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Just What NYC Needs: More People
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Mar 27, 2014
Modified Mar 27, 2014
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Mar 27, 2014
Modified Mar 27, 2014
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According to a U.S. Census Bureau study released today, New York City has increased its population by 61,000 since July of 2013, reaching a total population just north of 8.4 million for the first time. Good news: more people.
Every borough registered a gain in population. Even the Bronx, a traditional laggard, recorded a rate nearly as high as top-ranked Brooklyn and Manhattan. While Manhattan and the Bronx lost more people to migration than they gained, the difference was made up by more births than deaths.
Oh, so those furtive yelps, those drywall piercing shrieks of pleasure and desperation and desire, those omnipresent reminders of sameness and smallness that soundtrack our shoebox lives, those aren't just ambient sounds. People made more people. Great.
“Growth is now quite robust, much more so than it was in the last decade,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York. “These new numbers show that New York City now has recouped the roughly 250,000 population that was estimated but not found in the city by the 2010 census.”
"Robust" is the word that comes to mind when sixteen people stand up to be the first to shove their way through the subway door a full 20 seconds before the train stops. "This could be more robust," I mutter, when crossing the street and narrowly missing a guy on a unicycle carrying a baby stroller filled with papayas and ball bearings and babies, stirring up some of the fine particulate matter from the broken mattress the wheel just crushed. Why did someone throw that out? It could be facilitating the creation of more people.
According to William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, “the city continues to grow more rapidly than the metro area and its surrounding suburbs.”
“The huge city migration losses in previous years were a result of metro-wide losses to the Sun Belt and continued suburbanization,” Dr. Frey said. “Many young people” who might otherwise move away, “are finding the city, including the outer boroughs, an attractive long-term home.”
Young people are happy to become old people in the anti-Sun Belt. Ice Belt. Rat Belt. People Belt. Bring 'em on.
Tagged
census
affordable housing
hey cmon in the water's fine
population growth
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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