Most big-city growth in South, West
All but one of the nation’s 20 largest cities saw its population grow last year, with metropolises such as Austin, Denver and Houston among those seeing the most significant growth, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday.
With the exception of New York City, each of the 15 cities that gained the greatest number of people between 2014 and 2015 were in the South or the West.
Overall, growth in the nation’s biggest cities slowed to a five-year low of 1.03% for the last year, but the growth rate is still nearly double the average annual growth rate of 0.56% that cities saw from 2000-2010, noted William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“We’ve seen there’s been a decline in the growth level of some cities, but it’s still the case that cities are growing rapidly in this decade compared to last decade,” Frey said. “I’m not ready to write off the decade of the cities.”
Denver, with a population of 682,545, moved up two places to become the country’s 19thlargest city. The Mile High City saw 2.8% population growth over the last year, a bigger percentage increase than any other large U.S. city.
Seattle, which added more than 15,000 residents last year, moved up two spots to make it the nation’s 18th-biggest city.
New York City, with a population of more than 8.5 million residents, gained 55,000 people in the year that ended July 1, 2015, the biggest increase in raw population among any city. The bulk of the growth in New York took place in the Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx boroughs.
Houston, the nation’s fourth- largest city, added more than 40,000 residents over the last year, while Los Angeles, the second-biggest city in the country, added 34,000 people.
There were exceptions. Of the 82 biggest cities in the country, which account for a cumulative population of more than 59 million people, 11 cities saw population declines, according to the Census Bureau data. Detroit, which lost more than 3,100 residents, saw the biggest population decline and fell from being the 18th-biggest U.S. city to the 21st.