Your metro's suburbia before WWII

[iheartthed]

For Detroit, according to the present day MSA definition:

1930: 1,568,662 (Detroit) / 723,866 (surrounding area)
1940: 1,623,452 / 883,078
1950: 1,849,568 / 1,320,747

2020: 639,111 / 3,752,930


For NYC, according to the present day MSA definition:

1930: 6,930,446 (New York City) / 4,193,060 (surrounding)
1940: 7,454,995 / 11,950,188
1950: 7,891,957 / 13,299,834

2020: 8,804,190 / 20,140,470

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Funny to see Scranton bigger than LA, just a few years before WW2.

And Houston not even on the list, smaller than Utica.

Those numbers are way off. LA metro had 997,830 in 1920 and 2,327,166 in 1930.

[ChiSoxRox]

The 1920 district numbers are page 57 of the first chapter of the the 1920 Census Reports.

The Census Bureau used to have a handy tree outline of each Census Reports where one page had all tbe links. In their infinite wisdom that page is dead, but each Census can found quickly by searching "(Year) Census Reports Volume 1"

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Those numbers are way off. LA metro had 997,830 in 1920 and 2,327,166 in 1930.

Los Angeles and Orange counties combined had 997k in 1920. De facto metro area back then would certainly not include Orange and far away rural parts of LA county.

For 1930, LA+Orange definition (adopted officially in 1950) might be fine.

[ChiSoxRox]

Forgive the quick screenshot, but here is the Los Angeles metro definition used for 1930/1940 (with the main change being including Santa Catalina Island in 1930).

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Los Angeles and Orange counties combined had 997k in 1920. De facto metro area back then would certainly not include Orange and far away rural parts of LA county.

For 1930, LA+Orange definition (adopted officially in 1950) might be fine.

Nobody lived in the Antelope Valley or South OC in 1920. Almost that entire 997k figure would have been in the LA basin + SGV and SF valley streetcar suburbs. I mean, SoCal is pretty much the prototype American suburbia, and by the 1920s it was already a sprawling auto-oriented metropolis.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Forgive the quick screenshot, but here is the Los Angeles metro definition used for 1930/1940 (with the main change being including Santa Catalina Island in 1930)

I'm surprised they included Ontario and Upland across the county line. The census it right at one point...

Here's a neat interactive map that shows the age of every building in LA county. You can visualize the density and footprint of the urbanized area through the 20th century. This would be, by far, the largest geography of prewar suburbia in the country.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Is it the same definition from 1900 to 1940 or they adjust it over time. Figures are comparable with the precedent decade?

For the numbers I have posted, 1900 and 1910 are the same geographies and 1920 and 1930 (will post those later today) are also the same, but slightly expanded in some ways, contracted in others as the Bureau added a density requirement. These changes are not substantial, and the earlier decades are roughly comparable to the two latter decades.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Yuri

For some reason, Los Angeles was brought alone though. LA County had 936k inh. in 1920. Maybe a 700k de facto "metropolitan district"?

Los Angeles did not have comparable 1920 numbers on the document, so I did carry forward the 1910 numbers. Somewhere between 750k and 850k for the district sounds reasonable.

Originally Posted by Yuri

About Scranton-Wilkes, I remember when I was teenager, looking into the US stats, making my tables, and I remember how I find shocking the size of Scranton-Wilkes, Wheeling-Steubenville. Rust Belt arrived there 100 years ago.

Interestingly, after declining between 1930-2000, Scranton-Wilkes resumed their growth since then: 560k (2000), 563k (2010), 567k (2020). I need to check later, but if I remember correctly they peaked at almost 800k (current definition). Maybe New York exurbs arriving there? Pittsburgh-like rehabilitation?

Wheeling-Steubenville, on the other hand, are still in free fall. No signs of any recovery. I guess they'll just disappear.

Potential reason in addition to Crawford’s point:

These areas boomed during WWI for manufacturing reasons related to the war, and thus grew much larger than their pre-war economies’ demands could have generated, and so when the need for war supplies ended they began to revert to a more realistic population baseline.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Forgive the quick screenshot, but here is the Los Angeles metro definition used for 1930/1940 (with the main change being including Santa Catalina Island in 1930).

