Population Growth Patterns in Metro Areas, 2000-16

[cinyc]

Now that I have the population estimate data for 2000-16 in a readable format, I can make gifs of the growth patterns in metro areas.  First, the greater NYC Metro Area:



Note how there was an exodus from the Inner suburbs until around 2008, followed by an exodus from the exurbs in the 2010s.

What metro should I make next?

Edited to add: Fixed projection.

Links to other metro maps:
2    Los Angeles
3    Chicago
4    Dallas-Fort Worth
5    Houston
6    Washington, DC
7    Philadelphia
8    Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach
9    Atlanta
10    Boston
11    San Francisco-Oakland
12    Phoenix
13    Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario (For now, see Los Angeles)
14    Detroit
15    Seattle
16    Minneapolis-St. Paul
17    San Diego
18    Tampa-St. Petersburg (See Central Florida)
19    Denver
20    St. Louis
21    Baltimore (See Washington, DC)
22    Charlotte
23    Orlando (See Central Florida)
24    San Antonio
25    Portland, OR
26    Pittsburgh
27    Sacramento
28    Cincinnati
29    Las Vegas
30    Kansas City
31    Austin
32    Cleveland
33    Columbus
34    Indianapolis
35    San Jose (See San Francisco)
36    Nashville
37    Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News
38    Providence
39    Milwaukee (See Southeast Wisconsin)
40    Jacksonville, FL
41    Oklahoma City
42    Memphis
43    Raleigh
44    Louisville/Jefferson County
45    Richmond
46    New Orleans
47    Hartford
48    Salt Lake City
49    Birmingham
50    Buffalo
51    Rochester, NY
52    Grand Rapids, MI
53    Tucson, AZ
--------
55    Tulsa, OK (See Northwest Arkansas/Tulsa)
86    Madison, WI (See Southeast Wisconsin)
97 Durham-Chapel Hill
105    Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR-MO (See Northwest Arkansas/Tulsa)

The top 53 metros have a population greater than 1,000,000.  I'm going to try to map them all, eventually.

[cinyc]

The Nassau-Suffolk line is interesting. Also the Poconos. Is that people families moving out, or adult children moving away, as happened in Nassau in the 70s (there was the huge influx following WWII, and then 15-25 years later all the children were grown. The adults were still around 50-60, so not ready to vacate their homes, and there wasn't yet infill of apartments. The children who formed families had to move out to Suffolk. Those without, could move to NYC, or wherever they ended up for college, or North Carolina, Florida, etc. where they met a mate from somewhere else.

It's a combination of people not moving to the NYC exurbs, like the Poconos, any more, some older Poconos residents moving to the sunbelt, and probably some adult children moving away.

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There might be.  I used the census default projection on QGIS without reprojecting it to Albers Conic or whatever.  It's NAD 83 (EPSG:4269).  But Long Island is really long, which might make it look like it's stretched (plus, my water file leads to more water than there really is being shown, which probably makes Long Island seem longer than it really is.  

What projection should I be using?  Albers makes things conic, so stuff isn't oriented the way you normally see it on a map.

[cinyc]

Great stuff. If you could do the DC-NoVA-Metro area next that would be awesome.

I will, after I fix the NYC Metro gif to a better projection (NAD 83 (HARN): Long Island looks better than what I have). 

Unfortunately, you're going to lose a lot of the granularity south of the Mason-Dixon Line and west of the Mississippi, though, since those states don't have MCDs that census provides data for, and there are no yearly estimates for fictional areas like CDPs, which replace MCDs there.

[cinyc]

Great stuff. If you could do the DC-NoVA-Metro area next that would be awesome.

I will, after I fix the NYC Metro gif to a better projection (NAD 83 (HARN): Long Island looks better than what I have). 

Unfortunately, you're going to lose a lot of the granularity south of the Mason-Dixon Line and west of the Mississippi, though, since those states don't have MCDs that census provides data for, and there are no yearly estimates for fictional areas like CDPs, which replace MCDs there.

You could conceivably use ACS estimates for census tracts or block groups. You would have to use the five-year estimates, but could use 2011-2015 for 2013; 2010-2014 for 2012, etc.

That would be a lot more work - and the files are so large that they might crash QGIS and my computer.  I'll look into it, though.

[cinyc]

DC Metro:



Yes, the granularity isn't great.  The district itself and Arlington, VA started picking up population in earnest around 2005-06.

[cinyc]

Metro Seattle:


Again, the granularity isn't so great, but at least it's better than DC.

[cinyc]

Chicagoland:

[cinyc]

Fantastic maps. What is the theory as to why the population increases in the NYC exurbs stopped, and then reversed, around 2010?

High gas prices and the housing bust probably hurt the NYC exurbs the most.  NYC's exurbs are more far-flung than most other cities', making commuting costs even to suburban edge cities like Morristown and White Plains a factor when deciding where to live.  It's one thing to commute 20 or 30 minutes to work from Victor to Rochester, New York, and another to commute 90 minutes or more from the Poconos or Mid-Hudson Valley to NYC.

