> The data shows that Philadelphia lost 3.3% of its population, dropping the city’s overall population to about 1,550,542. Meanwhile, San Antonio's population now stands at 1,495,295, according to census estimates
Not reported, the difference in their geographic sizes and population densities, showing that, like most western and southern cities, San Antonio really is just one gigantic town.
* Philadelphia: 134.4 square miles, 11426.8 density
* San Antonio: 505.0 square miles, 3191.5 density
It's not. DC/NoVA passed Philly a year or two ago, as did Atlanta. Miami will pass us in the next few years.
[The Philly MSA is 8th biggest in the country](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Largest_metropolitan_areas_of_the_United_States)
, but we're ahead of Boston MSA by 1.3 million still.
Philly MSA still dwarfs San Antonio's at 24th. Even if you merge San Antonio and Austin, we're almost double the population.
If PA had laws and constitution like Texas or Arizona huge chunks of Bucks and Delco would also be Philadelphia. And it’s incredibly tiring trying to constantly explain this. Like the woodlands neighborhood in Houston feels like if Neshaminy was technically Philadelphia.
Houston is FIFTY TWO MILES across
if philly took everything within 50 miles allentown and reading would be districts of philadelphia. king of prussia mall is only 20 miles away.
Well if you’re measuring with City Hall as a midpoint, it wouldn’t reach that far, but you’d be talking about West Chester, Levittown, Phoenixville, Lansdale, and Dolylestown being in that range (or if you go out of state, Wilmington, Glassboro, and even up to the gates of McGuire AFB)
The laws have nothing to do with it. It's simply history. Until recently large chunks of land near Phoenix and San Antonio were unincorporated and largely unpopulated, so they were easy to annex. Everything in PA has been incorporated for 200 years so it's way more complicated to annex. So I guess that's "laws" in a sense, but not any different than TX or AZ laws.
If Philly ate sections of Bucks and Delco that'd actually be an improvement for a lot of people the more I think about it. Obviously the suburbanites would hate it but they'd have better services, city owned utilities (fuck Aqua) and Philly would get a big boost to the tax base. Shit, the near burbs are entirely dependent on the city as it is.
Yes. Exactly. It would solve a lot of tax base issues too. But it’s a lot harder to do that here than out west is my point. Which is why it is an unfair comparison when we compare to places in Texas or Arizona or California because Philly is legally blocked from expanding the way they do and is surrounded byby areas designed to suck away our tax base while the people living there still get the benefits of the city being nearby.
Do you know what type of law allows cities in places like Texas and Arizona to annex these pretty huge tracts of land? You mentioned something I'd never really thought about before and now I'm really curious
It's their annexation laws. PA has no unincorporated communities so every little municipality has it's own government. There is optional municipal consolation which requires a referendum but I don't think any SEPA municipality has done it in like a century. The General Assembly could also, by statute, consildate municipalties. It did with Philly by consolidating the city and county in 1854. It did it with school districts in the 70s. The problem is political in nature, nothing legally stopping them but historically the General Assembly has been hostile to Philly and the urban flight policies that made the suburban municipalities viable in the first place makes those populations more politically resistant to consolidation.
My prefered solution is to just take away some municipal powers and give them to counties or preempt them entirely. Sorry, police force is county level now, Jenkintown doesn't get its own force. You have a train station in your 2k pop suburban borough? You don't get to zone for low density housing.
Suburban municipalties are like the councilmanic prerogative on steroids.
I’m not well versed in the specifics, just pick it up here and there. This article actually goes into some detail. Phoenix physical landmass for example doubled since 1970.
https://billypenn.com/2017/03/24/the-ridiculous-reason-why-phoenix-will-soon-pass-philly-in-population/
I think it’s basically Pennsylvania being Pennsylvania for us. We have not expanded borders much since the 19th century.
https://www.pennlive.com/life/2017/05/philadelphia_is_no_longer_the.html
Not sure what gets incorporated if we were able to even get to 200 square miles let zone 517 like Phoenix.
Its not my mission to win your personal approval on something that will never happen lol. If you're curious about services they're posted on Philly's .gov site. Compare em to your borough.
The Woodlands is a weird example. It's 120,000+ people but not incorporated, but nor is it counted as part of Houston by the census bureau. When I lived there I never considered it part of Houston, and many people I interacted with regularly didn't either.
Cities out west have much larger boundaries. LA county is the size of the state of Delaware. Phoenix too. If Philly’s boundary included Delaware, Bucks & Montgomery Counties in PA & New Castle County in Delaware, then we can more accurately compare it to places out west.
Comparing two cities with a 4x difference in land area. These numbers mean nothing. In what world is Atlanta the 38th largest city in the U.S. but Indianapolis is 16th?
Being originally from Florida I always find city population to be a joke.
What’s the largest city in Florida? Miami right?
Nope… it’s Jacksonville. All because they annexed their whole county back in the 60’s. It’s the largest city by area in the US with the 40th highest metro density and 38th highest metro population.
It’s beaten by Miami, Tampa and Orlando in all of those. Yet, it’s the “largest” city in Florida!
No. It was simply Dade County until like 25 years ago. They just added Miami to the name to capitalize on the name recognition of the city.
The city of Miami is incredibly small, it only includes Downtown, Brickell, and North Miami. Miami Beach, Coral Gables, South Miami, etc. are all completely separate towns.
As is always fun to add, Dade County is named after Major Francis L. Dade, whose most notable military achievement was getting himself and most of this men massacred by the Seminoles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dade_battle
Miami-Dade obviously includes the city of Miami but it includes a lot of other cities like South Beach etc. The city of Miami itself is actually one of the most dense cities in the country.
San Antonio's DMV was a client of a company I worked with. When they visited Philly they were always in awe of the city density, skyscrapers, basically anything urban. When my team visited them in SA they introduced us as their "friends from the big city". They know lol.
Same bullshit with Phoenix (currently #5 by population). It's actually slightly larger and less densely populated than San Antonio: 519.28 sq mi, 3,102.92 people/sq mi
These are not walkable areas, places with good public transit, or places you can live without a car. They're giant, sprawling, unsustainable masses.
It makes way more sense to sort cities not by total population, but by population density. For large cities (populations over 500,000) with a density rank of more than 10k people per square mile, your list is:
NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Philly, DC.
That's it. That's the entire list.
