I noted recently that the 30 largest U.S. urbanized areas (excluding NYC) display no association between density and the number of households with children (as a percentage of all households). I have put the numbers below the fold for the curious.
Interestingly, Tampa and Pittsburgh have the lowest percentages of households with children (I thought San Francisco would be at the bottom; it ranks just above of Tampa and Pittsburgh), while LA had the third-highest percentage, ahead of Dallas, San Antonio and Atlanta.
The chart illustrates my point about density's irrelevance perhaps better than my scatterplot. For example, the urban densities of Philadelphia, St. Louis, D.C., Detroit, Las Vegas and Cincinatti range from 3,274 ppsm to 8,457 ppsm, but their percentages of HWCs vary by just 4/10ths of one percent (between 35.3% and 35.7%). (Remember, "urbanized area" includes the 'burbs contiguous to the urban core.)
The other thing that struck me was that households without children are a large majority in almost every large city. They exceed 60% in all but five of the thirty. Since I think such households tend to be more tolerant of density than households with children, there may be more market demand for infill density than most people think. Neighborhood-activist types often complain that we don't need all those apartments and condos because families with children don't want to live in them. Even if they're right about families with children, those households are a relatively small segment of the market.
By the way, I am not suggesting that singles or couples would rather live in a 100-unit condo than a single-family home. I imagine that, all else being equal, most singles or couples would rather have a single-family home. My wife and I owned our own house for years before we had children. And I certainly am not suggesting that singles or couples ought to live in multi-family units. Not at all. People should get the kind of housing they want.
But preferences depend on price. I prefer a 2009 Infiniti M45 to a twice-wrecked 2002 I35, but I drive the I35. As home prices rise, and all else being equal, small households are more willing (on average) to switch to denser housing than larger households with children. Their aggregate demand for SF housing is simply more elastic, more sensitive to price. Rising property values really do generate more demand for dense housing, regardless of what families with children want.
