New Geography

Tag: Census 2010

  • The Evolving Urban Form: Dallas-Fort Worth

    The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area (Note 1), which corresponds to the Dallas-Fort Worth urban area, provides a casebook example of expanding urbanization. Dallas-Fort Worth has been one of the fastest growing major metropolitan areas in the nation for decades. Dallas-Fort Worth was among only three US metropolitan areas adding more than 1,000,000 residents between 2000 and 2010. Only Houston’s addition of 1,230,000 exceeded that of Dallas-Fort Worth, which grew by 1,210,000, a 23.4 percent growth rate. Atlanta was the third metropolitan area to add more than one million residents, at 1,021,000. During the 2000s, Dallas-Fort Worth passed Philadelphia to become the nation’s fourth largest urban area, with a population of 6,372,000. Only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are larger.

    On an international scale, the United Nations estimates indicate that only Singapore, Houston and Atlanta had greater percentage growth between 2000 and 2010 among high-income world urban areas that exceed 4,000,000 in population.

    The Core: The core of the metropolitan area experienced the earliest growth and has since seen its share of growth and its growth rate decline significantly. Dallas County, which includes the historical core municipality of Dallas (Note 2), had a growth rate of 6.7 percent between 2000 and 2010, approximately one third less than the national growth rate of 9.7 percent. Nearly all of the growth in Dallas County was outside the city of Dallas, which added only 0.8 percent to its population, less than one-tenth of the national rate. The city of Dallas added 9,000 residents, while the suburbs within Dallas County added 140,000 residents.

    Overall, Dallas County accounted for 12 percent of the metropolitan area’s growth between 2000 and 2010. This is down from 41 percent between 1950 and 2000. Between 1900 and 1950, Dallas County accounted for an even larger share (66 percent) of growth (Figure 1). Dallas County’s annual growth rate fell from 4.1 percent between 1900 and 1950 to 2.6 percent between 1950 and 2000 to 0.7 percent in the last decade (Figure 2).


    Inner Suburban Counties: During the 2000s, the greatest growth was experienced in the inner suburban counties (those abutting the core county, Dallas). These six counties (Collin, Denton, Ellis, Kaufman, Rockwall and Tarrant, where Fort Worth is located) experienced a population gain of 38.9 percent. Inner suburban counties now contain 56 percent of the metropolitan area population. Between 2000 and 2010, the inner suburban counties captured 82 percent of the metropolitan area, up from 53 percent between 1950 and 2000 and 38 percent between 1900 and 1950. The inner suburban counties grew 1.7 percent annually from 1900 to 1950, increasing to 3.2 percent between 1950 and 2000 and 3.3 percent in the 2000s.

    Outer Suburban Counties: The outer suburban counties represent a comparatively small portion of the metropolitan area’s population. These five counties (Delta, Hunt, Jasper, Parker and Wise) accounted for only 7 percent of the metropolitan area population. The 2000 to 2010 growth rate was 20.9 percent, somewhat below the metropolitan area rate of 23.4 percent, and more than double the national population growth rate of 9.7 percent national growth rate.

    Between 2000 and 2010, the outer suburban counties captured 6 percent of the metropolitan area growth, the same share as between 1950 and 2000. However, perhaps surprisingly, their combined 1950 population was 19 percent below that of 1900. This illustrates the declining fortunes in the early part of the 20th century of counties that were dominated by agriculture, as the farm population and population of many small farm dependent communities declined. Of course, the 1900 to 1950 losses have since been compensated many times over by the post 1950 suburbanization. Nonetheless, one outer suburban county, Delta is unique in continuing to lose population through the 2010 census. Delta County’s 2010 population of 5,200 is approximately one third of its 1900 population of 15,200.

    The outer suburban counties lost 0.4 percent of their population annually from 1900 to 1950, but turned around to gain 2.1 percent from 1950 to 2000. Between 2000 and 2010, the growth rate fell back to 1.9 percent.

    The City of Dallas: The historical core municipality of Dallas illustrates of the dynamics of aggressive annexation policies. In 1910, Dallas covered only 16 square miles (41 square kilometers) and had a population of 92,000. Even at this early date, the city of Dallas was not very dense, with 5,700 residents per square mile (2,200 per square kilometer). The city reached its peak density of 7,300 (2,800 per square kilometer) in 1940, after having expanded to 41 square miles (106 square kilometers) and a population of 295,000.. Even at this peak density, the city of Dallas remained well below the densities of other core cities, especially in the East and Midwest, most of which had densities exceeding 10,000 per square mile (3,900 per square kilometer).

    By 1950, the city had expanded to 112 square miles (289 square kilometers) and with a population of 334,000, the population density had fallen to 3,900 (1,500 per square kilometer). Larger annexations were to follow, with the city reaching 343 square miles (885 square kilometers) by 2010. With a population of 1,198,000, the population density was 3,500 per square mile (1,350 per square kilometer), less than one-half the 1940 peak. Virtually all new owned housing was built consistent with the post-World War II suburban form, as occurred in metropolitan areas around the nation. The city’s addition of 9,000 residents between 2000 and 2010 was far less than the 182,000 gain between 1990 and 2000. By 2000, there was little greenfield land left to develop in the city and the population could be peaking. Indeed, the population could decline in future censuses, as has happened in geographically constrained urban cores around the world. Any such decline could, however, be counteracted by immigration, as has occurred in some urban cores.

