Chicago's population THROUGHOUT its history: always growing (Naperville, Joliet: 2015, how much)

[edsg25]

Chicago is amazing. Since statistics were compiled, the history of Chicago has been one of constant growth. In no decade has it ever declined in population. the trajectory has always been upward. Now to be fair, if one is to read estimates, the growth shown in the mid-decade year of 2015 appears to be minimal, but it still grew.

Let's look at how much Chicago has grown during the modern era (if we measure it by beginning in the post-WWII years):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicag...rea#Population


Chicago- Naperville- Joliet, IL-IN-WI
1950 Census: 5,495,364
1960 Census: 6,794,461
1970 Census: 7,612,314
1980 Census: 7,869,542
1990 Census: 8,065,633
2000 Census: 9,098,316
2010 Census: 9,461,105

Historical Metropolitan Populations of the United States - Peakbagger.com

for the record, we appear to have slowed in growth during this decade if we are to believe the always suspect number of a mid-census year.....Crain's reports Chicago grew to 9,554,598 in 2015, admittedly less than .1% and only about 4,735 people since 2010.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...inds-to-a-halt

Now let's look at Chicago's growth as measured by its first entry into the top 20 population list when it clocked in 17th place with an impressive 40,000 souls, right behind Rochester (I'm assuming we are talking NY here, not MN )

What's that you say? Did I omit something here. Should I have made it clear from the start I was talking metro population, not municipal? No, it wasn't an issue, IMHO: municipal population is meaningless, it reflects where a line is drawn on the map and tells me nothing other than where a community gets its public services.

The Chicago that matters is not a city, but a metro area. Chicagoland. It is a metropolitan area that defines who we are and how well we are doing and how we should be legitimately measured.

In every metropolitan area, the trend has always been dispersion over a larger geographic area. In earlier years of the city's growth (and as evidenced by so many cities throughout the nation), municipal population grew sharply as more people moved into the city and as the city spread outward to encompass hinterland areas, many of which were suburbs that became incorporated into the city limits.

Chicago's physical boundaries grew, all the way on up to 1930 when three annexations added parcels of land to the northwest, west, and southwest sides. I could actually have stated the year as 1960, but preferred not to have made that a benchmark since that expansion was strictly about brining O'Hare into city limits.

When we see Chicago's municipal population first drop after its 1950 peak, that drop came during the most massive decade of suburbanization in the nation's history.

My point here? Why on earth do we dwell on the virtual meaningless of municipal population, a statistic that tells us virtually nothing. Look at it logically.

look at these population figures for NYC (municipal) population:

year rank population

1790 1 33131
1800 1 60515
1810 1 96373
1820 1 123706
1830 1 202589
1840 1 312710
1850 1 515547
1860 1 813669
1870 1 942292
1880 1 1206299
1890 1 1515301
1900 1 3437202
1910 1 4766883
1920 1 5620048
1930 1 6930446
1940 1 7454995
1950 1 7891957
1960 1 7781984
1970 1 7894862
1980 1 7071639
1990 1 7322564

note the off-the-charts growth between 1890 and 1900, a decade where NYC added a mind boggling 2,000,000 citizens. well, we all know why that number shot up. in 1898, Albany passed the legislation that gave birth to Greater New York, adding the complete boroughs of Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn, and the easter portion of the Bronx to a city which up to that point consisted of Manhattan and western Bronx.

Look to the late 1900s when a secession movement showed the possibility of real success as the San Fernando Valley tried to put away from a Los Angeles it never did even feel a part of and always felt it was the step child of. If the SFV had become its own city, with a population well over a million, LA would have fallen below Chicago in municipal population, a meaningless statistic which would not have changed one iota the relationship between Metro LA and Chicagoland.

Boston and San Francisco thrive as the incredibly small cities they are; neither will ever hit a million people and neither gives a rat's a** about that fact. Both Metro Boston and the Bay Area and huge metropolitan areas, their population numbers a far more valid measure than the population of the two cities central to their respective regions.

Houston annexed everything in sight and far exceeds both SF and Boston in municipal population. But not metropolitan...and that's the one counts, folks.

Our paradigms on municipal population and its meaning are senseless. We talk insanity about Chicago's dropping population when there has been no drop at all in the stat that counts....metro population. We talk of decay of our midwestern cities and love to zero in on the minuscule municipal population of a place like St. Louis with its seemingly embarrassing 300,000 apparently-very-lonely souls. Rubbish. St.Louis has a population within shouting distance to 3,000,000, as measured by 2,810,000 people. And we all StL's municipal population would have been far larger than it is today if the city hadn't seen itself as the center of the universe and pulled out of StL County and its scattering of minimal population to become StL city. Bad move....but it did not make metro StL a smaller or less important place.

Metropolitan areas are organic, they are real, they are not merely lines on a map. they represent the extent of growth outward from a city core as an area defined by economic, cultural, and other forms of connection. Metro growth is what counts.........and IMHO it translates to a Chicago that counts for a helluva lot, having grown every year in its history when that ten year census is compiled.

[compactspace]

I agree (mostly) with you on principle, but Chicago could really do with another million people.

For a start, it would fill the coffers. Growth in the suburbs doesn't help Chicago pay its bills. Next, it would make further investment in metro transit feasible.

And finally, thousands of lovely old buildings on the South and West sides desperately need rehabilitating, and that requires people. I grew up in a city whose tiny tracts of pre-war buildings are jealously protected and highly prized. Most of the rest is just nasty, cheap postwar garbage. It breaks my heart to see Chicago's fabulous neighborhoods fall into ruin. Chicagoans don't know what they're losing, IMO.