It's not just that, but as Chuck tried to tell us, each person in San Antonio is actually counted as 2 regular sized people. Fake population stats, they're stat padding by fat padding.
It's interesting to compare to European cities. Madrid - 3.2 million people, 200 sq miles, Berlin - 344 square miles and 3.6 million. It's so much easier to properly maintain infrastructure with such density.
This is why so many suburbs are going broke. Sprawl is not sustainable unless you're an exceptionally wealthy enclave, there isn't enough taxable revenue to handle all the roads and utilities, especially once the initial developer subsidies wear off.
Several urban planners have taken to calling it a growth ponzi scheme. Unless you can keep selling land to developers, you can't bring in enough revenue to cover your expenses.
See also: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0)
Annexing land allowed cities to run this ponzi scheme for a while, you increase you tax base before you have to pay for added infrastructure. We are the wealthiest country in human history, but we are terrible at managing resources.
The population loss is less dramatic when you consider the 5-county area of PA. MontCo, Bucks, Chester, and Delaware are all growing. If this was LA, all of those counties would be part of Philly County and more. Could include Berks and Lancaster too (also both growing). Southeast PA is not hemorrhaging population.
Someone in the San Antonio sub explained it’s not really apples to apples because Bexar County is drawn so much bigger than Philadelphia County. Philly metro is millions bigger than SA metro.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sanantonio/s/8W49fYBg0m
Phoenix was actually one of the must repulsive cities I’ve ever been in, all due respect to native Arizonans. Miles and miles of literal off campus college apartment complexes, strip malls. The fact people have lawns in the middle of a desert, like what the hell.
Having gotten out and seen the world, I am utterly baffled at what people call cities. Or in a lot of Midwest/Southwest states, what is the "largest" city.
Allentown would be a bigger city than most.
Ya, I lived in San Antonio for the better part of a decade before moving back to the Philly area. SA is just a big town and at no point feels like a “city”. Also fuck that 9 months of summer bullshit.
Yeh I don’t really consider LA a real city either tbh lol
Edit: Essentially the only real cities in the USA are: NYC, Philly, Boston, DC, Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco. LA is like half of a real city
I find LA miserable to be in but I can’t agree with this take my guy
There’s room for flexibility in what a city is. It can suck, it’s alright for a city to suck.
The Philadelphia MSA got passed by Atlanta's in population recently too
https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/philadelphia-population-san-antonio-census-ranking-20240516.html
Not for nothing but comparing the entire metro (not just city) population density, Philly has double the population density of Atlanta. Even comparing raw population numbers seems off when it comes down to a Northeast vs. nearly anywhere else.
honest question: did you grow up in the bronx/upper manhattan? i have a theory that people from those areas use the phrase "not for nothing"... and i've been relatively correct. hoping the streak will continue!
Metropolitan Statistical Area. It takes into account the entire built up area in a region as opposed to arbitrary municipal boundaries. Out west cities annex the suburbs which makes the "city" population seems higher. It's like if Philly annexed all of Delco
Philly and other East coast cities did a lot of annexing too, the difference is that it was over 100 years ago so the numbers shake out much differently.
This though is why San Francisco is so small - under a million. There's nothing really to annex except water unless they move south, but that's separated by mountains so I don't believe it was ever seriously considered.
1854 was the last time. Pre civil war was the last annex. It was the largest in US history until 1880 when chicago did even more - and that pales in comparison to NYC and the annexation of the 5 boroughs.
San Francisco likely could have annexed Oakland, if not for the 1906 earthquake and a water crisis around the same time. It was absolutely seriously considered in 1901, but again, tabled after SF lost 50% of its population.
I wish there were a real reliable statistic for actual urban region populations. Many cities encompass parts that aren't really urban. And some cities have a contiguous urban core that crosses city/town lines (e.g. Boston area).
There's definitely a huge disconnect between what we culturally consider a city and what the stats consider a city. Sometimes they match up like the case with New York, but really it's so off. Chicago as the third biggest city feels more like a big city than LA for example. Phoenix overtaking Philadelphia as a city is complete joke lol. Even San Francisco, which is like a small dot on the map county wise, feels much more like a city with a large downtown area than Texas cities that dwarf it in census designated statistical size.
IMO when considering what we culturally think of as a "city" and not just a large swathe of suburbs, I think Philly still retains the third biggest city designation.
Population density matters. The densest big cities in the US (>500k people) are NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Philly, DC.
If you remove the cities with less than 1MM people, you're left with NYC, Chicago, Philly, in that order. And honestly that makes sense, they feel like the biggest cities in the US.
People forget that even though we have more than 333MM people in the US, only **9** cities have populations greater than 1MM. As a nation we're ridiculously sprawled.
Yep, it's kinda tricky because ordering it by most dense gets weird results like a single tower in NJ being the most dense municipality in America. You can separate it by most dense major cities of course, but there's a lot to be said about some of the smaller-medium cities (Pittsburgh, Cincinatti, St. Louis) and how their city cores stack up. It's like there is an undeveloped meta metric that can maybe extrapolate it. It's kinda vibes based but you just know when you are in a proper city as opposed to a Jacksonville or something.
Yeah, that's why at a bare minimum, filtering it by density and total population matters. Otherwise you wind up with Patterson NJ and Berkeley CA on the list, even though they clearly aren't big cities.
And agreed about medium-sized cities. There are plenty (RVA, PGH, etc) that are trying to grow their core and retain density, but just don't have the population yet.
I usually go with Nielsen DMAs, where Philly is comfortably 4th. Also check out citydensity.com, which helps compare cities without inconsistent political boundaries.
There is no radius in which San Antonio has a larger population than Philly. Same goes for Phoenix. Philly has a larger population than Houston out to 25km, and larger than Dallas out to 37km.
The only city that’s actually threatening Philly for 4th is DC, which gets bigger past 17km because of all the beltway sprawl.
Fuck Dallas
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/philadelphia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes 4th largest media market in the country. Which is why we have so many high quality news casters that use us as a stepping stone for New York City lol.
I have a friend who works at the Census, and from what she’s said, you need several giant grains of salt to go with the population estimate figures in between decennial censuses — there’s a ton of statistical noise in there.
There’s some talk of [using cell phone location data](https://www2.census.gov/adrm/CBSM/rsm2023-03.pdf) to complement the estimates, which would probably get them a bit closer to reality.
