The US Census Bureau thread

[Crawford]

What's going on with St. Louis? While I get that the annual estimates are likely way off, the general trends are plausibly informative, and the super rusty city propers seem to finally be growing, excepting STL. IMO the best parts of STL proper have a lot better urbanity than the best parts of Detroit or Cleveland. Seems to have the bones for the same trends as everywhere else. Downtown seems notably worse than Detroit or Cleveland tho.

[Steely Dan]

I loved moved all of housing discussion over to a new thread:

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=261753

Please continue that discussion there.

Let's keep this one on track about US census talk.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Downtown seems notably worse than Detroit or Cleveland tho.

That's my best guess too. Cities like Detroit really seem to be turning the ship around from the downtown out. St. Louis seems to be struggling with that


I've made the point before, but I really do honestly believe that the existence of downtown Clayton hurts St. Louis' downtown more than similar such secondary urban office nodes hurt their central city's downtown.

Downtown St. Louis hasn't seen a new class A office tower built in nearly 4 decades now. Meanwhile Clayton has built many such towers during that time.

[Steely Dan]

According to the 2024 CB city estimates, there are now 93 municipalities over 250K people in the US.

And according to those same estimates, 25 of them are still below their per-pandemic 2020 population.



City | 2024 estimate | 2020 count | % change

1. St. Louis | 279,695 | 301,578 | −7.26%
2. New Orleans | 362,701 | 383,997 | −5.55%
3. San Francisco | 827,526 | 873,965 | −5.31%
4. New York | 8,478,072 | 8,804,190 −3.70%
5. Memphis | 610,919 | 633,104 | −3.50%
   
   
6. Long Beach | 450,901 | 466,742 | −3.39%
7. Baltimore | 568,271 | 585,708 | −2.98%
8. Portland | 635,749 | 652,503 | −2.57%
9. Milwaukee | 563,531 | 577,222 | −2.37%
10. Cleveland | 365,379 | 372,624 | −1.94%
    
    
11. Toledo | 265,638 | 270,871 | −1.93%
12. Philadelphia | 1,573,916 | 1,603,797 | −1.86%
13. Honolulu | 344,967 | 350,964 | −1.71%
14. San Jose | 997,368 | 1,013,240 | −1.57%
15. Saint Paul | 307,465 | 311,527 | −1.30%
    
    
16. Virginia Beach | 454,808 | 459,470 | −1.01%
17. Chicago | 2,721,308 | 2,746,388 | −0.91%
18. Albuquerque | 560,326 | 564,559 | −0.75%
19. Anaheim | 344,561 | 346,824 | −0.65%
20. Buffalo | 276,617 | 278,349 | −0.62%
    
    
21. Anchorage | 289,600 | 291,247 | −0.57%
22. Los Angeles | 3,878,704 | 3,898,747 | −0.51%
23. Boston | 673,458 | 675,647 | −0.32%
24. Minneapolis | 428,579 | 429,954 | −0.32%
25. Corpus Christi | 317,317 | 317,863 | −0.17%

the good news is that this list got a lot shorter than last year, and 9 of the above are less the 1% off of 2020, which has got to be WELL within whatever margin or error these estimates come with.

And, as always, take EVERYTHING regarding CB estimates with a giant grain of salt.

[The North One]

Except official counts were also completely off, especially if you're a hard to count city where people don't trust giving information to the census.

[benp]

Originally Posted by The North One

Except official counts were also completely off, especially if you're a hard to count city where people don't trust giving information to the census.

Thing is, yearly estimates are based on changes from the 10-year baseline numbers. What is looked yearly at are birth/death records, IRS county-to-county moving records, ACS state-to-county records, and a series of random surveys. The 10-year Census is the only time that a full house-to-house count is performed. The yearly estimates only measure changes seen. And, they are based on sampling, limited actual data, and incomplete data (such as only taxpayers are included in IRS data, official change of address must be filed for moving data, birth/death records may not be available below county level, etc).

Any flaws in the 10-year count are only magnified by the yearly estimates. The 10-year count is the only attempt to physically locate and count every single residence.

[mhays]

The counts don't count everyone. Both have their issues. The count is probably more accurate than the estimates but it's not perfect either.

[PhillyRising]

I imagine the data for these numbers came mostly when Biden was in office. It will be interesting to see them next year with this regime making up whatever and saying people are now "fleeing" certain cities and going to ones more politically aligned with them.

The only hope for 2030 is a Democrat will be back in charge and therefore it will be done properly.

I'm just so happy Detroit is finally starting to turn it around.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by PhillyRising

I imagine the data for these numbers came mostly when Biden was in office. It will be interesting to see them next year with this regime making up whatever and saying people are now "fleeing" certain cities and going to ones more politically aligned with them.

The only hope for 2030 is a Democrat will be back in charge and therefore it will be done properly.

I'm just so happy Detroit is finally starting to turn it around.

Agreed...between staffing reductions, idiots in charge, and and potential funny business this could go very badly in 2030.

[jayden]

Aside from cities like Houston, wouldn't "growth" for most of these cities be gaining back what they lost during covid?

[PhillyRising]

Originally Posted by jayden

Aside from cities like Houston, wouldn't "growth" for most of these cities be gaining back what they lost during covid?

That is if they actually lost people in the first place. I don't know a soul who decided to up and move during the pandemic because they could work wherever remotely.

If people did move, it obviously wasn't a permanent situation.

[benp]

Originally Posted by PhillyRising

That is if they actually lost people in the first place. I don't know a soul who decided to up and move during the pandemic because they could work wherever remotely.

If people did move, it obviously wasn't a permanent situation.

It wasn't just people moving to and from cities. People were dying at much higher rates than previous years.

[JManc]

As for all those people moving to Houston, we'd be happy to send them your way. And feel free to take a million or so already here if you want.

[craigs]

The Los Angeles map is missing more than a third of the population.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by craigs

The Los Angeles map is missing more than a third of the population.

That's partially because I only captured the central part of the map for the video. You will notice how much higher the densities are than the 8K average for the whole city. Which is my point.

[mhays]

You can see 4/1/20 numbers at https://maps.geo.census.gov/ddmv/map.html.

The map increments only go to 10,000/sm. However you can click and see the actual numbers for each tract.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by mhays

You can see 4/1/20 numbers at https://maps.geo.census.gov/ddmv/map.html.

The map increments only go to 10,000/sm. However you can click and see the actual numbers for each tract.

Cool! Though it does take a lot of zooming in to find it.

Edited to add: Those maps are great for showing the vast areas of sparsely-populated land that drag the overall density averages down.

[mhays]

The other flaw is that clicking on a tract on the map might open a neighboring tract. Apparently a few people were assigned the job of lining up the click zones with the graphical map, and they had drinking games all week. Or that's my guess.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by mhays

The other flaw is that clicking on a tract on the map might open a neighboring tract. Apparently a few people were assigned the job of lining up the click zones with the graphical map, and they had drinking games all week. Or that's my guess.

I had to zoom in A LOT just to get the right county to open up. Then zoom even more to get the tracts to open.

[Steely Dan]

Nothing is perfect when it comes to measuring population density, but IMO the single best apples to apples comparison figure we have is weighted population density by census tract for Urban Areas (gets rid of arbitrary municipal limits).

It's a shame that it's such a cumbersome data point to calculate for all cities.