A lot of people are pretty pessimistic about Syracuse’s prospects for future population growth. ‘Our best days are behind us,’ ‘this place is going nowhere fast,’ ‘who’d want to live somewhere with this weather?’ People who think this way are fatalists—they think Syracuse is fated to decline, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

But there are other fatalists who are more optimistic about Syracuse’s future. They think that Syracuse is fated to grow again because of some global phenomenon—usually climate change—is bound to draw people to the City in the future. We don’t have to do anything to make that happen, we just have to wait.

This optimistic fatalism has always been less popular than the pessimistic version, but covid is giving it something of a moment. Early on in the pandemic, Business Insider named Syracuse the 21st best city in America to live in after the pandemic. They cited the metro area’s low unemployment rate and the high share of jobs that could be worked from home. Local boosters also touted the region’s low population density, light car traffic, easy access to nature, and highly rated suburban school districts to make a sharp contrast with New York City where the virus was raging in the Spring and early Summer. And this past week, the Post Standard reported that at least a handful of households from New York City have actually relocated to Central New York because of the pandemic.

It’s easy to overstate these effects—nine new residents aren’t going to change the fate of a metropolitan area with two-thirds of a million people—but they highlight the problem with optimistic fatalism: population growth will only result in positive change for the entire community if we do the work to prepare for it ahead of time.

The Syracuse metro area’s most existential problem is uneven growth across a region riven by minor municipal borders. For the last 70 years, population and economic growth has occurred at the urban area’s fringe, and that fringe has been expanding ever outward. As the fringe passes through any particular city, village, town, or school district, it provides temporary prosperity and facilitates municipal expansion—so villages lay sewer lines, school district’s build athletic facilities, towns subsidize new subdivisions. But that fringe has always eventually moved on and left smaller populations and lower tax revenues in its wake.

This is why Syracuse can’t afford to repair its roads, it’s why Northern Lights is a ghost town, it’s why Liverpool is closing elementary schools, and—if this pattern is allowed to continue—it will be why Onondaga County struggles to maintain the massive sewer system that it’s building out now.

So when we learned that nine people moved from New York City to Syracuse because of covid, and when we learned that one of them moved into the City while the other eight settled in Manlius at the current edge of the exurban fringe, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. That’s just a continuation of the demographic processes that have been playing out in Onondaga County for 200 years.

And this is why optimistic fatalism about Syracuse’s future is so frustrating—metro level population growth, all on it’s own, is not a cause for optimism. We do need more people, and it is good that these three households moved to Central New York, but more than that we need to do the preparatory work to that will allow us to harness that population increase to help meet the community’s biggest challenges.

We need to figure out how to grow sustainably and equitably. How to accommodate new people while also preserving farmland and wilderness, how to bring new people into old neighborhoods without pushing out existing residents, how to reorient our transportation system so that it can move more people more efficiently, how to modernize our governments to meet the needs of a metropolitan community, how to secure the benefits of growth and prosperity for the people who need them most.

We should be optimistic because Syracuse’s best days are ahead of us, but we can’t be fatalists because there’s too much work to do to create that better future.

Population is a function of two variables: the size of households and the number of households. If households get bigger, population will also grow even if the total number of households remains the same. And if the total number of households increases, population will also grow even if the average size of those households remains the same.

But although these two factors both influence the overall population count similarly, they have very different effects on the demographic reality that underlies that top line figure.

One of the main differences has to do with housing supply, demand, and pricing. If Syracuse’s population change was entirely the result of changing household size, that wouldn’t mean very much for housing prices—a three-person family that becomes a four-person family doesn’t necessarily need a new house, but a block that grows from three one-person households to four one-person households does. If that block doesn’t get a fourth house, then the household that gets left out is likely to be the one that can afford the least in rent.

This simple story played out over and over again across Syracuse between 2010 and 2019.

Changes in the number of households largely reflect changes in the population across the City. Between 2010 and 2019, Syracuse’s overall population decreased by 1.3%, and the total number of households decreased by 2.1%

The neighborhoods that gained the most households (teal on the map) were Eastwood, the Eastside between Westcott and 690, Elmwood, University Hill, Downtown and Franklin Square. Neighborhoods that lost households (orange on the map) were the Southside along Midland Ave, the Westside along Onondaga and Geddes Streets, parts of the near Northside, and the vast majority of the Eastside.

There was very little change in the total number of housing units in Syracuse (just a 3% increase overall) because the City is “built out” in the sense that it’s extremely difficult—from both a legal and financial standpoint—to construct new housing in old city neighborhoods.

Across the City, the vast majority of census tracts saw minor variations in available housing stock. A few dozen homes added to or removed from neighborhoods that house several thousand people. The only major areas of growth (purple on the map) were Franklin Square and University Hill, two neighborhoods that, taken together, saw a 32% increase in the number of housing units available between 2010 and 2019.

Decline was more widespread (yellow on the map), as would be expected in a City with a slightly shrinking population where it’s easier—and a matter of government policy—to demolish old buildings than it is to build new ones.

Combine those two measures—total number of households and total number of housing units—and you get the vacancy rate: the percentage of unoccupied housing units in an area. This map shows census tracts where the vacancy rate decreased in red, and those where it increased in brown. So much of the map is lightly shaded because changes in the number of households and housing units tracked pretty well across most of the city—where new families moved, new housing was built, where families left, housing was demolished. The City’s built environment adapted to its changing demographic reality.

