How Philly Became Just the Nation’s 6th Largest City

Houston and Phoenix passed
it by leaps and boundaries

Philadelphia is the second largest city on the East Coast.

Before giving the microphone to me on bus tours of Mumbai visitors traveling around Philly, the group’s host usually says something like this:

“Philadelphia, once the largest city in the U.S. is now 6th in population.”

The visitors then look at me expectantly, wondering what happened.

However, before we even get on the bus, I tell every visitor on my tours this:

“Philadelphia was founded by William Penn in 1682, 58 years after New York and 52 years after Boston.

“And because of our two superstars, Penn and Ben — William Penn and Ben Franklin — by 1770, we leapt past both of them to become the largest and most cultured city in the U.S.

“Later we became the ‘Athens of America’ and the ‘Workshop of the World.’ ”

So when the host guide gives me the microphone, I point out:

“Note that we’re still are the second largest city on the East Coast.

“And while we’ve lost some population from our peak of 2,071,605, Philadelphia is now known for “Eds and Meds” — or Education and Medicine.

“In addition, Paul R. Levy, president of the Center City District, says that Philadelphia’s Center City is now the second largest downtown residential population in the country, behind only Manhattan.

“What’s more, people now are moving back to Philadelphia. Our latest census figures top 1.6 million people for the first time since 1980. ‘The city’s 5.1% increase in population in the 2010’s was the largest since the 1950s,’ says the Philadelphia Inquirer.”

Still the tour director’s comments bothered me.

So I started digging around to see just how and why Philadelphia dropped from the fourth largest to the sixth largest U.S. city in population.

The big reason: annexation, resulting in large
areas of spread-out people in the Southwest

Over many years, our southwestern neighbors of Houston and Phoenix tossed their lariats as far as they could, and lassoed neighboring communities into their city limits.

And by doing so — in my opinion — they ended up with what I would call enormous territories or areas. Not cities.

Why? Because population density has always been a hallmark of what most people consider cities: a lot of people gathered closely together in one place.

In my research, I discovered that of the nation’s top ten largest cities, only three have population densities of more than 11,000 people per square mile (in 2016 figures). They are: New York, with 28,317; Chicago, 11,900; and Philadelphia, 11,683.

Density is where Houston
and Phoenix fall down

• The density numbers per square mile for Houston and Phoenix are much lower — at 3,613 and 3,120 respectively.

• When you look at land areas from the 2010 census, however, Houston comes in at 9th largest, and Phoenix, 10th largest. They’re huge in area, but have far fewer people per square mile.

• In fact, Jacksonville, the largest city in land area outside of Alaska, is 5th largest in that category. Jacksonville covers a staggering 747.4 square miles in territory. It’s also now 12th largest in population with 949,611 people, but with a density of only 1,178 people per square mile. That’s the lowest density of any of the 56 largest U.S. cities.

• Philadelphia ranks just 69th in land area. Philly has not dramatically changed in size since its Consolidation Act of 1854. That’s when Philadelphia went from about two square miles (in William Penn’s original city) to about 130 square miles — making the city and county boundaries the same. Our land area is now listed as 134.2 square miles.

Contrast that area with Houston, which doubled in size twice within 25 years, starting in the 1940s.

Then it expanded again, from 453 square miles in 1969 to 637.5 square miles now. It passed Philadelphia in population in 1984.

Today, according to the Greater Houston Partnership, “the city of Houston could contain the cities of New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington D.C. Seattle and Minneapolis — with a bit more room to spare.” It’s huge!

What about Phoenix?

In a nutshell, it grew from 17 square miles and a population of 107,000 in 1950 to 517.6 square miles (2016) and a population of 1,608,139 in 2020.

Now, Houston is about five times larger than Philadelphia in land area, and Phoenix, four times larger.

Is bigger better?

You can answer that for yourself

But for me, I’ll take a defined city with density, culture and history – over territories with people scattered far and wide over enormous areas.

I’ll take Philadelphia every time.

NOTE: What I didn’t know when I wrote this was that Philly also has the smallest footprint of the top 10 most populous cities in the U.S.!

Sources: U.S. Census figures from Wikipedia, and the list of U.S. cities by population; also info from Houston planning, and from Phoenix planning and development.