Very UNDUBIOUS!!

This is fantastic news since there has been a lot of fear-mongering in the past 10 years about how Chicago was becoming the next Detroit, which is obviously silly.

While it would be nice to see Chicago and the collar counties grow at a faster pace, we're not seeing the mass exodus that some were fretting over.

The rest of Illinois is a different story. Champaign/Urbana and Bloomington/Normal are the only two MSAs outside of the Chicago MSA that don't appear to be declining, and Bloomington/Normal only saw a .8% increase. The Metro East, Peoria, Springfield, Rockford, Decatur, Danville etc. are all really struggling. If Illinois wants to buck the trend of population losses then these MSAs need to do a better job of attracting/retaining people.

Rural counties are declining across the country, so that's not a big surprise. You can see that most rural counties across the Midwest are declining in terms of population. The difference in the states that surround Illinois is that the major population centers are growing at a healthy rate and more than offset the declines throughout their states, however.

^ Downstate is going through some serious demographic changes. As brought up in the last page:

^^

As I posted 3 pages ago:



Illinois 2010: 12,830,632

Illinois 2020: 12,812,508

growth: -18,124 (−0.1%)




9 Chicago MSA counties in IL 2010: 8,586,609

9 Chicago MSA counties in IL 2020: 8,730,688

growth: +144,079 (+1.7%)




the rest of IL 2010: 4,244,023

the rest of IL 2020: 4,081,820

growth: -162,203 (−3.8%)



chicagoland's modest growth is the only thing keeping IL barely treading water. If downstate wasn't such a trainwreck, the state would have seen actual growth.

Quick screengrab of the Chicago percentage change by census tract from citypopulation.de:

https://i.imgur.com/e3Cc0lch.png

Aurora noticed the number and the Mayor is planning to challenge. I could see a levelling off, but the east side of the city posted NOLA after Katrina type numbers.

If Chicago had the same area as Houston, this would not even be a contest. Houston is 640 sq mi (land only) to Chicago's 227 sq mi (and literally 6% of the land area constitutes airports!). Cook County is 945 sq mi. If the city annexed enough of the county to get to Houston's land area size, and assuming it annexed the most dense townships, we would probably be about 4.5 million easily.

This is why city limits population does not matter. Houston proper might be a few hundred thousand short of Chicago, but the Chicago MSA is still millions more than the Houston MSA.

Link for neighborhoods

2010 to 2020
Population/Change
Household/Change
Housing Unit/Change

Jesus. Those household numbers.

Almost every neighborhood in the city except Englewood, West Englewood, Roseland, Mt. Greenwood, Burnside and Fuller Park is either stable…or seeing incredible increase in households.

Austin, for example, lost 1957 or -1.99% of its population, but households increased by 3072 or 9.37% and housing units increased by 1263 or 3.31%.



https://gist.github.com/nmpeterson/5...348ca1903099e0

Thanks - pretty much aligns with what I have. Of the 77 community areas, 28 of them had populations in 2020 greater than what they had in 2000. A few more were very close but had slightly down populations.

The west side areas of Lawndale, Garfield Park, Austin, and Lower West Side have 76,000 fewer people today than in 2000. The south side areas of Englewood/West Englewood, Auburn Gresham, Roseland, West Pullman, New City, South Shore, Greater Grand Crossing, South Chicago, Chatham, Chicago Lawn, Washington Heights, Morgan Park, Pullman, and Avalon Park are down nearly 125,000 people. On the flip side of these, Near North/South/West + The Loop + Lincoln Park + Lakeview + North Center + West Town is up over 117,000 people. The density of this area increased from 26,895 ppsm in 2000 to 34,342 ppsm in 2020


Here are the densest community areas of Chicago now:

1. Near North Side: 38,459.4 ppsm
2. Lake View: 33,071.9 ppsm
3. Edgewater: 32,409.3 ppsm
4. Rogers Park: 30,276.3 ppsm
5. The Loop: 25,548.1 ppsm
6. Albany Park: 25,198.1 ppsm
7. Uptown: 24,604.3 ppsm
8. Lincoln Park: 22,284.5 ppsm
9. West Ridge: 21,843.7 ppsm
10. Hermosa: 20,576.8 ppsm
11. Logan Square: 19,967.6 ppsm
12. Belmont Cragin: 19,961 ppsm
13. West Town: 19,184.5 ppsm
14. South Shore: 18,399.5 ppsm
15. Kenwood: 18,356 ppsm
16. Avondale: 18,281.3 ppsm
17. Hyde Park: 18,262 ppsm
18. Gage Park: 17,987 ppsm
19. North Center: 17,157.6 ppsm
20. Brighton Park: 16,549.3 ppsm
21. Irving Park: 16,158.7 ppsm
22. Near South Side: 16,152.9 ppsm
23. Bridgeport: 16,118.1 ppsm
24. Portage Park: 15,943.1 ppsm
25. Chicago Lawn: 15,865.5 ppsm


The area of Near South, Near North, The Loop, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Uptown, Edgewater, and Rogers Park combined is 28,282.2 ppsm with a total population of 519,222 people. For the record that is larger than Atlanta, Miami, Oakland, Minneapolis, etc. Total population change of this area between 2010 and 2020 was +61,707 people or +13.49% which was actually higher than Miami, Oakland, Minneapolis, etc.


