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Comment by wtn | Hacker News Reader

Chicago shrank by 6.9% from 2000-2010.

That's... very weird and surprising. NYC grew by low single digits, while SF did a bit more. I incorrectly assumed this was shared across most major cities.

I'm not sure how that affects my prediction, one way or another.

Edited to add: a table with actual data. The 2000s have not been kind to most cities. By comparison, the USA as a whole grew 9.7% from 2000 to 2010.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-04-07-1Aciti...

Not all cities are created equally. I'm guessing Chicago is feeling much of what the same Pittsburgh is, each being on different edges of the rust belt.

For example, Boston is growing at a decent rate. Boston however has a tremendous education, health care, biotech/pharma, finance and high-tech industries. Boston crime is also at all-time lows. However, small cities in Massachusetts such as New Bedford, Fall River, Worcester, and Lowell are continuing to see people move out -- usually towards Boston, but also towards smaller suburbs that are continuing to grow. Actually, Boston bedroom communities aren't exactly hurting, as they're pretty decent at attracting lots of good jobs on their own (particularly the 128 corridor).

A great contrast is Philadelphia versus Pittsburgh. Although within the same state, they're still 300 miles apart and the differences in their industries and crime do much to determine how their populations are growing and falling respectively.

Worcester is actually growing. I grew up in that city, lived there for most of my life, though I do not live there anymore. It's not shrinking by any means, just examining the census numbers shows it outpacing Boston in growth 4.9% to 4.8% between 2000 and 2010.

Worcester is at a cross-roads now. It has excellent proximity to Boston and Providence. It has a strong bio-medical industry as well as three highly regarded universities (Holy Cross, WPI, and Clark) as well as several smaller, less known ones. Several major hospitals too. If Massachusetts can sort out the commuter rail situation and cut travel time down to <45min between Worcester and Boston then it could really take off as an alternative to Boston for people with families and on budgets.

It does have its issues. Certain neighborhoods are giant crime-pits (Main South, Vernon Hill etc.) On the other hand it has an extremely safe, pleasant west-side with some pockets of high-affluence. East and North Worcester range from OK to good. It's a very spread out city despite having 180K people living in it which unfortunately means cars are a must.

It's all going to be about transportation. Commuter rail to Boston will improve, part of the deal to allow CSX to expand its freight yard in Worcester was to add 10 - 20 more trains to Worcester between now and 2020. The Pike bypasses Worcester but since the completion of the 146 connector that has stopped being a real issue. If those things occur, and it is a big-if, expect the urban-downtown area of Worcester to boom as it's a small downtown area and it will be important to tightly pack around the train station because of the lack of transportation around the rest of the city.

The Houston Metro area grew 26.1% from 2000 - 2010 , http://www.houston.org/pdf/research/09AW010.pdf [PDF] so yes, not all cities grow along the same lines.

A lot of that includes suburbs of Houston though. Fort Bend County largely consists of Katy and Sugar Land, two major suburbs. Harris is mostly Houston though much of it doesn't really qualify as urban.

A lot of the oil companies are starting to move out of downtown. Exxon as always been up in The Woodlands, ConocoPhilips is out at Highway 6 and I-10. Shell is moving a lot of people out to their west Houston facility and BP recently opened a huge new expansion to their campus in the same area.

Now, urban Houston, which I would say is anything inside the 610 loop, still grew by a large percent though I'm not exactly sure what that is.

I'd also argue that there's never been a better time to live in Houston. Growing tech sector, amazing healthcare sector with some of the best hospitals and research institutions in the world. Also a food scene which is possibly the most interesting and innovative in the nation right now.

I lived in the Houston area between 2002 and 2005 and don't recall the food scene being the most interesting and/or innovative in the state, let alone in the nation especially considering the strong competition in DFW or Austin. Have things really changed that much? Is it now worth making a trip out to H-town for some delicious food?

That 6.9% is for an entire city of 3 million, with dozens of neighborhoods ranging from the Gold Coast with its Lamborghini and Rolls dealerships, to Wicker Park with its hipster bars and indie galleries, to Englewood with its crumbling storefronts and well-armed crack dealers. Much more interesting to me would be statistics for which neighborhoods have gained and lost over the same period of time.

Much of decrease is due to the sharp decline in Southside Chicago as well as the growth of the suburbs outside of Cook county.

http://igpa.uillinois.edu/content/census-reveals-population-...

Thanks to the economy, however, the trend is somewhat reversed:

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120406/BLOGS02/1204...

Chicago mostly lost population in black neighborhoods. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16illinois.html

And I think Detroit disappeared, didn't it?

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