One common anti-urbanist argument is that families simply don’t want to live in cities. But analysis by New York’s Department of City Planning (DCP) also shows that prosperous parts of New York City generally added children, at least in the decade before the rise of the COVID-19 virus.
DCP divided the city into “neighborhood tabulation areas” (NTAs) with population ranging from 15,000 to 100,000. DCP’s data showed that the city as a whole lost 2 percent of its under-18 population between 2010 and 2020, but that some areas had significant gains.
The biggest gainers were Long Island City (over 200 percent) and four areas where the under-18 population increased by between 50 and 75 percent (the Financial District, Midtown, Midtown South, and Downtown Brooklyn).
There seems to be a positive correlation between child growth and housing supply growth, even in these expensive areas. In the Long Island City NTA, the number of housing units increased by over 100 percent between 2010 and 2020- so it is no surprise that the number of children increased. Housing supply increased significantly in three of the four NTAs that added the most children. The number of number of occupied housing units increased by 23 percent in the Midtown South NTA, by 26 percent in the Financial District NTA, and by 86 percent in the Downtown Brooklyn NTA. (Central Midtown was an exception to the rule; housing supply increased more slowly there). By contrast, in Manhattan as a whole, the number of housing units increased by only 7 percent, and the number of children actually declined.
Moreover, affluent areas that added very little housing supply tended to gain under-18 residents at a much slower pace. For example, in the three Upper East Side (NTAs) (Lenox Hill, Carnegie Hill, Yorkville) the number of housing units increased by only 1.9 percent and the number of under-18 residents by only 8.9 percent. In two Upper West Side areas (the Central Upper West Side and Lincoln Square) the number of occupied units increased by only 1.4 percent and the number of under-18 residents by only 12.2 percent. In the West Village, the number of housing units actually decreased, and the number of under-18 residents increased by 6.9 percent.
The general pattern among these elite neighborhoods seems to be: where lots of housing is built, lots of children move in. Where very little housing is built, the child population still sometimes increases, but not by as much.
(NOTE: More data is available at popfactfinder.planning.nyc.gov )
