CENSUS: Honey, I Stopped Shrinking Philadelphia

DAILY NEWS: Good news, Philadelphia! After decades of population loss, the city has stopped shrinking, according to revised Census Bureau estimates delivered to the city earlier this week. On Monday, the city received a letter from the Census Bureau raising the 2008 population estimate by about 93,000. In October, Philly challenged the bureau’s 2008 estimate of the city’s population, which the bureau had set at 1,447,395. It was the first time that the city had challenged the bureau’s estimates since a challenge program began earlier this decade. The new estimate of Philadelphia’s ’08 population is 1,540,351 people, 4,220 higher than what even the city had believed. The difference came from the bureau’s having more accurate counts of those living in prisons, nursing homes and college dorms, said Gary Jastrzab, the city’s deputy director of city planning. The city’s population peaked at more than two million people in 1950, then began a 50-year decline. MORE