Brookings: comprehensive report on metropolitan America

“White flight” is reversing

Jay Blazek Crossley, May 17, 10.

Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program has released a comprehensive report, The State of Metropolitan America, that highlights changing demographics across the country, including changing makeup of suburbs, as noted in the New York Times.

The report indicates that the phenomenon of “white flight” that was highlighted in the 80s and 90s was reversed in the last decade, with both white Americans moving back into central cities and minorities spreading out in suburban areas, as noted by the Associated Press.

The report echoes the results of the Houston Area Survey and Dr. Stephen Klineberg’s recent presentations on Houston’s changing demographics, especially noting the fact that a majority of the growing elderly population are white and a majority of the growing millennial generations are minorities. Brookings reports that the country is headed toward no single majority race, as Dr. Klineberg’s eloquently notes is already the case in Houston, saying “we’re all minorities now.”

The report is accompanied by a dense collection of data and maps, such as the above map showing Change in population since 2000 in metropolitan areas.

Kaid Benfield, with NRDC, examines some of the changing commuting patterns shown in the report. Austin is noted as having the largest decrease in its share of workers driving alone to work since 2000, with a reduction of -3.6% compared to a national average of -0.2% and an increase in Houston of 1.1%.

Between 2000 and 2008, the Dallas - Fort Worth region had the greatest absolute population grown of metropolitan areas in the US, adding 1,103,747 people, followed by Atlanta adding 1,094,389, Phoenix adding 1,003,123, and Houston adding 988,518 people.