After decades of painful decline, Detroit's population grew by 2023, according to new estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau.
The increase – to 633,218 from 631,366 residents – was small, leaving Detroit slightly below 2021 levels. But the symbolism was meaningful in a city that had been hollowed out, year after year, since the time when more than 1.8 million people lived there. City leaders have long vowed to reverse Detroit's long-term population decline caused by the auto industry's contraction, the flight to the suburbs and municipal bankruptcy.
The new census estimates showed a similar, moderate population recovery for many major cities in the Midwest and Northeast, after earlier pandemic-era declines.
In the Northeast, cities with 50,000 residents or more grew by an average of 0.2 percent, after declining an average of 0.3 percent in 2022. In the Midwest, cities of that size grew by 0.1 percent in 2023, after declining on average 0.2 percent per year.
Some major cities that saw population declines in 2021 — including New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago — largely returned to pre-pandemic trends, with higher growth rates and smaller population declines than during the pandemic.
“We know that people have moved from larger cities to smaller ones during the pandemic,” said Andrew Beveridge, president of Social Explorer, a demographics company. “That has decreased somewhat.”
The robust growth of Southern and Sun Belt cities continued in 2023, with Southern cities growing an average of 1 percent.
“Thirteen of the 15 fastest-growing cities were in the South, eight of which were in Texas alone,” Crystal Delbé, a statistician in the Census Bureau's population division, said in a statement.
The fifteen largest cities in 2023 remained the same as in 2022, although some moved up or down the list: Jacksonville, Florida, climbed higher than Austin, Texas; and Fort Worth, Texas, became larger than San Jose, California.
Mid-sized cities, with populations between 10,000 and 50,000 people, saw growth in every region except the Northeast.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said the new population estimate for his city marked the first time since 1957 that the Census Bureau has not found the city has suffered population loss. According to census estimates, Detroit is now the 26th most populous city in the country, up from 29th in 2022. Decades ago, the city was the fourth most populous city in the country.
The administration of Mr. Duggan, who was elected mayor in 2013 and is serving his third term, has in the past raised questions about the Census Bureau's population numbers in Detroit, claiming that city residents had been undercounted. For Mr Duggan, the new population estimate is sufficient a campaign promise he made before his first term to help the city grow again.
“I have always said: a mayor should be judged based on whether the population is increasing or decreasing,” he said in an interview. “It took me longer to get there than I had hoped.”
Mr. Duggan said that while Detroit still faces the same challenges — such as faltering demand for office space — as many larger cities do, its population growth is the result of years of steady, difficult work.
In the past ten years, more than 10,000 houses have been renovated and property values have risen a new car factory to produce Jeeps was built in the city.