    Ethic Trends in the Metropolitan Area: As would be expected in a state bordering Mexico, the Latino population of Dallas-Fort Worth grew substantially between 2000 and 2010, at a 43 percent rate. Overall, Latinos accounted for 42 percent of the metropolitan area’s growth. The Latino population increase was nearly 520,000, more people than live in the core city of Atlanta.

    However, unlike a number of other metropolitan areas, there was strong growth in the African-American population, which added 33 percent to its count. African-Americans accounted for 19 percent of the metropolitan area’s growth.

    This growth was strongest in the core county of Dallas, where Latino and African-American growth made up for a decline in the rest of the population.  In the inner suburban counties, 53 percent of the growth was Latino or African-America, while the lowest share of Latino and African American growth was in the outer suburban counties, at 30 percent.

    Overall, 75 percent of Latino growth and 69 percent of African-American growth took place in the suburban counties, which is a substantial change from the past (Figure 3).

    The Urban Area: Urban area data has not been released from the 2010 census. However, it is clear that Dallas-Fort Worth has become less dense since 1950. Between 1950 and 2000, the population density of the urban area declined approximately 10 percent.   Even so, it is surprising to some that the Dallas-Fort Worth urban area, with its low-density reputation, was only 12 percent less dense that Portland urban area in 2000, despite the aggressive densification strategies employed by Portland.

    The Expanding Metropolitan Area: The story in Dallas-Fort Worth is little different (Table) from what has emerged in metropolitan areas around the world, in places like Seoul, Mexico City and Mumbai. Dallas-Fort Worth also illustrates a trend only now becoming more obvious, that middle-sized and smaller metropolitan areas are generally growing faster than the megacities within their own countries (see the report by the McKinsey Global Institute). The United States has two megacities, the New York metropolitan area, which grew 3.1 percent from 2000 to 2010 and Los Angeles, which grew 3.7 percent. Dallas-Fort Worth’s far higher growth rate of 23.4 percent translated into an actual population increase of 175,000 more than the combined increase of the two megacities, despite their having five times the population.

    Dallas-Fort Worth: Population Trend by Sector and County 
    1900-2010
    1900 1950 2000 2010
    CORE COUNTY
    Dallas County       82,756    614,799  2,218,899  2,368,139
    INNER SUBURBAN COUNTIES    222,747    527,281  2,596,623  3,585,286
    Collin County       50,087      41,692    491,675    782,341
    Denton County       28,318      41,365    432,976    662,614
    Ellis County       50,059      45,645    111,360    149,610
    Kaufman County       33,376      31,170      71,313    103,350
    Rockwall County         8,531        6,156      43,080      78,337
    Tarrant County       52,376    361,253  1,446,219  1,809,034
    OUTER SUBURBAN COUNTIES    149,302    120,754    346,022    418,348
    Delta County       15,249        8,964        5,327        5,231
    Hunt County       47,295      42,731      76,596      86,129
    Johnson County       33,819      31,390    126,811    150,934
    Parker County       25,823      21,528      88,495    116,927
    Wise County       27,116      16,141      48,793      59,127
    METROPOLITAN STATISTICAL AREA    454,805  1,262,834  5,161,544  6,371,773

    The Future? It is an open question whether the rapid growth of Dallas-Fort Worth will continue. As it continues to grow, the stagnation that now afflicts the nation’s two megacities and its near-megacity, Chicago could spread to Dallas-Fort Worth. On the other hand, Dallas-Fort Worth has advantages that could permit its growth to continue for multiple decades into the future. Texas has a favorable business climate, low taxes and less heavy handed regulation than New York, California and Illinois. Dallas-Fort Worth has plenty of developable land as well as a political culture not cowed by development. The economic advance of its growing population, particularly the burgeoning Latino population, depends upon public policies that favor housing affordability and urban expansion. If it continues on its current course, Dallas-Fort Worth could pass the Chicago metropolitan area in population by 2050 and could even challenge Los Angeles later in the century.

    —-

    Note 1: As currently defined by the Census Bureau. Officially titled the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan statistical area. Metropolitan areas are essentially labor markets and include a principal urban area and rural (non-urban) areas and may include smaller urban areas.

    Note 2: Fort Worth is not considered a historical core municipality, based upon the discussion in Perspectives on Urban Cores and Suburbs, though the Census Bureau considers Fort Worth and Arlington to be principal cities (which are a different thing). The "Dallas-Fort Worth" terminology is used because of its wide acceptance and to make the geographical expanse of the metropolitan area more clear.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

    Photo by Trey Ratcliff

  • Local Stakeholders Debate Changes to San Francisco Neighborhood Demographics

    Despite one of the highest population densities in California and a prohibitive cost of living, San Francisco keeps packing them in. Figures released by the U.S. Census last month show that “the City” added 28,502 people during the last ten years, a modest population bump of 3.7 percent from 2000.

