10th Anniversary Post: Can Cities Change Their Luck?

 

The hit 90s TV series Friends was a harbinger of the "back to the city" years:
Where are today's "friends" living?

(6/13/2026) Ten years ago this month, I looked back on what had been the best ten years for American central cities in a long, long time. By 2015, the "back to the city" movement that had been growing for decades had burst into full flower. From 2005-2015, the U.S. population grew by 8.4 percent; the combined population of the central cities of the 51 metropolitan areas with more than one million population grew almost exactly the same (8.2 percent); however, this masks a wide variety of individual experiences. Using the crude measure of central city population to measure progress, I classified these 51 cities into four categories: 

• STARS (at least double the US population growth 2005-15): 14 cities
• ABOVE AVERAGE (exceeding US population growth rate): 12 cities
• BARELY KEEPING UP (increasing but at less than the national rate): 11 cities
• FALLING BACK (losing population over the period 2005-15): 14 cities

The three fastest growing cities over this period were (1) Charlotte, North Carolina 35.4%; (2) Austin, Texas 35.0%; (3) Raleigh, North Carolina 32.1%. The cities at the top mostly reflected the knowledge economy that emerged along with the Internet, so they were the ones who were most successful at attracting the technical professionals that starred in the new economy. Most were found on the coasts or in the Sun Belt of southern states. (See the map at Saunders 2026b.)

Public Square, Cleveland in 2017

The three biggest losers of population between 2005 and 2015 were (1) Detroit, Michigan -23.6%; (2) New Orleans, Louisiana -14.3%; (3) Cleveland, Ohio -14.1%. New Orleans's decade began with the horrors of Hurricane Katrina; the other cities in this category tended to be older industrial cities in the North which had been stars of the midcentury economy but now were known as the Rust Belt.

U.S. Census data for the ensuing ten years show continuation of some cities' previous experiences, whether positive or negative, while other cities saw interesting changes. From 2015-2025, the U.S. population grew somewhat more slowly, adding 6.6 percent. There are now 56 metropolitan areas of more than a million population in the United States: We've added Tucson, Arizona; Fresno, California; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Greenville, South Carolina. At the same time, the New Orleans metropolitan area fell under a million, but I left it in the dataset. 

Significantly (I think), the total population of these 57 central cities increased only 3.0 percent between 2015 and 2025, less than half the growth of the U.S. overall, and a very different experience from the previous ten years. There were fewer "stars" and more in the middle categories. Interestingly, the number of cities losing population was very slightly less, though eight cities gained between 0 and 1 percent, which barely put them in the "barely keeping up" group.

STARS (13+): 8 cities	ABOVE AVG (6.5-13): 15 cities	BARELY KPG UP (0-6.5): 21 cities	FALLING BACK (<0): 13 cities
Orlando FL 23.2 Jacksonville FL 17.2 Charlotte NC 16.6 Greenville SC 16.6 Seattle WA 14.7 Atlanta GA 14.1 Okla. City OK 14.0 Salt Lake City UT 13.4	Raleigh NC 12.2 Tampa FL 12.1 Miami FL 11.1 Columbus OH 10.2 Nashville TN 10.2 Omaha NE 10.1 Kansas City MO 9.6 Sacramento CA 9.3 Las Vegas NV 9.0 Providence RI 9.0 Denver CO 8.5 Richmond VA 7.7 Austin TX 7.6 Fresno CA 6.8 Phoenix AZ 6.6	Buffalo NY 6.4 Indianapolis IN 5.6 Cincinnati OH 5.3 San Antonio TX 5.3 Minneapolis MN 4.7 Houston TX 4.4 Louisville KY 4.3 Washington DC 3.2 Grand Rapids MI 3.1 Tucson AZ 3.1 Tulsa OK 3.1 Dallas TX 2.3 Pittsburgh PA 1.1 Boston MA 0.9 San Diego CA 0.8 Chicago IL 0.4 New York NY 0.4 Philadelphia PA 0.4 Portland OR 0.4 Riverside CA 0.2 Virginia Beach VA 0.2	Hartford CN -1.6 Rochester NY -1.8 Los Angeles CA -2.6 San Jose CA -3.6 Detroit MI -4.1 San Francisco CA -4.5 Cleveland OH -6.3 Milwaukee WI -6.3 Memphis TN -7.0 New Orleans LA -7.0 Birmingham AL -7.8 Baltimore MD -8.3 St. Louis MO -11.9

Some factoids from this pile of data:

• Three cities were in the fastest growing group in both periods: Charlotte (+57.9% from 2005-2025), Seattle (+36.7%), and Oklahoma City (+35.5%).
• Nine cities lost population in both periods: Detroit (-26.8% from 2005-2015), New Orleans (-20.4%), Cleveland (-19.6%), St. Louis (-19.2%), Birmingham (-15.4%), Baltimore (-11.4%), Memphis (-9.3%), Rochester (NY) (-2.4%), and Hartford (-1.9%).
• Atlanta, Georgia dropped 1.4 percent in the first period, then leapt up 14.1 percent in the second. Salt Lake City, Utah moved up two categories, from "barely keeping up" to "stars."
• San Francisco, California increased 17 percent in the first period, but dropped 4.5 percent in the last ten years. Five other cities moved down two categories: Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas; San Jose, California; and Washington, D.C.

Mural, North Beach, San Francisco, 2014

Each one of those cities has a particular story to tell. And the next ten years promise new stories: Some Midwestern states--not Iowa, alas--have experienced increases in people moving in from elsewhere in the United States ("More People Coming" 2026). The Trump administration's success at strangling international migration to the United States will continue to impact cities even after Trump has left the scene.

All of this leads to the question: Is the urbanist moment over? My post ten years ago optimistically pointed to widespread success among central cities, with potential lessons for the less successful ones. Or do the experiences of the last ten years reflect broad adjustments (limits to growth, sectoral changes in the economy, changes in societal preferences in response to the pandemic, new TV series, or something else)? (Another possibility is that all these findings are altered by changing the unit of analysis to parts of cities, cf. Sanders 2026a).

Betting things will turn around soon?
Cleveland, Ohio has a downtown casino, and soon so will Cedar Rapids!

ORIGINAL POST: "Can Cities Change Their Luck?" 20 June 2016