Most major U.S. cities show population declines

By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY
Updated 9m ago |

The 1990s' urban renaissance that ended decades of decline for many of the nation's major cities lost steam the past 10 years when most of America's largest cities either grew more slowly or lost people at a faster rate.

The Phoenix skyline is shown at sunset in this 2008 photo. The city's growth slowed dramatically during the past decade.
A key factor: blacks leaving for the suburbs and more immigrants settling directly there instead of cities when they arrive in the USA.

CITY POPULATIONS DECLINE: Sortable table
INTERACTIVE MAP: Census data from your state, county, locality
UNDERCOUNTED: Cities dispute 2010 Census data

Immigration, which soared in the 1990s, also appears to have slowed in the last decade partly because of the recession — another factor driving the urban slowdown.

"Many urban scholars saw the 1990s as a breakthrough decade for cities, but it may have been their high watermark for growth," says Robert Lang, urban studies professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas who analyzed the 2010 Census data. "The recession was supposed to help cities by holding people in place but it appears for now as if it slowed urban development."

While some cities attracted young professionals and empty nesters to new downtown condos (Washington, D.C., lost black residents but grew 5.2% to 601,723 after losing almost 6% in the '90s), most did not lure enough to offset other losses.

Lang's research shows:

•Fourteen of the 15 most populous cities in 2000 lost population or grew more slowly by 2010. Philadelphia was the lone exception, reversing a decline in the 1990s. Cities that lost in the 2000s included Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit.

Even booming Sun Belt cities such as Phoenix, Dallas and Los Angeles slowed dramatically. Phoenix dropped from 34.3% growth one decade to 9.4% the next; Dallas from 18% to 0.8%; Los Angeles from 6% to 2.6%. The nation as a whole grew 9.7%, down from 13.2% in the 1990s.

"The story of this decade is that even a reliable growth city like a Dallas or a Phoenix is likely to grow slower than the U.S. as a whole, and that's a big change for the Sun Belt," Lang says.

•Urban centers of the 50 largest metropolitan areas collectively gained 3.7% in the 1990s but declined 1.3% from 2000 to 2010.

•Four of 35 cities that Lang had identified as rebounding in the 1990s had their worst decade since their post-war declines began: Birmingham, Ala.; Detroit, Toledo, Ohio; and New Orleans (lost more than 140,000 people, many after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city).

"What we saw in the '90s would be hard to replicate," says Audrey Singer, a demographer and immigration expert at the Brookings Institution. "A lot of places that lost are places that are experiencing simultaneous out-migration, lack of in-migration and aging. ... Immigrants are naturally going to suburban areas. That's where the housing is, where the jobs are."

Also, many Sun Belt metropolitan areas such as Charlotte, Nashville and Orlando, which saw an influx of immigrants in the past 20 years, are largely suburban regions.

The urban revival of the 1990s may not return, Lang says. "That could've been it," he says. "It might have been as good as it gets."

Declining growth
Fourteen of the 15 most populous cities grew more slowly in the past decade than in the 1990s or lost population:

City 2010 population 1990s growth rate 2000s growth rate

New York 8,175,133 9.4% 2.1%

Los Angeles 3,792,621 6.0% 2.6%

Chicago 2,695,598 4.0% -6.9%

Houston 2,099,451 19.8% 7.5%

Philadelphia 1,526,006 -4.3% 0.6%

Phoenix 1,445,632 34.3% 9.4%

San Diego 1,307,402 10.2% 6.9%

Dallas 1,197,816 18.0% 0.8%

San Antonio 1,327,407 22.3% 16.0%

Detroit 713,777 -7.5% -25.0%

San Jose 945,942 14.4% 5.7%

Indianapolis 829,718 8.3% 4.8%

San Francisco 805,235 7.3% 3.7%

Jacksonville 821,784 15.8% 11.7%

Columbus, Ohio 787,033 12.4% 10.6%

Source: Analysis of U.S. Census data by Robert Lang, University of Nevada-Las Vegas

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