Population Dip? Swell

Just do It

On the Urban Discoveries Blog, Matt Smith highlights a recent article showing Baltimore’s population is plunging by some 3000 people every year. He proposes 6 highly sensible ways to increase the population. Here are a few more, coming at you from the New York City Department of City Planning.

According to the census, the City of New York grew by 686,000 people between 1990 and 2000 — more than Baltimore’s entire population, added within 10 years. How’d they do it?

a. “Substantial natural increase” a.k.a., baby-making, so that more people were born than died. This is a scalable model we can adopt, no?

b. “Domestic migration losses offset by immigration.” White people moving to put babies in suburban schools were replaced (who needs ‘em anyway) by plucky immigrants. Let’s here it for the Koreans and the El Salvadorians, and their bim bam bop tortillas. Come all ye Vietnamese, Indians, Hmong, Liberians, Maoris.

c. Improvements in census methods. In New York’s case, the Address List Improvement Act of 1994 allowed local representatives to review and correct address lists for folks in their districts. More people = more government money. In Baltimore, our reps are busy.

d. Increased demand for apartments by professional in-migrants… to establish careers. Supposedly difficult to measure, this population pressure leads to “increasing numbers of individuals sharing apartments with non-relatives.” Hello, New Yorkers, you don’t have to do this in Baltimore. Like MS said, Spread the word. Let people know what Charm City living is like. Hint: In Baltimore, you won’t be wedging a loft bed copped off craigslist into a bathroom-sized space (hello, 2006), or shacking up with 5 people, 2 cats and an extended family of cockroaches to make rent (2004).

In short: We are faced with the thankless task of procreating in our spacious pre-war apartments. Except that pre-war isn’t even an real estate add-on here in Baltimore. Everything is a bloody historic landmark building here.

Hurrah for our de-populated, charming city life.