The US Census Bureau thread

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

And even more surprising to me than chicago's 63% share of cook county's growth last decade was the city's 32% share of the entire MSA's growth (51K out 157K)


Now of course, that's speaks much more to a pretty damn stagnant suburban Chicagoland than it does to the city having some kind amazing growth or anything like that.

just to put a finer point on how much the script flipped for chicagoland in terms of city vs. suburban growth, here are the population growth figures from the past 7 decades.

the "suburbs" category here is county-consistent for all decades and i eliminated dekalb, grundy, newton, and jasper counties from the MSA because even though they now meet the CB's commuter threshold for MSA inclusion, their developmental links to greater chicagoland are extremely tenuous to non-existent, and none of them really grow directly from the outward pressure of the great sprawl bubble. in fact, 3 of the 4 of them actually lost population last decade.


1960:

city: -70,558 (−1.9%)
suburbs: +1,309,725 (+63.8%)



1970:

city: -183,447 (−5.2%)
suburbs: +1,027,436 (+30.6%)



1980:

city: -361,885 (−10.7%)
suburbs: +512,024 (+11.7%)



1990:

city: -221,346 (−7.4%)
suburbs: +347,898 (+7.1%)



2000:

city: +112,290 (+4.0%)
suburbs: +781,617 (+14.9%)



2010:

city: -200,418 (−6.9%)
suburbs: +531,375 (+8.8%)



2020:

city: +50,790 (+1.9%)
suburbs: +109,851 (+1.7%)




as the data shows, the great seemingly unstoppable chicagoland sprawl machine was severely crippled by the great recession last decade.

after gangbusters outward growth in the 50's, 60s, and 70s, then a bit of a lull in the 80s, then picking up massive steam in the 90s and into the 00s, we finally saw a radical slowdown in growth in suburban chicago last decade, while the city posted only its second population gain out of the previous 7 decades.

yes, the city saw over twice as much growth back in the 90s on the back of MASSIVE mexican in-migration compared to last decade, but it was way more than offset by even more massive growth out in the burbs.