What Cities have lost 1 million residents?

[woodwardboy]

I ran across this:
Population peaked. As of 2006, Detroit is the only city in the United States to have a population grow beyond 1 million and then fall below 1 million.

However, I believe Detroit is heading toward another historical mark, that being losing 1 million residents from its high of 1.85 million in 1955. The 2010 census will likely show Detroits population around 850,000.

Which begs the question, what other cities in the world have lost 1 million residents due to things being the same, i.e. no war, no natural distaster.

Please name the cities.

[dtowncitylover]

Which begs the question,

It's unfortunate "begging the question" has lost it's original meaning.

But I digress...I know of none but an interesting question.

[woodwardboy]

Rome lost 1 million residents but that was due to "barbarian" invasions. Anyone else have any city that lost 1 million resident; not due to war or natural distasters?

[ghettopalmetto]

Which begs the question, what other cities in the world have lost 1 million residents due to things being the same, i.e. no war, no natural distaster.

If a city loses 1 million residents, things have clearly not "stayed the same".

[woodwardboy]

If a city loses 1 million residents, things have clearly not "stayed the same".

I was attempting to specifically exclude wars and natural disaster.

I ran some searches of the former GDR and Russia and have not seen a city that lost 1 million people ouside of war or natural disaster.

Detroit it seems may be the only city in the world to lose 1 million residents not attributed to war or natural disaster.

[313WX]

Chicago's close with 800,000 residents. Then Philadelphia lost 500,000 residents. Then of course New York lost just about 1 million people back in the 1980s [[of course they returned).

Granted, 1 million residents lost in Detroit [[50%) is far more significant than 800,000 residents lost in Chicago [[22%) and 900,000+ in New York [[10%).

[woodwardboy]

Yes, I see New York City had a similar drop like Chicago, around 800,000 but New York bounced right back.

[English]

Detroit it seems may be the only city in the world to lose 1 million residents not attributed to war or natural disaster.

Part of our comeback could be marketing this unusual status.

[Ocean2026]

Pompei -lol OK Pompei doesn't meet your criteria of course.

As of 1950 there were only a few cities that had a million people so its really from a statistical standpoint not such a big deal. Buffalo lost half of its population but it wasn't quite as big to start with.

[woodwardboy]

Part of our comeback could be marketing this unusual status.

I dont see a "comeback" in Detroits future. All the predicitve models indicate a decline in Detroits population for the foreseeable future.

For Detroit to have a "comeback" would mean an increase in population like Chicago or New York experienced after a decline.

[woodwardboy]

Pompei -lol

ah..natural disasters dont count.

try again...

We need a city in the world that lost 1 million residents excluding causes from war or natural disasters.

[Lowell]

If you segregate the City of Detroit from the international metropolis of Detroit-Windsor you can make your argument, but the contiguous population of the true metropolitan city has grown steadily. Proportionally Highland Park has lost far more. And these cities even more...

The city of Efes [of Ephesians fame in the Bible] had a population of a quarter million at its peak, which was huge in the ancient world. Harbor silted in and the population today is zero. See http://www.detroityes.com/ancient/01efes.htm on the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit Tour. This a picture from the top row of its 15,000 seat theater.


Likewise vanished city of Teotihuacan outside modern day Mexico City once numbered a quarter million.

[woodwardboy]

If you segregate the City of Detroit from the international metropolis of Detroit-Windsor you can make your argument, but the contiguous population of the true metropolitan city has grown steadily. Proportionally Highland Park has lost far more. And these cities even more...

The city of Efes [of Ephesians fame in the Bible] had a population of a quarter million at its peak, which was huge in the classical world. Harbor silted in and the population today is zero. See http://www.detroityes.com/ancient/01efes.htm on the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit Tour. This a picture from the top row of its 15,000 seat theater.


Likewise vanished city of Teotihuacan outside modern day Mexico City once numbered a quarter million.

New York City's greatest lost of population was: 823,223 but recovered it.
Detroit greatest loss of population is 920,000+ and is still losing population.
No other city in the world has lost that kind of population not attributed to war or natual disasters.
Forget about the "metro" areas. The city of Detroit proper is about to make the history books once the US census bureau releases the data in April 2011.

[professorscott]

The one million number is interesting, but of course as some have mentioned, very few cities in world history have ever had a million people to lose. Detroit has lost perhaps 60% of its peak population without any single catastrophic cause, and while its urbanized region has remained stable population-wise. I doubt that has any precedent for any major city in world history.

