Will Columbus become largest Ohio metro? (Cleveland, Cincinnati: subsidized, warehouses, stations)

[TomJones123]

Originally Posted by cheech14

I really disagree with this. You can urbanize just about any type of neighborhood. Yes, it's harder to urbanize some types of development than others, but there's no such thing as a neighborhood that can't ultimately be redeveloped. The more relevant question is not whether it can, but if it will.

Well...what exactly is urbanize in this context? You talking about lifestyle centers that are fake downtown looking outdoor shopping malls? Honestly, I don't really know how to urbanize suburban development when its not urban to begin with. Columbus downtown areas seem to be landlocked by suburban development. Some of that is common amongst mid-west and western cities. Personally, I always thought Los Angeles was a giant suburb in search of a true urban core, and I used to live in Hollywierd. I think development tends to happen this way when there arent the same landlocking constraints you see in places like Philly and NYC, for example...Not only that but development trends changed around the automobile and that affected cities like Columbus and Cincinnati...heck Cincinnati ripped out all of it's inclines and abondoned it's subway when it was under construction...this close to Detroit these cities in Ohio grew in part around the auto industry.

[cheech14]

Originally Posted by TomJones123

Well...what exactly is urbanize in this context? You talking about lifestyle centers that are fake downtown looking outdoor shopping malls? Honestly, I don't really know how to urbanize suburban development when its not urban to begin with. Columbus downtown areas seem to be landlocked by suburban development. Some of that is common amongst mid-west and western cities. Personally, I always thought Los Angeles was a giant suburb in search of a true urban core, and I used to live in Hollywierd. I think development tends to happen this way when there arent the same landlocking constraints you see in places like Philly and NYC, for example...Not only that but development trends changed around the automobile and that affected cities like Columbus and Cincinnati...heck Cincinnati ripped out all of it's inclines and abondoned it's subway when it was under construction...this close to Detroit these cities in Ohio grew in part around the auto industry.

My idea of good urbanity is mixed-use development with density that creates a walkable, rather than car-centric environment. That would include plenty of transit options and bike and pedestrian infrastructure. The areas that aren't gridded would be the hardest to transition to this, but it's not impossible by any means. If the demand is there, and if zoning codes are ultimately changed to encourage more density, Columbus has the space and opportunity to add urban density for many decades.

Some neighborhoods I think could be the most easily improved in this way are Linden, Hilltop, most of the South Side, all of the areas between and to the south of Whitehall and Bexley, and yes, most of Northland, especially within the outerbelt. That's like 50-60 square miles that are gridded or semi-gridded that are currently low density or mostly made up of single-family housing and low-density commercial strips. There's great potential even without including any of the harder-to-improve areas.

[cheech14]

Originally Posted by Losfrisco

I've always thought this to be the case. Do you have an actual count for the present day, pre-war boundary Columbus population?

All it takes is a few glances of old Columbus photos on the internet and you can clearly see that Columbus looked and functioned more like a major city in the 1930's than it does today.

I've been searching for an answer on this, and the best I could find is that the peak population was around 389,000 around 1960. It dropped to a low of about 235,000 in the 2000s and was just under 257,000 in 2020. So it seems to have lost about 154,000 or so from peak to low, and at the last count was down about 132,000. This is only if we're counting the original 40 square miles. Either way, this is significantly less than the losses that occurred in Cleveland and Cincinnati's pre-war boundary, though to be fair, it was only about 60% of the area that we're including vs Cleveland and Cincinnati.
If we expanded to include 75 square miles of Columbus' oldest areas, I wonder if the losses would've been smaller or greater, or if there would've been any loss at all. It's an interesting question. Maybe I could find an answer somehow.

[bjimmy24]

Originally Posted by cheech14

I've been searching for an answer on this, and the best I could find is that the peak population was around 389,000 around 1960. It dropped to a low of about 235,000 in the 2000s and was just under 257,000 in 2020. So it seems to have lost about 154,000 or so from peak to low, and at the last count was down about 132,000. This is only if we're counting the original 40 square miles. Either way, this is significantly less than the losses that occurred in Cleveland and Cincinnati's pre-war boundary, though to be fair, it was only about 60% of the area that we're including vs Cleveland and Cincinnati.
If we expanded to include 75 square miles of Columbus' oldest areas, I wonder if the losses would've been smaller or greater, or if there would've been any loss at all. It's an interesting question. Maybe I could find an answer somehow.

