Just this week, the Census Bureau released the long-awaited apportionment counts, and the population totals by state. We had some fun with the new data, looking at population changes since the 1970’s by block group, smoothed using a five-mile radius around each location. The shading is dark red for major declines, and dark blue for major growth. Areas that have been relatively unchanged (-1 to +1%) and unpopulated are unshaded.

1970’s

The 1970’s saw major depopulation in the rural areas of the great plains, and the lower Mississippi valley. There are clear patterns of inner city decline and suburbanization in the major cities of the northeast from Washington to Boston. There is considerable growth in Orange County, California, Phoenix, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, Denver, Colorado, Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, and Florida. We can see the start of a pattern already emerging in Atlanta with declining inner city and rapidly growing suburbs.

1980’s

Broadening rural depopulation now includes the northern Appalachians, much of the rural deep south, and the great plains as far south as west Texas.

California is booming, and the growth in Arizona now spreads from Phoenix to the southern border. Las Vegas doubled in size in just one decade. We can see the start of the major growth to Nashville, Tennessee and Charlotte, North Carolina. The Texas triangle—Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth and San Antonio—sees an increase in population as well as anywhere down the eastern coast from the Carolinas south.

1990’s

Rural depopulation continues, with much of the northeast continuing to decline.

The growth areas of the 1990’s are the Las Vegas/Tucson corridor, the front range of Colorado and New Mexico. This decade serves as the beginnings of the growth in the mountain west including Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and eastern Oregon and Washington. There was a broad belt of growth in the mid-south from the coast of North Carolina through Arkansas.

2000’s

Nationally, we see a trend of growth slowing across the country. Rural depopulation, especially in the upper Midwest and lower Mississippi river, continues.

Phoenix and Las Vegas continue to boom, as do the major southern cities from Texas to the Carolina shores. Growth in Florida is coastal and now includes the I-4 corridor through Orlando. The central Utah valley becomes the next Denver, seeing rapid growth in this decade.

2010’s

The northern plains – North and South Dakota – rebound, and growth becomes far more concentrated in a select number of areas – the Texas triangle, Phoenix, Arizona, the urban Pacific northwest, the mid-south including most of Tennessee, North Carolina, and north Georgia, and the continuing growth of the southern coastlines from the Carolinas around to the gulf shores of Alabama and Mississippi.

West Virginia and southern Virginia are major declining areas, some of which can be attributed to coal mines closing. The rural south continues to lose residents, as does the rural old west – New Mexico, west Texas, and Oklahoma.