Tag Archives: DC

What would a successful urban NFL stadium look like in DC?

I had started jotting down notes about a new stadium at RFK back in 2015 when Events DC hosted a series of planning meetings about the topic. Parts of this post have been sitting in my drafts folder since then.

And since 2015, a lot has changed. The local NFL team is now on its third name, and Virginia seems set on throwing money at the team to build a new stadium somewhere in the hinterlands of Loudoun or Prince William counties.

Legislators seem entranced by the idea of building a new city around the stadium, with a dome to host events year-round – Super Bowls, Final Fours, etc. Such promises of large-scale events are almost required in order to justify the multi-billion dollar price tag. Spending that much for a facility that only hosts a dozen events a year seems hardly worth it.

However, the only suitable parcels for such a large footprint are further and further from the center of the region. One of the potential locations (near the Jiffy Lube Live amphitheater) is so far from the core of DC that Baltimore’s NFL stadium is both closer and easier to access for a huge portion of the City. How attractive will a stadium that’s 30 miles from the city (and the bars and hotels and hospitality) be to a host committee picking venues for the Final Four or a Super Bowl?

Back in the District, Mayor Bowser expressed support for bringing the team back to RFK, but there doesn’t seem to be any appetite on the Council for matching Virginia’s offer.

And yet, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

There are lots of reasons to oppose any deal with the current team and owner. The team is bad and poorly run; the owner is (by all accounts) an awful person and unlikely to be a good partner in any city-building exercise; the financial incentives for NFL teams in general are extractive and lack strong ties to the community. All of this was true in 2015 and remains so today.

Then there are the externalities: stadium opponents will often cite large parking lots hosting tailgate parties as if those are requirements for building. Yet they do not need to be. And if we think beyond the narrow NFL vision for what a stadium should be, there are all sorts of opportunities.

It’s worth thinking through what it would take to get to ‘yes’ on a new football stadium in DC. Assume we had a different owner; one willing to fund a stadium privately. RFK has hosted sporting events since 1961; the site has lots of advantages. What would I need to see to get to ‘yes’ on a new stadium at RFK?

  • Minimal parking; no surface parking – Plan for fans to arrive via transit, potentially including infill Metro stations.
  • A civic center built to host multiple events
  • Connected to dense, urban development on the City side
  • Integrated into parkland on the river side

It’s not too hard to envision an urban stadium and waterfront park, both as a vision for the future of the RFK site and as a reference to past plans.

Planning Precedent

Before the District broke ground on D.C. Stadium in 1960, planners identified the need for a stadium in Washington to host large events, and at the intersection of East Capitol Street with the Anacostia River as early as the 1930s – often with the eye on hosting the Olympic Games.

1941 NCPC Plan for an East Capitol Mall.
1941 NCPC Plan for an East Capitol Mall.

A series of plans in the 1920s and 30s involved a massive expansion of DC’s monumental spaces. Very little of the plan was implemented, but one common element included a stadium and other athletic facilities (including a tennis arena, natatorium, and ballfields, with an eye toward hosting an Olympic Games) where East Capitol Street meets the Anacostia River.

east cap mall crop stadium
Cropped image of the 1941 plan; includes #71 stadium, #72 sport field, #73 natatorium, and #74 tennis stadium as well as a railroad station at the bottom of the image.

This version of the plan includes a new stadium located opposite of the existing DC Armory, as well as a large ‘sports field’ built into the hillside. The plan contains many similar elements to Berlin’s olympic park, including the massive Maifield located next to the Olympiastadion.

Aerial view of Berlin's Olympiastadion, along with the Maifield. Image from Bing Maps.
Aerial view of Berlin’s Olympiastadion, along with the Maifield. Image from Bing Maps.

The stadium was built for the 1936 Olympic Games in a park to the west of Berlin’s center city. The Maifield was built for holding annual May Day celebrations, as well as hosting large events. After World War II, the Maifield was the base of operations for the British soldiers occupying their sector of West Berlin.

