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Phoenix has it's own situation to overcome first and foremost. Philadelphia may be able to see this as an advantage, but who knows.
Some of those reasons are why I have a feeling Phoenix will have a little trouble gaining the large quantities of people it has been in the near future.
I don't see it happening anytime soon. Philadelphia is seeing a lot of reinvestment in its urban neighborhoods, and it has seen growth recently, but it's hard to post double-digit population gains (which is what it would need to get back in front) in a city that has been effectively built-out for generations. Revitalization of historic/established neighborhoods happens one building at a time.
The good news, Philadelphia is growing. But like almost all older built-out cities, it's going to be slow relative to the newer cities.
contrary to the opinion of most here Philadelphia is once again the 5th largest city and it doesn't look like pheonix ever even replaced philadelphia as the fifth largest city, previous estimates were wrong and cold hard census data shows that Philadelphia is still the fifth largest city in America by a margin of nearly 100,000 people.
This is despite the fact that Pheonix continues to grow in area as it annexes more land into the city and has gone from just over 300 sq miles in 1980 to 517 sq miles today, the 11th largest city by area in the country. meanwhile Philadelphia only has an area of 135 sq miles, a number that has remained unchanged since the 19th century. in terms of population density it's not even close as there are 11.5 thousand people per sq mile in philly and only 3 thousand per sq mile in phoenix. the metro areas are similarly disproportionate as pheonix only has 4.3 million in the metro area whereas philly has 6 million, still good for 4th best in the nation.
source: Surprise: Philly still the 5th largest city | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/10/2011 (http://www.philly.com/philly/news/117761248.html - broken link)
contrary to the opinion of most here Philadelphia is once again the 5th largest city and it doesn't look like pheonix ever even replaced philadelphia as the fifth largest city, previous estimates were wrong and cold hard census data shows that Philadelphia is still the fifth largest city in America by a margin of nearly 100,000 people.
This is despite the fact that Pheonix continues to grow in area as it annexes more land into the city and has gone from just over 300 sq miles in 1980 to 517 sq miles today, the 11th largest city by area in the country. meanwhile Philadelphia only has an area of 135 sq miles, a number that has remained unchanged since the 19th century. in terms of population density it's not even close as there are 11.5 thousand people per sq mile in philly and only 3 thousand per sq mile in phoenix. the metro areas are similarly disproportionate as pheonix only has 4.3 million in the metro area whereas philly has 6 million, still good for 4th best in the nation.
source: Surprise: Philly still the 5th largest city | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/10/2011 (http://www.philly.com/philly/news/117761248.html - broken link)
That's fine...keep kicking Phoenix in the teeth. Despite all of your wonderful words of wisdom and at the end of the day, Philly still only grew by 8456 people over the past 10 years. All it means is that you haven't lost #5...yet.
That's fine...keep kicking Phoenix in the teeth. Despite all of your wonderful words of wisdom and at the end of the day, Philly still only grew by 8456 people over the past 10 years.
that's pretty significant for a city that has been shrinking in population since the 1950s. starting in the 1990's the flood to the suburbs started to reduce to trickle and now it's reversed to the point where Philadelphia is actually gaining people, no one would have predicted this 20 years ago.
and this isn't a fad, Philadelphia was a large industrial city and when it lost that industry it scuffled and tripped for about a half a century but we've righted ourselves and we're back on track.
Philadelphia has redefined itself in the past 15 years or so as worldwide center for medicine, and has re-established itself as an educational mecca. and the good news many of those hundreds of thousands of college students are now deciding to stay in philadelphia and put their education to work in the city thereby not only increasing our population but our earning power and per capita gdp.
meanwhile phoenix gained way more people over the past 10 years than philly but most of them were in the first half of the decade, the recession hit phoenix hard and by some estimates has LOST people since 2008. i think there is very real possibility that over the next 10 years Philadelphia outgrows pheonix and pheonix NEVER catches Philadelphia.
that's pretty significant for a city that has been shrinking in population since the 1950s. starting in the 1990's the flood to the suburbs started to reduce to trickle and now it's reversed to the point where Philadelphia is actually gaining people, no one would have predicted this 20 years ago.
and this isn't a fad, Philadelphia was a large industrial city and when it lost that industry it scuffled and tripped for about a half a century but we've righted ourselves and we're back on track.
