The Changing Shape of Metropolitan America

Abstract

In the same way that rural towns gave way to cities in the middle of the nineteenth century, cities gave way to metropolitan areas in the middle of the twentieth century. Today, the United States is overwhelmingly metropolitan. Using tabular and spatial data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Labor, and the U.S. Geological Survey, this article explores metropolitan population, employment, and urban settlement trends since 1990. The first part of the article compares intermetropolitan changes in population and employment in 1990, 2000, and 2007. The second part considers the changing intrametropolitan distribution of population and households between 1990 and 2000 and of employment between 1994 and 2003. Finally, the third part explores changes in density and urban land cover between 1990 (or 1992) and 2000 (or 2001). These findings are reported by geographic region, metropolitan area size, and metropolitan gateway status.