Twincities metro population? (Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington: 2015, construction, living)

[smith21]

does anybody know the twincities metro area population? wikipedia lists it at 3.5 million but im not sure how accurate that is.

[mnmike]

That is accurate for the entire area....The area that most people would consider "the metro" is around 3.2.

[knke0204]

That's about right.

[Voyageur]

Originally Posted by smith21

does anybody know the twincities metro area population? wikipedia lists it at 3.5 million but im not sure how accurate that is.

Wikipedia is extensively footnoted and in this case contains links directly to the source of the 3.5 million figure - the Census Bureau's annual estimates of CSA populations. The 3.5 million figure comes from 2006, up from 3.3 million per the 2000 census. A little googling could probably give you a figure more recent, maybe from 2008 - doubt you'd find anything more current than that. So using the increase from 2000 (hard figures) to 2006 (Census Bureau estimate) you could extrapolate that in the 4 years since 2006 the metro area has gained another 100k to 200k, leaving the metro with a current population of 3.6 or maybe 3.7 million.

Census Bureau information is about as definitive as you're going to get.

Of course, there are varying definitions of "Twin Cities" and "Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area" and those varying definitions will yield different populations results.

[ColdRedRain]

Wikipedia lists the TC area as being polarized around Saint Cloud, Minneapolis, Bloomington and Saint Paul. The traditional, 7 county area is about 2.8 million last time I checked.

[smith21]

looks like the twincities will hit 4 million before 2015.

[knke0204]

Originally Posted by smith21

looks like the twincities will hit 4 million before 2015.

Maybe, but growth has slowed down.
Commercial and residential construction hasn't been happening like before.
People aren't settling down and having children as early in life, and people are having less kids.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by knke0204

Maybe, but growth has slowed down.
Commercial and residential construction hasn't been happening like before.
People aren't settling down and having children as early in life, and people are having less kids.

The first two things are happening all over the country. The rest might be as well, I don't know.

[Stiery23]

Pretty sure the weather is the biggest limiting factor. It's kind of hard to convince people to move to a metro area with the distinction of having the coldest mean temperature of any major metro in the U.S. Moreover, the cities are extremely isolated in comparison to "normal" midwestern cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, etc.

Twin Cities winters are downright brutal, and I think that if the climate was either humid subtropical (like Nashville or Louisville) or semi-arid (like Denver or Boise), the metro population would already be somewhere near 4.5-5 million

[knke0204]

Originally Posted by Stiery23

Pretty sure the weather is the biggest limiting factor. It's kind of hard to convince people to move to a metro area with the distinction of having the coldest mean temperature of any major metro in the U.S. Moreover, the cities are extremely isolated in comparison to "normal" midwestern cities like Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, etc.

Twin Cities winters are downright brutal, and I think that if the climate was either humid subtropical (like Nashville or Louisville) or semi-arid (like Denver or Boise), the metro population would already be somewhere near 4.5-5 million

Brutal, yes. But I think it's similar to what many Sun Belt states face in the summer, unbearable temps. Las Vegas, Phoenix, ABQ, San Antonio, Houston, Atlanta, Florida, SoCal (inland) are almost all unbearable in the summer time, just as bad as MN's winters.

I was talking to a relative last week and I said "I would just love to live in a place where I can walk outside in my flip-flops and a t-shirt in the middle of January"

She replied with "There arent many places that you can do that" and it's true. I think a lot of MN's seem to have this hatred for winter because they feel like peers in other parts of the country are basking in the sun and living on the beach.

You can't be in Tshirts, shorts, and flp flops in January in Dallas, San Diego, Vegas, Atlanta, etc.