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Facts About Urbanization in the U.S.A.

  • Most people now live in urban areas. Three quarters of the population of the United States is urban, and one quarter is rural.
  • Fewer than half of the people living in urban areas live in central cities. More than half live in suburbs.
  • More than half of all Americans live in the largest metropolitan areas, those with populations of 1 million or more. There are 39 metropolitan areas of more than 1 million in the United States.
  • The United States has a mobile population. In the 1990 Census, nearly half the population said they had moved to a new home in the last 5 years. Most moved within their own community or metropolitan area.
  • Some cities are losing population. Since 1950, Detroit has lost nearly half of its population. Between 1980 and 1990, the following cities became smaller: Pittsburgh (-12.8 percent), St. Louis (-12.4 percent), Cleveland (-11.9 percent), New Orleans (-10.9 percent), Buffalo, (-8.3 percent), Chicago (-7.4 percent), and Atlanta (-7.3 percent). Other shrinking cities include Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Toledo, Cincinnati, Denver, Memphis, and Kansas City.
  • Some cities are growing rapidly. Between 1980 and 1990, Fresno, California, grew 62.9 percent, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, grew 49.9 percent. Other rapidly growing cities include San Diego (26.8 percent) and San Jose (24.3 percent), California; Phoenix (24.5 percent) and Tucson (22.6 percent), Arizona; Austin (34.6 percent) and El Paso (21.2 percent), Texas; and Charlotte, North Carolina (25.5 percent).
  • Suburbs are changing. No longer are they just bedroom communities for people who work in the city. Most of the jobs in metropolitan areas are in the suburbs.
  • Central cities are changing. Poor, largely minority, people have become concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods. Jobs, stores, and entertainment services have left the central city for new suburban “edge cities” that compete with central cities.
  • Many urban poor who rely on public transportation have limited access to the suburbs where the jobs are. In Detroit, for example, about 40 percent of the central city population does not have a car, yet most of the new jobs are in outlying suburbs.
  • In 1990, the overall poverty rate in U.S. central cities was 18 percent. More than 26 percent of all urban children live in poverty.
  • Immigration increases the diversity of cities. In 1990, one in four immigrants was from Central America (more than one in five foreign-born Americans was from Mexico), another one in four was from Asia, and about one in five was from Europe. One in ten came from the Caribbean, and one in 20 from Africa.
  • By 1990, 4 of 10 residents of New York City over the age of 5 spoke a language other than English at home. In the borough of Queens, one third of the residents were born outside the United States, in at least 112 different countries. In a few cities, such as Miami and Union City, New Jersey, there are more foreign-born than American-born residents. Half the population of Santa Ana, California, is foreign-born, almost two thirds of whom arrived during the 1980s.