Following reunification, there was a long debate in Berlin about what to do with the stadium built by the Nazis. Some favored demolishing it and replacing it with a new stadium, others argued it should be left to crumble as a ruin. The end result was a renovation, completed in 2004 in anticipation of hosting the 2006 World Cup.

The renovation includes an underground parking garage directly linked to the VIP seating areas via a large below-grade atrium. The renovation managed to add premium seating areas while completely preserving the exterior. There are a modest number of surface parking areas, but they are either well landscaped or paved in a manner that allows for other uses. Nearby transit lines include both the U2 U-Bahn line as well as the S5 S-Bahn, complete with a large multi-platform station to accomodate big crowds.

  • Built: 1936
  • Renovated: 2004
  • Capacity: 74,475
  • On-site parking: 815 spaces

The stadium isn’t without its challenges. The main tenant is Bundesliga club Hertha BSC, which wants to build a dedicated soccer stadium (without the running track) and a smaller total capacity.

Events DC’s master plan for RFK abides by the terms of the lease on the land for ‘recreational purposes,’ and actually ends up with a vision for a waterfront park (with or without a stadium) and various sports and recreation venues not dissimilar from the Olympic Park ambition.

RFK Stadium and the challenge of multi-use venues

As mentioned above, the dilemma for any modern NFL stadium is the relative paucity of events compared to the cost of the edifice. Building a multi-use facility is the obvious solution, but the history of such venues in the US is murky. RFK is the original concrete donut, built to host football and baseball – admirably adaptable, a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of design.

These multi-purpose stadiums were once common; now almost all have been demolished – usually requiring separate baseball and football venues as replacements.

At some level, a stadium is a stadium. The basic design parameters for a football field haven’t changed that much over the decades. There are plenty of college football stadiums approaching (if not exceeding) a century of service. They’ve been renovated and added to over the years, upgraded to meet modern standards and the increasing professionalization of college football. Yet the institutional context means teams won’t ever move to a different city in order to get a better deal. Similarly, it’s not an accident that the NFL’s longest tenured team in a single stadium (albeit one substantially altered over the years) is the league’s only community-owned franchise – the Green Bay Packers.

The modern challenge is building a stadium capable of hosting more events than just NFL gamedays in order to justify its own existence, yet doing so without draining the public coffers.

The latest set of domed NFL stadiums (SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis) all make use of ETFE roofing to provide an indoor venue that doesn’t ‘feel’ indoors – and arguably feels more open than the previous generation of retractable roof designs (in Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Indianapolis). But for all of them, the roof is a critical element to enable additional events that justify the stadium’s existence and expense.

However, successfully hosting those kinds of events also relies on a central location in the region. Many of the domed NFL stadia are ‘downtown’ or immediately adjacent. Others are centrally located within the region. Only Phoenix is truly on the fringe (yet still just 12 miles from downtown as the crow flies).

As part of a regional plan, it’s much easier to justify that level of investment and land use intensity at a place like RFK than it is in Gainesville (31 miles from the Capitol Dome) or Ashburn (25 miles). If it were just a football stadium, hosting a dozen events a year, surrounded by surface parking lots, then a location on the fringe is preferable.

It’s a shame that the institutional context doesn’t allow for the kind of long-standing reinvestment and evolution, building off of the planning history for the RFK site. It’s also a shame that there’s not an obvious partnership between the primary user of a stadium and both the surrounding grounds as well as the neighboring community. But that’s not the world we have.

But it can be fun to dream.

WMATA Infill Stations: Berwyn & New Hampshire Ave

The single-highest scoring infill station location from my back-of-the-envelope comparison was Berwyn, thanks to good transit connections, strong land use and development potential, as well as relatively easy construction. Infill stations at Kansas Ave or New Hampshire Ave are also common among crayonistas.

Berwyn

At first glance of a map, there’s a strong case for adding an infill station on the Green Line between College Park and Greenbelt. The two existing stations are 2.3 miles apart. The only road crossing the tracks in that span is Greenbelt Road, approximately halfway between the two stations.

