New York for the first time in 70 years overtook suburbs in population growth

It seems that a separate house with a lawn outside the city is gradually ceasing to be the ultimate dream for New Yorkers. At least this is true for the Millennium generation (people born after 1981), many of whom prefer the convenience of living in a big city to relative calm and silence of the suburbs.

For the first time since the end of World War II, more people moved to New York than to its combined neighborhood in Westchester County, Long Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Such data was published last week by scientists from Rutgers University, New Jersey (Ratgers University).

In fact, between 2010 and 2013, almost two times more people moved to New York than in the suburbs. The research that revealed this trend affects the gap between 1950-s and the onset of 2010-x.

Scientists explain the sharp rise in the indicator by improved living conditions in the city, a fall in the level of crime and an increase in safety and, no less, by a change in the preferences of modern youth and middle-aged people.

“In the 1970s, New York lost its charm and appeal,” says one of the study’s authors, Professor James Hughes of Rutgers University. “Today the city returned it.”

From 2010 to 2013, the population growth in New York was 215 840 people, while its suburbs saw growth only in 113 227 people. By the way, the most newly minted New Yorkers moved not to Manhattan, but to Queens and Brooklyn (82 426 and 61 135 people, respectively). In the districts in Essex, Hudson and Union in New Jersey, meanwhile, 40 moved to 013 people.

During the second half of 20, the number of people arriving in New York changed several times. At the same time, the suburbs remained far ahead of the city in terms of the number of residents moving into them. More than two million people moved into them between the 1950-1960 years, and another million added to the 1990.

The mature baby boomers in 1960-1970 were bursting into the suburbs of New York and New Jersey because they were an excellent alternative to city life. To live in the metropolis in those days was, frankly, unsafe: the level of crime was off scale.

Professor James Hughes states that “the suburbs were very different in those times. They had a lot of young people, families with small children, the traffic on the roads was not so intense. ”

Meanwhile, many “echo boomers” (grandchildren and children of baby boomers) demonstrate an attachment to the city and choose to live in smaller metropolitan apartments instead of the suburbs. Cultural life, restaurants, parks, short distances from work to home - all this attracts young people to the city, in particular to Brooklyn and Queens.