Apparently, the city's growth has been in large part due to immigration:
Growth in the 1980's and especially the 1990's has been largely driven by immigration. Foreigners are expected to account for much of the growth in the next two decades, growth that, according to the forecasts, would keep New York in first place among the nation's cities and maintain the New York metropolitan region either as the largest or, at least, tied with Los Angeles.
(Now there's the shocker in the piece -- the implication that it's possible that LA will catch up with NY in population in 20 years or so.)
Whatever the reason for the growth, considering that when I grew up in the suburbs north of the city, the big story was the exodus from the City of the middle class, especially the white middle class, and that New York came perilously close to bankruptcy in the 1970's (remember the headline in the Daily News "Ford to City: Drop Dead" when the president refused to help the city avoid default), the City's return from the near-dead has been pretty extraordinary.
Of course, as the article points out, as New York gets larger, it also gets wealthier, and as it gets wealthier, it gets more and more expensive to live here, especially in most of Manhattan, so that a poor working slob like myself finds it more difficult to make ends meet.
Still, as often as the topic of leaving the city comes up in family conversation, or of leaving Manhattan for Brooklyn or Queens, after 30 years here it's now hard to imagine living anywhere else.
(BTW, as of the last census, New York's population density -- 8,008,278 people in 303 square miles -- was 26,502.9 people per square mile. Manhattan (New York County) had 1,537,195 people in 23 square miles, for a density of 66,940.1 people per square mile. According to the Census Bureau, our estimated 2004 population is 1,562,723, and, according to the article in the Times, it's expected to go to 1,694,200 by 2025, which will be a population densty of 73,660.9 -- pretty squishy.
Hey, Angelenos! -- give us a call when you've got density figures like that. Then you'll be a real city.)
One thing the article didn't deal at all with was the growth of the suburbs and exurbs which together with the City make up the Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, they've been out performing the City in growth rates for decades, but are apparently reaching something of a saturation point.
I guess that will make my relatives who live up there happy, as increasing population density has brought more and more of the problems usually associated with cities much closer to their doorstep. Me? I think if you're going to have the problems anyway, you might as well have the advantages that the density of a traditional city brings.
Update (3/5): According to Census Bureau projections, in 2030, Florida will pass New York as the third most populace state (after California and Texas), by a substantial margin. Also North Carolina and Georgia will move up to 7tha & 8th place (from 11th & 10th), pushing Ohio down to 9th, and Arizona moves from 25th to 10th, pushing Michigan from 8th to 11th.
Other winners are Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Alaska, so it looks like the Pacific Northwest is in for some population pressures. Losers are DC (losing almost a quarter of its population!), North Dakota, West Virginia, Iowa, Pennsyvania, Wyoming, Nebraska and Louisiana (not even accounting for Katrina). [via Atrios]
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Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
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i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
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John Gibson (FNC)
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Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
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Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
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William Kristol
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Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
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by Joel Pelletier
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Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
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Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
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recent listening
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Raymond Chandler
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"The Harder They Come"
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Bill James
Gene Kelly
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Jefferson Airplane
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Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
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Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.