This will also be the geography used for the (absent, in Los Angeles’s case) 1920 numbers I used, since I used the 1920 numbers from the 1930 document.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

1918 is when Baltimore does its last collar area annexation, jumping from 32 to 80 square miles.


(Maryland State Archives)

Ah, so annexation is the story there. Thank you.

[wwmiv]

1930 ‘Metropolitan Districts’

These 1930 numbers use identical geographies as the previous list.

Green indicates a positive rank change or growth rate over the national average (14%) in this decade, red indicates negative growth (or negative rank change, but only if there was also negative growth). Italics are metropolitan districts where the suburbs are larger than the core city. New entries are in bold. For this decade, I will only include as far down the list as is necessary to capture the whole universe of cities in the previous post (excluding those which had population decline, so down to Trenton). Wilmington drops off as it shrunk due to the method changes.

Highlights: Ohio booms, Houston leapfrogs Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth, and El Paso (the latter two already had metros, just smaller than what I included), we have our first two metro-wide population losses in Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News and Lowell-Lawrence, and a number of cities climb the rankings. Both Fall River and New Bedford decline within their metro and Providence develops into a single regional core.


1. New York City: 10,901,424
City: 6,930,446
Surroundings: 3,970,978

2. Chicago: 4,364,755
City: 3,376,438
Surroundings: 988,317

3. Philadelphia: 2,847,148
City: 1,950,961
Surroundings: 896,187

4. Los Angeles: 2,318,526
City: 1,238,048
Surroundings: 1,080,478

5. Boston: 2,307,897
City: 781,188
Surroundings: 1,526,365

6. Detroit: 2,104,764
City: 1,568,662
Surroundings: 536,102

7. Pittsburgh: 1,953,668
City: 669,817
Surroundings: 1,071,536

8. St. Louis: 1,293,516
City: 821,960
Surroundings: 298,632

9. San Francisco-Oakland: 1,290,094
San Francisco: 634,394
Oakland: 284,063
Surroundings: 371,637

10. Cleveland: 1,194,989
City: 900,429
Surroundings: 294,560

—————

11. Providence-Fall River-New Bedford: 963,686
Providence: 252,981
Fall River: 115,274
New Bedford: 112,507
Surroundings: 482,834

12. Baltimore: 949,247
City: 804,874
Surroundings: 144,373

13. Minneapolis-St. Paul: 832,258
Minneapolis: 464,350
St. Paul: 271,600
Surroundings: 96,296

14. Buffalo: 820,573
City: 573,076
Surroundings: 247,497

15. Cincinnati: 759,464
City: 451,160
Surroundings: 308,304

16. Milwaukee: 743,414
City: 578,240
Surroundings: 105,165

17. Scranton-Wilkes Barre: 652,312
Cities: 230,059
Surroundings: 422,253

18. Washington, D.C. 621,059
City: 486,869
Surroundings: 134,190

19. Kansas City: 608,186
KCMO: 309,746
KCKS: 121,857
Surroundings: 86,583

—————

20. New Orleans: 494,877
City: 458,702
Surroundings: 36,115

21. Hartford: 471,185
City: 164,072
Surroundings: 307,113

22. Albany-Schenectady-Troy: 425,259
Cities: 295,867
Surroundings: 129,392

23. Seattle: 420,663
City: 365,583
Surroundings: 55,080

24. Indianapolis: 417,685
City: 364,161
Surroundings: 53,524

25. Louisville: 404,396
City: 307,745
Surroundings: 96,651

26. Springfield-Holyoke: 398,991
Cities: 206,437
Surroundings: 192,554

27. Rochester: 398,591
City: 328,132
Surroundings: 70,459

28. Birmingham: 382,792
City: 259,678
Surroundings: 123,114

29.. Portland: 378,728
City: 301,815
Surroundings: 72,913

—————

30. Atlanta: 370,920
City: 270,366
Surroundings: 100,554

31. Youngstown: 364,560
City: 170,002
Surroundings: 194,558

32. Akron: 346,681
City: 255,040
Surroundings: 91,641

33. Toledo: 346,530
City: 290,718
Surroundings: 55,812

34. Columbus: 340,500
City: 290,564
Surroundings: 49,836

35. Houston: 339,216
City: 202,352
Surroundings: 40,864

36. Lowell-Lawrence: 332,028
Cities: 185,302
Surroundings: 146,726

37. Denver: 330,761
City: 287,861
Surroundings: 42,900

38. Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton: 322,172
Cities: 194,923
Surroundings: 137,249

