Edge Counties: Metropolitan Growth Engines

Fannie Mae Foundation Census Note 11 (June 2003)*

Robert E. Lang Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech

Patrick A. Simmons Fannie Mae Foundation

Introduction

In 2001, the authors published a Fannie Mae Foundation Census Note on “Boomburbs,” which are large, fast-growing suburban cities with more than 100,000 residents. Boomburbs, which are not the largest cities in their metropolitan areas, have maintained double-digit rates of population growth in recent decades. (Lang and Simmons 2001).

In presenting the Boomburbs research at multiple forums, the question was often raised as to why so many high-growth metropolitan areas—such as Atlanta—boomed, but contained no Boomburbs.

Atlanta’s boom occurred without Boomburbs because metropolitan Atlanta’s growth mostly happened in small, unincorporated places in the many counties that ring the central city. Outside the City of Atlanta, the region lacks municipalities above 100,000. And Atlanta is not alone. Much of the United States—especially the East—grows this way (Lang 2003a).

This Census Note serves as a bookend to the Boomburbs research. The Note tracks county-level growth by methods similar to those used to identify the city-level growth of Boomburbs.

Our analysis revealed a “Boomburb-type” of fast-growing counties that we call “Edge Counties.”1 The name “Edge Counties” refers to the fact that these places are mostly at or near the edge of their regions. In addition, Edge Counties are often at the leading edge of metropolitan growth. The label also plays on Joel Garreau’s (1991) popular term, “Edge City.”2

1 Edge Counties are among three types of “Growth Counties” identified by the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech (Lang 2002). The other types are MEGA (or Massively Enlarged, Growth-Accelerated) Counties and New Metropolis Counties (Lang and Zimmerman Gough 2003a, Lang and Zimmerman Gough 2003b). 2 Very few of Garreau’s Edge Cities, which are large concentrations of office and retail space, are found in Edge Counties. Rather, they appear in MEGA Counties. Edge Counties typically contain what Lang (2003b) refers to as “Edgeless Cities,” which are a form of sprawling office development that never reaches Edge Counties lie in the nation’s 50 largest regions. Our analysis shows that they account for a significant share of U.S. metropolitan growth since 1950. This report identifies 54 Edge Counties, in comparison with 53 Boomburbs. But unlike the Boomburbs, which were concentrated in the Western Sunbelt, Edge Counties are found throughout the United States—from New England to Florida, from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest, and all parts in between.

We performed the Edge County analysis to track metropolitan growth in booming regions that lacked Boomburbs. Surprisingly, we also identified Edge Counties in many slow- growth metropolitan areas. This finding suggests that the impacts of fast growth are widely distributed throughout metropolitan America, including many places that are not usually identified with growth-related problems.

Data

As with Boomburbs, we began our analysis by first identifying counties falling within a set population range. However, because counties are geographically larger than cities, the population size and range doubles, from 100,000 to 400,000 people for Boomburbs to 200,000 to 800,000 people for Edge Counties.

Counties within the 200,000 to 800,000 population range as of the 2000 census were identified. Counties were then screened by two additional criteria. First, each Edge County had to be located in one of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. In 2000, these metro areas ranged from New York, with more than 20 million people, to Richmond, Virginia, with just under 1 million residents.3 Second, like Boomburbs, Edge Counties also had to grow at double-digit rates for each census since 1950.

Table 1 contains the complete list of all 54 Edge Counties. The average population of Edge Counties is 385,018 people, and the median is 343,066 residents. They range considerably in size, from Ventura County (in Southern California), with 753,197 people as of the 2000 census, to Washington County (east of St. Paul, Minnesota), with 201,130 residents.

On average, the demographic and housing makeup of Edge Counties tends to be more traditionally suburban in nature than the nation as a whole. However, as with population size, the characteristics of Edge Counties vary widely. On average, they contain a larger proportion of non-Hispanic whites than the nation as a whole (76 percent versus 69 percent), but the white share ranges from only 32 percent in DeKalb County, Georgia, to 96 percent in Rockingham County, New Hampshire. Similarly, married couples with children constitute a larger average share of all households in Edge Counties (28 percent) than in the nation (24 percent), but this proportion varies from 42 percent in Davis County, Utah, to only 17 percent in Pasco and Lake counties, Florida. Single-family the densities or cohesiveness of Edge Cities. Edgeless Cities feature mostly isolated office buildings at varying densities over vast swaths of metropolitan space. 3 Richmond is actually the 51st largest region in the United States, but San Juan, Puerto Rico, was removed from the analysis, making Richmond number 50 in size.

Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. 2 detached homes, which typified the landscape of traditional suburbia, compose 66 percent of the housing stock in Edge Counties versus 60 percent in the nation. In Fort Bend County, Texas, the traditional single-family house accounts for four out of five homes, but in the suburban Washington, D.C., counties of Howard and Prince William, this proportion falls to just one out of two.

