Tracing America's Urban-to-Urban Migration Through the Recession

There’s obviously a lot of talk about the rural-to-urban shift that’s underway in countries all over the world. The majority of people now live in urban areas, and that’s not expected to change. But many countries have had urban majorities for decades. The United States, for example, has an urban population near 80 percent. So while there’s certainly some rural-to-urban migration happening, most of the movement in the U.S. is urban-to-urban.

A new interactive map from the Urban Institute’s MetroTrends research team breaks down these movements, watching population changes in and between the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. between 2004 and 2010. (This is the latest in a series of worthwhile maps from MetroTrends, which has recently looked at economic security and job growth by sector in metropolitan areas.)