Part 2 is now available for more great before and after comparisons.
How Columbus has changed in 10 years is not always easily quantifiable. Columbus added more people in the past decade than during any previous similar period in its history. I’ve posted a lot about the 2020 Census data and updated many pages worth of information to the site. However, examining only population change through numbers is just one part of the story. How has that population growth manifested in terms of how the city appears in its built environment? This before and after look shows how the city has been transformed on a visual scale, and shows how some of the hottest neighborhoods have been radically altered in a short time.
Downtown High Street, looking north from Rich Street Before: 2011 After: 2021 High Street, looking north from Gay Street Before: 2011 After: 2021
Long Street, looking east from 6th Street Before: 2011 After: 2020
Neil Avenue, looking east at Broadbelt Lane Before: 2011 After: 2021
The Short North High Street, looking north from Milay Alley Before: 2011 After: 2020
High Street, looking south from Buttles Avenue Before: 2011 After: 2021
Fourth Street, looking east at Auden Avenue Before: 2011 Before: 2021
Summit Street, looking west at 5th Avenue Before: 2011 After: 2021
Perry Street, looking south at Quality Place Before: 2011 After: 2021
Weinland Park Grant Avenue, looking north from 7th Avenue Before: 2012 After: 2021
Eighth Avenue, looking west from Section Alley Before: 2011 After: 2020
Franklinton Rich Street, looking east from McDowell Street Before: 2011 After: 2021
Broad Street, looking west from the railroad tracks. Before: 2011 After: 2021
South Side Livingston Avenue, looking east at Parsons Avenue Before: 2009 After: 2020
Washington Avenue, looking southeast from Innis Avenue Before: 2011 After: 2020
Front Street, looking south at Whittier Street Before: 2011 After: 2021
Campus High Street, looking south from Lane Avenue Before: 2011 After: 2020
High Street, looking south from 8th Avenue Before: 2011 After: 2021
West Side Parsons Avenue, looking northeast from Chapel Street Before: 2011 After: 2020
Champion Avenue, looking northwest at Phale D. Hale Drive Before: 2011 After: 2021
17th Avenue, looking north from Gay Street Before: 2011 After: 2020
Broad Street, looking northeast west of Woodland Avenue Before: 2011 After: 2021
Oak Street, looking east from Ohio Avenue Before: 2011 After: 2021
These images represent just a small fraction of the development and changes that have occurred in and around the city, and don’t even include the large developments in suburban areas like Grandview Yard in Grandview or Bridge Park in Dublin. The next 10 years looks to be even more significant, with new mixed-use towers for Downtown, potential skyscrapers for Easton, and large numbers of infill development projects continuing in central neighborhoods from Franklinton to Linden to the South Side. With them, the city will continue to grow more dense and more vibrant and- with any luck- will also help spur much needed change to Columbus’ underwhelming transit system.
These Columbus development links show many of the projects seen in the photos, as well as projects that are still just in the proposal stages. The City provides a master list of area development commissions to keep track of the latest proposals.
From the files of Project Blue Book, this event was thought to have been an aircraft, but never confirmed. An eyewitness letter is included in the files, but the writing has become so faint as to be mostly unreadable.
Continuing with the data from the 2020 Census, we break down the population rank for every community and census-designated place in the Columbus metro area. Census-designated places are areas with concentrations of population, but are not part of incorporated villages, towns or cities.
The main story with the 2020 census numbers is that smaller communities in rural counties generally declined the past decade. This followed a similar story with non-metro counties, not only in Ohio, but nationally. Population continues to concentrate closer to more urban areas, which tend to be the job centers. If such population declines continue in the decades ahead, many of these small towns and villages may die out.
These trends also have potential impacts on the upcoming state redistricting. With conservative, rural areas emptying out and more liberal cities and urban areas growing, how will this affect how congressional districts get drawn?
No, we’re not talking about being able to get HBO from the modern cable company. This signal had even worse consistency. On August 15, 1977, the Big Ear telescope– officially known as the Ohio State University Radio Observatory- recorded a surprisingly strong signal of non-terrestrial origin. At the time, the telescope was being utilized to search for signs of extraterrestrial life, a task that many large installations around the world had been occasionally involved in, with very little to show for the effort.
