Patterns and Processes in the Demographics of Land-Use Change in the United States

Abstract

Figure 5.1 Percentage change in county population, 1990-2000 status (those with populations greater than one million) and, for the first time in U.S. history, a majority of the population lived in these major metros (Frey 1995). The growth in metropolitan counties during the last decade, a period of population growth in most of the country’s metropolitan areas, is clearly seen in Fig. 5.1. In 2000, 80 per cent of the U.S. population lived in metropolitan areas. The continuing concentration of the nation’s population in large urban centers is one of the most notable and enduring trends in the demography of the United States (Frey 1995). Other than during a period in the 1970s, when many non-metropolitan areas grew faster than metropolitan areas, this trend toward population concentration was strong throughout the twentieth century. In the 1990s, the majority of U.S. metropolitan areas experienced population growth. While growth in these areas was widespread, it was particularly fast, an average of 19 per cent, in metropolitan areas with populations between one million and five million (Kent et al. 2001). In Figure 5.1 we can clearly see the very rapid growth (30 per cent and above) in the counties around large cities, such as Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia., Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Orlando and Naples, Florida, Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, Boise, Idaho, Provo and Salt Lake City, Utah, Bolder, Denver and Fort Collins, Colorado, and San Bernardino county, east of Los Angeles, California. Reflecting overall growth in the last decade, the metropolitan areas in the South and West grew the most rapidly – 20 per cent on average compared to less than ten per cent in metropolitan areas in the Midwest and Northeast. The desertcities of Las Vegas and Phoenix continued their spectacular growth at 83.3 and 45.3 per cent respectively, while retirement meccas in Florida, such as Naples, registered growth of 65.3 per cent. Population declines during the same period were widespread but concentrated primarily in the Midwest. North Dakota and Nebraska recorded the largest number of counties experiencing negative growth during the decade at 89 and 57 per cent, respectively (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census 2001b). Kansas, South Dakota, West Virginia, Iowa and Montana had, respectively, 54, 48, 47, 44 and 39 per cent of their counties experiencing negative growth during the 1990s. The Shaping of Metropolitan Growth The forces behind these rapidly expanding metropolitan areas vary from region to region, as do the patterns of metropolitan growth. A major force in the growth of the United States, and, in particular, metropolitan areas, has been international migration. Of the total U.S. population increase between 1990 and 1998, about 30 per cent was contributed by immigration (Martin and Midgley 1999). International immigration has proceeded at the rate of just over one million per year during the last two decades, but the selected flow of immigrants has contributed substantially to the growth of these metropolitan areas (Chiswick and Sullivan 1995). For instance, all of the 1985-1990 migration gains for Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco were due to international migration. In the early 1990s, international migration continued as a more significant force than rural to urban migration for these large metropolitan areas. In contrast to these cities, the majority of migration gains for Atlanta, Seattle, and Phoenix came from internal migrants from other parts of the U.S. (Frey 1995) It has been the flow of domestic migrants which has shaped the broader pattern of urbanization. Some cities, such as Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, have grown as people have moved away from older, more congested areas in the Northeast and Midwest. These cities have developed with the new economy of the South and offer a lifestyle more akin to traditional suburbs than the urban areas in the Frost Belt. Similarly, cities in the Mountain West, such as Boise, Idaho, have attracted Californians disenchanted with dense, congested, and hectic urban centers in their home state (Kent et al. 2001). Shorter distance migration has given rise to a notable phenomenon of the last two decades, namely the growth of edge cities: those residential, rural or mixed-use areas on the perimeters of large cities, which were initially the locus of homes and malls for those who worked in the central cities and, eventually, became the areas where new jobs were created and emerged as cities in their own right. Garreau (1991, 1994) identified 203 edge cities inside 36 large metropolitan areas. Examples include the Interstate-95 loop encircling Boston, Massachusetts, interstate highways 287 and 78 in New Jersey, and the ‘bedroom community’ of Irvine, California, south of Los Angeles.