I think the city could easily absorb another million people and be a long way from feeling 'crowded'.

(And just to address a point of contention: didn't the Chicago metro lose a net of 6500 people or thereabouts last year? That can't be good news.)

[MSchemist80]

Originally Posted by compactspace

I think the city could easily absorb another million people and be a long way from feeling 'crowded'.

Try telling that to the people stuck in traffic on the expressways and streets.

[ToriaT]

I agree with you that what is meaningful is the metro area. What they call Los Angeles is actually an area which includes things we would consider suburbs and not part of Chicago. There is actually almost ten million people in the Chcago metro area. That is huge.

[chet everett]

When you get Greg Hinz to print a retraction maybe that would be convincing --

CHICAGO AREA POPULATION GROWTH GRINDS TO A HALT |ChicagoBusiness.com

Population growth in the Chicago area ground to a near halt, as even the limited momentum the area experienced during the Great Recession has dissipated.

According to figures being released this morning by the U.S. Census Bureau, the metropolitan area, which takes in portions of Illinois, southeast Wisconsin and northwest Indiana... The continued slow growth through what now is almost half a decade makes it more likely that Illinois once again will lose at least one congressional seat in reapportionment after the 2020 census. The estimated figures also are used to distribute some federal financial aid.

[NOLA101]

But no longer. Chicago's metro has population loss this last Census year.

In fact Chicago is the only major U.S. metro to show population loss.

[chet everett]

Even the well regarded Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning understands the dire situation facing the region --

Population change and geographic mobility in the CMAP region - Updates - CMAP

Recent ...migration data indicate that, while the Chicago region continues to attract international migration, it has struggled to resume migration at pre-recession rates and now lags behind other large metropolitan regions.
Declining population growth in the CMAP region
Recent annual population estimates indicate that the Chicago region's population growth has slowed and is now trailing other regions that metropolitan Chicago competes with to attract talent. ...Chicago region is not keeping pace with other regions. ... the region's gross domestic product also trails our peers. CMAP also examined jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields that drive innovation, finding that the region's growth in many key industries is behind our peer regions.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by ToriaT

I agree with you that what is meaningful is the metro area. What they call Los Angeles is actually an area which includes things we would consider suburbs and not part of Chicago. There is actually almost ten million people in the Chcago metro area. That is huge.

Toria, I think both NYC and LA are fundamentally different from all other cities. They are composed of distinct areas, many of which come across as more suburban than urban. In New York, much of the eastern portions of Queens is still made up of the same "villages" that these locales were from before the consolidation of Greater New York. Certainly Staten Island does not project itself as heavily urban in nature. Rivers and bays separate Manhattan from its hinterland areas within city limits.

In LA, topography cuts off parts of the city from the core. The San Fernando Valley is north of the Hollywood Hills or, if you prefer to give them their height distinction they may actually deserve, the Santa Monica Mts....for these are formidable enough to make the valley areas to the north appear like another world. Like Queens, SFV is made up of endless towns and villages which aren't real because they are within city limits.

Chicago is the largest city in the nation where everybody has the same city address within city limits: Chicago. Not so in NYC where the NY address is used mainly in Manhattan, Brooklyn is used in Brooklyn, and the community/village address is used in places like Flushing, Astoria, St. George, et al.

In LA, the only town names....Encino, Westwood, San Pedro, Venice, Brentwood, etc......appear as addresses.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by chet everett

When you get Greg Hinz to print a retraction maybe that would be convincing --

CHICAGO AREA POPULATION GROWTH GRINDS TO A HALT |ChicagoBusiness.com

Chet, that seems to be the nature of the game when your state is in the northeast quadrant of the country: you lose relative power. It's not just Illinois.....look at NYS, despite having NYC within its area, it loses congressional power through redistricting.

the northeast will never be the attraction for people to live in that the sun belt is.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

But no longer. Chicago's metro has population loss this last Census year.

In fact Chicago is the only major U.S. metro to show population loss.

i'm lost, NOLA, but I usually am when you post. Everything I goggled came up with the same stat's for the last two census years.......2000 comes in as 9,098,316 and 2010 as 9,461,105. that's more than a 350,000 gain.

meanwhile the 2015 estimate was 9,554,598....which is only an estimate, but even as an estimate, it is up.

Where is the population loss you speak of?

All cities/metro areas grow and contract. Growth is never constant and luckily for us, it is not. The only thing that grows continuously is cancer. Honestly, NOLA, I can't understand you one bit. You make no sense to me. You are obsessed with a city/metro area that you neither like, have anything good to say about, or believe it has any kind of future, so you come here and throw around the most ridiculous, absurd crap about the place.

You are driven by your hate and disgust for Chicago and seek only to tear it down. It's a joke, NOLA.....we in Chicago and Chicagoland are blessed, utterly blessed, by having one of the greatest, most dynamic, diverse, culturally rich, economic powerhouse, architectural gem, eclectic, cities in America.......sitting there in the rarified and short listed air at the apex of urban america. it's a helluva of (toddling') town, world class alpha metropolis that is strong and major force to be reckoned with....now/today.....and very, very, ever-so-very well, well into the future. I travel coast-to-coast and if people find out i'm from chicago, i invariably get the same response: what a fantastic city, i love the place, Chicago's incredible.

Jeez, man, can't you find better things to do with your time than endlessly spewing your over-the-top negativity and garbage about Chicago, the city you obsess over, on a virtual daily basis here.