As for the population continuing to decline "for the foreseeable future", as someone wrote, what is the evidence for that? Detroit's population continues to decline because of several things, the chief one being that Detroit's political leaders continue to make awful decisions and that there is no regional leadership whatsoever. [[Don't try and blame the job situation; that would affect the entire metro region, which has about the same population now that it had 40 years ago.) So if the political leadership can somehow begin to make sensible decisions, there is no reason for people not to repopulate Detroit, as has happened in New York etc.

[woodwardboy]

My point is this. Detroit is unique in the world. No other city has had so much and lost so much in such a period of time. Within 3 generations, the arsensal of democracy has become a pile of ruble. The future relies on past data, 1955-2010, every year thereafter were fewer residents living in the city of Detroit than the previous year. 55+ years of recorded population loss is pretty good evidence of future trends.

[R8RBOB]

As I read the posts about population loss, I have to ask a cynical question: what the fuck is the purpose of this thread?

To rationalize Detroit's population loss as an historical event is nonsense. Detroit's population loss is the result of two things: racism and removal of revenue. Racism because Whites didn't want to live with a increasing Black population and when White flight took to the suburbs, they move their businesses to their communities leaving rotting shells behind thus removing the revenue, the money. Not to disappoint, Blacks in turn decided to follow their White brothers and sisters to the very suburbs that Whites fled to more than 50 years ago. Detroit's fate is a result of politics and economics, nothing more, nothing less.

[woodwardboy]

As I read the posts about population loss, I have to ask a cynical question: what the fuck is the purpose of this thread?

To rationalize Detroit's population loss as an historical event is nonsense. Detroit's population loss is the result of two things: racism and removal of revenue. Racism because Whites didn't want to live with a increasing Black population and when White flight took to the suburbs, they move their businesses to their communities leaving rotting shells behind thus removing the revenue, the money. Not to disappoint, Blacks in turn decided to follow their White brothers and sisters to the very suburbs that Whites fled to more than 50 years ago. Detroit's fate is a result of politics and economics, nothing more, nothing less.

The purpose of this tread was to point out the historical significance of a city that had over 1.8 million residents and is about to show a loss of 1 million residents after 60 years.
Also, as you have mentioned reasons why Detroits population dropped; namely racism.
Were Detroits whites anymore racisist than whites in Chicago or Cleveland? Why did Detroits whites leave in bibilical proportions? The same level of southern blacks that poured into Detroit, also poured into Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis, but Detroit got stuck with a black population of 85% today.. why?
All the major northern cities had race riots in the 60s/70s.. Detroit was not alone.
Why then did not Detroits whites stand and fight for their neighborhoods and businesses?
Never in the history of man have so many people just abandoned their possessions so williingly.

[wolverine]

Chicago's loss of nearly a million was a bit more easily absorbed as the number of occupants per unit dropped. This probably helps to explain why there isn't urban prairies or wide scale abandonment. [[though there's some spotty areas of large vacancy on the southside). Chicago has lost quite a bit of manufacturing, but alot of stuff is still made here, and it's expected to make somewhat of a comeback in the region.

As far as what has contributed to population growth and stabilization....this might help explain:
http://www.urbanophile.com/2010/11/0...d-c-longworth/

[laphoque]

If you segregate the City of Detroit from the international metropolis of Detroit-Windsor you can make your argument, but the contiguous population of the true metropolitan city has grown steadily. Proportionally Highland Park has lost far more.

This.

The Southwestern US cities and suburbs are the same entity. Detroit city is still denser than most of them. It's a fluke of how we define municipalities in Michigan.

Look at the top ten cities and all but New York, Chicago, & LA have way lower densities [[although Philly I bet has a higher city density, they're a city-county consolidation).

Coincidentally those are the cities that compete with us for the densest politicians too. However they actually have something to show for their corrupt state governments, unlike Lansing.

Sure take some on the side, you've got to live. But make it nice for the rest of us too.

[Gistok]

Woodwardboy... it seems rather presumptuous to say that Detroit will "never" get back what it had... no one knows the future... who would have predicted that America's 14th largest city in 1900 [[at 293,000) was destined for such growth.

Yes Rome had over a million people, and by the 6th century it dwindled down to about 25,000... partly due to the fact that the infrastructure [[i.e. acquaducts, sanitation, roadways) could no longer support such a large population. Rome remained at about 25,000 for nearly a millenium. Even during the middle ages when cities like Florence, Venice, Genoa and Milan approached [[or exceeded) 100,000... Rome was still languishing at around 25,000. It wasn't until the Renaissance that the population of Rome started its' upward rise. And it wasn't until the 19th century that it exceeded a million again. Now it is at 2.75 million. So it took Rome over 1,000 years to go back above a million.

