Tag Archives: growth

Modern-day boom towns in the American West

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While we might consider boom towns to be part of American history, the discovery of oil and gas in the American West is leading to rapid population increases with some negative effects:

Stepped-up oil and gas development in northwestern North Dakota and northeastern Montana is punctuating the landscape with drilling rigs, trucks and hastily erected barracks, known as “man camps,” to house thousands of mostly male workers crowding into small communities where residents once greeted each other by name and left their homes and cars unlocked…

In Sidney, Montana, about 45 miles (72 km) southwest of Williston, officials have been scrambling to keep pace with oil and gas activity that is expected to double the population – from 5,000 to 10,000 – in five years and add an estimated 774 new students to the public school system…

Utah State University sociologist Richard Krannich said years-long studies of boomtowns in the West show a sharp rise in negative consequences such as crime and the fear of crime in the earliest phases of a boom.

“But we also saw the recovery once the initial phase ended and the workforce stabilized, the pressure on local services eased and infrastructure caught up with demand,” he said.

I’m not sure how you prepare for this. I can’t imagine local politicians could say no to needed jobs and future revenues and yet the quick changes in a community are difficult to handle until revenue streams are established.

What I think is particularly interesting here is that communities across the country are subject to outside social forces that can quickly change their trajectories. I assume most of these Western towns were small and hadn’t changed much in recent years but as soon as valuable resources are discovered, things can change very rapidly. Each community can make different choices about how to respond. Of course, these rapid changes can’t or won’t last forever and the town will return to some equilibrium and once the resources wind down or are depleted, a downward cycle can begin again. Boom towns and ghost towns are notable because most communities don’t experience this kind of rapid change – we expect some kind of gentle growth or at least a stable plateau. Just the idea of population loss can be troublesome because it suggests a community is on the road to dying or it is going to lose funding for services and tough cuts will have to be made to budgets.

I wonder if there are any consultants or academics to help communities adjust to these boom periods in order to take advantage of them (mainly, find tax dollars) as soon as possible. Additionally, I imagine there are some interesting interactions between long-time residents and newcomers and both sides try to adjust.

Debating the idea of a “perfect suburbia” in Montgomery County, Maryland

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Amidst debates about sprawl and development in Montgomery County, Maryland, one commentator argues that whatever happens, it is impossible to return to a “perfect suburbia” that perhaps never really existed.

In the 1940’s, when much of Montgomery County was farmland, some people were probably upset to see their communities transition from rural to suburban. Others might have been excited at the prospect of new amenities, new neighbors, and the county’s emerging reputation as an affluent bedroom community. But no one really voted for that change to happen. It happened because of market demand for new housing, a lack of buildable land in Washington (and the declining status of the inner city), and a county government who, much like today, saw that people were coming and wanted to accommodate them appropriately.

Sixty years later, Montgomery County is a very different place. It’s a majority-minority county now. The Post did a story just yesterday about the gigantic Asian community in Montgomery County. Though many of those Asian immigrants have settled in so-called “suburban” places like Rockville or Germantown, studies show (PDF!) that they’re interested in a greater sense of community. For people who grew up in dense Asian cities, Montgomery County is the “perfect suburbia,” but not in the same way that Rose Crenca describes it…

Montgomery County became the “perfect suburbia” because people were invited in. We could turn people away who don’t look like us, who don’t think like us, who want to live in apartments, who make less money than us or get around on foot or by bus. But we wouldn’t suddenly go back to 1949 as a result. In fact, the county that would result would be far, far worse than what we have today.

Many people worry that plans to encourage urban development in Montgomery County is “imposing” a way of life on them. In fact, the opposite is true. Those, like Rose Crenca, who still cling to a “perfect suburbia” which may or may not have existed, are the ones telling other people how to live.

This is a common issue in debates about development: which vision of a suburbia will win out? There are lots of possible “winning” models: a place with lots of open space and plenty of restrictions on sprawl, places where redevelopment (and perhaps densification) is encouraged, places with a diverse population (Montgomery County is quite diverse compared to a lot of wealthy suburban counties), places that seem frozen in time. Of course, another way to look at this is who has the power to carry out their vision? Overall, this idea of an “ideal suburbia” is fascinating as people likely have some very different views.

