Center City has the second largest downtown residential population in the country, surpassing Chicago in 2015, and most walk to work.

[citation needed] In 2011, census data was released showing that Philadelphia had achieved its first confirmed population growth in 60 years.

It is attributed to a variety of factors, including increased immigration (especially from countries like India, South Korea and Mexico) and migration from more expensive cities in the Northeast Corridor.

[12][13][14] The ten-year tax abatement, a historically undervalued housing market, improvements to the waterfront, and continuing redevelopment throughout the city are thought[by whom?]

Prior to the 1820s, the overwhelming majority of German and German-speaking settlers in Philadelphia such as the Pennsylvania Dutch had belonged to Protestant sects.

By the 1840s, in response to the starvation and poverty that would lead to Great Famine of Ireland, a growing number of impoverished Irish Catholic immigrants began to settle in Philadelphia, leading to a rise in anti-Catholicism, nativism, and anti-Irish sentiment among the majority Protestant population in the city.

Like its other immigrant-magnet peers in the Northeast, starting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Philadelphia experienced an unprecedented heightened level of immigration.

Around this same time, an increasing number of African Americans from the Southern United States began to settle in Philadelphia during the Great Migration.

They remain an integral part of the city and a sizable swath of eastern North Philadelphia is considered to have the highest urban concentration of Puerto Ricans in the continental United States.

Recent immigrants from Asia are mainly of Indian, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Hmong, Filipino, Cambodian, Thai, Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds.

In addition, the Latino population continues to grow, as Dominican, Mexican, Colombian, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Cuban, Honduran and Brazilian immigrants.

[citation needed] Gentrification is altering the racial demographics of predominantly Black neighborhoods close to Center City.

The city's Middle Eastern population has tripled since 1990, with people of Palestinian, Turkish, Azeri, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Saudi, Syrian and Afghan backgrounds residing in Philadelphia.

Irish immigrants and the Irish Americans are associated in the North and Northeast Philadelphia neighborhoods, including Fishtown, Kensington, Mayfair, Frankford, Port Richmond, Holmesburg, Harrowgate, and Juniata, as well as Devil's Pocket, Whitman, Gray's Ferry, and particularly Pennsport in South Philadelphia.

The head of the Liberian Association of Pennsylvania, Samuel Slewion, said that as a result many African immigrants withdrew children from public schools.

As of 2010, there were 24,608 people of West Indian ancestry living in Philadelphia, representing about 1.6 percent of the city, the vast majority of which are Haitians and Jamaicans.

As of the 2010 census, there were 187,611 Latinos and Hispanics in Philadelphia, constituting over 12 percent of the city's population, the vast majority of which are Puerto Ricans.

[43] Most Philadelphia Hispanics self-identify as either White, Black, Mixed, or other, for government purposes i.e. United States Census.

Due to the Immigration Act of 1924 Puerto Ricans, who were already U.S. citizens, became the predominant Hispanic group and had taken control of the organizations by the 1950s.

Increases in Latino immigration and migration have fueled the growth of El Centro de Oro in Fairhill.

[47][57] Mexican immigrants have drastically changed the Italian area in South Philadelphia and have set up a small community in and around the market.

[46][51][59] The Asian American community has long been established in the city's bustling Chinatown district, but recent Vietnamese immigrants have also forged neighborhoods and bazaars alongside the venerable Italian market.

[67] Between 1982 and 1984, three quarters of the Hmong people who had settled in Philadelphia left for other cities in the United States to join relatives who were already there.

[68] Reverend Edward V. Avery, a Roman Catholic priest quoted in The Philadelphia Inquirer, stated that unemployed black youths questioned why Hmong people instead of native-born U.S. citizens received the federal aid, and that contributed to violence against Hmong people.

[74] There were also Korean restaurants in Upper Darby, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and in Montgomery County,[75] including in Blue Bell.

With immigration from the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, these two religions have increased their presence.

[80] According to several statistics, Philadelphia has surpassed Detroit and New York City to become the American metropolitan area with the highest proportion of Muslims.

There are pockets of Buddhists in Center City, Chinatown, Northeast Philly, and other neighborhoods with significant Asian American populations.

African diasporic religions are popular in Hispanic and Caribbean communities in North and West Philadelphia.

[83][84][85] [87] Languages spoken other than English and Spanish are Russian (5.1%), French (5.5%), Arabic (6.5%), Vietnamese (6.9%), Haitian Creole (8.3%), Chinese Mandarin (13.2%) and Portuguese.