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As the title states. Which would be first? What would be the possible affects to increase the growth potential?
Ex: Economy, education, global warming, merging cities/counties, etc.
Denver and Minneapolis are really close. Both cities should surpass 4-5 mil by 2050.
Long list of cities:
Austin
Nashville
Birmingham
Tampa
Orlando
Jacksonville
Charlotte
Raleigh-Durham
Richmond
Indianapolis
Cleveland
Columbus
Cincinnati
Louisville
Minneapolis-St Paul
Milwaukee
San Antonio
Salt Lake City
Little Rock
Charleston
New Orleans
Memphis
St.Louis
Kansas City
Des Moines
Denver
Las Vegas
Fresno
San Diego
Pittsburgh
Anchorage
Providence
Hartford
Buffalo
Green Bay
Grand Rapids
Jackson
Ok City
Portland
Austin: The fact that it is in a state of 30 million people and moving intra-state is pretty easy as many college students do when they move to Austin from other population centers across Texas. Same is true of both young adults and young families. Austin and all of the major Texas cities also have very different specialized economies from each other, which makes any of them a draw for certain careers and professions without the other cities getting in the way of that. This leads to a pretty large catchment area as a result and having a very strong job market helps retain many of those college graduates in their post-college lives.
It also helps that Austin's cache has gone well beyond it's state and in many instances beyond it's country. Among the group of cities that you've listed Austin gets the most immigrants of them all (save for Orlando). It's also an incredibly young city demographically, one of the youngest metropolitan areas in the United States by median age. So the fertility rate and replacement level population change is an advantage there. In addition to it being a migration hotspot nationally.
What could impede on that growth later on is whether or not the area builds enough housing to keep pace with demand and to level out the exponentially drastic increase in the cost of living. Infrastructure, especially creating alternatives to the road for transport are also key to alleviating the region from many of the traffic and congestion issues it currently faces. There is presently a plan in place and underway to build a light rail subway system to alleviate the traffic and congestion in key choke points right now but that wont be complete until later on this decade.
That said with the drop of fertility rates in the U.S., aging population of the U.S., and now the lack of mass scale immigration in the U.S. I am very hard pressed to say that any of these places will be reaching 4-5 million people if they were projected to do so previously. We now live in a new reality of slower growth in the U.S. and we have to adjust our expectations to that accordingly. Greater Austin has had the highest level of population growth in the country for two decades now, even post-COVID. So I would imagine that would pencil it in as one of the most likely candidates to reach this threshold, if any of these places ever actually do that.
Some of the other areas you listed have the advantage of presently being larger but Austin's 3 fold growth metrics (domestic migration, immigration, and natural increase) are the most stable and robust amongst this group of cities by a very sizable margin. The metropolitan area addressing it's weaknesses will eventually tell us whether or not it can reach the population threshold that is being discussed here. Also by CSA Orlando has already crossed the 4 million mark. Everywhere else it depends on whether or not they can sustain their growth metrics long enough to do so or if they go through consolidation of additional counties to push them past this threshold. We will see over time.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 08-04-2022 at 04:37 PM..
Austin: The fact that it is in a state of 30 million people and moving intra-state is pretty easy as many college students do when they move to Austin from other population centers across Texas. Same is true of both young adults and young families. Austin and all of the major Texas cities also have very different specialized economies from each other, which makes any of them a draw for certain careers and professions without the other cities getting in the way of that. This leads to a pretty large catchment area as a result and having a very strong job market helps retain many of those college graduates in their post-college lives.
It also helps that Austin's cache has gone well beyond it's state and in many instances beyond it's country. Among the group of cities that you've listed Austin gets the most immigrants of them all (save for Orlando). It's also an incredibly young city demographically, one of the youngest metropolitan areas in the United States by median age. So the fertility rate and replacement level population change is an advantage there. In addition to it being a migration hotspot nationally.
What could impede on that growth later on is whether or not the area builds enough housing to keep pace with demand and to level out the exponentially drastic increase in the cost of living. Infrastructure, especially creating alternatives to the road for transport are also key to alleviating the region from many of the traffic and congestion issues it currently faces. There is presently a plan in place and underway to build a light rail subway system to alleviate the traffic and congestion in key choke points right now but that wont be complete until later on this decade.
