Bingo, John!
All other things being equal, cities whose corporate boundaries cannot
expand into undeveloped farmland or annex existing suburbs *should* see a
gradual slip in population as America's households become slowly smaller
from one generation to the next. This shrinkage is actually healthy.
The same phenomenon is doubtless taking place in Dallas and Jacksonville and
San Jose, but its numbers are masked by aggressive annexation of
metropolitan sprawl by the alleged city in question. If Philadelphia were
able to incorporate vast swaths of Blue Bell and Chadds Ford at will, it too
would be "gaining population" ... but only by gaining square miles.
It would still be gaining it more slowly than the most prominent Sunbelt
cities -- net population shift to the south and west is the reality of our
time -- but metropolitan Philadelphia is not in demographic decline, even as
other Northeastern and Midwestern metropolitan areas are.
-- Tony West
John wrote:
First - Much of Philadelphia's 'population decline' is result of existing,
and continuously occupied, homes, which now house fewer people than they
did 55 years ago. Did some research once on the place I lived in back in
'80, in Fairmount / Francisville / Brewerytown, which before WWII was home
to Mom and Dad, 5 children, Grandma, and maiden aunt, and by 1980 had been
split into three apartments housing two singles and a couple.
So, same buildings, fewer people, more stuff, maybe 'a higher standard of
living' ...
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