I think that mismatch is probably unavoidable to some extent – cities aren’t meant to 2x in population in a few years, but I’m curious to know – what cities that are currently tier 2/3 would be best suited to accommodating a population boom if there is this great migration across US cities (climate change, CoL, politics increasingly more extreme, remote work, etc)?
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It’s going to be inland cities that don’t have geographic limitations on expanding their metro areas. Many of these have been expanding and continue to do so.
I don’t think there’s a particular list, it’s just going to be all of them to an extent over time.
Sunbelt
San Antonio, Texas.
What a sprawling hellhole.
The US doesn’t really rank cities, so from the get go this question is a mess to answer.
What characteristics would you qualify as 1st/2nd/3rd tier?
A lot of the Sunbelt cities are growing like mad. Nashville, Raleigh, and Charlotte have been booming for years. The Raleigh area will be home to Apple’s “other” HQ in a few years. Charlotte is a major banking hub.
Nashville is building like crazy.
In your option what qualifies as a tier 2 or 3 city?
The Kansas City area (on both sides) is growing like crazy, pulling in more businesses, etc.
Bryan-College Station metro, has the infrastructure and industry of a 1 million plus city with a population of about 250k. The only thing they need is better public transit
I have a strong suspicion that we will see rust belt cities come back.
Pittsburgh is already reviving.
I think Northern Ohio may come back. Michigan is actively trying to revive its cities.
I don’t know what cities are specifically building in anticipation of brining people back.
It almost never works that way. “If you build it they will come” isn’t a development strategy. That leads to waste and boondoggle projects.
I think that we’re going to see people flock back to rust belt cities in the next few decades. They are cheaper to live in, their crumbling infrastructure can be fixed easier than creating all new stuff, and they have better access to resources like food and water than a lot of other cities. I’d specifically consider smaller cities near the Great Lakes in particular. The main challenges that are going to be facing them are political, but that applies to just about everywhere on Earth at the moment.
Really, any infrastructure that doesn’t already exist can be built in time to support pretty rapid growth. Highways, sewer systems, and electrical infrastructure can be scaled up in years, not decades, if there’s political will to do it. The only thing that might take decades of work to really plan for is water, which is in short supply in the American west.
So aside from water, I’m not sure the question makes a lot of sense. Nearly any medium-sized American city _could be scaled up_ to become a major city, assuming there was money and political will to build out infrastructure.
Even water infrastructure _could be built_, we just won’t do it. A water pipeline wouldn’t be that too complex to build from eastern states to western ones.
Honestly, none of them.
I don’t think any of the boom cities like Austin or Nashville are actually doing a good job accommodating the massive amount of people that are moving there. Despite the builds that have happened, it doesn’t seem to be enough. Nashville also voted down a transit expansion a few years back, and trying to do it again probably won’t happen anytime soon.
Areas like Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth are only able to do so because there’s just so much land undeveloped both in the core and in the further flung suburbs and exurbs. And they too are experiencing massive problems with traffic even if property values are relatively affordable.
If we want to talk about cities that have a lot of good bones and that could handle a lot more residents, you really need to look at much of the Midwest and Northeast IE rustbelt cities. Many of these cities were built to hold far more people than they currently do and have the available land, relatively moderate cost of living, and have roads wide enough to accommodate both drivers and a dedicated lane or two for buses/trams and bicycling.
All I know is that Raleigh is full, so go away.
I realize I’m biased, but Indianapolis is bigger than people give it credit for.
It’s just huge geographically, and has very low population density. The city limits are roughly equivalent to the county lines, so the city contains about a million people in almost 400 square miles (950 km sq.) But, when you count the metro area (those communities and suburbs outside the city limits) it’s over two million people.
The advantage is that Indianapolis isn’t restrained by a major waterway, coast, or geographic feature; so it can just spread out as far as necessary without forcing people to cram in together. The only other city I remember feeling the same way about was Phoenix.
Huntsville Alabama, it’s now the largest city in Alabama by population, and it’s infrastructure, job growth, and population is rapidly growing.
