DC Population Growth

Another factoid from the recently released population estimates is that after decades of decline, Washington DC has posted a strong decade of population growth and is now just a tiny bit shy of the 600,000 mark—basically where it was twenty years ago:

Something I think the city could use is some kind of explicit population growth target. That might help structure people’s thinking about specific development issues. The city’s peak population came around 1950 when about 800,000 people lived here. And the population of the United States as a whole was only 150 million back then. Given that the national population has doubled since then and continues to grow, it seems to me that a District with aspirations should be hoping to see a over a million people living here a few decades hence. That’s the alternative to endless sprawl. But since modern-day people occupy more space than the people of sixty years ago, the only way to make that work is with a combination of taller buildings and with buildings that occupy a larger share of the lots they’re situated in.