jbcmh81

The fact is that boundaries changed after 1950. There is a difference between the census count and my numbers starting in 1960, so there are going to be differences each decade after if any further city boundary changes took place, which they did. My numbers were never going to match up exactly to the census counts for that very reason, but examining the census numbers, I don't see huge discrepencies when accounting for the boundary changes over time. The census % of -10.4% from 2000-2010 was for the entire city boundary, not just those that existed in 1950, which is all I was measuring. In any case, even if you don't believe the numbers at face value, and I freely admit that errors were likely made just in the process of obtaining them, the census itself supports the end result to some degree. The 10.4% loss was the 2nd largest loss since 1950 for the city as a whole, and just as my numbers show, the rate of loss has increased each decade since 1990 for Cincinnati. So while the numbers may not be exact and there is some fudging on whether it's the worst or 2nd worst, the general trend matches.

Columbus' incorporated city limits size 1910-2010. 1910: 23 1930: 38 1950: 40 1960: 91 1970: 144 1990: 196 2010: 217 In 1950, Columbus had a much smaller size than Cleveland or Cincinnati. There's no reason to expect that the population would be significant in that small of an area. Umm, let's see, Columbus is still declining, and according to your numbers, in 2010 barely had a population larger than Akron. I made the observation from YOUR numbers that Columbus is still declining and didn't have an impressive core population. None of Ohio's cities look impressive based on 1950 boundaries, so I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is, especially when Cincinnati/Cleveland did not have their boundaries grow significantly since and Columbus' 1950 boundares are much smaller compared to where the other two were at the same time. Columbus' core population is based on a size of about 40 square miles in 1950 when both the others were over 70. Since we're only using the 1950 boundaries for these population numbers, the 2010 number still represents only 40 square miles and Cleveland and Cincinnati still representing over 70. There aren't very many cities anywhere close to that size anymore. Maybe the closest is Boston at around 48, but even then, that only represents about 618K people in a significantly larger metro than Columbus. San Fransisco has about 46 square miles with a bit over 800K, but it's also one of the densist cities in the US. Other than that, I can't really think of too many other cities with boundaries that small. BTW, Akron's 2010 city boundaries are about 62 square miles with 199K, and we're talking about Columbus 1950 boundaries with 234K. It's apples to oranges and I'm not sure why you're trying to make such a comparison.

I'm not sure I see where you're getting that Columbus has lost some big advantage on employment growth. Further, I'm not sure what you mean by "employment growth" to start with. If you're referring to the civilian labor force, Columbus has long been the clear winner in that regard. With it comes to labor force, Columbus had the #1 growth of Ohio's large metros from 1985-1990, 1990-1995, 1995-2000, 2000-2005, 2005-2010 and in all years since. In fact, in any combination of years since 1985 Columbus leads in the growth of it's labor force. In the entire 1985-2012 period, its labor force grew by almost 128,000, while every other large Ohio metro had it shrink. If you're instead referring to total non-farm jobs, it's a similar story. The numbers only go back to 1990, but Columbus lead this catergory in 1990-1995, 1995-2000, 2000-2005, 2005-2010 and 2010-2012. It also lead the entire 1990-2012 period. The metro had these jobs grow in all but the 2005-2010 catergory, but had one of the lowest losses in the period. The only time it didn't lead was in the last year, and only one metro (Cincinnati) was ahead by a few thousand. This does not suggest a wholesale change unless it can be sustained.

Touché, the "Diversified Columbus economy" isn't as diversified as perceived. Very interesting. Actually, I don't think that's what they show at all. Given that government jobs have been the first ones slashed in the current economic situation (and for the past 5 years), if Columbus was truly dominated by those types of jobs, it should clearly be hurting worse than it is, yet the city, county and metro retain some of the lowest or lowest unemployment in the state. Indeed, for Ohio's metros, Columbus has seen one of the largest government jobs losses since the recession began, yet it doesn't seem to be all that phased. Other types of jobs have clearly stepped in to fill the loss.

