by James A. Bacon
In Northern Virginia, a common battle cry around the turn of the century was, “Don’t Fairfax Loudoun.” After much of Loudoun became Fairfaxed, the admonition moved on to, “Don’t Fairfax Fauquier.”
Soon it will be “Don’t Fairfax Richmond.”
Fairfax County’s dysfunctional pattern of land use — low density subdivisions of detached single-family dwellings, separated land uses, hopscotch development — was cemented in place by zoning codes and the high cost of redeveloping property into higher-density development. Traffic congestion and supply-demand imbalance for housing are baked into the cake. The resulting quality of life may be acceptable to the immigrants who replenish the population outflow, but the middle class wants out.
According to the leading expert in Virginia demographics, thousands of Northern Virginians are moving to Richmond. (Listen to our cool AI-generated song, “Riding to Richmond,” by clicking on the audio link above.)
The main reason more people are leaving Virginia than are moving in — and moving from Northern Virginia to Richmond — is the high cost of housing, said Hamilton Lombard, manager of the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center on Tuesday at an online seminar organized by Virginia FREE.
After decades in the shadow of Northern Virginia, the Richmond metropolitan area has quietly become the population and economic growth leader of Virginia in recent years. The cause is less than evident. It’s not as if Richmond has experienced an obvious efflorescence of innovation and business formation that is creating new jobs.
Richmond’s biggest virtue may be that it’s not Northern Virginia, but it’s near Northern Virginia — only a two-hour drive on Interstate 95 (depending upon traffic conditions).
The Richmond Times-Dispatch summarizes Lombard’s remarks:
Lombard … confirmed the perception that the escalating cost of housing in the Richmond area arises in part from a big surge in migration from Northern Virginia in the past three years. This came after the COVID-19 pandemic made the Washington, D.C., area one of the largest centers of remote work in the country.
“The Richmond area is growing as much as it ever has in its history,” he said, “and that’s in large part because of remote workers coming in.”Lombard backs up the statement with data from the first three years of this decade that show a net in-migration of more than 36,400 people to the Richmond metropolitan area, almost 10,000 more than a comparable period at the beginning of this century.
Many of them come from Fairfax County, the most populous locality in Virginia — with a net average increase of about 300 people arriving from Fairfax each year in Chesterfield County over the past three years and about 200 a year each in Richmond and Henrico County.
Housing prices are lower, traffic is far less congested, and Richmond has many of the urban/suburban amenities that many people are looking for. Northern Virginia expats can enjoy an easier, less-expensive lifestyle in the Richmond region but connect to Northern Virginia employers remotely and zip up I-95 (when it’s not a parking lot) a few times a month for in-person meetings, as needed.
I suspect that a closer examination also would show that an increasing number of Northern Virginia businesses are switching ancillary and back-office operations to the Richmond area. Again, there’s the combination of lower cost, livability and relatively close proximity.
Assuming this analysis is valid, a number of observations and questions arise.
While the City of Richmond is doing a good job of promoting higher-density, mixed-use infill (one of the few things the city does well), it can’t come close to accommodating the population growth of the entire region. Outside of Richmond, development has been characterized by the same kind of suburban sprawl that ruined Fairfax County. The population centers of Henrico and Chesterfield counties have been slow to change course. Will the Richmond area Fairfax itself?
Another interesting question is how the influx of Northern refugees will alter the politics of the Richmond region. Most Northern Virginians arrived from elsewhere, mainly Blue states in the Northeast. In turn, Fairfax County is solid Blue. Will Northern Virginia emigres, having fled the Northeast, turn Henrico and Chesterfield Blue as well? They may have done so already in Henrico.
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