An interesting set of stories in the Austin American-Statesman in March highlighted how the Austin-area population continues to boom, drawing more young adults than any other major metropolitan area in 2009-2011 ("
For people on the move, Austin is a place to stop and live"). But the stories also pointed out how families moving here from out of state are largely choosing to live in the suburbs. ("
Downtown is popular for newcomers, but families look to Austin's suburbs"). According to the Statesman's census analysis, the suburban areas of Steiner Ranch and Lake Travis attracted more out-of-staters than any other zip code in the five-county metro area. The online version of the story includes an
interactive map breaking out more detailed demographic information for individual zip codes. It would be great to see this data broken out further by households with vs without children.
As I have
discussed in
earlier posts, Austin faces ongoing challenges of how to attract families with children into the city, and especially the urban core. While there is no one silver bullet to address this challenge, the City of Austin's Families with Children Task Force issued a
report five years ago listing a whole host of policies that would help. The Report relied in part on a survey of Austin-area residents asking them what kinds of things could be done to make Austin a better place for families with children. The top concerns listed were:
- lack of affordable housing in central core
- lack of affordable quality child care
- lack of family-friendly open space
- low quality middle schools and high schools and disparate quality of elementary schools
- lack of sidewalks and dedicated bike lanes
- traffic and inadequate public infrastructure