    The racial composition of the city changed significantly during the “naughts.” The 2010 Census numbers indicate that the city lost nearly a quarter of its black population with 14,000 fewer residents than in 2000. Although still the largest group as described by race, there were 48,000 fewer white residents than in 2000, a 14 percent decrease. Both the number of Asian and Hispanic residents increased by 11 percent, constituting 33 and 15 percent of the city’s population, respectively.

    Additionally, San Francisco saw its already small percentage of children sink further: there were 5,000 fewer residents under the age of 18 residing in the city than in 2000. Although the former head of the city’s Department Children, Youth and Their Families believes that this number is low due to the number of undocumented children, the findings confirm the anecdote familiar to all San Francisco residents that there very well may be more dogs than children.

    Although the Census has not yet released data more specific smaller geographic units to help decipher the precise demographic shifts, Castro neighborhood stakeholders believe the area has changed in the last ten years. Despite the findings of the Census, many neighborhood observers have seen an increase in the number of children in the area, anecdotally suggesting that the increase in youngsters was absorbed by decreases in other neighborhoods. Perhaps families who can afford to raise children in such an expensive city are choosing to do so among the plush hills and restored Victorians of the Castro and nearby areas – nearby Noe Valley has long derisively been called “Stroller Valley” by the city’s hipsters.

    “The Castro has always been diverse in a number of ways,” Supervisor Scott Wiener said. “I think the biggest demographic changes over the past decade have been an increase in the number of parents, gay and straight, with children, and fewer young people because of the cost of housing in the neighborhood.”

    The 2000 Census showed the 94114 zip code with markedly different demographics than the rest of the City. For instance, 83 percent of the population was white, compared to nearly 50 percent citywide in 2000, and nearly 60 percent of residents in the zip code were male.

    “I do think that the area has become more diverse,” Mark Dicko, a realtor based at Herth Real Estate on Castro Street, said, agreeing with Wiener.

    However, the realtor did not share the same opinion on the area becoming grayer. “I’ve seen quite a few younger people moving into the area, many of the Google, Facebook, Apple employees have been able to purchase homes and condos or just want to rent in the area to be in the city. I have seen all ethnicities and sexual orientations deciding that they want to live in this area which is just fantastic.”

    “Certainly up in Buena Vista Park in the last 10-15 years, many families who had been there for a long time have moved out,” Richard Magary, chair of the Buena Vista Neighborhood Association, said. “Lots of upper-middle class houses changed hands to families with kids. It’s nice to see the fresher and younger families coming in.”

    Overall, the state added almost 4.5 million new residents, an increase of 10 percent from 2000. Much of this growth occurred in the Inland Empire and other counties in the San Joaquin Valley.

    Nationwide, the population grew by 9.7 percent to nearly 309 million.

    A version of this article was originally published in the Castro Courier neighborhood newspaper in San Francisco. Andy Sywak is the former publisher of the Courier. He now lives in Sacramento.

    Photo by stephanie vacher

  • Cities and the Census: Cities Neither Booming Nor Withering

    For many mayors across the country, including New York City’s Michael Bloomberg, the recently announced results of the 2010 census were a downer. In a host of cities, the population turned out to be substantially lower than the U.S. Census Bureau had estimated for 2010—in New York’s case, by some 250,000 people. Bloomberg immediately called the decade’s meager 2.1 percent growth, less than one-quarter the national average, an “undercount.” Senator Charles Schumer blamed extraterrestrials, accusing the Census Bureau of “living on another planet.” The truth, though, is that the census is very much of this world. It just isn’t the world that mayors, the media, and most urban planners want to see.

    Start with the fact that America continues to suburbanize. The country’s metropolitan areas have two major components: core cities (New York City, for example) and suburbs (such as Westchester County, Long Island, northern New Jersey, and even Pike County in Pennsylvania). During the 2000s, the census shows, just 8.6 percent of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than a million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6 percent represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4 percent. The New York metropolitan area was no outlier: though it did better than the national average, with 29 percent of its growth taking place within New York City, that’s still a lot lower than the 46 percent that the center region saw in the 1990s.

    This may be shocking to some. For years, academics, the media, and big-city developers have been suggesting that suburbs were dying and that people were flocking back to the cities that they had fled in the 1970s. The Obama administration has taken this as gospel. “We’ve reached the limits of suburban development,” Housing and Urban Development secretary Shaun Donovan opined in 2010. “People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.” Yet of the 51 metropolitan areas that have more than 1 million residents, only three—Boston, Providence, and Oklahoma City—saw their core cities grow faster than their suburbs. (And both Boston and Providence grew slowly; their suburbs just grew more slowly. Oklahoma City, meanwhile, built suburban-style residences on the plentiful undeveloped land within city limits.)

    All this suburbanization means that the best unit for comparison may not be the core city but the metropolitan area, and the census shows clearly which metropolitan areas are growing and which are not. The top ten population gainers—growing by 20 percent, twice the national average or more—are the metropolitan areas surrounding Las Vegas, Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Riverside–San Bernardino, Orlando, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, and Atlanta. These areas are largely suburban in form. None developed the large, dense core cities that dominated America before the post–World War II suburban boom began. By contrast, many of the metropolitan areas that grew at rates half the national average or less—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, New York—have core areas that are the old, dense variety. Planners and pundits may like density, but people, for the most part, continue to prefer more space.

