Massachusetts by the numbers
By adamg - 3/22/11 - 5:46 pm
From the 2010 federal census. The big news locally: Boston is officially back above 600,000 residents, for the first time since the 1970 census.
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Adam, that is one sweet
Adam, that is one sweet graphic you've inserted in this post! WBUR doesn't even seem to have it, or link to it.
It makes census
The census people are doing some cool stuff.
Aloha `oe
Whyyy do the Hawaiians hate us???
Probably miss the Hawaiian
Probably miss the Hawaiian weather.
Maybe they heard too much
Haole Carr, and thought us all such ignorant fools.
Lincoln?
Navigating through all the different county charts, I see that the largest percentage loss in population, by far, is in the Town of Lincoln. It dropped 21%, from 8,056 to 6,362. That's quite a surprise!
Seeing the population of
Seeing the population of Middlesex County made me think of this article: http://gizmodo.com/#!migration/5781476
Boston bullet points
City Hall crows, although I'm not sure how an increase in hotel rooms over the past decade helps explain our population growth.
Our City continues to be a
2 out of 3 isn't bad. The number of children declined from 2000.
Real Increase?
Or are they just counting more of the students this time after one of the Tom Tantrums ...
In any case, this "increase" is barely beyond the margin of error, and doesn't reflect the much larger increases in other cities that are nice places to live, work, and raise a family (or the increase in US population as a whole).
There's no doubt other parts
There's no doubt other parts of the US has much faster growing populations. Years ago I used to think of that as a problem for Massachusetts, but I don't anymore. Apart from the source of the population growth I just don't have an urge to deal with more people, especially not when I commute to work.
Check out the Toys in the Graphic
You can explore the entire country state-by-state to get a sense of how stable the population is here (and how little fluctuations matter) compared to other areas in the country.
I can't wait to hear the latest round of stupidity about "wahhhhh why are we losing a congressperson when we have 5 more people than we used to ...". Yes, I've heard that, and complaints that we just can't make special Massachusetts exceptions, the last time we lost one.
I agree that MA is pretty much saturated - however, we need to find a paradigm other than "growth in revenues" for maintaining our infrastructure given this state of relatively unchanging tax base, revenues, population, etc. Hasn't happened yet, I'm afraid. MA also needs to start looking to other areas of the US and Europe for ideas, since the current crop of office holders tends to be more interested in office holding and squabbling for pecking order than actual principles of effective administration.
That's funny regarding the
That's funny regarding the Congressional seats.
Good points about funding our state and its communities. It's a tough nut to crack, in part because success could bring in more people and put renewed stress on services and infrastructure, but mostly because it's just plain hard. But just going on the way we are seems pretty foolish.
I disagree about one thing. While the population is fairly stable in size it is definitely changing and that too presents difficulties.
Actually, a higher population
Actually, a higher population SHOULD always mean more reps, but some bozo capped them at 435.
Yep, stable population = winning
Boston and Massachusetts are both very crowded by U.S. standards. It's no surprise that growth is taking place in less crowded locations. I think stability or stability + modest growth is great for us. We couldn't possibly be an Atlanta or Phoenix, and we shouldn't compare ourselves to them. If you look at other older large cities, most of them have declining population. Detroit lost 25% of its population in a decade. Even Chicago lost population. Boston is doing just fine.
These are preliminary numbers
which are lower than the census bureau's own estimates from last year. Urban areas are very often under counted, which the subsequent adjusted numbers demonstrate.
How do you mean preliminary
How do you mean preliminary numbers? You expect the 2010 Census population count to change?
You want a population estimate? Pick one, anyone!
http://internet128.com/index.php/2010/07/02/boston-population-estimates-for-2001-2009/
:)
I haven't had a chance to dig into the numbers yet but as I remember the data off the top of my head it seems to me the Census Bureau overestimated the numbers of whites in the city and underestimated the number of Latinos. Not normally what one would expect a population count to show (although I'm sure Boston missed out on some number of college students who called some other place home).