Another aspect of suburban development debates is that it often pits “old-timers” against newcomers, people who have enjoyed the community for decades versus those who want to enjoy the community for decades. These groups might be very different demographically and therefore have very different visions of the world. For example, this blog post seems to pit a vision from an older resident who is partly worried about where older residents fit in the vision for Montgomery County. As land and home prices increase, older residents can be priced out of communities to which they have contributed. This is a particularly interesting issue in a lot of suburbs and is often behind what suburbs mean when they talk about affordable housing: how can we promote housing that allows our older residents to still live here? At the same time, communities don’t remain frozen in time and things change. Appealing counties such as Montgomery County are likely to draw a broad group of people looking for their own suburban ideal made up of quality (cheaper?) housing, good schools, and safety. This old-timer/newcomer split can last for quite a while until a community becomes characterized by a more transient population which is often tied to a spurt in growth.

The irony in all of this is that once you move into a community, it is likely to never be exactly the same again. New waves of growth tend to bring about different kinds of development and businesses. Places are not static; they tend to be dynamic as people and organizations move in and out. Managing this kind of growth can be done so it doesn’t turn into incomprehensible sprawl but change itself is inevitable.

I would also suggest that the people criticizing Rose Crenca for her views may just be promoting similar views in a decade or two after they have settled into Montgomery County and want to preserve the best of the county as they envision it. This is the essence of NIMBYism.

US population growth slows in 2011

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The Census Bureau announced today that the population growth rate of the United States slowed in 2011:

The population of the United States is growing at its slowest rate in more than 70 years, the U.S. Census Bureau said on Wednesday.

The country’s population increased by an estimated 2.8 million to 311.6 million from April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2011. The growth rate of 0.92 percent was the lowest since the mid-1940s.

“The nation’s overall growth rate is now at its lowest point since before the Baby Boom,” Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said in a statement.

Texas gained more people than any other state in the 15-month period, at 529,000, followed by California at 438,000, Florida at 256,000, Georgia at 128,000, and North Carolina at 121,000, according to the latest Census estimates.

Looks like the Sunbelt is still continuing to grow. This news comes on the heels of a slow population growth rate during the 2000s:

Despite the slowest decade of population growth since the Great Depression, the USA remains the world’s fastest-growing industrialized nation and the globe’s third-most populous country at a time when some are actually shrinking.

The United States reached 308.7 million in 2010, up 9.7% since 2000 — a slight slowdown that many experts say was caused by the recession and less immigration.

Even so, U.S. growth is the envy of most developed nations. Trailing only China and India, the nation is expected to grow at least through the next generation because it is one of the few industrialized countries that has a fertility rate close to replacement level. The rate of births needed for a generation to replace itself is an average 2.1 per woman. The USA’s is at 2.06.

Perhaps one’s perspective is dependent on which country the United States is compared to.

It would be interesting to talk with Americans about their expectations about population growth. I’ve thought about this before when considering shrinking cities or suburbs: we tend to assume places will go on growing forever but we know there are some communities that have not. Throughout the course of American history, Americans have seemed to believe that the country would continue to grow in terms of land, population, and political and economic power. And growth often seems to be tied to progress: bigger will lead to better. Granted that there is no land left to have and our political and economic power is somewhat stagnant, what would happen if the population growth of the United States came to a standstill in a few decades? Is a slowdown in population growth taken as a sign of weakness or a necessary correction? Similarly, in European countries that now have fertility rates below replacement levels, how much angst is there about the future of these nations?

Perhaps the biggest area of concern would be welfare or safety net programs that are reliant on a large population base that can support others. If the population is stagnant or dropping, this tax base can’t support the growing number of elderly citizens. But there could also be cultural consequences including a sense of decline or stagnation. Maybe that’s why USA Today reported that our lower rates of growth are “the envy of most developed nations.”

Aurora now second largest city in Illinois

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The population growth in the Chicago suburbs has shifted from Naperville (in the 1980s and 1990s) to communities further west and south. In particular, Aurora grew during the 2000s and is now Illinois’ second largest city:

[T]he Alperins are among the nearly 55,000 new residents since 2000 who helped Aurora boost its population to 197,899 and officially eclipse Rockford as Illinois’ second-largest city, according to the recently released 2010 U.S. census figures.

Aurora’s 54,909 jump was the largest among Illinois cities. Its percentage increase of 38.4 percent was just behind top-ranked Joliet, which grew at a 38.8 percent pace to 147,433 and beat out Naperville as Illinois’ fourth-largest community.

The growth comes as Aurora makes strides resurrecting what had become a struggling downtown and boasts of statistics that show the city’s major crime rate is at its lowest in more than three decades. The physical size of the city also has grown to accommodate more people. Aurora has three times as many square miles as it had four decades ago.

