Why haven’t the rising incomes of the so-called superstar cities translated to further domination of the economy by a few top metros? The answer, in short: The places getting richer aren’t the places getting bigger.

The metropolitan areas with the most rapid per-person income growth since 1980 have had only modest population increases. Think of the Bay Area, Boston and Fairfield County in Connecticut. Conversely, most places with huge population gains have had only modest income growth. They’re not getting much richer. Think of places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Orlando.

In other words, in almost all cases, economically successful places in America have gotten bigger or richer but not both. (There are also plenty of metros that have had slow population growth and slow income growth, like Detroit, Cleveland, Oklahoma City and Rochester, N.Y.)

Those rare exceptions with big growth in both per-person income and population include Austin, Texas; Raleigh, N.C.; and Provo-Orem, Utah, as well as the smaller metros of Naples, Fla., and Fayetteville, Ark. (home of Walmart). But the largest of these, Austin, still ranked only 27th among metros in total income in 2018 even after many boom years.

Among the 10 metros with the largest economies today, not one is getting both much richer and much bigger. In fact, in the past year the three metros at the top — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — all lost population.

The halt on housing

The main explanation for the lagging population growth in big, rich places is that they build relatively little new housing, for reasons of topography and regulation.