I’ve been playing around with the 2010 United States Census results by county again. This time I compared them to the previous decennial census conducted in 2000. This allows one to observe population shifts taking place over the prior decade. I tend to find more interest in the larger shifts, which is true I suppose for most observers, particularly those places that lost the greatest number of residents. I wasn’t too surprised by the results. Well, I’ll amend that a bit by remarking that one of the biggest losers misaligned with my preconceived notions.
Wayne County, Michigan
Wayne County is home to Detroit, and topped the list (map). It’s firmly at the center of heavy manufacturing job hemorrhaging particularly within the automotive industry. Did anyone imagine this one not making the list? Right. It’s obvious. That’s not the unanticipated result I mentioned. I featured Detroit’s situation in an article about real estate prices a couple of years ago. It was possible then and probably still today to find hundreds of homes available for purchase for less than ten thousand dollars. Detroit may bulldoze whole portions of the city to deal with its shrinkage.
As an aside, the real estate feature appears to have been removed from Google Maps since I last focused here. However, the town boundary feature now exists. I never realized until now that Detroit is a doughnut city. Check out the completely enveloped adjoining towns of Highland Park and Hamtramck at its center (map).
Wayne County lost 240,000 residents over the decade, or more than 11% of its population. To put that in perspective, that’s about the same population as Windsor, Ontario, its neighbor across the Detroit River in Canada. Imagine everyone in Windsor moving away, or everyone in Norfolk, Virginia or Plymouth, England or the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. That’s the magnitude of population loss in Wayne County during the first decade of the new millennium.
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County, anchored by the city Chicago, is the one that surprised me a bit (map). So, Cook lost about 182 thousand residents. However it’s not so bad as a percentage (~3%) due to its immense size. The story here is a bit different though. According to the Chicago Tribune:
“Chicago lost a hefty 200,000 residents in the last decade, most of them African-Americans, while suburban counties grew dramatically in numbers and diversity, according to 2010 census data released Tuesday. People continued to spread out far from the region’s urban hub, as thousands flocked to Will, Kane and McHenry counties, all of which experienced a second decade of vigorous double-digit growth, the numbers showed.”
It’s more of a population shift than an economic loss unlike what has been experienced by Detroit. People are trading chairs but they’re not necessarily leaving the extended metropolitan area. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning developed an excellent map that clearly demonstrated that effect. Some of the innermost sections of Chicago had fewer residents, but many of them were wealthier.
Orleans Parish, Louisiana
Population decline can be a study of heartbreak and decline. I don’t mean to diminish the slow-moving tragedy that is Detroit, but the devastation of New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina seems to bring grief to a completely different level (map). This one is particularly difficult for me personally due to family ties both in Louisiana and along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Hurricane Katrina blasted through New Orleans and surrounding areas in August 2005. Corresponding population loss was abundantly evident four-and-a-half years later when census takers combed through the bayous. A solid 140 thousand fewer people lived in Orleans Parish in 2010 than in 2000. Similar, proportional stories could be observed in neighboring Parishes such as St. Bernard.
The New York Times offered an excellent set of maps that detailed population loss in New Orleans. It also explained,
“The Lower Ninth Ward, the poorest neighborhood in the city and the one hardest hit by the storm, had the largest population decrease. Pockets of New Orleans East, a low-lying section of the city that was also devastated by the storm, also had large drops. The few areas with an increase in population tended to be along the Mississippi River, a higher-elevation section of the city that was not significantly flooded after the storm.”
There are signs that New Orleans Parish has been picking-up population so it will likely fall from the Biggest Losers list in 2020.
Cuyahoga County, Ohio
Cuyahoga County, home to the city of Cleveland, lost just north of a hundred thousand residents (map). Nonetheless, the Cleveland Plain Dealer opined somewhat optimistically that it could have been worse. Cuyahoga seems to combine elements of Detroit and Chicago, with losses in manufacturing jobs but also the retention of a decent portion of its population within the greater economic area (albeit outside of Cuyahoga).
The list of population losses drops very quickly from there. The top (bottom?) four locations stand out rather starkly when compared to the remainder of counties losing residents.
Totally Unrelated
Long-time 12MC reader Randy Clark shared an interesting map with me a few days ago. Check out this wonderful set of geographically-themed street names in the Rancho Yolo neighborhood of Davis, California.
From east of Pole Line Avenue we see: Inner Circle; Full Circle; Broken Circle; Quarter Circle; Outer Circle; Hidden Circle; and just to top things off, Diameter Drive. It reminds me a bit of Corona’s Corona.
Nice find, Randy!
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