Are Cities Obsolete?
Statisticians increasingly find city boundaries to be arbitrary when trying to evaluate population and social-geographic trends. Many cities themselves are small when compared to their greater metropolitan areas as they are known. Most of the metropolitan areas on the list below which are growing the fastest have a central city which is, in fact, losing population at an equally fast rate. The exceptions are primarily cities that have managed to annex surrounding areas to keep up with development.
It is quite possible that this distortion in our view of what comprises a regional entity extends to more serious matters than mere perception - an idea explored by Myron Orfield, author of American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality. Multiple cities in close proximity compete for a tax base with which to provide services - usually at the expense of the central city, causing decline in certain areas and aggravating any social problems already in place. If we are to truly address what causes social inequity and sprawl, it may involve the enabling of a new form of regional government with control of metropolitan areas as Thomas Jefferson had advised in a proposed amendment to the constitution:
“…counties be divided into wards of such size that every citizen can attend, when called on, and act in person. The ward governments would have been charged with everything from running schools to caring for the poor to operating police and military forces to maintaining public roads.” (Lewis Mumford, The City in History.)
Here are the top 52 candidates for such a regional reform.
Primary Census Statistical Areas of the United States of America
|
Rank
|
Primary Census Statistical Area
|
2006 Pop
|
2000 Pop
|
Δ Pop
|
|
1 |
21,976,224 |
21,361,797 |
+2.88% |
|
|
2 |
17,775,984 |
16,373,645 |
+8.56% |
|
|
3 |
9,725,317 |
9,312,255 |
+4.44% |
|
|
4 |
8,211,213 |
7,572,647 |
+8.43% |
|
|
5 |
7,465,634 |
7,298,695 |
+2.29% |
|
|
6 |
7,228,948 |
7,092,596 |
+1.92% |
|
|
7 |
6,382,714 |
6,207,223 |
+2.83% |
|
|
8 |
6,359,758 |
5,487,956 |
+15.89% |
|
|
9 |
5,641,077 |
4,815,122 |
+17.15% |
|
|
10 |
5,478,667 |
4,548,344 |
+20.45% |
|
|
11 |
5,463,857 |
5,007,564 |
+9.11% |
|
|
12 |
5,410,014 |
5,357,538 |
+0.98% |
|
|
13 |
4,039,182 |
3,251,876 |
+24.21% |
|
|
14 |
3,991,911 |
3,707,144 |
+7.68% |
|
|
15 |
3,502,891 |
3,271,888 |
+7.06% |
|
|
16 |
2,941,454 |
2,813,833 |
+4.54% |
|
|
17 |
2,927,911 |
2,629,980 |
+11.33% |
|
|
18 |
2,917,801 |
2,945,831 |
-0.95% |
|
|
19 |
2,858,549 |
2,754,328 |
+3.78% |
|
|
20 |
2,697,731 |
2,395,997 |
+12.59% |
|
|
21 |
2,633,282 |
2,191,081 |
+20.18% |
|
|
22 |
2,462,571 |
2,525,730 |
-2.50% |
|
|
23 |
2,373,596 |
2,069,298 |
+14.71% |
|
|
24 |
2,191,604 |
1,897,034 |
+15.53% |
|
|
25 |
2,147,617 |
2,050,175 |
+4.75% |
|
|
26 |
2,137,565 |
1,927,881 |
+10.88% |
|
|
27 |
2,034,796 |
1,901,070 |
+7.03% |
|
|
28 |
1,984,644 |
1,843,588 |
+7.65% |
|
|
29 |
1,953,575 |
1,835,189 |
+6.45% |
|
|
30 |
1,942,217 |
1,711,703 |
+13.47% |
|
|
31 |
1,820,232 |
1,408,250 |
+29.25% |
|
|
32 |
1,706,077 |
1,689,572 |
+0.98% |
|
|
33 |
1,649,457 |
1,576,370 |
+4.64% |
|
|
34 |
1,632,814 |
1,469,474 |
+11.12% |
|
|
35 |
1,565,223 |
1,314,589 |
+19.07% |
|
|
36 |
1,533,406 |
1,381,287 |
+11.01% |
|
|
37 |
1,513,576 |
1,414,656 |
+6.99% |
|
|
38 |
1,513,565 |
1,249,763 |
+21.11% |
|
|
39 |
1,356,798 |
1,292,482 |
+4.98% |
|
|
40 |
1,320,487 |
1,254,661 |
+5.25% |
|
|
41 |
1,305,713 |
1,257,709 |
+3.82% |
|
|
42 |
1,277,997 |
1,122,750 |
+13.83% |
|
|
43 |
1,274,704 |
1,205,204 |
+5.77% |
|
|
44 |
1,240,977 |
1,160,942 |
+6.89% |
|
|
45 |
1,219,054 |
1,254,066 |
-2.79% |
|
|
46 |
1,203,795 |
1,128,104 |
+6.71% |
|
|
47 |
1,194,008 |
1,096,957 |
+8.85% |
|
|
48 |
1,180,206 |
1,129,721 |
+4.47% |
|
|
49 |
1,147,914 |
1,118,095 |
+2.67% |
|
|
50 |
1,128,989 |
1,131,543 |
-0.23% |
|
|
51 |
1,073,513 |
1,085,094 |
-1.07% |
|
|
52 |
1,069,428 |
1,360,436 |
-21.39% |
Posted in Trends |
November 20th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
[...] Goldhagen believes that our lives no longer mesh with our method of governance. We live in a metropolitan area and our lives sprawl–in a good way–across several towns daily. Yet we have a crazy quilt of small towns and cities attempting to contend with expensive structural issues that developed over many years. (As mentioned before, 13 of the county’s 27 municipalities are in the Route 1 corridor.) [...]