Pittsburgh Historical Population (Allentown, Washington, California: loans, houses, neighborhoods)

[ex-burgher]

I was looking at the changes in Pittsburgh's population in the last 100 years plus, and I'm wondering how it's possible that the city population is less than half of what it was in 1950? Is it due to smaller families? Have certain neighborhoods become depopulated? Are there less dwellings today. We all know why the city shrunk with the loss of industry. My questions is where and how did all these extra people live?

The Growth of Pittsburgh (Population and Annexation)

[JoeP]

Yes families are smaller. Don't forget how big families were (and crammed into all of this old neighborhoods). What happened in this regard is not unique to Pittsburgh.

[Moby Hick]

In additional to families being smaller, there are indeed neighborhoods that have been depopulated and many fewer dwellings today. In some areas, what is now back yard would have been another house fronting on the alley. And many of the hillsides that are today empty were once built up.

[mbw5100]

Take a look at these aerials from 1950. The city is so dense. No vacant lots.

Pittsburgh from the sky, before the Renaissance | Old Pittsburgh photos and stories | The Digs

Compare that to now. This site shows you where all the vacant lots are. Lots to Love | Reclaiming vacant lots in Allegheny County

[szug-bot]

If you ride around some neighborhoods, you will see vegetative overgrowth - you might notice concrete walls and block peeking out from the plant life. There used to be houses there.

Two such places that come to mind: Fifth Avenue, between the old St. Agnes and the Birmingham Bridge (as you go west, on the right side of the road), and lower Brighton Heights on McClure Avenue, from Woods Run Avenue uphill.

There are numerous others, obviously. So yes, definitely there used to be more homes.

I think in the first half of the last century, we were pushing 700,000.

Here is a link:

Population of the 20 Largest U.S. Cities, 1900–2012

Look at that tumble between 1940 and 1960!

More people does not necessarily equal bliss, though! There ARE advantages, though, to having a more populous area.

[eschaton]

Most of it was declining household size. If we added only 110,000 people to the city today, we'd have an equal number of households to 1950. So around 2/3rds of the total decline was smaller families.

In terms of real population decline, some of it was due to blight (particularly in neighborhoods which saw white flight) but a lot was also due to urban renewal, highway construction, and expansion of non-residential areas. In some cases gentrification actually spurred further population decline, as chopped-up houses were converted back into single-family use, and multi-generation families were pushed out and replaced by DINKs.

[Geeo]

It's a long story with many factors. Most big cities lost population in the 50s and 60s to the suburbs for various reasons. Some Pittsburgh neighborhoods have increased in population since the 2000 census.

One of the concerns coming out of World War II was that the city was overcrowded. Families were also larger. Some of the housing was sub-standard in the oldest areas and some even lacked indoor plumbing.

Starting in the depression, the federal government wanted to thin out a lot of big cities because poor health and disease were a result of crowding and unsanitary conditions.

After WWII, the government made it easy to move to the suburbs (for white people, anyway) and built interstate highways that helped subsidize the new developments. The GI Bill of Rights offered loans that made it possible for families to buy houses with little or no down payment. Minority neighborhoods in the city were left behind because African Americans could not buy in the suburbs and their city neighborhoods were red lined against home loans.

Urban renewal decimated a lot of city centers and displaced thousands. In Pittsburgh, thousands were moved out of the Hill District, East Street Valley, Manchester, South Side, East Liberty and North Side for new developments, steel mill expansions, and highway construction.

Cities in the north east and midwest cannot expand their boundaries like cities in the south and west are doing. In Pittsburgh, the annexation of Allegheny City in 1908 was the last major annexation (there were other small ones into the early 1950s). After the Allegheny City annexation into Pittsburgh, the state legislature made it harder to annex.

The de-industrialization of the 1980s affected the entire region, and for a few years in that decade the metro was losing 20,000 or 30,000 people a year. That has stopped and today the population is much more stable.

Pittsburgh was probably too crowded with 676,000 people, and a lot of them didn't have cars in 1950. I can't imagine what it would be like with that many people and everyone having a car today. The wholesale destruction that occurred after WWII wouldn't happen today because people are more organized and we saw what happened the first time around.

