Category Archives: Sociology

A list of the 30 fastest growing wealthy suburbs includes two suburbs with population declines

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I recently found a list of wealthy American with the most population growth. But I noticed that the list ends with two suburbs that lost population during the time period of interest (2018-2023). I suspect this might be because how they selected the communities on the list.

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Methodology: For this study, GOBankingRates analyzed suburbs to find the fastest-growing wealthy suburbs in America. First GOBankingRates found the places with a population between 25,000 and 100,000 according to the U.S. Census American Community Survey. The metro area for each location was found and only the metro areas with a population of 1 million or more were kept. With these suburbs isolated, the numerical and percentage change in population from 2018 to 2023 were found for each city using data from the American Community Survey Census from 2018 and 2023. For each location, GOBankingRates found total population, population ages 65 and over, total households, and household median income all sourced from the American Community Survey. Only places with a median household income of $150,000 or more were kept for this study. Using this data the percentage of the population ages 65 and over were calculated. The cost-of-living indexes were sourced from Sperling’s BestPlaces and include the grocery, healthcare, housing, utilities, transportation, and miscellaneous cost of living indexes. Using the cost-of-living indexes and the national average expenditure costs, as sourced from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, the average expenditure cost for each location were calculated. The livability index was sourced from AreaVibes for each location and included as supplemental information. The average single-family home value was sourced from Zillow Home Value Index for November 2024. Using the average single-family home value, assuming a 10% down payment, and using the most recent national average 30-year fixed mortgage rate, as sourced from the Federal Reserve Economic Data, the average mortgage can be calculated. Using the average mortgage and average expenditure costs, the average total monthly and annual cost of living were calculated. The cities were sorted to show the highest percentage population increase first to show the places with the fastest-growing wealthy suburbs in America. All data was collected on and is up to date as of Jan. 6, 2025.

The bigger question is this: how many suburbs in the United States of population 25,000 to 100,000 have median household incomes over $150,000? I suspect this is not a huge list. Hence, there are only 28 suburbs who meet this criteria and grew between 2018 and 2023.

But it may not take much to change the parameters to include more suburban communities on the list. For example:

  1. What if the median household income was $140,000? Is there a strong reason for leaving the cutoff at $150,000?
  2. Why limit the population to communities between 25,000 and 100,000? If the list could includ communities between 10,000 and 100,000, are there now more growing wealthy suburbs?
  3. Limiting the analysis to metropolitan areas with 1 million people reduces the number of possible regions and suburbs. If the cutoff is 1 million people in an MSA, this means a little over 50 regions are included. Lower the region’s population and you would have more suburbs that might meet the criteria.
  4. Change the list from 30 suburbs to 20 and then the last one on the list would have 5% population growth.

What would happen if all social media was gone in a day?

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The temporary loss of TikTok in the United States a few days ago was a sort of natural experiment and it did make me wonder: what if social media was gone tomorrow?

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Numerous areas of life would be affected. Here are just a few:

  1. People and companies making money. Whether through ads or selling things or streaming, money flows through social media.
  2. How people use their time. What would people do instead? Watch more TV (this was a primary activity before social media existed)? Talk to the people around them? Go outside?
  3. Where people get information, whether about people they know or the news or the standard information people today are supposed to know (ranging from viral videos to celebrity updates to conflict on the other side of the world).
  4. Connections to people. The easy access to people through posts and profiles and social media interactions would be gone. Could the connections happen through other mediums?
  5. A whole set of rituals, norms, and discussions would be lost. They could not be accessed or scrolled through. All that time managing images and interactions goes away.

Even with all these changes (which would take some time to get used to), this question might be most important: would life be better?

“Lift Every Voice and Sing,” hymns, and civil religion

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The song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was written in 1900:

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Often referred to as “The Black National Anthem,” Lift Every Voice and Sing was a hymn written as a poem by NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson in 1900. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1873-1954), composed the music for the lyrics. A choir of 500 schoolchildren at the segregated Stanton School, where James Weldon Johnson was principal, first performed the song in public in Jacksonville, Florida to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

At the turn of the 20th century, Johnson’s lyrics eloquently captured the solemn yet hopeful appeal for the liberty of Black Americans. Set against the religious invocation of God and the promise of freedom, the song was later adopted by NAACP and prominently used as a rallying cry during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. 

How many hymnals is the song in? Hymnary.org lists the song being in 46 hymnals. For some quick comparisons on the same site, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is in 446 hymnals, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is in 557 hymnals, “A Mighty Fortress” is in 681 hymnals, and “Amazing Grace” is in 1,459 hymnals.

