US MSAs urban vs suburban growth (2000-2010) - Part 5

Continuing with the idea of defining urban cores based on 1960 densities, here's the next set of maps of what these cores look like, showing the urban cores that lost the most population (not including Chicago that was already shown in part 3).

Part 3 had maps of the top 10 MSAs by population as well as a table with the stats for all the 1,000,000+ MSAs.

Part 4 had maps of other MSAs that experienced urban core growth.

Again, the format is

MSA name
Urban core population change (rank)
Urban core % population change (rank)
Urban core population change relative to 2000 population of entire MSA (rank)


Detroit lost the most. Its urban core also includes many inner suburbs that did not experience as intense population loss.

New Orleans had lower net losses than Detroit (and Chicago), but because it's smaller, it ranked last in terms of the % change, and change relative to the MSA population. It's difficult to tell how much of that can be attributed to Hurricane Katrina. The urban core had a population loss of only about 10,000 in the 90s (compared to a 12,000 loss for city proper) but the city proper was estimated to have lost about 30,000 people between 2000 and 2005. Population loss for the entire city proper was about 140,000 from 2000 to 2010 - the more suburban parts of the city lost population too.

Next is Cleveland

Pittsburgh, in addition to most of the city and some inner suburbs, the core also includes the satellite town of McKeesport.

Buffalo

Cincinnati, the secondary core to the north is the town of Hamilton, OH.

St Louis

Baltimore

Indianapolis

Birmingham

If anyone is interested in seeing maps/stats for other cities, just ask.

Next I'm hoping to use a modified definition of urban cores to increase the size of the urban cores of newer cities. In many sunbelt cities, only the areas immediately adjacent to downtown met the density threshold, so looking at such a small area is not ideal and doesn't necessarily reflect how desirable it is to live in the central neighbourhoods of such metro areas or how much infill is occuring.

I'm thinking of also including census tracts that have non-auto commute mode share above the MSA average, and densities above the MSA weighted density. For MSAs where the urban cores is still below 20% of the MSA population, I'll also include census tracts that had densities between 3000-5000 ppsm in 1960. Although this will result in the inclusion of neighbourhoods that aren't very urban by Northeast standards, most should still be semi-urban, more urban than typical sunbelt sprawl.

From a cursory look, examples of places that could be added to sunbelt cores are Barclay Downs in Charlotte; parts of Alhambra in Phoenix; Northline and Sharpstown in Houston; the White Rock Lake area of Dallas and East Point and Lindbergh in Atlanta.