Detroit's brand is the biggest winner of its population increase
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The Detroit skyline and Detroit River from Cass Corridor. Photo: Samuel Robinson/Axios
City leaders are celebrating new data showing that Detroit is growing for the first time in nearly 70 years.
The big picture: Increasing the population has been a tenet of Mayor Mike Duggan's tenure since he took office as Detroit filed for municipal bankruptcy a decade ago, when the population was recorded at more than 720,000 people.
- The latest Census Bureau estimates from 2023 recorded 633,218 residents, up from 631,366 in 2022.
Reality check: An 1,800-person increase won't change the number of congressional districts or result in a windfall of federal grant funding, but many believe the reversal of the downward trend is an important moment for the city's "comeback" narrative.
What they're saying: "Symbolically this says all the good news and great vibes you've been reading about and all the great feedback we're getting from people visiting Detroit is now translating into people wanting to live here," Metro Detroit demographer Kurt Metzger, the former director of Data Driven Detroit who previously worked in the Census Bureau, tells Axios.
- "For Duggan, this is the ultimate, right? When he first started he said, 'Judge me on turning the population around,' and he feels like he's finally reached that."
Between the lines: Metzger says new apartments and renovations of historic buildings led him to believe the population had been growing, but it wasn't being recorded in recent years because of the Census Bureau's methodology for counting residents in Detroit. So did the mayor, who sued the Census Bureau and called it a "clown show" for treating demolished buildings as if they were fully occupied homes in the 2020 count.
- The Census Bureau's official estimates in 2021 and 2022 were revised slightly to add a few thousand people after the city challenged the figures last August.
By the numbers: Detroit, which at its peak recorded 2 million people in 1950 as the nation's fourth largest city, is now the 26th most populous city, up from 29th in 2022.
- Detroit passed Memphis, Louisville and Portland.
Yes, but: Many middle- and lower-income residents are being pushed into neighborhoods surrounded by blight and crime due to rising costs near Brush Park, Cass Corridor and Midtown.
- Between 2000 and 2020, Detroit lost about 295,000 Black residents, or 37.4% of its African American population, the largest loss of Black residents by any city in the country, Metro Times reports.
- Black people now account for 77.2% of the city's overall population, compared with 82.2% in 2010, when Detroit had the highest percentage of Black residents in the country.