Americans are used to civil religion where religious concepts are mixed with public and political rituals. What are the boundaries for this regarding hymns? I imagine there are long histories and discussions about whether songs about one’s country should be in the hymnal and used within congregations.

How homeowners and investors see home purchases differently

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What is buying a home about? It could depend who you are:

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Ordinary buyers and investors have different priorities when sizing up a house purchase. An owner-occupier will focus on whether they can afford the monthly mortgage payment, rather than obsessing over cap rates. They might be willing to overpay if the house is in a good location and is the right long-term fit for them or their family.

It can be frustrating for institutional investors when house hunters bid prices up to irrational levels in tight markets, as is happening today. But sky-high valuations have a silver lining for landlords. Oddly, family homes have turned out to be a great hedge against higher interest rates, as the lock-in effect of ultralow in-place mortgages has protected valuations. And now is a great time for landlords to prune their portfolios and sell properties at near-record prices. 

As the existing housing stock is so unaffordable, investors need to find other ways to grow their portfolios. Large players such as American Homes 4 Rent are building houses themselves, or buying newly constructed units directly from builders. This should be helpful for the undersupplied U.S. housing market.  

There is also a small pool of properties that can be picked up at prices that make sense to investors. According to real-estate investor Amherst, around $12 billion of two-to-four-bedroom homes are currently listed for sale at a 5.75% cap rate. These properties are cheaper because they need work. But it might be more lucrative to patch them up than to build new ones, given it currently costs $200 a square foot on average to build a house compared to $20 to $30 a square foot to renovate.

In the end, both sets of owners want to gain financially from their purpose. Investors want a return on their investment as do homeowners as they tend to expect the value of their property to increase in their time as owners.

But how they get to that return seems to differ. The homeowner will often live in the property in the meantime. As mentioned above, the financial return is not the only factor involved. For the big investor (the primary focus in the article as opposed to smaller investors), a property might be more of a data point among many other properties.

In both situations, it is worth asking how this emphasis on financial investment changes (1) the experiences of those living there and (2) communities. Owning a single-family home has long been part of the American Dream but the move to treating it more like a financial commodity does change matters.

How Walmart describes itself

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Most companies and organizations have an idea of who they are and what they do. With a recent branding effort, Walmart described themselves this way:

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Walmart is excited to announce a comprehensive brand refresh that reflects its evolution as a people-led, tech-powered omnichannel retailer. From its humble beginnings in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1951, Walmart has grown into a global leader dedicated to helping people save money and live better.

This is the opening paragraph of a press release that has more details. But this first section has a lot of ideas. Walmart is:

  1. people-led
  2. tech-powered
  3. omnichannel
  4. from humble beginnings
  5. global leader
  6. helps people save money
  7. helps people live better

There is a lot here. Probably too much for a slogan or advertising campaign. And how many line up with how the public sees Walmart?

When I think of Walmart throughout most of my life, I think of #6 above. It has pitched as the place for low prices. When they first arrived in the Chicago suburbs, I found that their CDs were much cheaper than the music stores in the area. Compared to other big box stores or grocery stores selling the same or similar items, Walmart often has lower prices.

What does it mean to be “people-led”? As opposed to AI led or driven by numbers? Is “global leader” referring to revenues or practices or name recognition?

The last one might be most interesting. Is the American good life partly dependent on Walmart? If Walmart was not around, would American lives be better or worse? Would this alternate universe just remove Walmart locations or all Walmart is connected to (supply chains, approach to retail, the growth of Bentonville, etc.)? If lots of Americans think Walmart does help them save money and given the role of money and wealth in American life, many might answer “yes” to this.

Who the nice new apartments in Chicago’s northwest suburbs are for

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Multiple suburbs northwest of Chicago have constructed apartments in their downtowns and/or along transportation options. Who lives in these new residences? A VP for a real estate development firm answers:

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Suburbs such as Niles, Des Plaines, Buffalo Grove, Palatine, Wheeling, Elk Grove Village and Rolling Meadows no longer are flying under the radar. And based on strong supply-demand fundamentals as well as greater municipality support, the future looks even brighter for new rental options in the Northwest suburbs…

While those starting their careers continue to make up the bulk of renters, Gen Xers and baby boomers also are drawn to the maintenance-free and resort-like lifestyle renting offers them at a time when they are looking to downsize and enjoy retirement.

