Birmingham’s outlying suburbs are getting thousands of new residents as the city centre shrinks

Residents of Birmingham and the surrounding area are forgoing city centre apartments and short commutes in favour of a quieter life and affordable housing in outlying suburbs.

Even the Jefferson County suburbs closest to the Magic City’s center are shrinking as cities in Shelby County welcome thousands of new residents.

“When buyers look at location and proximity to the city, they often want to live in Mountain Brook, Vestavia or Homewood,” said Genny Williams, a real estate agent in the Birmingham metro area. “But they just can’t make those numbers work. So they have to go farther away.”

In Mountain Brook, the most expensive city in Jefferson County, the median home value is $764,000, according to census data

The most expensive city in Shelby County is Chelsea, with an average home value of $294,500.

“The rates have gotten so high that they can’t afford it anymore,” Williams said.

While experts offer different explanations for the population shift, Williams offered a different, simple answer as to why cities closer to Birmingham are shrinking and cities in southern Shelby County are growing.

“It’s the only place where there’s land left,” she said.

Peter Jones, a professor of political science at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, agreed.

“For some cities, there just wasn’t enough housing supply,” Jones told AL.com. “As you get further away from Birmingham, those cities have that supply of housing, whereas suburbs like Homewood, Vestavia, those types of cities don’t necessarily have that supply of housing.”

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Rise of the ‘exurbs’

Census data shows that cities in Shelby County grew by an average of 6% between 2020 and 2023, while their Jefferson County counterparts shrank by about 1% on average.

In fact, Jefferson County is home to nearly half of the state’s shrinking cities. Nine of Alabama’s 21 major cities that saw population declines are in Jefferson County.

The five cities in Shelby County – Calera, Helena, Pelham, Alabaster and Chelsea – welcomed about 5,700 new residents. Jefferson County lost more than 7,000.

These figures are from the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent estimates, released in May, and include only the 21 cities in the Birmingham metropolitan area with populations greater than 10,000.

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But that trend isn’t unique to Birmingham. Research from the U.S. Census Bureau found that across the country, distant suburbs are growing faster than those closer to city centers.

After the pandemic, suburbs within 10 miles of the city center did not grow as fast as they did before the pandemic, while suburbs within 60 miles of the city center did.

These estimates come from a May Census Bureau release that unofficially defined the areas as “suburbs,” or towns with “a mix of rural and urban character” that are about 20 to 30 miles outside the city center.

Calera, Pelham, Alabaster, Chelsea and Helena are located between 20 and 35 miles outside Birmingham.

“Suburbs are sometimes among the fastest-growing communities,” said U.S. Census Bureau demographer Luke Rogers, “but that appears to be even more true now than before the pandemic.”

Jones, the UAB professor, also pointed out that the Covid-19 pandemic “has really changed the calculus of where to live.”

“Working from home allowed people to move closer to home and allowed others to move farther away. Several people lost parents or grandparents. We also know that child care became an issue,” Jones told AL.com. “All of these things were working, pushing, pulling, changing how we typically understand migration patterns.”

According to Jones, all these factors gave people the freedom to live where they wanted, which may have contributed to the boom in Birmingham’s suburbs.

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But they might also choose Birmingham’s suburbs because those cities have invested more in their public services, says Megan LaFrambois, a professor in Auburn University’s community planning program.

Take Alabaster and Pelham, for example. Both Shelby County cities have spent millions on public school renovations in recent years.

And a subdivision in Chelsea, the metro area’s fastest-growing suburb, will soon double to 2,500 homes. Chelsea Park, developed by Eddleman Properties, Inc., is just off U.S. Highway 280,

City officials in Chelsea also opened a new fire station on the city’s east side and have worked with the county to improve intersections and straighten busy roads, including Highways 39 and 47, AL.com reported last year.

“When you have a lot of growth, your infrastructure and your housing and things like that have to be well-accommodated,” LaFrambois said. “I think a lot of communities in the South are trying to meet that demand.”