Source: Workforce & Innovation Technical Solution for the U.S. Census Bureau

Central Indiana, with Indianapolis at its core, is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the Midwest. This chart shows the annual rate of population growth for the 11 peer regions. The previous chart measured only the urban core county; this includes the entire metropolitan region. That is, the previous table showed growth in Marion County, while this shows the growth rate for the nine-county region containing Boone, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Johnson, Madison, Marion, Morgan and Shelby counties.

The regions centered around Minneapolis, Grand Rapids and Columbus grew faster than Indianapolis from 1980 to 2000. Other cities grew more slowly or, in the cases of Cleveland and Pittsburgh, declined throughout their metro areas. After 2000, most cities’ metropolitan growth slowed down. Metropolitan Indianapolis had the highest rate of growth since 2000.

Metropolitan growth is higher than urban growth in all but one of the peer regions, and the outward movement from cities to suburbs was almost universal. Grand Rapids, which is the smallest city is the group, grew faster between 1980 and 2000 within the city than in its metro area. Everywhere else, the metro growth was larger or, in declining regions, metro decline was less than urban decline.

Indianapolis illustrates this most clearly. From 1980 to 2000, Indianapolis’ metro growth rate (1.31 percent a year) was about twice its urban growth rate (0.62 percent a year). After 2000, the difference widened. Central Indiana is growing 38 times faster than the urban growth rate: 1.51 percent to 0.04 percent. Still, Indianapolis is one of the few Rust Belt cities that continues to grow at all.

The shift of population from the urban core of large cities to the suburban areas around them is an important social trend. As population and wealth shift to the suburbs, other kinds of social and economic momentum go with it. For example, IPIC research in 2006 showed that thousands of retail and restaurant jobs had left Indianapolis and reappeared in Hamilton and other suburban counties. The challenge to Indianapolis and other cities is not simply to retain as much population as possible, but to create a vital partnership with the suburbs. Each needs the other, and communities that maintain a vibrant relationship between and among urban core and suburbs are more likely to thrive.