If District sidewalks seem modestly more crowded and the wait for a table just a spot longer, chalk it up to 31,528 city residents the U.S. Census Bureau decided last week actually exist.

Mayor Anthony Williams, who has long claimed his economic policies are behind a residential boom, last year quickly appealed the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2005, estimate of the city’s population, which it pegged at 550,521 — continuing a multidecade decline.