Is Hip, Cool Des Moines Really Attracting Migrants?
Kind of, Sort of, But There’s Something Interesting Here
In a recent Politico Magazine article, Colin Woodard has suggested that Des Moines has gone from being America’s “most boring city” to a hip, cool, new urban community. He backs this claim up with all sorts of fun anecdotes about Des Moines’ social, cultural, culinary, policy, and architectural environment. But implicit in his article is the claim that this newfound coolness is associated with a demographic revival of Des Moines’ downtown. In fact, throughout the article, there’s an interesting claim made that the population of downtown Des Moines has risen from 1,000 at some unspecified time in the 1990s, to at least over 10,000 as of 2016. This made me curious: if true, that’s a really remarkable urban revival. It’s not every day a city of just over 200,000 people gets 10,000 fresh arrivals all in the downtown area.
So I decided to look into it.
Did Downtown Des Moines Gain 10,000 Residents?
Probably Not. But The Claim is Still Okay.
Now regular readers know that I frequently fact-check media outlets on migration-related claims. And I generally have taken a dim view of how most national media outlets present their claims. Thus Woodard’s piece is an interesting case because I actually think he has the facts of his core claim are likely wrong, but manages to tell a true story nonetheless.
I asked Woodard about his sources on Des Moines’ downtown population. He indicated it comes from developers and counts of housing units in some close-in Downtown area.
For perspective, Des Moines city has about 209,000 residents in 2014. Polk County, including virtually all of Des Moines, has 460,000 residents. The Des Moines metro area has about 611,000. If we step back to 2000, Des Moines had 199,000 residents, Polk County had 376,000, and the Des Moines metro area had a population of about 480,000 people.
So that means the metro area increased by 131,000 people, or 27% in 14 years. Polk County increased by 84,000 people, or 22%. Des Moines city increased by about 10,000 people, or 5%. For reference, Polk County exclusive of Des Moines grew by 74,000 people, or 42%, and the Des Moines metro area exclusive of Polk County and Des Moines grew by 47,000 residents, or a 45% expansion.
In other words, from 2000 to 2014, the slowest rate of expansion was in Des Moines city, the next slowest in its immediate suburbs in Polk County, and the fastest in the further-flung suburbs. Ergo, Des Moines city fell from 41% of the metro area’s population in 2000 to 34% in 2014. Yikes. That’s not much of an urban revival. And if indeed the downtown grew by 10,000 people, then that means 100% of the city’s growth occurred downtown, without any spillovers beyond downtown. Hm. Doesn’t sound plausible, but… maybe.
Then I noticed something curious in the data. Let’s see if you spot it too, in this graph of Des Moines and Polk County population from 1850 to 2014 (seriously what fun is it if I don’t go back to the 19th century?):
Des Moines City’s population peaked in 1960, then declined in waves until 1980. Woodard’s article begins the narrative in earnest in 1987, with a revitalization plan. In 1987, Des Moines had 193,000 people, and although the population was growing, it was doing so very slowly. Had that rate of increase continued, Des Moines today would have just 200,000 residents instead of 209,000: so that gets us a “net acceleration” in Des Moines population growth since 1987 of 9,000 people. Okay, that’s pretty close to our 10,000 number, and maybe it makes sense to start the measurement from the beginning of the revitalization plan. If the accelerated growth is due to revitalization activities, then those activities could lay claim to a net 9,000 or so new residents, pretty close to our 10,000 number. They’re not all downtown but, hey, it’s still a principal city area.
There’s some population volatility in there too. But it’s weird volatility. Regular readers know that I’m skeptical of the new urban revival in general because I think it’s a phase related to the recession, and is now being reversed. Look at Des Moines’ population: it hits a peak in 2001, declines until 2004, then rises slowly until 2008, then has seen strong growth since. Indeed, virtually the entire acceleration in growth since 1987 has occurred since 2008.
What makes that so interesting is that the urban bubble I’ve spotted in most cities hits a peak in 2007–2010, and has declined since. Des Moines, on the contrary, hit its highest population number ever in 2014.
In other words, Des Moines’ recent growth is NOT a replication of the temporary national “urban inversion.” It’s something unique.
Color me surprised. Now I want to note: suburban growth has still greatly outpaced growth in Des Moines city. The chart below shows Des Moines city’s population as a share of Polk County.
