Lots of publicity in urban planning blogs about the fact that some older cities are still losing population even in the 2000s. For example, the post below discusses St. Louis:
http://nextstl.com/urban-living/the-exodus-continues-city-of-st-louis-loses-29k-residents-2000-2010
But in the blog there's a chart showing which census tracts in the city gained and lost population.
Big winners: the most urban parts of St. Louis. St. Louis's once-desolate downtown gained population in huge numbers, and near-downtown areas like Soulard, Lafayette Square and the Central West End gained population.
The losers? The bad neighborhoods on the North Side and the more pseudo-suburban areas in the South Side.
So what does this tell me? That even in St. Louis, a city that has lost population faster than Detroit over the past few decades, the MOST urban areas are gaining.
Even in St. Louis, people want to live in the city in greater numbers each year, as long as the environment is fairly city-like (i.e. downtown or close to it). The only thing that hasn't happened is that gentrification hasn't trickled down to the less urban neighborhoods further out.
