Chicago population is 2,695,598 the 2010 Census reveals, a loss of 200,000 from 2000

[alphachapmtl]

There's less people in Chicago now then in 1920.
It's unbelievable!!!

[ChiPsy]

Originally Posted by alphachapmtl

There's less people in Chicago now then in 1920.
It's unbelievable!!!

That VERY much depends on what you mean by "Chicago."

If you mean the contiguously populated, gi-normous region of people and economic activity occupying high-rises, townhomes, and single-family houses around a cultural hub on the shores of Lake Michigan, it's actually -- and obviously -- grown dramatically since 1920 (from about 4 million people to nearly 10 million people).

If you mean one arbitrarily drawn city-limit boundary approximately in the middle of that region, then yes, it's seen many of its residents move around to other arbitrarily drawn city-limits in the region as their tastes for various types of domiciles (and school districts) change over time.

It's a shame we reify signifiers the way we do when we talk about "cities" in the US. Central-city population boundaries are sometimes a decent proxy for metropolitan regions (which is what we usually mean when we use words like "Seattle," "Atlanta," "Dallas," "St. Louis," etc.), but usually they fail utterly to tell believable, honest truths about demographic and economic trends across those regions. This case being so prominently one of them, it is in fact -- and should be -- un "believe" able.

[SD_Phil]

^We both know it's not as innocuous as you make it seem. City limits are of course 'arbitrary' in the sense that human beings made them but it can be extremely informative and telling to compare a city against itself over time.

The arbitrariness of city population figures only becomes important in city v. city comparisons or, I suppose, if a city has done some heavy annexing and changed its own borders. If these don't apply then it sure as heck means a lot for hundreds of thousands of people to move in or out of that historically defined boundary. It means a lot economically and politically at the very least.

[mhays]

If households sizes dropped by 1/3 since 1920, then the news would be that the number of households grew by 50%.

[emathias]

I spent some time looking at the online map the Trib put together this weekend.

Some of it was quite interesting. Among the things I found interesting was that it seems fairly evident that East Garfield Park was gentrifying at a pretty good clip, although with the recession I don't know if it's continued doing so. But by most measures, it's seems fairly likely that East Garfield Park has turned that corner between decline and gentrification.

Looking at some of the other areas sort of just inside the "Bungalow Belt," it looks like at least part of this population decline was due to gentrification. Another indicator is, using East Garfield Park as an example again, their white population skyrocketed. That's a strong indication of transition for an area that has been primarily black for a long time. You see that pretty much all over the South side to 79th. Granted in many of those areas you're starting from a low base of white people, but it's quite interested that you can see growth in white and asian populations pretty much across the entire zone from 79th north to at least Irving Park, and as far west as Halstead on the South Side, Cicero on the West Side, and as far west as the River or the Kennedy on the North Side.

When you only look at total population, you see only the very central part growing, with a couple other places, and the rest declining. But when you separate out by race, it seems to strongly indicate a gentrification trend covering a much broader area that could maintain growth going forward.

It also seems to show quite a lot more racial mixing than in the past, which should please people who look at segregation patterns in cities. Historically white areas have received more black population, and historically black areas more white population.

All in all, I didn't want to dismiss the loss of 7% of our population casually, but after looking at the numbers, I think there are many positive trends here. I know it's tricky to call the enormous loss of black population as "positive," and I'm not saying that it's good to lose black people. What I am saying is that it really appears that Chicago is mixing better than it used to, and that demographics with smaller family sizes moving in have replaced demographics with larger family sizes moving out. Is it good to lose a big chunk of any one demographic? Well, it depends on why they've left. If they've left because they always wanted to and finally felt it was possible, then I'd say yes. Chicago has always had demographics that skew pretty different than the U.S. or even Illinois at large. If this is a resettling of people in a more natural mix, then it's hard to see that in a negative light even if it causes Chicago some transitory anxiety.

[VivaLFuego]

Even in the less desirable areas, most of the population loss can be attributed to shrinking household sizes, rather than a shrinking number of households. A relatively select few areas actually lost households from 2000-2010 within the city limits:

1. Much of the north lakefront, Gold Coast, East Lincoln Park, Rogers Park. This is largely due to a combination of deconverstions (3-flats ---> SFH mansion) and botched condo conversions that were vacant as of the 2010 census.

2. The Projects, particularly the Stateway Gardens/Robert Taylor Home belt along with a few others. Account for many thousand fewer total households in the city.

3. There were a few neighborhoods on the south side with declining number of households, compounding the shrinking household size issue: Englewood, West Englewood, and Chicago Lawn. Also, portions of Austin and Lawndale on the west side actually lost households. These are the neighborhoods for which there's no "good excuse" --- they aren't a desirable place to live, offer poor quality of life and poor access to economic opportunity compared to many other places. Probably the worst in terms of just outright decline and abandonment was Roseland, though it's hard to tell exactly how much of the decline is due to the projects (Altgeld Gardens) having been largely vacant during the Census.