But I don't think Cleveland had much difference pre and post war boundary. Losing over half is a big decline on par with CLE. I don't think there was any annexation in CLE after West Park in the 20s.

Anyway, where is this info coming from?

[cheech14]

Originally Posted by bjimmy24

But I don't think Cleveland had much difference pre and post war boundary. Losing over half is a big decline on par with CLE. I don't think there was any annexation in CLE after West Park in the 20s.

Anyway, where is this info coming from?

I did a search for Columbus core population on google images and found some that had it.
You're right in that Cleveland's boundary has barely changed since 1940. It's core in 1940 is basically the same as what it is now, between 75-80 square miles. Columbus' core in 1940-1950 was around 40 square miles. So we can't directly compare them with size. However, I can't imagine a situation where Cleveland's innermost 40 square miles lost less than Columbus did when the entire city at 75 lost more than half a million over the same period. The loss pattern in most cities was that the further in towards the downtown you went, the bigger the losses were. Perhaps if Columbus had also been 75 square miles in 1940, the numbers would look different, but I would lean towards the overall loss being less than 154,000 in that case.

[bjimmy24]

Originally Posted by cheech14

I did a search for Columbus core population on google images and found some that had it.
You're right in that Cleveland's boundary has barely changed since 1940. It's core in 1940 is basically the same as what it is now, between 75-80 square miles. Columbus' core in 1940-1950 was around 40 square miles. So we can't directly compare them with size. However, I can't imagine a situation where Cleveland's innermost 40 square miles lost less than Columbus did when the entire city at 75 lost more than half a million over the same period. The loss pattern in most cities was that the further in towards the downtown you went, the bigger the losses were. Perhaps if Columbus had also been 75 square miles in 1940, the numbers would look different, but I would lean towards the overall loss being less than 154,000 in that case.

Can you post your sources?

[woxyroxme]

These are the population numbers of the city of Columbus from Wikipedia

1812 300 —
1820 1,450 +383.3%
1830 2,435 +67.9%
1840 6,048 +148.4%
1850 17,882 +195.7%
1860 18,554 +3.8%
1870 31,274 +68.6%
1880 51,647 +65.1%
1890 88,150 +70.7%
1900 125,560 +42.4%
1910 181,511 +44.6%
1920 237,031 +30.6%
1930 290,564 +22.6%
1940 306,087 +5.3%
1950 375,901 +22.8%
1960 471,316 +25.4%
1970 539,677 +14.5%
1980 564,871 +4.7%
1990 632,910 +12.0%
2000 711,470 +12.4%
2010 787,033 +10.6%
2020 905,748 +15.1%
2022 907,971 +0.2%

[bjimmy24]

Originally Posted by woxyroxme

These are the population numbers of the city of Columbus from Wikipedia

1812 300 —
1820 1,450 +383.3%
1830 2,435 +67.9%
1840 6,048 +148.4%
1850 17,882 +195.7%
1860 18,554 +3.8%
1870 31,274 +68.6%
1880 51,647 +65.1%
1890 88,150 +70.7%
1900 125,560 +42.4%
1910 181,511 +44.6%
1920 237,031 +30.6%
1930 290,564 +22.6%
1940 306,087 +5.3%
1950 375,901 +22.8%
1960 471,316 +25.4%
1970 539,677 +14.5%
1980 564,871 +4.7%
1990 632,910 +12.0%
2000 711,470 +12.4%
2010 787,033 +10.6%
2020 905,748 +15.1%
2022 907,971 +0.2%

But we are interested in the pre-war border population of Columbus, i.e. not including all the annexed land that accounts for all the growth.

[cheech14]

Originally Posted by bjimmy24

Can you post your sources?

This was the pic I found of the Columbus core population. It seems to match the city population before annexation, so I figured it was accurate.

[bjimmy24]

Ok here is the source it's coming from: https://allcolumbusdata.com/2020-dow...lation-growth/

Not exactly sure how "downtown" area is defined or what exactly the "historic core" consists of, but if it's reasonable, that's interesting. "Downtown" Columbus went form 53k to 14k population today (bottoming out at 7k in 2000 census). From then to now is a 75% decline in population. The "historic core" declined from 390k to 257k today (bottoming out at 235k in 2010 census). So from then to now is a 35% decline in population.