Census Releases City Population Estimates

The Census Bureau just released its 2017 population estimates for municipalities. Here are the results for the 25 largest cities in American (as of 2017), ranked by year over year percentage change.

Rank	Municipality	2016	2017	Total Change	Pct Change
1	Seattle city, WA	707,255	724,745	17,490	2.47%
2	Fort Worth city, TX	855,504	874,168	18,664	2.18%
3	Charlotte city, NC	843,484	859,035	15,551	1.84%
4	Columbus city, OH	863,741	879,170	15,429	1.79%
5	San Antonio city, TX	1,487,738	1,511,946	24,208	1.63%
6	Phoenix city, AZ	1,602,042	1,626,078	24,036	1.50%
7	Dallas city, TX	1,322,140	1,341,075	18,935	1.43%
8	Denver city, CO	694,777	704,621	9,844	1.42%
9	Washington city, DC	684,336	693,972	9,636	1.41%
10	Austin city, TX	938,200	950,715	12,515	1.33%
11	Jacksonville city, FL	880,893	892,062	11,169	1.27%
12	Boston city, MA	678,430	685,094	6,664	0.98%
13	San Francisco city, CA	876,103	884,363	8,260	0.94%
14	San Diego city, CA	1,406,682	1,419,516	12,834	0.91%
15	Indianapolis city (balance), IN	857,453	863,002	5,549	0.65%
16	Los Angeles city, CA	3,981,116	3,999,759	18,643	0.47%
17	Nashville-Davidson metropolitan government (balance), TN	664,762	667,560	2,798	0.42%
18	El Paso city, TX	680,797	683,577	2,780	0.41%
19	Philadelphia city, PA	1,574,765	1,580,863	6,098	0.39%
20	Houston city, TX	2,304,482	2,312,717	8,235	0.36%
21	San Jose city, CA	1,031,942	1,035,317	3,375	0.33%
22	New York city, NY	8,615,426	8,622,698	7,272	0.08%
23	Chicago city, IL	2,720,275	2,716,450	-3,825	-0.14%
24	Memphis city, TN	653,369	652,236	-1,133	-0.17%
25	Detroit city, MI	675,480	673,104	-2,376	-0.35%

Seattle is killing it. I don’t believe the municipal boundaries have expanded, so this is real growth.

Dallas and Ft. Worth likewise did well, despite being landlocked. Nashville’s city population growth was surprisingly weak to me. It’s a very fast growing metro and has a city-county jurisdiction with plenty of opportunities for “internal sprawl” and a ton of apartments being built – yet surprisingly low population growth.

Detroit lost population again, but not that much.

Chicago is down in population again. However, this is only because the previous year’s data was adjusted upwards with its new release. I unfortunately deleted my previous vintage data set, but according to Wikipedia, Chicago’s 2016 population is 2,704,958. So had that base remained in effect, its population would have grown. Lyman Stone normally takes a look at annual data adjustments, so I’d expect him to have more to say on this.

Featured image credit: Rattlhed at Wikipedia – Public Domain

from Aaron M. Renn
http://www.urbanophile.com/2018/05/24/census-releases-city-population-estimates/