This data set includes cities in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These cities were collected from the 1970 National Atlas of the United States. Where applicable, U.S. Census Bureau codes for named populated places were associated with each name to allow additional information to be attached. The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) was also used as a source for additional information. This is a revised version of the December, 2003, data set.

This layer is sourced from maps.bts.dot.gov.

How many incorporated places are registered in the U.S.?

There were 19,502 incorporated places registered in the United States as of July 31, 2019. 16,410 had a population under 10,000 while, in contrast, only 10 cities had a population of one million or more.

Small-town America

Suffice it to say, almost nothing is more idealized in the American imagination than small-town America. When asked where they would prefer to live, 30 percent of Americans reported that they would prefer to live in a small town. Americans tend to prefer small-town living due to a perceived slower pace of life, close-knit communities, and a more affordable cost of living when compared to large cities.

An increasing population

Despite a preference for small-town life, metropolitan areas in the U.S. still see high population figures, with the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago metro areas being the most populous in the country. Metro and state populations are projected to increase by 2040, so while some may move to small towns to escape city living, those small towns may become more crowded in the upcoming decades.

A dataset listing Louisiana cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Virginia cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Colorado cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Georgia cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing New York cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Massachusetts cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Wisconsin cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Oregon cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Indiana cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Washington cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing New Mexico cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Maine cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Utah cities by population for 2024.

Not surprisingly, the capital of the Netherlands is also its largest city. At around *******, Amsterdam has over ******* inhabitants more than the second-largest city in the country, Rotterdam. The Hague and Utrecht, the third and fourth-largest cities in the Netherlands, together have approximately as many inhabitants as Amsterdam alone. Amsterdam and the pressure on the housing market A rapidly growing city, Amsterdam’s population increased from roughly ***** thousand to around ***** thousand in the last decade. This has created pressure on the real estate market, where average rent and housing prices have skyrocketed. In the first quarter of 2010, the average rent of residential property amounted to roughly ***** euros per square meter. In the first quarter of 2021, this had increased to over ***** euros per square meter.  2030 Outlook  In the nearby future, Amsterdam is set to remain the Netherlands’ largest city. According to a recent forecast, by 2030 Amsterdam will have broken the barrier of one million inhabitants. Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht are forecast to grow too, albeit at a much lower pace. In 2030, Rotterdam is expected to reach just under ******* inhabitants.

A dataset listing Mississippi cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Iowa cities by population for 2024.

In 2022, in terms of population, the biggest cities or municipalities in Belgium were Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, and Brussels. The Flemish cities of Antwerp and Ghent were the most populated in Belgium in 2022. From a regional perspective, out of the 6.8 million people living in Flanders, around 800,000 people lived in one of these two cities. However, the region of Wallonia also had large cities such as Charleroi and Liège. For instance, both cities registered around 200,000 inhabitants each. To put all these numbers into perspective, Belgium’s population amounted to 11.6 million in 2022.

Belgium’s capital city: Brussels

Surprisingly, the Belgian capital, Brussels, was not on top of the list. The reason for this is in the way the city’s population is measured. Brussels is made of 19 municipalities. In this ranking, for instance, only three of them are listed: Brussels City, Schaerbeek, and Anderlecht. These 19 municipalities form the heart of the agglomeration of Brussels which counts 36 municipalities in total and is also known as “le Grand Bruxelles”. In 2019, over a million people were living in this Brussels-Capital Region. The agglomeration of Brussels is the most populated in the country, it is bigger than the agglomeration of Antwerp. Yet in terms of municipalities, Antwerp was the most populated in Belgium in 2020.

Belgium’s five big agglomerations

Belgium faced a population growth of 0.58 percent in 2020. The country counts five big agglomerations: Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, and Liège. Although the notion of agglomeration is very fluid and disputed, each of these five agglomerations represents a significant part of the population. For some, agglomerations are defined by the continuity of constructions. For others, they are defined by the sense of an urban entity shared by a living community. Nonetheless, the definition of an agglomeration in Belgium corresponds to the European rules. These rules fix the technical specifications regarding the population and housing census. An agglomeration is, therefore, a group of municipalities which includes a continuously built-up zone with no cut of more than 200 meters between two constructions.

