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Dcgeneral riverfront { January 13 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47680-2003Jan12.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47680-2003Jan12.html
Boosting D.C. Population a Complex Goal
By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 13, 2003; Page A01
On his list of things to fix in his city, D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams has placed at the top a simple number: He wants to increase the District's population by 100,000 over the next decade.
"It's very, very important," Williams (D) said last week. "I analogize it to President Kennedy saying we are going to get someone on the moon."
Indeed, his goal is formidable: Most of the nation's big cities haven't come close to that kind of increase. And it is complex, raising questions about whether growth is always desirable and whether the city can emulate the success of some other U.S. cities that were given up for dead a few decades ago.
The District's population has declined since the 1950s, and it continued to contract even when such cities as Atlanta, Chicago and Denver turned around and began to grow in the 1990s. But the District apparently has stabilized at about 570,000, and urban experts say it could grow, given the right circumstances.
City planners are already optimistically outlining where their new residents will live: Some could settle in new densely built development around Metro stations, they say. Thousands could buy into vast mixed-income neighborhoods being built on demolished public housing near the Navy Yard and east of the Anacostia River. And planners are hatching proposals to redevelop the campus of D.C. General Hospital in Southeast into a riverfront community.
But to some demographers and economists, the mayor may be placing too much emphasis on his goal because, they say, population is not the best marker of success. Some say a better scorecard is the city's ability to adequately provide basic services and have enough tax revenue to do it. The city should not rule out "shrinking to greatness," Harvard University economist Edward L. Glaeser said.
"Population growth by itself means very little, in my view," said John R. Logan, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Albany who studies cities. For him, even a city like Detroit, which has lost population for decades, is somewhat of a success story because in the 1990s, its median income rose and poverty declined.
Williams announced his plan this month during his inaugural speech, saying he hoped to bring back people who had left, including middle-class black families who moved to Prince George's County. In a city that cannot tax commuters who work there, drawing new residents is one of the few ways to increase the tax base.
City officials haven't yet announced the details of their population-boosting strategy, which will be overseen by Eric W. Price, deputy mayor for economic development. But they say now that improving public schools and lowering the homicide rate are crucial to attracting new residents, especially middle-class families. The mayor also announced a goal of building 15,000 more housing units in the next few years, joining 24,000 already in the pipeline.
In addition to broad initiatives to encourage developers to build, Price said officials will target specific neighborhoods -- by accelerating a school renovation near new housing, for example, or upgrading a block of vacant buildings in a stable area. "That is new for the city," he said. "We are trying to be more strategic."
Planners are not aiming their hopes at the city's well-off neighborhoods in upper Northwest, where population is increasing and little space is available for new housing. They want people to move to areas east of Rock Creek Park that have lost population, hoping that better services and new homes or apartments will lure them.
Urban experts say the city has many assets to draw new residents, including its improved financial picture, better basic services, attractive neighborhoods and revitalized downtown. It is part of the fastest-growing large metropolitan area outside the Sunbelt, with suburbs that grew at double-digit rates over the decade. Experts say the city can seize some of that growth by attracting people who are tired of traffic or are looking for a change.
Price said he hopes he is typical: When he moved to this area eight years ago, friends pointed him to the suburbs. "I went home one night, and all the lights were out" in his early-to-bed Arlington neighborhood, he recalled. "I said, 'I can't stay here anymore.' " He moved to the District.
Some experts question whether the 100,000 goal is achievable, although they say they admire the mayor's bold gesture. The number represents growth of 17 percent over the decade, a level reached by only a quarter of the nation's biggest cities in the 1990s.
But the city's planning director, Andrew Altman, argues that if the District captures about 10 percent of the region's growth -- it now has about 10 percent of the region's population -- it will be close to meeting the mayor's goal. That target, he said, is "more than an aspiration."
Aside from the number, there is the question of who the city's new residents would or should be. In recent years, the District has become increasingly white, Latino and Asian. Immigrants -- now one in eight D.C. residents -- are growing in number. There are fewer families and more people living alone. There are more people with college degrees and fewer with only high school degrees.
City officials say they want a balanced population, drawing new people without driving out current residents squeezed by gentrification. Williams said he wants to attract "all kinds of people -- single people, married couples, retired couples. Bring people in, and lift people up. It's got to be a combination."
But officials also face the fact that middle-class families with school-age children cost the city more in services than they pay in taxes, while single people and couples without children are a net financial plus.
If the city acquired 50,000 more well-off single people and couples without school-age children, the city's revenue would grow by $300 million, according to Brookings Institution scholars Alice M. Rivlin and Carol O'Cleireacain. It was their paper two years ago that said the city should set a goal of increasing population by 100,000 as an economic development tool. They argued that the city should pursue a range of people but should only make a play for families if it also gains households without children.
To be fiscally wise, "you should grab every rich single person you can," Glaeser said. Those people "tend to be the backbone of urban growth," he added.
Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, said that no established city has successfully gone head-to-head with its suburbs in attracting affluent families. The cities that have done so are "central cities that look like suburbs," sprawling places in the South and West with large amounts of land, such as Las Vegas.
But if the District upgrades its schools, Lang said, it may steal some families from close-in older areas such as Prince George's. "As suburbs become more distressed," the city "might become more competitive," he said.
The rebound of the American city is driven in part by geography. Cities in the West and South increased the most in the 1990s. Glaeser said growing places are "consumer cities" that draw people because they are pleasant to live in, with good weather, strong service industries, well-educated residents with high incomes and a moderate-to-large immigrant population. That includes such places as Austin, Charlotte and Portland, Ore.
Losing or slower-growing cities, by his analysis, depend on manufacturing and have large numbers of poor people. On average, they also have high shares of mass-transit commuters. Among the losing cities in the '90s were Akron, Ohio; Erie, Pa.; and Rochester, N.Y.
For role models, Williams mentioned Chicago, whose population rose for the first time in 50 years and where downtown housing construction is booming. Price cited San Francisco's appealing neighborhoods, a revived waterfront in Canada's Vancouver, and strong growth in Portland.
Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institution's Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, said the mayor's population goal seems feasible. But he said the pull of suburbia is powerful. People want the bigger yards, less troubled school systems and lower crime rates.
"It's not the kind of thing that you win and you move on," he said. "Any city that is successful faces this year in and year out."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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