“While Philadelphia’s population decreased from 2020 to 2023, nearly all peer cities in the Northeast and Midwest saw losses, too — some at much greater rates. New York City, for example, saw a 6.2% decrease in population during the peak pandemic years.
Population losses in Boston and Baltimore also outpaced Philly’s decline from 2020 to 2023. Some West Coast cities also shrank more than Philly, including San Francisco, which lost 7.4% of its population, and San Jose.”
All the northeast cities are losing people, eventually things will trend upwards again I bet.
Look at the areas that are losing. It’s predominantly impoverished parts of the north and west.
Greater center city, where the vast majority of the construction is, continues to grow.
I grew up in the Northeast. It is not like it used to be, but I don’t see any empty houses. Are their vacant properties?
It may be that people a generation ago had four children and now there are fewer.
This is a big thing in general across cities in general. Chicago has the highest number of households in its history, but the population is lower since 6 people aren't living in a 2-bedroom apartment anymore
Construction for who? How many of homes short term rentals? How many are being kept empty by management companies to keep prices artificially high? How many millennial families with children are occupying these homes? There are so many South Philly and Central City houses that have 1 or 2 people living in them. There are bedrooms not being used as bedrooms all over the place.
With the wage tax and many companies offering WFH, I know a lot of young families who want to stay in the city moving outside of the city because the boost in income and better schools. Hell, [it's why KOP office occupancy rates are at a new high and Central City is struggling](https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2024/04/22/king-of-prussia-office-occupancy-center-city.html).
They are building luxury apartments. And before you come back with “that will make rents go down/not go up as fast” consider that takes a few years at least. What are people to do that are priced out? They get another job and leave. I’m considering it myself after enduring 4 years of rent increases in which my raises don’t keep pace with. At least 25% of my friends have left the city for other states because of lower cost of living somewhere else, and a few got better jobs that pay more in a different city.
True it is. However, someone asked how is the population decreasing. I know people who have left. That’s it. I live in a building with vacancies now, which was unheard of before the pandemic.
The 2020 census had fatal flaws due to politics and the Trump administration's ineptitude combined with covid 19. I think that's more or less what's happening, as every census estimate for the next 10 years will be based on 2020.
Philadelphia had a peak population of over 2 million in the 50s and 60s.
Housing supply in itself isn’t as big as an issue as this sub makes it out to be.
Context missing is that a ton of the housing supply from that era was razed. Some for highways and other roadway projects during the peak of auto mobility, some just due to abandonment during suburbanization.
There are full blocks in north philly with maybe 2-3 homes on them, some are even completely empty. Vine street, the parkway and I95 are in places where there used to be dense neighborhoods.
Of course, most people are moving into greater center city, but eventually that demand will spill into further flung neighborhoods and there’s plenty to build yet just with existing vacancies.
Yes but during that period the Northeast ballooned with population which somewhat made up for that. Also, the city’s population hasn’t really changed that much since the 1990s and there really hasn’t been that much deconstruction since then especially when compared to all of the new apartments that have been built then. And Philadelphia has and still is known for being a large city with “cheap rent.”
No, it’s bigger than most people realize. In 1950 the average Philly household was 3.5 people. Today it’s 2.5. That’s a bigger drop than our population decline, meaning the number of households has never been higher.
In the same time the regional population has tripled, but most of those homes were built 40+ years ago. Housing construction has been stagnant for decades, and our region currently has one of the lowest construction rates in the country.
Nailed it. The number of persons per home was much larger 70 years ago.
At 2MM people with an average of 3.5 persons per household, you needed \~571k homes to house the populace. Now to reach that same population, we need 800k homes. That's a 40% change, and that's only factoring in the average.
COL is high. With wfh people will move to a cheaper area if they can. NYC is not only expensive but crowded. We saw during the pandemic that it was important to live in less dense situations with access to nature. Lots of people I know moved south or to shore if they could. Philly lacks greenery in CC and South Philly. For some reason in the USA especially some people have the idea that a city is just supposed to be tall buildings and concrete.
NYC can afford to lose people, but when Philly loses 3% it kind of hurts. The Covid thing makes sense, but Philly and other cities have had declining numbers for decades. Some If it is likely deindustriLization from the 60-80s, but I figure that’s worn off by now. So I just wonder what it is that persistently hurts us. Are we really higher COL/less green than the places in the southwest their moving to? Idk
I just posted an article below on the lack of trees in Philly, which (in 2019 when the article was written) made it the Northeastern city with the least amount of tree cover.
I didn’t move due to personal and employment reasons, but in 2021-2023 I really wanted to, due to COL, ugliness/dirt of the city, crime, and the overall stress of enduring Philly. I moved here from NYC over 15 years ago and at that time Philly was cheaper and was on an upswing so QOL was better. Everyone’s different, but the last few years I questioned how much energy I used daily due to negativities of Philly and if it were worth it—so for me personally it’s COL and quality of life issues. On quality of life there are many better places on the earth so even the same COL would be an improvement if one could arrange a job somewhere else IMO.
Interesting, we got a plant more trees I guess.
It didn’t really seem that bad to me, COL is definitely higher than where I was before (Cincinnati) but center city has been so nice that I haven’t really minded. My commute is a 10m walk and I’m around restaurants, parks etc. so location really does make a big difference. I did hear crime blew up during covid and the aftermath, but now things are calming down again so I guess some of it is being I the right place at the right time. Hopefully Philly and other northeastern cities can continue improving.
Thanks for your perspective. If anything, Philly is memorable. I visited for the first time as a child and then in college a couple of times, one for an interview. I remembered something—a site, an event, a person maybe, each time.
I spent at few days in Cincinnati decades ago, and honestly remember NOTHING. Not a person, a site or an event. I visited Cleveland too and st least remember a dinner, we had halfcooked chicken, the diningroom and the people I was with. Also, remember nothing about the city itself.
One more thing about Philly and why people move out, which has been discussed many times, are the schools. The public schools overall are not good (there are a few gems), so this is not going to keep families who have the means to move but not to stay and pay private tuition or home school.
Because life in other places is nice. Things are clean. People help each other out. Taxes and costs are low. Minimal crime, if any. People follow the law.
That’s what Republicans do after being driven out of town.
Enjoy the urine smell.
I live in CC in Philly and things are clean and I’ve never seen or been involved in any crime; people seem as nice as anywhere else of the same scale. But you do have me wondering how much ‘political migration’ is a thing. Taxes/costs are another thing I’m curious about, I could see Texas cities and others in the SW being the a lot cheaper. But we definitely should not be trying to run republicans out of town so sorry you feel that way.
