equally poor!

cmoscoe 7y ago

There are probably also some age-cohort demographics at play. As millennials start to have families, the suburban (or small-urban) lifestyle becomes more appealing. It's a big generation, so they pull the demographics around. Who knows, they might even drag some of their Boomer parents who were living the fun empty-nester-downtown-lifestyle back out of the big metros with them.

vondur 7y ago

Well, those three cities have in thing in common, bad governments. This Results in issues like huge homeless problems, greater taxes, and less services from the taxes.

dmode 7y ago

Let me guess - cost of living ?