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1950s — 2020
Most arguments about Fort Wayne's size are arguments about which Fort Wayne is being counted: The metropolitan statistical area is a federal definition, revised by the Office of Management and Budget, and Fort Wayne's has been drawn three ways. When the metropolitan program reached Fort Wayne in the 1950s, the Fort Wayne SMSA was Allen County alone — the Allen County Plan Commission's 1968 transportation study states the definition flatly: "the Fort Wayne Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) which is defined as Allen County." On that definition the metro and the county were the same number, 232,196 in 1960. The definition then widened as commuting spread: by the 2000 census the Fort Wayne MSA comprised six counties — Adams, Allen, DeKalb, Huntington, Wells and Whitley — and counted 502,141 people. In June 2003 the OMB's redefinition cut the metro back to three counties, Allen, Wells and Whitley; Adams, DeKalb and Huntington became micropolitan statistical areas of their own (Decatur, Auburn and Huntington), and with the Kendallville and Angola micropolitan areas they join the metro in the wider Fort Wayne–Huntington–Auburn Combined Statistical Area.
On the present three-county definition, the metro counted 389,864 at the 2000 census (the sum of its three counties' census counts), 416,257 in 2010 and 447,781 in 2020, while the eight-county Combined Statistical Area counted 645,409 in 2020. The Exports section's metro figures — $1.8 billion of goods exports in 2024 — are measured on this same Allen, Wells and Whitley definition. The rule for reading any Fort Wayne population figure in the wild follows from the history: a figure near 264,000 is the city at the 2020 census; near 385,000, the county; near 448,000, the three-county metro; near 502,000, the abolished six-county metro of 2000; and near 645,000, the combined statistical area. Each is a true number for its ground, and none of them may be substituted for another.
Sources:
- Allen County Plan Commission, Fort Wayne – New Haven – Allen County Area Transportation Study: Forecast of Economic Activity (June 1968) — the SMSA defined as Allen County.
- U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000 — the six-county Fort Wayne MSA at 502,141, as carried in the Citilink Transit Development Plan's demographics chapter (Indiana Business Research Center figures).
- Matt Kinghorn (Indiana Business Research Center), "The Fort Wayne Metro Area," In Context, November/December 2004 — the 2003 redefinition, the three counties lost, and the combined statistical area's composition.
- U.S. Census Bureau, censuses of 2010 and 2020 — Allen, Wells and Whitley county counts (2010: 355,329 + 27,636 + 33,292 = 416,257, agreeing with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Fort Wayne housing-market analysis; 2020: 385,410 + 28,180 + 34,191 = 447,781); CSA population 645,409 at the 2020 census.