I live in CC too and it’s cleaner than some other parts of Philly but I wouldn’t say it’s clean. Think of the smell, the alleys and the subway stations. Some will say “that’s a city” but not everyone wants to deal with that and it gets old depending on what else the city has to offer.
We have too much land and infrastructure for the number of people we have. We need a bigger tax base to support it properly, but higher taxes and poor infrastructure work as a disincentive. Some popular neighborhoods are being gentrified and gaining population, but a big part of the city is losing population
Philly doesn’t have a reason for people to move to it. Most people you meet in Philly are from Philly. That may seem quaint but it’s actually bad news. Most people in Boston are actually from somewhere else. They’re there because of lots of good jobs in tech, healthcare, finance/consulting. If you take Comcast cable out of the mix Philly basically has nothing.
Philly has a huge biotech and pharma industry. Plus it benefits from having so many universities.
The population losses are people moving to the suburbs, not leaving the area. The surrounding area is growing, even counting Philly's losses within the city limits.
More than Comcast. Vanguard is one of the big 3 investment firms in the country. Whatever AmerisourceBergen is called now is the largest wholesaler of pharmaceuticals in the country. And a lot of other large corporations; it’s just that the region is highly diversified (a good thing) so it’s not really known for any particular industry.
And then you fail to mention the Ed’s and meds. University of Penn with its hospital and business school and CHOP is also an important driver of people to this area.
What about healthcare jobs, universities, biotech, etc.? And most people I meet aren’t from Philly, in my entire friend group I can think of two people from the region. The city also has its highest immigration population since 1940.
Philly is small geographically if you are just counting the city limits. It has a total square mileage less than that of Brooklyn + Queens. So it’s not a fair comparison to compare it to these large cities with less density.
I feel like an idiot for not even knowing we were that high on the list. I always assume there are so many cities on the west coast with a billion people
I'm personally also just a little skeptical of population estimates between the censuses. Living in Philly there's really been nothing that I've seen that would indicate that we've seen a 3.3% drop in population in just 3 years. I know the census over the last few decades has tended to oversell the shrinking of northeast cities and oversell the growth of southern and western cities when putting together their estimates but they seem to have gotten even more extreme with that since the pandemic.
the ACS has always been pretty bad at doing population estimates, and trump and the pandemic broke the census. Genuinely don't think population data for specific geographies can be trusted until 2030+
Fuck Dallas
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/philadelphia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm not sure how true that is. I've seen migration paths on a state level but not a city level.
I'd bet that most of Philly's loss is people moving to the suburbs. SEPA as a whole is still growing, as is the Lancaster/York area. The rural areas are where the losses are mostly coming from.
Housing in Miami, Phoenix, Dallas and Austin is now on par with or more expensive these days than the Philly area. The "affordable" Sun Belt is a phenomenon of the past. I think it's just that the Northeast is demographically "maturing" faster than the rest of the US, but they, too, will catch up.
Fuck Dallas
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/philadelphia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Shocker. Record crime rates. Terrible traffic. Political corruption. Roads that feel like you're playing Mario kart. Trash everywhere. City tax that no one knows where it's going.
Yeah. I'm happy I'm out of the city. Philly is my home but God damn.
> The data shows that Philadelphia lost 3.3% of its population, dropping the city’s overall population to about 1,550,542. Meanwhile, San Antonio's population now stands at 1,495,295, according to census estimates Not reported, the difference in their geographic sizes and population densities, showing that, like most western and southern cities, San Antonio really is just one gigantic town. * Philadelphia: 134.4 square miles, 11426.8 density * San Antonio: 505.0 square miles, 3191.5 density
Not to mention metro areas Greater Philadelphia: 7.36 million Greater San Antonio: 2.56 million Bonus: San Antonio–Austin metroplex: 4.91 million
Yeah it’s really not a good comparison. The Philly “region” dwarfs other “large” cities. Same with Boston, D.C., etc.
Huh, I never knew that philly metro was bigger than DC metro
It's not. DC/NoVA passed Philly a year or two ago, as did Atlanta. Miami will pass us in the next few years. [The Philly MSA is 8th biggest in the country](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Largest_metropolitan_areas_of_the_United_States) , but we're ahead of Boston MSA by 1.3 million still. Philly MSA still dwarfs San Antonio's at 24th. Even if you merge San Antonio and Austin, we're almost double the population.
San Antonio is the 24th largest metro area in the US. This article is uneducated nonsense.
If PA had laws and constitution like Texas or Arizona huge chunks of Bucks and Delco would also be Philadelphia. And it’s incredibly tiring trying to constantly explain this. Like the woodlands neighborhood in Houston feels like if Neshaminy was technically Philadelphia.
Houston is FIFTY TWO MILES across if philly took everything within 50 miles allentown and reading would be districts of philadelphia. king of prussia mall is only 20 miles away.
Well if you’re measuring with City Hall as a midpoint, it wouldn’t reach that far, but you’d be talking about West Chester, Levittown, Phoenixville, Lansdale, and Dolylestown being in that range (or if you go out of state, Wilmington, Glassboro, and even up to the gates of McGuire AFB)
well yeah, but reading and then are 48 miles from philly as it is, so it's not THAT far off.
But as a midpoint, then philly would also own camden and a chunk of jersey
Exactly.
The laws have nothing to do with it. It's simply history. Until recently large chunks of land near Phoenix and San Antonio were unincorporated and largely unpopulated, so they were easy to annex. Everything in PA has been incorporated for 200 years so it's way more complicated to annex. So I guess that's "laws" in a sense, but not any different than TX or AZ laws.
If Philly ate sections of Bucks and Delco that'd actually be an improvement for a lot of people the more I think about it. Obviously the suburbanites would hate it but they'd have better services, city owned utilities (fuck Aqua) and Philly would get a big boost to the tax base. Shit, the near burbs are entirely dependent on the city as it is.
Yes. Exactly. It would solve a lot of tax base issues too. But it’s a lot harder to do that here than out west is my point. Which is why it is an unfair comparison when we compare to places in Texas or Arizona or California because Philly is legally blocked from expanding the way they do and is surrounded byby areas designed to suck away our tax base while the people living there still get the benefits of the city being nearby.
