Population Growth

The pollsters for the Bay Attitudes Survey, released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency, somehow missed me in randomly interviewing 2,004 of the 14 million people in the six-state Chesapeake watershed.I'd have given quite a different ranking of the bay's most serious pollutants than the one shown by the poll.Here's how the respondents rated nine pollution threats:Industry (74 percent ranked it among the most serious); Commercial shipping spills (70 percent); Recreational Boating (67)

During a stroll Thursday night from Little Italy to Harborplace, I bought jelly beans in The Best of Luck candy store, listened to a sidewalk trumpeter play the blues, noted several dead lights that left unappealing darkness along Pratt Street, and watched a Baltimore police officer train his flashlight into cars approaching the stop at Pratt and South, apparently looking for anyone not wearing a seat belt. He was the first cop I saw, and I guess his duty was in the cause of public safety, but I'd much rather have seen the man on foot patrol, strolling the sidewalks and Inner Harbor promenade with the rest of us. His presence certainly would have been appreciated 30 minutes later, when a squadron of eight skinny boys on bicycles decided to pop wheelies and fly along the brick walkway between the World Trade Center and the National Aquarium, oblivious (or maybe not)

A REPORT out of the U.S. Census Bureau last week stated that the number of residents in suburban Baltimore, including Carroll County, continued to grow during the past year. Not as rapidly as in previous years, but still increasing. Baltimore City, no surprise, again lost population.Carroll and Howard counties were percentage-gain leaders in population growth in the metro area last year, as they have been since the 1990 Census. During the decade, Carroll's population has risen by 21 percent, Howard's by 26 percent.

In 1776, there were an estimated 2.5 million folks living in the New Colonies. Today, there are 311 million individuals who must be included when we consider their needs and make laws. How is it that the Baltimore Sun editorial staff, the media, our politicians, experts and even the president rarely, if ever, addresses this profound condition? Population growth and its problems should be the first factor in any national logistics planning. Furthermore, do we have confidence that the framers of the Constitution could see into the future?

WHETHER IT'S smart growth or not, Carroll County is among the hottest growth spots in the state.Westminster ranks at the top of Maryland cities in population growth from 1990 to 1996. The county seat increased by 15.4 percent in that period.Rankings obviously change over time. Much of Westminster is built-out, so some other town will probably be atop the growth chart next time.No one is saying that Westminster attracted the largest number of new residents. That double-edged honor goes to nearby Frederick, which surpassed Rockville, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Dr. Young J. Kim, a Johns Hopkins research scientist who studied the dynamics of world population growth, was killed Thursday in an automobile accident at Dulaney Valley and Timonium roads. The Towson resident was 71. Born Young Ja Kang in Tokyo, the daughter of a Korean physician, she initially studied physics and earned a bachelor of science degree at Seoul National University. After moving to the United States in the 1960s, she received a master's degree from Indiana University. She and her husband, Chung W. Kim, moved to Baltimore in 1966 as he joined the Johns Hopkins University faculty and she earned a doctorate in biostatistics there.

UNITED NATIONS -- A new survey by the United Nations has found that the world's population is growing almost everywhere more slowly than expected even a few years ago. The study also found that the number of people being added to the world each year has begun to fall sooner than anticipated."

The number of minority residents in Maryland has grown more than three times as fast as the number of whites during the past decade, according to new data from the 1990 Census.Minority growth is due in part to a large influx of Asians, according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau yesterday. The state's Asian population has grown to more than 139,000, a 117 percent increase since 1980.The release of the detailed state census data signals the start of the process by which states and local governments draw new congressional and legislative districts.

Hispanics will overtake blacks in the year 2013 as the largest U.S. minority group, according to government projections being released today.The United States will become far more ethnically diverse in the 21st Century as white population growth slows, Latin American and Asian immigration remains high, and the younger minority population has more children than whites, the Census Bureau predicted.The new projections offer this portrait of the United States in the year 2050: a population of 383 million that is 53 percent white (excluding Hispanics)

Racial and ethnic minorities are fueling growth in the region's suburbs, most notably Baltimore and Howard counties, according to U.S. Census estimates released yesterday. In Baltimore County, as the non-Hispanic white population decreased by 1,285 between 2000 and last year, the number of black residents swelled by 18,175. The county's relatively small Asian and Hispanic communities also added new residents. Combined, the non-white population made up about 28 percent of Baltimore County's residents last year, up from 25 percent in 2000.

