The Census Bureau has released its July 1, 2008 city population estimates. Note that Texas has three of the largest eight (Houston, San Antonio and Dallas) and six of the largest 21 (add Austin, Fort Worth and El Paso). Houston now trails Chicago by just 600,000, a gap that Houston could close within 20 years if the last decade's growth rates hold. This is a surprising statistic as long as one ignores metropolitan populations, which are what really count when calculating a city's heft. Chicago's metro population is still much larger than Dallas and Houston's, which are probably now the fourth and fifith largest metro areas. And, in general, Texas cities have large boundaries and aggressively annex surrounding areas, which partly accounts for their rapid growth.
What's going on with Fort Worth? It had the fastest growth of the top 25, both between 2007 and 2008 (3.6%) and between 2000 and 2008 (29%). No other city in the top 25 was close; Charlotte and Phoenix were the closest at 21% and 18%, respectively. Fort Worth has grown twice as fast as Austin since 2000. I haven't heard much about Fort Worth's explosive growth. Strange.
One surprise on the other end: Philadelphia contracted at a faster rate than Detroit between 2000 and 2008.
The most noteworthy fact here may be that, as the WSJ points out, central cities did very well between July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008.
The central-city population in U.S. metropolitan areas with more than one million people (excluding New Orleans) grew at an annual rate of 0.97% between July 2007 and July 2008, compared with a growth rate of 0.90% in 2006-2007, and growth rates around 0.5% in the years between 2002 and 2005. By contrast, U.S. suburbs in metro areas greater than 1 million people grew at a 1.11% annual rate in 2007-2008, down from growth rates between 1.29% and 1.48% between 2002 and 2005. Central cities are closing the gap.
The WSJ attributes the shift in growth rates to the recession. We have a short memory. 2007 was the year of the historic spike in gas prices. Central cities -- especially older, monocentric cities like Chicago -- began to look a lot more attractive to commuters. I imagine this played a much bigger role than the nascent recession.
