Where the People Are
- Posted by ryan on July 23rd, 2009 filed in Cities
Increasingly, here:
United Van Lines says it moved more people into D.C. than out of the city from January to June, ranking D.C. its most popular migration destination.
The moving company says 63.6 percent of its D.C. moves were inbound and 36.4 percent were outbound.
What’s interesting is that is just the District; Virginia and Maryland are considered separately (and both are about even, with Virginia having a slightly positive flow and Maryland’s slightly negative).
Anyway, it’s interesting to observe that the recession hasn’t much dinged the District’s population growth.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
What’s your over under for the 2010 census? 625,000? 650,000?
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:15 am
I think maybe we get to 610,000. That’s still a big decadal increase for a place that’s only 66 square miles.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:18 am
Those Maryland and Virginia numbers are always suspect since they are statewide. Any values for Northern Virginia and Suburbuan Maryland?
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Maybe its just the daily influx of the VA and MD commuters but it sure feels like there’s MUCH more than 600,000 people in DC. Ottawa has 600,000 and DC feels like a much larger city.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:49 am
I think all those people coming in are health care lobbyists.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:09 pm
not surprising at all. that’s where the jobs are. In government. Plus businesses that are seeing the advantage of being close to DC, i.e. to best influence government. not something to be celebrated i’m afraid…
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:15 pm
According to the cartoon version of new urbanism that I keep reading in blog comments, D.C. is only attractive to young people without kids. Once they have kids and a family they move to the suburbs.
The folks in the cartoon move into D.C. with their worldly goods in the trunk of a beat-up car. When they move out with kids, they need a moving van. So if this cartoon were close to the truth, we’d have many more vans moving people out of the city than in.
This data point is even more valuable than it looks at first.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
One caveat to this entire discussion. United Van Lines is on the GSA-approved list of movers for government employee relocation. That might distort their market share in Washington.