Rank Geographic Area Population estimates according to the Census Bureau

Bold-faced indicates cities in the Midwest:

July 1, 2004
1 New York New York 8,104,079
2 Los Angeles California 3,845,541
3 Chicago Illinois 2,862,244
4 Houston Texas 2,012,626
5 Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1,470,151
6 Phoenix Arizona 1,418,041
7 San Diego California 1,263,756
8 San Antonio Texas 1,236,249
9 Dallas Texas 1,210,393
10 San Jose California 904,522
11 Detroit Michigan 900,198
12 Indianapolis Indiana 784,242
13 Jacksonville Florida 777,704
14 San Francisco California 744,230
15 Columbus Ohio 730,008
16 Austin Texas 681,804
17 Memphis Tennessee 671,929
18 Baltimore Maryland 636,251
19 Fort Worth Texas 603,350
20 Charlotte North Carolina 594,359
21 El Paso Texas 592,099
22 Milwaukee Wisconsin 583,624
23 Seattle Washington 571,480
24 Boston Massachusetts 569,165
25 Denver Colorado 556,835
26 Louisville-Jefferson County Kentucky 556,332
27 Washington District of Columbia 553,523
28 Nashville-Davidson Tennessee 546,719
29 Las Vegas Nevada 534,847
30 Portland Oregon 533,492
31 Oklahoma City Oklahoma 528,042
32 Tucson Arizona 512,023
33 Albuquerque New Mexico 484,246
34 Long Beach California 476,564
35 New Orleans Louisiana 462,269
36 Cleveland Ohio 458,684
37 Fresno California 457,719
38 Sacramento California 454,330
39 Kansas City Missouri 444,387
40 Virginia Beach Virginia 440,098
41 Mesa Arizona 437,454
42 Atlanta Georgia 419,122
43 Omaha Nebraska 409,416
44 Oakland California 397,976
45 Tulsa Oklahoma 383,764
46 Miami Florida 379,724
47 Honolulu CDP Hawaii 377,260
48 Minneapolis Minnesota 373,943
49 Colorado Springs Colorado 369,363
50 Arlington Texas 359,467
51 Wichita Kansas 353,823
52 St. Louis Missouri 343,279
53 Santa Ana California 342,715
54 Anaheim California 333,776
55 Raleigh North Carolina 326,653
56 Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 322,450
57 Tampa Florida 321,772
58 Cincinnati Ohio 314,154
59 Toledo Ohio 304,973
60 Aurora Colorado 291,843
61 Riverside California 288,384
62 Bakersfield California 283,936
63 Buffalo New York 282,864
64 Corpus Christi Texas 281,196
65 Newark New Jersey 280,451
66 Stockton California 279,888
67 St. Paul Minnesota 276,963
68 Anchorage Alaska 272,687
69 Lexington-Fayette Kentucky 266,358
70 St. Petersburg Florida 249,090
71 Plano Texas 245,411
72 Jersey City New Jersey 239,079
73 Norfolk Virginia 237,835
74 Lincoln Nebraska 236,146
75 Glendale Arizona 235,591
76 Birmingham Alabama 233,149
77 Greensboro North Carolina 231,543
78 Henderson Nevada 224,829
79 Hialeah Florida 224,522
80 Baton Rouge Louisiana 224,097
81 Chandler Arizona 223,991
82 Scottsdale Arizona 221,792
83 Madison Wisconsin 220,332
84 Fort Wayne Indiana 219,351
85 Garland Texas 217,176
86 Chesapeake Virginia 214,725
87 Rochester New York 212,481
88 Akron Ohio 212,179
89 Lubbock Texas 207,852
90 Modesto California 206,769
91 Orlando Florida 205,648
92 Chula Vista California 204,879
93 Laredo Texas 203,212
94 Fremont California 202,373
95 Durham North Carolina 201,726
96 Glendale California 201,326
97 Montgomery Alabama 200,983
98 Shreveport Louisiana 198,675
99 San Bernardino California 198,406
100 Reno Nevada 197,963

Louisville and Lexington aren't in the midwest...

You forgot to bold St. Louis. And since when are Oklahoma City, Louisville and Lexington midwest cities?

Kentucky (KY) is under the section for Southeast, Oklahoma City is considered under "Midwest and Plains" since Southeast or Southwest didn't claim OK. Sorry about St. Louis--it was 6 in the morning and I'll take care of it.

:eek2:

Chicago did not just lose more population..

Detriot fell off of the Top 10... a sad day for the midwest..

one good news, Phoenix is still 6th, not 5th.

thats all for now...

sad day for the midwest? what do you mean? it's not effecting me one bit.

