Competition for city population rankings is fierce — every place wants to be bigger than the next— and the latest U.S. Census provides a sometimes-surprising look at the standings.
Nationally, New York remains the largest city in the U.S. with a population of 8.8 million. Then come Los Angeles (3.9 million), Chicago (2.7 million) and Houston (2.3 million). Rounding out the top five is Phoenix (1.6 million).
Other cities in the top 10 are Philadelphia (1.6 million), San Antonio and San Diego (each about 1.4 million), Dallas (1.3 million) and San Jose (1 million).
Note that seven of the top 10 cities are located in the Southwest, two in the Northeast and one in the Midwest.
Since 1970, New York has remained number one, but Chicago and Los Angeles have switched second and third place. Two cities have fallen out of the top five: Philadelphia, then fourth and currently sixth, and Detroit, dropping from fifth to 27th. Phoenix shot up from 20th to fifth.
The immense growth of Texas is apparent in its urban centers. It now has four cities with populations of about one million or more: Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin. The biggest state, California, has Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose in this category.
Major southern cities with the biggest population growth between 2010 and 2020 are Fort Worth (up 24%), Austin (up 22%), Charlotte (up 20%), Atlanta (up 19%), Jacksonville (up 16%), Raleigh (up 16%), Nashville (up 15%), Miami (up 11%) and Houston (up 10%).
Austin, with 962,000 people, has zoomed ahead of places we once thought of as much bigger, such as San Francisco (874,000), Washington, D.C. (690,000), Boston (676,000), Detroit (639,000) and Atlanta (499,000). In 1970, Austin didn’t even make the top 50. Now it’s nipping at the top 10.
Closer to home, two Louisiana cities make the top 100 list: New Orleans is 53rd (384,000) and Ïã¸ÛÁùºÍ¿ª½±ÀúÊ·¼Ç¼ is 99th (227,000). Shreveport ranks 137th (188,000) and Lafayette is 234th (121,000). If Metairie was an incorporated city, it would rank 188th nationally with 144,000 people.
The rest of Louisiana’s cities each have populations less than 100,000: Lake Charles (85,000), Kenner (66,000), Bossier City (63,000), Monroe (48,000) and Alexandria (45,000).
In 1840, New Orleans was the nation’s third largest city, nearly tied with second-place Baltimore. New York was then, as now, first.
In 1870, after the Civil War, New Orleans fell to ninth place. A century later, in 1970, New Orleans remained among the top 20, at 19th. But it dropped to 21st in 1980 and 24th in 1990. In 2000, the Crescent City tumbled to 31th with 485,000 people — falling behind Nashville, Charlotte, Portland and Tucson.
Of course, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 sparked one of the largest in the nation’s history when a huge chunk of residents left New Orleans, some permanently. In 2010, the first post-Katrina U.S. Census, the city’s population was counted at 344,000, ranking 52nd.
Considering urban sprawl and the growth of connecting suburbs, city population data doesn’t tell the whole story. A fuller view of a city’s economic power and cultural influence (if not environmental sustainability) is measured by population data based on metropolitan areas that each city dominates.
Metropolitan New York, for example, has 20.1 million people, more than twice that of the city proper. The L.A. area has 13.2 million people, more than three times the city. Greater Washington has a population of 6.4 million, nine times the District of Columbia itself. Atlanta sits in the middle of a metro area with 6.1 million people, 12 times bigger than the city.
In Louisiana, the New Orleans metro area has 1,272,000 people, more than three times that of the city proper. The Ïã¸ÛÁùºÍ¿ª½±ÀúÊ·¼Ç¼ area has 871,000 people, almost four times the city’s size, and the Lafayette area has 478,000 residents, four times the city.
Just as the largest cities demand recognition, so do the smallest. The five least populated towns in Louisiana are places most of us have never heard of — Mound (12), Bayou Corne (32), Sugartown (33), Gloster (53) and Taft (61).
I knew about Taft; it was the birthplace of my father. Perhaps importance isn’t always about size.