Columbus doesn't actually have the largest share of government jobs. I just now noticed, but I forgot to list Dayton, which has a 17.5% share, which is above Columbus. Still, for Columbus being the capital, the % difference is not as great between all the metros on government as people like to suggest. In regards to the health and education catergory, you bring up a good point. I've seen it said repeatedly that OSU dominates Columbus, along with state government, and yet it doesn't lead the state in either catergory. This suggests, at least to me, that Columbus does have a diverse workforce that doesn't rely on a few catergories... or at least not the ones people assume it does. Unfortunately, I am not able to break the numbers down any further to find out just where the jobs are in the industries. Someone mentioned historical numbers, which got me interested to see how those percentages have changed, and to see what were the dominant industries 10 or 20 years ago vs today.

All jobs are jobs. They all count. Two $50,000 per year jobs count equally in every way whether they are "manufacturing", "business services", or "information". If the market supports two jobs with equal pay, it values those jobs equally. Job categorization has little use for those outside career counseling and education planning. The market lets us know what has value. Just follow it. What does this response have to do with the information given? Some people were talking about the diversity of jobs in cities, so I just posted the breakdown of job catergories in a metro. Nowhere did I make any attempt to say that specific job catergories had more value over others. Again, you need to read what I post before commenting.

It's always been amazing to me how the Great Lakes have so many states at the top of the economic ladder, despite all the negative press about the "decline". Consider Texas and California, which really don't have all that many more given that they are 2 of the largest 3 states in the country in terms of size and contain some of the largest cities.

I wouldn't read too much into that since your numbers have some sort of error around this time period. Your 1950 boundary populations for Cincinnati in 1990 and 2000 are larger than the census's official numbers for the incorporated city. Well, I'm sure I made some errors just given that trying to follow all the changes to individual tracts was fairly difficult. For example, at some points, some counts for certain tracts all but disappeared as they merged or split. That said, it's probably the closest approximation I could get and the differences of those numbers vs the census count are about 1,500 for 1990 and 6,000 for 2000. Even accounting for that error, the % loss would still be the largest since 1950 in Cincinnati.

BTW, those numbers are for February.

Job diversity by metro, based on % of jobs by industry to total number of non-farm jobs. Akron Mining/Logging/Construction: 3.1% Manufacturing: 12.7% Trade/Transportation/Utilities: 19.5% Information: 1.2% Financial Activities: 4.3% Professional and Business Services: 15.2% Education and Health: 16.2% Leisure and Hospitality: 8.2% Other Services: 4.1% Government: 15.4% Cincinnati Mining/Logging/Construction: 3.4% Manufacturing: 11.1% Trade/Transportation/Utilities: 19.7% Information: 1.4% Financial Activities: 6.1% Professional and Business Services: 15.5% Education and Health: 15.3% Leisure and Hospitality: 10.4% Other Services: 4.0% Government: 13.0% Cleveland Mining/Logging/Construction: 2.8% Manufacturing: 12.5% Trade/Transportation/Utilities: 17.9% Information: 1.5% Financial Activities: 6.7% Professional and Business Services: 13.7% Education and Health: 19.3% Leisure and Hospitality: 7.8% Other Services: 4.2% Government: 13.5% Columbus Mining/Logging/Construction: 2.9% Manufacturing: 6.8% Trade/Transportation/Utilities: 19.4% Information: 1.8% Financial Activities: 7.8% Professional and Business Services: 16.3% Education and Health: 15.1% Leisure and Hospitality: 9.3% Other Services: 3.9% Government: 16.7% Toledo Mining/Logging/Construction: 3.4% Manufacturing: 13.3% Trade/Transportation/Utilities: 19.2% Information: 1.1% Financial Activities: 3.6% Professional and Business Services: 11.5% Education and Health: 17.4% Leisure and Hospitality: 10.4% Other Services: 4.3% Government: 15.8% Youngstown Mining/Logging/Construction: 3.2% Manufacturing: 13.6% Trade/Transportation/Utilities: 20.5% Information: 1.0% Financial Activities: 4.0% Professional and Business Services: 9.9% Education and Health: 19.9% Leisure and Hospitality: 9.4% Other Services: 4.4% Government: 13.9% Some differences that really stand out to me is that Columbus has, by far, the lowest % of manufacturing jobs and it, like Youngstown, have fewer industries that represent 10% or more of the availabe jobs (4 vs 5/6) than everywhere else.

