California, Here They Still Come

Californians don’t need to be fed statistics to have a sense of how rapidly the state is growing. They see signs of it in their own micro worlds each day--traffic snarls, sprouting developments, jammed theater lines, schools on double session and so on. But California’s macro world of population figures is always startling. The 1988 estimated city population figures just released by the Census Bureau provides some eye-openers.

The bureau reported that San Diego has moved into sixth place nationally with a population of 1.07 million, replacing Detroit and ranking ahead of Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix and Baltimore. San Jose now is 12th, moving ahead of San Francisco and Indianapolis. Four California cities are among the top 13, including Los Angeles No. 2 and San Francisco No. 13. California’s fifth-ranked city, Long Beach, has more people than St. Louis, Honolulu, Pittsburgh, Miami, Cincinnati, Omaha or Minneapolis. The report covers population just within official city boundaries and the ranking of metropolitan areas can differ considerably.

Of 186 cities in the United States with a population of 100,000 or more, 38 are in California, 19 in Texas and five in New York state. Texas, by the way, is almost certain to become the nation’s second most-populous state in the 1990 census, moving ahead of New York. California cities joining the 100,000-plus club on the basis of the 1988 estimates are Oceanside, Santa Rosa, Thousand Oaks, Salinas, Vallejo and Irvine.

And counting . . .