Hopefully the city can stabilize parts of the south and west sides. Painfully obvious to be vital for the future of the city IMO. It is shocking how many people those areas have lost even while certain parts of the south side have gained (like the south lake front) as well as the core and a bit of the north side.

^ Broken down like that, that’s phenomenal. Somebody once said that Chicago is a sunbelt city inside of a rustbelt city, and the numbers really show that.

What I wonder is how Chicago’s population growth would have looked if the black population had remained unchanged from 2010-2020? Would it have matched New York City’s growth rate?

^ So black population dropped by 84k from 2010-2020
It had dropped by 180k from 2000-2010. So black flight continues to slow down.

Just for kicks, if there were no black flight at all from 2010-2020, Chicago’s population now would be around 2.83 million people. That would be a much more respectable growth rate of 5%

If, from 2000-2020 Chicago had not lost ANY black residents, our current population would be 3.01 million, if everything else were equal. That would be a modest but not too shabby 3.9% growth rate in a cold weather, rustbelt city that is gentrifying like crazy.

So everything that is holding down Chicago’s growth rate has to do with black flight. Every single other group is growing. And black flight is slowing down, not speeding up, so that bodes well. I do hope that recent upticks in murders from 2020-present don’t cause black flight to re-accelerate, though...

I’m also impressed by how Chicago City proper grew faster than Lake, McHenry, DuPage, and Kane Counties. I believe even Cook County outgrew them all too.

I mean, that’s a subtle reversal of the typical American demographic story where suburban and exurban counties almost always are the growth center of the region

I'm surprised that a die hard Libertyvillephile like yourself would be impressed by such statistics...

I’d like to add to this post by pointing out that if you removed black population loss from 2000-2020 you get a 3.9% growth rate, and if you removed it JUST from 2010-2020 you get a 5% growth rate.

Thinking about that further, that means that the focus on black population loss is increasingly sharpening as the biggest factor hampering the city’s growth engine. It was much less clear prior to 2010, when other factors were also at play.

If growth rates go WAY up when you remove the ‘performance’ of a single demographic group, you can say that that demographic group is having a substantial impact on overall numbers.

So to summarize, 2 key things seem to be happening:

1. Black flight slowed WAY down from 2010-2020 compared to the prior decade

2. Black flight, however slowed down, increasingly became the singular reason why Chicago grew slowly from 2010 onward, whereas it may have been a more blended picture prior to that

^ this is going to cause some huge political fights over representation. Chicago's city council is overrepresented by blacks and under represented by Hispanics and Asians.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/polit...rri-story.html

^ There is not a single Asian council member in Chicago

At over 6% of the city’s population, that would mean at least 2 council members would be justified

^ I thought I read that Asian-americans are now over 7% of the city.

If we're doing a hypothetical straight 1:1 demographic group to alderman exercise, that translates to 3-4 alderman.

Of course in reality, a very large percentage of Chicago's Asians live in pretty mixed neighborhoods like uptown, west ridge, Albany park, etc. where straight 1:1 demographic group to alderman doesn't really work like it does in other areas of the city that are much more monolithically a single macro-demo.

Ultimately 20% declines as happened to the black population between 2000-2010 are not a regular occurrence.

Looking back, the 2010 result was a perfect storm of easy home loans, a severe financial crisis and an imbalance of prices and employment opportunities vs the South. Not to mention, birth rate declines.

Chicago’s black population declined by 181453 or 17.22% for the 2010 census. To see a similar absolute population loss after 2020 would probably require East St. Louis (-31.6%) or bankrupt Detroit (-25.0%) failure of basic services which is not happening.

5-10% black population loss seems reasonable for the upcoming decade. Hopefully more integration in some neighborhoods should stem further losses.

I'm not sure how interesting this is to people, but those 2 big purple census tracts indicating the biggest population loss are Cook County Jail and the census tract in Englewood where they leveled all of the housing for the railroad yard expansion.

Oh! I just thought of something else. Could Chicago become a "megacity" by 2030? Possibly.

If my math is right Chicago MSA would need to grow by just under 4% in the next decade to reach that distinction. Seems possible especially since that was basically the growth rate between 2000-2010.

We keep inching our way to “mega city” status but can’t seem to close the deal