Along the length of the Mississippi River valley many rural areas also saw continued population declines. Both communities had declining population in the principal city of the Metropolitan Statistical Area. The map helps to identify neighborhoods within these communities where population fell.įigure 2: Census tract-level change in the Saint Louis and Memphis Metros. Several major cities along this corridor recorded population declines last decade, including Saint Louis and Memphis. Along the length of the Mississippi River valley, the new map adds detail to a region that experienced protracted population declines – with some county populations having peaked in the 1970s and ’80s. It’s also easier to see the areas that experienced population loss last decade. What’s unique is the ability to visualize this type of change across such a large area of the country so that we can make these comparisons.” “This kind of suburban expansion has happened for decades. “We don’t want to give the impression that population increases in suburban areas are a new occurrence,” said Tim Kuhn, Director of the Tennessee State Data Center. Kansas City, Indianapolis, Columbus and Greenville (SC) were just a few of the communities that saw their fastest growing areas located on the flanks. This pattern of change at the suburban fringe was evident in many of the largest metros like Houston and Atlanta, but the trend in smaller metropolitan areas was similar. Growth was already slowing in the country’s large cities over the past decade, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic might have accelerated it. Population increases closer to the urban core, where most land is already developed, were weaker by comparison. Areas in darker shades of green ringing the core-city saw a larger population increase between 20 than census tracts that were lighter shades of green. In these locations, the existing suburban development pattern is extended on ample and more affordable land found further from the urban core.įigure 1: Census tract-level change in Charlotte and Houston Metros. Most notable is the strength of the population increases at the outer-suburban fringe of many metropolitan areas. The new subcounty data highlight some interesting patterns that were not as discernable on county-level maps. Small statistical areas called census tracts were the basis for a calculation of the 10-year population change. Most gains were concentrated in larger cities and their nearby suburbs, while most rural counties generally trended downward.Ī new visualization tool from the Tennessee State Data Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, adds a higher level of resolution to the population changes occurring between 20 across the country. counties saw increases over the last decade. When detailed 2020 Census data was released in August 2021, the disparity of population change among the nation’s more than 3,000 counties was clear. How We Did It: Producing tract-level population change for the U.S.ĭownload GIS data: ( Shapefile 382 MB | File Geodatabase – 181MB)

Try the Interactive Map: Explore detailed population change between 20 Census.įastest Growing Census Tracts: See the Fastest Growing Census Tracts Across the US and Each State

Us map with population density