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Saturday, Sep. 26, 1998
More folks are flocking from 'burbs to downtown
Survey: Suburban migration trend slowing
By PATRICIA LAMIELL
Associated PressNEW YORK -- When Leslie Aun and Buzz McClain moved from suburban Washington, D.C., to Dallas, they first looked at what they knew: the suburbs. They even put a deposit down on a house in Allen, 20 miles north of Dallas.
``And then we thought, what are we doing? We don't want to live in the suburbs,'' Aun said. They ended up buying a 20-year-old brick bungalow in northeast Dallas. Aun, a public relations executive, does a 15-minute reverse commute to her job at MCI in the Dallas suburb of Richardson.
``We really haven't regretted it,'' she said. ``We pay slightly higher taxes, and I suspect we'll put our kids in private school. But it seems like a small price to pay to have a fun life and do interesting things.''
After decades of suburban migration, Americans are returning to urban downtown areas and will continue to do so at least for the next decade, according to a survey released Friday.
The survey of developers and local officials in 21 big cities by the Brookings Institution and the Fannie Mae Foundation found that all but one -- Atlanta -- expected their downtowns to be more populous by 2010.
And Atlanta said there must be some mistake. With development sparked by the 1996 Olympics, ``we have waiting lists for people to try to acquire housing in downtown Atlanta,'' said Nick Gold, a spokesman for mayor Bill Campbell. ``And we have developers clamoring to build more.''
Even cities that have lost population for decades -- Philadelphia; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio -- expect the number of downtown residents to rise.
In New York's Wall Street section, for example, or the Inner Harbor section of Baltimore, a new wave of urban pioneers is moving into renovated downtown industrial space, or is building new housing in downtown areas.
``People are living downtown because they want to be near their work places and cultural amenities, and because they enjoy a bustling urban environment,'' said a statement by the James W. Rouse Forum on the American City, which commissioned the study.
The trend holds for northeastern and midwestern cities, which in the years following World War II razed their downtown tenement and row housing to make way for offices and warehouses or beltways.
It also applies to sunbelt cities that never had much downtown housing in the first place.
Houston, for example, expects its downtown population to quadruple. Cleveland expects a tripling, while Memphis and Seattle anticipate twice as many downtown residents in the next 12 years.
Philadelphia's downtown population has grown by 20 percent since 1960. Philadelphia officials predict another 10,000 residents will live downtown by 2010. That is a 13 percent increase ``in a city with 600,000 fewer people now than it had in 1950,'' the Rouse Forum noted.
In Chicago, the movement downtown is even stronger. The city projects a 32 percent increase in residential use over the coming decade.
The survey allowed each city to define ``downtown'' but suggested they not include surrounding neighborhoods. New York City, for example, limited the survey to the Wall Street section of Manhattan and excluded SoHo, TriBeCa, and Greenwich Village, which are geographically downtown but not part of the financial district.
Chicago defined its downtown more broadly, including not only the Loop, or central business district, but a four-mile swath along Lake Michigan and the Magnificent Mile.
Denver's overall population has begun growing for the first time since 1970. In the downtown area, ``condominiums, lofts, apartments and townhouses are leased or sold as quickly as they are built,'' Rouse said.
Houston, whose downtown population has risen during the past three years, reported most new downtown residents are upper-income, and the majority have no children.
John Taylor, president and chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said that in some cities, the downtown movement has led to wealthy people displacing long-time low- and moderate-income residents.
``Every neighborhood welcomes economic stability,'' Taylor said. ``The question is whether you manage that upsurge in a way that includes traditionally underserved people.''Post your comments about local news eventsFront Page || Main Index || News || Business || Texas || South Texas Outdoors || Birdwatching || Sports || Entertainment || Selena || Education || South Texas Attractions || World Wide Web