After decades of population decline, the city of Syracuse has begun to experience a small boost in its overall population. Millennials are overwhelmingly leading the growth.

Syracuse has historically struggled with population decline, and has lost about 77,000 people since 1950. The city’s population increased by about 0.32% between 2017 and 2018, according to census data. The increase is small, only a few hundred people, but Syracuse was the only major city in New York state to see a population increase that year.

“It wasn’t a large amount, but it is certainly in the right direction and something that we think bodes well for the future,” Mayor Ben Walsh said at a media roundtable on Friday.

Estimates from the National Association of Realtors also reveal that a significant portion of new residents — roughly three out of four — who have moved to the city since 2017 are millennials, or people who are in their mid-20s to mid-30s.

The majority of millennials moving to Syracuse in the past decade have settled in the downtown neighborhood, resulting in a 70% population increase in the area, said Alice Maggiore, communications director of the Syracuse Downtown Committee.

Syracuse’s slight population increase is part of bigger trend among fellow Rust Belt cities, said Alan Mallach, a senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress in Washington, D.C.

Over the past twenty years, Rust Belt cities have seen a significant shift in their population, with an increasing number of millennials driving this resurgence, Mallach said.

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In Rochester, about two-thirds of new city residents are millennials. As of 2017, millennials accounted for more than one-fifth of the residents in Cleveland, another Rust Belt city. Almost 60% of these residents had moved to the city within the past few years.

These cities have become appealing to younger people due to expanding job opportunities in the fields of healthcare and higher education, which have replaced the manufacturing industry as the main areas of employment in the country, Mallach said.

More than 40% of all jobs in Syracuse today are part of the healthcare and higher education fields. The strength of these industries is driven by the city’s proximity to institutions like Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University, Mallach said. 

“If you think back to the 1960s, there were hospitals, there were colleges, but they were a very tiny factor economically,” Mallach said. “Manufacturing was the thing that drove cities.”

Technological innovation is becoming more common in revitalizing Rust Belt cities, like Syracuse, that are based around large universities and medical organizations, Mallach said. These research institutions often lead to the development of tech growth, which attracts highly-skilled and educated young people seeking jobs in the tech field.

In the past few years, Syracuse’s focus on growing its tech sector has encouraged several tech companies and startups to establish operations in the city. Walsh’s administration aims to revitalize the city through his Syracuse Surge plan, a combination of different projects intended to create new jobs and educational opportunities in the tech field.

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Syracuse is beginning to craft a city-wide technological infrastructure, including a centralized street light system and a 5G cellular network, said Jennifer Tifft, deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Neighborhood and Business Development. The city hopes to boost economic growth through these technological initiatives, she said. 

“These technologies help the city achieve a higher degree of connectivity, productivity and efficiency and meet some of the needs and desires of the millennial generation,” Tifft said. “We very much want to create an environment here, through technology, that facilitates people’s lifestyles and livelihoods and makes it easier for everyone to achieve prosperity.”

Syracuse’s technology-based growth is part of a growing trend seen across upstate New York, said John Maggiore, senior adviser to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Regions that include large, technology-focused cities — such as Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse — have drawn in the greatest number of millennials in the past several years, he said.

“In each of these counties, there is a central city that is a different place today than it was ten years ago,” Maggiore said. “There’s been development in their amenities and their public infrastructure has been improved.”

Syracuse in particular has made significant changes in its downtown corridor over the past several years. The city’s once deteriorating downtown neighborhood now features dozens of new restaurants, hotels and attractions. Maggiore said this is ideal for millennials, who often want to live somewhere that they can both work and play.

Still, even as Rust Belt cities like Syracuse begin to experience overall economic growth, the revival of these cities remains uneven. While Syracuse’s millennial population has increased, many long-time city residents in low-income neighborhoods are not being included in the city’s prosperity, Mallach said. 

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While downtown Syracuse has flourished, other neighborhoods have been ignored and continue to see concentrated poverty, especially places where the majority of residents are people of color, Mallach said.

Tifft said the city hopes to address this disparity through the Syracuse Surge initiative by helping train people from low-income neighborhoods, like the Southside, to participate in the growing economy.

For now, Syracuse’s recent efforts to revive its economy and downtown neighborhood have been part of Cuomo’s Upstate Revitalization initiative, which has provided roughly $5.6 billion to the region in the past eight years. This money has funded several technology-focused projects in and around Syracuse, including the construction of a drone-testing corridor and the development of several startup companies through the city’s Tech Garden. 

By creating lasting and well-paying employment opportunities for both the incoming millennial population and existing residents, Syracuse aims to transform the city into a prosperous technology hub that will reverse its history of population decline and continue to attract a younger population, Tifft said. 

“We want to make sure that everyone, not only the millennial generation, has the types of job opportunities that are going to be sustainable into the future,” she said. 

Published on September 10, 2019 at 1:11 am

Contact Gillian: gifollet@syr.edu