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Well, This Is Fascinating
On Wikipedia, go to List of United States Cities by Population. It features an interactive table of all the US cities (over 100,000 population), so you can click on the column headers to sort, up or down, by that value.
So this is what you see when you sort by the change in population in %, from 2020 (census) to 2021 (estimate):
Yoiks!
Sure, we know people are leaving New York City and San Francisco in droves, but these numbers are pretty shocking.
I mean, San Francisco’s loss of 6.72% in one year translates to 50% over a decade. Now that’s a single extreme number, and it’s not going to sustain for that long, sure. But still; man oh man.
The other side of the chart shows the cities people are moving to:
[added later…]
6 of the top 25 cities are in the SF Bay Area. Hey, near me.
All New York cities (over 100,000 population) are losing residents. Same with Massachusetts and Wisconsin.
All Arizona cities are gaining population. Same with Idaho, Missouri, Montana,Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota
I’d like to see a correlation with city size. Maybe it’s a large city to small city movement.
I must admit, I did see one Surprise among the high-growth cities.
Lakewood?
I suspect I would hate it if I lived in Buckeye, AZ. 10%+ growth rate would likely make things miserable.
I’ll reserve this comment for the same.
No, I meant Surprise, AZ, at +4.22%. Line 179.
When you read a Comment, always interpret in the light of the home planet of the Commenter. I am from the Earth-like planet, Liter-Al.
If there is a Liter-al interpretation available, always choose it, in the case of my people.
We live just up the road from Nampa and Meridian, ID, 2nd and 5th fastest growing respectively. The housing market has slowed down a bit here in the past months, but that just means they stay on the market for a few days rather than having multiple offers at listing time. And they are still building like crazy in those two towns and the rest of the western Treasure Valley. I assume the mortgage rate increases will curtail this eventually, but right the effect is like turning the market down from ’11’ to a 9 or so.
Cheater.
Well, it’s better than editing the original post, right?
Nothing tricky, I just wrote the post very quickly and thought I’d have more to add.
A “P.S.” feature would be kind of nice.
Well, more candid as to one’s nefarious intent, at the very least. It is certainly better to plead guilty, and throw oneself on the mercy of the court of public opinion after one is caught, than to plead innocent.
But it’s maybe not the best choice from the beginning.
Biggest problem I see is that, with a comment already there, editing it won’t notify previous readers of the addition/change.
You noticed a design defect. I’ve discovered that we are not supposed to talk about those. It’s not considered being a team player here.
I added some notes. ‘Problem solved.
I would point out that North Dakota and Montana each have only one city with a population of over 100,000. Nebraska has two.
Overall population changes by state, might be more useful. Moving from a big city to a smaller city, in the same state, doesn’t mean as much.
Checked the first twenty, most are blue, a handful are non-partisan (at least mostly blue), and no actual Republican-led polities.
In addition to DC and Alexandria, Arlington (which is a county under Virginia law) shrank by about 2.4%, according to the county-level Census estimates, which you can find here. The population of Fairfax County (immediately west of Arlington and Alexandria) also shrank, but by less than one percent.
Weren’t there some phantom upward adjustments made to the 2020 census to prevent blue states from losing representatives?
What does Arizona have? Lots of cities with increasing population. And summer temperatures regularly over 100.
What does Arizona not have? Water.
I predict some amount of discomfort for the residents of Arizona in the years to come.
Indeed. And 10 of those cities are really close to Phoenix.
I can’t help but wonder if it’s possible to build a pipeline from the Gulf of California to Phoenix. 160 miles? Solar-powered pumps and desalination along the way, as they got tons of sunlight. Make a deal with Mexico, as 1/3 of it will be through Mexico.
[added:]
That’s also my solution to the Salton Sea. Well, mine it first.
[Checking…]
Actually, Arizona’s growth has always been pretty amazing:
from Wikipedia
They must be doing something right locally if the state is losing people overall . . .
Good point. I’d like more detail on where the rest of the population is going. Some of the book club people I hang out with are from Chicago, New York, and other blue cities & states. Why move to Aiken, SC? Simple: lower cost of living and they own (or used to own) horses. That, and Aiken is horse country . . .
The pre-air conditioning growth is beyond understanding.
Well, firstly it’s mostly dry heat, which is much more tolerable that days of 90F and 90% humidity.
But also it had the pollen-free clean air recommended for asthmatics.
But mostly, my guess is that the doubling and quadrupling corresponded to the cattle boom of 1873 to 1891.
And tuberculosis patients.
Not really. Much of this growth comes at the expense of high water use agriculture, cotton especially. So the farms give way for residential, and most of those use low water “desert” landscaping, including fake grass. In fact, Chandler, where I live, has been taking its large CAP allocation and filling reservoirs that exclusively recharge the local aquifer. So there is that. People talk a lot about water here, but other than the CAP reservoirs, it’s not really an issue. And as to the depletion of the CAP reservoirs (Havasu, Mead, Powell, Pleasant), it’s really just mismanagement. If you look at precipitation numbers in the Colorado watershed, we’ve been stacking up normal to above normal numbers almost every year for a while. The problem is not drought as much as it is mismanagement. The allocations removed by the participating states and for power generation exceeds the watershed’s capacity to replentish. Much is used in agriculture. CA takes the most, by far and rely on that resource most heavily. CA has not built a reservoir since 1980. Several years ago the voters approved funding for several new water projects, yet none has yet to be built. And none will ever be built as long as CA is allowed to deplete the CAP system.
I think that the state where Surprise is situated (Arizona) is not losing people overall.
Side Note: According to Wikipedia,
I live in Florida and when I looked at the charts all I thought was: Please Governor DeSantis, build a wall!