The U.S. Census Bureau released a beautiful thing recently – a report of the urbanization processes in America. And, more importantly, it comes with LOTS of beautiful chloropeth maps to make any geographer or social scientist excited.

I wanted to share some interesting maps (and please note, they are all chopped directly out of the above-linked PDF) and some commentary on them. For those waiting for an update on my MOOC experience, I will be posting about that later this week.

First, America, as a country is growing roughly at a rate of around 10% (per decade). It’s pretty clear what the recent trends are.

The growth is spread rather evenly across larger cities – and not so much around the smaller cities.

Katrina’s toll is noted…

And there are clear patterns of suburbanization, but also some CBD growth in the next few maps:

And last, the country is changing demographically rather dramatically.