Tagged: population

In case you missed it, Newsweek Magazine put out a Top Ten list last Friday. This top ten list was called "American's Dying Cities."

There's nothing like a provocative headline to get people to peek in.

For Michigan, it's the usual suspects: Flint and Detroit.

But many will be surprised that Grand Rapids also made the list.

No doubt about it, there are many urban areas around the country that are in decay. The question is, how do you measure the decay?

The writers at Newsweek said they looked at the latest census numbers (it's difficult to tell who at Newsweek looked at the numbers because there's no byline as far as I can tell):

We used the most recent data from the Census Bureau on every metropolitan area with a population exceeding 100,000 to find the 30 cities that suffered the steepest population decline between 2000 and 2009. Then, in an attempt to look ahead toward the future of these regions, we analyzed demographic changes to find which ones experienced the biggest drop in the number of residents under 18. In this way, we can see which cities may have an even greater population decline ahead due to a shrinking population of young people.

It's also difficult to tell which direction this list goes.

The cities are listed in their scrolling widget in one direction, and in their "view all" list in the opposite direction. So, for what's it's worth, here's the list (from their "view all" view):

1. Grand Rapids, Michigan
2. Flint, Michigan
3. South Bend, Indiana
4. Detroit, Michigan
5. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
6. Cleveland, Ohio
7. Rochester, New York
8. Hialeah, Florida
9. Vallejo, California
10. New Orleans, Louisiana
    

One sign of a tough economy is the sight of a big moving truck out in front of the neighbor's house.

And according to one moving company's study, Michigan has seen more of those moving trucks leaving the state than entering the state.

In it's 34th annual "migration" study, United Van Lines says Michigan ranked second in outbound traffic in the country.

Officials in the Obama White House say they're not concerned about the new Census numbers.

The Associated Press reports that White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he "doesn't expect the results of the new census to have a 'huge practical impact' on national politics."

NPR quotes Gibbs as saying:

"I don't think shifting some seats from one area of the country to another necessarily marks a concern that you can't make a politically potent argument in those new places."

The results of the 2010 U.S. Census has shifted seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from traditional democratic strongholds in the East and Midwest, to some of the republican strongholds in the South and West (see map above).

Update 1:30 p.m.:

It's confirmed. Michigan has NEVER lost population in U.S. Census data history. I asked Vince Kountz of the U.S. Census Bureau in Detroit. He looked at the books and never saw population drop for the state of Michigan. He went back to the 1810 Census, before Michigan was a state. There were 4,762 people in the Michigan territory back then.

• We had 9,938,444 people in the state in 2000
• We now have 9,883,640 in the state in 2010.

12:02 p.m.:

The Census numbers are out. You can take a look at what they found with this map.

Detroit is a city built for 2 million people, but now has around 800,000. It's ruins have become famous. And some people, like artist Lowell Boileau, have said the problems Detroit faces are like a "slow moving Katrina."

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is leading a plan, called the Detroit Works Project, to shrink the city down to size. To make the city's 139 square mile footprint more manageable for city services like police, fire, sanitation, and water.