As should be quite clear, suburbanization has not stopped. The rising suburban share of the metro population is continuing at about the same pace it has since 1955. Let me reiterate: we are not witnessing the reversal of suburbanization. Rather, rapid suburban growth is occurring alongside rapid urban growth. Which is really no surprise. One would expect that a city doing a good job providing economic opportunity will experience suburban, urban, and exurban growth, showing strength across the life-cycle geography.
Downtown is Stable
Which Isn’t Necessarily a Bad Thing
But I was still curious about the downtown itself. Many urbanists are fairly adamant that counties are too big of units to assess urban revival. I think counties (or at least economic place like a city) are fine units, because very locally-defined downtowns are by definition very local and thus very small and thus their stories are economically eccentric and, for most people, irrelevant. The focus on downtowns is, in my opinion, an elitist whimsy.
But this story was so explicitly about the downtown that I wanted to make sure I covered my bases. Maybe within Des Moines city, everybody moved downtown. It’s possible!
The chart above shows population as reported in the 2000 and 2010 Censuses, and the 2009 and 2014 5-year ACS files. I didn’t feel like digging back for older Census data than that, so shoot me.
I selected 7 Census tracts that I think represent the Downtown. But maybe I’m wrong. If so, I invite a better definition. These tracts include between 20,000 and 25,000 people total, so about 10–15% of Des Moine city’s population. You can see a map of Des Moines census tracts here. Long story short, I’m looking at Census tracts focused around the river and a bit to the west.
Arguably the most downtown part of downtown is Census Tract 51, which crosses the river and includes the statehouse and the great majority of the tallest buildings. And lo and behold, Census Tract 51 did grow! And notably, many of the projects identified were projects within this Census tract. And Tract 51 rose from 4,200 people in 2000 to 4,663 from 2010–2014. And given that the 2010 Census put it at 4,597, that means it has risen at least since 2011, though growth may have slowed somewhat. So the core of the city grew! That’s notable.
The other fast grower was Census tract 12, a tract of mostly single-family homes, lower educational attainment, and moderate-to-low crime. So presumably a working-class neighborhood, though I’m open to correction on that from any Des Moines natives.
Although the downtown core-of-the-core did see real growth of about 11%, almost every other downtown census tract declined. The growth in Des Moines city, then, wasn’t mostly in the downtown, although probably the very center of the city is seeing some real growth, indeed outgrowing Des Moines on the whole. Des Moines township (a designation including about half of Des Moines city, generally the densest-populated half) fell from 101,000 people to 99,000 from 2000 to 2010–2014, meaning Tract 51’s share of the population of the city core rose from 4.2% to 4.7%.
Even as the Des Moines metro area is getting more suburban, Des Moines city is getting more urban.
And that’s a curious fact. It makes me wonder where else this trend may be duplicated, and if that may explain some of the different perceptions regarding re-urbanization versus suburbanization. That is, people whose focus is on urbanism and the densest parts of cities will be likely to be surrounded by city-specific information, more likely to have urban-focused social spheres, and even reside in urban centers: so they have an information bias towards seeing that, hay, the city is getting more downtown-ey, and may miss that, well, people generally are still getting more suburban-ey. It may be that cities like Des Moines are getting more urban, even if it’s also true that the United States on the whole is continuing to suburbanize.
Commuting Patterns are Shifting
Still More Suburban Than the 1990s, Though
We can also look at data on commuting patterns. Now for this, the only data I have available is at the county level. Sorry urbanists, I use what I’ve got. I can track how many people work in Polk County who reside elsewhere, and vice versa.
The below chart shows, from the 1990 and 2000 Censuses, and the 2006–2010 and 2009–2013 ACS files, the net commuting balance in Polk County as a percent of employed Polk residents and as a percent of the total number of people employed in Polk County, regardless of residence. In other words, if these numbers are high, it means more people are commuting into Polk County than out of Polk County.
As you can see, more and more people were commuting into Polk County until 2006–2010. In other words, from 1990 to 2006–2010, the economic prevalence of people choosing to reside outside of Polk County but work within Polk County rose. But from 2006–2010 to 2009–2013, that trend has abruptly reversed, and the net balance has changed. This is because the number of commuters into Polk County has essentially flatlined, while the number of commuters out of Polk County has continued rising.
So, relatively speaking, the life-geography pattern of “live in Polk County, work elsewhere” is getting more popular since 2009 while “live outside of Polk County, work in Polk County” is essentially stable. This suggests either rapid economic growth beyond Polk County, increased desirability of living in Polk County, or both. I lean towards “both” given the growth of the Des Moines metro area.
