DECATUR, Ill. — The last three census counts brought bitter confirmation of what Decatur residents could already see for themselves, after the factories cut shifts and the neighbors moved away. Their city, whose welcome sign boasts of being the original home of the Chicago Bears, was shrinking.

But ahead of this year’s official head count, Decatur officials are trying a new way to boost their numbers: If people won’t move to Decatur — where downtown coffee shops are nestled amid mid-rise buildings, factories are hiring again and the area’s first Chipotle just opened — Decatur will move to them.

Over the last year, the City Council pushed Decatur’s boundaries outward, annexing hundreds of properties despite vehement objections from new residents whose spacious houses and half-acre lots contrast sharply with the smaller, aging homes in neighborhoods closer to downtown.

The annexation drive in Decatur, where the population in the latest federal estimate was just over 71,000, down from 94,000 in 1980, is part of a once-a-decade land rush across the country. Ahead of a 2020 census that will shape government budgets for the next 10 years, officials in cities in Wyoming, Arizona, Alabama and elsewhere pitched plans to broaden their borders.