Just for grins, I looked to see how the ten largest cities around the time I was born have changed in terms of rank. The top ten in 1960 and their current rank:
- New York (still # 1)
- Chicago (now 3)
- Los Angeles (now 2)
- Philadelphia (now 5)
- Detroit (now 18)
- Baltimore (now 21)
- Houston (now 4)
- Cleveland (now 45)
- Washington, DC (now 24)
- St. Louis (now 58!)
New York is a bit larger now, and has for more than 50 years been more than twice as large as the second largest city, making the spirit of George Zipf happy. LA and Houston have gained population as well as rank; the other seven all lost. St. Louis is hemmed in by a boundary that was drawn more than a century ago, but it doesn't lack land--the area north of downtown is basically field and forest. Cleveland, Baltimore and, of course, Detroit have lots of empty space within their boundaries as well.
For symmetry, let's look at where the current top ten were in 1960.
- New York (1)
- Los Angeles (3)
- Chicago (2)
- Houston (7)
- Philadelphia (5) (note: the top 5 were all in the top 7 in 1960).
- Phoenix (29)
- San Antonio (17)
- San Diego (18)
- Dallas (13)
- San Jose (57)
The cities in the second five moved pretty dramatically. They all had lots of available land in 1960 and are all, of course, sunbelt (although I suppose on could argue that northern California is not sunbelt).
Note: All data come from 2010 Census and http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab19.txt.
