Data provided by U.S. Census Bureau [1].
Cleveland Sees Plunge in Population [2], reports the Wall Street Journal today, announcing: "A larger-than-expected exodus from Cleveland during the past decade shrunk the city's population by 17% to about 397,000, according to U.S. Census data released Wednesday." That's right, Cleveland's population has crashed below the 400K floor for the first time since around the start of the 20th Century, which triggers all sorts of unsustainable, shrinking, un-re-imaginable financial and political realities for leadership and citizens here.
Perhaps the only silver lining is that this proof of Cleveland political and leadership failure will have a significant price of leaders' heads. From the Wall Street Journal:
Political observers said the decline could tilt the balance of political power in one of America's most hotly contested swing states.
"Ohio is expected to lose two congressional districts, and this big decline in Cleveland suggests that both could come out of northeastern Ohio," a Democratic stronghold, said John Green, a University of Akron political-science professor.
On his FaceBook page, Cleveland City Councilman Cummins posted:
"Cleveland City Council, as expected, will be decreased from 19 Wards to 17 for the 2013 election, with the redistricting taking effect Jan. 2014. Now we have confirmation of where we stand, we need to take more significant action on City, County and Regional reform."
Leadership in Cleveland Mayor Jackson's Happy-Virus-infected City Hall [3] seems to have different plans: living in denial... and asking President Obama for a recount of our homeless, it seems...
The steepness of the drop prompted a skeptical reaction at Cleveland City Hall. "We believe it is a significant undercount," said City Planner Robert Brown."
We very much question the accuracy of the count," said Mr. Brown, the city planner.
City officials said Wednesday that the foreclosure crisis struck particularly hard, forcing many residents to leave and prompting others to take shelter in places where they failed to gain the notice of census takers.
In a turnabout from the 1990s, Cleveland had a net loss of blacks during the past decade, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, adding that Cleveland received a smaller bump from incoming Hispanics than did many other Midwestern cities such as Chicago.
Mayor Frank G. Jackson said the census figures failed to reflect the laying of groundwork for a residential renaissance downtown as well as a continuing evolution of Cleveland—a quintessential Rust Belt city—into a center of medicine, finance and biotechnology, alongside a base of manufacturers
So... to the sophisticated readers of the global WSJ, our city leaders blame Clevelanders for being poor, foreclosed-upon, leaving, and taking shelter where we failed to be noticed (e.g under bridges, homeless shelters, in the woods by the river)... making Clevelanders seem like pathetic idiots-by-proxy, as usual.
Whereas, any citizen who has watched Mayor Jackson et al lead this city and region, for the past decade, has seen "leaders" waste $billions in Federal tax funds on sprawling the wealth and good-living away from Cleveland, with minimal, window-dressing-Gentrifying "groundwork for a residential renaissance downtown"... while constantly, brutally poisoning, ripping apart and demolishing the largely-black East Side and other impoverished urban environmental injustice communities where leaders consider residents unworthy of public service - driving black residents into poverty, poor health, foreclosure and out of town.
"It is what it is [4]", as the leader of all that redlining and blighting, Mayor Jackson, loves to say... as the 2010 census numbers prove the impact of his redlining is "Cleveland had a net loss of blacks during the past decade".
Demographers inside and outside of Ohio expected the 2010 population to drop to about 430,000. Its actual fall to below 400,000 is humbling for a city once ranked as America's fifth largest, with its population peaking in 1950 at 915,000.
The drop also shatters the turnaround hopes that arose when Cleveland lost only 5% of its population during the 1990s, following a 12% drop in the 1980s and a 24% drop in the 1970s. The latest drop of 17% is second only to that '70s decline.
From Cleveland Plain Dealer coverage of the bad census news - 2010 census population numbers show Cleveland below 400,000; Northeast Ohio down 2.2 percent [5] - and perhaps more disturbing than Cleveland's 80,000 resident drop... Cuyahoga County's population declined to 1,280,122, down 8.2 percent from 1,393,979... a reduction of OVER 112,000!
Perhaps some smart, financially-mobile Cuyahoga County residents noticed the taxation-without representation and other political stupidity and corruption here and moved AWAY.. perhaps?!?!
"The latest numbers show the eight-county Cleveland-Akron metro area has 2,881,937 people. This is a 2.2 percent drop from 2000."
A site called Patch.com reports [6] declines in population for the inner-ring Cleveland suburb of Cleveland Heights are similar to Cuyahoga County:
The population in Cleveland Heights dropped by more than 7 percent during the past decade and became more diverse, according to data from the 2010 U.S. Census released today.
Cleveland Heights lost 3,836 residents, going from 49,958 people in 2000 to 46,121 in 2010. The white population decreased by 12 percent or 3,245 residents, and the black or African-American population dropped by 6 percent, or 1,286 residents.
White residents now make up just less than 50 percent of the population, and black or African-American residents comprise 42 percent.
While the white and black or African-American segments of the population dipped, the number of Asian residents almost doubled, and the Hispanic or Latino population grew by 14 percent.
By contrast, from the Census Bureau website, from 2000-2010:
Data provided by U.S. Census Bureau [1].
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CensusHeader.JPG [7] | 61.15 KB |
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PopulationHeader.JPG [9] | 79.12 KB |
Links:
[1] http://2010.census.gov/2010census/data/
[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629104576191021044682508.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
[3] http://realneo.us/Teaching-Cleveland-Historical-Revisionism-and-Negationism
[4] http://realneo.us/polls/will-clevelands-mayor-ever-bust-grape-tremont-west-development-violating-constitutional-rights
[5] http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2011/03/2010_census_figures_for_ohio_s.html
[6] http://clevelandheights.patch.com/articles/census-2010-cleveland-heights-population-dips-by-7-percent
[7] http://li326-157.members.linode.com/system/files/CensusHeader.JPG
[8] http://li326-157.members.linode.com/system/files/ColorsHeader.JPG
[9] http://li326-157.members.linode.com/system/files/PopulationHeader.JPG