And with high interest rates and low for-sale housing inventory, even 30- and 40-year-olds who are in the thick of raising children and typically gravitate to single-family homes have turned toward renting in recent years — both out of necessity and choice.

The city of Chicago’s uncertain political environment and higher taxes also have increased the suburbs’ draw for some people, with rental communities near Metra stops or major expressways providing an appealing alternative for professionals who prefer the slower pace of the suburbs while still enjoying an easy commute.

And while there are suburbs hesitant to embrace rental housing, a growing number of municipalities understand the many economic benefits of new, high-quality rental options — such as increased foot traffic in their downtowns and activating underutilized sites.

If there is demand for housing, developers will want to build but suburbs often want housing that fits their particular goals and character. How will apartments fit into communities often full of single-family homes? What might apartments do to daily life in downtowns and around transportation corridors? Who will live in these apartments?

In my research on suburban development, I have seen discussion and debate involving all three of these questions. Focusing on the last one, the description above highlights the ideal apartment dwellers in suburbs. The first group is young professionals. These residents might be coming off finishing their education and are looking to establish themselves. They may have smaller households. They may not have the financial resources yet to purchase a home or they like the idea of living in a more vibrant location. Then there are those looking to downsize. They want an easier life. They may have owned homes in the past but do not need all that space or the trouble of maintaining a home and property. And “even” those who families may want to rent.

And these are not necessarily cheap or affordable rentals. These are places that are “high-quality” and “resort-like.” Their location near walkable amenities and transportation likely drives up demand and cost.

If the goals were to provide more units at prices accessible to more residents and prospective resident, the apartments might meet with more concern from local residents and leaders who could view them as threats to a particular quality of life and to their property values.

Sanctifying Suburbia is out! Explaining the forces behind the evangelical embrace of the American suburbs

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If observers in the United States in the late nineteenth century had to predict the geography of American evangelicals in the year 2000, what would they have said? Would they have foreseen an evangelical presence in the biggest cities? Important evangelical congregations, organizations, and institutions resided in New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. From these population centers (and ones that emerged in the twentieth century like Los Angeles or Dallas), evangelicals could reach the masses. Or would they have selected small towns and more rural areas? Perhaps they would have thought of evangelicals living in particular regions, in the kinds of places that would be called “the heartland” or “flyover country” or “the Bible Belt.” These places with a slower pace of life and traditional values may have aligned with everyday evangelical life.

I argue in Sanctifying Suburbia (out in paperback today!) that by the turn of the twenty-first century American evangelicals were firmly suburban. Evangelicals did not simply follow many other Americans to the suburbs (the country was majority suburban in the 2000 Census); evangelicals actively chose to locate in the suburbs.

Why? Multiple factors led to this and different chapters in the book discuss the components that contributed to the evangelical embrace of the growing American suburbs. The story includes:

  1. Racial and ethnic change in cities and evangelicals moving to whiter suburbs.
  2. The National Association of Evangelicals operating from suburban settings for much of its existence after its founding in the 1940s
  3. Locating in some evangelical clusters – like Wheaton and Carol Stream, Illinois and Colorado Springs, Colorado – that offered particular amenities and synergy between evangelical congregations and organizations.
  4. Seeing cities as incompatible with evangelical lifestyles and goals.
  5. An individualized view of engaging with places and society while also holding up heaven as the ultimate city/place.

And this is not just a story of the twentieth century; some of the seeds were sown prior to mass suburbanization and developed over decades.

Where does this leave American evangelicals in the third decade of the twenty-first century? As a whole, they may feel most comfortable in suburban settings where day-to-day life focuses on families in single-family homes, middle-class and populist activities and values rule the day, and attracting attendees and gathering resources from growing suburban populations occupies their organizational efforts.

How a suburban school district could “attract the right families…while keeping the wrong families out”

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The suburban case studies in the 2024 book Disillusioned include one wealthier community trying to boost its status and avoid decline. Here is one way they tried to insure this in their local schools:

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For the plan to work, the district would have to attract the right families into Lovejoy while keeping the wrong families out. Hoping to gauge the possibility of threading that needle, the Lovejoy board hired a demographic firm to run some analyses. First, they took aerial photographs of the district’s 17-square-mile attendance zone, counting the number of roofs versus available lots to ascertain likely development trends. Then, the firm analyzed census data and conducted interviews with local real estate agents, landowners, and developers to predict the household incomes and education levels of future residents. In their final report, the demographers projected that Lovejoy’s enrollment would by 8 or 9 percent a year for the next decade, enough to support a midsize high school. And just as important, they expected that the local poverty rate would remain extremely low, allowing the towns to maintain what local leaders liked to call “quality growth.” Elated, Lovejoy leaders began assuring prospective homeowners that their new high school would never look anything like its gargantuan counterpart in Allen. (202-203)

Growth is good in suburbs as it brings status and additional revenue.

