According to the US Census Bureau’s new population estimates, the fastest growing cities and municipalities between 2017-2018 occurred in the states of Arizona, Texas, Washington state and North Carolina. Phoenix jumped to the top of the Census Bureau’s list by adding 25,000 new residents and pushing the population of Arizona’s capital city to nearly 1.7M people.
Take a look at the other four fastest growing cities after Phoenix:
- San Antonio – +20,824 people
- Fort Worth – +19,552 people
- Seattle – _+15,354 people
- Charlotte – +13,151 people
In the order of population growth, the fastest growing cities in the South region of the country included:
- Austin TX
- Jacksonville FL
- Frisco TX
- McKinney TX
- Miami FL
Also in the order of population growth, the fastest growing cities in the West region of the country included:
- San Diego CA
- Denver CO
- Henderson NV
- Las Vegas NV
Columbus OH was the only Midwestern city on the Census Bureau’s top 15 list of fastest growing cities.
William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institute told National Public Radio, “…Phoenix is a good example of a city that is growing from a combination of immigration from abroad, domestic migration of seniors and old people from the north.”
Clearly, larger cities in all parts of the country are growing more slowly as the country’s population disperses to small cities, suburbs, and beyond. Frey said, “Among the 13 top growing cities…are Frisco and McKinney Texas, in suburban Dallas, and Henderson Nevada, in suburban Dallas. Each of these suburbs gained more people than Houston, Atlanta or Miami in this past year.”
The US Census Bureau also tracked the growth in housing units as well as population in this study. Its findings? A growth rate of +0.8% nation-wide save the following exceptions:
- Utah was the fastest growing state in terms of housing units with an increase of +2.2% between 2017-2018.
- Idaho had an increase of +1.9% in terms of housing units.
- Colorado and Texas each had an increase of +1.6% in terms of housing units.
- Texas, Florida, California and North Carolina all gained more than 50,000 housing units between 2017-2018.
One interesting sidebar to the US Census Bureau’s most recent estimates on population growth relate to the growth of African Americans moving to the South. Since 2000, the influx of African Americans to Charlotte and Mecklenburg County in North Carolina has ballooned by some 64%, according to the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance.
According to the US Census Bureau, nearly 3M non-Hispanic blacks are living in the state of Georgia, the largest population of African Americans for the first time since the 1950’s. And, Atlanta’s African American population is now second in terms of size to that of New York City’s.
Other cities in the South attracting large numbers of African Americans, according to David Harshbarger, the Director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institute, are Houston, Tallahassee and Columbia SC.
The attraction of all these cities? African Americans are coming to the South with higher levels of education and broader networks of connections for new jobs in the technology and finance industries.
