The Urbanization of America – People Flocking to Cities to work and live

The findings are in and people seem to want to live and work in the city center. With the official release of the 2010 US Census data there’s some interesting facts and figures floating around. For example, more than 10% of the US population resides within the New York and LA city limits! From the latest findings, Chicago experienced the largest numeric gain in its downtown area, with a net increase of 48,000 residents over 10 years. New York, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Washington also posted large population increases close to city hall.

Other highlights:

• More than one in 10 U.S. residents lived in either the New York or Los Angeles metro area in 2010.
• Although metro areas covered only slightly more than one-quarter of the nation’s land area, they were home to eight of every 10 people.
• The Hispanic share of the population increased in every U.S. metro area.
• While the non-Hispanic white alone, black alone and Asian alone populations grew faster in metro areas than in micro areas, the reverse was true for Hispanics.
• Next to those who were non-Hispanic white alone, Hispanics were the most populous race or ethnic group in most metro and micro areas in the western half of the U.S., with single-race blacks the largest in most areas in the eastern half.
• Metro area populations were younger (a median of 36.6 years) than the population in either micro areas (39.3 years) or territory outside either of these areas (41.9 years).
• Areas with the highest median ages were either in slow-growing regions like western Pennsylvania, which had past outmigration of the young combined with “aging in place,” or were faster-growing areas in parts of Florida and Arizona that were traditional retiree migration destinations.
• Areas with the lowest median ages included metro areas and micro areas in Utah, southern Idaho and along the U.S.-Mexican border.

These are just some of the findings in the new 2010 Census special report, Patterns of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Population Change: 2000 to 2010 .(Warning, link to 132 MB PDF)