Single Cities

We have a family friend who recently moved to a new housing community a good thirty minutes from downtown. He is single and wants to meet someone and get married. Despite pleadings from family and friends that there would only be families in this community, he moved anyways. His thought? Young married couples would know single women to set him up with. So far, the experiment hasn’t worked out in his favor, and my guess is that he will give up and move closer downtown within a few years. Why? Traditionally, single people live downtown, and families live in the suburbs. But are there places where that differs? Are there any hot spots for singles to go and look for love?

Full disclosure: when we first looked at the data of singles nationwide, most clusters of single people are imprisoned, and we are not about to go suggesting that singles find love with inmates. Instead, we looked at the percentage of people who are never married. The nationwide map is very interesting, from the rural areas of the Dakotas down to Texas, there are lots of interesting patches of singles. Those are also areas where there are large amounts of people who work on the oil fields, farms and cattle ranches, so perhaps single women looking for men might consider a relocation.

When you look at the data at a city level, most follow the principle we laid out earlier: singles live in the city center, families live in the suburbs. Such is the case with Nashville, St. Louis, Orlando, New York, and Pheonix. Those maps are below using hex level geography.

Nashville

St. Louis

Orlando

Pheonix

Two that don’t exactly follow the mold are New York and Los Angeles, which have separate clusters of singles in different cores of the city, though the highest concentration in Los Angeles is downtown, and in NYC, people are mostly single in Manhattan.

Los Angeles

NYC

The Dakotas are very interesting, with large clusters of singles not in major metropolitan areas, but as previously discussed, are likely clusters of men working in the oil field.

Are you willing to relocate for love?