    If you do look at cities themselves, rather than at larger metropolitan areas, you’ll see that the census reveals three different categories. The most robust cities, with population growth over 15 percent for the decade—Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, and Orlando—were located within the kind of metropolitan area that urbanists tend to dislike: highly suburbanized, dominated by single-family homes, and with few people using public transit. That’s partly because these cities developed along largely suburban lines by annexing undeveloped land and low-density areas. This has been the case in virtually all the fastest-growing cities. Raleigh has expanded its boundaries to become 12 times larger than it was in 1950; Charlotte and Orlando are nine times larger, and Jacksonville an astounding 25 times larger.

    At the opposite end of the spectrum are core cities, mostly in the Midwest and Northeast and often land-constrained, that have continued to shrink. These include longtime disaster zones like Detroit and Cleveland as well as newer ones like Birmingham in the South. They include Pittsburgh, a city much praised for its livability but one that is aging rapidly and whose city government, based disproportionately on revenue from universities and nonprofits, is among the nation’s most fiscally strapped. They even include Chicago, which lost some 200,000 people during the 2000s, its population falling to the lowest level since the 1910 census. The reasons aren’t hard to identify: despite all the hype about Chicago’s recovery and the legacy of Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Windy City is among the most fiscally weak urban areas in the country, its schools are in terrible shape, and its economy is struggling.

    Finally, there are cities that have grown, but not quickly. New York City’s population, for example, inched to a record high in the 2000s, but that growth was less than the national average. The population of Los Angeles grew a mere 97,000—the smallest increase since the 1890s. Many of the slow-growing cities (New York, San Francisco, and Boston, for example) suffer from high housing costs, which inhibit population growth. But they also host high-end industries—finance, technology, and business services—and enough well-paid workers in these industries to afford pricey housing and sustain a small rate of growth. The cities also attract already wealthy people from elsewhere.

    The census provides information on a smaller level, too, telling us not just which cities have grown, but where the growth has taken place within cities. Often, it has been in and around the historic downtowns. This is a trend in many cities that otherwise differ starkly (New York, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles), and it reflects a subtle shift in the role of the downtown. Rather than reasserting themselves as dominant job centers, downtowns are becoming residential and cultural—a change that H. G. Wells predicted when he wrote that by 2000, the center of London would be “essentially a bazaar, a great gallery of shops and places of concourse and rendezvous.” What may have been an office, industrial, or retail zone morphs into a gentrified locale attractive to the migratory global rich, to affluent young people, and to childless households.

    This downtown recovery (which many cities subsidized heavily) was partly why so many urbanists and developers identified a broader back-to-the-city movement; but in reality, the phenomenon was usually limited to a relatively small population and a relatively small area. Since 1950, for example, St. Louis has lost a greater share of its population than any American city ever boasting 500,000 or more residents. The area from downtown to Central West End experienced strong growth during the 2000s, however, adding more people than Portland’s Pearl District, a favorite of urban planners. Yet this gain of 7,000 people was far from enough to offset the loss of 36,000 in the rest of St. Louis.

    It’s also worth noting that in economic terms, downtowns are losing their hold. For example, though the residential population of Chicago’s Loop tripled to 20,000 in the past decade, that famed business district lost almost 65,000 jobs; its share of the metropolitan area’s employment also fell. Los Angeles’s downtown, whose population has likewise grown, lost roughly 200,000 jobs from 1995 to 2005. Manhattan is losing employment share to the other four boroughs, as it has been for decades; but as a recent report from the Center for an Urban Future reveals, the process accelerated over the last ten years. From 2000 to 2009, Manhattan lost a net 41,833 jobs, while other boroughs saw net increases. This employment dispersion is even more evident in the suburbs. Of commuters who live in the inner-ring suburbs (such as Yonkers and East Orange), 60 percent work in their home counties and only 14 percent in Manhattan. Of commuters from such outer-ring suburbs as Haverstraw and Morristown, 73 percent work in their home counties and 6 percent in Manhattan.

    What, in the end, does the census tell us about America’s cities today? Certainly not that they’re dying, as they threatened to do in the 1950s, but equally certainly that they aren’t roaring back. Cities remain a successful niche product for a relatively small percentage of the population. Most people, though, even in the New York metropolitan area, continue to move toward the periphery rather than the core. That said, New York’s continuing growth over the past decade suggests that its recovery will likely prove durable. As for Senator Schumer’s “another planet” allegations, the census is simply confirming the fact that terrestrial Americans continue to disperse, both within and among metropolitan areas. So far, there’s little that planners, policy makers, and urban boosters can do about that.

    This piece originally appeared in City Journal.

    Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, and an adjunct fellow of the Legatum Institute in London. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, released in February, 2010.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

    Photo by caruba

  • The Accelerating Suburbanization of New York

    Some of the best evidence that the tide has not turned against dispersion and suburbanization comes from an unlikely source:  New York’s 2010 census results. If dense urbanism works anywhere in America, it does within this greatest of US traditional urban areas.

