Census: Texas is the hot place to live!! (Dallas, Abilene: schools, universities)

[case44]

Originally Posted by bellestaroftexas

great to see Killeen-Ft Hood area as one of the top growing areas! i love it here! just the "right" size area-everything you need-but surrounded by SO much rural "totally Texas" country towns....and the beauty of all the hills/mountains surrounding me. my backyard view is breathtaking

It really is, belle. People just forget to divert onto U.S. 190 when traveling I-35. I've traveled 190 and it will surprise a lot of people. Killeen really has something going on.

[case44]

Originally Posted by JamesAbilene

I am glad to see that Abilene is beginning to grow again. I think the growth would be even greater if we had folks moving here to fill available jobs. There are help wanted signs all over town on hotels, restaurants, retail stores. Many are minimum wage, but even places like McDonalds have signs on the curb in front of them advertising that they will pay over minimum wage. Articles in the paper constantly state that we do not have enough people to fill the jobs that are here. Tige boats, which manufactures luxury boats, laid off 49 people last month. The employees were snapped up by other companies in town that are having trouble finding employees, according to the Abilene Reporter News. Our unemployment rate is very low. My guess is that we need more people, and they are moving other places instead. I wonder if that is true of some of the other slow growth areas?

Well, you'd think that, with two universities, they'd have students who will take notice of those things. It appears that Abilene needs that one major corporation that can bring jobs to the area and possibly help fill spots where needed. That, in turn, should bring new residents.

[NOTAM]

i have never understood why Corpus Christi hasnt done alot more to make their gulfcoast location attractive to residents and visitors. it's really sad. i lived 30 minutes from Corpus for a year, and every shopping trip or day trip i made to Corpus was unimpressive.

Originally Posted by Lucidus

What surprises me is that Wichita Falls and Corpus Christi are not experiencing more growth.

Wichita Falls is in North Texas, I would think it would benefit from the high growth rates there. Maybe it is just close enough to DFW to lose population to DFW but far enough away that it is outside of DFW's sphere of influence. Any other theories?

Corpus Christi is a coastal city and should be attractive to Hispanics. Most cities that are attractive to Hispanics are growing rapidly, I really don't know why Corpus seems to be missing out.

[shannon94]

Hot place to live!!! No pun intended??? lol Just kidding...this is great news.

[case44]

Originally Posted by shannon94

Hot place to live!!! No pun intended??? lol Just kidding...this is great news.

In a literal sense, also.....yes!

Truth is, most of the locations people are moving to are in the Sun Belt, and many right here in Texas. That's reason enough for us residents to be proud.

[JamesAbilene]

Originally Posted by case44

Well, you'd think that, with two universities, they'd have students who will take notice of those things. It appears that Abilene needs that one major corporation that can bring jobs to the area and possibly help fill spots where needed. That, in turn, should bring new residents.

I teach at one of the universities right now. I am afraid that most college kids would prefer to have their way paid or borrow money rather than work. I try to convince them to take some of these jobs so they won't end up with such a huge debt when they graduate. Just like I was when I was their age, they don't think that far into the future.

(By the way, we actually have seven colleges and universities at this time--eight if you count the two Tech campuses separately: Texas Tech School of Engineering, downtown; Texas Tech School of Pharmacy in the Hendrick Hospital District; Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene Christian University, McMurry University, Cisco Junior College/Abilene Campus with almost 4000 students--larger than the mother campus, Emery-Riddle University at Dyess Air Force Base, and Texas State Technical College-Abilene Branch.)

[SweethomeSanAntonio]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

I did think it was odd the article gave absolute ranking instead of percent, which to the average resident is more 'apparent', probably.

So Austin metro is 80% the size of the SA metro? SA always looks much bigger to me, probably all the nice highways .

I wonder what the average population growth in the US was last year...?

EDIT: Okay, it appears that the US growth rate is right aroun 0.9 percent, so if you subtract that out, you get the influx growth as oppose to the average growth in the country as a whole. the following Texas areas were 'shrinking' compared to the average US growth:

• Waco 0.8
• Lubbock 0.8
• Amarillo 0.8
• Beaumont-Port Arthur 0.5
• San Angelo 0.4
• Abilene 0.3
• Corpus Christi 0.2
• Wichita Falls -0.9

San Antonio urbanized area is much larger than Austin's, close to 600,000 people. Bexar county alone has more people than the Austin 5 county metro area.

[Stevie30]

It's interesting that so many of you are embracing all this hyper growth. Out here in California you'll hear practically every kind of complaint associated with growth,even Wal-Mart has a difficult time building out here.

When Texas starts experiencing all the problems from all this growth,I wonder where all the Californians living in Texas will start running to

[Lucidus]

Originally Posted by SweethomeSanAntonio

San Antonio urbanized area is much larger than Austin's, close to 600,000 people. Bexar county alone has more people than the Austin 5 county metro area.

This comes up every time I post census information. Just for the record I use the definitions of MSAs as given by the census bureau.

[hound 109]

Originally Posted by Stevie30

It's interesting that so many of you are embracing all this hyper growth. Out here in California you'll hear practically every kind of complaint associated with growth,even Wal-Mart has a difficult time building out here.

When Texas starts experiencing all the problems from all this growth,I wonder where all the Californians living in Texas will start running to

I'm scratching my head as well over these dubious "achievements".

- behind the curve infrastructure.
- gridlock.
- cr*p homes built by cr*p builders.
- perpetually higher taxes to pay for schools that the newcomers (in new cr*p homes) won't have to pay for for two years.
- paving over of perfectly nice pastureland.

Given the comments above, I think I need to look at greater Corpus.