39. Dallas: 309,658
City: 260,475
Surroundings: 49,183

—————

40. Worcester: 305,293
City: 195,311
Surroundings: 100,982

41. New Haven: 293,724
City: 162,655
Surroundings: 131,069

42. Omaha: 273,351
City: 214,006
Surroundings: 59,845

43. San Antonio: 279,271
City: 231,542
Surroundings: 47,729

44. Memphis: 276,126
City: 253,143
Surroundings: 22,983

45. Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News: 273,233
Cities: 209,831
Surroundings: 63,402

46. Dayton: 251,928
City: 200,982
Surroundings: 50,946

47. Syracuse: 245,015
City: 209,326
Surroundings: 35,689

48. Richmond: 220,513
City: 182,929
Surroundings: 37,584

49. Nashville: 209,422
City: 153,866
Surroundings: 55,556

—————

50. Grand Rapids: 207,154
City: 168,502
Surroundings: 38,562

51. Bridgeport: 203,969
City: 146,716
Surroundings: 57,253

52. Utica: 190,918
City: 101,740
Surroundings: 89,178

53. Wheeling: 190,623
City: 61,550
Surroundings: 128,964

54. Trenton: 190,219
City: 123,356
Surroundings: 66,863





—————

Source: https://www2.census.gov/library/publ...3450421ch1.pdf

[Docere]

[deleted]

[Docere]

Also, the auto giant (Detroit) surpassed the steel giant (Pittsburgh) in the 1920s.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Those numbers are way off. LA metro had 997,830 in 1920 and 2,327,166 in 1930.

Where are you getting this number? The document source I linked to has no number for 1920.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

The 1920 district numbers are page 57 of the first chapter of the the 1920 Census Reports.

The Census Bureau used to have a handy tree outline of each Census Reports where one page had all tbe links. In their infinite wisdom that page is dead, but each Census can found quickly by searching "(Year) Census Reports Volume 1"

There are no metro districts anywhere in this report (I checked), so I used the 1920 numbers for 1930 definitions. See the link at the bottom of the post. Los Angeles did not have a given number in that document, so I used the city population so that it would at least be on the list somewhere.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Nobody lived in the Antelope Valley or South OC in 1920. Almost that entire 997k figure would have been in the LA basin + SGV and SF valley streetcar suburbs. I mean, SoCal is pretty much the prototype American suburbia, and by the 1920s it was already a sprawling auto-oriented metropolis.

LA County had 932k (Orange would definitely be out in 1920) and you had lots of farming communities back then and the county is huge. As those pre-1950 metro areas definitions were not county-based, I'd guess metro Los Angeles at 850k or so.

@wwmiv could you help us out?

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Where are you getting this number? The document source I linked to has no number for 1920.

That's the sum of Los Angeles and Orange counties population in 1920.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Docere

Also, the auto giant (Detroit) surpassed the steel giant (Pittsburgh) in the 1920s.

Los Angeles’s non-city population also now is larger than Pittsburghs, but still smaller than New York City and Boston.

[Yuri]

I found this 1929 illustration on Google Images, showing Los Angeles urban spot:

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/...-20th-century/

By 1920, the main urban cluster ended on Beverly Hills and didn't have enter San Fernando Valley. Didn't reach Pasadena either. Long Beach, a completely distinct city and had 55k people, Pomona 13k. We should at least deduct those from the 932k of Los Angeles County to find a metro population for Los Angeles. I guess 800k it's the most likely figure.

During the 1920's, population has grown insanely, 2.5 times in 10 years. For 1930 and 1940, I would use the county-based 1950 definition for Los Angeles.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

There are no metro districts anywhere in this report (I checked), so I used the 1920 numbers for 1930 definitions. See the link at the bottom of the post. Los Angeles did not have a given number in that document, so I used the city population so that it would at least be on the list somewhere.

The page I directly referenced on that link, from the *1920* Report.