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The Dripby Fern Shen10:00 amFeb 10, 20110

8 things Baltimore learned from the census

Above: Green dots indicate population gains, black dots show losses, between 2000 and 2010 in Baltimore.

1. We shrank, again – Baltimore lost population  over the last decade, dropping about 30,000 people.  The population now stands at 620,961. representing a 4.6 percent drop. That’s nothing compared to the previous decade, when Baltimore lost 84,860.

It’s pretty tough when the best spin the mayor’s office can come up with is to note, as they did yesterday in an emailed statement,  that “it’s the smallest population decline since the 1950s.”

2. Where’d they go? To the county, hon! Baltimore County, specifically. According to The Washington Post, “tax records show the lion’s share of the residents who left the city settled in Baltimore County, which gained about 50,000 residents over the decade.”

3. We’re more diverse, less black and white – The city’s African-American and white populations dropped by 20,000 and the Asian and Hispanic populations rose. (Whites now make up 29.6 percent of the city, blacks, 63.7 percent.) The Sun looked at Highlandtown census tracts and found the area is now 34 percent Hispanic, triple what it was ten years before.

4. We’ll pay for this shrinkage, politically . . . – The city could lose one of its Senate seats in statewide redistricting. The proposed city council redistricting could all be revised since the plan released by the Mayor was based on 20,000 residents.

5.  . . .Unless the prison population gets counted? – The state still needs to adjust the new census data to include prisoners in order comply with a new state law (The Baltimore Sun reported on this in April)  which requires that the incarcerated be counted  at their last known address.  The state prison population is about 23,000, with about 6 in 10 from Baltimore city. It’s not if address data for federal prisoners will count as well.

6. Latinos could help Baltimore County retain political power –…. if lawmakers don’t pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would diallow the inclusion of non-citizens in Maryland redistricting. The census showed that Baltimore County is now home to the state’s third-largest Hispanic community. (Montgomery and Prince George’s counties are the other two. )

7. Boom in Baltimore’s waterfront, bust everywhere else – Numbers will have to be properly crunched but a quick scan of The Washington Post’s interactive census data map shows massive losses across the city, but pockets of growth in affluent areas, particularly along the downtown waterfront and in a few spots in north Baltimore.  Plug in your zip code to check on your neighborhood. (Note: the map shows percentage increases and decreases, not raw numbers.)

6. Slower growth in Baltimore’s ‘burbs – No major jurisdiction in Maryland showed losses except for Baltimore, but area suburbs did see slower growth than in previous census reports. Howard, Harford and Carroll grew, but the rates of growth there were slower than in past decades. Same story in the close-in DC suburbs. The big growth? Southern Maryland. St. Mary’s and Charles counties, which both saw population increases of more than 20 percent.

8. The major trend: more minorities in Maryland – Even counties such as Charles, which boomed, became less white. According to The Washington Post, the white population there dropped from 67 to 48 percent of the total in just 10 years – a shift generated by the arrival of thousands of blacks and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics and Asians.

In Prince George’s, the Hispanic population nearly doubled over the past 10 years. In Montgomery County minorities became the majority. Overall in Maryland, the number of Hispanics doubled and the number of non-Hispanic whites dropped to less than 55 percent.

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