KC metro growth and migration stats

[GRID]

Losing Pro Teams might be the most major impact of no longer being a Top 30 metro but there will probably be many other impacts too, like when services rollout something to the top 30 markets, etc. I'm in the camp that no strong university will continue to be a major factor for comparably slower growth for KC. Though slow growth is fine, being out of the Top 30 could become a long term problem.

On STL metro, not first negative growth, 2016 was as well and 2017 not much. They are having much higher domestic outmigration this decade compared to last...
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/popu ... s%2C_MO-IL

I'm not sure dropping out of the top 30 is a huge problem with KC's existing teams since they are established teams with established fan bases and the regional draw of KC's sports teams is even larger than the CSA. It will likely keep KC from ever getting the NHL or NBA back though. The bigger problem may be the Royals attendance which has been on a very concerning downward trend since they won the world series. I have been a Royals fan my entire life and I have never seen such poor attendance. Not being able to sell out home openers is just crazy (two years in a row just a few years after back to back world series appearances). Even when everybody in the city knew they would lose 100 games, the opener would still draw 42k and be nearly impossible to get tickets to and they would average 18-23k a game. I don't know what happened, but it's like all the bandwagon fans that showed up in 2015 took about half the original fans base with them when they left lol. Attendance is going to really hurt the Royals over the next few years as I don't think anybody at the Royals thought it would drop this far this fast. Plus KC will have stadium issues again soon as the lease gets close to the end. I think losing the Royals could be a real threat in the next 15 years if attendance continues to fall, not because of the KC's falling rank nationally.

The royals massively raised ticket prices. It's their own damn fault for falling attendance. They could easily lower ticket prices.

Im not a royals fan but i went to at least 1 game every year, until 2015 when they jacked up prices because they could. The dynamic pricing they also added meant the few teams i wanted to see, mostly the stl cardinals, were now premium games that were $40 for the cheapest ticket when i used to go to those games for like $10.

Just looked on stubhub. For this season cheapest tickets are KC @ STL for $9; STL @KC is $35. Literally 4x the cost to watch it in KC....

I'm pretty sure the Royals could cut prices in half and it probably wouldn't increase attendance. Royals games are still relatively cheap by MLB standards. Even Chiefs tickets are generally some of the cheapest in the league, even for playoff games. KC sort of wants to have major league teams at minor league prices. Can't have both.

After market websites have way more inventory of Cards tickets because nearly every game is a sell out, so there are a lot of tickets out there on the market. Royals tickets never sell in the first place, so the few that make it to third party sites will be better tickets overall. For the Royals, it's better to just go directly to Royals.com for cheap seats since very few make it to the streets.

I think the bottom line is that the Royals thought the fans would hang around a bit longer than one or two years after going to the playoffs and they started to spend some money long term, but as soon as attendance started to drop like a rock, they lost in interest in the bigger contracts. Hopefully the new cable deal will help keep them from being worse than they could be.

[normalthings]

Witchita has been growing pretty fast. In fact, they have 100k more people than STL now. Anyone know what’s going on down there? I had thought their oil and aerospace industries were on the decline.

[earthling]

Wichita metro is shrinking for the first time since the 70s. Wichita city proper has some growth but not much. Has been larger than STL city for quite a while.

Wichita Metro
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/popu ... hita%2C_KS

Wichita City..
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explo ... l=en&dl=en

[FangKC]

It's astounding to me that St. Louis City has not stemmed its' population loss. I would think by now that it would be adding people again--albeit slowly.

[earthling]

STL city started to improve around turn of 2010 as downtown to central corridor improved but then losses started to increase more each year since. In both population change and domestic outmigration. Could hit below 300K within a year or so at current rate...
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/popu ... Louis_city

Is more eyebrow raising that STL metro overall is losing population with record levels of domestic outmigration this decade...
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/popu ... s%2C_MO-IL

[brewcrew1000]

Wichita city proper probably only has growth because they are annexing a lot of areas. If u Google wichita and see there city limits there is an island that is like 30 miles SW of Wichita by Viola KS. That can't be part of the city can it?

[FangKC]

Talk about a city/metro that would benefit from increased foreign immigration. It might at least help stabilize current population.

[normalthings]

STL city started to improve around turn of 2010 as downtown to central corridor improved but then losses started to increase more each year since. In both population change and domestic outmigration. Could hit below 300K within a year or so at current rate...
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/popu ... Louis_city

Is more eyebrow raising that STL metro overall is losing population with record levels of domestic outmigration this decade...
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/popu ... s%2C_MO-IL

Any guesses for where KC will land in 2020? One website had us down for 500k but that seems a bit aggressive.

[FangKC]

Even if KCMO reaches 500K by adding residents, I think it depends on if the Trump Administration gets its' way with adding a question asking if residents are US citizens. If it's there, many may not return the census form, or talk to census takers who visit homes.

Enough residents might do this and deny KCMO the 500,000 count.

I'll give you an example of how cities are under-counted. In New York City, there are situations where apartments are shared by more the the legal number of tenants. For example, a 3-bedroom with nine people living in it. Because rents are high, it's not uncommon for roommates to share bedrooms - say three people in each bedroom. This setup is used by undocumented people. They sleep in shifts, so only one or two people sleep in a bedrooms while another works.

