CLEVELAND, Ohio - The city ranks eighth in the nation in the growth rate of college-educated millennial residents aged 25 to 34, placing it in a three-way tie with Miami and Seattle.

That's just one of the findings in "The Fifth Migration," the latest report from the Center for Population Dynamics at the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.

The gist of the new study is that after decades of losing population and jobs, Cleveland is witnessing hot spots of growth caused by a rapid influx of young, college-educated people in downtown and neighborhoods such as Tremont, Ohio City, University Circle and Detroit Shoreway.

Bifurcated city: A map pinpoints college-educated versus non college-educated millennials in green and black dots, respectively.

Other striking pockets of growth for college-educated millennials - mapped with pinpoint precision in the report's graphics - include Lakewood, portions of Cleveland Heights, and Mayfield, where hiring by Progressive Corp. has had a visible impact.

Commissioned by the Cleveland Foundation and based on the U.S. Census, the study aims at sharpening civic debate over how to convince urban newcomers to stay put as they marry and raise children, rather than follow the traditional path to the suburbs.

"Instead of managing decline, we're preparing for growth," said Richey Piiparinen, one of the study's authors and a senior research associate at the Center for Population Dynamics. "The city is changing, and we have to help grow it."

Lillian Kuri, the Cleveland Foundation's program director for arts and urban design, said the study raises questions including whether the rapid increase in rental apartments downtown should be diversified with construction of condominiums and for-sale housing in other neighborhoods.

"We have very, very little for-sale product in University Circle and downtown, and even compared to Detroit and Pittsburgh, we're not building any," Kuri said. "As we think about this [millennial] group and how large it is and how soon they're going to be post-35, are we going to be prepared?"

Five migrations

The report calls the new population shift the "fifth migration," after previous demographic waves that included the settlement of the colonies, the formation of factory towns, the migration to industrial cities and the postwar expansion of suburbs.

The fifth migration represents a nationwide shift back to cities from suburbs, especially among millennials, who represent the largest single cohort in the U.S. population.

The preference of millennials for dense, walkable urban neighborhoods served by mass transit is highly visible in downtown Cleveland, where residents aged 18 to 34 comprise 63 percent of downtown's population of 13,000.

Zooming: The "Fifth Migration" report says that millennials constitute 63 percent of downtown Cleveland's 13,000 residents.

The study also says that the number of downtown residents aged 25 to 34 zoomed 76 percent from 2000 to 2012.

Cleveland's challenge is that its millennial population overall is still only 23.7 percent, below the national average of 26.2 percent and well below the hottest millennial enclaves including Austin, Texas; San Diego; and Los Angeles.

Cheaper than the coasts



Yet Cleveland enjoys a valuable edge: affordability. Its allure for millennials includes rising job opportunities and a relatively low cost of living, the study's authors say.

The counties that sent the most new residents to Cuyahoga County between 2008 and 2012 were Cook County (Chicago), Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), Clark County (Las Vegas), Wayne County (Detroit), Los Angeles County and Kings County (Brooklyn, New York).

Comparative advantage: Cleveland's affordability in relation to coastal cities is grabbing attention and luring new residents.

Such moves are encouraged, the report says, by Cuyahoga County's relatively modest median gross monthly rent of $1,088, compared with the national median rent of $1,488 and Brooklyn, New York's rent of $2,583.

The influx is registering at a nationally significant level, according to the report. Cleveland's 8.3 percent growth rate in college-educated millennials in 2011-13 placed it on par with Miami and Seattle, which tied for the eighth place in that category out of 40 top metro regions.

Cleveland's ranking in this metric has increased sharply in recent years. In 2000-07, it ranked 38th among the top 40 cities in attraction and retention of college-educated millennials. During that period, the city lost 9,842 college-educated millennials aged 25-34, a decline of 11.4 percent.

During the recession years of 2008-2010, the picture reversed dramatically. Cleveland gained 7,231 college-educated millennials, an increase of 9.9 percent, which placed it 23rd among the 40 top metros.

The report documents the new influx geographically in pointillist maps developed by the Portland, Oregon, firm Paste in Place, in which an individual dot represents a single person.

A tale of two cities

The maps show that Cleveland remains sharply bifurcated. High concentrations of non-college-educated millennials in Cleveland abut dense clusters of college-educated 25-to-34-year-olds in Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, and in Ohio City and the Downtown/Central areas.

A previous analysis by Piiparinen and the Center for Population Dynamics that mapped brain gain and loss, documented a double migration in which low-income blacks recently moved from the city to inner-ring suburbs or out of the region altogether by the tens of thousands.

For Kuri, one of the report's major implications is that if Cleveland's growth is to be sustainable, "you have to focus on college- and non-college-educated" residents.

"That's new and one of the big takeaways for us about how we are going to outpace some of our peer cities. We have to look more at this more diversely and not just tell the college-educated story."