NEW YORK’S POPULATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1070, 6 September 1930, Page 27

NEW YORK’S POPULATION

OVERHAULING LONDON BIG LEAP IN TEN YEARS “Over a million more people to “stamp out more of: the city’s charm and comfort.” Thus mourns the “New York Evening Post” over the “depressing news” that America’s metropolis has taken a mighty leap of 1,335,315, or 23 per cent., in ten years, the largest decennial jump in its history, running its total up to almost 7,090,000.

“New York does not need a ‘Watch I s Grow’ movement,” this paper declares. “On the contrary, it ought to launch a big ‘Stop Our Growth’ campaign.”

“A day of dwindling” * is indeed needed, echoes Heywood Broun, columnist of the “Telegram,” who takes this gloomy view of the city’s increase: “Two people standing on your feet in the subway where only one stood before; higher rents; higher prices; more honking of automobile horns; a greater litter cn the beaches and park lawns.” New York’s population, by actual count, is 6,955,363, according to the official census returns, but Health Commissioner Wynne predicts that, on the basis of its daily average gain of 357, the city will pass the seven million mark by August 10. This phenomenal growth “indicates that by the next census New York may he the largest city in the world,” forging ahead of London, says the “New York Herald Tribune,” which also tells us that this is the first census in which the city lias had four boroughs of one million population each. All the boroughs showed increases except Manhattan, which registered a loss of 18 pei- cent. Thus the trend toward converting Manhattan, the original New York, into a “workshop” and the other boroughs into “dormitories” shows a marked gain, observers point out. How the population has shifted in the last ten years is indicated by the following table:

Change per Borough 1930 1920 cent. Manhattan 1,856,439 2,284,103 —18.6 Brooklyn .. .. 2,596,153 2,018,356 4-28.6 The Bronx .. 1,266,784 732,016 -f72.9 Queens .. .. 1,079,407 469,042 +130.0 Richmond .. 156,630 116,531 +34.$ Total .. .. 6,955,363 5,680,048 +23.8 Those who nurse hopes that America eventually will boast of the world’s largest city will be interested in the following also from the “Herald Tribune”: “Second only to London for decades, New York may he expected to pass that city by 1940, if the two cities ! grow during this decade as they did ] in the last. “Greater London, which includes ! registration London and that part surrounding the city and known as “the outer ring,” had a population of 7,450,201 in 1921, as compared to New York’s population of 5,620,048 in 1920. j

Since those years London has had an annual average increase of 52,000, while New York's annual increase has been 133,531.

“Whereas the 1021 and 1920 figures showed that London had a population greater by 1.860,153 than that of New York, the 1930 population for this city and the 1927 population for London, the latest available* show that New York is but 840,990 behind the capital of the British Empire.

“Should London have had the same relative increase for 1927-30 as for the six preceding years, the population of that city this year would be around 7,900,000.”

Pursuing the comparison between the world’s two largest cities, the Providence “Journal” reminds us that “the seven and a-half million people of London live on a tract 693 square miles in extent, while New York's seven millions are contained within an area of only 290 square miles,” and “if we should set up a Greater New York on the London model we might easily include ten million inhabitants within a territory fairly characterised by that title.”