Don't give a shit about estimates, I'll listen to the census figures in 5 years :)

Even if it isnt in the midwest what the hell is up with Louisville, alot of people were saying it had 693k and was the 16th largest city or some crap.

Looking at that list, it's hard to believe that St. Louis, Cincy, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Buffalo all used to be Top 10 Cities. Now, the Midwest is left only with Chicago (although Detroit and Indianapolis are #11 & #12)

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/29/national/30CENSUS_GRAPHIC.gif

June 30, 2005
To the Chagrin of Detroit, Top 10 No Longer
By JEREMY PETERS

DETROIT, June 29 - Cynics have signed this city's death certificate time and time again. But even for the many others who say Detroit is not dead, just on the cusp of an economic revival, the numbers are hard to ignore.

On Thursday, the Census Bureau will release its latest population statistics, showing that Detroit was not on the list of the top 10 most populous American cities for the first time since the 1900 census. San Jose, Calif., has taken its place.

Although the two cities are separated by a mere 4,324 people, in many ways they could not be further apart. Detroit, the Motor City, is the hub of the American auto industry and a microcosm of the nation's declining industrial base. The computer chips of San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, are what have replaced the sheet metal and molten steel of Detroit in the new American economy.

"It's part of a pattern for the heavily industrialized cities, but I think Detroit is a specific case," said Dana Johnson, chief economist at Comerica Bank in Detroit. "There's been an ongoing dynamic here of people, middle-class people in Detroit, fleeing the city looking for better schools, better lifestyles, better services. So it has been a particularly hard fall."

The new census data show that other heavily industrial Midwestern cities are shrinking as well. Of the 10 cities with the largest population declines between 2000 and 2004, seven were in the Midwest. New York remained the nation's biggest city, with 8,104,079 people, followed by Los Angeles, which the Census Bureau measured at 3,845,541.

The fact that Detroit is shrinking is nothing new. Detroit has clung to its position on the list of the 10 most populous cities since the 2000 census when it first dropped below 1 million people. That was a stinging blow for a city that was the nation's fourth largest in 1950. Since then, it has shrunk in every census. The latest figures recorded 900,198 people, half the population of 50 years ago.

Still, some city leaders say Detroit is just beginning its economic and social renaissance.

"Sufficient groundwork has been laid for new investment that will increase the housing stock, jobs, and it portends for a good future for the city of Detroit," former Mayor Dennis Archer said. "I don't think anybody, with all due respect, pays much attention to a city's population."

To walk around downtown Detroit is a lesson in contrasts. On any given summer afternoon, people fill cafe tables on sidewalks while construction workers hammer away at new loft apartment buildings. But past 6 p.m., with workers back home in the suburbs and the construction crews gone, the city becomes a ghost town.

In this city, where four professional sports teams drive much of the economy, a nighttime Detroit Tigers game is one occasion when the downtown springs to life at night. In the winter, Red Wings hockey games have drawn suburbanites into the city. But with the National Hockey League shut down this past season, many local bars and restaurants that depend on Red Wings traffic saw their business slow to a trickle.

In San Jose, where the Sharks, an N.H.L. franchise, are the only professional sports team, the tech boom brought with it a construction boom downtown. Museums, a convention center and light-rail trolleys were put in, and streets were transformed into pedestrian promenades.

On the unofficial but closely watched "Best Of" lists, San Jose is a perennial performer. It has also been called one of America's best-managed cities, not to mention one of the most livable. In Detroit, "Best Of" accolades are hard to come by. Time magazine recently named Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick one of the nation's three worst mayors. His office declined to make him available for comment.

Part of the fallout from Detroit's population drain has been a sharp cutback in city services.

"You don't have the resources to stay vibrant if the tax base is declining," said David Littmann, a retired economist and longtime observer of the Michigan economy.

With a $300 million budget shortfall projected next year, more than 700 police officers and firefighters face layoffs. When the school year ended this month, 34 public schools closed for the last time.

The problem is not that people are leaving Michigan. It is that they continue to leave Detroit for the suburbs north and west of the city. With 5.5 million people, Detroit has the nation's eighth largest metropolitan area, according to the 2000 census.

Not that San Jose has been without its economic hardships. The city was hit hard when the dot-com bubble burst and has a 5.5 percent unemployment rate. That is higher than the 5.1 percent jobless rate nationwide but still lower than in metropolitan Detroit where 7.8 percent of the labor force is unemployed.

As manufacturing jobs have left Michigan and the Midwest, metro Detroit has experienced growth in business services. Employment in the public sector has also increased over the past two decades. "It's just not as attractive as the competition elsewhere," Mr. Littmann said.