    Before the actual count, the Census Bureau estimated, in large part as a result of a successful historical core municipality (city of New York) challenges, that as of Census Day (April 1, 2010), the city would have added 413,000 residents since 2000 and would have accounted for more than one-half of the metropolitan area growth. But the numbers turned out startlingly different. In fact, the city’s census count came in nearly 250,000 below projections and accounted for the lowest share of New York metropolitan area growth since the 1970s.

    Overall the 2010 census figures paint a picture of continuing dispersion in the nation’s largest metropolitan area, New York. The metropolitan area stretches from Manhattan, with the world’s second largest business district (after Tokyo) to the four outer boroughs of the city of New York, more than 100 miles to the eastern end of Long Island, north to Putnam and Rockland counties, completely across northern New Jersey, jumping the Delaware River to include Pike County, Pennsylvania and south to Ocean County (New Jersey), nearly all the way to Atlantic City. In all, this 23 county metropolitan area has the nation’s largest population and actually extended its margin over second place Los Angeles, which has been converted from a growth leader to a laggard giant growing slower than most Midwestern metropolitan areas. New York added 574,000 residents, while Los Angeles added 473,000. If New York continues to add more people than Los Angeles in future censuses, its position as the nation’s largest metropolitan area be secure.

    Major metropolitan areas in general did poorly in terms of growth in the new cesusus. This was particularly true in New York. Between 2000 and 2010, the New York metropolitan area population rose from 18,323,000 to 18,897,000, a modest growth rate of 3.1 percent, one of the slowest among major metropolitan areas in the country. The national growth rate was three times as high

    Suburbanization Accelerating Again: If you had read the New York Times and other Manhattan-based media over the last decade you would have assumed the suburbs were in decline and cities ascendant, particularly in the New York area. Yet in reality over the past decade, the suburban counties captured their largest share of New York metropolitan area growth in three decades. During the 2000s, the suburbs accounted for 71 percent of growth, up from 54 percent during the 1990s and 48 percent in the 1980s. The outer suburbs grew the fastest, while the inner suburbs – some of which are denser than historical core municipalities in other metropolitan areas – grew faster than the historical core municipality, the city of New York (Figure 1 and Table)

     

    NEW YORK METROPOLITAN AREA
    POPULATION TREND BY COUNTY: 2000 TO 2010
    2000 2010 Change %
    HISTORIC CORE MUNICIPALITY (New York)
    Bronx County, NY       1,332,650       1,385,108        52,458 3.9%
    Kings County, NY       2,465,326       2,504,700        39,374 1.6%
    New York County, NY       1,537,195       1,585,873        48,678 3.2%
    Queens County, NY       2,229,379       2,230,722          1,343 0.1%
    Richmond County, NY         443,728         468,730        25,002 5.6%
    Subtotal       8,008,278       8,175,133       166,855 2.1%
    INNER SUBURBAN
    Bergen County, NJ         884,118         905,116        20,998 2.4%
    Essex County, NJ         793,633         783,969         (9,664) -1.2%
    Hudson County, NJ         608,975         634,266        25,291 4.2%
    Middlesex County, NJ         750,162         809,858        59,696 8.0%
    Nassau County, NY       1,334,544       1,339,532          4,988 0.4%
    Passaic County, NJ         489,049         501,226        12,177 2.5%
    Union County, NJ         522,541         536,499        13,958 2.7%
    Westchester County, NY         923,459         949,113        25,654 2.8%
    Subtotal       6,306,481       6,459,579       153,098 2.4%
    OUTER SUBURBAN
    Hunterdon County, NJ         121,989         128,349          6,360 5.2%
    Monmouth County, NJ         615,301         630,380        15,079 2.5%
    Morris County, NJ         470,212         492,276        22,064 4.7%
    Ocean County, NJ         510,916         576,567        65,651 12.8%
    Pike County, PA           46,302           57,369        11,067 23.9%
    Putnam County, NY           95,745           99,710          3,965 4.1%
    Rockland County, NY         286,753         311,687        24,934 8.7%
    Somerset County, NJ         297,490         323,444        25,954 8.7%
    Suffolk County, NY       1,419,369       1,493,350        73,981 5.2%
    Sussex County, NJ         144,166         149,265          5,099 3.5%
    Subtotal       4,008,243       4,262,397       254,154 6.3%
    SUBTOTAL: SUBURBAN     10,314,724     10,721,976       407,252 3.9%
    TOTAL     18,323,002     18,897,109       574,107 3.1%

     

    Critically, the city of New York did worse than at any time since the 800,000 population loss that was sustained in the 1970s, representing all of the loss since 1950. Between 1950 and 1980 the suburbs added 3.9 million residents. The city’s fortunes had improved measurably in the 1980s and 1990s, with approximately one-half of the metropolitan area’s growth. The last decade’s share of metropolitan area growth – only 29 percent – in the historical core municipality indicates a startling acceleration of dispersion, although fortunately not a return to the population decline of the 1970s (Figure 2).

    City of New York: The city of New York grew from 8,008,000 to 8,175,000 between 2000 and 2010, a rate of 2.1 percent.

