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I think Jacksonville FL, Huntsville AL, Waco TX, Oklahoma City OK, Colorado Springs CO, the Harrisburg/Lancaster PA region, Greensboro/Winston Salem NC, Greenville/Spartanburg SC, Knoxville TN, Chattanooga TN (GA), and Kansas City MO (KS) are going to make moves upward in the 2020's. All of these are great areas now in the rankings I've done. Some of them are already on the rise. But all of them have strong QOL metrics and have what it takes to make bigger strides.
Pittsburgh is one of my favorite cities to visit. One of the best and prettiest downtowns in the nation. Topographically beautiful. Great food scene. Friendly residents. A lot to do for a metro area of its size. Relatively affordable. So many QOL metrics to work with. But they have to improve their economy. Their housing stock is weak and dated. They have to reverse their declining population growth rate. These things are stark, real, and can't be ignored. It will take at least a decade of reversal and hard work to improve these issues to a point that they can start an upward the way they need to to compete with the overall QOL of Sunbelt and Rocky Mountain metro areas.
Why do people keep overlooking Richmond? It's a well placed state capital within a state that has a formidable economy. It's a regional center for banking and top-quality healthcare, has two well-respected NCAA Division I universities (VCU and U Of Richmond), a thriving well-balanced economy, several vibrant downtown area neighborhoods and a decent transportation infrastructure with recent inclusion of regular service within Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with the big boys...DC, Baltimore, Philly, NYC and Boston.
I'm not sure about Waco, but I've got quite a few friends from Austin who have moved to the Temple area in recent years.
That area is growing but I still think it’s mostly due to the military and medical industries. Outside of that, it won’t have substantial growth unless Austin metro continues to grow north and you won’t see any affects on that for several decades. Still, the Killeen-Temple is growing much faster than Waco.
Why do people keep overlooking Richmond? It's a well placed state capital within a state that has a formidable economy. It's a regional center for banking and top-quality healthcare, has two well-respected NCAA Division I universities (VCU and U Of Richmond), a thriving well-balanced economy, several vibrant downtown area neighborhoods and a decent transportation infrastructure with recent inclusion of regular service within Amtrak's Northeast Corridor with the big boys...DC, Baltimore, Philly, NYC and Boston.
I think that people have different ways of interpreting "out of nowhere".
IMO, Richmond isn't obscure enough to meet the requirement of the OP.
Maybe if Richmond was a decaying, declining city, like a Youngstown, OH, or Scranton, PA, and it shot back to health, it could be seen as coming out of nowhere. Fortunately for Richmond, it's not like those cities.
For anyone saying Pittsburgh has been on the decline. Has not been there since 2010.
There are only two states with two cities in the Top 20 Amazon HQ finalist list, and they were Pennsylvania and Texas.
And Pittsburgh was one of the cities in the top 20.
Pittsburgh continually ranks as one of the top cities in the nation for QOL.
Its legacy institutions really can only be matched by metros in the 5 Million Plus venue. Yet it is a 2.5 million metro.
It carries well above its weight and is, yet still so affordable.
Carniege Mellon is on the rank and file with MIT and Stanford.
With that.
I think Lancaster, Pennsylvania is the true rising star.
350k will still buy you a nice and new home there. Its downtown is highly attractive and historic. It has direct Amtrak high frequency service to both Philadelphia and NYC. ( Trains every hour to Philadelphia and NYC).
Fun fact: The Keystone Line is the 4th busiest in the nation.
Its downtown gives me Richmond, VA vibes, despite being much smaller.
I LOVE Pittsburgh.
But I think Lancaster. Is Pennsylvania's next rising star
For anyone saying Pittsburgh has been on the decline. Has not been there since 2010.
There are only two states with two cities in the Top 20 Amazon HQ finalist list, and they were Pennsylvania and Texas.
And Pittsburgh was one of the cities in the top 20.
Pittsburgh continually ranks as one of the top cities in the nation for QOL.
Its legacy institutions really can only be matched by metros in the 5 Million Plus venue. Yet it is a 2.5 million metro.
It carries well above its weight and is, yet still so affordable.
Carniege Mellon is on the rank and file with MIT and Stanford.
We've been hearing all these things for 20 years now, except the Amazon bit; but in a similar vein we've been hearing how CMU was going to attract a huge wave of tech investment.
Well, there's been some tech money parked there, but despite that and everything else Pittsburgh has going for it, it's all the place can do to just keep its current population. And that goes for the whole metro area, not just the city proper. Just keeping its current population means its actually losing population share relative to a growing national population.
I saw a piece on Pittsburgh once. It’s attracting above the national average on jobs in the so-called “creative class” but is losing (much) more than the national average on working class jobs. People are still moving away even while it’s average income per capita increases (and in fact the later is tied to the former happening). Because the jobs that stay are higher paying. But there is a ceiling there if you can’t grow the remainder of your employment base.
Pittsburgh did everything right way back in the 1980s as it transitioned from an industrial to a post-industrial world. But in the decades it took to change, a couple generations had begun the process of moving out and now too few babies are there and Pittsburgh can’t move international immigrants in fast enough to offset the domestic migration out that is still occurring.
I personally was surprised to see Nashville come out of nowhere in the past 5 years or so. Country music? State government? Who knew?
Des Moines, too.
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