Kyle Fee

CHAPTER 3. The Relationship Between City Center Density and Urban Growth or Decline

Working papers of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment on research in progress. They may not have been subject to the formal editorial review accorded offi cial Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland publications. The views stated herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland or of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In this paper we contrast the spatial patterns of population density and other demographic changes in growing versus shrinking MSAs from 1980 to 2010. We fi nd that, on average, shrinking MSAs show the steepest drop in population density near the Central Business District (CBD). Motivated by this fact, we explore the connection between changes in population density at the core of the MSA and MSA productivity. We fi nd that changes in near-CBD population density are positively associated with per capita income growth at the MSA-level.