Are We Moving Back to the City? Examining Residential Mobility in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area

This research assesses the extent to which there is evidence of population re-centralization or back to the city moves by tracking the historical trend of household and income mobility in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. County-to-county migration data and four migration efficiency measures are used to investigate net flows of households and income in the region. The results show a nascent tendency of back to the city movement; however, the redistribution of households and income in the metropolitan area is more complex. While the region's core may be starting to gain households and income, there are still significant flows into the region's most distant suburbs. The results of this research have implications for transportation, housing, and economic development policy making in Washington, DC and other regions. The study also offers a unique example of how to study household and income redistribution within U.S. metropolitan areas.