Columbus
Nashville
Louisville
Charlotte
KC
I’m going to throw out my home town of Little Rock. Real estate is pretty cheap, have have pretty good infrastructure, and our tax laws are very business friendly from what I understand. Also, we don’t really ever have any major weather events or disasters. Some people point out the crime rate, but that’s pretty contained to one section of the city
I think that the best suited to a lot of growth are rust belt cities like Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis. Maybe you could put Chicago on this list. These are cities that were important on a national scale around the 1950s but have declined since. Those cities have a lot more practical and cultural infrastructure (Cleveland has subway, Detroit has one of the most important airport hubs) than they need for their current populations, which means a lot of it could be updated to today’s standards. They also have a lot of cheap (albeit older) housing stock, so that’s less of an issue than it is in places like Austin or Nashville.
I think that for cities that are actually growing the ones with the infrastructure most matched to their growth are Charlotte, Jacksonville and the Hampton Roads metro (Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Norfolk…). I also think Atlanta in 2022 may belong on this list. A lot of us think about Atlanta in the 1980s when it was the quintessential boom town without appropriate infrastructure, but 40 years later I would say its infrastructure is more where it should be for its size.
Valparaiso, Indiana. The city is beautiful through and through, is by areas with plenty of opportunity and has just about everything in it in terms of places to eat, party etc.
I think cities that have good infrastructure that haven’t built vertically / higher density yet are good candidates. DC and Boston come to mind. Both have expensive housing, but in DC in particular, there’s a lot of vertical expansion happening and for all its faults the Metro can handle quite a bit.
Phoenix has a lot of the pieces, but the transition from being a city that builds out to being a city that builds up will be extremely hard.
Minneapolis
Not sure what qualifies as a 2nd or 3rd tier city.
Miami made a huge push and landed a lot of business.
DFW is arguably a tier 1 city because of their infrastructure.
Denver, Pittsburgh, Charlotte and Nashville are growing.
Boise has become a hotspot and is attracting companies.
None of this happens accidentally. It’s a variety of things from lower taxes, to better colleges, roads and airports, affordable housing and more.
Sacramento has entered the chat
Since the United States does not do ‘Tier cities,’ OP needs to explain what the tiers mean. What is Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3? Explain that first, with examples, and people will provide better answers.
Does Detroit count? It was a huge city.. but absolutely could be again and is in-progress.
Boise and its metro area is growing rapidly and we all want you to LEAVE!
Eastern PA is really starting to fill in. The whole Lehigh Valley around Allentown is in a good spot
Boston is in the middle of a weird identity crises where some think the city should embrace it’s potential to become an international cosmopolitan, while others would rather have it stay the simple provincial capital of New England
Given the ongoing effort to reshore manufacturing to the United States, I’d say that cities with existing infrastructure for manufacturing. That means existing transportation and distribution (Or the ability to upgrade in a hurry). I’d say that the Southern cities such as Birmingham or Rust Belt cities are likely the ones that are poised to make the biggest leap.
Oklahoma City is kinda going nuts. When we legalized medical marijuana, a bunch of people from California moved here. Now I’m seeing a bunch of Texas license plates. It’s cheap to live here, and we have a program called MAPS that has drastically changed our city scape over the past 20 years.
Columbus, Austin, Charlotte, Phoenix
The upstate NY rust belt cities all have massive potential, and Syracuse just got a huge investment from a chip manufacturing plant. Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse all have housing stock and infrastructure to support much larger populations than they currently have, plus plenty of room to further grow suburbs.
Most climate change models have the region relative un affected and in many cases beneficial changes to the climate, and almost all agree that potable water supply will never be an issue. They’re also isolated from severe weather events outside of blizzards, which are typically much leas damaging than hurricanes,earthquakes, and tornadoes etc.
One thing I noticed about driving around Las Vegas is they already have major, 7 lane roads through areas south of the strip that are just surrounded by dirt and vacant lots. Obviously preparing for those areas of town to become larger and more populated.
What I’m not quite sure of is their water situation. That is something they’ll need to figure out in a hurry.
The upper midwest, especially around the great lakes. They have plentiful land and ample fresh water. Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, etc. used to be America’s economic heartland and I suspect they will be again in the long term. In the shorter term the sunbelt cities, especially Florida, will continue to grow because they’re warm and have lots of land.