Census says…

Why such a drastic change?

This clearly validates my long-standing argument that the 2000 count and all the estimates based off it were badly skewed along ethnocentric lines. That is, immigrant populations actively hid from the census for fear of getting involved with the authorities, whether they were documented or not. It’s common knowledge among demographics wonks that the denser the area, the less accurate the count.

Last year, the Hispanic community actively pushed participation and we probably have one of the more accurate core-city counts around.

Yay, us!

Worcester may have a bigger population but considering Providence is almost half the size as far as area and land I’d say Providence is looking a bit more impressive.

Part of the reason that there was a higher population in Providence in the early to mid 20th century was that there was more housing stock. Housing began to vanish with demolitions in the late 1950s with the start of highway construction and the creation of “modern” industrial parks.

Institutions such as Rhode Island Hospital, Miriam Hospital, and Brown had footprints that were a small fraction of what they are today. Upper South Providence, Summit, College Hill and Fox Point simply had more housing units whether three-deckers or single family houses than they have now.

Also in many of the higher density neighborhoods like Federal Hill, Olneyville, and the West End, since the 1960s every time there’s a down real estate market when prices drop buildings are bought and demolished to create parking lots for adjacent properties.

Upper and Lower South Providence, parts of Olneyville, Elmwood, and the West End suffered from either the 1960s race riots where buildings were burned or over the decades lost buildings by landlords who burned their properties to collect insurance also contributed to loss of residential units in the city.

Commercial corridors such as Elmwood Avenue, Broad Street, Charles Street, and Cranston Street had more buildings that had ground floor retail with apartments on second and third floors or had multi-family residential buildings lining the streets. Many of those properties have been demolished to create parking lots or single-story strip retail stores.

It is true that the there was a significant population shift from the city(s) to the suburbs and that families generally were larger in the past, but those were by no means the only reasons why Providence and other Rhode Island cities lost population after World War II. The acceptance of automotive land-use patterns and anti-development land-use policies contributed as well.

It’s unlikely that anyone who responds to this forum would advocate for losing rural lands for population expansion. To consider losing rural lands for population and economic expansion assumes the acceptance of the postwar car culture model and land-use patterns are the only way to achieve population and economic increases.

If Providence and Rhode Island are to get smaller that implies that people, jobs, and wealth are leaving the area. Providence and the state have plenty of room to expand its population and economy. It just won’t be by using late 20th century methods as used in other parts of the country, but rather by going back to its 18th and 19th century origins of concentrated high-density development.

@Rachel, I don’t know what the growth rate should be. At the very least the state should hold onto the population that already lives here, including calculating the number of births and deaths. Providence has about 35,000 college and university students each year, if roughly 7,000 or 8,000 graduates annually, very few are staying here after graduation or locals that attend out-of-state schools aren’t returning.

As far as where to put development, a start could be to fill up parking lots and empty lots throughout the city. Downtown and underdeveloped industrial neighborhoods like Woonosquatucket valley, Olneyville, South Providence near the hospitals or the area south of Broad Street offer opportunities. Also, the industrial pockets like the area west of Elmwood Avenue between Westfield and Cromwell Streets with entire empty blocks could be redeveloped not to mention under-built commercial corridors dominated by strip retail and parking.

New residential development in these kinds of areas either are not permitted under the current zoning rules or what is permitted is so minimal that the economics to buy a property and rebuild don’t make sense. Providence could easily re-achieve it previous population maximum of 250,000+ and more as Jim pointed out sited from the report findings. Land-use regulations should be incentivized to encourage targeted high-density development. This could be done without replicating a Midtown Manhattan landscape of 50 story towers. With the exception of a few downtown neighborhoods Providence’s zoning discourages development and still caters to car culture.

As an aside on the density and car culture front, driving up N. Main the other day, I looked to my left and dreamed of plowing under all that extinct development and returning it to the earth. It’s certainly serving no urban purpose now. Wouldn’t it be a crazy change to have a stretch of country separating Providence and Pawtucket? Urban planning dreams. . .

Or, to have Central Falls population density, we’d have to increase population to about 298k. To have Boston’s population density, we’d need a population of about 235k.

When Providence population peaked, large parts of the East Side and Mount Pleasant were still farms. Almost no one had a car.