That said with the drop of fertility rates in the U.S., aging population of the U.S., and now the lack of mass scale immigration in the U.S. I am very hard pressed to say that any of these places will be reaching 4-5 million people if they were projected to do so previously. We now live in a new reality of slower growth in the U.S. and we have to adjust our expectations to that accordingly. Greater Austin has had the highest level of population growth in the country for two decades now, even post-COVID. So I would imagine that would pencil it in as one of the most likely candidates to reach this threshold, if any of these places ever actually do that.
Some of the other areas you listed have the advantage of presently being larger but Austin's 3 fold growth metrics (domestic migration, immigration, and natural increase) are the most stable and robust amongst this group of cities by a very sizable margin. The metropolitan area addressing it's weaknesses will eventually tell us whether or not it can reach the population threshold that is being discussed here. Also by CSA Orlando has already crossed the 4 million mark. Everywhere else it depends on whether or not they can sustain their growth metrics long enough to do so or if they go through consolidation of additional counties to push them past this threshold. We will see over time.
To believe this, you need to believe that Austin will add 1.7 million people to its MSA faster than San Diego will add about 600,000 or Minneapolis 300,000. Both Minneapolis and San Diego already have a fully realized mass transit system in place.
Orlando will probably be the biggest city on this list in 2050. It’s had the highest growth rate of any metro since the 1970s and it has a lot of tailwinds being in Florida. Moreover, unlike other Florida cities it can continue to expand in all directions.
I think that NC will be the next state to have two 4 million plus metros with the ridiculous growth.....
Yeah, if I had to make a wager, I'd bet on Austin, Raleigh and Charlotte in the long game. Population growth trends change, but these areas have been growing consistently over time, and the fundamentals are strong. It's going to take longer to get there than for cities in the past, but lots of things are possible. Atlanta had a metro population of 1.6 million in 1980/40 so years ago. At the nexus of corporate preference, quality of life, desirability, and sheer inertia, I can definitely see Charlotte, in particular, having a similar trajectory over time.
To believe this, you need to believe that Austin will add 1.7 million people to its MSA faster than San Diego will add about 600,000 or Minneapolis 300,000. Both Minneapolis and San Diego already have a fully realized mass transit system in place.
Well there are lots of issues for America to sort out before anything like that can happen now.
Immigration into the U.S. had been declining after peaking in the mid to late 2000s. Growth in the United States wont be coming back to what it was or any semblance of what it was until a more pro-immigration friendly administration takes over in Washington DC.
We can do a much deeper dive into some of these places and put some statistics into play now that census numbers are out. I'll do 2010-2021 as a snapshot of each MSA's growth numbers, 2021 is the most recent year for which there are census estimates.
So here's what we know and what the data can tell us, all provided by the U.S. census bureau; growth drivers are out of whack in the post-COVID era.
The U.S. used to get over 1.1 million immigrants each year until 2019 and in 2021 it only brought in 374,000 immigrants. That's about double to triple the immigrants that Toronto gets by itself in Canada. So it's dropped precipitously. Some of that will bounce back as the world normalizes post-COVID and lockdowns and restrictions are lifted but it wont really get back to where it used to be. The only way for that to happen is to have a pro-immigration administration in Washington D.C. because both Trump and Biden have been damaging on that end.
The U.S. was always expected to rapidly age as the Boomers entered a later stage of their lives but that has since been expedited due to declining fertility rates and other factors that have damaged population growth.
So two of the three growth drivers that lead places to grow their populations have been compromised and while we can eventually expect a bounce back in immigration, it will likely never get back to where it used to be even in 2019.
Hence why post-census most places in the United States are now declining in population:
Also my post wasn't a case for Austin getting through the 4 million person threshold first. It was simply a pros and cons of why Austin can or cant get there. As it stands right now, it has the strongest growth rate and strongest growth fundamentals out of this group of cities being compared right now. We'll see how all of this plays out in the years and decades to come. I will say this though, if an administration that prioritizes immigration doesn't come into power soon then this decline in immigration trends is here to stay permanently.
One last point: it doesn't matter who is closest to the finish line anymore, the way places in America grow now has fundamentally changed and unfortunately I feel like it's a permanent change.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 08-05-2022 at 02:55 PM..
At the end of the day, I don't find a Charlotte, Denver, Austin, Nashville, etc. of 4 million + in the metro to be appealing. Actually it's kind of sad.
A lot of these places won't hit 4-5 million because birthrates have collapsed along with immigration. There will be little growth left.
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