Headliners; The Clustering of America, Part II
By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: January 27, 1991
THE 1990 census figures for every city, county and crossroads in the United States -- more than 39,000 communities -- were released last week, giving the first fine-grained look at where Americans lived and moved in the decade that saw Wall Street boom and the farm country bust.
Like scattered drops of mercury drawing together, Americans clustered in larger and larger communities. The list of cities whose populations exceeded 100,000 grew to 195, with 18 of the 29 newcomers in California alone.
While the urban cores of regional population centers generally continued to decline, major metropolitan areas expanded in all but a handful of cases -- most of these hard-hit mining and manufacturing regions like Pittsburgh and Cleveland. But every trend is made to be defied. New York City was the only major Northeastern city to expand instead of contract. Although preliminary population counts indicated the city's population might have declined, census programs to complete the count found another 289,385 New Yorkers. That brought the total to 7,322,564, a 3.5 percent gain for the decade. City officials say the figure should be 300,000 higher.
Immigration helped refill emptying city neighborhoods. Asian immigrants from countries like China, Vietnam and Cambodia helped change the face of communities like Falls Church, Va.
The 10 fastest-growing cities in the 100,000-plus group were all in California, Arizona or Texas, illustrating the surge of the small cities and suburbs of the Southwest. California offered the best example of the rapid urbanization of land that a few decades ago grew crops, not homes. In Orange County, there are five cities with populations of more than 100,000.
And along the Mississippi River, the nation's biggest highway in the 19th century, slow barges now ply their way past counties that are becoming as empty as they were in the days when Huckleberry Finn might have floated by.