De-Industrialization

VIII. Shrinking Cities
in The U.S.
The following municipalities in the United States have lost at least 20% of their
population, from a peak of over 100,000, since 1950. In all but a few cases, the
surrounding metropolitan areas and urban areas (including the shrinking metropolitan
areas) have increased in population. In recent decades, most of the cities in the
Northeast have begun growing again.
Geography
A patchwork of cities across the northern United States, because of their vibrant
industrial economies, were referred to collectively as "the Foundry of the
Nation". These are also referred to as the Manufacturing Belt or the Factory Belt.
This includes most of the cities of the Midwest out to the Mississippi River, and many of
those in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, particularly those away from
the Eastern Seaboard. After World War II, the cities in the area among the nation's 100
largest in the middle-20th century had population that had fallen most by the century's
end.
At the center lies an area stretching from northern Indiana and southern Michigan in the
west to Upstate New York in the east, where local tax revenues still rely more heavily on
manufacturing than on any other sector (by far the largest contiguous area of the U.S.
where this is the case).
Shrinking Cities
City
%
Peak
Decline
1950 Peak
2010
decline
population
from
population population
population
from
year
peak
peak
Akron, Ohio 274,605 290,351 1960 199,110 91,241 34.5%
Albany, New York 134,995 134,995 1950 97,856 37,139 27.5%
Baltimore,
949,708 949,708 1950 620,961 328,747 34.6%
Maryland
Birmingham, 326,037 340,887 1960 212,237 128,650 37.7%
Alabama
Boston,
801,444 801,444 1950 617,594 183,850 22.9%
Massachusetts
Buffalo, New York 580,132 580,132 1950 270,240 309,892 53.4%
Camden, New 124,555 124,555 1950 77,344 47,211 37.9%
Jersey
Canton, Ohio 116,912 116,912 1950 73,007 43,905 37.6%
Chicago, Illinois 3,620,962 3,620,962 1950 2,695,598 925,364 25.6%
Cincinnati, Ohio 503,998 503,998 1950 296,943 207,055 41.1%
Cleveland, Ohio 914,808 914,808 1950 396,815 517,993 56.6%
Dayton, Ohio 243,872 262,332 1960 141,527 120,805 46.1%
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