Density and rank

2010 — 2020

Mishawaka is a small city by count and a dense one by ground: At the 2010 census the city held 48,252 people on 17.00 square miles of land — 2,838.4 persons to the square mile — within a total area of 17.348 square miles, 0.348 of it water. At the 2020 census the Bureau's density figure is 2,856.8 persons to the square mile on the 51,063 counted. The area beneath those densities is itself carried in the sources with its vintages, and the Story of Mishawaka section prints the figures as they stand rather than reconciling them: the city's commissioned history gives 17.87 square miles, the 2010 gazetteer 17.348 in total, and the 2020 gazetteer figures carried in the reference record 18.25 in total — the differences of survey, annexation and water's edge across three measurements of a city whose limits still move by ordinance. On any of them, Mishawaka packs the population of a mid-sized Indiana city into the ground of a small one: it is denser than its county seat by the Bureau's own figures (South Bend's 2020 density stands near 2,464 to the square mile), because its growth was annexed close rather than spread.

The rank follows from the count. Among Indiana's incorporated places at the 2020 census, seventeen places counted more people than Mishawaka's 51,063 — Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville, South Bend, Carmel, Fishers, Bloomington, Hammond, Lafayette, Noblesville, Gary, Muncie, Terre Haute, Kokomo, Greenwood, Anderson and Elkhart — which makes Mishawaka the eighteenth-largest city in Indiana, computed from the census counts themselves; it is the second city of its own county, behind South Bend, and its metropolitan area, whose series the next entry prints, ranked 164th among the nation's metropolitan statistical areas at the 2020 census. The rank's history at full size — the city's standing census by census, in a state whose own city ranks turned over as the suburbs grew — was not pulled and is named in the note as a gap; the two modern points stand on the counts.

Sources:

1. U.S. Census Bureau — Census 2010 gazetteer and counts: total area 17.348 square miles, land 17.00, water 0.348; density 2,838.4 per square mile. QuickFacts, Mishawaka city — population per square mile, 2020: 2,856.8. The 17.87 and 18.25 square-mile figures as carried in the Story of Mishawaka section of this history (city-commissioned history; 2020 gazetteer via the reference record).
2. U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2020 — the Indiana place counts from which the rank of eighteenth is computed, the seventeen larger places named in the text; South Bend's density from its 2020 count and gazetteer area as published. Office of Management and Budget / Census Bureau metropolitan rankings — the South Bend–Mishawaka MSA as 164th largest at the 2020 census, as carried in the standard reference record.