I’ve opted to call this location ‘Berwyn’ due to the proximity to the Town of Berwyn Heights, and because the name would fit well as a unique addition to WMATA’s station name, but we’re talking about a station to be built near where Greenbelt Road crosses the tracks.

The wide right-of-way includes three Metro tracks and CSX’s Capital Subdivision (home to MARC’s Camden Line). WMATA’s third track isn’t used for regular service, but for testing new railcars, which are usually delivered to the system’s Greenbelt Yard.

View of the tracks, looking south from Greenbelt Road. Metro tracks on the left, CSX/MARC on the right

Connections: Because Greenbelt Road is a bit of a choke-point in crossing the railroad tracks, it already hosts a fair amount of bus service. Additionally, many of the routes traversing Greenbelt Road eventually turn north to terminate at Greenbelt Station, adding time and distance to a journey that could be shorter – if only there were a station where Greenbelt Road crosses the tracks.

Connecting bus service at Greenbelt station. Note all the routes feeding from the south that use Greenbelt Road.

Land Use: The Berwyn location is already seeing transit-oriented development with the townhouse project just north of Greenbelt Road – but it’s counted as part of the Greenbelt station development, despite the fact you can’t really walk between the two.

However, there are great development opportunities next to an infill station. Immediately to the west is the University of Maryland’s Severn Library, a high-density storage facility located in a former Washington Post printing plant. The site includes ample surface parking lots, ready for redevelopment. To the east is Beltway Plaza mall, already planned for additional housing. And in between, lots of properties fronting on Greenbelt Road are ripe for suburban retrofits and incremental additions of density.

Ease of Construction: The big reason Berwyn scored as the best overall infill station opportunity is because of (hopefully) easy construction. The right of way is generous; there would seem to be opportunities to add platforms with minimal track reconfiguration; or, use the generous spacing to reconfigure the tracks to make room for an island platform. Regardless of the design, the available space opens a lot of doors.

An ideal configuration would link mezzanine access directly to the Greenbelt Road bridge, allowing for easy bus-to-Metro connections and simple pedestrian access. Some additional work is required to create welcoming walking environments.

New Hampshire Ave

Should we call this spot Kansas Ave? New Hampshire Ave? That’s part of the conundrum. You can’t really do both, you’d have to pick one. And each avenue has big drawbacks.

Station location (orange rectangle) shows the Kansas Ave location

The context here is a 1.8 mile gap on the Red Line between Fort Totten and Takoma stations. Adding a station at either Kansas Ave or New Hampshire Ave would be plausible.

Connections: existing bus service shows a clear preference for connections at New Hampshire Ave, which hosts WMATA’s K6 and K9 Metro Extra routes. Kansas Ave, by contrast, is home to only the modest K2 bus, with just 22 round trips per day.

Land Use: a quick glance at a Google Maps aerial shows why NH Ave has the bus service: Kansas Ave terminates at the DC line, whereas NH Ave turns into a major suburban commercial strip.

However, within the District, the situation is reversed: Kansas Ave is surrounded by industrial uses and potential redevelopment sites, while NH Ave is hemmed in by parkland and steep slopes before you hit existing single family residential areas.

DC has a interest in protecting some industrial sites; but doing so is incompatible with adding a new Metro station, which will basically require high-density land use.

DC Future Land Use Map on left; Aerial Photo on right

Ease of Construction: this is the real challenge for either location: it would be a massive construction project – something on the scale of the original construction of the Red Line itself.

The Red Line is sandwiched between two tracks of CSX’s Metropolitan Subdivision. Building Metro required a complete reconstruction of the entire rail corridor; WMATA used the center of the ROW to preserve freight rail access to sidings along the route – most of which have since been abandoned.

Adding platforms at either location requires relocating the CSX tracks at a minimum, and perhaps the WMATA tracks as well (depending on platform configuration). Additionally, the New Hampshire Ave location is amidst a slight curve, further complicating construction.

Either location would be expensive, decreasing the prospects for these locations. However, the Kansas Ave location would seem to be the more challenging site, requiring rebuilding the existing underpass, acquiring adjacent properties, etc. The existing NH Ave overpass provides a bit more margin, but still presents a tight fit.

