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, The Plain Dealer. More statistics:

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Where newcomers settle: This map pulls out the Cuyahoga County cities and Cleveland neighborhoods where the population of young adults has risen more than 500 in the past decade -- gray for parts of Cleveland, red for suburbs. Click the colored areas for details: the neighborhood or city name and how many people it has attracted.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- New to Northeast Ohio in 2010, Rachael Ng rented an apartment across from the mall in Beachwood. But as she came to know her way around town, she quickly joined the migration path of her tribe.

"I have a lot of friends who live downtown," explained Ng (pronounced "Ing"), a 27-year-old pharmacist for the Cleveland Clinic. "A lot of us hang out on Coventry, too. I wanted something in the center of all that."

So she moved to University Circle, on the border of Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, and added her energy to a new and potentially potent population pattern.

As residents left Cleveland and Cuyahoga County in unprecedented numbers last decade, one group defied that trend assertively. Young adults, minorities in particular, moved in eye-opening numbers to some urban neighborhoods of the city and its inner-ring suburbs, according to a new report.

From left, Roger Lin, Fung-Lin Wu, C.C. Chen, Rachael Ng and Benjamin Shyong talk about life in Cleveland at one of their favorite restaurants, Pacific East on Coventry Road.

They streamed into Cleveland Heights and Lakewood, bought homes in Parma, and even discovered venerable city neighborhoods like Kamm's Corners and Old Brooklyn.

In the newcomers, some see a jolt of human capital with economic development potential. Or at least a youth movement worth stoking.

"We're talking about an infusion of fresh blood," said Richey Piiparinen, a Cleveland policy researcher who specializes in the economic power behind demographic patterns. "Circulation of people is something we've been languishing in. That may be changing."

Piiparinen makes that argument in report he wrote for the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve University: "Mapping Human Capital: Where Northeast Ohio's Young and Middle-Age Adults are Migrating."

Comparing 2000 and 2010 census data, he found that people of family-rearing age, 35 to 44, continued to leave the city and its older suburbs, often for outer suburbs like Solon and Olmsted Township. But in some communities, reinforcements arrived in the form of young adults, people aged 25 to 34, who may present a new foundation to build upon.

The study found that:

*The young adult population grew in several Cleveland neighborhoods, including downtown, Tremont, Ohio City, University Circle, Kamms Corners, Edgewater and Old Brooklyn.

* As young adults left outer suburbs like Strongsville and Pepper Pike, they arrived in greater numbers in older, more walkable suburbs like Cleveland Heights, Lakewood and Rocky River.

* The trend fostered cultural diversity as young Asians, Hispanics and African Americans often moved into largely white communities.

Greg Brown, executive director of the Cleveland think tank PolicyBridge, said the local pattern mirrors a national trend.

"People are coming back to the urban core, especially young people who are starting to find a kinship with the culture and the ambience of the city," he said. "It's hopeful because it brings back vitality."

In Northeast Ohio, the youthful migration has a strong ethnic thread. Hispanics led the young-adult surge in Parma and Old Brooklyn, often beating a path from the old neighborhoods of Clark-Fulton and Stockyards in Cleveland. Piiparinen sees a classic example of upward mobility.

Young African Americans made a bigger jump, from foreclosure-ravaged neighborhoods on the city's east side to Lakewood, where they form about 15 percent of a burgeoning youth movement. They also moved into the west side city neighborhoods of Kamm's Corners and Old Brooklyn.

Young Asian Americans may have had the biggest impact of all. In a decade when Cuyahoga County lost nearly 10,000 young adults, the number of Asians in 24 to 35 age group grew by more than 3,000.

Piiparinen argues the larger exodus makes that inflow remarkable.

"It's a plus-3,000 in a shrinking region for a single group in a single race," he said. "Think about that."

Young Asians moved in significant numbers into Mayfield Heights, near major employers like Progressive Insurance and Rockwell Automation, but also into downtown Cleveland, Lakewood and, most noticeably, Cleveland Heights.

The venerable suburb lost seven percent of its population last decade as both white and black households left a community growing poorer. But a spike in young Asians and Hispanics helped to minimize losses and add new dimensions to the singles scene.

Cleveland Heights attracted nearly 600 young Asian adults, many of them college-educated professionals.

The newcomers include Fung-Lin Wu, a cheerful 26-year-old who came from the University of Michigan in 2008 to accept a job at Progressive Insurance in Mayfield Heights. Asian co-workers told her about Cleveland Heights and she found her comfort zone.

"I like that it's all walkable," said Wu, an Internet marketing specialist. "And there's a young crowd because of Case. When I was new to Cleveland, I wanted to meet people, and I knew this would be the place."

Wu gathered with some of those new friends Thursday night for sushi at Pacific East, a popular restaurant at Coventry and Mayfield roads.

The group included Ng, the co-president of the young professionals group MotivAsians; as well as Roger Lin, a medical resident from North Carolina; Benjamin Shyong, a Lincoln Electric engineer from Michigan; and Chien-Chih "C.C." Chen, who came from Taiwan to earn his master's in chemistry at Case.

No one had much of an impression of Cleveland before they arrived for school or a job. Though they wish there was more of an Asian scene, and some struggle with winter, all said they would recommend the move to friends.

"I do think Cleveland's underrated," said Wu. "There's little beauties in Cleveland. Like Chagrin Falls. And Tremont."

"Anywhere you go, it's the people who make it," said Shyong, 26. "I have a lot of friends here, so that's why I like it."

Focused on careers and social lives, the new Clevelanders don't give much thought to their clout. Economic planners do. They say a rising young adult population is a powerful investment lure.

"All you have to do is look at the investment into new apartment units downtown," said Edward "Ned" Hill, a professor of economic development at Cleveland State University. "This is an optimistic story that says when people migrate to this area they stay and they re-energize the place."

Some of the newcomers moved up from Cleveland immigrant neighborhoods, like Asiatown and Clark-Fulton, illustrating the importance of an immigrant stream.

"Like any fountain, you have to make sure there's new water going into it," Hill said.

But just as many or more arrived from other states and other nations. Piiparinen sees a "green flow" to build upon.

"Instead of focusing on the 'don't leave' strategy that never works, focus on the people who are coming in," he suggests. "Why are they coming?

"You draw young people," he said, "the capital will follow."