Census 2010 Home Page

Los Angeles Slips Below 2010 Population: New State of California Estimates

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The state Department of Finance (DOF) has reported, in its official population estimates, that California continued to lose population during calendar year 2022  read more »

More Census 2010 Features

Tarnishing the Golden State

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No state advertises its egalitarian bona fides more than California. Governor Gavin Newsom brags that his state is “the envy of the world,” a place that is “not going to abandon our poor people.” In his inauguration speech, he claimed that “unlike the Washington plutocracy, California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope. The California Dream is for all.”  read more »

A Tale of 273 Cities

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. 

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Since 1790, 273 cities have made an appearance on the list of the nation’s 100 largest places.  read more »

Is the Census Bureau On Track For Another Estimating Fiasco?

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When the 2010 Census results were released, a number of big cities had populations that were very off from what would have been expected based on the Census Bureau’s previous annual estimates of the population – sometimes grossly so.  Some of these were related to cities that had challenged the estimates and had adjustments made in their favor, such as Cincinnati and St. Louis. Given that the Census Bureau seems to have approved every challenge, bogus challenges were all but encouraged.  Still, there were significant variances in cities that didn’t challenge the Census, such as Chicago and Phoenix.   read more »

Aging America: The Cities That Are Graying The Fastest

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Notwithstanding plastic surgery, health improvements and other modern biological enhancements, we are all getting older, and the country is too. Today roughly 18.5% of the U.S. population is over 60, compared to 16.3% a decade ago; by 2020 that percentage is expected to rise to 22.2%, and by 2050 to a full 25%.

Yet the graying of America is not uniform across the country — some places are considerably older than others. The oldest metropolitan areas, according to an analysis of the 2010 census by demographer Wendell Cox, have twice as high a concentration of residents over the age of 60 as the youngest. In these areas, it’s already 2020, and some may get to 2050 aging levels decades early.  read more »

Core City Growth Mainly Below Poverty Line

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Over the toughest economic decade since Great Depression, the nation's core cities continued to gain more than their share the below poverty line population in the 51 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population. Between 2000 and 2010, core cities (Note 1) attracted approximately 10 percent of the increase in population (Note 2) while adding 25 percent of the increase in people under the poverty line (Figure 1).  read more »

Misreferencing Misoverestimated Population

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I know the media confusion story of the past week is all about the momentary misreporting that got the story of the Supreme Court ruling backwards. Yet there was some real misoverestimating across the nation over the latest census numbers that were released recently on municipal population estimates for 2011.  read more »

Staying the Same: Urbanization in America

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The recent release of the 2010 US census data on urban areas (Note 1) shows that Americans continue to prefer their lower density lifestyles, with both suburbs and exurbs (Note 2) growing more rapidly than the historic core municipalities.  This may appear to be at odds with the recent Census Bureau 2011 metropolitan area population estimates, which were widely mischaracterized as indicating exurban (and suburban) losses and historical core municipality gains.  read more »

Population Change 2010-2011: Interesting Differences

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The recently released estimates of population change and the natural increase and migration components of that change for 2010-2011 contain a few surprises, as well as much what has come to be expected.  What we population freaks have been awaiting are estimates of the components of change for the whole 2000-2010 decade, but these are still being adjusted, in part because of the tremendous complexity of migration and immigration and, yes, estimating  just who is in the country!  read more »

The Shifting Landscape of Diversity in Metro America

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Census 2010 gave the detail behind what we’ve known for some time: America is becoming an increasingly diverse place.  Not only has the number of minorities simply grown nationally, but the distribution of them among America’s cities has changed. Not all of the growth was evenly spread or did it occur only in traditional ethnic hubs or large, historically diverse cities.  read more »

New Geography's Most Popular Stories of 2011

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As our third full calendar year at New Geography comes to a close, here’s a look at the ten most popular stories in 2011. It’s been another year of steady growth in readership and reach for the site.  Thanks for reading and happy new year.  read more »

Is Suburbia Doomed? Not So Fast.

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This past weekend the New York Times devoted two big op-eds to the decline of the suburb. In one, new urban theorist Chris Leinberger said that Americans were increasingly abandoning “fringe suburbs” for dense, transit-oriented urban areas.  read more »

More Americans Move to Detached Houses

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In defiance of the conventional wisdom in the national media and among most planning professionals, Americans continue not only to prefer, but to move into single family detached houses. Data from the 2010 American Community Survey indicates that such housing attracted 79.2% of the new households in the 51 major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) over the past decade.  read more »

Census 2010 Blog

Tucson: Missing A Million

Census Bureau estimates in 2008 indicated that the Tucson metropolitan area had become the nation's 52nd with more than 1,000,000 population. A Bureau of the Census estimate released earlier this week placed the population in 2010 at 1,027,000.  read more »

