One of the great "truths" of demographics in the past 50 years has been the outflow of people from cities and villages to more rural settings. In a phrase, it's referred to as "urban flight".
Oneida County has seen considerable evidence of this in census data. The table below shows the change in population for cities, villages and remainders of towns (ROTs)from 1960 until the most recent census in 2010. ROTs are basically the town populations minus the village populations.
As you can see, since the 1960 census, the cities in Oneida County have experienced a decline of more than a third (36%) of their population. Villages, while not losing nearly as great a percentage, have lost more than a tenth (13%). ROTs on the other hand have seen their populations increase by about 34% ! This despite an over all loss of population for the county as a whole since 1970.
As a result, town populations (that is to say the populations in the parts of towns NOT in villages) now exceeds city populations in the county, and has done so since the year 2000. While approximately 99,000 people now live in one of the three cities in Oneida County, nearly 110,000 live in the non-village portions of its towns.
Interestingly, the number of people (population = 109,197) living in the ROTs has remained the same since the Census 2000. And by the same I mean EXACTLY the same ! Could this be a sign of a change in this trend ? With no real way to know, we will have to wait for another 8 years until the 2020 census to get a better view of where this trend is heading locally.