I recall reading in the City's tabloids stories of immigration raids where crazy numbers of people lived in small apartments, or houses in the boroughs. These situations would also be reported after building fires.

This happens because undocumented people are not eligible for many forms of cheaper housing: public housing, subsidized housing, and private rent-controlled and rent-stabilized apartments.

This is technically an illegal setup, so these residents certainly would avoid anyone asking too many questions.

It's also common for several friends to share a two bedroom apartment. Two sleep in one bedroom, One or two sleep(s) in the second bedroom, and another sleeps in the living room. Landlords don't like these setups either, because if the rent includes water, you can see how water usage would increase. The building probably has a shared boiler, so lots of extra hot water use increases the gas or oil bill. That's why residents won't answer any questions.

This results in huge under-counts in big, expensive cities.

[earthling]

A rise of convincing Census scams are also expected this round so many might not return the real one if thinking already completed. KCMO might hit over 500K but the numbers we see yearly are estimates and tends to be 'corrected down' some at census time, typically not up. And then cities debate with their own records. Either way, KCMO should show over 500K within a few years after if not 2020, unless of course the growth trend ends.

[wahoowa]

It's astounding to me that St. Louis City has not stemmed its' population loss. I would think by now that it would be adding people again--albeit slowly.

the lesson here of course is that no municipality can afford not to heavily subsidize sport team stadium demands. /s

[kcjak]

Witchita has been growing pretty fast. In fact, they have 100k more people than STL now. Anyone know what’s going on down there? I had thought their oil and aerospace industries were on the decline.

I was born and raised in Wichita and family still lives there, so I visit often. Despite efforts to diversify the economy, Wichita's growth continues to be tied to the aviation industry - when it slumps, so does population growth. The past few years have been pretty stagnant, but the air force base is getting a tanker refueling contract that should bring in more military, and Spirit (formerly Boeing) expects to hire over 1,000 people in the coming years, so I would expect things to look up. Metro-wise, I think Sedgwick county is the only one with growth - the other counties pretty much negate overall population growth for the metro.

The residents have repeatedly refused to fund eco-devo efforts in the past, which doesn't help when competing for companies with metro areas or states that DO grant incentives. It's nice to see some growth downtown and uptown around Wesley and College Hill, though.

[longviewmo]

Wichita city proper probably only has growth because they are annexing a lot of areas. If u Google wichita and see there city limits there is an island that is like 30 miles SW of Wichita by Viola KS. That can't be part of the city can it?

Looks like it's a police-related facility owned by the city. Still within Sedgwick County. Wichita is capturing a lot of the growth because there's not really an east-side suburb in Sedgwick County, you have to go to Butler to hit Andover.

[empires228]

Wichita city proper probably only has growth because they are annexing a lot of areas. If u Google wichita and see there city limits there is an island that is like 30 miles SW of Wichita by Viola KS. That can't be part of the city can it?

Looks like it's a police-related facility owned by the city. Still within Sedgwick County. Wichita is capturing a lot of the growth because there's not really an east-side suburb in Sedgwick County, you have to go to Butler to hit Andover.

People tend to forget that Wichita's largest suburb is itself and several areas of the city proper are actually zoned to the Maize, Andover, and Maize school districts. Wichita Northwest and East aren't terrible either and have some nice houses in their zoning as well, especially around Kirstie Alley's house in College Hill.

[earthling]

KC metro still doing OK with net migration of 'Young Adults', aged 25-34. Not in hot market territory. Note how much Austin is decreasing, likely due to rising cost of living and infrastructure struggling to keep up.



http://kcrisingmetrics.org/assets/peopl ... dults.xlsx

[TrolliKC]

There are some strange swings - especially Minneapolis.

[earthling]

Maybe because that's probably the most mobile demographic, especially if no kids, which is more common in this generation than ever at this age range.

[johnmatrix]

So question here kinda related to the topic....

i was looking at this: http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cit ... opulation/

Howcome KC's population declined so much from 1970-1990?

[flyingember]

So question here kinda related to the topic....

i was looking at this: http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cit ... opulation/

Howcome KC's population declined so much from 1970-1990?

See Raytown, Lee's Summit, Independence, Blue Springs, Gladstone, Liberty, Smithville, Parkville, Overland Park, Olathe, Leawood, Lenexa and other surrounding towns for your answer.

The longer answer would involve writing about systematic racism in our society and how people fled an area perceived to be dangerous to live in. Flashpoints like the 1968 race riots were contributing factors to this, even if KC didn't see the worst of it.

Without the 1950s annexation of the suburbs these numbers would still be going down for 20 years longer. Although economically is wasn't the greatest long-term result the Clay County suburbs taking on many families leaving the city helped the population recover quicker than it would have otherwise and now that the second generation of migrations is more diverse the city hasn't become a poor urban city of 350,000 or less that it would have and there probably would be a major business center in Liberty on the west side of I-35 to match College Blvd.

[earthling]

Migration into KC metro 2011-2015. Where people are coming from.

The first numbered column shows migration into KC. The counterflow shows outpbound migration. The net-migration column shows who KC gained/lost to per market....


International into KC 2011-2015...


Source:
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2015 ... ation.html