By Mike Swift
Mercury News
Article Launched: 05/01/2008 10:47:37 AM PDT
So close . . .
San Jose is within a few subdivisions of being mentioned in the same breath as Mbuji-Mayi, Xinyang, Shiraz, Semarang - cities in the Congo, China, Iran, Indonesia and Costa Rica - on the United Nations' list of 382 urban areas with 1 million people.
The California Department of Finance today reported San Jose's population at 989,496 as of Jan. 1, 2008 - a whisker shy of seven digits. Nine U.S. cities, including only Los Angeles and San Diego in California, have populations of more than 1 million people.
Despite the housing apocalypse and the growing likelihood of a national recession, San Jose had another strong year of population growth, up 1.8 percent, or 17,306 people, since 2007. With the city in the midst of annexing a number of unincorporated "islands" of land, San Jose seemed capable of breaking the 1 million barrier this year . . .
. . .but not quite.
If just slightly more than the graduate student population at Stanford University, or a little over half the fans at a Sharks game, were to relocate to San Jose, we would have made it.
Despite falling just short of the Big M, San Jose still has more breathing souls than the the whole states of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, Delaware, Montana and each of the Dakotas. And while drivers who have to endure the crush of rush hour traffic may not be too excited about San Jose passing 1 million inhabitants, the prospect does excite demographers.
"It's a million!" said Hans
Johnson, of with the Public Policy Institute of California, which is based in San Francisco, San Jose's plucky little neighbor (Pop. 824,525) to the north.
"It's just another number, but then again, it's not. All the time you see lists of cities that have a million or more people. San Jose is going to be on that list now."
But um...not til next year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information about the state's census report, see www.dof.ca.gov/research/demographic/reports/estimates/e-1_2006-07/