    Staten Island (Richmond County), which is largely suburban in form, was the fastest growing of New York’s boroughs, with a growth rate of 5.6 percent. The Bronx grew the second fastest, at a rate of 3.9 percent. Only Staten Island and Queens (below) reached their population peaks in the 2010 census (Figure 3).

    The Bronx has experienced perhaps the nation’s most successful urban turn-arounds, after a disastrous period in the 1970s and 1980s, when large swaths of the South Bronx were literally leveled. The population fell from 1,472,000 in 1970 to 1,204,000 in 1990. By 2010, the population had recovered nearly two-thirds of the loss, to 1,385,000.

    Manhattan (New York County) added 3.2 percent to its population (49,000) and reached 1,586,000. This is approximately one-third below its population peak of 2,232,000 in 1910.   Manhattan’s population, however, remained approximately 45,000 below the Census Bureau estimates.

    Brooklyn (Kings County) continues to be the largest borough in New York, with 2,505,000 residents, an increase of 39,000 (1.6 percent) between 2000 and 2010. Brooklyn reached its population peak of 2,738,000 in 1950. Brooklyn’s population proved approximately 75,000 below the Census Bureau’s estimates.

    The slowest growing borough was Queens, which added only 2,000 residents (a 0.1 percent population increase), yet reached its population peak of 2,231,000. Queens had added more residents than any other borough since 1950 and added approximately 275,000 residents in the 1990 to 2000 census period.

    Inner Ring Suburbs: The inner ring counties (Nassau, Westchester, Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Hudson, Union and Middlesex) grew 2.4 percent from 6,306,000 to 6,460,000. Growth rates varied significantly, from a loss of 1.2 percent in Essex County (where Newark is located) to 8.0 percent in Middlesex County. Middlesex County includes newer suburban areas further away from the core than in any other inner ring county. Much of the Middlesex County growth occurred in these areas. The inner ring suburbs captured 26.7 percent of the metropolitan area growth.

    Outer Ring Suburbs: By far the e fastest growth was in the outer ring counties, with a population increase of 6.3 percent, from 4,008,000 to 4,262,000. Monmouth County was the slowest growing outer ring county, adding 2.5 percent to its population. Pike County, Pennsylvania, which is the farthest to the west of any county in the metropolitan area, had by far the highest growth rate, at 23.8 percent. Ocean County, New Jersey, had the second fastest growth rate, at 12.8 percent. Ocean County lies at the extreme southern end of the metropolitan area. The outer ring counties captured 44.3 percent of the metropolitan area growth.

    Suburban Growth and Projections: Overall suburban growth was from 10,314,000 to 10,712,000, for a gain of 407,000 (4.0 percent). This was above the Census Bureau estimate of 392,000. The suburbs now contain 57 percent of the metropolitan area population.

    New York’s Continuing Dispersion: The dispersion of the 2000s is an extension of the overall metropolitan area trend since 1950 (Note). The historical core municipality, New York, has added less than 300,000 residents, or 3.6 percent. The suburbs have added 5.3 million residents, nearly doubling their population. Approximately 95 percent of the metropolitan area’s growth was in the suburbs between 1950 and 2010 (Figure 4).

    The dispersion is apparent even in the city of New York. Since 1950, Queens, the outermost of the inner four boroughs, added nearly 700,000 residents, while the more inner boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, lost nearly as many residents. Overall these four inner boroughs gained only 6,000 residents since 1950. Staten Island, which is largely post-war suburban, grew 277,000, while the city overall was growing by 283,000, leaving only a net gain of 6,000 for the four inner boroughs of New York.

    A recent newgeography.com article documents similar patterns in employment dispersion and commuting during the 1990 to 2008 period.

    Consistency with the National Trend: The accelerating suburbanization of New York is consistent with the national trends in major metropolitan areas in the new census data. Between 1990 and 2000, historical core municipalities accounted for 15 percent of metropolitan area growth. Between 2000 and 2010, the share of historical core municipality growth had fallen to 9 percent.

    Note: This analysis is based upon the metropolitan area boundaries as currently defined.

    Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

    Photo by Mike Lee

  • Census 2010 Offers Portrait of America in Transition

    The Census Bureau just finished releasing all of the state redistricting file information from the 2010 Census, giving us a now complete portrait of population change for the entire country.  Population growth continued to be heavily concentrated in suburban metropolitan counties while many rural areas, particularly in the Great Plains, continue to shrink.


    Percentage change in population, 2000-2010. Counties that grew in population in blue, decliners in red. Note: Legend values not multiplied by 100.

    Dividing counties by those growing faster or slower than the US average paints the picture even more starkly:


    Percentage change in population, 2000-2010.  Counties growing faster than the US average in blue, slower than the US average in red.  Note: Legend values not multiplied by 100.

    The release of all county data means it is also possible to take an unofficial, preliminary look at metropolitan area growth.  The biggest gainers were Sunbelt cities in the South, Texas, and the Midwest, while the Midwest and Northeast continued to lag, particularly the old heavy manufacturing axis stretching from Detroit to Pittsburgh. But this picture was not monolithic. Many Southern cities with Rust Belt profiles like Birmingham failed to grow much compared to neighbors, nor did coastal California with its development restrictions.


