Remember this
dumb population forecast by an LSU researcher which projected Orleans parish to gain only
15,000 people over the next 20 years, and forecasted New Orleans' 2030 population to be only 275,000? Really hard to believe.
Bayoustjohndavid spelled out some of the potential implications of that questionable and suspicious study.
Last week the
U.S. Census estimate for New Orleans was released:
Orleans continued a strong growth rate with an 8.2 percent increase compared with the 2007 estimate, for a 2008 total of 311,000 residents.
I guess the demographers up in Baton Rouge will have to adjust their numbers a bit. N.O. gained more in one year than it was supposed to gain in the next 20.
And, yes, I'll give credit to Mayor Nagin and Police Chief Riley, who have been using rosy population numbers for a while now that, in retrospect, weren't as wildly optimistic as many people assumed.
Labels: Nagin, Riley, science
3 Comments:
Shouldn't you have to wait 20 years before you can tell whether they were wrong or not?
Good for y'all. Now N'awlins can use all those special laws that apply to parishes with a population of over 250,000.
Seriously, all snark aside, good for New Orleans.
I'd argue that the 2008 numbers are low, too (just as the 2007 numbers were). You can't use traditional measurement methods here... the immigration population is too large and undiscovered, the movement of people in and out draws a fine line between intent and abandonment, and the politic of what, who, and how many is so convoluted that it can't be readily trusted. AND the people who are most able to do the best job in the work (i.e.: the researchers living here) are regularly denied research dollars to do so BECAUSE we live here (hence, the money goes to researchers in Boston or Ann Arbor or Chapel Hill).
Okay, that last part was a frustrated aside. But still. Point remains: the numbers are lower than the reality and the folks best poised to give accurate accounts aren't necessarily the ones holding the strings.