But suburban communities often are looking for particular kinds of growth and certain residents. Here, “quality growth” means higher-income residents in larger new houses. The community does not want residents who are below the poverty line. And they then can run particular programs in their local schools aimed at high levels of academic performance, which will also boost their status. Good schools are not just about student learning; for numerous suburbanites, they serve as proxies for the overall quality of life.

Through planning and zoning, the suburb will have effectively decided who will live in the community and attend the local schools. They may pay for this down the road – the argument of the book is that the suburbs are a Ponzi scheme that pass along the costs to future residents who have fewer resources to meet the costs – but the short-term benefits look good for local leaders and residents.

Will in About a Boy with his “units of time” and all of our lives lived in 15-minute increments

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In the movie version of About a Boy, the adult character Will describes his life as lived in “units of time”:

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The important thing in island living is to be your own activities director.
I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than 30 minutes.
Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour.
Taking a bath: One unit.
Watching Countdown:
Okay.
One unit.
Web-based research:
Two units.
Exercising: Three units.
Having my hair carefully disheveled: Four units.
It’s amazing how the day fills up.

In the movie, this looks somewhat depressing. Perhaps it is a coping mechanism. Will claims he is fine living alone but the story involves him finding value in relationships with several people who would not expect to have relationships with.

But what if all of us live in small increments of time that add up to weeks, months, years, decades. From the end of a recent article on declining social engagement in American life:

When Epley and his lab asked Chicagoans to overcome their preference for solitude and talk with strangers on a train, the experiment probably didn’t change anyone’s life. All it did was marginally improve the experience of one 15-minute block of time. But life is just a long set of 15-minute blocks, one after another. The way we spend our minutes is the way we spend our decades. “No amount of research that I’ve done has changed my life more than this,” Epley told me. “It’s not that I’m never lonely. It’s that my moment-to-moment experience of life is better, because I’ve learned to take the dead space of life and make friends in it.”

What if life is a series of 15-minute blocks where our choices with those blocks can add up to profoundly different outcomes? In the example above, start socializing each day in one 15-minute increment and see what it can lead to. This is the narrative in numerous self-improvement and habit books: build small new routines and change your life.

Keeping track of every 15 minutes in life would be laborious and could turn someone into a clock watcher rather than an active participant in life. Yet, time use does indeed add up and broad changes in time use – such as watching more television – can have big impacts.

Are millennials going to the suburbs like boomers did?

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The American suburbs reach across generations:

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But the reality of many millennials is starting to more closely mirror their parents’. They’re catching up on earnings and wealth, and while they’re still behind on homeownership, they’re not screwed. It may have taken them awhile to settle down, but they’re getting around to it and heading to the suburbs. In short, millennials are looking increasingly boomer-esque, and in some areas, they’re doing better than their parents.

The primary argument here involves wealth and homeownership. Are millennials at similar levels? Can they find the same kind of American Dream consisting of making it to the suburbs and owning their own house?

But it strikes me that there is a larger argument to make: these are longstanding cultural patterns, not just questions about economic resources. A later passage in the article hints at this:

In other words, it may not be that all the millennials headed to the suburbs want to be there, but in some cases, they feel like they have no choice but to exit urban centers and swallow a longer commute in the process.

“The plurality are moving to the suburbs, but that’s where the housing stock is,” Lautz said. Some of it has to do with having school-age kids, for example, but a lot has to do with affordability and availability.

Do economic conditions alone drive these choices – people need housing they can afford – or is it about influential ideologies that provide Americans particular messages about the suburbs? Americans prioritize certain things in suburbia. They like cheap and big houses. They like living near certain neighbors. They like particular amenities in their communities, including those they think help their children succeed.

If millennials do indeed end up in the suburbs at similar rates to previous generations of Americans, they may do so because this is what Americans have been doing for decades. There are economic imperatives for doing this – owning a suburban home is a primary vehicle for acquiring wealth – but also established patterns where they like driving, they are used to the ins-and-outs of sprawl, and they enjoy their private dwellings.