Still, Detroit loyalists like Mr. Archer refuse to throw up their hands. "A lot of cities have their ups and downs," he said. "The city of Detroit has had its downs and we've had our ups. Now it's time for us to go back up."

Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from San Francisco for this article.

Even if it isnt in the midwest what the hell is up with Louisville, alot of people were saying it had 693k and was the 16th largest city or some crap.


Although Louisville/Jefferson County merged in 2003, the city's census records were not updated in time for the 2004 estimates. Over 80 incorporated cities were left off the totals even though they are officially part of the new merged city. This has already been corrected and will be reflected in the 2005 estimate.

With these areas included, the city has an estimated population just over 700,000 making it the 16th largest city in America.

You can just substitute the county figure for Jefferson released in April, which is 700,030

cjfjapan, great info and map you posted there.


wow... there is 3 in california and 3 cities in texas that are in the top 10...

cjfjapan, great info and map you posted there.


wow... there is 3 in california and 3 cities in texas that are in the top 10...

Yeah--that map is amazing...thank the New York Times.
Looking at that map, it appears that Detroit was a relative latecomer to the Top 10, while both St Louis (1970) and Cleveland (1980) were Top 10 cities later than I imagined. Of course, it's all relatively meaningless; we really should be comparing metro area populations, which still favors the Midwest and the Northeast.

2004 election map:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/countycartredblue.png

1996 US population by state
http://www-viz.tamu.edu/faculty/house/cartograms/1996cart.JPG

Although, in these images from 1900-1990, the population is clearly tipping...
http://www-viz.tamu.edu/faculty/house/cartograms/Decade.GIF

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/faculty/house/cartograms/1900-1996.gif

Interesting cartogram. Look at how California keeps getting bigger...like a blob on the map.

In 1900, Lake Erie is barely visible and NYS is "touching" Michigan. while now, you could see Lake Erie...

Floridia is extending like crazy...

No one ever believes me when I tell them Indy is bigger than places like San Francisco, Boston, Seattle... But, if your looking at metro populations it is quite a different story.

and in how many square miles?

Yeah, San Francisco is so much more impressive, city alone, at only 40 something square miles in comparison to Indianapolis's what? 366 square miles? It BETTER be larger than small and declining in population San Francisco. lol I wonder how much San Fran's population would be if it, too, encompassed 366 square miles...?

City drops out of top 20
Census estimates Milwaukee lost 3,600 residents in '04
By CHASE DAVIS and RICK ROMELL
cdavis@journalsentinel.com
Posted: June 29, 2005
For the first time since before the Civil War, Milwaukee is not among the 20 largest cities in the United States, according to figures released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Milwaukee Population
National Comparison


Graphic/Rika Kanaoka

Click to enlarge

Quotable
Yeah, it’s an issue to drop out of the top 20. There’s more than bragging rights at stake here.

- Tim Sheehy,
President of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce

Census Falls


Graphic/Rika Kanaoka

Click to enlarge

Advertisement

With southern cities such as Charlotte, N.C., and Fort Worth, Texas, growing into the top 20, Milwaukee's population loss pushed it from the 19th largest U.S. city in 2003 to the 22nd in 2004, reflecting the oft-cited exodus of Northerners to the South.

According to the annual figures, which estimate population each July, Milwaukee's population in 2004 was 583,624, down nearly 3,600 residents from the same time in 2003.

But Mayor Tom Barrett and state demographers said they are leery of the census figures, which are estimates, and note that state calculations have a history of being more accurate.

Last year, for example, the Census Bureau pegged Milwaukee's 2003 population at about 587,000. The state estimate, conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Administration, floated more around 595,000.

For 2004, the state has unofficially projected Milwaukee's population to be about 593,500, state demographer David Egan-Robertson said. But that's still not high enough to crack the list of the top 20 cities.

Regardless of the numbers, Barrett said Wednesday that he was optimistic about Milwaukee's growth and that he has seen more people moving into Milwaukee through new condos and other urban developments.

"We live in the most livable large city in the U.S.," he said. "The region has to sell itself on its strengths."

Population shifts to suburbs
Since 1960, census figures have shown Milwaukee's urban population slowly leaking away while the suburban metro area has grown. According to some experts, federal funding, the ability to attract business and Milwaukee's image as a vibrant urban hub could all suffer if the urban population continues to decline.

"Yeah, it's an issue to drop out of the top 20," said Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. "There's more than bragging rights at stake here."

Among the many things that hinge at least partially on population are some federal funding formulas, including money for some health care and transportation programs. Because Milwaukee's population has dropped by only several thousand this year, Barrett said Wednesday that he wasn't concerned about losing federal money.