    Percentage change in population, 2000-2010. MSAs that grew in population in blue, decliners in red. Note: Legend values not multiplied by 100.


    Percentage change in population, 2000-2010.  Counties growing faster than the US average in blue, slower than the US average in red.  Note: Legend values not multiplied by 100.

    A full table of population change for large metro areas (greater than one million people) is available at the bottom of this post.

    Basic race information is also available in this data release, since it is used to ensure redistricting complies with the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.  Here’s a map showing the concentration of Hispanic population the US:


    Population of Hispanic Origin, as a percentage of total population. Note: Legend values not multipled by 100.

    Hispanic population remains heavily concentrated in the Southwest, but the interior, and especially parts of the South one would not expect, such as Alabama, posted significant gains in Hispanic population share.


    Hispanic population as change in percentage of total population, 2000-2010.  Note: Legend values not multiplied by 100.

    As the highest concentrations of Hispanics remain in the Southwest, similarly the Black population is at its heaviest concentrations in the South:

    Black Alone population as a percentage of total population, 2010.  Note: Legend percentages not multiplied by 100.

    A lot has been written about the so-called reverse Great Migration of blacks from the North to the South.  These results show something of that effect, but less of a general than a specific migration. Some cities both North and South are becoming magnets for Blacks, while other traditional Black hubs like Chicago are no longer favored. Note that some northern cities that showed a larger increase in concentration started off on a low base, like Minneapolis-St. Paul:


    Black Alone population as change in percentage of total population, 2000-2010.  Note: Legend values not multiplied by 100.

    As noted above, here are all US metro areas with a population greater than one million people in 2010, ranked by percentage change in population:

    2000-2010 Population Growth, MSAs of 1 Million or More
    Rank Metropolitan Area 2000 2010 Total Change Pct Change
    1 Las Vegas-Paradise, NV 1,375,765 1,951,269 575,504 41.8%
    2 Raleigh-Cary, NC 797,071 1,130,490 333,419 41.8%
    3 Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX 1,249,763 1,716,289 466,526 37.3%
    4 Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC 1,330,448 1,758,038 427,590 32.1%
    5 Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA 3,254,821 4,224,851 970,030 29.8%
    6 Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL 1,644,561 2,134,411 489,850 29.8%
    7 Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, AZ 3,251,876 4,192,887 941,011 28.9%
    8 Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX 4,715,407 5,946,800 1,231,393 26.1%
    9 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 1,711,703 2,142,508 430,805 25.2%
    10 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA 4,247,981 5,268,860 1,020,879 24.0%
    11 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 5,161,544 6,371,773 1,210,229 23.4%
    12 Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Franklin, TN 1,311,789 1,589,934 278,145 21.2%
    13 Jacksonville, FL 1,122,750 1,345,596 222,846 19.8%
    14 Sacramento–Arden-Arcade–Roseville, CA 1,796,857 2,149,127 352,270 19.6%
    15 Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO 2,179,240 2,543,482 364,242 16.7%
    16 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 4,796,183 5,582,170 785,987 16.4%
    17 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 2,395,997 2,783,243 387,246 16.2%
    18 Salt Lake City, UT 968,858 1,124,197 155,339 16.0%
    19 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 1,927,881 2,226,009 298,128 15.5%
    20 Indianapolis-Carmel, IN 1,525,104 1,756,241 231,137 15.2%
    21 Richmond, VA 1,096,957 1,258,251 161,294 14.7%
    22 Oklahoma City, OK 1,095,421 1,252,987 157,566 14.4%
    23 Columbus, OH 1,612,694 1,836,536 223,842 13.9%
    24 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 3,043,878 3,439,809 395,931 13.0%
    25 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL 5,007,564 5,564,635 557,071 11.1%
    26 Kansas City, MO-KS 1,836,038 2,035,334 199,296 10.9%
    27 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 2,968,806 3,279,833 311,027 10.5%
    28 Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 1,161,975 1,283,566 121,591 10.5%
    29 San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA 2,813,833 3,095,313 281,480 10.0%
    30 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 1,205,204 1,316,100 110,896 9.2%
    31 Birmingham-Hoover, AL 1,052,238 1,128,047 75,809 7.2%
    32 Baltimore-Towson, MD 2,552,994 2,710,489 157,495 6.2%
    33 Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC 1,576,370 1,671,683 95,313 6.0%
    34 Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN 2,009,632 2,130,151 120,519 6.0%
    35 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 1,735,819 1,836,911 101,092 5.8%
    36 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT 1,148,618 1,212,381 63,763 5.6%
    37 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA 4,123,740 4,335,391 211,651 5.1%
    38 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD 5,687,147 5,965,343 278,196 4.9%
    39 St. Louis, MO-IL 2,698,687 2,812,896 114,209 4.2%
    40 Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI 9,098,316 9,461,105 362,789 4.0%
    41 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA 12,365,627 12,828,837 463,210 3.7%
    42 Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, WI 1,500,741 1,555,908 55,167 3.7%
    43 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH 4,391,344 4,552,402 161,058 3.7%
    44 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA 18,323,002 18,897,109 574,107 3.1%
    45 Rochester, NY 1,037,831 1,054,323 16,492 1.6%
    46 Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA 1,582,997 1,600,852 17,855 1.1%
    47 Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 1,170,111 1,135,509 -34,602 -3.0%
    48 Pittsburgh, PA 2,431,087 2,356,285 -74,802 -3.1%
    49 Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH 2,148,143 2,077,240 -70,903 -3.3%
    50 Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI 4,452,557 4,296,250 -156,307 -3.5%
    51 New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA 1,316,510 1,167,764 -148,746 -11.3%

    Aaron M. Renn is an independent writer on urban affairs based in the Midwest. His writings appear at The Urbanophile. Maps and analysis done using Telestrian.

