Full Citation

Title: Change in the Size and Distribution of Large Urban Areas in the U.S., 1950-2020

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2023

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Abstract: A dataset with the numbers of housing units for the 56 largest urban areas in 2020, going back to 1950, is used to examine the changes in their sizes. While all of the areas more than doubled in size, the growth of some was astounding, adding over 99 percent of their 2020 housing units since 1950. The differences in rates of growth produced significant changes to the list of the largest 15 areas, with six new areas added compared only one change in the previous four decades. The areas in the South grew most rapidly. In 1950, the large urban areas in that region accounted for by far the smallest share of all of the housing units in the large urban areas but had the largest share in 2020. In the final decade, nearly half of all growth in housing units for the large urban areas was in the South. The distribution of the sizes of urban areas is often thought to conform to Zipf’s law, postulating that the size and rank are related by a power law with an exponent of one. In 1950 the exponent was slightly greater than one. The exponent dropped by 2020 such that the the smaller urban areas were larger than expected.

Url: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369539913

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Ottensmann, John

Publisher: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS

Topics: Land Use/Urban Organization

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