Actually, the Cleveland and Cincinnati metros have pretty similar percentages of their overall jobs in manufacturing (something like 14%, I think,) and both are higher than in Pittsburgh (which is just under 10%.) Cleveland and Pittsburgh do have larger education and healthcare sectors (26 and 27% of total jobs) than Cincinnati (22%) though. Brookings has a lot of fascinating data available for perusal, although you might have to dig for the most recent numbers. At least for me, it really casts doubt on the conventional wisdom characterization of Cincinnati having a "diversified" economy, Cleveland and Pittsburgh having "rust belt" economies, and Columbus having an "education and government" economy. There are differences in how they're structured, of course, but they're often not as great as you might expect, and there seem to be a lot of nebulous factors in metro economic performance that aren't immediately explainable just by saying a particular city is manufacturing-heavy, or has a lot of financial-sector jobs. If you guys are interested, I could do a breakdown of % of jobs by industry to total jobs by metro. That might help get a better idea of the diversity of jobs.

Good question, and I'm honestly not sure. The 1990s were generally a very good economic decade, especially in later years (though it was somewhat of a bubble). I know from reading many census reports that the 1990s had generally strong growth everywhere in the US, from states to metros to cities. Ohio and it's metros generally saw stronger growth that decade than this past one. I guess the bright spot for Cleveland is that it still had more tracts growing in the 2000s than the 1980s or 1970s, at least in those from the original 1950 tracts. The back to the city movement, however, is really only just beginning, so hopefully we'll see more growth in the core in the coming years. Cincinnati in particular did not do very well in the 2000s for its core based on 1950 boundaries, with it's highest loss there ever, and the fewest number of tracts growing.

That Columbus's core followed a similar trajectory as the other 3C cities? It's interesting because if you look at population numbers alone and don't control for annexing, you don't see the same pattern at all. I would think that the core population losses extend well beyond Ohio. Even to the Sun Belt in some cases. What I found most interesting is that the rate of losses increased the last decade in two of the three cities to their worst or 2nd worst ever, despite going through 2 recessions that made moving more difficult for many people, not to mention that economies faired somewhat better than other parts of the country during the period. Columbus, on the other hand, while still losing people, had it's best rate of retention since the 1960s and has a gradually improving number of growing tracts. What are the differences that explain these differing trends? Clearly Columbus suffered the same steep population drops through the 1970s that the other places had, so what has been the catalyst to be improving this trend there but not necessarily elsewhere, especially when economic factors have been gradually improving from Rustbelt status?

Columbus' incorporated city limits size 1910-2010. 1910: 23 1930: 38 1950: 40 1960: 91 1970: 144 1990: 196 2010: 217 In 1950, Columbus had a much smaller size than Cleveland or Cincinnati. There's no reason to expect that the population would be significant in that small of an area.

How I got the numbers is that I looked up Census links to tract data by decade. The reports had every tract listed, but as the decades went on, some of the original ones split up. Luckily, the links gave descriptions on how the tracts changed and to what numbers, so I was able to still list population for tracts as if they were still the originals. That gave a good idea of how the original tracts changed over time. I'm sure there were some overall changes to borders after 1950, though, because none of the final 2010 numbers exactly match the total 2010 city populations. The tract totals used (110 for Cincy, for example) are how many existed within the city in 1950. There are more now as many split up, but I wanted to keep everything listed as if things existed exactly like they did in 1950.

There isn't one. By my standards, parts of northern kentucky would be considered 'core' to the Cincinnati metro Without such definitions these numbers are meaningless. Why did everyone seem to miss that i put at the top of the post that the numbers represented the tracts within the 1950 boundaries? Frankly, your response is meaningless if you can't be bothered to read the post.

"City core" in this case refers to the city proper boundaries in 1950. That seems to be what most people discuss when they talk about urban cores.

