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Data Study · 7 min read

Who Lives Within 3 Miles of Downtown? Census Profiles of 25 Major US Cities

Published October 10, 2026 by the Demografics team

A 3-mile radius is one of the most common trade areas in retail site selection: wide enough to capture a neighborhood's everyday shopping trips, small enough that most customers are a short drive, transit ride or walk away. But a 3-mile circle around downtown means very different things in different cities. This study measures exactly what that circle contains in the principal city of each of the 25 largest US metropolitan areas.

The spread is wide. New York, NY has 965,199 residents within 3 miles of City Hall, about 15 times as many as Detroit, MI (66,046). The median city in the group has 190,393 residents in the same circle.

How we measured

We drew a 3-mile radius around City Hall in each city and combined US Census American Community Survey (ACS) 2018–2022 data for every census tract inside it. Each downtown is measured from City Hall at its street address. Miami is measured from the Stephen P. Clark Government Center (111 NW 1st St) because Miami City Hall sits in Coconut Grove, outside the downtown core.

Trade-area figures combine every 2020 census tract whose internal point lies inside the radius. Counts are summed; the median household income and median age of an area are household- and population-weighted averages of the tract medians, a standard approximation. ACS figures are survey estimates with margins of error, so small differences between places should not be over-read.

The 25 downtown trade areas

Income: the richest and poorest cores

The highest median household incomes within 3 miles of City Hall are in San Francisco, CA ($152,120), New York, NY ($135,675) and Washington, DC ($128,861). The lowest are in Detroit, MI ($42,056), San Antonio, TX ($44,326) and Phoenix, AZ ($55,779). Because these are medians of households living in the circle, they describe residents, not the office workers or visitors who come downtown during the day.

Renters dominate most downtowns

In all 25 cities, more than half of occupied homes within 3 miles of City Hall are rented. The highest renter shares are in Los Angeles, CA (87%), Detroit, MI (76%) and Miami, FL (75%); the lowest are in Orlando, FL (51%), Riverside, CA (52%) and Tampa, FL (53%). Renter-heavy areas tend to have more frequent household turnover, which matters for businesses that rely on new customers discovering them, such as phone stores, gyms and furniture retailers.

Age

The youngest downtown populations, by median age, are in Minneapolis, MN (31.2), Riverside, CA (31.3) and Boston, MA (32.5). The oldest are in Miami, FL (40.5), Detroit, MI (39.4) and San Francisco, CA (39.2).

Density

Population density within the 3-mile circle ranges from 34,137 residents per square mile in New York, NY to 2,336 in Detroit, MI. The five densest downtown circles are New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Boston. Density matters most for businesses that depend on walk-in trips, because it determines how many potential customers live within a short walk.

What downtown residents do for work

The ACS also records the industry each employed resident works in. Within 3 miles of City Hall, the largest industry is education & health care in 15 cities and professional, scientific & admin services in 10 cities.

What this means for site selection

• Do not assume a downtown is dense or affluent because the metro is large. The table shows large metros with modest core populations and smaller metros with very dense cores.
• Pair resident data with daytime activity. These figures count people who live in the circle; office districts can be busy during the day while having few residents.
• Compare the same radius everywhere. A 3-mile circle in one city can hold as many people as a 10-mile circle somewhere else, so match the radius to how your customers actually travel.
• Check the latest data for a specific address before committing. You can run the same analysis for any US address on Demografics.

Note: densities are residents divided by the area of the full circle, including water and parkland, so cities on a coastline or river show lower densities than their built-up neighborhoods actually have.

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2018–2022 (tables B01001, B01002, B01003, B11001, B19001, B19013, B25003, C24050).
• U.S. Census Bureau, TIGERweb 2020 census tract boundaries (used to find the tracts inside each trade radius).

More data studies

• 1, 3 or 5 Miles? How a Trade Radius Changes the Picture in 25 US Downtowns
• Is Downtown Richer or Poorer Than the Metro? Income in 25 US Cities Compared
• Where Young Adults Live: The 18–34 Share in the 50 Largest US Metros and 25 Downtowns
• Renters vs Owners: Housing Tenure in the 50 Largest US Metros and Their Downtowns