Tag Archives: Demographics

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.

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.

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.

646,449 – DC’s population continues to grow

Cranes. CC image from Daniel Foster.

Cranes. CC image from Daniel Foster.

The latest state-level population estimates show another year of 2%+ growth for DC, bringing the city’s estimated population to 646,449. Former Mayor Tony Williams set a goal in 2003 of adding 100,000 new residents to the city back when the city’s population growth was essentially nil, following decades of population decline.

Even in the relatively short history of this blog, nearing the symbolic 600k threshold prior to the 2010 Census was a big deal.

Of the growth in the most recent estimates, about 1/3 of the gains are from natural increases in the population (births minus deaths), while 2/3rds are from net migration (more people moving into the city from elsewhere than moving out).

Explanations for DC’s recent growth spurt that focus on Federal government spending are tempting, but misleading. The region’s overall growth rate since World War II is fairly consistent; what’s changing now is how that regional growth is allocating itself within the region. Chris at R.U. Seriousing Me shows how DC’s share of the regional population decreased from 1950 to 2010. The region’s growth trajectory has been upward, while the District’s population declined. However, if you assumed that DC maintained the same regional share of that growth throughout the last half-century, you’d find a DC today with 2.6 million people inside the city limits.

The counterfactual scenario is intriguing: assume a DC population of 2.6 million still governed by the federal height limit, and suddenly the comparisons of DC to Paris (low-rise with high population density) aren’t so absurd. Chris notes that for those opposed to even modest changes to the height limit or the construction of by-right buildings, the kind of development needed to accommodate 2.6 million people “must sound apocalyptic.”

Leaving the apocalypse aside for the moment, the 2.6 million resident scenario illustrates that you must not only have demand for growth, but allow that growth to happen – that is, allow the city’s housing supply to increase. Again, a comparison to Paris is illustrative: the Paris region has continued to grow, while the city’s population has somewhat declined and flattened out. It’s not hard to see why; the city’s legal and regulatory constraints on development do not provide room to grow within the city.

Mayor Gray, like Mayor Williams, set an ambitious goal for growth the District’s population: adding 250,000 new residents by 2032. Unlike in 2003, it’s not hard to see the demand for city living – in fact, we’re on pace to meet that goal right now. If the city were to continue to grow by 13,000 per year (as it has over the past three) over twenty years, DC will hit that mark.

Demand is only half of the equation, however. Michael Niebauer notes that the population gains justify the increased development seen around DC, and more will be needed to accommodate increased demand for living in the city. If city does not add supply, the demand will continue  to put pressure on housing prices.

Different types of urban science

CC image from futureatlas.com

CC image from futureatlas.com

Jeff Wood’s handy mailing list on behalf of Re-connecting America pointed me towards this article from Urban Omnibus, disputing the broad conclusions from Geoffrey West’s work towards discovering a universal theory of cities.  Eric Peterson, the author, does not like the implications of West’s quantitative work and the implications of physical laws that might apply to cities:

Despite proposing to have radically reinvented the field in which architects and urbanists work, the article appears to have garnered little attention among commentators and blogs from within architecture and urbanism. Perhaps the article’s lack of substance explains professionals’ reluctance to engage with the implications of West’s work. Nonetheless, it is crucial for those of us interested in the serious study of urbanism to look closely at the article, if only because many of the assumptions it advances strike me as undermining an understanding of cities as complex and important things.

The charge that West’s work is somehow lacking in substance struck me as harsh and misguided.  The notion that there can be only one true understanding of how cities work misses the obvious difference between  West’s work and the more conventional urban studies that Peterson seems to prefer.  The difference appears to be a simple one, based on a misunderstanding of the kinds of universal rules West seeks to understand, as well as the fundamental difference between qualitative and quantitative observation.

Remembering that West is a physicist, Peterson’s charge that a universal theory of urbanism misses out on all of the complexity of a city represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what such a universal theory really means.  Just look at West’s field – physics – and you can easily see exceedingly complex movements that can all be understood by the basic laws of Newtonian mechanics.  A full understanding of motion, as we know it, is an exceedingly complex undertaking, yet Newton essentially boiled that complexity down to three basic laws of motion, which can easily be translated into simple maxims.  Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest; bodies in motion tend to stay in motion; for each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; etc.

These laws have limits to their validity, of course, but that does not discount the fact that complex systems can be understood via the basis of simple laws. This reduction isn’t something to be feared.

Peterson also seems to gloss over the mutually beneficial relationship between both qualitative and quantitative analysis.  He frames urbanism in a qualitative way and then implies that the quantification of urbanism not only has little to offer, but is indeed dangerous to our understanding of urban places:

Further, such an approach should be read as dangerous to all of us who see cities as phenomena formed at the collision of dynamic economic, historical, social, political and ecological forces.

This fear seems so misguided that I don’t even know where to begin.

Instead of recognizing cities as the products of these complex forces, the object of West’s study is purposefully contextless and unspecified. Describing how he applies his scientific principles to a specific city he’s studying, he says, “I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.” West goes on to qualify this assertion by saying that, essentially, the differences between cities that we so often discuss are merely superficial, material ones, related to how a city functions rather than to each city’s unique history.

Even in areas of knowledge where we have a strong quantitative understanding of how things work, this knowledge has never derailed our searches for qualitative understanding as well – for context, for history, for social interactions.

Some of this confusion between the respective role for quantification and qualification stems from language.  Peterson notes early in his piece his disdain for West’s characterization of cities as “problems” to be solved.  Here, the word problem would have completely a different meaning to a mathematician and a physicist as compared to a ethnographer or an architect.  To the mathematician, a problem is not necessarily a social ill but a riddle to be solved, a question to be answered.

In the end, both approaches are crucial to our understanding of the places we live in.