The Most & the Least

Fascinating tidbits from the Census Bureau's 1962 County and City Data Book (705 pp.; $5-25):

> MOST DENSELY POPULATED CITY: Union City, N.J., with 40,138 people per sq. mi. Next: Hoboken, N.J. with 37,262. New York City has only 24,697--although one of its boroughs, Manhattan, jams 77,195 into each square mile.

> LEAST DENSELY POPULATED CITY: Hilo, Hawaii, with 89 per sq. mi. Next: Oak Ridge. Tenn., with 316.

> WEALTHIEST CITY: Shaker Heights (pop. 36,460), near Cleveland, with a median family annual income* of $13,933. Second: suburban Wilmette, on the North Shore near Chicago, at $13,661.

> POOREST CITY: Laredo, Texas (pop. 60,678), with a median of $2,935 a year.

> HIGHEST HOME RENTALS : Shaker Heights, with a median of $168 a month. Also-rans: Chicago at $88, Los Angeles at $78, New York at $73.

> COSTLIEST CITY FOR HOME PURCHASE: Beverly Hills, Calif., with a median of more than $35,000. Runners up: Wilmette, $33.000, and Miami Beach, $32,600. The nation's biggest cities are far down on the list: Chicago, $18,000; Los Angeles, $17,300; New York $17,000.

> COSTLIEST COUNTY FOR HOME PURCHASE : New York's suburban Westchester County, $24,000.

> CITY WITH OLDEST CITIZENS : St. Petersburg, Fla., a famed retirement haven, with a median age of 47.3 years.

> CITY WITH YOUNGEST CITIZENS : Bloomington, a Minneapolis suburb, which has so many babies that the median age is an incredible 19.6 years.

> MOST AIR CONDITIONERS: Prairie Village, a suburb across the Kansas line from Kansas City, Mo., where 68.2% of the homes have units.

> MOST TELEVISION SETS: Skokie, Ill., where 99.5% of all homes have sets.

> COUNTY WITH THE MOST-EDUCATED ADULT POPULATION: Los Alamos, N. Mex., the atomic research center, where the average adult has 12.9 years of schooling.

> CITY WITH THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF COLLEGE GRADUATES: Ann Arbor, Mich., 38.7%.

>FASTEST-GROWING CITY: Warren, Mich., where a General Motors technical center helped push the population from 727 in 1950 to 89,246 in 1960.

> FASTEST-GROWING COUNTY: Brevard County, Fla., home of Cape Canaveral and its rocket pads, which jumped from 23,653 to 111,435 between 1950 and 1960.

> CITY WITH HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF NONWHITES: Hilo, Hawaii, with 79.5%. In the continental U.S., Bessemer, Ala., leads with 57.5%.

>INCIDENTAL MOSTS : Los Angeles has more land (454.8 sq. mi.) than any other city. It also has more gas stations (2,961) and more hotels and motels (1,163, as against New York's 737 and Chicago's 727). In the Los Angeles suburb of West Covina, 54.8% of the families own two cars, more than anywhere else. But New York has more bars and restaurants--17,164--as against 8,941 for Chicago and 5,551 for Los Angeles.

*The median is the middle figure in a series of statistics. In dealing with population, for example, it means that an equal number of people or families fall above or below the cited figure. The city figures are limited to incorporated cities with at least 25,000 residents.

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