But as far as diminsihing cities.... Venice probably leads the world, percentage wise... From a high approaching 180,000 in the early 1950s... the population of Venice has dropped to below 60,000.... a drop of 2/3 of its' population in 60 years. Not even Detroit has that high of a percentage decline....

Also, I bet that if someone did some research, we would find some Middle East and Far East cities that once had huge populations [[in the last 3,000 years)... and today have vanished completely... or become backwater villages. I'm not sure how large the ancient cities of Carthage, Babylon, Nineveh, Persepolis, Mohenjo Daro, Harappa, Xian or other cities once were. But they're mainly ruins today.

[R8RBOB]

The purpose of this tread was to point out the historical significance of a city that had over 1.8 million residents and is about to show a loss of 1 million residents after 60 years.
Also, as you have mentioned reasons why Detroits population dropped; namely racism.
Were Detroits whites anymore racisist than whites in Chicago or Cleveland? Why did Detroits whites leave in bibilical proportions? The same level of southern blacks that poured into Detroit, also poured into Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, St. Louis, but Detroit got stuck with a black population of 85% today.. why?
All the major northern cities had race riots in the 60s/70s.. Detroit was not alone.
Why then did not Detroits whites stand and fight for their neighborhoods and businesses?
Never in the history of man have so many people just abandoned their possessions so williingly.

Understand that Detroit is over 300 years old. It is an old ass city. That said, it is cheaper to build anew than to restore. A number of those business owners who once had businesses within the city limits understood that they would save a lot of money by simply relocating their operations outside the city where there was plenty of land and no taxes. Take AAA and KMart for example. Rather than build a new building in downtown for their headquarters both decided to build suburban fortresses. This was done over and over by many more businesses as they fled Detroit.

What about the people? Well the people wanted new development and it appears that Detroit was skipped over for place like Novi and Northville and Chesterfield Township and Washington Township. New homes, new malls were being built every day yet in Detroit entire neighborhoods disappeared only to return to nature. If Whites and suburban living Blacks wanted to live in Detroit proper, the development would have happened. It would have been demanded but the people wanted to live that sprawl lifestyle that Brooks talks about all the time.

So the question is why did they leave? Can't really say why they left. I suppose a number of things came into play which brought about the decline of Detroit.

[Lt. Dan Bassett]

the manufacturing protocols of consumerism emptied Detroit. you could say capitalism is a natural disaster if you wanted to. The Polish grandmothers know we are at war here, how come you don't?

[Lowell]

The big majority of the people who 'left' the City of Detroit did not leave. They moved to another part of the city that happened to be under a separate municipal government. To wall off the City of Detroit makes for interesting statistical games but does not speak to the population realities of the actual international city in which we live.

By contrast, in Gistok's example of Rome, along with the vanished cities, the population loss was actual. The population did not move to the suburbs.

Had Detroit not ended regional annexation beginning in the 1920's we would not be having this debate. There would be no one million loss, just a continual albeit slowing growth. Just because politicians carved up a city into separate governments, does not cancel out the fact that we are one family of communities and one city that has grown continually.

[Hermod]

Woodwardboy... it seems rather presumptuous to say that Detroit will "never" get back what it had... no one knows the future... who would have predicted that America's 14th largest city in 1900 [[at 293,000) was destined for such growth.

Just blue sky brainstorming here:

Maybe Detroit just has the "bones" of a 300,000 population city and all that growth from 300,000 to 1,800,000 was just "boomtown" growth. As a result, the "bones" of the city were not enough to counteract the various phenomena causing the exit from the city of anyone who could afford the move.

In other words, there was just not enough "there" in downtown Detroit to serve as an anchor holding people to the city.

[kryptonite]

I dont see a "comeback" in Detroits future. All the predicitve models indicate a decline in Detroits population for the foreseeable future.

For Detroit to have a "comeback" would mean an increase in population like Chicago or New York experienced after a decline.

Well maybe a partial comeback, as maybe a stabilization of population in Detroit. A few years ago I read an article that some demographer felt that Detroit's population would stabilize at around 750,000.

Even if by some miracle people began swarming back into the city, aren't the building code different, didn't the city change the building codes many years ago that require larger lots? So if new residents wanted to build on vacant lots there would be a lower housing density, pretty much like many suburban subdivisions.

Also, families have fewr children. And even if Detrooit were to experience population growth again it is not likely that many new families would have children, at least nowhere near as many as in the 1950's when Detroit's population peaked.