Business, too, has a stake in population growth. However, local and national experts say Milwaukee as a central city is far less important to attracting and retaining business as a growing metropolitan area - another level where Milwaukee has struggled. Census figures released in April show that the five-county metropolitan area had a net gain of 3,627 people, a scant 0.2%.

"From a hard-headed economic standpoint, it's the metropolitan area that really counts," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution and a research professor at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. "It's not the city of Milwaukee competing with the city of Phoenix or the city of Atlanta, but the metropolitan area."

Michel Guillot, a demographer and sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, agreed. He said a city's population is in some respects artificial - the result of where public officials drew boundaries.

Compared with other cities, Milwaukee long has had a relatively large population compared with its metropolitan area.

The city itself, for example, is bigger than the cities of Atlanta, Boston, Miami, Washington and Seattle, all of which anchor metropolitan areas two to three times larger than Milwaukee's.

One reason Milwaukee has maintained a relatively large city population is the consolidation in the 1950s with the former Town of Granville - now the far northwest side.

The consolidation under then-Mayor Frank P. Zeidler increased Milwaukee's geographic area by 30%, providing room for growth while many other industrial cities were hemmed in by their suburbs.

El Paso, Texas, which slipped ahead of Milwaukee, also has benefited from geography. The west Texas city spreads over 247 square miles, an area 2 1/2 times the size of Milwaukee.

While El Paso's city population has passed Milwaukee's, its metropolitan area, at just over 700,000, is less than half as large.

Metro area sees slow growth
According to Frey, Milwaukee's metro population growth in recent years has sat near the bottom of the country's 43 largest metropolitan areas. That would remain true even if the city's growth had held steady since 2000, according to Frey's data.

For the 2000 to 2004 period, metro Milwaukee's population increased by 1%, according to Frey's data. Among all areas with a population of at least 1.5 million, that increase ranked 38th, ahead of only Detroit, San Jose, Calif., Cleveland, Pittsburgh and San Francisco.

That stagnant growth is significant, said Sammis B. White, a professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and director of its Center for Workforce Development.

"It's just harder for the local economy to be healthy when you have a central city that is losing population," White said. "That means in order for the metro area as a market to grow, the suburbs must grow even faster to compensate for losses at the center."

Milwaukee's population bleed has mirrored those in dozens of other urban areas across the country, as experts say families leave big cities in search of better schools, warmer climates and more reasonably priced homes.

Growth going South
According to the census estimates, all of the 10 fastest-growing cities since 2000 are in southern and southwestern states such as California, Arizona and Florida. .

In contrast, many shrinking cities are in the North. Detroit, Cincinnati and Cleveland are among those that shrank the most. Milwaukee has lost about 2.2% of its population - about 13,350 people - since 2000, according to census estimates.

"The pattern of historical migration is one of people moving from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt," said William Gayk, director of the Center for Demographic Research in Fullerton, Calif.

Gayk said Latino migration has driven central city revitalization in many large cities, especially as more families move to the suburbs. Mixed-use developments and upscale condos have also helped lure residents downtown, he said, but immigrants have done more to drive central city growth.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jun05/337561.asp

I can't tell you 344 sq. mi., but I can tell that San Francisco would have 4.3 million people in an area the size of Houston.

I can't tell you 344 sq. mi., but I can tell that San Francisco would have 4.3 million people in an area the size of Houston.

Yeah, SF is much more denser to me. :)

To just you? This isn't subjective. It IS "much more denser." lol

To just you? This isn't subjective. It IS "much more denser." lol

It's though, stop worrying about my grammar.

Yeah, San Francisco is so much more impressive, city alone, at only 40 something square miles in comparison to Indianapolis's what? 366 square miles? It BETTER be larger than small and declining in population San Francisco. lol I wonder how much San Fran's population would be if it, too, encompassed 366 square miles...?

True. Indianapolis is not dense at all, sadly.

At least Indianapolis was smart enough to annex, some cities *COUGHsanfranciscoCOUGH* werent.

At least Indianapolis was smart enough to annex, some cities *COUGHsanfranciscoCOUGH* werent.

What woud San Francisco annex?

Probably Daly City?

Other counties, and parts of the Pacific.

Probably Daly City?

Only with the latter's consent. This ain't Canada after all ;)

Love Statistics like this - subscribe to thread;)

actually if sanfran was only 300 sq mi it would be only half the size of Houston.

That's why I said I didn't know the 344 sq. mi. population of San Francisco. Only the 600 sq. mi. population.