Milwaukee: Slow Growth, But Still Dispersing

The new 2010 census figures for Milwaukee reveal one of the nation's slowest growing metropolitan areas. From 2000 to 2010, Milwaukee grew 3.7 percent, from 1,501,000 to 1,556,000.  read more »

Phoenix Population Counts Lower than Expected

The 2009 Census Bureau estimates indicated that Phoenix had become the nation's 12th largest metropolitan area, passing San Francisco and Riverside-San Bernardino since 2000. The census count for 2010 indicates that Phoenix remains the 14th largest metropolitan area and failed to pass either San Francisco or Riverside-San Bernardino during the decade.  read more »

Hartford: Virtually all Growth Suburban

The Hartford metropolitan area grew 5.5 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to new census data that has just been released. In 2000, the metropolitan area had 1,149,000 residents, a figure that rose to 1,221,000 in 2010.  read more »

Pittsburgh: Metropolitan, Suburban and Core Losses

Just released census data indicates that the Pittsburgh metropolitan area declined in population from 2,431,000 in 2000 to 2,356,000 in 2010, a loss of 3.1 percent. The loss reflects a continuing trend of regional declines. The present geographical area of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area has a population below that of 1930 and has lost 400,000 residents (at percent) since 1960. No other major metropolitan area has experienced a loss since 1960 (including Katrina ravaged New Orleans).  read more »

Columbus: Suburban and Core Gains

The Columbus (Ohio) metropolitan area increased in population from 1,613,000 in 2000 to 1,837,000 in 2010 (13.9 percent). This growth rate is likely to have been among the strongest in the Midwest and is greater than the growth rate of Seattle, which had grown more quickly in recent decades.

The historical core municipality, the city of Columbus, which is largely suburban in form, grew from 713,000 to 787,000, an increase of 10.4 percent. The city of Columbus captured 33 percent of the metropolitan area's growth.  read more »

Cleveland: Huge Core Loss Overwhelms Suburban Gain

The Cleveland metropolitan area population fell from 2,148,000 in 2000 to 2.077,000 in 2010, according to the just released 2010 census figures. All of the loss was attributable to the city of Cleveland. However, population growth in the suburbs was small.  read more »

City of Philadelphia Gains, Dispersion Continues

For the first time since the 1950 census, the city of Philadelphia has registered a gain in population. In 2010, the city had 1,526,000 residents, up 8,000 from the 1,518,000 in 2000. The city had reached its population peak of 2,071,000 in 1950 and even with the increase since 2000 remains below its population as recorded in the 1910 census. The city (the historical core municipality) accounted for three percent of the metropolitan area growth.  read more »

Los Angeles: Slowest Growth Since Late 1800s

Just released 2010 Census data indicates that the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County experienced their smallest numeric population growth since the 1890 to 1900 census period.  read more »

Population Dispersion Continues in Riverside-San Bernardino, San Diego and Sacramento

Population growth continued the strongest in the suburban areas of Riverside-San Bernardino, San Diego and Sacramento, while unusually strong growth occurred in the historical core municipalities, all of which are dominated by a suburban urban form.  read more »

Bay Area Growth Slowing

New 2010 Census data indicates that the two major metropolitan areas in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco and San Jose, have settled into a pattern of slow growth.

San Francisco: The San Francisco metropolitan area grew 5.1 percent between 2000 and 2010, a more than one-half drop from the 1990 to 2000 rate of 11.9 percent, from 4,124,000 to 4,335,000, for a gain of 211,000. Only in one decade (1970 to 1980) have the five counties of the metropolitan area gained at such a slow percentage rate.  read more »

Major Metropolitan Areas: Summary of the First 20

Data is now available for 20 of the nation’s 52 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population. The early results indicate a pattern of accelerating dispersion of the population to the suburbs as is indicated in the table below. Thus far, historic core municipality growth has been approximately one-half the 1990s rate. During the 2000s, the historic cores have accounted for 8.8 percent of metropolitan growth, down nearly one-half from the 1990s rate.  read more »

Kansas City MO-KS: Moving Toward Kansas?

Results just announced for the 2010 Census show that the Kansas City metropolitan area grew 10.8 percent from 2010, from 1,836,000 to 2,035,000 persons. As in all of the major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) for which data has been reported, the bulk of the growth was in the suburbs, rather than in the historical core municipality (Kansas City).  read more »

Virginia Metropolitan Areas Dispersing

Population data from the 2010 Census has been made available for Richmond and Virginia Beach- Norfolk. In both cases, the bulk of the population growth is in the suburbs.

Virginia Beach-Norfolk: The Virginia Beach-Norfolk metropolitan area grew from 1,576,000 in 2000 to 1,672,000 in 2010, a gain of 6.0 percent, which is a decline from 8.8 percent in the 1990s. The municipal core municipality of Norfolk gained from 234,000 to 243,000, an increase of 3.6 percent.  read more »