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 2001. Note: Figures may not add to indicated totals because of rounding.

Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. 4 As Figure 1 shows, Edge Counties are found throughout the nation. They are in 21 states and 27 metropolitan areas. Most have been metropolitan counties for more than 30 years, but 14 of the 54 joined their respective regions after 1971.

Edge Counties exist in a mix of metropolitan areas, including high-growth regions such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Orlando, Florida, and slow-growing ones such as St Louis, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia.4 The widespread nature of Edge Counties contrasts with Boomburbs, which are heavily concentrated in the western metropolitan areas of the Sunbelt (Lang and Simmons 2001).

Figure 1. Edge Counties: Location and Growth Rate

Sources: Data from U.S. Bureau of the Census 2001. Note: Metropolitan designation from U.S. Bureau of the Census 1999 population estimates.

Some regions have multiple Edge Counties. Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington each have four Edge Counties. Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Portland, Oregon, have three each.

Overall, Edge Counties accounted for just over 13 percent of national population growth in the 1990s and captured roughly the same share between 1950 and 2000. Between 1950 and 2000, their share of the nation’s total population jumped from 3 percent to more than 7 percent.

Table 2 shows that Edge Counties contributed slightly more to metropolitan growth in the 1990s in the Northeast and Midwest than they did in the South and West. The share of

4 Some fast-growing regions—notably Phoenix and Las Vegas—were without any Edge Counties because their main metropolitan county was too large to match the criteria, and their other counties were too small.

5 Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. growth captured in the Northeastern and Midwestern metropolitan areas on average was almost one third of the total gain. By contrast, the Edge Counties in these regions represented slightly more than one in 10 residents. Edge Counties in the South and West grabbed a disproportionately large share of growth in their respective regions as well, approaching three in ten people added to the metropolitan area in the 1990s. However, their share of total population was larger than in the Northeast and Midwest, with one in five people in the region.

Table 2. Edge Counties Metropolitan Summary

Sources: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001, 1991. Note: Figures may not add to indicated totals because of rounding.

The shares of metropolitan growth and total population captured by Edge Counties also varied considerably across individual metropolitan areas. St. Charles County, Missouri (in suburban St. Louis), captured almost two-thirds of the region’s growth in the 1990s, but contained just one in ten residents. Johnson County, Kansas (outside Kansas City) also picked up a big share of its region’s population relative to its size by adding half the metropolitan area’s new residents while representing only 22 percent of the total population in 1990.

Conversely, Edge Counties in the South’s Piedmont region stretching from Raleigh southwest to Atlanta had roughly equal shares of population growth and total proportionate population. In all cases, these Edge Counties grabbed half or more of their region’s population increase.

The presence of Edge Counties in so many of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas indicates that rapid population growth, at least to some extent, impacts a full spectrum of large regions. There are places where fast growth sweeps an entire metropolis, as in the case of Atlanta or Denver. But even older and slower-growing metropolitan areas, such as St. Louis, Kansas City, and Cincinnati, have their booming parts. In all three places, population growth is mostly concentrated in a single Edge County.

During the past 50 years, the fastest population growth in the nation occurred in the Sunbelt (Katz and Lang 2003, Lang and Rengert 2001). Most of this growth took the built form of what many critics label “sprawl” (Lang 2003a, Lang and Rengert 2003)— that is, low-density, leapfrog development, complete with mix-and-match subdivisions, low-slung and shiny-glass-cube office parks, big-box retail centers, and, most characteristically, strip development. This characterization also describes most development in Edge Counties.

While older metropolitan areas have high-density traditional cores and rings of older, pedestrian-oriented suburbs, they also feature new, so-called sprawling growth, which is often found in Edge Counties. The Edge Counties surrounding older Northeastern and Midwestern cities have grown at rates comparable to those in the Sunbelt, so much so that these wintry places could be deemed in the “low-SPF Sunbelt”—as opposed to the “high-SPF Sunbelt” of the Southwest and Southeast.5

Thus the edge of slow-growing regions may come to resemble fast-developing metropolitan areas. The historian Sam Bass Warner Jr. observed that places that experience growth at the same time come to resemble each other because they reflect the same fashions and feasibilities of the market (Warner 1972). Warner’s observation implies that the low- and high-SPF Sunbelts should therefore look fairly similar.

