As Chicago's population falls, could Houston someday give us a problem?

Houston city limits = 601 sq mi.
Chicago city limits = 234 sq mi.

Straight dope did a pretty good job addressing this: http://chicago.straightdope.com/sdc20090723.php

People, as they always have done, are moving where the jobs are. Like Schumburg or Oak Brook. Ever try getting to a job in either place from the City?

I take the Rock Island on occasion and I had the identical thought to you. Blocks of emptiness. Sometimes it almost looks likes parkland there is so much of it.

It's not just there. Woodlawn, Roseland, Lawndale etc etc etc.

In an earlier version of a Lee Bey blog, Lee Bey 1.0, you referred to the movie "Monkey Hustle". Besides the eternal shame Yaphet Kotto should feel for appearing in it, what struck me was how in 1977 or so the retail in Woodlawn looked relatively vibrant.

Those days are sadly gone.

The answers to repopulating the city has to be less crime, better schools, transportation, and jobs. Sadly, I suspect none of us will live long enough to see those huge empty swaths of the city utilized again.

I hope I am wrong.

It's critical for Chicago to understand WHY people are leaving and make the necessary adjustments...if we have the political willpower and cajones to do so. Is it the lack of affordable housing, is it the systematic demolition of public housing, is it the insane taxes, lack of jobs? The city should also work diligently to make sure that the Latino community is accurately reflected, although the city combined with social services did a pretty good job this year. The Census data are just the tip of the iceberg. We have to go deeper. We do need a plan. Sidebar: Emmanuel had better know what he's doing.

I agree that Chicago needs to keep growing, but city population comparisons are often a product of arbitrary borders. Houston is 580 square miles and Chicago is only 230. If you compare MSAs, you'll see that Dallas is actually the fourth largest metro area with about 6.5 million people and Chicago is about 3 million more than that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Metropolitan_Statist...).

I don't have any great ideas on how to grow Chicago beyond the obvious, there needs to be more jobs. While increasing gas prices and traffic gridlock could shift people from the suburbs to the city, that's not going the help the region as a whole. Instead we need a reason for people to stay here or move here.

What do you think the chances are of Chicago expanding to over 600 sq. miles like Houston? Let's compare apples to apples here.

I wonder the city population is by ethnicity?

@Navin: The Straight Dope addressed the issue, but did so in 2009--before current census figures were released showing Chicago's precipitous drop in population--using 2007 population estimates. And even then, the piece you reference says, "If both cities continue to increase at their present rate, Houston will overtake Chicago by 2030." In my blog post, I say it "might well" happen by 2020.

@Brent: The square mile comparison between Chicago vs Houston is meaningless in this case for two reasons: (a) I don't argue that Chicago should expand through annexation, but should grow again within its own borders, (b) because it isn't Houston's annexation but Chicago's alarming population loss--a million souls since 1950 with 200,000 of that loss coming since 2000, erasing a modest population gain we had from 1990 to 2000--that has put the two cities' populations close to each other. Even if Chicago kept its 1970 population of 3.3 million or its 1980 population of 3.0 million, we'd still be a substantially more populous city than Houston.

NYC lost 900,000 people from 1970 to 1980 due to its rising crime, and monumental financial troubles, but has gained back about 1.1 million since then.

Cheryl makes a great point in that it's time to examine the reasons why people are leaving Chicago.

I am interested to see not just the population trends not just by ethnicity but also be income. There are astonishing economic trends at work in this country in which the wealthiest are getting richer and the poor and middle class are getting poorer. How do these trends effect a big, expensive city like Chicago?

Expounding on Navin Johnson's statistic of land area in each city, you have to realize that Houston's growth has been partially due to a long-standing effort by which it has annexed hundreds of square miles of exurban sprawl, often against the wishes of those annexed. Johnson Space Center is in a suburban area called Clear Lake City, half way from downtown to Galveston. In standard Texas fashion, Houston was determined that when astronauts said "Houston" when calling Mission Control, they'd mean it; so Houston annexed enough land to put most of JSC inside the Houston city limits (I believe the southernmost point of the City of Houston is about 10 yards past the southernmost point of the building on JSC which houses Mission Control.) This equates to a distance from downtown Houston equivalent to that from downtown Chicago to Lake Cook Road.

Easy solution - merge Chicago with Cook County. Then you have a population of 5 million and Chicago is again then number 2 city! And who doesn't want to be number 2?

I think you are focusing too much at the micro scale. The region as a whole, the MSA, is still growing. I believe this decrease in the population is a redistribution of people all across the region. Certain groups are not longer living in certain areas, there are dispersing around the entire region.

However, this is not good for the city itself. There are too many dis-invested parts of the city. The city need to work on economic development, and a good PR campaign, to repopulate some of these area. Take the Bronzeville for example. It is the same distance from the Loop, yet it has a fraction of the population, density, transit access, retail options, and etc.

As the city also has more of the density, it also has more efficiencies when it comes to services, transportation, and retail. As the population is spreading out across the prairies, the region will become more inefficient.