The observatory, located of of US 23 between Columbus and Delaware, had been working with SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) since 1973, after the installation had been deemed “defunct”. Equipment listening for frequencies would print out results on long sheets of paper, and while reviewing the data, the signal was first detected by astronomer Jerry Ehman at around 10:16PM. The readout featured the sequence 6EQEJ5, a combination that indicated frequency and signal intensity. The signal’s intensity was 30 standard deviations above normal background noise, and lasted for the full 72 seconds that the Big Ear was able to listen. Both the length and strength fell in line with expectations of what an alien signal would be like. Ehman was so shocked by it, that he circled the sequence and marked it with a “Wow!”, which is how the signal got its name.
The exact origin of the signal is even today unknown, but it was narrowed down to somewhere in the Sagittarius Constellation. Despite multiple attempts by the team at Big Ear, as well other other Earth-bound observatories to locate the signal again, they were unable to. This lack of repetition has meant that theories to its origin- either natural or otherwise- remain unconfirmed. Ehman himself was later skeptical of it actually coming from space and suggested it was signal from Earth that just happened to bounce off a satellite of some kind, but subsequent studies suggested this was highly unlikely.
For the next few decades, astronomers made multiple attempts to locate the signal again, but it was never heard again. To date, it remains one of the most mysterious space signals ever captured.
In 1997, the Big Ear ended all operations after 40 years of use. The following year, it was demolished to expand a golf course.
After a very long delay, the 2020 Census data has arrived! In this first series of related posts, we will compared Columbus to national peer and Midwest metro areas. Metros used here are those that were within 1.5-2.5 million in either 2010 or 2020, as well as Midwest metros of 500,000 or more in either 2010 or 2020, and all Ohio metros.
Total Population by Metro Area by Year Green metros moved up in the rankings 2010-2020 and red moved down.
Rank
2010
2020
1
Chicago: 9,461,105
Chicago: 9,618,502
2
Detroit: 4,296,250
Detroit: 4,392,041
3
Minneapolis: 3,346,859
Minneapolis: 3,690,261
4
St. Louis: 2,787,701
St. Louis: 2,820,253
5
Pittsburgh: 2,356,285
Orlando: 2,673,376
6
Charlotte: 2,243,960
Charlotte: 2,660,329
7
Portland: 2,226,009
San Antonio: 2,558,143
8
Sacramento: 2,149,127
Portland: 2,512,859
9
San Antonio: 2,142,508
Sacramento: 2,379,382
10
Cincinnati: 2,137,667
Pittsburgh: 2,370,930
11
Orlando: 2,134,411
Austin: 2,283,371
12
Cleveland: 2,077,240
Las Vegas: 2,265,461
13
Kansas City: 2,009,240
Cincinnati: 2,256,884
14
Las Vegas: 1,951,269
Kansas City: 2,192,035
15
Columbus: 1,901,974
Columbus: 2,138,926
16
Indianapolis: 1,887,877
Indianapolis: 2,111,040
17
San Jose: 1,836,911
Cleveland: 2,088,251
18
Austin: 1,716,289
San Jose: 2,000,251
19
Virginia Beach: 1,713,954
Nashville: 1,989,519
20
Nashville: 1,646,200
Virginia Beach: 1,799,674
21
Providence: 1,600,852
Providence: 1,676,579
22
Milwaukee: 1,555,908
Jacksonville: 1,605,848
23
Jacksonville: 1,345,596
Milwaukee: 1,574,731
24
Grand Rapids: 993,670
Grand Rapids: 1,087,592
25
Omaha: 865,350
Omaha: 967,604
26
Dayton: 799,232
Dayton: 809,248
27
Akron: 703,200
Des Moines: 707,915
28
Toledo: 651,429
Akron: 701,449
29
Wichita: 623,061
Madison: 670,447
30
Des Moines: 606,475
Wichita: 643,768
31
Madison: 605,435
Toledo: 641,549
32
Youngstown: 565,773
Lansing: 548,248
33
Lansing: 534,684
Youngstown: 531,420
34
Canton: 404,422
Canton: 396,669
Columbus largely held its own in the rankings this decade, but it poised to eventually pass a few of the metros currently ahead of it.
Columbus had the 2nd highest growth in the Midwest after Minneapolis, and is growing much faster than 3 metros currently ranked ahead of it- Cincinnati, Kansas City and Pittsburgh- which it will likely pass at some point in the future. For Cincinnati, for example, current growth rates would suggest Columbus will pass it sometime around 2027. In any event, Columbus’ metro growth was the highest in its history, and about 10,000 more than occurred during the 2000s.
Data related to metro components of growth, such as immigration and deaths vs. births, have yet to be released. Those should come out sometime next month, and will be posted here when they do.
