Urban Areas
Could the “two-body problem” be contributing to rural brain drain?
More career women means more two-career couplesOne of the biggest economic stories of the last half-century has been the growing participation of women in the workforce. And it’s not just the number of women working that’s important; it’s the type of work…
Mapping city to city migration
The Census Bureau recently released new migration data based on the 2009-2013 5-year American Community Survey estimates. This data estimates how many people move between each of the country’s metropolitan areas over the course of a year.There are plenty of…
Migration data miscounts millennials, confuses the media
Fivethirtyeight’s Ben Casselman published an article recently entitled “Think Millennials Prefer the City? Think Again.” He cites the most recently published migration data from the Census Bureau’s CPS (Current Population Survey) to show that more millennials moved from “principal cities” (a…
Even more evidence for the new donut
A while back, I wrote a post on the transformation of US cities over the last two decades, using Charlotte, Houston, Atlanta, and Denver as examples. That investigation, using graphs to show changes in the city from the core to the…
Are the “urban millennials” a real thing?
There has been quite a bit of hype around the idea that millennials are gravitating towards city centers. Canadian professor Markus Moos calls it “youthification” and has recently put together some maps and data to prove it. But finding more hard numbers can…
The Goldilocks problem: Enrollment trends are not being kind to Virginia’s schools
This week, the Demographics Research Group published a new Census Brief covering recent trends in Virginia’s public school enrollment. Despite the weak economy, most of Virginia’s localities have continued to grow in population during the past five years. Throughout the…
A funny thing is happening in many US cities
An article at the Urbanophile gives us a helpful graphic explaining the old and new “Donut” conceptions of the city. In the “Old Donut,” we have an impoverished central city with a ring of thriving suburbs around it.An example of that model appears…
Retiring Boomers are going rural (but not too rural)
There is a lot of buzz amongst urbanists and demographers about the increasing gravitation of young adults towards urban areas. We’ve found evidence to support this narrative in some areas of Virginia, including indications that they may be staying even…
As more families choose cities, governments are returning to the drawing board
Urban areas import the young and export the old, the theory goes, or went. For decades, young people have come to Virginia’s urban areas to go to university or work, often moving out again when their children require more space…
Home Building: Now for something completely different
During the past decade major changes in population growth patterns were evident in Virginia. In contrast to what happened in the early 2000s housing boom, when many counties on the edges of urban areas became some of the fastest growing in…