Philadelphia has redefined itself in the past 15 years or so as worldwide center for medicine, and has re-established itself as an educational mecca. and the good news many of those hundreds of thousands of college students are now deciding to stay in philadelphia and put their education to work in the city thereby not only increasing our population but our earning power and per capita gdp.
meanwhile phoenix gained way more people over the past 10 years than philly but most of them were in the first half of the decade, the recession hit phoenix hard and by some estimates has LOST people since 2008. i think there is very real possibility that over the next 10 years Philadelphia outgrows pheonix and pheonix NEVER catches Philadelphia.
If the 2008-2010 estimates were overestimated, what makes you think that the years prior to that weren't also overestimated? If the same entity was doing the estimates for the past 10 years, why would they get the first seven years correct and not the last three?
BTW, Phoenix has learned many lessons over it's growth that happened too quickly, but Philly is not the only city that can learn from its mistakes and reinvent itself.
If Philly sustains the same type of growth it had over the past 10 years, I just don't see it maintaining the #5 position regardless of whether or not it is Phoenix that surpasses it.
Plus the Philadelphia MSA retained its position as the 5th largest MSA in the nation.
There was much fanfare by Houston boosters last year that Houston/Sugarland/Baytown MSA had overtaken Philadelphia as the 5th largest MSA in the nation based on the census estimates at the time.
That is not the case! Philadelphia MSA is the 5th largest MSA in the nation, just behind the Dallas MSA.
I love Philadelphia.
My significant other has family there and I always enjoy visiting Philadelphia ... it is a smaller version of New York City but albeit still a very, very big league city.
If the 2008-2010 estimates were overestimated, what makes you think that the years prior to that weren't also overestimated? If the same entity was doing the estimates for the past 10 years, why would they get the first seven years correct and not the last three?
BTW, Phoenix has learned many lessons over it's growth that happened too quickly, but Philly is not the only city that can learn from its mistakes and reinvent itself.
If Philly sustains the same type of growth it had over the past 10 years, I just don't see it maintaining the #5 position regardless of whether or not it is Phoenix that surpasses it.
obviously the estimates are unreliable. but that doesn't mean that they are completely worthless. looking at the estimates as well as the facts that the census provides it's reasonable to conclude from that information that most of Phoenix's growth occurred in the beginning of the decade and has since slowed. Sure, Phoenix probably never lost significant population as much as earlier estimates were simply too high, but there was at least a slow down to the growth that throughout the nineties and the early aughts was extremely rapid.
meanwhile you can also draw from these sources that while philadelphia's population likely never dropped as far down as the estimates said, it's undeniable that as recently as the last census Philadelphia was still losing significant population and it's reasonable to assume through estimates that this trend had not yet reversed until we were well into this decade. So over the later portion of this decade Philadelphia not only gained back this initial loss but also then gained another 8.5 thousand people.
so while phoenix's growth rate over the past 10 years is undeniably higher than Philadelphia's it is far from a stretch to say that since then the have fallen much closer together and over the past two years it is possible that Philadelphia's growth rate is higher.
With much of the sunbelt cities facing similar a crisis after the housing bubble burst; coupled with the fact that these cities are no longer gaining 100s of sq miles of geographical expansion as the annexing of nearby municipalities has all but stopped, it is reasonable to assume that if more recent trends continue that over the next ten years growth in sunbelt cities will not rise as dramatically as it has over the previous two decades. that along with will almost surely be an even greater population increase in Philadelphia over the next decade and you can why it's very easy to now predict that with an edge over 80,000 people to it's closest competitor that these new population growth rates mean Philadelphia will remain the 5th largest city in america for the foreseeable future.
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Philly Still 5th largest City
