(Updated, 10:45 a.m.)
PROVIDENCE – The city’s population shrank slightly from 2008 to 2009, continuing a six-year trend of residential decline in the state capital, according to figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Providence had a total of 171,909 residents as of July 1, 2009, the agency reported, or 64 fewer people than were living in the city a year earlier. (The figures are estimates and not based on the results of the decennial census, which is still being completed.)
Providence was the 137th-largest city in the United States last year, wedged between No. 136 Tallahassee, Fla., and No. 138 Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
Providence has lost 4,009 residents since its population hit a recent high of 175,918 in 2003. The city’s population reached its all-time peak of 253,504 residents back in 1940, according to Census records.
Over the last decade, Providence’s population decreased by an estimated 1 percent, or 1,712 people. Only 39 of the nation’s 276 largest cities lost more residents over that period, according to the Census Bureau.
Boston, the largest city in New England and the 20th-biggest in the U.S. by population, added 8,421 residents from 2008 to 2009, raising its total population to 645,169.
New York City remained the nation’s largest city by a huge margin last year, with an estimated 8.4 million residents as of last July, the Census Bureau said. Far behind New York were Los Angeles, with 3.8 million residents; Chicago, 2.9 million; Houston, 2.3 million; and Phoenix, 1.6 million.
Rhode Island’s population shrank for the sixth consecutive year from 2008 to 2009, falling 0.03 percent to 1,053,502, according to estimates released last December by the Census Bureau.
Additional information is available at census.gov.
This story has been revised to use Census Bureau figures for Providence’s all-time population peak.
