Can you name the U.S. cities which have lost 50,000 or more residents between 1970 and 2008? by nrsilver

Change in Population	City	1970 Population
-599,420		1,511,482
-513,843		3,366,957
-408,258		1,948,609
-317,155		750,903
-281,618		593,471
-268,840		905,759
-267,875		622,236
-210,080		520,117
-191,849		462,768
-164,677		756,510
-119,188		452,524
-112,622		717,099

Change in Population	City	1970 Population
-103,437		382,417
-90,617		383,818
-89,401		243,601
-89,347		296,233
-80,417		193,317
-79,495		175,415
-73,731		307,951
-72,112		300,910
-67,915		275,425
-66,863		139,788
-59,140		197,208

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US Cities Losing Most People Since 1970 Quiz

by nrsilver

Created Dec 29, 2009 in Geography
Game Plays 4,187

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	eja82:	Dec 29th, 2009 at 22:17 GMT	5 points
	great quiz!

	cocky:	Dec 29th, 2009 at 23:20 GMT	7 points
	Its sad what happened to Detroit. lost over 1/3 of its population.

	expat:	Dec 29th, 2009 at 23:36 GMT	7 points
	pays to know your rust belt ... former Syracuse resident

	raggedyanne:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 00:08 GMT	5 points
	Wow. People seem to be leaving Ohio in droves.

	DSherman:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 01:15 GMT	3 points
	I may be from Dayton, Ohio but at least I go to school in Columbus, Ohio now, haha, sad Ohio has the most cities, by 4, OUCH.

	jsftrey:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 01:32 GMT	9 points
	Chronicles the loss of industry in the US. I would like to see the corresponding quiz for the cities that gained - probably a lot of cities in the SE and SW US.

	Mapmaker:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 03:51 GMT	2 points
	Good to see another U of C alum writing quizzes! I kept guessing Michigan cities instead of the two I missed.

	mellocrush19:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 04:23 GMT	0 points
	Detroit represent!

	Barzuniac:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 08:28 GMT	5 points
	Agree with jsftrey. This, along with the corresponding most-gains quiz (presumably south atlantic coast, Texas, and SW/Cali), chronicles the death of the United States. Industry died, we stopped producing anything, and all the people, rich and spoiled from the labors of generations of people who actually produced things, fled for the sun and the sand.

	The:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 15:02 GMT	1 point
	Looks like people are trying to flee the cold weather...

	mikeinpurple:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 18:32 GMT	7 points
	Chicago people just went to the suburbs. :P

	HarryNJ:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 18:51 GMT	4 points
	Norfolk is a bit surprising. Anyone have any insight on this one?

	elnok:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 20:34 GMT	5 points
	I love it when my hometown's a Sporcle answer... just not this time :( (Let's Go, Buffalo!)

	UselessKnowledge:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 21:50 GMT	10 points
	No, Barzuniac, people scrambling for jobs pre- and post-layoffs left those cities. I'm pretty sure of the 600,000 that left Detroit, most were by no means rich people.

	Unidentifiedkiwi:	Dec 30th, 2009 at 23:33 GMT	1 point
	As expected, not a single city west of the Mississippi. I'd be interested to see this for the last 50 or even 100 years; the westward population shift would be even more pronounced.

	burningriver:	Dec 31st, 2009 at 04:41 GMT	4 points
	AKA name a city in Ohio

	AtomicIce:	Dec 31st, 2009 at 14:35 GMT	1 point
	Sad that I haven't been that well travelled, but that I have been to almost every city on this list in one way or another.

	megarockman:	Jan 4th, 2010 at 17:04 GMT	4 points
	HarryNJ: Norfolk I'm guessing is related to the shift of the American economic engine from manufacturing to tertiary industries (more white-collar work) and maybe its close ties to naval shipbuilding (specifically that there are many more yards now than before). Same with Birmingham: it was a relatively big industrial center in the South back then.

	ericderkonig:	Jan 5th, 2010 at 03:36 GMT	3 points
	Virginia Beach, near Norfolk, has grown significantly since the 1970s, so perhaps everyone is just moving there.

	BiloxiSean:	Feb 24th, 2010 at 18:28 GMT	3 points
	Virginia Beach has grown due to more people living there, and also the former county that VA Beach was in just calls itself the city of Virginia Beach.

	cjmulrain:	Feb 24th, 2010 at 18:40 GMT	4 points
	Norfolk, like Baltimore and Philadelphia, was one of the major east coast port cities. With the decline of American manufacturing in the rust belt, American shipping has also taken a major hit. It's a testament to the evolution of both New York and Boston that they didn't make this list.

	cjmulrain:	Feb 24th, 2010 at 18:41 GMT	3 points
	Also, have to say I'm surprised DC is on this list. DC has never been a manufacturing or a shipping city - really, it's never produced anything. Meanwhile, the Federal government has grown by leaps and bounds since 1970. Then again, I work in DC and live in Maryland - I bet if you included the whole Metropolitan area, there's no way DC would have made the list.

	carbon_rod:	Jul 17th, 2010 at 21:00 GMT	4 points
	For some of these cities, the flight to the suburbs is probably to blame. That is, the area as a whole is probably the same, but with the people living in the suburbs and commuting in to the cities they used to live in.

	gowhere:	Oct 27th, 2010 at 15:45 GMT	3 points
	@cjmulrain: You have the nub of it right there. With Washington, the issue is spread. The metro area has grown significantly - it is just DC itself which shrank. As examples, Gaithersburg and Olney were farm communities back then. This trend is starting to reverse itself because of Washington's nightmare commutes.

	Roman:	Oct 27th, 2010 at 16:17 GMT	1 point
	Birmingham is an aberration to the South trend. Crime maybe? horrible post Jim Crow experiences maybe?

	megarockman:	Nov 11th, 2010 at 04:42 GMT	3 points
	Roman: Birmingham was a big industrial center, believe it or not.

	adamnvillani:	Jun 9th, 2011 at 07:43 GMT	1 point
	Well, St. Louis is just west of the Mississippi, but besides that, yeah, everything is east of the Mississippi.

	johnlk:	Jan 31st, 2012 at 18:47 GMT	4 points
	You should update with 2010 census figures. Detroit's even more screwed now.

	Dralcoffin:	Feb 1st, 2012 at 03:44 GMT	1 point
	2010 numbers would also drop Chicago even farther from a growing Philadelphia, but for a similar population drop Chicago and Detroit are in such different conditions...