40% of Ohio's fastest growing communities are in Central Ohio

[Tender Branson]

In other related news, Minneapolis gained population for the first time since '92. Though it was only 159 people.

Congrats. Its weird to think of a place not getting larger in population for me... here the population has almost always been growing (actually I cant think of a time period in the last 150 years where there has been a major stoppage in the population growth)

The population is just getting less dense. City boundaries stay the same, so fewer people live in the city limits. Kind of misleading. Very few metros are losing population.

Just Detroit, really.

No, Detroit metro gained 5 percent during the 1990s. Metros that lost population in ascending population loss by percent were Dayton, OH; Sharon, PA; Muncie, IN; Bangor, ME; Youngstown, OH; Altoona, PA; Syracuse, NY; Pine Bluff, AR; Pittsburgh, PA; Jamestown, NY; Buffalo, NY; Decatur, IL; Scranton, PA; Lewiston, ME; Anniston, AL, Johnstown, PA; Wheeling, WV; Alexandria, LA; Elmira, NY; Pittsfield, MA; Binghamton, NY; Utica, NY; Grand Forks, ND; and Steuenville, OH.
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t3/tab05.pdf

I expect the list for our current decade to be similar with New Orleans leading the way.

Looky looky:

http://www.census.gov/population/www/estimates/CBSA-est2006-pop-chg.html

Allthough your list from 1990-2000 and my list from 2000-2006 do not include the same definition of metropolitan area in some cases, you are right. N.O. and Biloxi are leading the Metros in population loss for this decade.

(Your list uses Combined Metropolitan Statistical Areas, where my list uses only MSA's for example in New York, resulting in a population of 21 Mio. vs. 19 Mio.)

[Tender Branson]

I looked at that census page, and I noticed a few things that intrigued me.  I used to think of Cleveland and St. Louis as roughly equivalent metros in size, if not in terms of vitality, but as it turns out St. Louis is much bigger.  Another surprise is that Minneapolis-St. Paul has pulled well ahead of St. Louis - I believe it used to be quite a bit smaller.

Huh? It says that St. Louis has 2.6 million and grew 4.5%, while Cleveland has 2.9 million and grew 3%. Cleveland is slightly larger, though they are very similar in size and growth rate. Both are also really great cities as well. Minneapolis is also at 2.9 million, though its growth rate is a robust 16.9%

While both St. Louis and Minneapolis are MSA's (Metropolitan Statistical Areas), Cleveland is a CMSA, a Combined Metropolitan Statistical Area. Which means that the CMSA is always bigger than the MSA, because more counties in the surrounding of the MSA are added.

This results in the fact that Cleveland's MSA population is 2.1 Mio. while it´s CMSA population is close to 3 Mio. So, according to the definition Opebo used (comparing just MSA's), he´s right.

US metro areas are not really comparable though, because if you look at LA combined metro for example, which has an area of more than 88.000 Km² (=34.000 square miles) and a population of 18 Mio. LA's CSMA is more comparable to a country, not a city.

For example if you want to compare US Metro Areas with European ones, you need to use MSA's only.

The LA MSA has 13 Mio inhabitants on an area of 13.000 km² (=5.000 square miles), the density resulting in 2.700/square mile, rather than the 500/square mile used in the CSMA.