702,445 – DC’s population reaches heights not seen since 1975

In case you were wondering what the hex code color is for 702,445, here it is.

While the pace of DC’s population growth has slowed a bit in the last year, the city nonetheless officially surpassed a big milestone this week. According to the state-level estimates from the US Census Bureau, DC topped 700,000 residents for the first time since 1975.

Last year’s estimates meant the city was close to this mark; the city even celebrated the (estimated) birth of the 700,000th resident back in February 2018.

Milestones like this are a good time to step back and look at the broader context:

  • 700,000 is still 200,000 below DC’s all time peak population
  • The current level is more like 100,000 below DC’s sustained peak population level (absent war-time restrictions)
  • The pace of growth is impressive, but still slower than historic rates when DC had greenfield growth opportunities within the District limits
  • Population growth will continue due to the number of units already under construction, with approximately 15,600 units under construction right now.

On the other hand, it’s worth remembering how small DC remains. Brooklyn alone has a similar land area to the District (71 square miles to DC’s 61 square miles) housing nearly 4x as many people:

https://twitter.com/profschleich/status/1075504407431798786?s=21

Likewise, the new estimates put DC’s population density at approximately 11,500 per sq mile, still less than Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and any number of other cities.

Even DC’s peak population of 900,000 would only yield a population density of 14,750/sq mile – less than San Francisco, Cambridge, Jersey City, Somerville, and others.

In other words, there’s lots of room to grow.

693,972 – new DC population estimates

Happy New Year to the very few people who swing by this blog…

DRgKK7YWsAEN3rD

Ah, the benefits of living in a city-state – the only American city-state. You get your city’s updated population estimates from the US Census Bureau as part of the state-level estimates. And DC’s growth has continued apace, now estimated at 693,972 residents within the District in 2017.

I moved to DC a decade ago, and since then the city’s population has increased by more than 100,000 residents.

While the pace of population growth is remarkably steady (netting about 10,000 people a year) even as the pace slows, the contributors to that growth have changed dramatically. Domestic migration substantially declined after the post-recession peak. International migration steadily increased.

Within the District, apartment growth continues at an impressive pace. The impact of the additional housing supply in the face of increased demand over the past decade has finally started to appear in the asking rents and other concessions from landlords.

On a personal note, these stats aren’t just abstractions for me. 2017 was a big year for me and my family; since February, we’re contributors to that natural increase in DC’s population. Parenting sure isn’t conducive to an increase in blogging. But, since I have a string of cheap, easy to bang out blog posts (going back to 2009) celebrating DC’s population increases, I figured why not add one more?

681,170 – DC population growth continues, with more to come

The things you find when googling for 681,172 - like hex color values.

The things you find when googling for 681,172 – like hex color values.

One perk of living in the only true city-state in the US is getting new census data released as part of the state-level population estimates. Those estimates for 2016 show DC’s population continuing to grow, with the official estimate now standing at 681,170 residents – the highest mark in about 40 years.

Most of that growth came from migration, with most of the migrants arriving from other countries. The natural increase (net of births over deaths) accounted for 40% of the overall growth.

I’m a bit late in posting this news or any news (hence the New Year’s Eve post, getting one more in under the gun), in part because my wife and I have some personal news: we are getting ready to add to that ‘natural increase’ number for DC’s population in February, 2017. Look out, US Census Bureau. More babies coming to DC in the new year.

Here’s to 2017 – with less sleep for me.

DC after Trump

There’s no denying the mood swing in the District of Columbia following the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States. It’s been a somber week on the streets.

It certainly goes beyond the simple fact that Trump won just 4.1% of the city’s vote, or the fact that he represents the Republican party. His specific campaign of white grievance politics, xenophobia, and know-nothingness cut against the District’s civic values.

This is bad.  But that’s no reason to overreact.

The idea that this will send the city’s economy tumbling is without evidence. Previous changes in administration haven’t impacted housing prices one way or another. Despite the role as a capital city, the reality is that so much of what happens in this city extends well beyond the reach of the federal government. President Trump might be the best opportunity those seeking to ‘re-brand’ the DC region never wanted.