There are several reasons that the community has grown including a growing Hispanic population and open land in a growing region of the Chicago suburbs. But the city has also dramatically expanded in size:

Aurora, meanwhile, now covers 46 square miles compared with 35 in 1990 and 15 in 1970. It sprawls through four counties, six school districts and seven townships. But like Naperville in the last decade, the city could eventually be boxed in by neighbors, Greene said. And there’s also no guarantee that brisk growth from the 1990s through part of the 2000s will repeat when the economy improves.

The explanation for why Aurora is growing is very similar to what led to Naperville’s growth between 1960 and 2000: it is located near highways, it has a number of businesses, and there is plenty of room to expand and the city has annexed a lot of land. But as Naperville discovered, the growth only goes on for so long: eventually, the land runs out and then Aurora will become a different kind of place. As the end of the article notes, the long-term course of the city will likely include denser development near the center of the city.

At the same time, Naperville and Aurora’s growth are not quite the same: Naperville has long had a wealthier profile compared to Aurora’s status as an industrial satellite city (named as such in this 1915 work).  During the 1980s and 1990s, Naperville’s growth was quite unusual: Naperville was classified as the only boomburb outside of the South or West during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Naperville is quite well-off for a large community, has a history of high-tech companies dating back to the mid-1960s, has very low crime and poverty rates, and has a vibrant and popular downtown.

It will be interesting to watch in the coming years how Aurora, Joliet, Plainfield, and other suburbs in the southwest suburbs continue to grow.

Thinking about the “fastest growing small towns”

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Forbes has put together a list of the “fastest growing small towns” in the United States. Here are the top five towns:

No. 1. Fairbanks, Alaska (Metro Area)

2009 Population: 98,660

2006 Population: 86,754

Growth: 13.8%

No. 2. The Villages, Fla. (Micro Area)

2009 Population: 77,681

2006 Population: 68,769

Growth: 13.0%

No. 3. Bozeman, Mont. (Micro Area)

2009 Population: 90,343

2006 Population: 81,763

Growth: 10.5%

No. 4. Palm Coast, Fla. (Metro Area)

2009 Population: 91,622

2006 Population: 83,084

Growth: 10.3%

No. 5. Ames, Iowa (Metro Area)

2009 Population: 87,214

2006 Population: 80,145

Growth: 8.8%

An interesting list based on data between 2006 and 2009. I have a few thoughts about this:

1. To be a “small town,” a community had to have less than 100,000 people. This does not sound like a small town to me. When I think of small town, I think less than 15,000 people. In my opinion, all of the top five fastest growing should really be labeled “small cities.”

1a. If the list were labeled the “fastest growing small cities,” would people still want to look at it? Using the term “small town” invokes certain images of a place where everybody knows everyone and a quaint downtown where people regularly gather. This image is something quite different from the actual population of the community; I’ve heard people in Naperville, a suburb with over 140,000 people, claim it is still like a small town.

2. Is this growth a good thing? I wonder if the people living in these communities would like to see this growth continue for a decade or so. Since they are already not small towns, they will really not be small towns if this sort of growth continues. The shift from smaller to larger community is often not easy as it involves more newcomers in the community who have a different understanding of the place, new businesses (such as big box stores and chains), and possibly a declining sense of community.

2a. Do a good number of people move to places that are the “hot places” because there is rapid population growth? The Yahoo! story on this has links that immediately go to real estate listing. How many people click on those?

3. It might be useful to know what is “average” growth for communities over this time period. While these communities might be the top 5, what is the distribution among places under 100,000? What is the average or median rate of growth?

Plainfield: From deadly tornado to suburban growth

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Plainfield, Illinois has experienced much suburban growth in the last twenty years: it had 4,500 people in 1990 and it was estimated in 2007 to have more than 37,000 (with projections of 120,000 people in 2030).

But at the beginning of this growth spurt, a deadly F5 tornado ripped through the community on August 28, 1990:

The tornado touched down outside Oswego about 3:15 p.m., and the 200 mph winds inside it etched a scar 16 miles long, stretching to the southwest side of Joliet.

By 3:45, the sky was clear and the horizon lined with battered, leafless trees and ruined homes. In all, 1,500 buildings were damaged or destroyed, 300 people were injured and 29 were dead, victims of the most powerful tornado ever to strike the Chicago area.

As the community prepares to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the tornado, this article provides some insights into the collective memory of the community. The memory of their darkest moment faded away as new people moved in, 1,000 new residents in the first year after the tornado. Today, Plainfield is something different than it was then.

Sociological studies of the effects of disasters or crises tend to focus on big cities. I recently heard a presentation about a new book comparing the 9/11 crisis in New York City and the Hurricane Katrina crisis in New Orleans. I wonder if the insights of that book would be able to speak to the experience of people in places like Plainfield.