Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. Fannie Mae Foundation Census Note 11 (June 2003)* Edge Counties: Metropolitan Growth Engines 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. 3 Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. Table 1. Edge Counties by Metropolitan Area 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. Fannie Mae Foundation 2003. All Rights Reserved. 6 Analysis 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).