arenn

As it happens, I live in NYC. Here are the components of Columbus' population growth since 7/1/2010: Natural Increase: 95,340 (3rd in Midwest, even exceeding much larger metro Detroit and St. Louis) Domestic Migration 49,558 (1st in the Midwest) International Migration: 55,652 (4th in Midwest) Natural Increase is more births than deaths. That's the largest share of growth, which is pretty common. Columbus' young median age helps with this, obviously. International migration is very strong, but it's typical for international migration to exceed domestic in weak domestic attractor cities in the Midwest. Domestic migration is where Columbus is both strong but has been heavily concentrated in drawing from Ohio. There are many states from which Columbus has a positive migration balance, so to say that Columbus has been losing people to the rest of the country outside Ohio doesn't mean it's losing population to everywhere, only that the total of all other 49 states + DC is negative. For Midwest cities, retirement destinations are often the biggest outflow sites. I can also say that the domestic migration situation for Columbus has improved a lot. As you can see here, Columbus trends have been positive of late, in contrast to Indy/Minneapolis: This one is older but may be of interest: https://www.aaronrenn.com/2014/02/09/in-state-vs-out-of-state-migration/ I actually hope to do a study that would incorporate not just the latest IRS but also ACS migration data. I find it interesting that these Midwest cities actually had better national pulls in the 90s than the 2000s. These cities are indisputably vastly better today than they were back then. I am bullish on Columbus and if I were investing money in a major Midwest city, Columbus would be it. If I thought the community conditions for a serious rebranding and aggressive push to become a national talent magnet were there, I might very well want to be a part of it myself. But in my experience, if I say ten positive things about Columbus and one negative thing, very few people appreciate the good things I said but I'm usually attacked on the one negative item. And I've witnessed other writers get the same treatment.

A number of smaller tier cities bet on hubs and lost - Pittsburgh, Memphis, St. Louis (although a bit of a different story as it was home to TWA) - and now Cincinnati. This is the fact of the airline marketplace. The good news is that locals aren't on the hook for paying off most of the capex. (Indy is still paying off massive amounts of bonds issued in conjunction with a now-shuttered United Airlines maintenance facility). Cargo is super-competitive as well. Not clear why CVG would have a market advantage here, but certainly it could have some success.

The innerbelt is a legitimate problem. Not sure about the proposed solution, but the fact that so much of the highway dollars likely to be allocated to Columbus over the next 2-3 decades is headed to this project is really going to hamstring the city's ability to invest in critical regional infrastructure. I know some of you don't like new roads but in growing regions they are needed. The Outerbelt needs major upgrades to meet long term needs, and there are outside the beltway arterials that require it as well.

Any Brent Spence replacement is going to be a toll bridge. As in Louisville, it may also mean tolling other currently free crossings in order to prevent traffic from simply bypassing the toll booth on I-71 or some such. The "build it now" only without new taxes or tolls crowd is a joke. I'm very disappointed in all the design alternatives I've seen to date. Cincinnati deserves better.

Please don't rely on the 2011 municipality estimates as they are seriously flawed: http://www.urbanophile.com/2012/06/30/misreferencing-misoverestimated-population-by-chris-briem/ Lots of chatter in various demographic circles on this.

Cincy and Dayton will definitely start growing together, but a coherent region might take longer to develop. I recently moved to Providence. It's 50 miles from Boston, but on the T commuter rail system. Providence is its own metro with its own identity, but is sort of a subsidiary of Boston in many ways. I see the two as a functional region with two poles, one dominant and one lesser. The downside of this is that Providence (much smaller than Boston) is a sort of "brown dwarf" metro. We sort of see the same thing in Dayton, which in my view lack the minimum scale to effectively compete in the marketplace. We're seeing similar things in Chicago-Milwaukee, which are even further apart (with bad traffic to boot). There's quasi-commuter rail via Amtrak's Hiawatha. The OECD territorial review of Chicago highlighted the growing inter-connectedness of the region. I'm even speaking at a conference at Marquette in a couple weeks talking about the Chicago-Milwaukee region coming together. I don't think distance is an object, but with Cincy so much smaller than Chicago or Boston, it may make things more difficult. Definitely both cities should be pursuing collaboration. The nearby effective population is a huge boost to Cincy for many things, and as I said I don't think Dayton is big enough or strong enough to go solo.

Just read this. Great work Jeff as always.

Strap hanger, I'm not sure what you mean for those statistics, but I have over 150 variables of data from the IRS migration files, including tons of derived statistics such as the core to suburban stuff. I'm pretty confident I have what you're interested in. Of course, I'm in the business of selling that :)

Yes, I agree out-migration has been depressed due to the housing market. Some of the return migration might also be due to fringe suburban foreclosures forcing people to come back closer to the core to rent. But there's nothing wrong with pocketing good news where you can find it. I don't like to try to "explain away" bad data, so in a similar vein I don't want to pooh-pooh good data. And the out-migration declines started well before the bubble popped. In fact, they were declining even into the peak of the bubble, which I find interesting.

I have data going back to 95-96. It is based on IRS tax return statistics, so those are real people, not estimates. It will be interesting to see what happens when the economy recovers. Obviously the suburban housing boom has taken a big hit. But I do find it interesting that out-migration started falling before the housing bubble popped.

Some of you may have seen the piece I did at New Geography showing the shift in migration trends for selected cities: http://www.newgeography.com/content/002514-back-city I thought I'd share similar graphs for the 3C's. Unlike say Philadelphia their central counties (which is what I define as "core") do not truly map to the urban core, but it's still a useful measure. Index of migration from suburb to core: Index of migration from core to suburb: Total number of net migrants from core to suburb: I trust you'll think this is good news.

I do support the streetcar. The cost seems modest as these things go. It's basically a starter type system.

Brookings report is based on standard MSA definitions, and Akron is defined as its own MSA by the US government.

Ok, I pulled the data on Cleveland. Only the city proper lost foreign born population, down 12%. The region added, but not much. Brookings ranked them 95 out of 100 on this metric

I was wondering when people were going to start discussing this. The report is so massive that digesting it will take some time. The killer stat in my view (and I'll admit to taking this from a news report, not the Brookings data directly) is that Cleveland's foreign born population percentage actually declined from 2000-2008. Wow and double Wow. I actually did a similar sorting of metros into typologies. But rather than using three criteria, I used population only. However, my rankings and Brookings match extremely well. The only difference is that I called Grand Rapids "Stable" (equivalent to Brookings Skilled Anchor - Brookings had them as Industrial Core) and Akron (the reverse - I listed as Struggling, and Brookings as Skilled Anchor). http://www.newgeography.com/content/00811-the-successful-stable-and-struggling-midwest-cities Louisville gets dinged because of its low educational attainment. Its economic performance in my view is consistent with regional Skilled Anchor economies. Columbus ranked 9th in the nation in increase in Latino percentage and in increase in Asian percentage, albeit from a low base. I'm planning a post on this for Sunday, so I'll plan on posting a link when it is done. I clipped a few of their more interesting graphics.