With the U.S. Census Bureau projecting that the country?s population will soon surpass 300 million, many are looking back at where the nation was when it passed the last such milestone, and Baltimore City is no exception.
When the nation reached the 200 million landmark in 1967, William Donald Schaefer was still campaigning for his first term as City Council president. The city-scarring riots following Martin Luther King Jr.?s assassination were a year off. The Orioles had Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Boog Powell and Jim Palmer ? but still no winning record ? and the Colts were led by Johnny Unitas to go undefeated for 13 games.
In 1967, Baltimore?s population was hovering above 900,000.
Now, as the nation adds another 100 million residents, the city shrinks to two-thirds of its former size.
“A lot of central cities have lost population over the last half-century to suburbanization,” said John Iceland, an associate professor in the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.
In the 1960 census, the outlying suburbs of Carroll and Harford counties were at less than half of their current populations. Now both are struggling to deal with increasing growth, longer commutes and demands for dwindling supplies of water and sewer service.
Though census estimates point to immigration as playing a large part in the increasing population ? foreign-born immigrants were 12 percent of the total population in 2004 ? that same suburban focus has kept Baltimore City from reaping the full benefits of the boom, Iceland said.
“The old model of immigration was that people would move to the cities, then gradually outward,” Iceland said. “Now they just go directly into the suburbs.”