Lee, NYC's population has actually risen by at least 1.4-1.5 million, not 1.1 million. Current estimates for NYC are in the 8.4-8.5 million range, with a growth of 400,000 to 500,000 since 2000.

But NYC and Chicago are totally different cities. NYC receives much more immigration, and has much more gentrification and young people. Also, the bad areas in NYC are basically a million times better than in Chicago.

The South Bronx and Brownsville-East NY, Brooklyn (probably the two worst neighborhoods in NYC) look like Uptown or Humboldt Park. There is really nothing in NYC in 2011 that looks like the slum parts of Chicago's South Side and West Side, with all the vacant lots and everything. There are no more vacant neighborhoods in NYC. Harlem and Bed Stuy are now expensive and very desirable. Prices in Harlem are higher than in Lincoln Park.

Another interesting statistic in the Chicago Census numbers is the white population loss. Chicago lost over 52,000 whites since 2000. I assume this means that the outer neighborhood white areas like Jefferson Park and Mount Greenwood are emptying out, and probably being replaced by Latinos and African Americans.

My theory:

Chicago was always more of a regional center than a true world city. It only became a world city because the United States was such a dominating cultural, economic and military force for so long that it's third largest city was bound to wield some power.

With the United States losing its hegemony on the world stage, Chicago will go the way of, say, St. Petersburg or, maybe, Frankfurt or Munich, or some-such. A big city, sure, but not the world cities that Moscow and Berlin are.

As for Houston, when the oil economy eventually disappears, so will it.

I'm guessing that Chicago's population is way higher than the census shows, but they're all illegal aliens.
If you lived in Rogers Park, as I do, we're overwhelmed with way too many people, all of them illegals.

I'm a Houstonian living in Illinois now. One of biggest reasons Houston is passing Chicago is the lack of city, county and state governmental corruption. As far as I know, there hasn't been any Texas Governor's, Houston city mayors or county officials sentenced to jail time for corruption at least in the last 30 years. Chicago and Illinois are as bad as Lousiana and New Orleans! At one point Louisiana had 2 Governors in state prison simultaneously! From what I've heard, Illinois does as well! And might get a third incarcerated.

With that going on, who would want to live in Chicago? Not me.

Whoever said Houston was passing Chicago in any regard except population? And it may not do that. Just because Houston eats up every piece of neighboring land that it borders, doesn't mean it is surpassing Chicago in world importance. There basically are two bottom lines here: #1 - Houston's population is growing because it continues to annex everything, kind of manipulating things (but legal under Texas law) to rise up in the ranks. Just look at a map of the Houston metro area, it has basically no suburbs whatsoever. It is really not making great drives in building up its current land, its main drive is simply annexing other areas. In 1955, Houston had 180 square miles of land, while Chicago had 216 square miles. That's close in land area. But Houston only had about 600,000 people according to the 1950 census. Chicago had over 3.6 million people according to the census count. Now that's comparable; notice how MUCH further ahead Chicago is when you look at land areas when they are very close in size. Houston, however, wanted to be considered one of the big boys. So one year later in 1956, Houston annexed 140 square miles; basically a whole other Houston-sized area worth of land in one complete annexation process. This action took its population from 600,000 in 1955 to nearly 1 million a year later in 1956. Houston wasn't one of the top ten most populous cities in 1955, and in 1956 it rose to # 7. In 1950, Chicago had 216 square miles of land, Houston had 180. In 2010, Chicago has 225 square miles (having taken O'Hare Airport) and Houston has 580 square miles, and still looking to annex more. So it's not surprising Houston is getting closer to Chicago in population when it's 3 times as large in area than Chicago. It's actually more impressive that Chicago is still more populous than Houston when it has such a smaller area to work with.

Which brings me to my second point: #2 - Having said all that, it means NOTHING. Houston officials realize that most people simply aren't willing or are too lazy to look or care about square mileage. Houston is counting on the fact that if it overtakes Chicago as the 3rd most populous city, people will simply call it that, "America's third largest city", and not look beyond that number. Its relying on the fact that nobody notices that Houston could only become the 3rd most populous city by becoming four times as large as Chicago in land area (in future decades, I suspect it will be four times as large in land area). AND Houston may actually have a point. Because as I read through some comments, people really do seem to be oblivious to just how much land area that city covers, which is the only reason its population is where it is. Its just as large as two New York Citys put together (basically it there were ten boroughs of NYC); and its almost as large as Los Angeles and Chicago put together. The city's density rate is so very low as its 2.2 million people are spread out, and it can't build a viable subway/elevated network. And Chicago's metro rate of about 10 million totally trumps Houston's metro of 6. The Midwest and Northeast cities can take a cue from these large land area cities in the South and West like Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Jacksonville, and do the same ting they're doing. Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, ect (citis with big populations in small areas) should annex some suburbs and watch their populations soar beyond what Houston, Phoenix, or San Jose could ever have imagined. San Francisco is going through the same thing too. It is only less populous than San Diego and San Jose because of its small land area (55 square miles), but it feels like a MUCH bigger city than those two because of its impressive denisty rate. If SF were near the land size of those cities it would be far more populous than they are right now.

