Texas continues to attract new residents from across the country and elsewhere. New data from the U.S. Census Bureau supports projections that the state’s population will double by the year 2050.
The study reflects population growth between the years 2010 and 2014. Over that time, the population of Texas grew by 1.8 million people or by 7 percent. Suburban growth outpaced that of major metropolitan areas.
In fact, the in-fill between Austin and San Antonio is an area that some are calling the “new DFW” — with consistent year-over-year growth in corridor towns like New Braunfels and San Marcos, which was ranked nationally as the fastest-growing city in the nation for the third year in a row.
One official said Austin and San Antonio are two separate metro statistical areas, but they will soon be linked in such a way that people may not realize when they’ve left one and entered the other.
Austin is the nation’s fastest-growing “big” city, that is, cities with a population of more than 500,000, with a just under 16 percent increase over that four-year period. The much smaller, college town of San Marcos grew at almost double Austin's rate, at more than 31 percent.
While Austin, with a population of just more than 900,000 was the nation’s No. 1 city in terms of growth rates for cities of 500,000-plus, Texas also had two other cities in the top 10: Fort Worth (No. 5, 9.58 percent), San Antonio (No. 7, 8.23 percent).
Three Texas cities, San Antonio (No. 7), Houston (No. 4), and Dallas (No. 9), also made it to the list of the country’s largest cities — those with a population of more than 1 million. San Antonio, the only city that made it to both lists, grew its population 1.8 percent from 2013 to 2014, the highest percentage growth among any of the 1 million-plus range in one year.
