New figures out from the U.S. Census Bureau show that downtown areas saw huge jumps in population between 2000 and 2010. The biggest of these metro areas, those with populations of 5 million or more, saw a collective growth rate of more than 13 percent in the areas within two miles of city hall, a stand-in measurement that, for these purposes, designates "downtown."
In all U.S. metro areas, 16.1 million people were living within two miles of City Hall by 2010, about six percent of the total metro area population of 258 million.
Combined with the populations slightly farther out, in the two to four mile radius outside city hall, the numbers increase dramatically. Together, the total metro population living within four miles of city hall is more than 54 million – almost 21 percent of America's metro population. That's 17.5 percent of the national population living within a quick car ride, 30-minute bike ride or hour-long walk of the center of a big city.
Among the biggest metro areas, those over one million in population, the share of people living within two miles of city hall is nearly nine percent of the nation's metropolitan population.
The growth downtown, though, is mainly a large metro phenomenon. Metros with fewer than 2.5 million people saw only modest increases (0.2 percent for the 500,000 to 999,999 group) or even decreases (-1.2 percent for the 1 million to 2.499 million group).
