Declining Metro Areas

[BG918]

Originally Posted by DCReid

It's only about 100K from its peak so it will likely reach it within 15-20 years even as a slow growth metro. I think LA as a whole is a slow growth state. Since it is next to TX and shares similar industry (chemicals and oil), growth gravitates towards TX and its metros rather than LA. OK is in a similar bind (for now), although the capital OKC has decent growth (but Tulsa is slow growth).

Yet Oklahoma has seen a lot more growth than Louisiana, especially in recent years. Oklahoma ranked #10 in population growth since 2020. Most of that growth was in the OKC metro with Tulsa starting to really pick up as well.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Xing

Tell that to St Louis please. Still dealing with blight, and probably the biggest metro area in the country to not have a Latino population higher than 5%.

I only have data for the midwest/rustbelt at hand, but considering that the region is the lowest overall in the nation for Latino population share, your statement is likely true given that only Pittsburgh is lower on the list below. However, metro Detroit is larger than st. Louis and was right at 5% in 2020.


here are the 1M+ midwest/rustbelt MSAs ranked by percentage of latinos.


MSA latino population (census 2020):

chicago: 2,239,376 (23.3%)
milwaukee: 182,777 (11.6%)
kansas city: 229,233 (10.5%)
grand rapids: 110,671 (10.2%)
indianapolis: 177,787 (8.4%)
rochester: 88,854 (8.1%)
minneapolis: 242,621 (6.8%)
louisville: 82,964 (6.5%)
cleveland: 133,862 (6.4%)
buffalo: 67,476 (5.8%)
columbus: 110,967 (5.2%)
detroit: 219,953 (5.0%)
cincinnati: 95,073 (4.2%)
st. louis: 106,269 (3.8%)
pittsburgh: 52,920 (2.2%)



nationally, latinos now make up 18.5% of the US population as of 2020. chicago is the only major MSA in the region that is more or less aligned with the national trend.

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I only have data for the midwest/rustbelt at hand, but considering that the region is the lowest overall in the nation for Latino population share, your statement is likely true given that only Pittsburgh is lower on the list below. However, metro Detroit is larger than st. Louis and was right at 5% in 2020.


here are the 1M+ midwest/rustbelt MSAs ranked by percentage of latinos.


MSA latino population (census 2020):

chicago: 2,239,376 (23.3%)
milwaukee: 182,777 (11.6%)
kansas city: 229,233 (10.5%)
grand rapids: 110,671 (10.2%)
indianapolis: 177,787 (8.4%)
rochester: 88,854 (8.1%)
minneapolis: 242,621 (6.8%)
louisville: 82,964 (6.5%)
cleveland: 133,862 (6.4%)
buffalo: 67,476 (5.8%)
columbus: 110,967 (5.2%)
detroit: 219,953 (5.0%)
cincinnati: 95,073 (4.2%)
st. louis: 106,269 (3.8%)
pittsburgh: 52,920 (2.2%)



nationally, latinos now make up 18.5% of the US population as of 2020. chicago is the only major MSA in the region that is more or less aligned with the national trend.

Surprisingly, Kansas City has the second largest Latino population in the Midwest. Second to Chicago, which is definitely far above everywhere else. I find it interesting that St. Louis is right in the middle of the two metros with the highest population and has been largely skipped over by the Latino wave. It definitely has affected regional growth rates. I'd imagine that St. Louis would be about a 250,000 people larger with healthier growth rates if it had the same percentages of Kansas City, much less Chicago.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by goat314

Surprisingly, Kansas City has the second largest Latino population in the Midwest.

KC is third in the region by percentage, after chicago and milwaukee*.

KC is third in the region by numbers, after chicago and minneapolis.

but either way, KC's relatively high latino population for the region is interesting when you condsider just how low st. louis is at the other end of the state.

grand rapid's relatively high percentage is another one that's curious to me.




(*) as for milwaukee, its MSA is actually undersized because racine county, directly south of milwaukee county, gets pulled in two directions by chicagoland's presence, such that it doesn't meet the commuter threshold for inclusion in either MSA (though it is in milwaukee's CSA).

however, racine county has a very high latino share for the midwest at 14.1%, and if it were added to the MSA, milwaukee's numbers would look like this:

Milwaukee MSA + Racine County: 210,688 (11.9%)

[Docere]

Rust belt-type city at one end of the state, Great Plains city at the other.

And it's the "river cities" in the rust belt region (as opposed to Great Lakes) that have especially low Latino (and Asian) populations.