[xdv8]

Those aerial images are great, but sad.

Many people decided to give up on the city because it was too gritty/cramped/whatever and they moved to the suburbs, now many neighborhoods are a shell of what they once were. Car culture and highways helped facilitate this shift. Now we are left with a less dense urban core, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except for the thousands grand homes that are decaying or have been demolished, lack of an appropriately sized tax base, and fractured communities.

It's too bad the culture of the 50s and 60s embraced this behavior because for the most part it is irreversible and was totally misguided when you look at how the last 40 years of focus for City officials and large scale projects has been to reverse the damage done in just one decade.

I could see a comfortable Pittsburgh with double the population, but it would take 100 years and more money than would ever b available.

[lprmesia]

# of Households:
1950: 193889
2010: 156165

Average Household Size in Pittsburgh:
1950: 3.49
2010: 1.95

If I adjusted the 2010 population to the average household size of 1950's Pittsburgh, we'd have 545,123 people.

Now let's add back populations of certain neighborhoods for certain things that have happened since 1950 (all based on adjusted household size):

Urban Renewal:-6,687
East Liberty
1950: 14,954
2010: 5,869
2010: 10,465 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -4,489

Allegheny Center
1950: 3,862
2010: 933
2010: 1,664 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -2,198

Highway Communities: -22,669

North Shore
1950: 3952
2010: 303
2010: 540 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -3412

California-Kirkbride
1950: 5428
2010: 761
2010: 1357 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -4071

Fineview
1950: 4997
2010: 1285
2010: 2291 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -2706

South Oakland
1950: 7842
2010: 2969
2010: 5294 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -2548

West End
1950: 1820
2010: 254
2010: 453 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -1367

Perry North
1950: 8354
2010: 4050
2010: 7222 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -1132

Ridgemont
1950: 989
2010: 483
2010: 861 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -128

Chateau
1950: 7326
2010: 11
2010: 20 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -7306

Other Communities which lost a lot of housing stock: -104,133
Crawford-Roberts
1950: 17334
2010: 2256
2010: 4023 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -13311

Middle Hill
1950: 14929
2010: 1707
2010: 3044 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -11885

Larimer
1950: 12102
2010: 1728
2010: 3081 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -9021

Homewood South
1950: 12610
2010: 2344
2010: 4180 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -8430

East Allegheny
1950: 11763
2010: 2136
2010: 3809 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -7954

Homewood North
1950: 13316
2010: 3280
2010: 5849 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -7467

Manchester
1950: 10958
2010: 2130
2010: 3798 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -7160

Perry South
1950: 14462
2010: 4145
2010: 7391 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -7071

Terrace Village
1950: 11631
2010: 3228
2010: 5756 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -5875

Beltzhoover
1950: 8153
2010: 1925
2010: 3433 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -4720

Hazelwood
1950: 12371
2010: 4317
2010: 7698 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -4673

Marshall-Shadeland
1950: 14183
2010: 6043
2010: 10776 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -3407

Allentown
1950: 7487
2010: 2500
2010: 4458 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -3029

St. Clair
1950: 3089
2010: 209
2010: 373 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -2716

Arlington Heights
1950: 2860
2010: 244
2010: 435 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -2425

Bedford Dwellings:
1950: 3870
2010: 1202
2010: 2143 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -1727

Upper Hill
1950: 5884
2010: 2057
2010: 3668 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -2216

Lower Hill (including Downtown)
1950: 7517
2010: 3629
2010: 6471 (Adjusted household size)
+/-: -1046

Now you have 677,736. Almost identical to the 1950 population. Sure, some neighborhoods have grown some (North Oakland, Banksville) and other intact neighborhoods have posted losses (Bloomfield, Mt. Washington, Lawrenceville, South Side). But really, it's just a combination of empty lots in neglected neighborhoods and fewer people sharing a household

[lprmesia]

Since North Oakland posted the 5th highest growth rate of any neighborhood since 1950, I think the solution for the other neighborhoods is to get a Chuck Bonasorte stand.