L.A. Still the Second City; San Diego Moves to No. 6

The country’s five largest cities retained their rankings in the Census Bureau’s latest estimates of city populations but San Diego replaced Detroit as the nation’s sixth largest city.

The Census Bureau said that San Jose and Jacksonville, Fla., also moved up in the rankings of the country’s 25 largest cities in a new report released today.

New York City ranked No. 1 in population in 1988 followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia, the same positions these cities held in 1986, the last time the bureau estimated city populations.

But San Diego replaced Detroit as the nation’s sixth largest city while San Jose passed San Francisco and Indianapolis to move into 12th place. In the other change in the top 25, Jacksonville replaced Washington, D.C., as the 16th largest city.

Since 1970, there have been major shifts in the ranking of the most populous cities, with many in the East and Midwest being replaced by cities in the South and West. Seven of the 10 largest cities in 1970 were in the North and East but by 1988 there were only four in these regions. Baltimore, Washington and Cleveland had been replaced by San Diego, San Antonio and Phoenix.

Among the 25 largest cities, 12 are estimated to have lost population from 1986 to 1988, including Houston, Dallas and Denver. Dallas’ population loss dropped the city under 1 million, a level Dallas had reached for the first time in 1986.