For ‘culture,’ starting from the premise that DC’s culture is solely defined by the handful of people working in the West Wing is never a good start for an article about city life in Washington. Likewise, asserting that the city was a rotting shell until the Obama family arrived is laughable.

Despite what anyone says, there’s absolutely no clear indication of what a Trump administration would mean for infrastructure or urban policy. The dog caught the car; nobody knows what will happen next. We’ll have lots of battles about the federal role in shaping our cities, but those battles will take place in a different, national context.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t opportunity here. There’s room for the District to step up and take the lead. If city leaders want to soothe concerns about the impact on the city’s economy or culture, then there’s no better time than now to take the reigns.

Building Height and Density in Center City Philadelphia

With a hat tip to this tweet from John Ricco, linking to this compendium of tall buildings in Center City Philadelphia from the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. The document provides a brief profile of each building, showing building height, site size, gross floor area, floor area ratio, year of completion, and floor count.

Example of information from the Philadelphia FAR catalog. Screenshot from the document.

Example of information from the Philadelphia FAR catalog. Screenshot from the document.

Pulling the data into a spreadsheet allows for some quick charts to show the relationship between building height and density.

Height v density

It’s generally true that taller buildings are more dense, but not universally so. Buildings with the same density come in different shapes. Both the Liberty Place complex and the 230 South Broad St have an FAR of ~19.5; but Liberty Place includes a 960′ and 783′ tall towers. 230 South Broad St is just 250′ tall, but the building’s floorplates occupy 100% of the site.

By comparison, the densest zoning in DC is for 12 FAR (the C-5 zone), located in one of the few exception areas for DC’s height limit (allowing 160′ tall buildings along some blocks of Pennsylvania Ave NW). Quite a few blocks are zoned for up to 10 FAR, but nothing in DC can be built to an FAR of 15, 20 or 25, as in Philadelphia.

Considering DC’s effective downtown height limit of 110′ to 130′ combined with a maximum FAR of 10, it’s not hard to understand why DC has so many boxy buildings forced to occupy entire parcels. Likewise, DC’s height limit is indeed a hard limit on office density. Beyond 10 FAR, any additional density requires more height than the law currently allows.

In New York, the Empire State Building has a FAR of about 28. At less than half the height, the Equitable Building (inspiration for New York’s 1916 zoning code) has a FAR of 30.

Note: almost all of these very dense buildings are offices.

Back in Philadelphia, a more obvious example: the obvious relationship between building height and floor count (taller buildings have more floors).

Height v floors

Looking at building height by decade, you can see the clear trend of taller buildings emerging following the end of Philadelphia’s ‘gentleman’s agreement’ on building height – that no building should be taller than the Statue of William Penn atop the City Hall clocktower. This agreement left plenty of room for tall buildings; at 548 feet tall, City Hall was the tallest building in the world between 1901-1908. The agreement was breached by the construction of 1 Liberty Place in 1987.

Height by decade

This particular data set doesn’t include any buildings shorter than the City Hall tower; it’s not a complete record of all construction in Center City, just high rise buildings (the document was published in 2010). You can clearly see the approximate 500′ limit prior to 1987.

If you put all of these characteristics into one chart, you get something like this:

height GFA FAR year

The size of the circles indicate the gross floor area of the project.

Mid-life crisis: BART, WMATA, and America’s modern subway systems

America’s few modern subway systems are facing a mid-life crisis. In the past month, WMATA had to shutter the entire system for emergency inspections of the power supply system, while BART had to shut down one branch of the system due to a mysterious power surge problem disabling trains. Both systems are no longer the ‘new’ transit systems in the US, they find themselves in mid-life crises. Aging infrastructure requires repair, existing governance and funding systems haven’t had to deal with the costs of maintaining these systems as they age.

Route miles of modern US subway systems, by year of segment opening. From Christof Spieler via Twitter.