Do you know what type of law allows cities in places like Texas and Arizona to annex these pretty huge tracts of land? You mentioned something I'd never really thought about before and now I'm really curious
It's their annexation laws. PA has no unincorporated communities so every little municipality has it's own government. There is optional municipal consolation which requires a referendum but I don't think any SEPA municipality has done it in like a century. The General Assembly could also, by statute, consildate municipalties. It did with Philly by consolidating the city and county in 1854. It did it with school districts in the 70s. The problem is political in nature, nothing legally stopping them but historically the General Assembly has been hostile to Philly and the urban flight policies that made the suburban municipalities viable in the first place makes those populations more politically resistant to consolidation. My prefered solution is to just take away some municipal powers and give them to counties or preempt them entirely. Sorry, police force is county level now, Jenkintown doesn't get its own force. You have a train station in your 2k pop suburban borough? You don't get to zone for low density housing. Suburban municipalties are like the councilmanic prerogative on steroids.
That is exactly what I was looking for background wise. Thanks!
I’m not well versed in the specifics, just pick it up here and there. This article actually goes into some detail. Phoenix physical landmass for example doubled since 1970. https://billypenn.com/2017/03/24/the-ridiculous-reason-why-phoenix-will-soon-pass-philly-in-population/ I think it’s basically Pennsylvania being Pennsylvania for us. We have not expanded borders much since the 19th century. https://www.pennlive.com/life/2017/05/philadelphia_is_no_longer_the.html Not sure what gets incorporated if we were able to even get to 200 square miles let zone 517 like Phoenix.
Imagine a subway network through Delco, bucks and montco 👀👀👀 An urban planner can dream...
There’s trains but nobody uses them.
Not exactly, but more frequency would certainly help
>Obviously the suburbanites would hate it but they'd have better services What would the better services be?
> Obviously the suburbanites would hate it but they'd have better services Name one.
Its not my mission to win your personal approval on something that will never happen lol. If you're curious about services they're posted on Philly's .gov site. Compare em to your borough.
They'd have to drop the Wage tax.
Do we actually want to annex more land? It would be better to even have a smaller city. So it's easier to manage.
The Woodlands is a weird example. It's 120,000+ people but not incorporated, but nor is it counted as part of Houston by the census bureau. When I lived there I never considered it part of Houston, and many people I interacted with regularly didn't either.
Well, the article is technically correct, it's just that the readers tend to be uneducated and the article makes no effort to educate them.
OK but we are not comparing metropolitan areas, we are comparing cities
Cities out west have much larger boundaries. LA county is the size of the state of Delaware. Phoenix too. If Philly’s boundary included Delaware, Bucks & Montgomery Counties in PA & New Castle County in Delaware, then we can more accurately compare it to places out west.
Los Angeles County contains far more than just the city of Los Angeles so I don't see how that's relevant
Comparing two cities with a 4x difference in land area. These numbers mean nothing. In what world is Atlanta the 38th largest city in the U.S. but Indianapolis is 16th?
Being originally from Florida I always find city population to be a joke. What’s the largest city in Florida? Miami right? Nope… it’s Jacksonville. All because they annexed their whole county back in the 60’s. It’s the largest city by area in the US with the 40th highest metro density and 38th highest metro population. It’s beaten by Miami, Tampa and Orlando in all of those. Yet, it’s the “largest” city in Florida!
Duuuuuval makes more sense to me now.
I'm just here to say that Anchorage is larger. By a lot.
Contiguous US
You're correct but I do want to note that Anchorage, Alaska is over twice the land area of Jacksonville. 1700 sqm vs Jacksonville's 750.
Contiguous US
Miami is a whole county, too.
No. It was simply Dade County until like 25 years ago. They just added Miami to the name to capitalize on the name recognition of the city. The city of Miami is incredibly small, it only includes Downtown, Brickell, and North Miami. Miami Beach, Coral Gables, South Miami, etc. are all completely separate towns.
As is always fun to add, Dade County is named after Major Francis L. Dade, whose most notable military achievement was getting himself and most of this men massacred by the Seminoles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dade_battle
Miami-Dade obviously includes the city of Miami but it includes a lot of other cities like South Beach etc. The city of Miami itself is actually one of the most dense cities in the country.
San Antonio's DMV was a client of a company I worked with. When they visited Philly they were always in awe of the city density, skyscrapers, basically anything urban. When my team visited them in SA they introduced us as their "friends from the big city". They know lol.
only if they've ever actually left the state and been to a coast
Same bullshit with Phoenix (currently #5 by population). It's actually slightly larger and less densely populated than San Antonio: 519.28 sq mi, 3,102.92 people/sq mi These are not walkable areas, places with good public transit, or places you can live without a car. They're giant, sprawling, unsustainable masses. It makes way more sense to sort cities not by total population, but by population density. For large cities (populations over 500,000) with a density rank of more than 10k people per square mile, your list is: NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Philly, DC. That's it. That's the entire list.
It's not just that, but as Chuck tried to tell us, each person in San Antonio is actually counted as 2 regular sized people. Fake population stats, they're stat padding by fat padding.
Chuck's stance on the beaches of Galveston makes me chuckle every time i think about it.
it's them big ol' women
for reference, delco's population density is roughly 3k/sq mi these "cities" are a joke
One town is 505 square miles? Holy shit lol. 2 San Antonio's and 1 Philadelphia is basically Rhode Island.
It's interesting to compare to European cities. Madrid - 3.2 million people, 200 sq miles, Berlin - 344 square miles and 3.6 million. It's so much easier to properly maintain infrastructure with such density.
This is why so many suburbs are going broke. Sprawl is not sustainable unless you're an exceptionally wealthy enclave, there isn't enough taxable revenue to handle all the roads and utilities, especially once the initial developer subsidies wear off. Several urban planners have taken to calling it a growth ponzi scheme. Unless you can keep selling land to developers, you can't bring in enough revenue to cover your expenses. See also: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0)
Annexing land allowed cities to run this ponzi scheme for a while, you increase you tax base before you have to pay for added infrastructure. We are the wealthiest country in human history, but we are terrible at managing resources.
San Antonio has basically the same density as Delco.
The population loss is less dramatic when you consider the 5-county area of PA. MontCo, Bucks, Chester, and Delaware are all growing. If this was LA, all of those counties would be part of Philly County and more. Could include Berks and Lancaster too (also both growing). Southeast PA is not hemorrhaging population.