  • Final Census Results: Core Cities Do Worse in 2000s than 1990s

    Based upon complete census counts for 2010, historical core municipalities of the nation’s major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) captured a smaller share of growth in the 2000s than in the 1990s.

    The results for the 50 metropolitan areas (New Orleans excluded due to Hurricane Katrina and Tucson unexpectedly failed to reach 1,000,000 population) indicate that historical core municipalities accounted for 9 percent of metropolitan area growth between 2000 and 2010, compared to 15 percent in the 1990-2000 period. Overall, suburban areas captured 91 percent of metropolitan area population growth between 2000 and 2010, compared to 85 percent between 1990 and 2000.

    Total population growth in the historical core municipalities was 1.4 million, nearly all of it in municipalities with a largely suburban form (such as Phoenix, San Antonio and Charlotte). This compares to an increase of 2.9 million during the 1990s.

    Suburban areas (areas in metropolitan areas outside the historical core municipalities) grew 15.0 million, down from 16.1million.

    Overall, the major metropolitan areas added 14 percent to their populations in the 2000s, down from 19 percent growth in the 1990s. The historical core municipalities grew 4 percent, compared to the 1990s rate of 7 percent. Suburban areas grew 18 percent, compared to the 1990s rate of 26 percent (all data unweighted).


  • Chicago’s Unique Population Loss of the 1 Million Plus Cities

    There are only 9 cities in the United States with populations over 1 million. The list includes New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia, Chicago, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas. With this afternoon’s release of Census 2010 numbers for New York City, the final 2010 data is in.

    Of these 1 million or more cities, only Chicago lost population over the last decade, yet the media seems to be in love with Mayor Daley.  The New Yorker called Mayor Daley “America’s most successful mayor.” Newsweek is equally “impressed” with Daley’s performance, saying “Daley also leaves behind a glittering metropolis that Chicagoans rightly love and outsiders can only envy.”

    Chicago’s 200,000 person loss shows Mayor Daley’s failed legacy as Mayor. Daley leaves office with a smaller population than when he took office in 1989. Numbers are stubborn things. There was no Chicago comeback of the middle class to experience bad public schools, high taxes, and corruption.  Almost no one predicted Philadelphia would gain population while Chicago declined. Mayor Daley’s legacy appears to be built on smoke and mirrors. A fawning media of urban reporters puffed up Daley for years. According to the numbers, Mayor Daley is America’s worst Mayor leaving Rahm Emanuel with intractable problems. Is it more accurate to call Mayor Daley the white man’s Coleman Young?

  • New York City Population Growth Comes Up Short

    Just released census counts for 2010 show the New York metropolitan area historical core municipality, the city of New York, to have gained in population from 8,009,000 in 2000 to 8,175,000 in 2010, an increase of 2.1 percent. This is the highest census count ever achieved by the city of New York.

    Nonetheless, the figure was 245,000 below the expected level of 8,420,000 (based upon 2010 Census Bureau estimates). The higher population estimate had been the result of challenges by the city to Census Bureau intercensal estimates. The city of New York attracted 29 percent of the metropolitan area growth. Approximately 43 percent of the metropolitan area’s population lives in the city.

    Overall, the New York metropolitan area grew from 18,323,000 to 18,890,000, an increase of 3.1 percent. The suburbs grew approximately twice as rapidly as the city of New York, at 4.0 percent, and attracted 71 percent of the metropolitan area growth.

  • Charlotte Continues Strong Growth

    According to US Census Bureau data, the Charlotte (NC-SC) metropolitan area grew 32 percent, from 1,330,000 to 1,758,000 between 2000 and 2010. The historical core municipality, the city of Charlotte grew from a 2000 base of 568,000 to 731,000 in 2010 (an increase of 29 percent). The city of Charlotte is largely of a post-World War II suburban form. The city of Charlotte attracted 38 percent of the metropolitan area growth.

    The suburbs grew at a 35 percent rate, higher than that of the city of Charlotte. The suburbs captured 62 percent of the metropolitan area growth.

  • Slow Growth in Providence: City Grows

    The Providence (RI) metropolitan area was one of the slowest growing in the 2000 to 2010 period, according to counts just released by the Census Bureau. Providence grew 1.1 percent, from 1,583,000 to 1,601,000. The historical core municipality, the city of Providence gained 2.5 percent, from 174,000 to 178,000 and grew faster than the suburbs, like neighboring Boston. The city of Providence reached its population peak in 1940, at 254,000.

    Even so, the suburbs attracted 75 percent of the metropolitan area growth.