"Dan Gilbert is an irritation as far as our economic development" -L Brooks Patterson

[Bham1982]

You claimed Chicago has the worst population trend in the country when in fact the Census Bureau thinks it was growing 2010-2013 with the data for 2014 not out yet. [[And wait, aren't we on a forum about a city that's estimated to be down 50,000 over the past four years?? )

In your homerist haste you didn't bother reading my post; I never wrote any of this. You don't seem to understand numbers, as you don't seem to get that an area could be growing and be "worst" or shrinking and be "best". This is a comparative ranking, so the absolute change is irrelevant; the key is the population change relative to that of other cities.

What major city has worse population trends than Chicago? Name one. The answer is none. Even using your cherrypicked years, and even ignoring the years prior and post, Chicago had the worst population trends during those years.

Even Philly, which is probably the next-worst off major U.S. city [[and note I'm talking the major urban cities with young people; so basically the dozen or so largest U.S. cities) has stronger population numbers than Chicago, and Philly is really a significant laggard compared to the other Northeast Corridor cities.

And you are seriously arguing I'm a Detroit homer? You're obviously new to DYes.

Now you're claiming that there will be substantial losses this year to make up for that growth because of available county data, and yet the only 2014 estimate for Cook County on the Census Bureau's site shows a loss of a whopping 179 people in a county of 5.25 million.

Again, you don't understand the difference between absolute or relative, and no, I never claimed "substantial losses". Cook County could be growing, and Chicago could still have the worst population trends. But Cook is shrinking, and Chicago is also likely shrinking.

You can follow the link in my original post to see this. Note by the way that the county population is double that of the city of Chicago, so it's probably worth waiting for the actual city data to make any judgments on 2014.

Not really. In every single past Census estimate year the county matches the city trends, so if the county is declining, the city is almost certainly declining. And Chicago comprises the strong majority of the county, not 50%.

Brookings Institution says Chicago's metro GDP [[since you mentioned the Bay Area I'm assuming we're now talking metro areas) is significantly larger than either DC's or San Francisco's + San Jose's combined. $563bn for Chicago versus $442bn in DC or $491bn for SF + SJ.

Nope. Per the BEA, Chicago has the fifth largest economy in the U.S., and was surpassed by both SF and DC around five years ago, and the gap has grown in every year since.

In fact, Houston is likely closer in size to the Chicago economy than that of the Bay Area. I don't see 2014 figures listed online, but the 2013 figures are as follows-

2013 Combined Statistical Area[[CSA) Gross Product
New York-Newark $1.683 Trillion
Los Angeles-Long Beach $999.661 Billion
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland $664.687 Billion
Washington-Baltimore-Arlington $657.039 Billion
Chicago-Naperville $597.805 Billion
Houston-The Woodlands $517.367 Billion
Boston-Worcester-Providence $514.586 Billion
Dallas-Ft Worth $451.436 Billion
Philadelphia-Reading-Camden $429.838 Billion
Atlanta-Athens-Clarke County-Sandy Springs $314.759 Billion
Seattle-Tacoma $309.577 Billion
Miami-Ft Lauderdale-Port St Lucie $297.071 Billion
Detroit-Warren-Ann Arbor $262.166 Billion
Minneapolis-St Paul $236.389 Billion
Denver-Aurora $209.648 Billion

So, do you have any evidence for what you're saying that you can link?Given that you've been wrong on some pretty basic stuff, I don't see why anyone should believe you unless you can show some actual data.

Given that 1. You misread all of my previous posts 2. You have yet to contradict anything in my previous posts and 3. You don't seem to understand the difference between relative and absolute numbers, I'll take your criticisms in the proper context.