The One-Minute Geographer: Our Shifting Metropolitan Population

Downtown Beckley, West Virginia. Photo from wvnstv.com

Between 2010 and 2020, the total US population grew from 309 million people to 331 million, an increase of 7.4%.

Much of this growth was in the nation’s 384 officially designated metropolitan areas. (I’ll call them metros.) Now, 86% of Americans live in these 384 metros, an increase of 1% since 2010.