In Northeast, A City's Tale Of Turnaround

28 July 2005 - 5:00am

After decades of decline, New Haven and other mid-size cities see a positive population trend.

"In the band stretching from Elizabeth, N.J., to Providence, R.I., and Worcester, Mass., there are 13 cities with populations between 100,000 and 300,000. Of those cities, only one, Jersey City, N.J., actually lost population from 2000 to 2004. The remaining 12 saw an average population increase of 1.6 percent... But the surprise comes not in the magnitude of growth, but the fact that the cities are growing at all. The growth stands in stark contrast to Midwestern cities, which continue to lose population, and even larger Northeastern cities such as Boston, which also saw a drop in residents."

Source: The Christian Science Monitor, July 28, 2005
Bookmark and Share
All of that only scratches the surface of what's wrong with this study. The idea that complex urban development patterns and human behavior can be meaningfully studied according to one primary criteria — density — is wrong from the start.