Motivation

In the United States, city governments provide many services: they run public school districts, administer certain welfare and health programs, build roads and manage airports, provide police and fire protection, inspect buildings, and often run water and utility systems. Cities also get revenues through certain local taxes, various fees and permit costs, sale of property, and through the fees they charge for the utilities they run.

It would be interesting to compare all these expenses and revenues across cities and over time, but also quite difficult. Cities share many of these service responsibilities with other government agencies: in one particular city, some roads may be maintained by the state government, some law enforcement provided by the county sheriff, some schools run by independent school districts with their own tax revenue, and some utilities run by special independent utility districts. These governmental structures vary greatly by state and by individual city. It would be hard to make a fair comparison without taking into account all these differences.

This dataset takes into account all those differences. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy produces what they call “Fiscally Standardized Cities” (FiSCs), aggregating all services provided to city residents regardless of how they may be divided up by different government agencies and jurisdictions. Using this, we can study city expenses and revenues, and how the proportions of different costs vary over time.

Data

The dataset tracks over 200 American cities between 1977 and 2020. Each row represents one city for one year. Revenue and expenditures are broken down into more than 120 categories.

Values are available for FiSCs and also for the entities that make it up: the city, the county, independent school districts, and any special districts, such as utility districts. There are hence five versions of each variable, with suffixes indicating the entity. For example, taxes gives the FiSC’s tax revenue, while taxes_city, taxes_cnty, taxes_schl, and taxes_spec break it down for the city, county, school districts, and special districts.

The values are organized hierarchically. For example, taxes is the sum of tax_property (property taxes), tax_sales_general (sales taxes), tax_income (income tax), and tax_other (other taxes). And tax_income is itself the sum of tax_income_indiv (individual income tax) and tax_income_corp (corporate income tax) subcategories.

Variable Description

• year Year for these values
• city_name Name of the city, such as “AK: Anchorage”, where “AK” is the standard two-letter abbreviation for Alaska
• city_population Estimated city population, based on Census data
• county_name Name of the county the city is in
• county_population Estimated county population, based on Census data
• cpi Consumer Price Index for this year, scaled so that 2020 is 1.
• relationship_city_school Type of school district. 1: City-wide independent school district that serves the entire city. 2: County-wide independent school district that serves the entire county. 3: One or more independent school districts whose boundaries extend beyond the city. 4: School district run by or dependent on the city. 5: School district run by or dependent on the county.
• enrollment Estimated number of public school students living in the city.
• districts_in_city Estimated number of school districts in the city.
• consolidated_govt Whether the city has a consolidated city-county government (1 = yes, 0 = no). For example, Philadelphia’s city and county government are the same entity; they are not separate governments.
• id2_city 12-digit city identifier, from the Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances
• id2_county 12-digit county identifier
• city_types Two types: core and legacy. There are 150 core cities, “including the two largest cities in each state, plus all cities with populations of 150,000+ in 1980 and 200,000+ in 2010”. Legacy cities include “95 cities with population declines of at least 20 percent from their peak, poverty rates exceeding the national average, and a peak population of at least 50,000”. Some cities are both (denoted “core

The revenue and expenses variables are described in this detailed table. Further documentation is available on the FiSC Database website, linked in References below.

All monetary data is already adjusted for inflation, and is given in terms of 2020 US dollars per capita. The Consumer Price Index is provided for each year if you prefer to use numbers not adjusted for inflation, scaled so that 2020 is 1; simply divide each value by the CPI to get the value in that year’s nominal dollars. The total population is also provided if you want total values instead of per-capita values.

Questions

• Do some exploratory data analysis. Are there any outlying cities? Any interesting trends and rela...