Since 2010, population growth has either restarted in many cities that lost inhabitants for decades, or has accelerated for cities that never stopped growing. New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, D.C., Minneapolis, Miami, Philadelphia, Denver, and Chicago have all experienced this phenomenon, not to mention others, I'm sure. It's a huge trend.

Some cities are growing a bit, but far more people, proportionally, are heading to the suburbs, which is where all the fastest-growing places in the US are.

For example, between 2000 and 2014, SF added about 75,000 residents. In that same period, Irvine, CA added about 150,000 residents, and one quadrant of the Dallas suburbs, Collin County, TX (the northern suburbs) added about 400,000 residents. All of NYC put together in the same period added 500,000 residents, slightly beating out this one part of suburban Dallas.

I personally like living in dense urban areas, but for there to be a sea change in that direction on the scale of overall American trends, people need to be moving into cities in much larger numbers. Here's a modest goal that would represent an undeniable change, even if still only for a small minority of the population: over the next 10 years, 2-3% more Americans live in dense urban areas than currently. That's ~6-9 million more people in dense urban areas. As far as I can tell, we're nowhere near being on track for that to happen.

City populations can grow without an actual trend of increasing desire to live in the city. It's the percentage that matters, not the absolute number.

Yep. They used to say every generation thinks they're the first to discover sex, but as I get older it seems like that applies to many, many things.