Middle Class America Moves Downtown

People are leaving for suburbs, Southern US

(NEWSER) - Chicago's population fell 6.9% during the decade that ended in 2010, leaving it with fewer people than lived there in 1920. The US Census Bureau reports a population of 2,695,598 people, just under the 2.7 million that were reported nearly a century ago, the Wall Street Journal reports. The recession is likely to blame for a significant migration to the suburbs and the South; even so, Chicago is expected to remain the third-largest city in the nation behind New York and Los Angeles. More»

(NEWSER) - New York may be expensive and unemployed, but high marks for “coolness” and online dating participation have it atop this year’s Forbes list of best cities for singles. As the economy stifles ambition, the dating number has become more significant. “When things are tough, core needs are most important,” a sociologist says. “And love— someone to share your life with—is a core need.” The rest of the top 5: More»

Out-of-control urbanization threatens to drag down Indian economy for years

(NEWSER) - The explosive growth of India's cities is threatening to drag down the country's economy for decades to come, economists tell the Wall Street Journal. The global trend toward urbanization has gone into overdrive in India, but most cities aren't prepared to deal with the influx of migrants from the countryside, resulting in gridlock, decay, and ever-expanding slums. More»

(NEWSER) - When urban planners dream, they dream that Americans will give up on the suburbs in favor of a dense, environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent lifestyle. And it’s never going to happen, David Brooks writes in the New York Times. “Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there.” According to a recent Pew study, cities are among the least popular places to live for Americans, who still yearn to sprawl outward. More»

Fast-growing urban demographic handed Obama election victory

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama's strength in cities won him the election, meaning he "might be America's first urban" president, statistics whiz Nate Silver writes in Esquire. Obama's "pragmatic, superior, hip, stubborn, multicultural" ways make him unmistakably urban, Silver writes, and America's changing demographics mean that urban voters matter now more than ever. More»