Anybody else discouraged by 2010 results?

[Ban my account ffs!]

I seriously thought that cities that had been losing people since the 50s might have finally turned around.  But it seems, at least so far, that most that hadn't already begun to turn around in the 80s have just seen the decline accelerate.

Ohio was hit particularly hard.  Cleveland now has under 400,000 residents... down from 914,000 in 1950.  Youngstown is at 66,000... down from 170,000 in 1930.

In PA, Pittsburgh is down to just above 300,000 residents... less than half its peak of 676,000 in 1950... though the losses have slowed since the '80s.

At the same time, I'm starting to see some other trends.  Growth in the sunbelt has slowed... and some cities, which have faced decline for decades, are seeing growth again.. notably Newark, NJ and Philadelphia.  Philly saw its first population increase since the 1940s during the past decade.

I think what the trends are showing is that people are still leaving the depressed rustbelt areas in droves... but they're not all going to the sunbelt anymore.  Of course many are... but some are migrating to other cities within the same region.

I'm also seeing the general malaise among the population as well.. rather than just a depressed urban core.  Suburban areas of the cities that lost so many residents aren't seeing much growth either.  This indicates that everybody is hurting and people are leaving the region from all areas.. rather than just a migration towards open land on the edge of town.

I'm really hoping that Minneapolis and St. Paul didn't see big losses.  Their population trends are kind of a hybrid of the depressed rustbelt but also the more successful cities like Denver or Seattle.  Unlike Detroit or Cleveland where mass exodus caused by white flight led to vast areas of abandoned homes turned urban prairie... the population loss of the Twin Cities from the 50s-70s was caused by a reduction in household size.  The number of homes still increased.. just at a rate below the drop in household size.  This was especially true in the 70s when the numerous baby boomers that lived on the outskirts of the cities (which had developed in the 40s/50s) were moving out.  After 1980, the populations stabilized and grew in the '90s.

What do you guys think?  Do you notice any new trends?  Do you think the huge losses in St. Louis and Cleveland were for different reasons than in previous decades?  Just more of the same?

[Ban my account ffs!]

Well, the results in Minnesota were pretty unsurprising.  Minneapolis' population stayed flat (lost 60 people since 2000... though by the estimates there was a significant loss from 2000-2005 down to 369,000 with a rebound to 2000 levels late in the decade).  St. Paul lost 2100 people.

The same areas that grew in the 1990s grew in the 2000s... mainly the suburban ring of the Twin Cities with a broad corridor including St. Cloud, the Brainerd Lakes area, the rural lakes areas of Hubbard and Cass Counties, and the Bemidji Lakes area... while the northwest and northeast corners, and the southwestern farmbelt near South Dakota lost people.

Woodbury was the fastest growing of the larger cities in the state, adding a third to 62,000 people.  Rochester, in southeastern MN, grew by 24% to 107,000 thanks to being a leader in healthcare (Mayo Clinic) and high-tech industries (IBM).

There were some surprises.  The city of Moorhead, part of the Fargo-Moorhead area along the MN-ND border, grew by 18.5% in the 2000s, the fastest growth since the 1960s (the fastest growth in that time frame being 7.7% in the '80s with a loss in the 90s).  Growth in the Fargo-Moorhead region was quite strong in the past decade thanks to a good economy in the region.  Some areas of western Minnesota and most of North Dakota were not nearly as affected by the recession and housing bubble as the rest of hte nation.

My area also grew faster than census estimates, with the Bemidji area growing by about 14% in the past 10 years compared to 16% during the '90s.