Comments on: Transient Spin

By: Smouie Kablooie

Smouie Kablooie — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:51:37 +0000

It’s always been my opinion that the adage “perception is reality” often rings true here in DC. I think that because we are the heart of this great nations political universe – the ebb and flow of elected officials, and their associated staff, tends to generate the perception that DC is a heavily transient city.

It doesn’t help that when you go out to a downtown bar and strike up a conversation with a stranger, and they find out you grow up here, their response is likely to fall along the lines of “Wow! A native!”

Ps. I loved your approach to this entry! Are you interested in a job in management consulting?

By: Jenn L

Jenn L — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:02:16 +0000

Tiff, I agree about the perception having to do with the idea of election year turnover.

But if you look at the “same residence in 1995″ data, DC is at 49.5%. Given a 1996 election year (though granted not a major party turnover, you’d still expect movement), you would expect it to be lower than the average – but the average is 49.7%. Note Miami’s 49.3%. So DC is at a respectable level compared with the other cities (at least in that five year period)…

Then again, I totally admit to preconceived notion and faulty parameters. You can parse data every which way – I guess that’s what the phrase “lies and damned statistics” is all about! But I hope looking at this makes us think about the nature of cities and our perceptions of them.

By: Tiff

Tiff — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:58:59 +0000

What you’re missing is that there are two parts of the assumption about DC being a transient town. Not only do lots of people live here, lots of people then move away. Of course Miami is going to have a large non-native population- people retire to Florida (to say nothing of the large population of Cuban ex-pats). But in Miami, they largely don’t leave again. In DC, every election year, there’s churn, and the level of churn depends on the size of the election. We have a built-in system that turns over a reasonable chunk of the population every couple of years, and that affects the jobs of an even larger chunk.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 05:43:09 +0000

Correct me if I’m wrong someone, to the best of my knowledge there are 4-5 million people living in the DC metro area.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 04:22:07 +0000

Somewhat related — One thing I think about with DC a lot is that the ratio between the size of the city and the size of the surrounding suburbs is way different than a lot of American cities. DC is dwarfed both in size and population by its suburbs. Fairfax County alone has nearly twice as many residents as DC. Ditto for Montgomery County.

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 01:30:49 +0000

I ran into this sentiment when I asserted on the list that many of the DC metblog authors were not native. I was swiftly corrected.

As far as DC in general goes, I think I had that perception because so many people come here to go to school, are attracted to working in the political arena, or other sorts of federal jobs available here. There is also the fact that the district itself is quite small, so you how would you define a non-native? Does Virginia count (and how far south), does Maryland count (and how far north)?

By: Jenn L

Jenn L — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:37:43 +0000

Doug, you bring up an interesting point about how uncommon living your whole life in one place really is nowadays. I wonder though, outside of major metropolitan areas, how common it actually is. I would love to find a migrancy study out there about habitation patterns or whatever the heck the term is – to test the theory that we are a more mobile population than ever before.

My annoyance is with the assumption that DC is by nature a transient town, isolated in this regard from other cities (i.e. that other cities are less transient). What I take away from looking at this chart is that it’s not an isolated case. Miami and SF, for example, have lower resident nativity that could even be less when adjusted for the “state” incongruity. I suspect most cities are closer to the 40% mark when adjusted. Even without adjustment the average is in the 40-50% range. But you don’t hear people say, “Oh, no one stays in SF” or “no one was born in San Diego.” So why that perception of DC?

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 22:57:48 +0000

Funny you should bring this up, we had a thread about it on the list not long ago. No surprise that cities like LA, NY and SF all have a pretty high rate of “imports” (for lack of a better word), but DC is not far behind.

How common, in this day-and-age of multiple careers, changing relationships, ease of travel…are people born and raised, married with children, etc., in the same town they born in and live out their lives there?

And why would you want to?