[cinyc]

At jimrtex's suggestion, I'm testing out some population change maps using the 5-year ACS dataset.  Unfortunately, these datasets don't go back as far as the yearly population estimates.  Since they're 5-year estimates, I'm referring to the datasets by the most recent year - e.g. the most recent 2011-15 dataset is c2013.

First, the DC Metro by place, including CDPs:


This goes back to c.2007, but I think the c2007 (2005-2009) 5 year estimate used the 2000 Census codes, which I didn't update, so I threw out the c2007-08 map. 

Note that I deliberately left the county remainders out of the map because I have no reliable way to calculate the county remainder population.  Earlier versions of the ACS doesn't appear to break down CDP/Town data by county for CDPs/Towns that cross county lines.

Second, the DC Metro by ZIP code:


Unfortunately, this data only goes back 4 years.  Note that the color saturation is higher, likely due to larger MoEs.

I also tried my hand at a c2012-13 change map by Block Group.  There was way too much information, and because MoEs were high, saturation levels were even worse than the Zip Code map.  I can post a map of one of the metros for those years if anyone is interested in what they look like.  But it's a TMI mess.

Does anyone want to see any other maps?

[cinyc]

Southern Wisconsin (Milwaukee & Madison) would be awesome!

Southeastern Wisconsin:

[cinyc]

Metro Detroit:



Is it me, or does there seem to be more variation in the 2000-10 data than the 2011-16 data for the outer areas of SE Michigan and SE Wisconsin?  Does Census revise the population estimates after the census to reflect the next Census or something?  Or is Census just estimating things by county in the smaller jurisdictions until the 2020 census?

Edited to add:

Metro Detroit doesn't include Monroe County (though the CSA does).  It does include Lapeer and St. Clair, to the north.  Here's a new map showing those two counties.  It also has the benefit of showing Flint:

[cinyc]

Also real estate in NYC and its surrounding suburbs is cheaper than the exurbs. Which probably led to that Post-2008 crash change in population growth.

It probably depends on what exurb and where in NYC.  Manhattan south of 96th Street, most of Brooklyn, and much of the inner suburban New York Counties (Westchester, Nassau, Bergen, and the nicer parts of Union and Essex) are very expensive.   The Bronx and the crappier parts of the inner suburban counties are less expensive - and growing a bit by infill.  But the infill tends to be apartments, not single family homes, which are out of reach for your average New Yorker in the close-in suburbs unless you move to a city or town with crappy schools.

There are still ads on TV for people to get more house for less in the Poconos.  Just 90 minutes by bus from NYC.  Just.  On a good day.

[cinyc]

Boston:

[cinyc]

Philadelphia:



I tried to zoom it out enough to pick up Atlantic City and Allentown.

Columbus, Ohio will be next, though I'm not sure how illuminating it will be, since a lot of the metro's population lives in Columbus, proper.

[cinyc]

Columbus, Ohio:



What's up with the wild population swings in Union Township, Madison County?

[cinyc]

Nashville? That's were my fiancée is from.

Nashville suffers from the lack of granularity issue in the south, particularly since a lot of of the population lives in the consolidated Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.  I'll put it on my to do list, though.

[cinyc]

Nashville:



As I thought, the granularity stinks.

[cinyc]

What's up with the wild population swings in Union Township, Madison County?

It has two prisons (London Correctional Institution and Madison Correctional Institution) which has a an address of London, but appears to be located in the township (Madison Township wraps around London, and the prisons are west and northwest of the city).

In 2010, 89% of the township population was male, and 78% was incarcerated.

Thanks.  It's almost always the prisons that cause wild population swings.

Nashville? That's were my fiancée is from.

Nashville suffers from the lack of granularity issue in the south, particularly since a lot of of the population lives in the consolidated Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.  I'll put it on my to do list, though.

I can imagine quite a few Southern cities would be tough to do for this reason

Correct.  Many people in the South live in unincorporated parts of their counties, and Census doesn't do yearly population estimates for CDPs (though I can get about 5-years' CDP data from the 5-year ACS).  

It's a little less of a problem on the West Coast, but still a problem.  Eventually, I'll get around to doing maps of the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas and Houston metros, though.  The shapes of Texas' cities are bizarre, thanks to their annexation laws.

[cinyc]

Los Angeles:



You can see a scurry to Riverside County and the Los Angeles/San Bernadino Exurbs in from about 2003-07.

[cinyc]

It probably will have the same problems as the Nashville map, but one of North West Arkansas might be interesting to look at.

It should be a little more detailed than Nashville, as there are more incorporated places in NW Arkansas than Middle Tennessee. 

What counties are you looking for?  Benton south to Sebastian?   A bigger map might pick up the Tulsa area, since the NW Arkansas population is pretty much confined along the I-49 Corridor.

[cinyc]

San Francisco Bay Area:

[cinyc]

Northwest Arkansas/Tulsa:



Oklahoma has some strange looking cities.

[cinyc]

Atlanta:



The granularity is okay, but not great.  At least it's better than Nashville.

[cinyc]

The largely growing Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex:

[cinyc]

Greater Houston:



Yes, Texas has weird-shaped cities and the granularity stinks.