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According to a new report from the US Census Bureau, the population of Columbus continued to grow at a rate of just over 1% over the past year, with an additional 8,024 people in the city limits. That brings the total population up to 754,885. Despite the population gains, our southern rival Austin grew at a faster rate and surpassed us in total population taking over the 15th place spot and bumping us down to 16th.
If these types of stats and numbers bother you, perhaps you can take some consolation in the fact that our metro area is still around 120,000 people larger than Austin’s.
Across the state, Ohio’s population remained steady with a minimal .1 percent increase. Columbus was the only major Ohio city to grow. Cincinnati held steady with no change while Cleveland, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Canton, and Youngstown all shrank a bit more.
More information, charts, and country-wide data can be found by clicking here.
On one hand, this list is meaningless because of varying incorporation laws that make city limits pretty arbitrary. Columbus’s rank is especially misleading. I’ve lived both in and near Boston and Denver, with their small limits but large sprawl, and Columbus feels, spatially, much, much smaller, which I think is a huge plus (ever try to get out of those cities in traffic?).
On the other hand, the percent changes are revealing. I think Columbus should be very happy with a 1% increase – this is on the lower end of healthy, sustainable growth. Some of those higher increases out west look like just another cycle of boomtown-to-busttown. However, it would be interesting to see how much of that growth is related to government/OSU growth and how much is business growth. This, and the relative rankings of other cities with or without taxes, may help inform our decision this August…..
On the other hand, we’re the 10th widest city, at least measured by waist line.
It’s solid, steady growth overall and either way, outright strong growth for a midwestern city. Go Columbus.
*sniff* Now I’m too ashamed to leave the house.
Glad for Columbus.
You asked if the numbers bother us? Columbus’ doesn’t, but Ohio’s do very much.
As a “census geek,” I made a spreadsheet of all Ohio municipalities – red color copy = declining, black = growing. Eyeballing the red v. black, I’d estimate that more than 3/4 of Ohio’s communities these have lost population. Ohio is sinking, folks. (I guess this is not news.) Will Ohio eventually take Columbus down with the ship?
Just incorporate more areas.
Good news for Columbus. Ohio’s population is currently stagnant though and that isn’t encouraging for the city. Eventually Ohio will bring down the city unless we start aggressively attacting out of state jobs, diversifying our economy, and IMO add rail transit. These factors will allow Cbus to retain the “YP” needed to keep the vibrancy and population increasing.
@KyleEnzell Is the spreadsheet anything thats online of publicly viewable? Would be interesting.
Columbus is really poised to be a strong community, it has good draw for Business, local talent/workforce, art/entertainment, education. I can only hope they strengthen this by smarter infrastructure development (light rail, community development w/ more responsibility-ownership from developers, Roads, Network IT Infrastructure (free wireless), etc)
howatzer said it best. This whole survey is based upon an arbitrary definition of cities, e.g. their incorporated boundaries. It’s actually an outmoded and inaccurate way of tracking metropolitan growth, however, which extends to suburbs, and for most major cities, outlying counties. In fact, it does a great deal to promote urban vs. suburban parochialism by suggesting that suburbs function as completely separate entities, economically speaking, from their central cities, when the opposite is true.
Cincinnati, for instance has seen little change in population within its’ city limits this past decade. However, Cincy’s 15 County tri-state metropolitan population has expanded by almost 150,000 since 2000. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Cincinnati#Growth) Examining the larger metropolitan area provides us with a much more informative picture in terms of the trends that are actually taking place in any given region.
As far as Columbus is concerned, Franklin County now has 1.1 million people, up roughly 5% from 2000. If Columbus followed in the footsteps of Louisville and Indianapolis and consolidated government with the county, the resulting City of Columbus-Franklin County would rank #10 in the Top 10 US cities, behind San Diego and ahead of San Jose, currently at #9 and #10 respectively. (Gee, you think people might take notice of us then?)
I’m no expert on the topic, but it sounds like with Ohio’s historical manufacturing base, some of our cities seem fairly well posed for a comeback if we can ever move into the 21st century with the type of technology we’re manufacturing.
HERE’S AN EXAMPLE
I don’t know. I had the impression that it’s (sometimes, usually?) easier/cheaper to build new than to re-tool outdated facilities.
Oh, and I don’t think the historical union base is helping to attract manufacturing jobs.
Hey, why so pessimistic? Columbus is by far the top city in Ohio demographically and economically, and one of the top in the Midwest, and growing faster than the national average (metro area). I think there’s a lot to celebrate and I think C-Bus is starting to differentiate itself regionally in this slowdown.
I do have a question for you. Is there any way to get a good measure of estimated population last year in the old pre-annex areas of Columbus? For example, Indiana still reports township level (full township, not the rump legal township fragments that exist in Ohio) estimates each year. So I can look at Center Township, Marion County as a proxy for how Indy’s urban core is doing. (Up 400 people last year, with the third year in a row of growth). Is there anything equivalent for Columbus?
Heh. I noticed that this data collected is from the date range of July 1, 2007 to July 1, 2008. So I guess I can proudly say that Anne & I helped increase the population of the city by +1 during that time. ;) Ha!
Time to get everyone else to start cranking out the kids (and not moving to the burbs)!
Ohio has been sliding for twenty + years , it hasn’t stopped us so far. I don’t see why it will now.
If anything it might give us some easy talent to cherry pick from the other Ohio cities
It appears that some Austinites look to Columbus for an example, as cited in the Austin Chronicle, “ACP [Austin Comprehensive Planning team] cited the example of Columbus, Ohio, which in November 2008 voted to approve Dream It, Do It, a $1.66 billion bond package to fund projects and capital initiatives developed through community visioning.”
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:744365
Sadly though, in the recent interview with Mayor Coleman, he mentioned that we only approved the city to take out up to $1.66 billion in bonds for those projects. With our city budget not in great shape, we’ve currently taken out zero dollars, and have no plans to take out any of that money unless we can get the budget readjusted and be able to repay those bonds. :(