Tag Archives: Columbus Ohio demographics

Where Racial Groups are Growing Fastest in Franklin County

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The US Census recently released updated estimates for 2016 for smaller-area designations like tracts and blocks. Looking at them, I wanted to see where racial groups were growing the fastest at that level.
The first map is based on the % change from 2010 to 2016.
where racial groups are growing
What’s interesting about this map is that it is such a hodgepodge. No single part of the county is dominated by growth in any specific racial group. However, a few things can be generally determined. For example, almost all of the tracts where the White population is growing the fastest are within I-270, and the majority of those within the eastern half of the Columbus in what have long been dominated by Black majority populations. These areas include parts of Linden, the Near South and Near East sides. That said, the White population was growing the fastest in just 30 census tracts by % change. This compared to 53 for the Black population, 83 for the Asian population and 107 for the Hispanic population.

The next map takes a slightly different approach, measuring the TOTAL change in population, rather than by %.

Again, a hodgepodge, but much less so than before. Instead of being the fastest-growing in just 30 tracts, the White population rockets up to 108 tracts. This shows that, while Asian and Hispanic populations have respectable % growth, this is largely based on comparatively small population bases. Still, non-White populations are clearly making inroads throughout Franklin County.

Young Adults Prefer Density in Franklin County

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I’ve seen several articles across the internet lately questioning the idea that Millennials and young adults prefer density and urban areas. I decided to see how this played out in Franklin County overall. I first looked at the total population aged 20-34 in the year 2000 and the year 2015 by Census Tract.
Here were the maps for those years.
young adults prefer density

After looking at the numbers for both years, I came up with this map for how that age group had changed in the 2000-2015 period.

Unfortunately, some tracts, particularly in the eastern suburban areas, did not exist in 2000, and so I was not able to figure out the change for them during the period. The rest of the map, however, shows that the strongest growth in this age group was not only inside 270, but closest to Downtown and central corridors along Broad and High Streets.
These maps don’t tell us about the relationship between those changes and the population density of the census tracts. So I went further and broke the tracts into increments of density to see where the strongest growth was occurring.

With a few exceptions, there appears to be a correlation between average 20-34 aged population growth and the density of the census tracts it occurs in. This suggests that this age group, at least in Franklin County, prefers areas with moderate to high density, which typically translates to urban living.