Predicting the future is dicey. Even the works of Nostradamus are vague and open to interpretation. Still, it doesn't take a seer like Nostradamus to look ahead in Harford County and realize the local public school system needs to overhaul its approach to building and maintaining schools, as a recent two-part series in the pp&t section of this newspaper made clear. The recent addition of Red Pump Elementary School to the county system substantially increased the elementary level capacity, which already was beyond what was needed given the local school-age population.

I'd love to see Baltimore grow, and if immigrants are the answer that's fine with me, as long as they're here legally ("Immigrants key to reaching mayor's population goal," Jan. 9). Yet no matter how hard the mayor tries to increase population, it will be meaningless unless there are good jobs. It's fine Elsa Garcia's husband found some construction work, but it doesn't sound like full-time employment to me. Why is no one suggesting a greater emphasis on vocational training in our schools?

If I drove around Baltimore long enough, I probably could find enough discarded wrapping blowing along the streets to wrap all our family's holiday gifts. In the best-case scenario, all this trash came out of someone's uncovered recycling bin; in the worst case, it's from someone unwrapping presents in a car or outside their home and throwing it in the street. In Baltimore, either of these is a possibility, and because of this and other uninviting features of city it will be hard to add 10,000 new residents over any period of time.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, inaugurated this week for her first full term, is making it her mission to increase Baltimore's population by 10,000 families during the next decade. It is a worthy framework for every decision she will be called on to make in the months and years ahead, as it serves as a quantifiable proxy for the central question of her leadership: Can she make Baltimore a better place? If you could wrap into one metric all the challenges of the city - crime, poor schools, drug abuse, high taxes, vacant property, unemployment, poverty, and so on - the population issue would be it. It is heartening to see Ms. Rawlings-Blake put an exact figure on her goal, one that would be historic - after all, Baltimore's population has been in decline, sometimes rapid, for more than half a century - and achievable.

It was heartening to read, just after Election Day, that Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced that she wants Baltimore's population to increase during the next four years. The mayor has given us very few clues up to now about long-term goals for the city, and population increase seems to be a good one. This is a reasonable and quite doable objective but, in itself, doesn't tell us much about the Baltimore of the future. Will the new population live in high-rises ringing every available foot of shoreline?

Former Baltimorean Greg Wise, who moved to York eight years ago to be closer to his aging parents, says he can easily identify new Maryland transplants who have joined him in the northern migration just across the Pennsylvania line. They're called "white-taggers," he said, because they have yet to change over to Pennsylvania license plates. He estimates that about one-fourth of those commuting south on Interstate 83 with him every morning still have Maryland tags. Long considered a Baltimore exurb, York County has seen its population swell 14 percent since 2000.

More people moved out of Howard County to nearby counties and states than moved in over the past few years, a trend that local and state planners think may be the result of sharply rising home prices earlier this decade. The total county population is still growing, though more slowly, according to a draft report by county planner Jeff Bronow. About two-thirds of the growth since 2000 is from births, while just over a quarter is from international migration, and 11.7 percent is from people moving into Howard.

Baltimore lost population yet again — that's what recent census data show. Some see this as a negative, but the Baltimore Community Foundation's response is just the opposite. The smallest population decline in 50 years is a clear and strong sign of progress. It suggests greater things to come and should inspire all who love the city to work together to create a bigger and better Baltimore. It takes time to reverse a city's decline. But the slowing population loss, coupled with many other positive changes, suggests that this can be the decade when the city's population begins to grow again, setting the stage for a comprehensive renaissance.

The writer of "Illegal immigrant disconnect" (Sept. 8) asserts that immigration is required in order to maintain growth in a developed society. My question is why do we want to grow? Is there a practical purpose to continue growing? If the economy requires population growth, we'll grow. We're in a period where our manufacturing base actually requires fewer workers, so why would we want to boost our population total? Do we really need more unemployed people in this country? Matt