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I found this site that offers decades of metro populations. One that stuck out was 1920, as we are approaching 100 years from that census.
Here is how it looked almost 100 years ago: (x1000)
1. New York 7041
2. Chicago 2859
3. Philadelphia 2072
4. Boston 1366
5. Detroit 1071
6. St. Louis 859
7. Cleveland 834
8. Pittsburgh 775
9. San Francisco 771
10. Baltimore 753
11. Los Angeles 682
12. Minneapolis 626
13. Buffalo 539
14. Milwaukee 478
15. Cincinnati 470
16. Washington 467
17. Kansas City 455
18. New Orleans 393
19. Seattle 334
20. Indianapolis 323
Compare to 2010: (x1000)
Rank Metro Area Pop
1. New York 20009
2. Los Angeles 15750
3. Chicago 9023
4. San Francisco 6828
5. Philadelphia 6003
6. Dallas 5685
7. Miami 5513
8. Houston 5382
9. Atlanta 4743
10. Washington 4697
11. Boston 4407
12. Detroit 4160
13. Phoenix 3863
14. Seattle 3446
15. San Diego 2985
16. Denver 2716
17. Minneapolis 2651
18. Baltimore 2497
19. Tampa 2442
20. St. Louis 2246
Biggest winners: Los Angeles #11 to #2, San Francisco #9 to #4, Dallas --to #6, Miami --to #7, Houston --to #8, Atlanta --to #9
Biggest losers: St. Louis #6 to #20, Cleveland #7 to --, Detroit #5 to #12, Pittsburgh #8 to --, Baltimore #10 to #18.
Your biggest winners and biggest losers list seems off. Wouldn't climbing from not even ranked to number six, rank improvement by at least fourteen, be more impressive than climbing from ninth to fourth? Or falling from eight to not even ranked, rank decline by at least twelve, worse than falling from fifth to twelfth?
Also, the 2010 list, which seems to come purely from "#4: Metropolitan Area and Urbanized Area U.S. Census data from 1950-2010," makes no sense and it seems the person is just putting numbers together to cement what he views as the "hierarchy" of metro populations. I cannot understand, at all, why the ranking would be San Francisco-Philadelphia-Dallas-Miami-Houston-Atlanta-Washington-Boston. San Francisco is basically the Bay Area, Philadelphia has this bloated UA and metro, pushing it past the urban agglomeration of Dallas-Fort Worth at over six million people in 2010, while Boston and Washington are little more than just the UAs of those cities despite actually having recognized urban agglomerations which would also make them notably above Philadelphia, even this bloated version.
Your biggest winners and biggest losers list seems off. Wouldn't climbing from not even ranked to number six, rank improvement by at least fourteen, be more impressive than climbing from ninth to fourth? Or falling from eight to not even ranked, rank decline by at least twelve, worse than falling from fifth to twelfth?
Also, the 2010 list, which seems to come purely from "#4: Metropolitan Area and Urbanized Area U.S. Census data from 1950-2010," makes no sense and it seems the person is just putting numbers together to cement what he views as the "hierarchy" of metro populations. I cannot understand, at all, why the ranking would be San Francisco-Philadelphia-Dallas-Miami-Houston-Atlanta-Washington-Boston. San Francisco is basically the Bay Area, Philadelphia has this bloated UA and metro, pushing it past the urban agglomeration of Dallas-Fort Worth at over six million people in 2010, while Boston and Washington are little more than just the UAs of those cities despite actually having recognized urban agglomerations which would also make them notably above Philadelphia, even this bloated version.
Yeah.
If he's going to create his own metro borders, then it's rather dishonest to not apply the same criteria to all areas.
If he's going to create his own metro borders, then it's rather dishonest to not apply the same criteria to all areas.
I didn't create anything here. I only provided the source. But, yes, in 1920 I would suspect the definitions were not as standardized as they are today.
As for my winner/losers, I was looking at the list from top to bottom. Was not pretending it to be scientific. I just thought the list was interesting. BTW, you can compare other decades on the link I provided.
I didn't create anything here. I only provided the source. But, yes, in 1920 I would suspect the definitions were not as standardized as they are today.
As for my winner/losers, I was looking at the list from top to bottom. Was not pretending it to be scientific. I just thought the list was interesting. BTW, you can compare other decades on the link I provided.
Point taken. As I mentioned, in 1920 I think definitions of "greater" (name your city), were probably very subjective and can't be used for anything except a rough estimate. But still pretty fascinating to see how the rankings have changed over the decades. Says a lot about population movement in the past century.
Interesting that Seattle and San Francisco, which I think of as very hot places to be right now, have actually fallen on the list.
Not Seattle. And it's hard for me to think of San Francisco apart from the greater Bay Area.
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