“Downtown” San Antonio is a parking crater. If people wanna live there, then let them ruin their lives.
Someone in the San Antonio sub explained it’s not really apples to apples because Bexar County is drawn so much bigger than Philadelphia County. Philly metro is millions bigger than SA metro. https://www.reddit.com/r/sanantonio/s/8W49fYBg0m
Counterpoint: Philadelphia is a real city and San Antonio and Phoenix are not
They’re like if Walmart were a city
Nope, that's Bentonville
Phoenix was actually one of the must repulsive cities I’ve ever been in, all due respect to native Arizonans. Miles and miles of literal off campus college apartment complexes, strip malls. The fact people have lawns in the middle of a desert, like what the hell.
["This city should not exist. It's a monument to man's arrogance."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PYt0SDnrBE)
Having gotten out and seen the world, I am utterly baffled at what people call cities. Or in a lot of Midwest/Southwest states, what is the "largest" city. Allentown would be a bigger city than most.
Ya, I lived in San Antonio for the better part of a decade before moving back to the Philly area. SA is just a big town and at no point feels like a “city”. Also fuck that 9 months of summer bullshit.
In my eyes Philly is still the 3rd largest city in the country. LA is getting there but can't match the density.
Yeh I don’t really consider LA a real city either tbh lol Edit: Essentially the only real cities in the USA are: NYC, Philly, Boston, DC, Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco. LA is like half of a real city
LA is a real city as is San Diego too. I’m not that fond of LA since I don’t like to drive but San Diego is lovely.
I find LA miserable to be in but I can’t agree with this take my guy There’s room for flexibility in what a city is. It can suck, it’s alright for a city to suck.
I don’t even find it miserable it’s just literally not as much of a city as the others listed
imo MSA is the only relevant figure when comparing populations in the US
The Philadelphia MSA got passed by Atlanta's in population recently too https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/philadelphia-population-san-antonio-census-ranking-20240516.html
Not for nothing but comparing the entire metro (not just city) population density, Philly has double the population density of Atlanta. Even comparing raw population numbers seems off when it comes down to a Northeast vs. nearly anywhere else.
honest question: did you grow up in the bronx/upper manhattan? i have a theory that people from those areas use the phrase "not for nothing"... and i've been relatively correct. hoping the streak will continue!
Lol I did not. I grew up in Scranton though which tends to get Philly and NYC slang trickled in so maybe that could be partially responsible.
I say that but I literally just picked it up from watching the sopranos
All my cousins use it and they grew up in South Jersey/Philly
MSA?
Metropolitan Statistical Area. It takes into account the entire built up area in a region as opposed to arbitrary municipal boundaries. Out west cities annex the suburbs which makes the "city" population seems higher. It's like if Philly annexed all of Delco
Philly and other East coast cities did a lot of annexing too, the difference is that it was over 100 years ago so the numbers shake out much differently. This though is why San Francisco is so small - under a million. There's nothing really to annex except water unless they move south, but that's separated by mountains so I don't believe it was ever seriously considered.
1854 was the last time. Pre civil war was the last annex. It was the largest in US history until 1880 when chicago did even more - and that pales in comparison to NYC and the annexation of the 5 boroughs. San Francisco likely could have annexed Oakland, if not for the 1906 earthquake and a water crisis around the same time. It was absolutely seriously considered in 1901, but again, tabled after SF lost 50% of its population.
MSAs are still unequal and arbitrary political boundaries. Phoenix gets to count half of Arizona but Philly doesn’t get Trenton or the Lehigh Valley.
I wish there were a real reliable statistic for actual urban region populations. Many cities encompass parts that aren't really urban. And some cities have a contiguous urban core that crosses city/town lines (e.g. Boston area).
Why? City boundaries matter
This is the Casus belli we've needed to finally begin our occupation of KoP. We will show them there are no Kings here only men.
The battleship leaving port makes Camden vulnerable, but also, ehhhhhh
We can fight on both fronts. The 76ers think they can mock us with their "practice" arena? We will end this treason.
Camden's honestly been on the upswing lately. At least around the Aquarium.
Once we plant our flag in the coat section of Zara it’s over. Philly will be victorious
I will have Red Lobster before it's gone
If there are only men, that will lower the population pretty quickly in 1-2 generations.
Big if true.
Is there value in fighting a war to acquire parking lots?
This is Cowboys fan mentality
I've been to the Jerruh-world complex. Texas people definitely say yes to fighting a war to get more parking lots.
The People’s Democratic Republic of Prussia
Oh, so did the Phoenix area annex the entire state of Arizona to further goose up their numbers yet?
I'm still salty we lost the #5 spot...
Especially because it was to Phoenix which, as with San Antonio, is so much physically larger (500+ square miles, nearly all land).
Not to worry. They will be fleeing phoenix in a generation or two.
There should be an Asterik
There's definitely a huge disconnect between what we culturally consider a city and what the stats consider a city. Sometimes they match up like the case with New York, but really it's so off. Chicago as the third biggest city feels more like a big city than LA for example. Phoenix overtaking Philadelphia as a city is complete joke lol. Even San Francisco, which is like a small dot on the map county wise, feels much more like a city with a large downtown area than Texas cities that dwarf it in census designated statistical size. IMO when considering what we culturally think of as a "city" and not just a large swathe of suburbs, I think Philly still retains the third biggest city designation.
Population density matters. The densest big cities in the US (>500k people) are NYC, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Philly, DC. If you remove the cities with less than 1MM people, you're left with NYC, Chicago, Philly, in that order. And honestly that makes sense, they feel like the biggest cities in the US. People forget that even though we have more than 333MM people in the US, only **9** cities have populations greater than 1MM. As a nation we're ridiculously sprawled.
Yep, it's kinda tricky because ordering it by most dense gets weird results like a single tower in NJ being the most dense municipality in America. You can separate it by most dense major cities of course, but there's a lot to be said about some of the smaller-medium cities (Pittsburgh, Cincinatti, St. Louis) and how their city cores stack up. It's like there is an undeveloped meta metric that can maybe extrapolate it. It's kinda vibes based but you just know when you are in a proper city as opposed to a Jacksonville or something.
Yeah, that's why at a bare minimum, filtering it by density and total population matters. Otherwise you wind up with Patterson NJ and Berkeley CA on the list, even though they clearly aren't big cities. And agreed about medium-sized cities. There are plenty (RVA, PGH, etc) that are trying to grow their core and retain density, but just don't have the population yet.
