According to a report by the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan community organization, more than 1.2 million people left major U.S. metropolitan areas between July 2020 and July 2021. Another 860,000 people left between July 2021 and July 2022.
Only a new influx of immigrants saved the big cities from a sharp decline in population. Even including newcomers, 17 of the nation’s 25 largest counties suffered population losses between April 2020 and July 2022, according to census data provided by The Hill.
“Metropolitan areas as a group lost population for the first time since at least 1990 and possibly decades before that,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.
The historic exodus, combined with chronic vacancies and rising crime, pose serious and potentially existential challenges for major US cities, experts said. For city officials, a nightmare scenario would be a return to the urban decline of previous decades, an era of high crime, growing poverty and problems in schools in many large cities.
The recent exodus echoes the decades-long exodus of wealthy families from the cities to the suburbs that began after World War II. During these years, some urban centers were depopulated. The void is still there, especially on Mondays and Fridays, peak days for virtual work.
Half of all commercial space in the 10 largest US cities are vacant, according to weekly data from office security firm Kastle Systems. Remote work has changed the central regions of the country, and not for the better. The virtual work exodus comes at a time when urban crime is on the rise, evoking memories of a much larger urban crime problem over the past millennium.
According to the US Police Chiefs Association, the number of homicides in major cities increased by two-fifths between 2019 and 2022, from 6,406 to 9,138. There were 438 homicides in New York in 2022, compared to 319 in 2019 That’s a significant increase, but both numbers pale in comparison to the city’s 2,262 murders in 1990.
Hamilton Lombard, a demographer at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Public Service Center, says the parallels between the current telecommuting boom and the exodus from cities in previous decades are “perhaps stronger than many people realize. would like to admit it”.
- It’s as if the speed limits had doubled. People can live twice as far, – explained the expert.
In 2022, deaths from COVID-19 have declined and immigration has resumed. Together, these advantages more or less compensate for the losses of urban flights. However, most major cities in the United States now remain less densely populated than they were at the start of the pandemic.
Los Angeles County lost nearly 300,000 people, or 3% of its population, between April 2020 and July 2022, according to the census. Cook County, which includes Chicago and its suburbs, lost 166,000 people during that time, or about 3% of the population. Kings County, better known as Brooklyn, lost nearly 150,000 residents, or 5% of its population. New York County or Manhattan lost nearly 100,000 people, or 6% of the previous number.
Many city dwellers are fleeing the big cities to find cheaper spaces. According to a recent analysis, the average cost of a one-bedroom apartment currently exceeds $2,000 per month in 14 of the nation’s top 100 cities: New York City’s $3,550 per month, San Francisco’s $3,000, 2,370 dollars in Los Angeles and $2,300. in Washington DC.
According to city experts, the challenge for the city is to adapt to remote working: converting empty offices into affordable housing, ensuring public safety in troubled neighborhoods and working with public schools so that education tax-funded remains a viable option for parents.
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