This Is America’s Fastest Growing City

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 5, 8:25AM EDT

This Is America’s Fastest Growing City — © NicolasMcComber / Getty Images

The U.S. Census Bureau has released its “New Vintage 2020 Population Estimates Available for Nation, States, Counties and Puerto Rico Commonwealth.” The latest data, presented by state, county and metropolitan area, cover the year that ended July 1, 2020. The findings show that people left large cities and moved to suburbs, although the trend was not even nationwide.

The New York Times looked at the trend across cities with populations over 500,000 as of July 1, 2019. Several cities lost over half a percent of their residents in a year. These included Jackson, Mississippi, and Honolulu, Hawaii, which lost 1.0%, and San Jose, California, which lost 0.7%. The New York metro area, the largest in America, lost 0.6% as did the second largest, Los Angeles.

The fastest-growing city with a population of over 500,000 was Austin, Texas, which posted an increase of 3.0%. Boise, Idaho, and Lakeland, Florida, followed, each at 2.7%. Two other Florida cities were among the fastest growing: Cape Coral (2.4%) and North Port-Saratoga (2.0%).
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These were the fastest-growing metro areas in American in 2020:

Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, Texas: 3.0%
Boise City, Idaho: 2.7%
Lakeland-Winter Haven, Florida: 2.7%
Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Arkansas: 2.4%
Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida: 2.4%
Provo-Orem, Utah: 2.4%
Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, Arizona: 2.1%
Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina: 2.0%
North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida: 2.0%
Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina: 1.8%

These were the fastest-shrinking metro areas in American in 2020:

Jackson, Mississippi: −1.0%
Urban Honolulu, Hawaii: −1.0%
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California: −0.7%
Youngstown-Warren, Ohio-Pennsylvania: −0.6%
San Francisco-Oakland, California: −0.6%
New York-Newark, New York–New Jersey-Pennsylvania: −0.6%
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, California: −0.6%
Chicago, Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin: −0.5%
Syracuse, New York: −0.4%
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania: −0.4%

Special thanks to The New York Times.

Click here to see which American cities are growing fastest.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.