What is also remarkable, however, is that the share of Polk County residents who work in Polk County (so “non-commuters” we’ll say) fell from 97% in 1990 to 90% in 2009–2013. Likewise, the share of people working in Polk County who reside in Polk County fell from 82% to 76% from 1990 to 2009–2013. So even as Polk County may be getting more desirable for living, the dominant trend is of more cross-county commuting at all levels.
What Can We Say About Migration?
It’s Positive for Polk County. Which, Holy Cow, Way to Go Polk County!
We can get migration estimates of some kind for Polk County going back to 1980. We can get domestic net migration going back to 1990, from the Census Population Estimates Program (PEP). And since 2005, we can get net migration from the ACS.
As you can see, there’s some volatility. But broad patterns show up. While Polk County did get some migration in the early 1980s, it was offset by the late 1980s. Migration during the 1990s and early 2000s was essentially breakeven, meaning that growth was driven by local demographics. This is actually really impressive given the consistent growth rate shown in the population charts above: apparently Polkians in the 1990s were very fertile and healthy!
Then we get positive migration in the mid-2000s, a drop in 2010–2011, and a rise again until 2014. Again, a decline in net migration during the peak years of the urban inversion. That’s bananas. ACS gives a much more volatile picture than PEP, but basically the same story. Now look, I haven’t got a clue what caused these trends. I don’t know.
But what stands out to me is that we’ve got an urban core county with a decade of fairly consistent positive net migration.
That’s rare. Like, really, really rare. Not a lot of urban cores have positive net migration. Take a much-heralded boom city of the urban inversion like Washington, DC and, whoops, the urban core has massive out-migration. Impressive, Des Moines, most impressive.
Toss in some significant international net migration (tends to be between 500 and 1500 net positive for Polk County) and you’ve got something really good going on.
But maybe we want more detailed than just Polk County.
Des Moines vs. Polk County
City and Suburb Rising Together
Let’s break down migration for just Des Moines city vs. the remainder of Polk County. That’s pretty much the most zoomed-in I can get on migration without the margin of error wiping out all the information. First, let’s look at intracounty migration, so movement in and out of Des Moines city from Polk County. If this is the standard urbanization story of young urban types moving in from far away, then suburbanizing as they get older, marry, and have kids, we should see pretty consistent outflows from Des Moines.
Okay, fairly consistent outflows… but actually Des Moines sometimes gains people from Polk County. In other words, Des Moines city and Polk County manage to offer competitive enough mixtures of costs and amenities that marginal changes can drive year-over-year shifts between them. Which is impressive, because that does not happen with, say, the District of Columbia.
Let’s step out a bit to the intrastate level. Here, since Des Moines has some universities with about 12,000 enrolled students total, while the remainder of Polk County has universities with about 26,000 students total, we may expect to see pretty strong intrastate inflows. This is especially true given the commuter balance, which shows Des Moines is an economic hub.
And on the whole, that’s mostly what happens: generally positive intrastate inflows. Since 2009 (when there was an ACS methodology change that could impact university students), Des Moines and Polk County have seen closely correlated intrastate net migration rates, and more-or-less positive net rates. Except for 2011. This would seem to suggest that the drop in migration in 2011 was uniquely correlated with a drop in intrastate migration. Again, I don’t know what would cause that, but we should look for within-Iowa causes here.
Next we’ll look at interstate rates. The classic story here is that interstate migrants tend to be job-seekers and students, and usually renters, so cluster near universities, rental-heavy areas, and employment clusters. This tends to mean cities. So we should expect Des Moines to draw many interstate migrants.
And that was true during the “urban inversion” of 2010 and 2011. This is the one place where the urban inversion seems to show up, in the decline of interstate migration to Polk County, and its rise to Des Moines. But migration into Des Moines from other states has just kept on rising. It used to be persistently lower than the rest of Polk County, now it may actually end up higher.
Finally, traditionally, international migration is thought to concentrate on dense urban cores for a variety of reasons. So we might expect Des Moines to have higher international inflows than the remainder of Polk County.
And it does, in some years. In other years, Polk County has higher inflows. On the whole, the two areas have very similar rates.
When we add up all of these domestic components, we can compare Des Moines and the remainder of Polk County’s total domestic migration, and see how they relate to the Polk County totals.
The Polk County suburbs got the most migration in most years. Des Moines saw a spike in 2010, but it reversed itself in 2011. But since 2011, migration into Des Moines has picked up, while migration into the rest of Polk County has remained positive. This isn’t the “urban inversion” I’ve noted before. This is something else.