Census Tract population changes 1950 to 2010 based on 1950 city core areas. Cincinnati City Core Population 1950: 503,998 1960: 498,607 1970: 448,652 1980: 381,268 1990: 365,853 2000: 337,234 2010: 278,509 City core population change 1940-1950: +48,397 or 10.6% 1950-1960: -5,391 or -1.1% 1960-1970: -49,995 or -10.0% 1970-1980: -67,384 or -15.0% 1980-1990: -15,415 or -4.0% 1990-2000: -28,619 or -7.8% 2000-2010: -58,725 or -17.4% # of census tracts growing (out of 110) 1950: 81 1960: 54 1970: 41 1980: 14 1990: 26 2000: 19 2010: 11 Cleveland City Core Population 1950: 914,798 1960: 877,814 1970: 750,191 1980: 573,667 1990: 495,530 2000: 468,451 2010: 378,447 City core population change 1940-1950: +36,462 or 4.2% 1950-1960: -36,984 or -4.0% 1960-1970: -127,623 or -14.5% 1970-1980: -176,524 or -23.5% 1980-1990: -78,137 or -13.6% 1990-2000: -27,079 or -5.5% 2000-2010: -90,004 or -19.2% # of census tracts growing (out of 206). 1950: 101 1960: 52 1970: 42 1980: 8 1990: 11 2000: 53 2010: 28 Columbus City Core Population 1950: 375,710 1960: 389,222 1970: 348,808 1980: 287,089 1990: 268,265 2000: 246,713 2010: 234,582 City core population change. 1940-1950: +69,624 or 22.7% 1950-1960: +13,512 or 3.6% 1960-1970: -40,414 or -10.4% 1970-1980: -61,719 or -17.7% 1980-1990: -18,824 or -6.6% 1990-2000: -21,552 or -8.0% 2000-2010: -12,131 or -4.9% # of census tracts growing (Out of 61) 1950: 50 1960: 25 1970: 13 1980: 5 1990: 11 2000: 11 2010: 16

Here in a few minutes, I'm going to make a post on the census thread about 1950 core population. I took all the tracts that existed in 1950 for the 3-C's and tracted the population for just those tracts through 2010.

From the census tract maps, I would still make the argument (and not because of any personal bias but based on the evidence) that the urban core of Columbus is still one of the better performing when it comes to Ohio cities. Overall it has been losing population just like the others, but the losses are much smaller and there are more tracts, particularly 2000-2010 that grew than in the other 3-Cs. These tracts were not just in the immediate Downtown core like in Cincy and Cleveland, both of which have a very distinct pattern of central growth surrounded by almost every other tract losing population. Columbus has the central core growth, but it also has a very mixed look further out, particularly on the north, west and south sides, where some tracts are growing and others not. The good news is that all of the cities seems to have more tracts growing recently than in previous years/decades. Since the point of this thread is not about population, though, I'll post that information over in the census thread.

Why? Rates are calculated the same for all cities based on # of crimes and population. All cities have certain crimes that occur more often than others. For example, Columbus has one of the highest rates of property crime in the state, and I suspect a lot of that has to do with the younger population. At the same time, the violent crime rate is one of the lowest in the state. I'm not sure that this makes the city any more or less dangerous to the average person, but personally, I'd rather have my car stolen than be assaulted.

I have put that into account, but most murders seem to happen in a certain section of town (the east side I believe). Probably not a surprise to most, I just didn't think Columbus had so many murders/violent crimes. Its core city is no different than the others. High crime, and high population loss. The size of the city somewhat skews the data which makes things look better for Columbus. Not really if you understand how crime rates work. They don't particularly favor anyone.

The average murder rate in recent years has been between 10 and 13 per 100,000 vs rates over 20 for both Cincy and Cleveland. Until April, Columbus was actually running well behind last year, but now has caught up (even so, 2011 was lower than 2010). Not sure why April's been so bad considering March had warmer weather overall and that seems to contribute, but I've noticed also that there tends to be one spring and one fall month that have high numbers and then they drop back again.

The mayor has lived Downtown for years now, something I always respected. It's one thing to promote an area, while it's another to live there.

If you think I'm upset about jobs numbers, you have no idea what's going on. I just get tired of the 5th grade tactics that go on. Other people may not see it because they don't know our history, but I do and I want no part of it. If that means that all these type of threads end up closed, so be it. It was a mistake on my part to start them.