5,809,300 Folks Left Their Hearts in S.F.--Now It’s No. 4
San Francisco replaced Philadelphia as the nation’s fourth largest urban area, and the nation’s capital slipped two places to 10th, the Census Bureau reported today.
New York remains well ahead of all other metropolitan areas in the population estimates for 1985, followed by Los Angeles and Chicago.
But the estimates covering the nation’s 281 metropolitan statistical areas show many changes below that level. Rapid population growth propelled many Sun Belt communities up the list, while communities with population declines, or static counts, lost ground in the rankings.
The highest-ranking change was San Francisco’s, moving up one notch to fourth place. The region around San Francisco Bay grew 8.2% to 5,809,300 people between 1980 and 1985. During the same period, the Philadelphia metropolitan area grew only 1.7% to 5,776,500 and slipped to fifth place.
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