Meet the New Neighbors
Mostly the Young, But Families Too
So okay, Des Moines is doing well for itself. But who are these new Des Moinians? (Des Moiniards? Des Moiners? I’m not sure the demonym). I won’t break down every demographic, but a look by age may be instructive.
Several things stand out in that chart. First: the big decline in 2011 for Des Moines was correlated with drops in migration for families (40–59, 1–17). We said it was intrastate before, so now we know we should look for factors that disproportionately impact the choice of Iowan families to move into Des Moines, or Des Moinian families to move to the rest of Iowa.
We can also see that there was a sharp drop among 18 to 24 year-olds, but even when I assess net migration exclusive of 18–24 year olds, the trend remains. Actually, fun fact, I can say that for almost every year, because in almost every year, the direction of change for the 18–24 group is pretty much the same as the rest of the population. That is to say, while 18–24 year olds in Des Moines have a really high volume of migration (hello universities and workforce entrance!), their trend is pretty much the same as the rest of the population, on average.
But check out another group with high migration at the end of the period: 1–17 year-olds. That’s remarkable, not least because this group had the most negative migration in 2008. More crucially, this suggests that whatever is driving the improvement in Des Moines’ migration record post 2011 at least fundamentally relates to family-friendliness. Hip, cool bars might be part of that for young parents trying to stay hip (ha-ha), but it’s just as likely that affordability, school quality, crime, and similar factors are in play. And this rise in kids probably is mostly youngish kids, because the steadiest rise in parent age groups has been 25–39-year-olds. Migration among 40–59-year-olds has bounced around near zero, while 25–39 have risen from deeply negative to essentially breakeven. Again, jobs, education, urban amenities all play a role here: but kid-friendliness is almost certainly in play as well.
So to maintain these gains, Des Moines will need to do more than provide a cool social scene (though that will help retain kids when they graduate high school). Des Moines will need to continue providing and improving its kid- and family-friendly amenities, perhaps most importantly moderate housing costs. The chart below shows monthly housing costs in Des Moines and Polk County, 2005–2014, as a percentage of the US average.
From 2005–2009, Des Moines and Polk County saw their costs fall relative to the national average. Since 2009, they have essentially held steady, although in 2014, Polk jumped up a bit above its level for the previous years. As long as Des Moines can offer generally good cultural amenities, job growth, and maintain cost of living well below the national average, broad-based population gains should continue.
The only groups Des Moines lost were retirees, mostly after 2009. In other words, even stable housing costs may have been too much for retirees. Whereas Des Moines actually gained retirees in 2009–2011, as of 2013 and 2014 it was again losing them. The reality is that the same economic growth that draws migrants of opportunity and families serves to hold Des Moines housing costs at their current levels, instead of allowing them to fall further. Stable or rising housing costs will tend to drive out-migration among retirees.
The truth is it is rare, and in the long run probably impossible barring unique cultural or historic conditions, for a region to have positive net migration for all ages. But what Des Moines is doing is close to the best a city can hope for: generally positive or balanced migration for the groups with the most future earnings potential, and, overall, a relatively high gross rate of migration.
Conclusion
Facts Be Darned, Des Moines Is Doing Fine
Downtown Des Moines probably did not gain 10,000 residents from the late 1990s to 2016, nor does it seem likely that it had just 1,000 residents at any time in the last few decades. However, that doesn’t mean the essential claims of Woodard’s story are wrong. Au contraire, Des Moines has gained about 10,000 people since 2000, and has about 9,000 more people than we would expect had 1987 growth rates continued. That’s a meaningful acceleration in urban growth, and a significant number have been headed to the very center of the city. However, suburbanization has not slowed down a bit: indeed Des Moines’ strength appears to be robust suburban growth fueling and feeding into robust urban growth. That vibrant downtown life is powered by people coming in from the suburbs to give it economies of scale. By attracting young people and families through affordability and economic growth, Des Moines has achieved a truly balanced and positive migration profile apart from the much-heralded “urban inversion.” Whether that can be continued in the future remains to be seen. Yes, improvements in urban amenities almost certainly have had a role to play, and will in the future, but only as long as they don’t lead to spiraling cost of living.
For my previous post about immigration and assimilation, click here.
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I’m a graduate of the George Washington University’s Elliott School with an MA in International Trade and Investment Policy, and an economist at USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. I like to learn about migration, the cotton industry, airplanes, trade policy, space, Africa, and faith. I’m married to a kickass Kentucky woman named Ruth.
My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I did not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research. More’s the pity.
