L'ville population-what happened (Louisville: school, living in, suburbs)

[desert sun]

Why does city data say Louiville's populaton is just over 200,000 thousand and I remember this in school too, but I saw on a post somewhere on here that Louisville is the 14th largest city, how did this happen?

[tomocox]

Can you spell "spin"? In a much needed realignment, the people of Jefferson County voted to merge the city and county governments into a Metro-Louisville. It is actually a convoluted mess, but the number you were seeing (200k) didn't include the entire population of Jefferson County.

[missymomof3]

Originally Posted by tomocox

Can you spell "spin"? In a much needed realignment, the people of Jefferson County voted to merge the city and county governments into a Metro-Louisville. It is actually a convoluted mess, but the number you were seeing (200k) didn't include the entire population of Jefferson County.

I didn't vote for this mess and it didn't change a thing for me anyway

[traveler guy]

It's probably cause most of the major cities of the US are small cities with suburbs all around them. Like miami population is 400K while the metro is about 5.4 mil.
Also I think the 14th largest city is actually San Francisco with about 700K.

[kat750]

What happened to the 400k that used to live in Louisville in the 60s?

[censusdata]

The Louisville merger with unincorperated areas of Jefferson County occured in 2003, there has not an official census since the merger occured - hence City Data is showing the pre merger Louisville population the last official census which occured in 2000.

Louisville wanted to claim all the population of Jefferson County for its post merger population, but the Census bureau said that since the suburban cities didn't dissolve that they couldn't count in the population. Similar to Nashville and Indy residents of independent cities can still vote for the city mayor and are represented by council districts

in 2000 the city of Louisville had 256,000 residents and Jefferson County had 693,000. The merged Louisville has 556,000 residents, with an additional 153,000 people living in Jefferson County's independent cities.

[JMT]

Originally Posted by kat750

What happened to the 400k that used to live in Louisville in the 60s?

I'd like to know the same thing. The 1960 Census showed Louisville's population as 390,639. Louisville lost 1/3 of its population between 1960 and 1980 while most big cities, even Memphis, didn't start losing urban population until after 1980. What happened in Louisville?

http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decenni...a_kyABC-01.pdf

[kingcopper]

the answer is white flight and industrialization. The city is very small geographically, and has always been very dense. Industry and flooding along with white flight reduced the density. I'd say that Louisville is far more dense than her southern peers and is probably closer in density to New Orleans rather than an Atlanta.

[censusdata]

Originally Posted by JMT

while most big cities... didn't start losing urban population until after 1980. What happened in Louisville?

http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decenni...a_kyABC-01.pdf

Are you joking? Nearly all major cities in the Eastern Half of the US started losing populations by the 1950s, including Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Cincinanti, St Louis, Milwaukee, and San Francisco in the West did as well.

[bobmulk]

censusdata: love your information. I'm a demographics junkie.