From Edgar Allan Poe to Ta-Nehisi Coates to John Waters, Baltimore is the birthplace of a slew of famous artists of all kinds, all of them originals. Indeed, Baltimore is full of quirky things to do and see, including a tattoo museum, live pig races every October and a statue honoring musician Frank Zappa.
Whether they’re coming for the quirkiness or something else, the Baltimore metro area is growing, adding more than 5,000 new residents between July 2015 and July 2016, according to the latest census data. During that time, the metro population went from 2,793,837 to 2,798,886 a .2 percent increase.
The population of the city of Baltimore shrank slightly in that time, going from 621,402 to 614,664, a 1.1 percent decrease. However, according to another census study, one conducted over five years from 2011 to 2015, the city attracted 35,603 domestic movers in that five-year span of time. (Unlike most places in the U.S., Baltimore is not part of any county. Rather, it’s an “independent city,” but the census still collects data on it.)
So where are all those people coming from?
The census data gives us a pretty good idea. The majority, 61 percent, of people moving to Baltimore came from elsewhere in Maryland, many from nearby Baltimore County. The other 39 percent of new Baltimoreans arrived from elsewhere in the U.S.
Below are rankings for the top five counties of origin for movers to the city of Baltimore:
Movers outside of Maryland:
1. District of Columbia
2. New York County, NY (Manhattan)
3. Philadelphia County, PA
4. Kings County, NY (Brooklyn)
5. Los Angeles County, CA
Movers from Maryland:
1. Baltimore County (separate from the city of Baltimore)
2. Anne Arundel County
3. Prince George’s County
4. Howard County
5. Montgomery County
Above are the top places inside Maryland that people moved to the city of Baltimore from over the five-year period 2011-2015. Numbers represent the number of movers from that place during the period.
Sources: Visit Baltimore, http://baltimore.org and http://baltimore.org/list/quirky-baltimore
Maryland Manual On-line http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/36loc/bcity/html/bcity.html
U.S. Census Bureau
