Since the 1950s and the construction of an interstate highway system, the U. S. urban population has been steadily moving from its older urban core to the newer suburbs. At the same time, another trend has been apparent in the move from eastern and midwestern industrial cities to western and southern cities emphasizing high-tech industries. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing through the 1990s, the population shifted from the rust belt to the Sunbelt. Political experts noted that the effect of that shift favored the Republican Party at the presidential level, and the Republicans won the White House in every election save one from 1968 to 1988. In 1992 California shifted to the Democrats, indicating that the rust belt/Sunbelt paradigm had begun losing its former force. In 2006 the picture of urban life in the early 21st century United States was looking much different from the 1980s.
By 2006, 54 percent of Americans lived in cities of one million or more. That statistic masks noticeably different degrees of growth or decline in American cities since 2000. And that growth or decline has different sources, depending on the cities involved. Instead of an eastern/midwestern grouping versus a western/southern grouping of cities, it is more productive to group cities into one of four categories and analyze the differences.
The first group of cities consists of the large established centers, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Boston. These cities have low overall population growth, but the overall numbers mask a significant transition in the type of population in these cities. Many people are moving out of these cities, but nearly as many immigrants are moving in. Los Angeles, for instance, saw 6 percent of its population leave from 2000 to 2006, but this loss was balanced by a 6 percent gain from immigrants moving into the city. Overall, the large coastal cities have not gained in population, even though large numbers of people have been moving out. The loss of population has been offset by a corresponding gain in the number of immigrants.
The number of people exiting from these cities means the American population has begun to move out of, rather than into, coastal California, southern coastal Florida, and established major metropolitan areas in general. Experts argue that reasons for the population loss include high housing costs, high taxation, and, to some extent, a distaste for the growing immigrant population of these cities. At the same time, the greater number of entering immigrants is creating a large class of people working at low wages. The economic middle class in these cities is in decline, creating a picture of cities experiencing a growing gap between the affluent and the working poor.
There is, on the other hand, a significant gain in cities in the interior of the country, and in northern Florida, North Carolina, and Texas. Cities experiencing booming growth include Riverside and San Bernardino in California; Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Dallas and Houston, Texas. Their collective population has gone up 18 percent just since 2000. Considerable numbers of immigrants have been partly responsible but only accounted for just over 20 percent of the growth of these cities. The rest of the growth comes from natural increase and a large number of domestic movement into these cities, which by itself accounted for almost half of the growth of the last six years. Some 38 percent of the nation’s growth since 2000 is attributable to these cities.
The third category of old rust belt cities—Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Buffalo and Rochester, New York—have continued to lose population since 2000. Their economies are still suffering, and the number of people leaving these cities has been measured at about 4 percent. This decline has only been partly offset by a 1 percent gain from immigration. If the population loss in these areas is smaller than in the 1980s, that is partly because these cities lost so many young people in the previous two decades.
The fourth category consists of 18 metropolitan areas that have been essentially stagnant since 2000. These cities include: Philadelphia, Baltimore (Maryland), Hartford (Connecticut), and Providence (Rhode Island), in the East; Minneapolis, St. Louis and Kansas City (Missouri), Cincinnati and Columbus (Ohio), and Indianapolis in the Midwest; Seattle, Portland (Oregon), and Denver in the West; and Norfolk (Virginia), Memphis (Tennessee), Louisville (Kentucky), Oklahoma City (Oklahoma), and Birmingham (Alabama) in the South. Overall, these cities had a domestic influx of between zero and 4 percent since 2000, and an immigrant inflow of 2 percent, offset by a domestic outflow of just 1 percent in these years. These cities appear to be holding their own economically, but they are not moving ahead, and some could start losing population again.
Two metropolitan areas do not fit into easy categories of analysis. One is New Orleans, which was losing population and attracting almost no immigrants before
Hjrricane Katrina, and has seen its population drop 25 percent since. The other is Salt Lake City, with a robust population growth of 10 percent in six years, fueled almost entirely (90 percent) by natural increase. Its domestic population loss of 4 percent has been balanced by a corresponding immigrant influx of 4 percent.
There are a few smaller metropolitan areas that look like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, such as Santa Barbara, California; a number that are growing, such as Tucson, Arizona; and a similar number that are declining, such as Muncie, Indiana. Demographically, however, the United States outside these 49 metropolitan areas is growing slowly, with just 1 percent domestic inflow, another 1 percent immigrant influx, and a domestic growth rate of 4 percent.
The recent census data indicates another demographic shift taking shape in the United States, with political consequences as dramatic as the shift that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The U. S. population is migrating to interior metropolitan areas where most of the voters are private-sector religious Republicans, only partly offset by significant immigrant populations that favor the Democrats. The rust belt is smaller and less significant in 2006, although still heavily Democratic. The real strength of the Democratic Party in the period 1992-2008 has been in the large coastal metropolitan areas, where secular high-income earners and low-earning recent immigrants vote Democratic by sizable margins. The shift away from the large coastal cities does not bode well for the Democrats. New York, New Jersey, and Illinois look to lose House seats and electoral votes in 2010. California, which has gained House seats in every census since it became a state in 1850, is now projected to pick up none in 2010. Within the state, House seats are projected to shift from the coastal areas favoring Democrats to the interior, which favors Republicans.
Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada look to register gains in electoral votes after 2010. In the 1960 election, based on the 1950 census, Michigan, with its 20 electoral votes, went for Kennedy, while Arizona cast four for Nixon. New York’s 45 votes went to Kennedy, while Florida cast 10 for Nixon. In 2012, Michigan is projected to have 16 votes to Arizona’s 12, and New York and Florida are projected to each have 29 electoral votes. The demographic changes in the urban United States have had and will continue to have a dramatic impact on the political fortunes of the two parties.
Further reading: Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2006); U. S. Census Bureau. Available online. URL: Http://www. census. gov/. Accessed December 30, 2008.
—Stephen E. Randoll
World History
