The State Data Center of Iowa’s website was redesigned just in time for release of the 2010 census data. The new site is completely dynamic without a single directly downloadable PDF or Excel file in sight. It does not seem to provide a way to get a simple table: A listing of Iowa’s cities in descending order by population, WITH a ranking, and NOT including Census Designated Places.
So I made one.
The 2010 census page is one of the last static pages on the old site. This is where the original files came from. I could explain the process, but the end result is what matters:
Iowa city population and rankings, in ranked order, 2010 (PDF)
Iowa county population and rankings, in ranked order, 2010 (PDF)
For data going back past 2000, the State Data Center is maintaining those files, at least for now:
Rankings from 2000 going back to 1850 (PDF)
Root page for multiple statistical compilations for cities
(This new site hasn’t even begun to sit upright, let alone crawl or walk, but if I’m going to put up link bait, this is a good place to start.)