A great example of this adaptation is Franklin Square. That census tract saw huge growth in the number of households over the last decade (54%), but it also saw a similarly large increase in the number of housing units (59%), so the vacancy rate barely changed (+3%).

The real outlier is Downtown, where the total number of households increased by 43%, but the number of housing units available only increased by 6%, so the vacancy rate decreased by 24%.

And changes in vacancy rate translate pretty well to changes in the cost of rent. Although Franklin Square and Downtown occupy a similar place in Syracuse’s housing market—in terms of who’s moving there, what kind of housing they’re looking for, the intensity of population growth—median rent in Franklin Square actually decreased by 5% between 2010 and 2019 relative to the rest of Syracuse, while median rent Downtown increased by 33% over that same time.

For the most part, this same pattern holds elsewhere: rents went up where the vacancy rate dropped, and dropped where the vacancy rate went up.

Syracuse has long been one of the youngest municipalities in the county, and SCSD is one of the only districts that’s seen a growing enrollment in recent years. But over the last decade, Syracuse’s population started aging, and the total number of children decreased while the City’s adult population grew.

Like variations in total population, these changes were not even across neighborhoods. Their spatial distribution correlates with population gains and losses, and suggests that if Syracuse is going to achieve sustained growth, it will need to do better by the kids.

Median age is dropping fast (purple on the map) in the City’s center and in some outer neighborhoods like the far Northside, Eastwood, Elmwood, and the Valley. In general, these areas gained population over the last decade. Population in tracts where the median age decreased gained 2,473 people between 2010 and 2019.

Median age is rising ( pink on the map) across much of the Southside and in areas with large retirement homes like Ross Towers, Vinette Towers, Brighton Towers and Loretto. All together, census tracts where the median age increased lost 4,333 people over the last decade.

In census tracts where the median age fell, children under the age of 18 tended to comprise a greater share of the population in 2019 than in 2010 (green on the map), and the reverse was true of tracts where the proportion of children fell (orange on the map).

Combined, census tracts where children under the age of 18 made up a smaller share of the population in 2019 than in 2010 shrank by 3588 people over that time. Census tracts where children accounted for a larger share of the population grew by 1728 over the same period.

These trends make sense. If a family of three becomes a family of four, if an adult couple has their first child, or if a retired couple moves south and sells their house to a family with kids—if any of those changes occur, it will show up in the census data by lowering the median age, increasing the proportion of children to adults, and growing the overall population.

And so what you see pretty clearly is that the census tracts where the proportion of children to adults grew between 2010 and 2019 generally also saw rising household sizes (in blue on map) over that time.

It’s an open question whether these trends will continue. In the parts of the City where kids are a growing share of the population, most of the growth (84%) came from census tracts where the population of children ages 0-5 (below school age, yellow on the map) outpaced the population of children 6-17 (school age, blue on the map). This increase in the proportion of young families could be a very good thing for Syracuse if it means that the City is gaining a stable cohort of long-term residents. But the increasing percentage of children below school age in growing neighborhoods could also signal something very bad—that families in growing neighborhoods are leaving the City when their kids start school.

After years of precipitous decline, Syracuse’s overall population has held remarkably steady over the last decade. Between 2010 and 2019, the total number of people living in the City decreased by just 1,890 or 1.3%.

But look at the tract-level data, and it’s clear that Syracuse’s population has been anything but stable. Some neighborhoods boomed, others emptied out. And the compositions of those neighborhoods changed in ways that simple population counts can’t capture.

This map shows the change in population for each Syracuse census tract, adjusted for area. Tracts shaded red had fewer people in the 2019 than in 2010, and tracts shaded blue saw population growth.

Much of Eastwood and the Northside grew in the last decade, while the South, East, and West Sides all saw population loss.

The City’s center—Franklin Square, Downtown and University Hill—saw intense growth, but it is somewhat obscured in this map because much of SU’s student population gets counted South Campus and because Franklin Square is just a small part of a huge census tract that also includes the Inner Harbor, Mall, and part of Onondaga Lake.

Syracuse became more diverse between 2010 and 2019. The White share of the city’s population decreased from 59% to 55% over that time. That decrease was driven by a combination of White flight and Black growth in outer neighborhoods on the North, West, and East sides, but it was counteracted by a combination of population loss in some neighborhoods with large Black populations and an increase in the White population in the City’s center.

In the City’s center and the outer parts of the North, East, South and West sides, these changes have made neighborhoods more integrated—the racial makeup of those neighborhoods looks more like the City as a whole. But in a few pockets like the near Northside, Tipperary Hill, Park Avenue, the residential ring around Syracuse University, and the Southwest, neighborhoods have become more segregated over the last decade.

In the graph above, the thick black line represents the City’s population in the decade between 2010-2019. It barely moves from year to year, cutting a straight path across the screen and suggesting that Syracuse has achieved a measure of demographic stability.

All of the colored lines represent population change for each of the City’s 55 census tracts. They riot across the screen, painting a more complicated picture of demographic change. Looking at individual neighborhoods rather than the City as a while complicates the notions that Syracuse’s population has stabilized or that the entire City is trending in one direction or another, and it can point the way towards a future where Syracuse can sustain citywide population growth.