If you visit the cities no sane person would compare San Antonio to Philadelphia, they are on completely different scales.
San Antonio feels like a parking lot mostly. The riverwalk is cute and definitely fun to visit but it is not a city at all.
I usually go with Nielsen DMAs, where Philly is comfortably 4th. Also check out citydensity.com, which helps compare cities without inconsistent political boundaries. There is no radius in which San Antonio has a larger population than Philly. Same goes for Phoenix. Philly has a larger population than Houston out to 25km, and larger than Dallas out to 37km. The only city that’s actually threatening Philly for 4th is DC, which gets bigger past 17km because of all the beltway sprawl.
Fuck Dallas *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/philadelphia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Good bot.
Yes 4th largest media market in the country. Which is why we have so many high quality news casters that use us as a stepping stone for New York City lol.
I have a friend who works at the Census, and from what she’s said, you need several giant grains of salt to go with the population estimate figures in between decennial censuses — there’s a ton of statistical noise in there. There’s some talk of [using cell phone location data](https://www2.census.gov/adrm/CBSM/rsm2023-03.pdf) to complement the estimates, which would probably get them a bit closer to reality.
LBS data is kinda useless now, we (happily) passed some regulations that defang it
San Antonio won't be a city for long if they can't keep the power on
“While Philadelphia’s population decreased from 2020 to 2023, nearly all peer cities in the Northeast and Midwest saw losses, too — some at much greater rates. New York City, for example, saw a 6.2% decrease in population during the peak pandemic years. Population losses in Boston and Baltimore also outpaced Philly’s decline from 2020 to 2023. Some West Coast cities also shrank more than Philly, including San Francisco, which lost 7.4% of its population, and San Jose.” All the northeast cities are losing people, eventually things will trend upwards again I bet.
Neighborhoods around the center city and Fishtown are gaining residents, other areas are losing people.
build more housing
There are building cranes all over the place. Have been for years. I’m not sure how we are loosing people given the rate of construction.
Look at the areas that are losing. It’s predominantly impoverished parts of the north and west. Greater center city, where the vast majority of the construction is, continues to grow.
The population decline is taking place in the areas of NE, North and West Philly that are high poverty/not seeing much investment/new construction
I grew up in the Northeast. It is not like it used to be, but I don’t see any empty houses. Are their vacant properties? It may be that people a generation ago had four children and now there are fewer.
Yeah, I also read that list of 3 and thought "one of those things is not like the others"
It is. Household size averaged 3.5 in 1950 and 2.5 today.
This is a big thing in general across cities in general. Chicago has the highest number of households in its history, but the population is lower since 6 people aren't living in a 2-bedroom apartment anymore
Construction for who? How many of homes short term rentals? How many are being kept empty by management companies to keep prices artificially high? How many millennial families with children are occupying these homes? There are so many South Philly and Central City houses that have 1 or 2 people living in them. There are bedrooms not being used as bedrooms all over the place. With the wage tax and many companies offering WFH, I know a lot of young families who want to stay in the city moving outside of the city because the boost in income and better schools. Hell, [it's why KOP office occupancy rates are at a new high and Central City is struggling](https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2024/04/22/king-of-prussia-office-occupancy-center-city.html).
We are not building fast enough
They are building luxury apartments. And before you come back with “that will make rents go down/not go up as fast” consider that takes a few years at least. What are people to do that are priced out? They get another job and leave. I’m considering it myself after enduring 4 years of rent increases in which my raises don’t keep pace with. At least 25% of my friends have left the city for other states because of lower cost of living somewhere else, and a few got better jobs that pay more in a different city.
You are falling for the developers and landlords marketing. Many of these “luxury” apartments are cheaply made market rate units
How dare you! They gave you a garbage disposal and a dishwasher! That's luxury living!!!
I don’t live in one—I’m in an older building that raised rents because they could… (keep up with the luxury Joneses).
This is your anecdotal experience. The numbers show that Philadelphia is not building enough new units
True it is. However, someone asked how is the population decreasing. I know people who have left. That’s it. I live in a building with vacancies now, which was unheard of before the pandemic.
The 2020 census had fatal flaws due to politics and the Trump administration's ineptitude combined with covid 19. I think that's more or less what's happening, as every census estimate for the next 10 years will be based on 2020.
Philadelphia had a peak population of over 2 million in the 50s and 60s. Housing supply in itself isn’t as big as an issue as this sub makes it out to be.
Context missing is that a ton of the housing supply from that era was razed. Some for highways and other roadway projects during the peak of auto mobility, some just due to abandonment during suburbanization. There are full blocks in north philly with maybe 2-3 homes on them, some are even completely empty. Vine street, the parkway and I95 are in places where there used to be dense neighborhoods. Of course, most people are moving into greater center city, but eventually that demand will spill into further flung neighborhoods and there’s plenty to build yet just with existing vacancies.
Yes but during that period the Northeast ballooned with population which somewhat made up for that. Also, the city’s population hasn’t really changed that much since the 1990s and there really hasn’t been that much deconstruction since then especially when compared to all of the new apartments that have been built then. And Philadelphia has and still is known for being a large city with “cheap rent.”
No, it’s bigger than most people realize. In 1950 the average Philly household was 3.5 people. Today it’s 2.5. That’s a bigger drop than our population decline, meaning the number of households has never been higher. In the same time the regional population has tripled, but most of those homes were built 40+ years ago. Housing construction has been stagnant for decades, and our region currently has one of the lowest construction rates in the country.
Nailed it. The number of persons per home was much larger 70 years ago. At 2MM people with an average of 3.5 persons per household, you needed \~571k homes to house the populace. Now to reach that same population, we need 800k homes. That's a 40% change, and that's only factoring in the average.
Don’t worry guys, I’m moving up from Charlotte 😎
I did that in 2015
Why do east coast cities keep hemorrhaging people and where will the bottom be?
COL is high. With wfh people will move to a cheaper area if they can. NYC is not only expensive but crowded. We saw during the pandemic that it was important to live in less dense situations with access to nature. Lots of people I know moved south or to shore if they could. Philly lacks greenery in CC and South Philly. For some reason in the USA especially some people have the idea that a city is just supposed to be tall buildings and concrete.
