Just spotted
this great series of maps on population changes from Jonathan Schroeder of the Minneapolis Population Center. I'm going to share what I think is the key image, because who knows whether that Twitter link is going to last, but I encourage people to check out the full thread if it's available.
Here's population changes per block group in the MSP metro in the 2010's:
A couple key points from Jonathan's maps and some of my research:
1. As you can see from his decade-by-decade maps, MSP's growth was occurring primarily in exurban areas for decades. But the 2010's saw a spatial shift in these patterns, with downtown Minneapolis emerging as
the major center of growth. I really think this shift is undercovered and underappreciated locally. Everyone knows that "downtown is coming back" and "there's a lot of cranes downtown," but I still don't think it's really seeped into how people think about the area, including some downtown landlords, business owners, and boosters. A big part of that is that this is a pretty recent trend.
2. This spatial shift actually dates more precisely to 2012. This was the year that developers started coming up for air following the housing bust and they looked to urban multi-family housing. In 2011, just 691 homes got permits in the two core cities, out of 4,578 homes permitted in the metro area. Then, in 2012, 4,072 homes were permitted in the core cities out of 10,452 homes in the metro. That enormous jump saw the percentage of metro area homes permitted in the core cities jump from 15.09% to 38.53%. It hasn't dipped below 20% since, whereas in previous decades that percentage had all-but never (1982 is the only exception I have) broken 20%.
At the same time, developers moved decisively to multi-family housing. Whereas in previous decades the percentage of metro area housing units in multi-family buildings had almost never eclipsed 40%, it leapt from 28.28% in 2011 to 54.11% in 2012 and has recently been above 60%.
You can view both of these trends in
this graph. Again, I have to emphasize how different this is. In 1991, the % of multi-family permitted housing units in the MSP metro bottomed out at 11.87% and in 1992, the % of permitted housing units in the two core cities bottomed out at 0.82%. A little over a decade ago, MSP was closer to those numbers than what we're seeing today. The Twin Cities have undergone an unprecedented decade of urban densification.
3. As Jonathan's maps show, this is
not part of some universal national trend. While I suspect it's been replicated in places like Seattle, Portland, and maybe Denver, if you look at fast growing metros like Tampa and Las Vegas, or still-hollowing out cities like St. Louis and Detroit, you'll appreciate the path the Twin Cities have been one.
4. Are we still on that path? We've been getting years and years of articles from the Strib promising a shift from developers to multi-family housing in suburban areas. But only this year do we really have clear evidence of this occurring. The percentage of permitted housing units in MSP metro that are in the two core cities has slumped in 2022 so far to 22.08%, the second lowest figure since 2011. But the percentage of permitted housing units in the metro that are in multi-family buildings has
increased to 68.28% (all these figures through September).
Is this a new trend? Possibly! But one note of caution: housing production in Minneapolis is still pretty solid. The number of newly permitted housing units in the City of Lakes is on track to to be the second most productive year of this decade. The main collapse has been in St. Paul, probably for obvious reasons that are city specific and have nothing to do with regional trends. Already we are seeing some renewed interest in the capital after the rent control ordinance was amended. If it picks up, the core cities could have a much better 2023, even if suburban multi-family housing is here to stay.