Elgin Area Chamber Of Commerce: The Urban Exodus Begins To Turn

Press release from the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce:

September 15, 2021

The Urban Exodus Begins To Turn

New Analysis Finds People Moving Back to Cities, Close-In Suburbs

CoStar Group, www.costar.com
 

By Rohit Diwadkar
CoStar News
 

The COVID pandemic resulted in hundreds of thousands of Americans leaving urban centers for small towns and other places far outside major cities, many seeking less dense spaces to minimize their exposure to the infectious coronavirus and to take advantage of work-from-home policies. That migration now appears to be slowing.
 

A new analysis finds that the number of people moving into big cities and close-in suburbs is ticking up, while the number of people relocating to the exurbs and beyond is declining.

The analysis was conducted by the UBS Evidence Lab, a research arm of UBS, the big wealth management firm. Analysts there have assessed population shifts during the pandemic, based on a baseline of permanent and temporary resident movements in 2017. In the chart above, its easy to see the big swing to small towns during the early days of the public health crisis in 2020 and a jump again in March of this year as the delta variant began to circulate.

However, moves back to the city — as indicated by the orange line — began to climb early this year as companies began calling workers back to the office.

Cities that saw some of the largest population shifts during the pandemic, such as New York and San Francisco, are now seeing households return as fewer people move to the suburbs. By contrast, Dallas has seen little change in people moving to the city even as the migration to the city's exurbs and farther outskirts continues to climb, possibly a reflection of the Sun Belt's broader draw as a destination to live these days.

This press release was produced by the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce. The views expressed here are the author’s own.