With that context, I came across this tweet from Christof Spieler, showing the length of “modern” grade-separated subway lines opened for service in the United States from 1965 to today. A few observations:

BART, the snake digesting the mouse: Until seeing the data presented this way, I never appreciated how much of the BART system (navy blue on the chart) was built in quick succession in the early 1970s. The system didn’t add any route miles until the first phases of the San Mateo-SFO Airport extension came online starting in 1995. Contrast that to the history of WMATA (gray bars on the chart) regularly opening smaller system segments over a span of 20 years. MARTA also expanded by adding segments over the course of two decades.

The implication for maintenance is that BART is kinda like a snake digesting a meal – the bulge of maintenance needs/life cycle costs now coming due. WMATA has a similar length of track to maintain, but won’t have to deal with such a large portion of the system reaching mid-life at the same time.

End of Federal (Capital) Role: It’s hard to overlook the long-term trend as well – cities aren’t opening new third-rail, fully grade-separated transit systems anymore. There are only seven of these systems, most of which received substantial capital funding from the predecessor to the Federal Transit Administration, the Urban Mass Transit Administration; and there have only been a handful of expansions of these systems (absent federal funding) since 2004. Of those recent expansions, two are airport connectors (Miami and Oakland – and the other is WMATA’s first phase of the Silver Line, eventually destined to reach Dulles International Airport).

Limited federal funding, rising costs, and limited flexibility of fully grade-separated systems meant that capital spending shifted away from subways and towards light rail systems.  Even high capacity transit projects (such as Seattle’s light rail system) with substantial grade separation have opted for the flexibility of a light rail platform. Subway system expansion in the US is limited to regions locked into that technology.

End of Federal (Governing) Role:A diminished federal role doesn’t just impact capital spending. Writing about WMATA’s governance and maintenance struggles, Ryan Cooper makes the case for DC Statehood to help clarify WMATA’s convoluted regional governance. And while I share the desire for DC home rule and full federal representation, I’m not sure DC statehood alone would resolve WMATA’s governance issues.

Cooper correctly identifies several of WMATA’s key governance shortcomings: a lack of clear lines of authority and accountability and a short-term fiscal focus. He suggests that WMATA should address these issues by reconstituting itself under a fully empowered DC state, with the transit system “ideally under the primary responsibility of the D.C. mayor.”

However, statehood for DC won’t change the broad funding share (DC pays about 1/3 of WMATA’s subsidy) or the location of tracks and stations (the District is home to just 40 of the system’s 91 stations). Statehood for DC won’t assert authority over either Maryland or Virginia, nor would it redraw state lines (no matter how much it might make sense to do so).

WMATA’s original planning assumed a stronger federal role – both for federal transportation spending to direct and supersede state-level planning (with UMTA’s ambitions to fund and build subway systems in American cities), as well as for a stronger role for the feds acting as the local government for the national capital region. WMATA began as the federally chartered National Capital Transportation Agency, in the same era when the Federal Aviation Administration directly built and operated airports in the DC region.

The federal government is uniquely positioned to address some of these issues of both funding and governance, as it did in the Great Society. Since then, we’ve muddled through.

Precedents for DC’s population growth

On the heels of the recent announcement from the US Census Bureau about DC’s continued growth, it’s worth asking how exceptional this growth is. Ask around, and you’ll find commentary about DC’s unprecedented building boom – or about how this growth isn’t particularly exceptional. So, which is true?

DC’s Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development released their economic intelligence dashboard, compiling various economic indicators for the District.  The population data from the US Census Bureau is displayed both in absolute terms, but also showing year over year change:

DC population change

A few observations:

DC’s current trend hasn’t been seen since the 1920s and 30s. While there have been a few years of growth here and there post-WWII, there hasn’t been a decade of sustained population growth like we’ve seen in the past ten years. The longest streak of years with consecutive population growth was over a period of 5-6 years in the early 1960s. In the lifetime of a resident, chances are they haven’t seen a boom like this – only 11% are 65+ years old.

Does that make this growth truly unprecedented? Not in terms of magnitude. Even with that sustained growth, DC’s current boom pales in comparison to the rate of growth seen before WWII. The current growth of ~2% seems paltry compared to 5% or 10% annual growth.