@ Ron S

Chicago is not a regional player, it has always been a true world-class city. A regional player is the Detroit or Minneapolis metros in the Midwest; Philadelphia and Boston in the Northeast; and Phoenix and San Diego in the West. Perhaps you think Chicago is a regional player (which really is laughable) because it is the third largest metro in its country. But you must look beyond that. Some countries have no dominant world city, like say, Bolivia, Liberia, Guatemala, and dozens of others. Some countries have one dominant world city, like say, the United Kingdom (London), France (Paris), Australia (Sydney), Canada (Toronto), and dozens of others. But the superpower of the United States has three world class cities in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The annual GDP of Chicago is greater than that of both London and Paris. Most people do not know that , its GDP is greater. In fact, Chicago has the 4th highest GDP in the entire world after Tokyo, New York, and Los Angeles, but it is not the fourth largest city in the world. That speaks volumes for Chicago's prowness as you would expect the other three to be the top three. Chicago has also put the current president in the White House, and is the inventor of the skyscraper and house music; two of the many things from the city that the world has latched on to. Chicago throws around its weight more than you really have given consideration. But just because its ranked third within its own country (of out over 400 US metro areas, so that's impressive) doesn't mean it does not trumph other cities in other nations that may be ranked first in their own country; i.e. Paris, London, Sydney, Beijing, Singapore, Mexico City, etc. Remember, city limit populations can be misleading to a degree. That's because some city cover expansive areas, others do not. Metro populations are a key indicator of how a city is performing and Chicago's metro is growing heavily. Its approaching ten million, which would make the same three American cities (NYC, LA, CHI) the only cities with metro populations in the double digits of millions. So although it would have been preferable if Chicago's city limit population had increased, the city is still doing fine. -And on a side note, if the city starts allowing mid-rises and high rises to be erected on the North and South Sides and not give in to resident protests, I think you will see a population increase for the 2020 census; plus again, growth in the entire metro area.

I'm sorry, but virtually that entire post from Green Line was factually incorrect, so I have to respond.

Chicago is nowhere near the 4th largest economy in the world. In fact, it isn't even 4th largest in the United States. As of 2010, Chicago has the 5th largest U.S. economy, behind, NYC, LA, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. You can look it up, per the Bureau of Economic Analysis' annual numbers of metropolitan economic output.

Yes, at one time Chicago had the nation's third largest economy, but those days are over. I seriously doubt Chicago was ever 4th largest in the world (and to say larger than London or Paris combined is obviously nonsense), but we are dealing in the present, not in the past.

In the present, Chicago is the fastest shrinking city in the nation. In the present Chicago is the most segregated city in the nation. In the present Chicago is the most debt-laden city in the most debt-laden state in the country.

We need to stop relying on past glories and talk about Chicago's present (which is very troubled) and future (which is highly uncertain). If Chicago wants to be thought of as a global city and not another Detroit, it needs to start growing again, both in terms of population and economy.

The comments on building highrises on the South and West sides are laughable, BTW. There is no demand for any type of housing in those neighborhoods. In our current economy, when Lakeview and South Loop highrises can be bought for $90,000, why on earth would we further glut Chicago's housing market with more empty apartment buildings?

The one important point that is being noticed in the 2010 census is that the city of Chicago has continued to shrink since its population peaked in the 1950's. Since then Chicago has steadily lost about 1 million residents. The same statements being made about Houston's large land area accounting for its large population gains were made about Los Angeles in the 1930's when its population was growing. Now with infill Los Angeles has continued to grow and has expanded its population to over 1 million more residents than Chicago. There's no certainty about the future, but trends over decades can and do reveal what's likely to happen in the next several years. The Houston metro area in the 1950's was under 1 million (Chicago's was 6.9 million). Now Houston's metro is about 6 million (Chicago's is 9.6 million). What's the trend? Chicago metro has expanded by 2.7 million (139%) vs 5 million (632%) for Houston over the past 6 decades.

I know this is a late comment but i find this very interesting.

Now as someone who has lived in 3 different large cities for some time, chicago , tokyo, and now houston, I can tell you for a fact that the population growth here in Houston is a sight to behold. I have lived here 5 years now, and in that time I have watched this town go from "eh" to some things that remind me more of tokyo and Chicago. Houston is a large city by size and population. In fact having lived in Chicago for a while as well, just from my observations of the city, Houston to me appears larger than Chicago did. I will always love Chicago, but I have got to say that Houston is looking very impressive. It has over 3 different skylines that if put all in one place would look allot like Chicago, however it is very spread out. Also just because oil will eventually dry up, dont expect Houston to go with it. For example, the reason i moved down here. The medical plaza. One of the largest medical centers on Earth. A major part of this city's economy. Also the Houston ship channel (reminds me a little of Tokyo) is I believe the 2nd busiest port in the entire country. So Houston has allot going for it, sure it may not be heaven, but neither is Chicago.