Many, many Chicago neighborhoods that lost 5-10% of their population (e.g. Logan Square) actually increased their total number of households. I don't see how this can be construed as a severe negative, rather just a demographic change. And it's not just the white gentrifying neighborhoods; many majority black neighborhoods, particularly the middle class ones such as Ashburn and Washington Heights, actually added total households, as did much of Bronzeville and north Lawndale.

Interestingly the bulk of the troubling reduction in total households occurred in the inner ring suburbs, literally those just inside I-294.

As far as the City of Chicago is concerned, this census really wasn't that bad considering the city has been fully built up within its limits for decades. I could see the inner ring burbs facing some serious issues over the coming decades though, as decay sets in. The slice bounded by 290 to the north 55, to the south, and 294 to the west is particularly striiking for having lost thousands of total households in the past ten years.

[Thundertubs]

Excellent observations in the previous two posts.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego

Interestingly the bulk of the troubling reduction in total households occurred in the inner ring suburbs, literally those just inside I-294.

I'm not sure if there's anything "troubling" about a reduction in overall household size. It's just another way of saying bigger families are replacing smaller ones.

Household size is just a variable for slicing the population pie. It's really not "good" or "bad" relative to things like govt. funding.

What happened in inner suburbs like Cicero is that old white folks are dying off and being replaced by young Mexican families. So household sizes are dropping faster than population.

[Chase Unperson]

Originally Posted by ChiPsy

That VERY much depends on what you mean by "Chicago."

If you mean the contiguously populated, gi-normous region of people and economic activity occupying high-rises, townhomes, and single-family houses around a cultural hub on the shores of Lake Michigan, it's actually -- and obviously -- grown dramatically since 1920 (from about 4 million people to nearly 10 million people).

If you mean one arbitrarily drawn city-limit boundary approximately in the middle of that region, then yes, it's seen many of its residents move around to other arbitrarily drawn city-limits in the region as their tastes for various types of domiciles (and school districts) change over time.

It's a shame we reify signifiers the way we do when we talk about "cities" in the US. Central-city population boundaries are sometimes a decent proxy for metropolitan regions (which is what we usually mean when we use words like "Seattle," "Atlanta," "Dallas," "St. Louis," etc.), but usually they fail utterly to tell believable, honest truths about demographic and economic trends across those regions. This case being so prominently one of them, it is in fact -- and should be -- un "believe" able.

True but compare Chicagoland's percentage of the nation's population in the same time period. And query why the core city of Chicago is now what it was in 1920 while other cities like LA and NY have seen both their cores and their metros peak for the most part decade after decade.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'm not sure if there's anything "troubling" about a reduction in overall household size. It's just another way of saying bigger families are replacing smaller ones.
...

Re-read what he wrote. He was lamenting a reduction in number of households, not size of households.

Originally Posted by Chase Unperson

...
And query why the core city of Chicago is now what it was in 1920 while other cities like LA and NY have seen both their cores and their metros peak for the most part decade after decade.

Comparing Chicago to LA isn't really fair, for many reasons. And both LA and New York have natural deep-water-port advantages over a city with next to no sea-related commerce. Chicago existing at all will always take a bit of a fight now that there are no longer the Great Woods to make timber money off of, and now that we're not longer the national meats clearinghouse.

Chicago's economy transitioned from advanced agriculture to industry and now to services. Unfortunately, the city structure and composition didn't transition as quickly as the economy. New York made that transition sooner than we did, and their higher prices tend to force transitions in population more quickly than Chicago. Chicagoans who were, to be crude about it, obsolete, could afford to hang on here longer than people in New York could. The high prices of New York are terribly hard on people, but they do enforce an up or out mentality that keeps the city churning. New York made the transition faster. They got services rich and that money chased out the poor. That appears to be happening in Chicago now, but it's happening later, and it will probably not happen quite as quickly as it did in New York. As long as Chicago continues to remold the city to serve those who are fueling its economy now, though, people will continue to trickle in and if we're lucky we'll hit a reverse tipping point at some point and start to gain population again. Until then, we should continue to add households, and to gain rich households faster than poor ones. If it works out, it'll be a monumental time.

[urbanactivist]

From what I've seen of Chicago, the inner core will continue to thrive. But it may be a while before the whole of the city limits starts to grow again. The key to that happening is land transition from poor areas to gentrification. That's tough to do when you're looking for growth, because a block of gentrified housing contains fewer people than a block of project housing. The more money one has, the more space they'll want, even if the new housing looks and feels "more urban", it will likely contain less people.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by emathias

Re-read what he wrote. He was lamenting a reduction in number of households, not size of households.

The number of households are obviously determined by the size of households.

And my point is that there is nothing lamentable about the relative number of households. It's just a function of household size.

[VivaLFuego]

If the actual number of households declined, it implies that there were housing units that were occupied in 2000 that now either no longer exist or are vacant as of 2010. It's not always a "bad" --- much of the north side lost households because 3-flats were deconverted into enormous mansions --- but in the inner ring burbs, it's a bad sign since there wasn't much construction, just the drip dip drip impact from no new investment in the housing stock.