To be fair, those years were the last of greenfield development inside the District; but it’s not a surprise that about half of DC’s housing stock dates back to this era. Those kind of large-scale development sites are few and far between, as the frontier for Washington’s urban area pushes deeper into the suburbs.

DC’s current growth is largely based on the center city and redevelopment of low-density industrial and commercial areas. Without actively planning for additional development and incremental land use change, it’s not clear if that pattern alone can continue to sustain this kind of population growth.

672,228 – DC’s growth continues – short-term trend or long-term shift?

Just before the end of the year, the US Census Bureau releases their state-level population estimates. Thanks to DC’s city-state status, we get an early view of the District’s population trends before other major cities. DC’s 2015 estimate clocks in at 672,228 people – an 1.9% increase over 2014.

In 2009 and early 2010, I had a chance to help coordinate the District’s local outreach for the decennial census, emphasizing the importance of getting an accurate count of the city’s population. Back then, we were hoping to see a number above 600,000. Five years later, we’ve blown past that, climbing back to the city’s population in 1977:

DC (and Baltimore) population estimates, hovered over 1977. Screenshot from a Google search for DC Population; data from the US Census Bureau.

DC (and Baltimore) population estimates, hovered over 1977. Screenshot from a Google search for DC Population; data from the US Census Bureau.

(There’s also a great deal of uncertainty to contend with. Census estimates are often revised as better data is collected.)

DC’s press release about the data documents the elements of the recent population growth. Of DC’s increased population, about 1/3 was a natural increase, 1/3 from net new domestic migrants, and 1/3 from new international migrants:

According to the US Census Bureau, the main driver of the increase was domestic and international migration—people moving to the District from other parts of the United States, and from abroad. Between July 2014 and July 2015, in addition to the natural increase (births minus deaths) of 4,375 residents, a total of 8,282 more people moved into the District than moved out. Of these 8,282 net new residents to the city, 3,731 more people moved from other U.S. states than moved out and 4,551 more moved to the District from other countries than the number of residents that left the District for other countries. While net international migration made a greater contribution to the District’s population growth than net domestic migration, net domestic migration has grown four times its previous year total and demonstrates that the District continues to attract residents from other U.S. states.

Back in 2013, DC’s Chief Financial Officer forecast a slowdown in the District’s growth, citing slower economic growth in the region (thanks to decreased Congressional spending) as well as a slowdown in new housing starts. Part of the CFO’s job is to be appropriately conservative in these forecasts, but the Census Bureau’s estimates bucked the CFO’s forecast.

Part of the question is if this growth in DC represents a flash in the pan, or a real long-term shift in migration patterns. Last week saw some hearty twitter debate over this piece by Lyman Stone, questioning the narratives about a major shift away from suburbs and towards more urban locations (examples: here, here and a counter-example here). Stone argues that the data doesn’t support the conclusion of a major shift towards urban living. And given the macro-trends, it’s hard to argue against his broad conclusion.

Consider the analogue of driving, where a sustained period of high gas prices and a weak economy put a serious dent in US vehicle miles traveled, spawning all sorts of theories about how we’ve passed ‘peak car.’ But as soon as oil prices dropped, we’ve seen a massive increase in VMT (never mind the negative consequences of cheap gas). The broad narratives about a paradigm shift against car usage seemed hung up on anecdotes about Millennials using smartphones instead of cars, rather than looking at the broader trends of where people live and work (which hadn’t changed much). Beware reading too much into the data; or missing the outside factor.

However, the smaller-scale evidence is also hard to dismiss. Apartments in DC are sprouting like mushrooms (where they are allowed by zoning), and DC’s population can only increase as fast the city’s housing stock can expand. And even with the District’s sustained growth, rents and home prices continue to rise, indicating demand for urban living greater than the available supply.

Those peak-car arguments might accurately assess our desires to drive less, but the driving data is based on the reality of housing and transportation options available, rather than the options we might wish were available. Likewise, urban migration patterns are based on available housing, not what migrants might wish were available.