The character of existing stable residential neighborhoods would not have to change in order for Providence to grow by tens of thousands. Peter Brassard correctly identifies where growth belongs.

Would anyone disagree that neighborhood character would be improved by redeveloping crudscapes like Eddy St? Even the Summit Nimbyhood Association is at consensus that midrise commercial/residential structures built right to the street are what North Main Street needs.

Jef’s density comparisons are interesting in that Cambridge shows a higher density than Boston. Cambridge’s built environment is more similar to Providence with its mix of wooden three-deckers to single family houses. The difference is that Cambridge wasn’t bulldozed for highways and because of the T and permitted on-street overnight parking much less surface parking was created there, though most people own cars.

When Providence was at the 250,000 population level, the trolley car system was still in place that saw ridership of around 150,000,000 passenger rides per year. For an “out dated defunct” system that was a lot of equipment and drivers to provide to maintain that level of service. Even in the 50s after they dismantled the system ridership was around 100,000,000 passenger rides per year as compared to today’s 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 rides annually.

Where ever new residential development is located, the transit system needs to be stepped up to support it.

I agree that a major key to density in Boston and Cambridge is the transit system. Another factor, though, is that Cambridge isn’t really a free-standing city (I have some experience- I lived there for years.) Cambridge has a lot of its own industry -education, biotech, some factories still- but many, many of its residents depend on employment in businesses, schools and other industry that is 10 minutes away in Boston. Population density is going to be much higher when some residents use the city as a bedroom community. Look at Somerville- way denser than Cambridge with house after house after house, because pretty much everyone works somewhere else.
In some ways, Cambridge can be so dense because Boston contains the financial center, the airport, the bus and train stations, the port and much of the other stuff Cambridge needs to be more than a college town.
As a full-service city, Providence might aspire to a density more like Boston’s than like Cambridge’s, if we give up the nature of Mount Pleasant, Elmhurst, Blackstone and less-dense residential areas like those. Boston doesn’t really have areas like that, except for maybe parts of Hyde Park or West Roxbury.

Perfect description of North Main Street: “Failed Sprawl”

I should add, for clarity, that south of the Smithfield Avenue overpass is yet more unbuilt land only part of which is the playing fields. As a point of interest, the bus station is WEST of the river.

Oh, yeah, and that is an absolutely terrible location for a bus terminal- you pretty much can’t get there unless you have a car. Duh.

A couple of things:

– I’m not sure it is worth reclaiming farmland. Not only do you need brownfield remediation but you would need some hefty engineering to keep runoff from 95 and the train-yard from getting back into the soil.

– It is a lousy place for a bus terminal but IIRC you can pick up any bus you need at KP as well. It’s not really that unusual to have terminals like this out of the way, even in Europe. Although the whole thing is kind of a blight due to neglect, etc.

Manton has the second highest population increase, 57.4% or 1,601 people following Downtown with a 65% increase or 1,871 people. Downtown isn’t a surprise with all the building conversions and new towers. Has there been a lot new construction in Manton? If so where did they put it and what kind of construction?

I don’t understand the increase in Manton. I don’t know that there is any new development there, but I don’t spend a lot of time there either (why would I?). Downtown makes sense. There were practically no residents there 10 years ago. Now there are many.

I think the East Side has the same issue as Elmhurst. The population is older and while 10 years ago, the kids might have been living at home, they have since gone off to college or graduated and moved elsewhere. Elmhurst has that same issue. While there are people moving in, they tend to be younger couples who haven’t started families yet (myself included in that). That’s the only reasoning I could come up with.

I think some of the numbers on the East Side and downtown must be skewed by numbers of students. Maybe East Side numbers are down because fewer East Side students answered the census this time, for whatever reason?
If you look at the ethnic stats on the NYT census mapping feature, you can see the influence of the student population- it looks like Rhode Island’s Asian population is concentrated in two places: Cranston behind Mashapaug pond and Downtown/College Hill. Someone who knows about Providence would know that shows that our Asian population is largely resident families in Cranston and students in dorms downtown or on College Hill..

I realize these estimates are probably to be taken with a grain of salt, but the latest population estimates show that Rhode Island gained 1,391 people in the year ending July 1, 2015. The estimates were not available for the city of Providence, but Providence County gained 1,448 residents.

2015 Census Estimate for Rhode Island by County