Many parts of NYC depopulated heavily during suburban flight, in particular Manhattan - the regional population has always trended up but many people left for t

Many parts of NYC depopulated heavily during suburban flight, in particular Manhattan - the regional population has always trended up but many people left for the newly developed suburbs following the war. Manhattan's population for example peaked at 2.2m between 1910-1920 and still has never been that high since. Current estimates are around 1.6m. Population density in Manhattan has decreased dramatically, largely owing to suburban flight and an increased demand for quality of life - it was 21 people per 5,000 sq ft in 1910[1], it is 12 people now. One funny thing about all of this is that the old brick buildings that are such prized real estate nowadays used to be low-rent tenements, considered blights on the city, and where a million dollar bachelor pad now sits multiple families used to fit in the same space. The pattern extends to other parts of the city also - Brooklyn peaked at 2.7m between 1940-1950 and rapidly depopulated afterwards, even now the borough only has ~2.5m people. The depopulation is a large part of NYC's reputation in the 60s, 70s, and 80s as a dangerous place - abandoned buildings and depopulated neighborhoods contributed to crime and general decay, though of course cheap rent also contributed to a dramatic surge of artistic achievement. tl;dr: NYC depopulated heavily after 1950, and didn't really start recovering until the 1990s, and even then NYC's population didn't start growing rapidly until the early 2000s when the combination of shifting preference towards urban lifestyles and lowering crime made a large influx of population possible. The resurgence of American cities is, in the grand scheme of things, an extremely recent phenomenon. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/01/realestate/manhattans-population-density-past-and-present.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/03/01/realestate/man...