Yesterday (July 1) was the day the Census Bureau uses as its benchmark for its 2009 population estimates, which are obviously the last before the actual Census. At this instant, the estimated population is 306,817,884. On July 1, 2008 it was 303,824,640. That’s an increase of 2,993,244 people in a year and a day, or a 0.985% rate of growth. At that rate, there will be 400 million Americans in 2037 and 500 million in 2059. (I will stop myself there).
What’s interesting is how the US is becoming more and more urban every day–but only if you accept that urban really means suburban-plus-the-gentrification-of-certain-former-industrial-cities. Large cities that grow and grow are essentially suburban in character (Los Angeles, San Antonio, Phoenix) and really, the only older cities currently at their peak population are New York and San Francisco. Chicago, for example, has not come close to recouping its late 20th-century population loss.
In a weird way, the US is becoming more like Latin America–which means that the two continents are experiencing similar population movements. Latin America is kind of like a giant Arizona, largely empty except for its megacities. There are 569 million people living south of the US-Mexico border, and the ten biggest metro areas (Sao Paulo, Mexico D.F., Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Bogota, Belo Horizonte, Guadalajara, Monterrey and Recife) add up to almost exactly 100 million residents. In Argentina, one in three people live in or around Buenos Aires.
Interestingly (to me), the most urbanized states in the US aren’t all in the Northeast. The most urbanized state is California, which is kind of a surprise considering the breadth of the agricultural industry and how many people it takes to service it. Rounding out the top five are New Jersey (which I’d thought would be number 1), Hawaii, Nevada and Massachusetts. The most rural state? I would have guessed North Dakota, but it’s Vermont. Maine and West Virginia are nos. 2 and 3.
Here are the top ten most urbanized and top ten least urbanized states.
Expanding the map to top fifteen of each, two stronger patterns emerge. First, the Northeast is where urban and rural live cheek-by-jowl. It takes extreme dedication (and a harsh climate) to maintain a rural character after 400 years of colonization and settlement. Second, urbanization and political liberalism go side-by-side. Or, at least, cosmopolitanism is the social and political trait that bridges the two.
But it’s the Southwest where almost everybody lives in large areas. You could almost say that Maine has more of a rugged-loner spirit than does Nevada or Colorado. Urbanization, now that it has been engulfed by suburbanization, once again means affluence. West Virginia and Mississippi are the two poorest states, and New Mexico is definitely poorer than any of its neighbors.
I don’t know about Latin America being largely empty outside its megacities. That’s true for Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile, but Brazil has an extremely broad spread of people, with lots of large cities, lots of midsized cities, and plenty of densely populated non-urban areas. I mean, off the top of my head, there’s Sao Paulo, Rio de Janiero, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Manaus, Belem, Brasilia and Salvador that are at least 1 million (if not 2 million+) , then there are places like Joinville, Londrina, Novo Hamburgo (ole!), Campinas, Fortaleza, etc. that are all like 500,000+. I am sure I have totally ignored the black northern half of the country. The eastern half of Minas Gerais alone is basically as densely populated as the Ohio Valley.
And then of course there’s Colombia which is populated in 5 places and virtually deserted elsewhere, which is kind of like Oregon or something, then Venezuela with its long narrow belt of montane metro areas, that kind of resembles California. But I digress!
Brazil is an exception, I agree. The larger a country’s size and population, the more spread out that population will be, I guess. But the vast interior is empty even in spite of 40+ years of government campaigns–including moving the capital way inland. Even still, a quarter of the country lives in the 5 biggest metro areas. Let me restrict my argument to Hispanophone Latin America!
Maybe a better example would be Australia. 55% of the country lives in 5 metro areas.