http://finance.yahoo.com/news/where-americans-are-moving-205531313.html?page=1 Where Americans Are Moving The red states may have lost the presidential election, but they are winning new residents, largely at the expense of their politically successful blue counterparts. For all the talk of how the Great Recession has driven people -- particularly the “footloose young” -- toward dense urban centers, Census data reveal that Americans are still drawn to the same sprawling Sun Belt regions as before. An analysis of domestic migration for the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan statistical areas by demographer Wendell Cox shows that the 10 metropolises with the largest net gains from 2000 through 2009 are in the Sun Belt, led by Phoenix, and followed by Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.; Atlanta; Dallas-Ft. Worth; and Las Vegas. Migration has slowed from a high of nearly 2 million annually in 2006 to less than 800,000 last year, but the most recent numbers show that the Sun Belt states, though chastened by the recession, are far from dead, as often alleged. This part of America, widely consigned to what the Bolshevik firebrand Leon Trotsky called the “dustbin of history” by Eastern pundits, somehow manages to continue to draw Americans seeking opportunities, in particular from the large coastal metropolitan regions.
I suspect it's because Texas ranks so poorly in education that they need to find people from well educated states to do jobs here. amirite? :grin:
The primise of the OP is flawed, IMO. Yes, those states are growing, but politically, it isn't at the expense of the "Blue Party," if that's what "Blue States" refers to. It's at the expense of the "Red Party" currently dominant in the region, due to the low population growth there of the ethnic background of the party that's dominately "Red," and the large growth of those affiliated, in general, with the party that's "Blue." In other words, time is not on the side of the Reds. It's definitely on the side of the Blues in that region. Now, the article in the OP could have kept itself to simply discussing population growth, and over the last few decades that region certainly has been growing faster that the other regions. That would have made it Hangout worthy. It chose not to keep it on that level as witnessed by the title used. That will probably bump this down to D&D eventually, but what do I know? All in my opinion, of course.
Pretty much what I discovered when I was relocated to Omaha 6 months after college: cheap living, low competition for professional jobs and no traffic. Also, any metropolitan center, no matter how small, is always going to have airports, upmarket retail and fully accredited colleges with a fine arts departments: that and any kind of philanthropic activity means you'll get at least some minimal museum, theater, dance and music options on the weekend.
I moved from Houston to Phoenix after college for a job. Big mistake. Someone hook me up with a job in Houston :grin:
Yes, that is why states like Virginia and Georgia are turning from red to purple and Texas could follow that lead in by next census. If Texas turn purple or gasp blue I wonder how many Republicans will cry themselves to sleep every night.
And this is good? When I was in college back in the early 80's, I loved the drive from Austin to San Antonio. Now, it is one long exit ramp full of strip malls, fast food joints, and mega churches. Houston is now Conroe and just a few exits away from Huntsville. Dreadful. I now live in Oregon. If you put Oregon in TX, it would roughly go from Louisiana to Abilene and Houston to the Red River. Most of the Texas population of 20.8 million or so lives in that area. The population of Oregon is 3.5 million, most of which is within a 45 minute drive from downtown Portland. The population per square mile in TX is now about 80 people per. In Oregon, it's about 35 people per. Good luck to all of you when the Zombie Apocalypse comes... I'll be chillin' in a coastal cabin eating fresh fish and smoking venison.
Has nothing to do with politics....but desperate party loyalists will spin anything these days to feel better.
