Here’s an interesting article from Forbes. It’s entitled “Why America’s Young and Restless Will Abandon Cities for Suburbs.” The author is Joel Kotkin, part historian, part demographer, part prognosticator on all things related to cities. Last year I briefly reviewed his book The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.
Here’s the upshot of the Forbes article:
Some demographers claim that “white flight” from the city is declining, replaced by a “bright flight” to the urban core from the suburbs. “Suburbs lose young whites to cities,” crowed one Associated Press headline last year.
Yet evidence from the last Census show the opposite: a marked acceleration of movement not into cities but toward suburban and exurban locations. The simple, usually inexorable effects of maturation may be one reason for this surprising result. Simply put, when 20-somethings get older, they do things like marry, start businesses, settle down and maybe start having kids.
An analysis of the past decade’s Census data by demographer Wendell Cox shows this. Cox looked at where 25- to 34-year-olds were living in 2000 and compared this to where they were living by 2010, now aged 35 to 44. The results were surprising: In the past 10 years, this cohort’s presence grew 12% in suburban areas while dropping 22.7% in the core cities. Overall, this demographic expanded by roughly 1. 8 million in the suburbs while losing 1.3 million in the core cities.
The basic point is that lots of youngsters move into cities in their twenties, but they move out in their thirties when they want to start a family and settle down.
So what does this mean for the church?
1. If cities are strategic (and they are), we should pray that God will call some Christians not just to move to the cities for a season, but to stay there for the long haul.
2. If people continue to settle in the suburbs (and they do), we should not abandon ministry to the suburbs. The burbs need good churches, good pastors, and good Christians to stay put there.
3. We should be cautious in adopting wholesale the ministry models that work in the urban core. Churches in center city locations are usually filled with young, single professionals. The dynamics of family life, multiple generations, aging seniors, and long-term church members–all factors in most suburban and rural churches–are less likely to be at play in many center city congregations. It’s not that we can’t learn from everybody else, but we must be aware that the contexts are very different.
Those are just a few quick thoughts on the article. As always, be sure to read the whole thing.