Maroun

The only reason Columbus is growing is due to annexing other neighbors. If you look at the core city data from the 1950 and 1970 land area, the actual core city of Columbus has also lost population. In 1950 Columbus had 38 square miles in 1970 it went up to 120 square miles and today it has 210 square miles, that is an addition of roughly 180 sqaure miles to the city limits which also adds to the population.

Cleveland and Cincy on the other hand have roughly 77 square miles ever since 1950, because the surrounding areas were already well established and had solid governments, so they could not annex their neighbors. The only hope for them is to merge with surrounding areas. If Cleveland for instance annexed half of what Columbus annexed it would have roughly 2.4 million people and Cincy would have almost 1.8 million people. So to answer the question Columbus didn't actually grow in the normal sense. The core city just like most core cities is still declining. In the brookings study only Chicago, NYC, and Sanfrancisco had core cities which did not dramatically decline and is only attributed to the falling numbers of families in each household.

Also if you look at the current GDP for the metro areas, Cleveland and Cincinnati were #1 and #2 for income and growth. The metro numbers are the better indicators since Cleveland's metro is smaller in square miles yet has 3 times the population of Columbus and the same goes for cincinnati. Also if you look at the detailed report of the crime statistics the Columbus metro area was the most dangerous of the big cities in Ohio.
So looks can be decieving and if either Cleveland or Cincinnati acquired its neighbors like Columbus did those cities would appear has having BIG booms. So if your question regards growing as in actual growth then no Columbus is not growing, if you are talking about growth as aquiring land have having more square miles then yes it is. - Thu Aug 28 2008, 08:22