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| Detroit |
Census figures released to the Free Press -- by a government source who asked not be identified because the data has not been released publicly -- show the city lost 238,270 — on average, one resident every 22 minutes between 2001 and 2010.
Livingston County reported a 15 percent increase in population over the same time period, growing to 180,967.
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing's office said he would have no comment until a press conference this afternoon.
The data also show that Wayne County’s population fell almost 12% to 1,820,584. Oakland County grew almost 1% to 1,202,362, while Macomb grew 6.7% to 840,978 — making the county more populous than Detroit for the first time.
• Related: County-by-county population numbers
Detroit, once America’s fourth most populous city, will fall below Midwestern neighbors like Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Ind.
“This speaks volumes and is very disappointing,” said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who was born and grew up in Detroit. “We’re seeing what happens when there’s a total collapse of city services. Detroit is in desperate straits.”
Oakland County gained a little less than 15,000 in population and stands at 1,202,362, according to the Census figures.
“We probably would have had a higher population number, but we have an unemployment rate of 15%. We took a huge drubbing with the automotive industry collapse,” Patterson said. “A lot of those guys and gals left the state, so the fact that we only gained 15,000 … I think we did alright, given what we’re up against.”
Fueled by the implosion of the domestic auto industry, the Motor City’s decline helped make Michigan the only state to experience a net population loss since 2000. Overall, the state’s population fell by about 54,000 people, a 0.6% decline at a time when the nation’s population grew about 9.7%.
Michigan’s population peaked in 2006 and has been declining since, according to Census figures.
One Michigander to move out was John Bessette, 44, who grew up in suburban Detroit and moved to an exurb of Pittsburgh in August 2010 after commuting there for almost two years. His company, Aim Construction, builds medical facilities and wanted to be where that field was growing.
“With the economy, even before the bad times, everybody was tightening up their purse strings” in Detroit, he said. “It was really a good time to go look at somewhere else.”
Bessette’s mobile phone number still carries an 810 area code, a longtime suburban Detroit listing, and his family makes the four-hour commute back to Michigan about once a month to visit, he said.
Detroit’s population loss isn’t unique in the region. Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Cincinnati also logged their smallest head counts in at least 100 years. Milwaukee and Toledo are at their lowest levels since 1940.
Sources: http://www.livingstondaily.com