Of course total households is distinct from average household sizes, which was the entire point of my post --- many city neighborhoods lost population while still gaining new households, just of a smaller average household size. That's not a bad thing, and if anything it's arguably one of the more objective, non-racially-charged measures of "gentrification" there is, since average household size is so strongly correlated to per capita income.

[Chase Unperson]

Originally Posted by emathias

Re-read what he wrote. He was lamenting a reduction in number of households, not size of households.



Comparing Chicago to LA isn't really fair, for many reasons. And both LA and New York have natural deep-water-port advantages over a city with next to no sea-related commerce. Chicago existing at all will always take a bit of a fight now that there are no longer the Great Woods to make timber money off of, and now that we're not longer the national meats clearinghouse.

Chicago's economy transitioned from advanced agriculture to industry and now to services. Unfortunately, the city structure and composition didn't transition as quickly as the economy. New York made that transition sooner than we did, and their higher prices tend to force transitions in population more quickly than Chicago. Chicagoans who were, to be crude about it, obsolete, could afford to hang on here longer than people in New York could. The high prices of New York are terribly hard on people, but they do enforce an up or out mentality that keeps the city churning. New York made the transition faster. They got services rich and that money chased out the poor. That appears to be happening in Chicago now, but it's happening later, and it will probably not happen quite as quickly as it did in New York. As long as Chicago continues to remold the city to serve those who are fueling its economy now, though, people will continue to trickle in and if we're lucky we'll hit a reverse tipping point at some point and start to gain population again. Until then, we should continue to add households, and to gain rich households faster than poor ones. If it works out, it'll be a monumental time.

Good explanation. NYC quit being a manufacturing center by the 1940s/50s way ahead of Midwest cities.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Now that the census data for Wisconsin has been released, we can calculate the 2010 population of the Chicago MSA. (Kenosha County in WI is at 166,000, up from 149,000 in 2000.)

If I crunched the numbers correctly, then the metro (which includes nine counties in Illinois, four in Indiana and one in Wisconsin) is at 9,461,105, up from 9,098,316 in 2000. That's 362,789 more people-- a 3.8% increase.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Ch.G, Ch.G

Now that the census data for Wisconsin has been released, we can calculate the 2010 population of the Chicago MSA. (Kenosha County in WI is at 166,000, up from 149,000 in 2000.)

If I crunched the numbers correctly, then the metro (which includes nine counties in Illinois, four in Indiana and one in Wisconsin) is at 9,461,105, up from 9,098,316 in 2000. That's 362,789 more people-- a 3.8% increase.

Do we have enough detail yet to calculate CBSA?

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by emathias

Do we have enough detail yet to calculate CBSA?

Er... maybe? The CSA (which just adds LaPorte County and Kankakee County, I believe?) is at 9,686,021, up from 9,312,255 in 2000.

[modkris]

Thanks to everyone for trying to explain how such an amazing boom time for our city, still lead to a major population loss. I for one expected a loss although not as much as the census is suggesting. Let's not forget that the census can be incorrect. It's not a perfect system. It's too bad people in other cities and even in our own suburbs don't get it. Number of households is up in the city and average number of people per household is down. That's not a bad thing in itself!

The 2 flat where I used to live in Wicker Park was turned into a single family home and now has 1 person living in it. This is a place my partner grew up in with his family of 8 people on one floor and a family of 6 on another floor. We bought a three flat in the southern end of Ukrainian Village in 1999. At that time there were 16 people living in here! Now there are 6 including a newborn baby. You would be hard pressed to find anyone in this neighborhood who thinks this is a bad thing. This kind of thing has happened in literally thousands of buildings across the city.

Unfortunately another reason population continues to decline is because most people don't want to raise their kids in the city. We own a dog walking and pet care business that mostly caters to 1 or 2 person households around the northwest side. The sad thing is 90% of these people don't plan on staying in the city forever. They see it as a fun place to be while they are young but as soon as they decide to start a family they feel it's time to sell their places and head to the suburbs. They move out and another single person or childless couple moves into their place. This bothers me a lot because there are plenty of nice neighborhoods with affordable homes that they could move to in the city, but because of negative perceptions and old stereotypes they don't even consider it. Until that kind of mentality diminishes we are going to continue to see population declines even while vast areas are improving.

Either way, the quality of life in this town gets better all the time and you'd have to be insane to think otherwise.

[oshkeoto]

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego

Even in the less desirable areas, most of the population loss can be attributed to shrinking household sizes, rather than a shrinking number of households. A relatively select few areas actually lost households from 2000-2010 within the city limits:

Where are you finding these numbers? I've been looking on the Census page and can't find anything about total households from the 2010 Census.

[VivaLFuego]

Originally Posted by oshkeoto

Where are you finding these numbers? I've been looking on the Census page and can't find anything about total households from the 2010 Census.

Downloaded raw data for 2000 and 2010 and calculated Pop and HH stats in ArcGIS. You can get the 2000 data and GIS shapefiles via a much more user-friendly interface at www.nhgis.org.