Middle-Class Urbanism is the New Heartland Chic
An unforeseen outcome of the pandemic is what we might call “urban heartland chic.” As the media focused intently last year on people leaving expensive and increasingly unworkable large coastal cities in a season of disease and unrest, lower-cost, better-performing cities never looked better. No longer bound to their city of residence by their jobs, many Americans packed the U-Haul and headed for saner pastures.
In reality, migration between cities is not that much different than before the pandemic. The media is just covering it more now. Growth had slowed and even reversed in big cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles over the past decade, outpaced by fast-growing inland dynamos like Austin, Raleigh, and Nashville. The difference now is more people are connecting the dots between these migration trends and the failings of costly, dense cities with aging infrastructure, sclerotic bureaucracies, and rising crime.
Urban residents may be the most economically optimistic Americans — believing more in the promise of entrepreneurship and America’s economic future than non-urban people — but they are the most likely to distrust their local political leaders. Large percentages are weary of housing costs and social unrest. In-migration into large coastal cities has slowed during the pandemic. And Americans in general are pining for less-dense places. Gallup found at the end of 2020 that 48 percent of Americans would prefer to live in a small town or rural area, up from 39 percent in 2018.
Most people won’t ever live in small towns and rural areas, though, because of the metropolitan nature of the U.S. economy — which bodes well for urban heartland chic pioneers. They stand the most to gain from Americans’ need to live in cities and desire to live outside them. What types of qualities do attractive inland urban areas possess? One way to answer the question is to look at middle-class metros — that is, large U.S. cities with the biggest share of middle-class residents. If a large city provides the benefits of urban social and economic life while remaining accessible to the middle class, it must be doing something right.
So which American metro areas have the largest middle class? Using a definition developed by Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution, which takes national income thresholds and adjusts them with regional price parities and average household size, one finds that Salt Lake City leads the pack, with two-thirds of its population in the middle class. Other top-ten middle-class cities include Grand Rapids, Phoenix, Orlando, Nashville, and Oklahoma City. Among the ten cities with the lowest share of middle-class residents are superstar metros like San Francisco, San Jose, and Boston.
What do middle-class metros have in common? For one thing, they grow at a higher clip than cities that have hollowed out their middle class. The top ten middle-class cities in America grew their populations at more than four times the rate of the bottom ten in the five years prior to the pandemic. People apparently want to live in them. Why?
There are a number of factors, from growing industry to relative affordability to the kinds of amenities people typically associate with a good quality of life. But four things stand out in particular.
First, they have a newer housing stock. The median year of homes built in the top-10 cities is 1993. The median year of homes built in the bottom-ten is 1970. NIMBYism, restrictive zoning, and powerful environmental interests have stymied new housing supply and priced out the middle class. Six out of the ten worst cities for the middle class are among the top 20 over-regulated housing markets in the country. People prefer newness and versatility in their housing choices, which many middle-class cities have provided.
Second, it is easier for aspiring entrepreneurs to start and run businesses in middle-class cities. A 2019 study of cities by conditions favorable to startups ranked Orlando and Oklahoma City 1st and 2nd out of 100. Low-middle class metros like New York and Philadelphia came in 66th and 97th, respectively. A post-pandemic boost in new business activity could bode well for the heartland’s middle-class hotspots.
Third and fourth, on the social capital front, more children grow up in two-parent households in middle-class cities, where the share of women who are married is considerably higher, and there are more houses of worship per capita. Two-parent families and participation in religious congregations are associated with a wide range of positive social and economic outcomes, which collectively make a place an appealing place to live and work.
There’s no magic formula for making a city a popular destination for burned out coastal urbanites, but it seems likely that a new urban chic rooted in old values such as home, enterprise, and family may win the battle for footloose Americans looking to start anew after the pandemic.
Ryan Streeter is the director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Kawit Promrat is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute.