Consider the similarities between Lake County, Illinois (in suburban Chicago, or the low- SPF Sunbelt) and Cobb County, Georgia (outside Atlanta, or the high-SPF Sunbelt). Located in two vastly different types of metropolitan areas, the two nonetheless share growth patterns and demographic profiles. The two counties are large, with more than 600,000 people compared with the Edge County average of less than 400,000. As Table 3 shows, the counties also have roughly similar land areas and population densities. Looking at the demographics, Cobb County seems to be a bit more urban in profile than Lake County, but there are no stark differences. Even the 1990s growth rates are comparable, with Cobb and Lake counties gaining by 36 and 25 percent, respectively.

Comparisons of Atlanta and Chicago focus on the differences between the regions because they often consider the metropolitan area as a whole. For example, Atlanta is a booming region of the Sunbelt that added almost 39 percent more people in the 1990s,

5 SPF (or sun protection factor) refers to the level of sunblock in suntan lotion—the higher the level, the greater the protection. Therefore, Boston’s Sunbelt requires a low SPF. The label was suggested by Ned Hill.

7 Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. while Chicago is an older Midwestern metropolis that grew by only 11 percent during the decade, a rate below the national average. But, as shown here, select Edge Counties such as Lake and Cobb counties, within these metropolitan areas, may be peers. Their similar nature suggests that they face a comparable set of policy challenges related to growth. Indeed, interviews with government officials in 14 Edge Counties revealed that most were concerned with financing and building adequate infrastructure to accommodate rapid growth (Atkins, Wolman and Jordan 2002).

In many ways, Lake County is like a lost Atlanta county that has ventured north into the low-SPF Sunbelt. Its climate may be cold, but its growth is nearly as hot as the Sunbelt. Likewise, its growth-related issues in many ways are the same.

Table 3. Comparison of Lake County, Illinois, and Cobb County, Georgia

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001, 2002.

The policy implications of our findings are straightforward. Solutions that are now offered to address problems associated with fast growth in the high-SPF Sunbelt may also work in its low-SPF counterpart. There are some variations given the fact that the low- SPF Sunbelt is still growing more slowly than the high-SPF Sunbelt. Yet the key issues are likely to have important parallels.

Authors

Robert E. Lang is Director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, in Alexandria, Virginia, and an Associate Professor in the Urban Affairs and Planning graduate program. Patrick A. Simmons is Director of Housing Demography at the Fannie Mae Foundation.

The authors thank Kristopher Rengert and Jennifer LeFurgy for invaluable comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. They also thank Meghan Zimmerman Gough for excellent research assistance.

*About the Census Notes Series

The Fannie Mae Foundation’s Census Notes series provides timely analyses of Census 2000 data to stimulate discussion and further research. Although Census Notes are reviewed internally and on an informal basis externally, they have not been subject to the

Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. 8 formal process of external peer review that is commonly used for the Foundation’s research publications. Therefore, they should be viewed as works in progress, and their findings should be considered preliminary.

References

Atkins, Patricia S., Hal Wolman, and Jessica Jordan. 2002. Edge Counties Struggle with Impacts of Rapid Growth. Housing Facts and Findings 4(3).

Garreau, Joel. 1991. Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Doubleday.

Katz, Bruce J., and Robert E. Lang, eds. 2003. Redefining Urban and Suburban America: Evidence from the 2000 Census. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Lang, Robert E. 2003a. Open Spaces, Bounded Places: Does the West’s Physical Environment Yield Dense Metropolitan Growth? Housing Policy Debate 13(4): 755-778.

Lang, Robert E. 2003b. Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Lang Robert E. 2002. Growth Counties Drive Regional Expansion. Housing Facts and Findings 4(3):2-4.

Lang, Robert E., and Kristopher Rengert. 2003. Kudzu versus Cactus: Comparing the Wet and Dry Sunbelts. Washington, DC: Fannie Mae Foundation. Census Note 03-00 (forthcoming).

Lang, Robert E., and Kristopher Rengert. 2001. Hot and Cold Sunbelts. Washington, DC: Fannie Mae Foundation. Census Note 01-02, April.

Lang, Robert E., and Patrick A. Simmons. 2001. Boomburbs: The Emergence of Large, Fast-Growing Cities in the United States. Washington, DC: Fannie Mae Foundation. Census Note 01-05, June.

Lang, Robert E., and Meghan Zimmerman Gough. 2003a. MEGA Counties: America’s New Metropolitan Heartlands. Washington, DC: Fannie Mae Foundation and Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. Census Note 02-03, December.

Lang, Robert E., and Meghan Zimmerman Gough. 2003b. New Metropolis Counties: Suburbs of Suburbs. Alexandria, VA: Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. Census Note 02-05, December.

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9 Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2001. Census 2000 Summary File One. Accessed from American FactFinder on the World Wide Web at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1991. 1990 Census Summary File One. Accessed from American FactFinder on the World Wide Web at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/BasicFactsServlet.

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Warner, Sam Bass Jr., 1972. The Urban Wilderness. New York: Harper and Row.