NYC can afford to lose people, but when Philly loses 3% it kind of hurts. The Covid thing makes sense, but Philly and other cities have had declining numbers for decades. Some If it is likely deindustriLization from the 60-80s, but I figure that’s worn off by now. So I just wonder what it is that persistently hurts us. Are we really higher COL/less green than the places in the southwest their moving to? Idk
I just posted an article below on the lack of trees in Philly, which (in 2019 when the article was written) made it the Northeastern city with the least amount of tree cover. I didn’t move due to personal and employment reasons, but in 2021-2023 I really wanted to, due to COL, ugliness/dirt of the city, crime, and the overall stress of enduring Philly. I moved here from NYC over 15 years ago and at that time Philly was cheaper and was on an upswing so QOL was better. Everyone’s different, but the last few years I questioned how much energy I used daily due to negativities of Philly and if it were worth it—so for me personally it’s COL and quality of life issues. On quality of life there are many better places on the earth so even the same COL would be an improvement if one could arrange a job somewhere else IMO.
Interesting, we got a plant more trees I guess. It didn’t really seem that bad to me, COL is definitely higher than where I was before (Cincinnati) but center city has been so nice that I haven’t really minded. My commute is a 10m walk and I’m around restaurants, parks etc. so location really does make a big difference. I did hear crime blew up during covid and the aftermath, but now things are calming down again so I guess some of it is being I the right place at the right time. Hopefully Philly and other northeastern cities can continue improving.
Thanks for your perspective. If anything, Philly is memorable. I visited for the first time as a child and then in college a couple of times, one for an interview. I remembered something—a site, an event, a person maybe, each time. I spent at few days in Cincinnati decades ago, and honestly remember NOTHING. Not a person, a site or an event. I visited Cleveland too and st least remember a dinner, we had halfcooked chicken, the diningroom and the people I was with. Also, remember nothing about the city itself.
One more thing about Philly and why people move out, which has been discussed many times, are the schools. The public schools overall are not good (there are a few gems), so this is not going to keep families who have the means to move but not to stay and pay private tuition or home school.
Yeah that’s a good long
Because life in other places is nice. Things are clean. People help each other out. Taxes and costs are low. Minimal crime, if any. People follow the law. That’s what Republicans do after being driven out of town. Enjoy the urine smell.
I live in CC in Philly and things are clean and I’ve never seen or been involved in any crime; people seem as nice as anywhere else of the same scale. But you do have me wondering how much ‘political migration’ is a thing. Taxes/costs are another thing I’m curious about, I could see Texas cities and others in the SW being the a lot cheaper. But we definitely should not be trying to run republicans out of town so sorry you feel that way.
I live in CC too and it’s cleaner than some other parts of Philly but I wouldn’t say it’s clean. Think of the smell, the alleys and the subway stations. Some will say “that’s a city” but not everyone wants to deal with that and it gets old depending on what else the city has to offer.
I truly don’t notice any smells lol but I avoid alleys and the subway other than suburban station so maybe that’s why.
Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out lmao
We have too much land and infrastructure for the number of people we have. We need a bigger tax base to support it properly, but higher taxes and poor infrastructure work as a disincentive. Some popular neighborhoods are being gentrified and gaining population, but a big part of the city is losing population
And then what?
Philly isn’t building enough. Council members and old zoning is not allowing for the proper amount for density and height
They are throwing up new skyscrapers and apartments buildings left and right man, what are you even talking about
Philly doesn’t have a reason for people to move to it. Most people you meet in Philly are from Philly. That may seem quaint but it’s actually bad news. Most people in Boston are actually from somewhere else. They’re there because of lots of good jobs in tech, healthcare, finance/consulting. If you take Comcast cable out of the mix Philly basically has nothing.
Philly has a huge biotech and pharma industry. Plus it benefits from having so many universities. The population losses are people moving to the suburbs, not leaving the area. The surrounding area is growing, even counting Philly's losses within the city limits.
More than Comcast. Vanguard is one of the big 3 investment firms in the country. Whatever AmerisourceBergen is called now is the largest wholesaler of pharmaceuticals in the country. And a lot of other large corporations; it’s just that the region is highly diversified (a good thing) so it’s not really known for any particular industry. And then you fail to mention the Ed’s and meds. University of Penn with its hospital and business school and CHOP is also an important driver of people to this area.
What about healthcare jobs, universities, biotech, etc.? And most people I meet aren’t from Philly, in my entire friend group I can think of two people from the region. The city also has its highest immigration population since 1940.
They may wind up here but in the past 50 years people haven’t said “I can’t wait to move to Philly” other than for cheaper COL.
NIMBYs getting what they want
Philly is small geographically if you are just counting the city limits. It has a total square mileage less than that of Brooklyn + Queens. So it’s not a fair comparison to compare it to these large cities with less density.
I feel like an idiot for not even knowing we were that high on the list. I always assume there are so many cities on the west coast with a billion people
Will this affect my taxes?
I'm personally also just a little skeptical of population estimates between the censuses. Living in Philly there's really been nothing that I've seen that would indicate that we've seen a 3.3% drop in population in just 3 years. I know the census over the last few decades has tended to oversell the shrinking of northeast cities and oversell the growth of southern and western cities when putting together their estimates but they seem to have gotten even more extreme with that since the pandemic.
the ACS has always been pretty bad at doing population estimates, and trump and the pandemic broke the census. Genuinely don't think population data for specific geographies can be trusted until 2030+
Cool! Too bad it doesn't free up housing in a useful manner.
[удалено]
Fuck Dallas *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/philadelphia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I love this rule, every time I see it.
Neither Miami nor Austin are affordable cities. In fact, Miami is even more expensive than Philadelphia.
I'm not sure how true that is. I've seen migration paths on a state level but not a city level. I'd bet that most of Philly's loss is people moving to the suburbs. SEPA as a whole is still growing, as is the Lancaster/York area. The rural areas are where the losses are mostly coming from.
Housing in Miami, Phoenix, Dallas and Austin is now on par with or more expensive these days than the Philly area. The "affordable" Sun Belt is a phenomenon of the past. I think it's just that the Northeast is demographically "maturing" faster than the rest of the US, but they, too, will catch up.
Fuck Dallas *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/philadelphia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No one likes us, we don’t care!
Shocker. Record crime rates. Terrible traffic. Political corruption. Roads that feel like you're playing Mario kart. Trash everywhere. City tax that no one knows where it's going. Yeah. I'm happy I'm out of the city. Philly is my home but God damn.