The Census produced their latest annual population estimates for cities and towns around the US through 2005:
http://www.census.gov/...
Looking at the data (and seeing a few articles), people are leaving the expensive cities (whether expensive compared to the rest of the nation, like San Diego, or expensive relative to the local area, like Lawrence, KS, home of the Univ. of Kansas) for cheaper locales.
San Diego went from 7th to 8th place in the largest cities in the US, replaced by San Antonio, Texas. For the first time in many years (not sure when, if ever, it happened last), San Diego is estimated to have lost population between 2004 and 2005--over 8000 people (or about 0.6% of the total population). Here's the obvious explanation from
http://www.signonsandiego.com/...
The median price of an existing single-family home in San Diego is $607,000, more than four times San Antonio's median price of $133,400, according to the National Association of Realtors.
San Diego is where I live now. Lawrence, Kansas, a very desirable (despite the weather) university town where I grew up, which had been gaining population rapidly through the 1970s, '80s and '90s, is also losing population for the first time in many years, as mentioned in http://www2.ljworld.com/...
In estimates released today, the Census Bureau claims Lawrence from July 2004 to July 2005 lost 26 residents -- less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the city's overall population. But the numbers are significant because it is believed to be the first time in at least 30 years the city has recorded an annual decline in population.
In Lawrence, the average house price is a fraction of that in San Diego (somewhere around $150,000 I would guess). However, incomes are also less, and there are nearby towns which are even cheaper, like Eudora and Baldwin City. And these towns are gaining in population:
And the report shows that Eudora, Tonganoxie, Baldwin and other communities just outside Lawrence are growing robustly, perhaps at the expense of Lawrence.
"It is very disturbing," City Commissioner Sue Hack said. "I think it is pretty obvious that we have a cost-of-living issue in Lawrence. This just statistically proves that communities that are less expensive to live in are drawing folks who probably would choose to live in Lawrence otherwise."
The migration from expensive to cheap places is clearly accelerating, and this is happening in other cities around the country. Could this be a symptom (that we've talked about for a long time here at DailyKos) that more and more people are running out of money--not because of lack of a job or people they're bad with managing finances but instead because costs are just too high!
And what cities are winning? Clearly the exurbs (Olathe, Kansas, an exurb of KC, gained about 3,000 people in the past year) and cheap larger cities, like San Antonio and Phoenix (though Phoenix is becoming much less so).